What did your first computer's hardware consist of ?

[tinyvillager]

Since i was going to crack open my computer for a DVD Burner install  i've decided to replace the hard drive
as well,going for 320 gig  This caused me to flash back to my first PC,back in 95 which was a Packard Bell,
66 mhz Pentium 1; 16 mb of RAM;2X Speed cdrom drive;and a hard drive that was 540 Megabytes! at i
believe  4200 RPM,might of been 5400 RPM,none the less noisy as hell,oh yeah let's not forget the 14.4 modem.

  My mother purchased this for me for a little over $2000,which was a rip off even back then but she
wanted to surprise me and didn't know better.She bought it in monthly  payments through a catalog company,
fingerhut,who are still around but as since been taken to court for fraudulent interest practices.

[Jibz]

My first computer was a Power 3000, a ZX81 clone .

[m_s]

My first was a Commore 64, back in OMG 1979!  I loved it, and when the first emulators came out a few years back, I downloaded several of the games I had back then - and they were as good as ever.  I remember the flashy screen as I loaded programs from cassette; I'd set them to load from tape and go run around outside for 30 minutes or so while they did so.  Wow, and now I get frustrated when I have to wait for 30 seconds...  I taught myself some basic machine language and used to write simple programs and - forgive me for I knew not what I did - crack games for my own use.  Ah, I'm coming over all Proustian...

[mouser]

this was discussed a bit in an old thread, http://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=514.0


here was the first computer we had (my father bought it, thanks pop), the Cromemco Z-2d:

http://users.pandora.be/lust/cromemcozd2.htm

1977
CPU Z80 2 or 4MHZ
ROM 1K monitor
OS CP/M
RAM 64K
21 S-100 slots
8 and 18V integrated power supply
2 Floppy Drives
3 S100-bus cards

[m_s]

It really was a pretty cool design!

[tinyvillager]

Good lord!  Technology has come a long way.I remember that first night i used my computer,DID NOT SLEEP FOR AT
LEAST 24 hrs,at least.My blood pressure got low from lack of eating.I lived out in the sticks so all the ISP numbers where long distance on top of hourly charges for access.I used a graphical email client from Juno,they still exist as
an ISP now but only offered email back then.That was weird calling up a number just to get email.Now the first
computer i used was a Mac at school and it was to play Oregon Trail.And that monitor screen,it was like matted,
felt like panty hose.I'm sure there is a technical description for it.

[Carol Haynes]

Sinclair ZX81 ... 1Kb of memory ;-) Most progs had to be written in machine code and 'poked' byte by byte into memory!!

A good computer was the BBC Micro - 32Kb of memory and 100Kb or 200Kb floppy discs but you could still desktop publish and run MIDI music systems.

A remember managing a Prime MiniComputer System with 25 terminals. Had rather lower abilities than even Pentium III processor though, and only 4Mb of memory! Still managed to teach with all the major languages of the day (inc. C, Basic, Pascal, COBOL) and all the usual apps running concurrently.

Computers have come a long way - but surprisingly what can be done hasn't improved as greatly - it is just a bit simpler to achieve !!

[zridling]

My first computer purchase was a 286 with a 20Mb HD (forget the memory) and with the printer and monitor, I paid about $4200 for it in 1986 — before the USDollar fell through the floor in the past few years! It was a great machine for about 15 months, and then I wanted more. I still want more. I watch Star Trek, where they simply talk to the computer and tell it or ask it to do some task. That's old school — I want the darn thing to know what I'm thinking... Computer, don't you know by now what I'm thinking?

I'm wanting the HAL9000-SP2!

[tsaint]

1973 .. Exidy Sorcerer ... 4K ram, z80. For a small amount you could buy a booklet with a listing of the OS.
The ram was expandable to 16K but I got an elec engineer friend to solder in an extra 32 K. Tape storage, until I bought a "stringy floppy" which was an endless loop of tape. 360K floppy drives were $AU1000+ in those days