How did you first get into computers...

Kyra_to brought it up in the Ask a Hooker Thread and I thought I would start a new thread on this subject rather than hijack Gen's AWESOME thread.

Kyra_to said:
My first computer had a cassette recorder, remember those? But yes I was very young at that time, I think I needed a booster seat to sit at it.

A TRS-80? I remember playing a Star Trek text only game on one of those... I was maybe 12 yrs old... Then when my dad bought one of the original IBM PC's (a 5150 I think...) in the Spring of 1982 I think.

275px-IBM_original_PC.jpg


It had no hard drive- only 5 1/4" floppies...

It wasn't until 1993 I got my own 486DX2 and joined the "Internet age" through Compuserve... the rest as they say is history!

How about the rest of you???
 
Last edited:
A 4K Vic20. Used it to operate a solenoid using a BASIC timer to run an Ansco Super8MM movie camera in a timelapse mode and film a bean germinating.

Moved on to an Amiga, gave it to my son who used it to make animations. No HD, just two 3.5 floppy drives.
 
I was part of the very stupidly but quickly aborted hijack... it was a PET 4K. And I had forgotten the cassettes!

PET2001.jpg
 
moresex4me said:
I was part of the very stupidly but quickly aborted hijack...
No worries... I think we caught it in time! ;)

I actually forgot about the old 286 hand me down I got from my dad before I bought the parts for the 486DX2 in 1993. That was the first PC I built from scratch- a 486 DX2 66 mhz, w/ 64K Ram and a 40 MB hard drive... You used to have to change all these jumper switches on the motherboards back then, and even if just one of them was wrong- nothing would work! I've probably built about a thousand since... Much easier now-a-days!
 
Cycleguy007 said:
I suspect you're right!
(I was just a yr old then!)

I would hope I am right.:)
 
I first started learning for a statistics course in University.. I found it extremely frustrating. I didn't really learn anything more until working in an office and learned a lot of it on the job. I didn't buy my own computer for home use til probably 10 years ago.
 
I first got into computers with the Commodore PET as well; the chiclet keyboards seemed to wear out quickly with Space Invaders for the PET.

TRS-80's and Apple][ were more "game" machines (played "Olympics" on the Apple - my first colour graphics game) and were frowned upon by us Commodore geeks.

Around 1983, I helped tear apart an old DEC (maybe a PDP-7?) with core memories; I'm still sorry I didn't save one of the blocks of cores. I think I still have one of my punch-card decks, though. Forgotten the COBOL structure, though.

Did a lot of programming for the PET and Commodore 64; owned a C-64 and a Vic20 (still have the Vic20 sitting on a shelf, alongside about 50 x 5 1/4" floppies - what was their capacity again? 525K? 625 sectors?).

Got into 6502 Assembler, then during University (mid 80's) I was busy with embedded and large-scale computer systems and specialized languages.
 
I was hired by Radio Shack in 1979 to do instore demo's of the TRS80 line of computers by writing software that could show the power of the machines. I wrote many games and office softwares that were actually packaged and sold in the early days.

In the early days our machines were banned by the FCC because of RF interference. (Model I)

computer-model1x300.gif


Back then the prefered method to program was in Assembly language which you could stuff lots of code into a nice 4KB page..
 
Oh well, if we're talking university mainframes, my first was an IBM 1620 at Carleton in '60-61. Wrote little programs in machine language first then FORTRAN, and loaded them in punched card decks and waited hours for results. Heaven help you if you dropped a deck.
 
Mr. Lucky said:
Cycleguy did you play ET in 1982?
It will always be the worst video game in history.


I started with computers in 94' when the internet came out.

Nope... not familiar with that one... I do however remember a game called Adventure. It was a text RPG made for the PC... it was quite interesting and fun to play actually. :D