First computer

[Tallulah]

We had the Spectrum with the membrane keypad - previously mentioned in this thread. We then upgraded to the rubber keys and then the keypad that was a little more robust (plastic keys).

Oh, the technology then!

[Lothar-gr]

A Amstrad 6128 with a Green monitor was my first computer in the year 1986 ... Soon a color monitor took the place of the green, and 2 years later a Amiga 500 followed.

Before 1986 i used to play a lot with a spectrum 48K that a friend of mine had. I remember how much proud i was to have a computer that used diskettes instead of cassetes ( amstrad 6128 had a 3 inch floppy )

[Elbmek]

what was your first computer experience?

Sinclair ZX81 given to my son, I used to write programs for it. Followed by Commodore C64C and then into pc's. My first pc cost £1000 and had a 108MB Hard Drive, 8 meg of ram and ran on Windows 3.1.1. How DID it ever run?

[landsmith2001]

i had an acorn electron, with a tape recorder to load games, that were pants!

You had to turn the volume up really load so that the computer would pick up the code of squeeks and pips " how bizzare"!
I would wait what seemed an hour for the tape to run through, only to get a message saying "bad data"
What a total waste of time! I think the attraction lasted about 2days before it collected a very thick layer of dust, whilst i was out doing more worthwhile things..i really hated computer geeks who spent long hot summer days sat in their bedrooms playing pointless computer games

[Spangles]

A 32K Commodore PET from the late '70s. It had brilliant green block graphics and if you wanted sound effects you had to have a long wave radio in close proximity. I loved it.

[mrbig]

A 32K Commodore PET from the late '70s. It had brilliant green block graphics and if you wanted sound effects you had to have a long wave radio in close proximity. I loved it.

I remeber using those in school. We play games on them. And they had a math program for it.

[steve edwards]

i or rather my dad had a zx81 it had a 1k memory and was about as technological as my nans pants

[OrangeCremolaFoam]

mine was a C64 which was one of the Best games machines ever (next to the Atari 2600 VCS which i loved and the Sega Megadrive)..I remember buying Zzap64 and Computer and Video Games magazines and before that, a very old Mag when I had my Atari VCS called 'TV Gamer'!!! lol.. was ace...

Rab

[Cal]

everyone at school had either a zx spectrum or a vic 20.....my old fella wanted us to have more than just a good gaming machine so he went and bought us a sharp mz700......there was about 5 games avalaible for it so it never got the use it should of.
spent most of the time around my mates house on his spectrum.

[steve edwards]

i remember when we were poor we used to have a really odd video recorder , it was not vhs or betamax , it was a video 2000 system it was cool really as when you finished taping or playing one side of the tape you turned it over and played the other side , just as you might with a music cassette ...bizarre

[armchair_scouse]

The first computer I ever used was at the Open Day for the secondary school I ended up going to. It was before the days of computer monitors, it used to display stuff on a continuous roll of paper, like a typewriter/teletype. Strange device it was too... The school also had one ZX80, with it's white case and blue keyboard. A few years later, they got a couple of Research Machines 380Zs (anyone who did Computer Science at school and is of a certain age would have encountered one of these beasts, or it's successor, the 480Z).

My first computer (that I owned) was a Sinclair ZX81. Me and my brother had saved up our money, and even did a car washing service locally, to earn enough cash to buy it ourselves. £70 I think it was, from WH Smith. Flat membrane keyboard, 1K of RAM. I can remember spending hours typing in pages and pages of machine code letters in order to get a program running. Imagine our joy after spending three or four hours typing in little pairs of letters when we discovered a) we'd missed a line b) the machine code listing was misprinted c) we had taken too long on the telly and someone wanted to watch TV... Thank God 7 months later when we got a proper keyboard, a 16K Rampack, a tape recorder, and, best of all... Kevin Tom's Football Manager game!!!

[Oggy]

I had the bog standard spectrum ZX...... though loved it too bits, until it fell to bits that was.

[OrangeCremolaFoam]

Hi Armchair!!

lol lol..was laughing at the Days of 'Computer Program Listings' that you typed in, and, as you rightly said, you spent days doing it and it seldom ever worked!!! I did this many Times with Game Listings from 'C+VG' magazine (Computer and Video Games mag) and also listings in Commodore User, Y64 and zzapp64....those were the days eh? loved my Commodore 64 though and still play my Emulator often..lol..I also remember only having a black and White portable, had to share the TV in the living room with my Granny before that but on Games like 'Cauldron' you had multi coloured keys to open doors on the game and they all looked the same in Black and white!! lol..good days though...

all the best...

Rab ;0)

I saved up for an Atari 2600 VCS with the big cartridges from my mates mums Catalogue back in 1983, a year before I got my commodore 64.. it took me ages as I only had a paper round earning £2 a week and it cost £140!!!!!! lol.. loved my old Atari too!! for months I only had the one Cartridge with it...Centipede....;0)..I still play that on Emulator too!!! lol.. its all about the Gameplay and that is often forgotten in these days of ever more powerful Graphics..long live Retro Gaming!!!!

[Oggy]

It was the way you loaded games too, the awful squeaking, that seemed to go on forever, then it crashed and you had to repeat the horrid sound.

[sixtyten]

God,you *******s..I never had one in the old days.we had the Pong machine,but it was not until the 90's (YES, the 90's) that I bought a long out dated Atari STFM.It was only used for music as it had midi outputs.
the first PC we got was again,a rental for three years and its yours deal.
great spec..Pentium..no,JUST Pentium.850 mb hard drive!!!! Ram would have been 8mb tops,but it was the most bells and whistles PC in the shop! multimedia!
my mobile phone has better spec than that!!
that PC cost about £1500 at the time,lucky to get £20 for it now!
A friend of mine ran a studio in the mid/late 90's and the main centre of this fantasic new digital studio ( no tapes anymore)???
Atari Falcon..4 mb!!!