What was you're first experience with a computer?

[NTDaws]

I was watching a LMG Clip the other day where Linus explained his first time using a computer.

I wanted to see what everyone else's was.

 

I'll start "I started on my first computer when I was 4 years old, so 2004. We had this custom built Pentium 3 running Windows XP Home. My dad had it built by Honor Computers Edmonton. The first game I played was Epic Duel (I still play this) and club penguin."

[emosun]

Maybe around 1995 we had a 486 era machine running windows 95 that I played simcity and solitare on. I dont actually know what the machine had for hardware I was 5 at the time lol

[WaggishOhio383]

Oh geez I don't even remember when I first started using a computer... I grew up using my parents' desktop running Windows XP. I used to love playing around with the clipart in Microsoft Word and playing Space Cadet Pinball. I don't really remember a thing about the computer hardware-wise, nor do I remember well what it looked like either.

[Rex Hite]

My first memorable experience was a Commodore PET at school. We had to write our programmes and save them to tape cassette and hand them in to the teacher.

 

Later my second notable experience was when my dad got a 286 PC and was installing something called an "Operating System" from floppy disks and I was confused because I thought all home computers were like the PET. It made no sense to me.

 

My third experience was when I got a Mac Beige G3 tower and I finally understood what a useful interface could do.

 

 

[Eigenvektor]

I started on an old C64 that my father got from a co-worker. He included a ton of 5.25 floppy disks (and some datasettes) with all kinds of games. Also a book with development lessons. I wrote my first programs in BASIC on that machine.

 

That was some time around 198x. A friend's father had a very expensive 80286 (for work). I remember he showed us some program he was using to design circuit boards. I also remember playing some golfing simulation and Lemmings and that machine.

[GuiltySpark_]

We got a Apple Macintosh Performa 550 in our basement in 1993 or so and I remember playing Star Wars X-Wing non-stop. I think i was 7? 

 

[Guest]

Grand parents had a Commodore 64 that I played games on when I was 7 or 8.  First internet experience was on a 286 with a 9600 baud modem, in DOS mode.

 

First personal computer was a 386, don't remember much else other than it had a 540mb hard drive, and I thought I could store anything. lol.

[Kronoton]

My brothers CPC464 as in 1st real experience.

I think I played some jump&run on a cousin's C64 before (or at around the same time).

 

In school we has some Apple2e (which were somewhat outdated at that time).

[AzzaNezz]

My father bought some PC for like 80 euros,used one.It was in 2001-2003 i think.It used Windows 95 and it was shitty as hell.We had if for like 2 months maybe then it died

[BoxTurtle]

Earlier last year my brother bought a keyboard and mouse and set up a monitor. 

 

Edit: I forget to mention that my brother had an inverted touchscreen Chromebook set up as a second monitor so thats the computer part.

[whm1974]

19 minutes ago, BoxTurtle said:

Earlier last year my brother bought a keyboard and mouse and set up a monitor. 

What about the Computer? Unless the Monitor is an AIO Desktop Computer.

[Bitter]

My dad's Apple IIC+ with monochrome monitor and internal speaker.

[jones177]

Atari 400 back in 1982. It came with Basic programing language so I went back to school to learn it. 

Programming was my main hobby but that changed to graphics when I got my first 16 bit computer in 1987. 

[BoxTurtle]

13 minutes ago, whm1974 said:

What about the Computer? Unless the Monitor is an AIO Desktop Computer.

well i forget to mention that brother had an inverted touchscreen Chromebook set up as a second monitor

[whm1974]

41 minutes ago, AzzaNezz said:

My father bought some PC for like 80 euros,used one.It was in 2001-2003 i think.It used Windows 95 and it was shitty as hell.We had if for like 2 months maybe then it died

And give your Dad a good excuse to buy a decent computer? For only 80 Euros what did your Dad expect?

[MultiGamerClub]

Mother had a Windows 95 pc that ran LEGO trains and LEGO park games and some older windows included game on a board with 2 sticks on the bottom.. Lots of colors it had.

 

I remember greatly sitting on a high-up chair on our old beige computer hearing weird clicking noises and screeching noises from inside the cabinet while the pc ran.. Not hot but just some loud noises from time to time while getting pizza.. Me being 7 or 8 at the time had a blast playing LEGO games, that first experience is really hard to forget.

 

Probably my first HP laptop i had in 2003 too that was the most powerful we got for 1200$~, man that machine still runs fine today too! (Even with Dual Core Intel something.)

[rockyroller]

My first experience with computers was at school when I discovered children in the years below me were allowed to use them, but my generation was forbidden to even see them. So when I got a job I bought my own to learn about computers.

[Uttamattamakin]

For me the very VERY first... was when I was under four.  https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-history/heroic-failures/the-texas-instruments-994-worlds-first-16bit-computer 

All I remember of it was playing a Star Trek video game on it.  

 

The second one.. the one I really learned how to use was a Coleco Adam computer.  The Adam was the computer.  The Coleco was a video game console which would plug into the computer or which could work without the computer.  It also came with an impact printer which was where the power supply was. 

As such it was a pretty good gaming experience.   Pretty good for 1984-1988.  It was after that that I got a Tandy 1000 RL which I have written about as well. 

The one game I remember from that was WarGames.  Based on the classic hacker movie of the same name.  Just to get an idea of what kind of game play satisfied us back then.  Which may explain why I look at certain people who get eye cancer from less than 100+ FPS gaming as being ... well. What's a good word for spoiled?

 

This game basically defines my microgeneration in some ways.  If ... Ferris Buler there was a cool MUCH older person to you when those movies came out... you were one of us.  "Geriatric Millennials" as they call us now.  

[Guest colin.p]

First computer was a pre-built made by a company called Patriot Computers in the summer of 1994. We got it as part of an ICS course. It had a 486 SX UMC processer, 4mb RAM, 80mb HDD, a Creative Labs soundcard, video card? It had IBM DOS 6.1 installed and I then installed the included Windows 3.1 diskettes later.

 

I upgraded the computer myself, upgrading to a 486 DX2 Intel (66mgz), going up to a total of 12mb RAM ($100 for a 4 meg module), a 1mb video card ($100), and a 1 GB Conner HDD (at the then princely sum of $475). I still have the old 1 gig drive in storage someplace but the old computer is long gone. I rebuilt it  and a couple others until I went to the dark side and bought a Dell 1545 in 2009.

 

OS started with  Windows 3.1/DOS 6.1, then 95, then 98, then 2000, a side jaunt to Red Hat 8/9 and then Mandrake 9, back to XP, then Vista (wife's laptop), then 7 on my Dell laptop. I kept 7 on for 3 months, then went to ubuntu and stayed there until I got this HP refurb and trying Windows 10 for awhile.

[CerealExperimentsLain]

My first experience was with a C64 but this was the 90s and it was well past it's prime.  It had been my uncle's and for some reason he set it up in a room at my grandma's house where the whole family would gather frequently. I treated this more as 'game console' though, you put in floppies, typed run, and played the game.  It was a funny shaped NES that loaded games really slowly to my young mind.

It wasn't until 1995 that my family got a computer proper, a 66mhz 486 DX, 8MB of RAM and a 365MB HDD, fancy stuff.  From there we were a 'computer family'.  My mother didn't want us to have game consoles because 'We'd just play video games all day' but a computer was 'educational'.  We of course used them largely to play video games all day, but the computers also brought technical exploration and more and even the internet a few years later.

[Guest colin.p]

My first internet experience was dialing in to Carleton University's freenet (Dec 1994 with a 9600 baud modem) and cutting my teeth on BBS's and usenet. When we went to a paid ISP service, I was blown away by pictures on the screen and the first real website ( I went to) was a fan page of the Ottawa Senators, all while using Mosaic's web browser.

[AzzaNezz]

12 hours ago, whm1974 said:

And give your Dad a good excuse to buy a decent computer? For only 80 Euros what did your Dad expect?

My father up to that point never used a computer,he was on a drink with his friends who asked my dad does he needs PC.Even today only thing that he can do is go to youtube,and write an email.

[Invalid Human]

I was 3 or 4, I dont remember. My grandpa got a free laptop from where he worked at the time and I got to use it a few times. I got my own laptop when my mom put me in cyber school. I would say thats when I started really likeing computers.

[Sir Asvald]

Back in 2005/6 when my dad bough some PCs from his place of work for his exams. Boi those PCs work HEAVY, Dell workstation PCs.

[Alan G]

Intro CS class back in 1968.  Fortran punch card programming on an IBM mainframe.  Student programs would be run at the top of each hour and if you made a mistake in one of your cards, you had to wait an hour to get the new print out.  It was a real PITA.  When I got to my post-doc seven years later the lab had a DEC PDP-11 which was convenient.  It needed to be booted each morning using a paper tape reader and toggle switches, no simple on/off switch and auto booting that we have today.  It did run BASIC which made programming easier but it was only 16 bit and I don't remember how much memory it had.  To optimize anything, parts of the code had to be in assembly language which I didn't know.