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Describe your first computer and your earliest online experiences

Started by berberry, June 27, 2017, 05:44:21 PM

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GaryV

The first computer I bought was a 386.  Because who would ever need a 486?



kkt

First computer I used (not owned) was an HP-2000.  I was in middle school and it belonged to my school district.  They let students learn to program on it.  You could do anything you want, as long as it was in BASIC.  The computer was in the School District offices across town, so to use it we used ASR-33 teletypes.  They were very loud and clunky, printed on a roll of paper not on a screen.  The modems were acoustic couple - they let out an audible whistle as a carrier, modulated to transmit data.  The telephone headset was placed on the modem to use it.  Since there was no electrical connection, it was considered acceptable to send the data through Ma Bell's wires.  The keys were cylinders that had to be pressed hard and a long way, touch typing was pretty much impossible.  The teletypes were discarded from some company that didn't want them anymore.  The computer was pretty modest, but usable for beginners.

Mr_Northside

First computer the family had was a Commodore 64.  I mostly remember it being used for word processing (printing, of course, to an old-school dot-matrix printer), and playing Sargon Chess (or something like that).  I can't remember what specific year we got that.

While I used the internet at a friends house, and the Pitt-Uniontown campus (probably a junior in High School) - We didn't get the internet till I convinced my folks to sign up for dial-up service (33.6) thru our telephone company (Citizens Telephone Company of Kecksburg)
*We were already 2 computers past that Commodore at this point.


I don't have opinions anymore. All I know is that no one is better than anyone else, and everyone is the best at everything

Big John

First computer was the cheapo Timex/Sinclair 3000 in 1983.  Had very little memory and no discs, had to start from scratch each time.

Fir use of an internet system was at my first job out of school.  A 2400 baud telephone connection to a BBS at company headquarters.

Otto Yamamoto

The first exprience with computers was in high school using a teletype terminal and programming in BASIC. I used a lot of DOS machinery in the Navy; I actually started getting online in '94 via a Sharp organiser with a sidecar modem; I went from that to an early Toshiba Lappy  with 512 mb memory and 1 MB 'hard ram' on a card, and had access to PC"s and Macs via the local college. I finally got a Win 95 PC in '95.

route17fan

My first computer was a Texas Instruments TI99/4A! (yikes!). The software was YIKES at best and programming was relatively easy. I do miss some of the programming error messages like:

]CAN'T DO THAT

or

]STRING NUMBER MISMATCH AT 56
I would then type..
>EDIT 56

]CANT DO THAT

Ahh the fun. Then that evolved in to a Commodore 64 (and eventually 128) while my school used Apple ][e.

Man, I miss the 80s. (laughs)
John Krakoff - Cleveland, Ohio

nexus73

First computer was a C-64.  Went online with the net in 1995.  I enjoyed IRC and the newsgroups back then.  Yahoo's web-based email has been with me since 1998 and has proved to be of good value.  ISP's and locations can change but the email addy remains the same!

First online: 1971.  We had a modem with a printer terminal at our high school that used BASIC.  Imagine that, not even a CRT!

Rick
US 101 is THE backbone of the Pacific coast from Bandon OR to Willits CA.  Industry, tourism and local traffic would be gone or severely crippled without it being in functioning condition in BOTH states.

jakeroot

I learned to use a computer at school back in the early 2000s. My elementary school was equipped with state-of-the-art Mac Classics. I thought they were pretty good! I played the hell out of Oregon Trail on that thing, and it was also what I learned to type on (apparently it was an Apple Keyboard II).

At home, we had some piece of junk HP with Windows XP (no idea what the specs were). It crashed constantly, and the only thing I ever did on it was play SimCity 4, which it ran well enough.

My first true online experience was Xbox Live, playing Halo 2 online. We had internet at the time, but I never used it/didn't know what to do with it. Every now and then, when I visited my cousins (mid 2000s at this point), we would use their HP computer to access AOL and browse things like Albino Blacksheep and flash games.

hm insulators

I was a latecomer to computers; my parents got their first one in 1998, and about the year 2000 I had gone out to visit them in Sun City West (I was still living in California) and they showed me how to use theirs. They had AOL. Eventually I started using library computers which were much faster. About a year after I moved to Arizona in 2004, my mother gave me her old computer, and I hooked it up to broadband--no clunky old AOL for me! :no: She had Windows 98 which I upgraded to XP and had that computer for several years until the monitor wore out, at which point I got a new 'puter and was surprised at how whisper quiet it was compared to the noisy old tower that Mother gave me. That computer in turn died about a year or so ago and I have this machine with Windows 10.
Remember: If the women don't find you handsome, they should at least find you handy.

I'd rather be a child of the road than a son of a ditch.


At what age do you tell a highway that it's been adopted?

cjk374

Right now...today...there is a computer in our railroad (weighing) scale house that runs on Windows 98. The weighing program is DOS-based. The program's screen is different shades of green (just like in the old days), but everything else uses color. It is powered by some old IBM computer (I don't remember the model). Some classics are hard to kill off.

We had computers in our high school wing in the 80s. They were in the "business room" where typing class was still taught using IBM Selectric typewriters! The computers were green-screen Apple models that we learned BASIC computer language. Oh the joy of typing 10 PRINT 2+2.  20 REPEAT.
Runnin' roads and polishin' rails.

Roadgeekteen

Probably watching a kiddie tv show or playing little kid educational games at age 5 or 6.
God-emperor of Alanland, king of all the goats and goat-like creatures

Current Interstate map I am making:

https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/edit?hl=en&mid=1PEDVyNb1skhnkPkgXi8JMaaudM2zI-Y&ll=29.05778059819179%2C-82.48856825&z=5

US71

Second hand TRS-80. Mostly good for word processing. Upgrade later to a used/refurbished PC, but it only lasted a couple years.
Like Alice I Try To Believe Three Impossible Things Before Breakfast

slorydn1

First computer I had access to was a Tandy TRS-80 with the monochrome screen with the 5.25 disks in the computer lab/library in junior high circa 1982-1983.

First home PC (circa 1986) was a Vendex Headstart IBM PC/XT compatible with 2 5.25 gloppy drives, color monitor and dot matrix printer. This was the computer that I started keeping road trip stats and various other spreadsheets on. I also spent countless hours typing papers (high school) and playing Flight Simulator on it. I didn't get to bring it to college, it was shared between my little brother and I while at home, so I used an electric typewriter for term papers in college.

I ended up with that computer at my house somehow in the later years, and it was still working in October 1997 when I got my first internet capable computer, a Packard Bell 486/66mhz with a "huge" 325 MB hard drive, color monitor, inkjet printer, and a blazing fast 14.4 modem, and Windows 95. 

I had messed with some Windows 3.1 (meaning playing Solitare) at the rescue squad I ran with, but this was my first real day to day use of Windows files/folders (etc). I had both IE 4 and Netscape loaded on it and used a local ISP for dialup access. It really wasn't as bad as it sounds, for what we used the internet for back in those days a 14.4 modem was plenty fast. When I upgraded to a 28.8 modem that felt almost as good as today's high speed internet-until pages got more and more complex, pictures got bigger, advertising got more pervasive (etc).

I do remember the WEEKEND I downloaded IE5, though. I capped WEEKEND because that's exactly as long as it took, an entire weekend. I was working nightshift, I got online first thing Saturday morning and began the download process. When I woke up to go to work Saturday afternoon it still wasn't done. I worked 12 hours, got home Sunday morning, still no joy. I had made up my mind if it wasn't done Sunday afternoon when I was getting dressed to go to work I was going to cancel the download and order the CD. It was done, though the clicking and saving/installing almost made me late for work, lol.
Please Note: All posts represent my personal opinions and do not represent those of any governmental agency, non-governmental agency, quasi-governmental agency or wanna be governmental agency

Counties: Counties Visited

index

I have very early memories of computers that are very foggy, which I think involved using educational related websites from PBS on an old Windows XP machine.

I clearly remember that my first computer was an iMac G3 colored lime green. I remember my grandmother bringing it home, I have no idea when this was, but I knew it must have been when I was two or three. I have no memories of that using that one, or any other memories of it. The earliest clear memories I have on a computer would be a three-year-old me playing Super Mario flash games on some site, which is surprisingly still up (onemorelevel.com), around 2005, on what was at the time a brand new HP desktop computer, laid sideways, meant for office use. The early-mid 2000s were nice from what I'm able to dig up from my memories.

It was one of these, but with a floppy drive.



I do remember being a huge PITA to deal with as a little kid with computers. I have very clear memories of myself constantly factory resetting it, destroying saved data. I would get viruses on the system all the time, download copious amounts of adware, and even cause physical damage to that poor old computer by shoving cotton balls and q-tips into the back fan, power supply fan, CD drive, and floppy drive. I'd also try to annoy my older brothers on there when they played their games. When my parents gave me my first laptop in 2008, it got broken beyond repair from viruses. What were they thinking??

It was one of these.



Of course, these are nowhere near as old as you all's first computer experiences. I've always been interested in old technology, so this thread was cool to read.
I love my 2010 Ford Explorer.



Counties traveled

roadgeek01

The first one I remember using was a Dell Dimension that ran Windeos XP  After that broke, (because yours truly put a Trojan virus, and who knows what else by accident onto it) a Dell XPS that ran Windows Vista.  That thing got unbearably slow, so a Dell Inspiron all in one running Windows 8 that was upgraded to Windows 10.  My first computer that I owned was a old Dell Inspiron from 2005 or something running Windows XP.  Then after that a Dell laptop that ran Linux Mint that was converted from XP.  Now I have a very much nice Dell Inspiron laptop that isn't 10 years old.
pork bork my hork

idk what it means either

cpzilliacus

Quote from: Otto Yamamoto on June 28, 2017, 07:12:28 PM
The first exprience with computers was in high school using a teletype terminal and programming in BASIC.

Did this as a college freshman (the supported languages were BASIC, a form of Fortran IV and PL/I).

The host computer was IBM 370 running a time share system called Call-OS. 

A buddy worked in a small data center that had two IBM 360 Model 50 computers, used that some (with punched cards).

Then used a Sperry Univac 1100/40.

Then back to IBM 370 Model 148. 

And so on.  Have not worked with a mainframe computer for many years now.
Opinions expressed here on AAROADS are strictly personal and mine alone, and do not reflect policies or positions of MWCOG, NCRTPB or their member federal, state, county and municipal governments or any other agency.

route17fan

Remember when the Pentium processors first came out? 1 + 1 = 1.999995  :-D
John Krakoff - Cleveland, Ohio

DeaconG

My first computer was an NEC Ultralite Versa 486DX-25 laptop with a 10-inch active matrix screen, 2 MB memory and a 170MB hard drive (which lunched itself six months after and got replaced with a 250MB Simpletech hard drive). The laptop had two PC Card slots, one of which I used a 28.8K modem in and the other one was a SCSI-2 interface card for my NEC 3x CD reader (and later, a Syquest 180MB cartridge drive), all run under Windows 3.11. It was the second active matrix screen laptop after Toshiba (IIRC). I paid four grand for that laptop (hey, that's what you get for being bleeding edge). Yes, a lot of folks had serious envy when they saw it... :sombrero:

My first home PC was a special built unit by a company called SAG Electronics based out of West Chester, PA; with dual Pentium 200MHz CPU's, 4 GB memory, two Seagate SCSI-320 HD's on an Adaptec SCSI interface card, two Pioneer CD-R's and a Number Nine video card, finished off with a 17-inch MAG CRT and a 56k modem, all running Windows NT Workstation 4...and paid half of what I'd paid for the laptop. I loved that machine so, but getting games for it was a royal pain in the ass...

And yes, the dual CPU bug is still with me, my current PC motherboard is dual socket...obviously I have more money than sense! :-D :banghead:
Dawnstar: "You're an ape! And you can talk!"
King Solovar: "And you're a human with wings! Reality holds surprises for everyone!"
-Crisis On Infinite Earths #2

kkt

Quote from: route17fan on July 04, 2017, 09:33:40 PM
Remember when the Pentium processors first came out? 1 + 1 = 1.999995  :-D

"I am Pentium of Borg.  You will be approximated."

berberry

Quote from: route17fan on July 04, 2017, 09:33:40 PM
Remember when the Pentium processors first came out? 1 + 1 = 1.999995  :-D

I remember, but not sure how clearly. I think I recall it was related to clock speed. The first Pentia were supposed to run at 66 Mhz, but this math problem kept cropping up during the quality control tests. Intel was faced with major losses until someone had the bright idea of retesting the failed chips at a slower clock speed. That fixed the problem, and so Intel ended up selling most of the initial run of chips as a 60 Mhz product.

Am I remembering this correctly?

formulanone

First computer I'd used was in 1982, where we had an Apple II in the corner of our 3rd grade classroom (one per grade level). We had a computer lab with about a dozen "brown apples" by the time I'd reached 5th grade, and we learned a few BASIC commands and file saving.

Got an old IBM PCjr which was heavily outdated by 1986, which worked fine for word processing, a few simple games, and some programming. Something in the motherboard refused to display anything (except for the cartridge-based games) midway though my freshman year in college.

First online experience was at high school, in 1988. I don't recall much of the specifics, but you could find extracts and articles if you searched a few words. It frequently dropped characters and sometimes substituted gibberish. Admittedly, I used it a few times to greatly assist research and busy-work writing. When it typically only yielded a handful of results on any subject, we kind of knew you couldn't just plagiarize persistently.

First world-wide-web moment was with Compuserve in 1995, kind of lost interest after six months; found a renewed interest two years later when my future wife said I needed an email address. I took a crack at do-it-yourself HTML, and that all kind of hooked me into everything else.

DeaconG

Quote from: berberry on July 06, 2017, 06:44:32 AM
Quote from: route17fan on July 04, 2017, 09:33:40 PM
Remember when the Pentium processors first came out? 1 + 1 = 1.999995  :-D

I remember, but not sure how clearly. I think I recall it was related to clock speed. The first Pentia were supposed to run at 66 Mhz, but this math problem kept cropping up during the quality control tests. Intel was faced with major losses until someone had the bright idea of retesting the failed chips at a slower clock speed. That fixed the problem, and so Intel ended up selling most of the initial run of chips as a 60 Mhz product.

Am I remembering this correctly?

I believe you are correct.
Dawnstar: "You're an ape! And you can talk!"
King Solovar: "And you're a human with wings! Reality holds surprises for everyone!"
-Crisis On Infinite Earths #2

intelati49

My first real computer memory was asking some high school chemistry(?) student what was the red lines underneath some strange words were. This was probably 1998. Everything's hazy at this point, but I did play some games(?) online in the computer lab.

I was behind most of your experiences. From age 5-12 I probably had a total of a day on the internet. Seriously though, we kept busy at home and I read *all* the books.

Suddenly at 15, I found a computer magazine, built my own computer at 16, and never looked back.

My first site I remember in particular is probably the the World Factbook

Had Dial-up (56kbps I'm assuming) for ten years there (-2011ish?) then got laptops with a cellular dongle. We used to spend hours at McD's working on homework (This is when I found this site.  :-D)

Rothman

First computer in my family's house was an Apple IIe.

The first computer I touched was an IBM mainframe in 1978.  My mother was a data processor at IU.
Please note: All comments here represent my own personal opinion and do not reflect the official position(s) of NYSDOT.

I-39

Compaq Presario with Windows 98 First Edition (if you recall, they had to make a Second Edition of Windows 98 because the first one was extremely buggy). It was a decent computer, but because of Windows 98 FE, it crashed on occasion. Played a lot of Humongous Entertainment games on there.

I didn't start using the Internet until we moved to a new house and got Comcast High-Speed Internet and WiFi installed in 2004.



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