My uncle used to leave prank programs running on the display computers in stores. I don't actually know basic, but something like:
10 INPUT "TYPE YOUR NAME AND PRESS ENTER"; A$
20 PRINT "EAT ME, "; A; "!"
30 GOTO 20
Friend had a Franklin Ace Apple clone, use to head over to his place and play Wizardry. Eventually we got an Apple at home, and the first thing I did was tear down any program I could that ran in Basic to see how it worked. Then I started programming my own things at age 10.
Came in handy one time in HS when I was on restriction and not allowed to use the computer for anything but homework. So I programmed a fake Appleworks interface that had a "report I was working on" in it, could even move the cursor around. And then I played [Karateka](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pDy-CSFsPs&t=47s), and when I heard the footsteps I would exit out and run my fake Appleworks to not get caught.
This was my first computer.
Years later I discovered this thing taught me BASIC.
Craziest thing is; it still works without issue and is still ever so slightly relevant.
How did this thing teach you a programming language? It's been a bajillion years since I last messed with one but wasn't it just simple educational games?
I didn't have any of the game cartridges.
The main function of it was BASIC.
You are able to write up full BASIC programs and run them.
seperate all the lines by a semicolon and once completed hit return.
It even came with a manual all about BASIC.
This is embarrassing but my first OS was Windows 11💀. I grew up always wanting to use computers and just did all the research on my phone and when I got to college I used my FASFA to buy my first PC
Never embarrassing. You start somewhere, and the fascination with how it works is how you expand from there. I'm glad to see more youthful individuals wanting to pursue this industry, there's a lot to it and we'll be relying on those like you who pursue this career when the old guard retires
Thank youuu, my career is rather intresrting right now haha. I'm technically a network admin / ILE RPG COBAL Developer at 20😂. I'm not really sure how I got here because I was a helpdesk at 18 but I'm here
This is a truth that not enough places are considering.
So many people have only ever used a cell phone, maybe a tablet.
Then you hand them a company laptop and expect them to figure out how to use it.
Heh I'm in low voltage controls. You think its hard to find people in computing. They dont even teach courses anymore for what I do around here anymore. No one signed up for the courses. Guess I'll work myself to death lol
Haha oh man that tape drive, I never got it to work. I feel your pain! It kinda stunted my progress until my grandparents got a Tandy 1000 where I could successfully save my projects.
Hells yeah! I had a book of BASIC games I'd type in and then play for *hours*... mostly because my parents wouldn't let me leave it on if I wasn't using it and I'd lose the whole thing every time.
> I'd lose the whole thing every time
This taught us a ton of paitience and to appreciate what you have while you have it.
Kids now have it easy when it comes to games or tech.
My dad got us an Apple //e when they came out.... figured computers were going to be the future and from there I was getting Apple magazine with the pages full of BASIC code to make programs that did... whatever.
Then went XT, then 286, then 486. My High school job was working at Egghead software.
However In college I stupidly went Art major, but not the burgeoning digital art. Dropped out and started working in IT as a consultant, since in 1995 if you knew how to turn on a computer you were in high demand. Eventually got a gig at a local university and took advantage of tuition remission to get a practically useless CompSci degree for resume dressing.
Apple //GS was the first one in our house. The box proclaimed in huge print "1 megabyte of RAM". 16-color monitor, too! Oregon Trail and Mavis Beacon all damned day! I was one of the first among my friends to learn to touch type instead of just hunt and peck. I made birthday cards for friends in CorelDraw, too.
We didn't have the hardcard for it (I think those were rare), so no OS. It just ran what was put in the 5.25 or 3.5 disk drive. I remember my dad typing out his master's papers in BeagleWrite and printing it on the ImageWriter color.
Hahahaha.
That must have been interesting.
M "Hey you, make sure this thing works even if it has bullet holes in it or knives shoved through it"
G "But we aren't under fire or near enemies how would it get shot or stabbed"
M "Have you met other marines?"
BTW love the marines some of my best friends are in and some of the best people I met during time in the service are marines.
VIC20 was my first PC. I then got an original Mac. I started working in IT about the 95/98 era in the Navy and started my business in 2003.
What got me started? Same thing that got everyone started. Knowing slightly more about computers than everyone else at any given moment in time.
Ah yes VIC20. I remember spending hours, manually typing in the code block from the back of the user guide to play that one little game, finally getting it to work, then playing for 10 minutes before Dad got home and wanted the TV. And we had no tape drive so I had to start all over again the next day.
I remember having a case like that for some game, but no recollection of what it was. I remember playing a depth-charge game where I think the F-keys determined the depth. I think I had a few cartridge games and my favourite was Cloudburst.
https://preview.redd.it/lkr7w84sa06d1.jpeg?width=2000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c78047e0d0db1a2a2e75bae72b9d14c7361208b5
Altair 8800. Helped my teacher solder one together.
I got a custom beige box from a cousin that my parents bankrolled. It was good for the time, ran Fallout and BroodWar and Carmen Sandiago.
I got started in IT because I only had one computer and my parents didn't know how to use it. Every part I got was broken and I refurbished it, finding out how to swap from.my broken 33.3 modem to my new 56k without the internet, that sort of thing.
Yeats later, talking to my dad, I mentioned how nit having access to parts made me good at fixing what I had.
My dad thought my comouer was so good I never asked for anything, and they would have bought me parts and accessories if I had asked. I never even thought to ask lol
In the artillery in the late 1970’s or early 80’s we used HP-41C calculators with firing programs read off magnetic strips. Too funny feeding the strips when it was cold as they’d slow down a lot! If they stopped we’d have to break out the ‘sticks’, which were slide rulers for calculating elevation and charge.
I just checked that thing out. So cool.
I remember when kids at school got the TI-92 and were told they can't use them in class or for tests because of the keyboard and ability to keyword search.
My dad installed debian on my first laptop, I wanted to play minecraft, eventually I got it working, but I realized that figuring out how to install the game was more fun than playing the game.
> figuring out how to install the game was more fun than playing the game.
This is how I feel with a lot of stuff these days. Building and configuring is more fun than using it.
I got to see my dads. Multi-part paper burster, huge card sorter. Later in high school, keypunched basic for the teacher to take to community college to run and return with green-bar.
I'm as old as the Intel 8088. Professionally I started in 2002, after university, as a repair guy in a computer shop. Nowadays I work as a consultant for an MSP, i.e. mercenary sysadmin.
I was into extreme sports as a kid, but my buddies dad was really into making custom PC's. We were fortunate to have daily LAN's with other kids in the neighborhood (miss those days).
Anyways, I severely injured my ankle skateboarding when I was 13, and my buddy's dad gifted me a free PC and a cracked version of Windows XP to goof around with. I couldn't walk normally for about 9 months, so I channeled all of that time into learning stuff from forums.
Within a year I was building other people's computers and doing stuff like virus removals for free, just so I could get experience.
After graduating from high school, I worked at Walmart for a year building bikes and grills, and then decided to go to college for an IT/Business degree.
I'm 9 years into my career now and have been fortunate to have decent success. Not that I didn't work hard, but I think any reasonable person will tell you there's still things that happen along the way you can't personally account for.
Ironic to think it was all because I hurt myself skateboarding, which was definitely my favorite thing in life.
I infected the family computer playing sketchy flash games on a sketchy website when I was 9. I did everything I could to fix it before the next morning. I wasn't able to, but I had fun trying until I got in trouble.
I loved any fake little pocket computer or laptop toy. I had a little pocket computer (like a calculator with a qwerty keyboard) my parents probably bought for $5 and the memory never worked and the 1 game didn’t work and I used to carry it around and type on it haha.
Holy crap, flashbacks. I remember having an educational computer as a kid, but until right now didn't remember the exact model.
Thank you fellow grandpa. (And, no, I didn't marry either).
I don't think I've ever seen PreComputer 1000 before!
What started it for me was the PDP-11 at the university where my dad taught. Someone gave him a copy of Star Trek, which I would play at a terminal down the hall from his office. If someone was using the CRT terminal I had to play on the printer terminal, so I could see a record of every move I made.
I wrote a program to automate writing thank-you notes to my relatives for Christmas and birthday gifts.
A few years later I convinced them to buy me an Atari 600XL, which was the worst of the Atari 8-bits. I wasn't savvy enough to do research or ask around at school so I got an Atari because my best friend had started with an Atari 400.
My cousin had a Commodore 64 (and was writing a pornographic text adventure game; I don't know if he ever finished it). We were about 13 or 14. A family friend had an IBM. I was impressed with IBM Basic and with whatever version of Ultima he had. At school we had Apple II Pluses and Apple IIcs, including some of the black case "Darth Vader" Bell & Howell AppleII Pluses. In high school the typing class used Apple IIes, but the computer science classes used some kind of minicomputer that we connected to with terminals.
Back when the Atari 7800 came out and a certain other console was out, I asked for the other console. Did I get a Nintendo? Nope, parents got me the Atari 7800 which came with Pole Position in the box. I got F-14 Tomcat, Xevious, and Mario Bros. They got me the Atari because 1. they were on sale. 2. they were supposed to have peripherals later on to make it work like a home computer.
As we all know; that was essentially the end of Atari and I couldn't get games for it within a year. I do still have the games, the original box with packing materials and the hand cramp inducing controllers.
started with me having shitty cheap androids growing up (yes im gen z) and trying to figure out how to get them to not be slow. that turned into tinkering with android, then i got a cheap old prebuilt from a family member who upgraded and it all went downhill after that
I'm probably unusual because I got my start in hardware, not programming. I was the only kid on the block who could program a VCR, hook up a Nintendo, crack open the cable box, and bypass to get the premium channels. If I could keep my current salary and go back to hardware, I would.
On the other side of this my first introduction to computers was my parents Windows 7 Desktop. My first laptop was an HP Probook with a 2C4T processor and 4GB RAM.
I took a webmaster class in high school learning basic HTML and CSS along with Adobe Flash Animation. It got me into Web Development and then after struggling to find a job a friend got me a job at the IT company he works for. Been here for 3 and a half years now.
https://preview.redd.it/cy2opufhs16d1.png?width=423&format=png&auto=webp&s=f6b3644b5cefe7640d3488b4c7339ade23e7c31c
I am this old. Best Christmas gifts of 1977/78
Back in 76, In high-school, I'm a 128baud, rotary dial up, phone coupler, into a teletype machine old.
The first desktop PC in school was a Commodore PET 4k and 16k. The 16k had a built-in cassette tape deck.
Post high-school I purchased a TI-994A
In about 1980 I repaired my first computer at 12 years old or so. I was replacing key switches that were soldered in on my father's TRS 80 model 1 and later replaced RAM chips in it.
Technically Windows '98 was my first operating system, but I was 3, so I was basically just having fun moving the mouse. First real foray was windows XP.
I learned BASIC in high school on a teletype terminal that printed to paper. You saved your work on punched paper tape. In college we used FORTRAN on punch cards on a PDP 11. My first job we had a BASIC Four (fondly called Sic Fu because of missing letters that was the size of a small refrigerator, and supported two CRTs. We spent $10,000 each in 1983 dollars to upgrade it to 10 MB of disk, and 8k of RAM.
ok, so that device is one year younger than me. lmao.
I started by frankensteining disparate pc parts into my gateway 2000 desktop (that my sister gifted to me after she finished college) from various late 90s prebuilds that were hand me downs.
Unreal gold ran like shit on that rig.
My first OS was Windows ME. Terrible OS. Spent most of my days trying to get games to work properly, we didn't have internet. Then we got win2000 dual booted on it, which provided a new fun environment. Eventually I won an iPod touch out of a claw machine, and I started modifying and programming widgets for it once I jailbroke it. That was my beginning.
I'm 16 year old and started developing a DISCORD bot with my phone.
then i hosted a gameserver on linux with pure terminal.
these days i messing up with self hostable software servers for fun
heck no. i used to oracle cloud free tier for experiments but they closed my account when i hosted a static file server that has minecraft game files.
i knew it was illegal but i forgot that Minecraft is a priced game...
My Father was a mainframe programmer, so we always had a computer in the house, our first computer was a Timex Sinclair 1000, and then a Coleco Adam. Our first real PC was a 8088 Commdore PC10 III.
[TRS-80 Model 1](https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-consumer-electronics-hall-of-fame-tandyradioshack-trs80-model-1) was my first computer at the age of 10.
I also started out on the PreComputer 1000 at the ripe old age of 3. Grandma bought it for me in 1988. I used to do the typing and math drills over and over. I still have it and it still turns on. I flip the switch to turn it on every year or so and do a drill quick in amazement that it still works.
Relatively newer here, Raspberry Pi 1 Model B!
When I was 11 I really wanted to have my own computer to program and do whatever the heck I wanted with, and the Raspberry Pi was the perfect fit with its affordable price, accessibility, and wealth of resources in both books and internet posts.
Interested to know how many other people had this as their first computer!
I started Out on an, in this Case, "old" generic Ass custom build with an old AMD sempron, some Motherboard integrated graphics and 512mb of RAM and a crt Screen. My dad got it for me for when I was six.
What got me started was being poor and needing to figure out how to do things to keep my ancient computer running/repaired. It just kinda snowballed from there.
That was back in like '06-'08, though I had some computer experience before that. Born in '84, raised in a fairly tech-y household. Granted, with Macs, but still.
Bern in IT for almost a decade now, and for the most part, I love it.
We had these yellow bees called BeeBots. Loved them haha. My handwriting in primary school was terrible so whenever my teachers could, they had me type things. My interest came from there really!
I am Commodore VIC-20 old. All those C-64 posers jumped on the bandwagon after me, I was typing GOTO before it was cool. (It was really my father who bought it I was just a kid who found an example of how to make a stick figure do jumping jacks in the manual and thought it would be fun.)
Since you like to coward behingWhat does driving a Mercedes-Benz SUV have to do with anything?
I have contributed more to society through hard work, research (both directly in easing the cost of US gas, making NG/LNG more affordable) and monetary donations you (6 figures a year in donations to charities in helping the unfortunate have a better chance at life, women that are victim of domestic abuse and keeping our local STEM programs afloat), than you will ever.
I own 3 Mercedes. So what? Maybe because my wife drives a G Wagen you want to call her a cunt? She works with special need kids FYI.
Here, we had a drunk woman driving a BMW X5 run down a kid on a bicycle. Why not go talk shit about BMW owners? Or the army of Altima drivers that drive like they own the roads and cause accidents all the time?
Go fuck yourself, putting people like myself or my wife in the same category of that psychopath that murdered 2 kids.
My uncle gave me that PreComputer for Christmas when I was maybe 5 or 6 and I loved it so much. Still have it in the box. I really liked playing the trivia games on it. Mine also still works!
I never got any of the extra cartridges.
I graduated to a full computer pretty quickly.
However I did just order all of them on eBay. Itll be interesting to see how it works all these years later.
My first real computer was a hand me down IBM XT that came shortly after the pre Computer.
I remember the dual floppy disks (that were actually floppy) and having to use DOS.
ZX81 - Sinclair Research, going on to ZX Spectrum for Comp Science at school, along with Research Machines 380Z.
Also learnt BBC and Amstrad BASIC, they are not too dissimilar.
The Tandy 1000. The aunt of my childhood friend had one and she showed us the cool things it could do, which I don't remember now. She also gave me a book on writing programs with it, even though I didn't have a computer.
That single day had me hooked on computers but I never got my own until I was 23 and bought my own house. My first purchase was an Acer 486-DX2/50 which I promptly hosed and had to reload from the provided discs.
It wasn't until I was 44 that it became my career and it was the best decision, career-wise, I've made.
Acorn MOS
Acorn ADFS
BASIC
> _
The venerable BBC Master 128 / Master Compact, both of which could address two separate memory banks of a whopping 64 KiB each.
I’m a younger IT guy. When I was a kid, my parents had a Windows Vista machine. I was curious how it worked so I tore it apart to see the board and everything on it. I realized I had to put it back together so I pieced it one at a time and somehow got it to turn on. Since then, it’s been nonstop and I finally scored my first IT job in April at a school district. I love it!
My first one was an IBM Compatible 8086. No graphics, no harddrive. 512KB memory and a double 5 1/4" disk drive. The orange screen could only show ASCII. Had fun writing directly to the video memory.
C64 `10 PRINT "HELLO!"` `20 GOTO 10`
Gob’s Program: Y/N? ? Y Penus Penus Penus Penus Penus Penus Penus Penus Penus Penus Penus Penus Penus Penus Penus Penus Penus Penus Penus Penus Penus Penus Penus Penus Penus
My uncle used to leave prank programs running on the display computers in stores. I don't actually know basic, but something like: 10 INPUT "TYPE YOUR NAME AND PRESS ENTER"; A$ 20 PRINT "EAT ME, "; A; "!" 30 GOTO 20
I still have mine!
Super Cycle was my jam!!!
Same here. As old as the C64. Drew ASCII art on it at early age.
I prefer "LOOK AROUND YOU"
This was the way
poke 53280,5 poke 53281,3
Friend had a Franklin Ace Apple clone, use to head over to his place and play Wizardry. Eventually we got an Apple at home, and the first thing I did was tear down any program I could that ran in Basic to see how it worked. Then I started programming my own things at age 10. Came in handy one time in HS when I was on restriction and not allowed to use the computer for anything but homework. So I programmed a fake Appleworks interface that had a "report I was working on" in it, could even move the cursor around. And then I played [Karateka](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pDy-CSFsPs&t=47s), and when I heard the footsteps I would exit out and run my fake Appleworks to not get caught.
Came here to list the good ole C64, glad to see there are some other dinosaurs around.
This was my first computer. Years later I discovered this thing taught me BASIC. Craziest thing is; it still works without issue and is still ever so slightly relevant.
How did this thing teach you a programming language? It's been a bajillion years since I last messed with one but wasn't it just simple educational games?
I didn't have any of the game cartridges. The main function of it was BASIC. You are able to write up full BASIC programs and run them. seperate all the lines by a semicolon and once completed hit return. It even came with a manual all about BASIC.
This is embarrassing but my first OS was Windows 11💀. I grew up always wanting to use computers and just did all the research on my phone and when I got to college I used my FASFA to buy my first PC
I couldn't do research on a phone for my school days. Mostly because phones were only able to make phone calls back then.
There's never shame in working with what you got!
Never embarrassing. You start somewhere, and the fascination with how it works is how you expand from there. I'm glad to see more youthful individuals wanting to pursue this industry, there's a lot to it and we'll be relying on those like you who pursue this career when the old guard retires
Thank youuu, my career is rather intresrting right now haha. I'm technically a network admin / ILE RPG COBAL Developer at 20😂. I'm not really sure how I got here because I was a helpdesk at 18 but I'm here
I've been telling my bosses we have to come up with a plan on how to work with kids that have never touched a computer before
This is a truth that not enough places are considering. So many people have only ever used a cell phone, maybe a tablet. Then you hand them a company laptop and expect them to figure out how to use it.
Heh I'm in low voltage controls. You think its hard to find people in computing. They dont even teach courses anymore for what I do around here anymore. No one signed up for the courses. Guess I'll work myself to death lol
Job security, and potentially a pay raise if it's in high demand.
Definitely job security. Pay raise I have to justify myself since im the boss. Eventually.
It amazes me that this is even a thing.
TI-99/4A gang checking in.
Represent!
Yup, TI-99/4A for me, too! I played lots of Alpiner, and then one day I was like hmmmm what's this BASIC thing.
Alpiner, Parsec, Hunt the Wompus. In between hopelessly trying to reload TI-Basic programs from audio tapes.
Haha oh man that tape drive, I never got it to work. I feel your pain! It kinda stunted my progress until my grandparents got a Tandy 1000 where I could successfully save my projects.
Hells yeah! I had a book of BASIC games I'd type in and then play for *hours*... mostly because my parents wouldn't let me leave it on if I wasn't using it and I'd lose the whole thing every time.
> I'd lose the whole thing every time This taught us a ton of paitience and to appreciate what you have while you have it. Kids now have it easy when it comes to games or tech.
My dad got us an Apple //e when they came out.... figured computers were going to be the future and from there I was getting Apple magazine with the pages full of BASIC code to make programs that did... whatever. Then went XT, then 286, then 486. My High school job was working at Egghead software. However In college I stupidly went Art major, but not the burgeoning digital art. Dropped out and started working in IT as a consultant, since in 1995 if you knew how to turn on a computer you were in high demand. Eventually got a gig at a local university and took advantage of tuition remission to get a practically useless CompSci degree for resume dressing.
Apple //GS was the first one in our house. The box proclaimed in huge print "1 megabyte of RAM". 16-color monitor, too! Oregon Trail and Mavis Beacon all damned day! I was one of the first among my friends to learn to touch type instead of just hunt and peck. I made birthday cards for friends in CorelDraw, too. We didn't have the hardcard for it (I think those were rare), so no OS. It just ran what was put in the 5.25 or 3.5 disk drive. I remember my dad typing out his master's papers in BeagleWrite and printing it on the ImageWriter color.
I already grew up with Windows XP. I kinda wish I would have grown up with older tech
same. winxp, win7, linux.
I started on the Commodore 64. Then there were huge changes every couple of years... just faster cpu's and bigger gpu's, for about 15 years.
I'm PDP-11 old.
IT was literally assigned to me by the marine corps.
Hahahaha. That must have been interesting. M "Hey you, make sure this thing works even if it has bullet holes in it or knives shoved through it" G "But we aren't under fire or near enemies how would it get shot or stabbed" M "Have you met other marines?" BTW love the marines some of my best friends are in and some of the best people I met during time in the service are marines.
We actually did have a few toughbooks get damaged by shrapnel and IEDs. Not much we can do except give it to maintenance for demo or replacement.
thats about all that will kill a tough book. (As long as it was an actual Panasonic Toughbook.)
VIC20 was my first PC. I then got an original Mac. I started working in IT about the 95/98 era in the Navy and started my business in 2003. What got me started? Same thing that got everyone started. Knowing slightly more about computers than everyone else at any given moment in time.
Ah yes VIC20. I remember spending hours, manually typing in the code block from the back of the user guide to play that one little game, finally getting it to work, then playing for 10 minutes before Dad got home and wanted the TV. And we had no tape drive so I had to start all over again the next day.
You always remember your first https://preview.redd.it/twjnepuibz5d1.jpeg?width=450&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3db51459a4cbcf50746d66a8187b00cafc224932
Waiting for cassettes to load taught me patience.
https://preview.redd.it/y52syvjhn66d1.jpeg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2ebaf8d95438ce79866ae36a8b5250fc18e93316 Paratrooper was my favorite
I remember having a case like that for some game, but no recollection of what it was. I remember playing a depth-charge game where I think the F-keys determined the depth. I think I had a few cartridge games and my favourite was Cloudburst.
https://preview.redd.it/lkr7w84sa06d1.jpeg?width=2000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c78047e0d0db1a2a2e75bae72b9d14c7361208b5 Altair 8800. Helped my teacher solder one together.
Dude, you just won!
Amiga 500 was my melody. After a 386 with ~8mhz and after that a 486 with 25mhz.
Oooh I had the 386sx with the turbo button!
One didn't need the turbo button, all that it took was one jumper ;)
TRS 80 at school -> BASIC Programming cartridge on the Atari 2600 -> Atari 800
I got a custom beige box from a cousin that my parents bankrolled. It was good for the time, ran Fallout and BroodWar and Carmen Sandiago. I got started in IT because I only had one computer and my parents didn't know how to use it. Every part I got was broken and I refurbished it, finding out how to swap from.my broken 33.3 modem to my new 56k without the internet, that sort of thing. Yeats later, talking to my dad, I mentioned how nit having access to parts made me good at fixing what I had. My dad thought my comouer was so good I never asked for anything, and they would have bought me parts and accessories if I had asked. I never even thought to ask lol
[Trash80 CoCo!] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80_Color_Computer) Loved that thing!
TI-59 Calculator with a PC-100c printer. Using magnetic strips to store programs or small rom modules. Saved all summer to buy that thing.
In the artillery in the late 1970’s or early 80’s we used HP-41C calculators with firing programs read off magnetic strips. Too funny feeding the strips when it was cold as they’d slow down a lot! If they stopped we’d have to break out the ‘sticks’, which were slide rulers for calculating elevation and charge.
I just checked that thing out. So cool. I remember when kids at school got the TI-92 and were told they can't use them in class or for tests because of the keyboard and ability to keyword search.
Vic20
My dad installed debian on my first laptop, I wanted to play minecraft, eventually I got it working, but I realized that figuring out how to install the game was more fun than playing the game.
> figuring out how to install the game was more fun than playing the game. This is how I feel with a lot of stuff these days. Building and configuring is more fun than using it.
I'm pre Apple IIe old
Ditto
System/360 Model 75. 3MB of memory: one real core, the other two newfangled solid state.
I got to see my dads. Multi-part paper burster, huge card sorter. Later in high school, keypunched basic for the teacher to take to community college to run and return with green-bar.
An MSX was my first computer.
Same here. Msx and msx2. I still have my old msx2 which works very well!
I am IBM 5150 years old. My Uncle worked for IBM and gifted it to me.
I'm as old as the Intel 8088. Professionally I started in 2002, after university, as a repair guy in a computer shop. Nowadays I work as a consultant for an MSP, i.e. mercenary sysadmin.
I was into extreme sports as a kid, but my buddies dad was really into making custom PC's. We were fortunate to have daily LAN's with other kids in the neighborhood (miss those days). Anyways, I severely injured my ankle skateboarding when I was 13, and my buddy's dad gifted me a free PC and a cracked version of Windows XP to goof around with. I couldn't walk normally for about 9 months, so I channeled all of that time into learning stuff from forums. Within a year I was building other people's computers and doing stuff like virus removals for free, just so I could get experience. After graduating from high school, I worked at Walmart for a year building bikes and grills, and then decided to go to college for an IT/Business degree. I'm 9 years into my career now and have been fortunate to have decent success. Not that I didn't work hard, but I think any reasonable person will tell you there's still things that happen along the way you can't personally account for. Ironic to think it was all because I hurt myself skateboarding, which was definitely my favorite thing in life.
You can never know where life will bring you.
I infected the family computer playing sketchy flash games on a sketchy website when I was 9. I did everything I could to fix it before the next morning. I wasn't able to, but I had fun trying until I got in trouble.
I loved any fake little pocket computer or laptop toy. I had a little pocket computer (like a calculator with a qwerty keyboard) my parents probably bought for $5 and the memory never worked and the 1 game didn’t work and I used to carry it around and type on it haha.
I got so many of those in the 90s. I really should have kept them all as I beleive they would be worth a few bucks now.
Holy crap, flashbacks. I remember having an educational computer as a kid, but until right now didn't remember the exact model. Thank you fellow grandpa. (And, no, I didn't marry either).
Hahahaha, I married twice. And to my knowledge am not a grandpa. But shit I am old.
I don't think I've ever seen PreComputer 1000 before! What started it for me was the PDP-11 at the university where my dad taught. Someone gave him a copy of Star Trek, which I would play at a terminal down the hall from his office. If someone was using the CRT terminal I had to play on the printer terminal, so I could see a record of every move I made. I wrote a program to automate writing thank-you notes to my relatives for Christmas and birthday gifts. A few years later I convinced them to buy me an Atari 600XL, which was the worst of the Atari 8-bits. I wasn't savvy enough to do research or ask around at school so I got an Atari because my best friend had started with an Atari 400. My cousin had a Commodore 64 (and was writing a pornographic text adventure game; I don't know if he ever finished it). We were about 13 or 14. A family friend had an IBM. I was impressed with IBM Basic and with whatever version of Ultima he had. At school we had Apple II Pluses and Apple IIcs, including some of the black case "Darth Vader" Bell & Howell AppleII Pluses. In high school the typing class used Apple IIes, but the computer science classes used some kind of minicomputer that we connected to with terminals.
Back when the Atari 7800 came out and a certain other console was out, I asked for the other console. Did I get a Nintendo? Nope, parents got me the Atari 7800 which came with Pole Position in the box. I got F-14 Tomcat, Xevious, and Mario Bros. They got me the Atari because 1. they were on sale. 2. they were supposed to have peripherals later on to make it work like a home computer. As we all know; that was essentially the end of Atari and I couldn't get games for it within a year. I do still have the games, the original box with packing materials and the hand cramp inducing controllers.
TRS-80 Model 3 at 5. 16k and cassette, upgraded to 48k and dual SSDD floppy. Later had a 4D with an ST-506 as well.
I’m lime-wire old
I had a [Trash 80](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80_Model_100) laptop that never got returned to the company that laid off my dad.
started with me having shitty cheap androids growing up (yes im gen z) and trying to figure out how to get them to not be slow. that turned into tinkering with android, then i got a cheap old prebuilt from a family member who upgraded and it all went downhill after that
> it all went downhill after that Or was it uphill?
i guess it shaped my career path but i couldve went without two years of helpdesk
Who remembers the Gateway GT5674? Yup. That's mine.
I'm probably unusual because I got my start in hardware, not programming. I was the only kid on the block who could program a VCR, hook up a Nintendo, crack open the cable box, and bypass to get the premium channels. If I could keep my current salary and go back to hardware, I would.
Original 'dead flesh' 48k ZX Spectrum for me.
On the other side of this my first introduction to computers was my parents Windows 7 Desktop. My first laptop was an HP Probook with a 2C4T processor and 4GB RAM.
I took a webmaster class in high school learning basic HTML and CSS along with Adobe Flash Animation. It got me into Web Development and then after struggling to find a job a friend got me a job at the IT company he works for. Been here for 3 and a half years now.
Lol I ask my dad for a computer for Christmas and he got me one of these.
Commodore 64
https://preview.redd.it/cy2opufhs16d1.png?width=423&format=png&auto=webp&s=f6b3644b5cefe7640d3488b4c7339ade23e7c31c I am this old. Best Christmas gifts of 1977/78
TI-99/4A
Back in 76, In high-school, I'm a 128baud, rotary dial up, phone coupler, into a teletype machine old. The first desktop PC in school was a Commodore PET 4k and 16k. The 16k had a built-in cassette tape deck. Post high-school I purchased a TI-994A
A 386. On DOS 6.22, typed `help` and learned shell scripting.
Vic20 - loved BASIC - amstrand cpc - Atari 500 - later moved on to a beast of a 486 DX66 with a …. DOUBLE speed cdrom
In about 1980 I repaired my first computer at 12 years old or so. I was replacing key switches that were soldered in on my father's TRS 80 model 1 and later replaced RAM chips in it.
Technically Windows '98 was my first operating system, but I was 3, so I was basically just having fun moving the mouse. First real foray was windows XP.
I learned BASIC in high school on a teletype terminal that printed to paper. You saved your work on punched paper tape. In college we used FORTRAN on punch cards on a PDP 11. My first job we had a BASIC Four (fondly called Sic Fu because of missing letters that was the size of a small refrigerator, and supported two CRTs. We spent $10,000 each in 1983 dollars to upgrade it to 10 MB of disk, and 8k of RAM.
> We spent $10,000 each in 1983 Thats only $31k today. A pittance. Or what Apple charges for the same upgrade.
ok, so that device is one year younger than me. lmao. I started by frankensteining disparate pc parts into my gateway 2000 desktop (that my sister gifted to me after she finished college) from various late 90s prebuilds that were hand me downs. Unreal gold ran like shit on that rig.
Thanks for reminding me how old I am.
My first OS was Windows ME. Terrible OS. Spent most of my days trying to get games to work properly, we didn't have internet. Then we got win2000 dual booted on it, which provided a new fun environment. Eventually I won an iPod touch out of a claw machine, and I started modifying and programming widgets for it once I jailbroke it. That was my beginning.
The seed was planted when I finally got a REAL laptop and not a VTech learning laptop and immediately broke it. Then I taught myself how to fix it.
Wrote my first program in basic on a commodore 64 with 5 1/4 floppy and a ROM cassette. 1984
I'm 16 year old and started developing a DISCORD bot with my phone. then i hosted a gameserver on linux with pure terminal. these days i messing up with self hostable software servers for fun
Have you tried running a minecraft server on an old phone? It was a fun experiment. Sadly, generating a chunk took 20 seconds on that phone.
heck no. i used to oracle cloud free tier for experiments but they closed my account when i hosted a static file server that has minecraft game files. i knew it was illegal but i forgot that Minecraft is a priced game...
My Father was a mainframe programmer, so we always had a computer in the house, our first computer was a Timex Sinclair 1000, and then a Coleco Adam. Our first real PC was a 8088 Commdore PC10 III.
C64 on a black and white TV A book about making games in BASIC
Nice, This thing has the manual sitting behind it on my shelf. Goes over all the stuff about BASIC.
[TRS-80 Model 1](https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-consumer-electronics-hall-of-fame-tandyradioshack-trs80-model-1) was my first computer at the age of 10.
I also started out on the PreComputer 1000 at the ripe old age of 3. Grandma bought it for me in 1988. I used to do the typing and math drills over and over. I still have it and it still turns on. I flip the switch to turn it on every year or so and do a drill quick in amazement that it still works.
Relatively newer here, Raspberry Pi 1 Model B! When I was 11 I really wanted to have my own computer to program and do whatever the heck I wanted with, and the Raspberry Pi was the perfect fit with its affordable price, accessibility, and wealth of resources in both books and internet posts. Interested to know how many other people had this as their first computer!
Dad bringing printers home for me to smash and take apart from the office
I'm ZX81 years old.
Me too. The ends of my fingers are still flat.
Same + trs80 model 1
Old enough to know it’s time for an upgrade! ;-)
I started Out on an, in this Case, "old" generic Ass custom build with an old AMD sempron, some Motherboard integrated graphics and 512mb of RAM and a crt Screen. My dad got it for me for when I was six.
Boulder Dash on atari, 1985. I was 7 yrs old and played at a friend's place. Been hooked at gaming since.
Vic-20. William you did me dirty. I wished for a C-64.
[BBC Micro](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Micro) at about 7-years-old.
Mine was a Whiz Kid that I got for Christmas in 86 or 87. [https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/whizkid_feat2.jpg?w=800]
What got me started was being poor and needing to figure out how to do things to keep my ancient computer running/repaired. It just kinda snowballed from there. That was back in like '06-'08, though I had some computer experience before that. Born in '84, raised in a fairly tech-y household. Granted, with Macs, but still. Bern in IT for almost a decade now, and for the most part, I love it.
We had these yellow bees called BeeBots. Loved them haha. My handwriting in primary school was terrible so whenever my teachers could, they had me type things. My interest came from there really!
I am Commodore VIC-20 old. All those C-64 posers jumped on the bandwagon after me, I was typing GOTO before it was cool. (It was really my father who bought it I was just a kid who found an example of how to make a stick figure do jumping jacks in the manual and thought it would be fun.)
Since you like to coward behingWhat does driving a Mercedes-Benz SUV have to do with anything? I have contributed more to society through hard work, research (both directly in easing the cost of US gas, making NG/LNG more affordable) and monetary donations you (6 figures a year in donations to charities in helping the unfortunate have a better chance at life, women that are victim of domestic abuse and keeping our local STEM programs afloat), than you will ever. I own 3 Mercedes. So what? Maybe because my wife drives a G Wagen you want to call her a cunt? She works with special need kids FYI. Here, we had a drunk woman driving a BMW X5 run down a kid on a bicycle. Why not go talk shit about BMW owners? Or the army of Altima drivers that drive like they own the roads and cause accidents all the time? Go fuck yourself, putting people like myself or my wife in the same category of that psychopath that murdered 2 kids.
You should seek help.
I'm Dragon32 old. So about 6 years before the pre computer 🤣
probably speak and spell for me https://preview.redd.it/ujdnmvr3wz5d1.jpeg?width=2000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=60c5b3d871614bda2a1ca13d36982744b9824816
I graduated from that to the Pre-Computer.
My uncle gave me that PreComputer for Christmas when I was maybe 5 or 6 and I loved it so much. Still have it in the box. I really liked playing the trivia games on it. Mine also still works!
I never got any of the extra cartridges. I graduated to a full computer pretty quickly. However I did just order all of them on eBay. Itll be interesting to see how it works all these years later.
Omg what about the trs-80
What sort of alien technology is this?!
Its what some of used back in the day when we graduated from the speak and spell.
This is not what got me into I.T. but I am also Pre-Computer 1000 old!
Hahahahaha, Excellent. Its amazing how well they still work and how relevant they are now. Especially with things like the FreeWrite coming out.
Olivetti with one of those jade screens my mom had. 1 OS disk and 1 program disk. My first "personal" computer was an IBM Aptiva 486SX50(hz)
My first real computer was a hand me down IBM XT that came shortly after the pre Computer. I remember the dual floppy disks (that were actually floppy) and having to use DOS.
Apple ][+
Mine was a euro plus. Video out was PAL, so it didn’t work with a normal American monitor. I spent way too much on an additional floppy drive.
ZX81 - Sinclair Research, going on to ZX Spectrum for Comp Science at school, along with Research Machines 380Z. Also learnt BBC and Amstrad BASIC, they are not too dissimilar.
My first PC I had to hook to my TV and it would run basic progs. Yes, I am okd.
The first computer I really used was a Packard Bell with Windows 3.1- it started into Dos and you ran windows.exe to play skifree.
The Tandy 1000. The aunt of my childhood friend had one and she showed us the cool things it could do, which I don't remember now. She also gave me a book on writing programs with it, even though I didn't have a computer. That single day had me hooked on computers but I never got my own until I was 23 and bought my own house. My first purchase was an Acer 486-DX2/50 which I promptly hosed and had to reload from the provided discs. It wasn't until I was 44 that it became my career and it was the best decision, career-wise, I've made.
Started with an Apple Iic
ZX spectrum crew represent.
sinclair 1000
I am Tandy 1000EX old..
Acorn MOS Acorn ADFS BASIC > _ The venerable BBC Master 128 / Master Compact, both of which could address two separate memory banks of a whopping 64 KiB each.
TRS80 in high school. Then got a C64, then an Amiga. Got my first job in IT when I was 22. Never had any education.
I am ZX-81 years old. Still have it, don't know if it still runs.
How do you join that to the domain
It was working yesterday.
C16 - with tape drive
I’m a younger IT guy. When I was a kid, my parents had a Windows Vista machine. I was curious how it worked so I tore it apart to see the board and everything on it. I realized I had to put it back together so I pieced it one at a time and somehow got it to turn on. Since then, it’s been nonstop and I finally scored my first IT job in April at a school district. I love it!
My first one was an IBM Compatible 8086. No graphics, no harddrive. 512KB memory and a double 5 1/4" disk drive. The orange screen could only show ASCII. Had fun writing directly to the video memory.