First "Story" on TechIMO :)

[StealthyV]

a story for TechIMO members:
in the late 80's, my older sister won an Apple IIc Plus computer from Skippy Peanut Butter company and Smuckers Jelly company; one for her, and one for her school. in all, 100 computers were given out, two per State-winner. the computer was valued at over $1000USD and came with a "state-of-the-art" Dot Matrix printer. The computer was built-into the KEYBOARD.

"Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing," "Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiago?" and "Space Quarks" were all my favorite games.

Now my machine is an AMD overclocked processor, has (what once was) the latest video card, massive tower case with window, and 2x 120GB drives, with 512mb ddr ram.

look how far we've come!

I'm interested in YOUR story, of YOUR first computer

~Branson
(I'll be 22 on Sept 14th!)

[Bob The Great]

hey happy almost birthday

My familys first PC was an old K-PRO...Well actually I guess it was new, just seems old now. No HD, just two floppy drives that you changed disks out and in with. Very, funky but I was like 3 so I don't remember it well. Next was a K-PRO 286 which ruled. I was 5 when we got that and I was able to play space invaders. I typed my first words on that PC with its word processor. The first word was "dirt" which was a complete accident as I was just jabbing random keys.

Then we moved to a 486 which we got for free. Its still alive to this day! I think it was a 486 as well but I'm not 100% sure on that. I grew up playing stuff like F-15 strike eagle 2 and F-117 Nighthawk and other greats like Doom, and Scorch!

Our next big advancement was when I was about 10. It was a Pentium 60! My first game for that was Wing Commander 3, though later I collected all of the wing commander series! I loved that machine, it too is still around today, though the last game I played on it was Quake. It ran Quake perfectly and I happily beat it!

I've gone through a few other PC's, and now I'm on a AthlonXP 2500, 512mb PC2700, 80GB, Radeon 9800 based PC that just flies in everything. I couldn't amagine life without it though I do sometimes missed how the games back then were so good. The story, and gameplay...oui you just don't get it so often nowadays.

[Nighthawk]

My story's almost exactly like Bob's, except I started with a PC Jr. to a 286 to a 486 to a P60 to a 166MMX and eventually to my 2500+ with 1GB of RAM.

[Kuasimodem]

My first was a Commodore Vic20, it used cartridges (like a Nintendo) for programs and games, or you could load programs with a cassette drive

No monitor, it connected to a standard TV

[vass0922]

started out with a TI-99/4A (worthless ) with a ZIPPY tape drive! Good ol' audio cassettes was how you saved data

I got a programming book from my dad and one of them was in machine language to make a little bouncy ball
The rest was in some other basic type of language that did cheesy stuff
Then from there moved on to a kick arse commodore 64
(later I got my own Commodore 128 that ruled)
Then my dad got a NEW 386 with a whopping 100MB hard drive I played many games on there including the original wing commander (many hours!)
then when I got into college I bought me a P200 from crapway..errrr gateway up to a PIII 650, and now onto a 2500+

I'm like old and stuff

I learned ACAD 10 on a 8086!
(believe that was the one with the stylish math co-processor to make it zip along!)

[Daft_Ghosty]

My first I owned was a Tandy 1000HX 3 1/2 LD drive.. it had 640k of ram and no hardrive.. everything had to be loaded from disk.. It also had a EGA monitor.. I would still have it if someone hadn't stolen it. They were morons.. as when they stole it I had had it for a few years.. and the first intel inside chip was to come out.. thing is I had 4 guitars sitting out in the open that would have fetched a good price.. and a vcr, and boom box.. but they stole my first baby instead..

now the first computer I used was either a 8086 Softech.. or a Commodor64.. I can't remember..

[BettaBuy]

my first was a Commodore 64..used to play Dan Dare for hours

and a formula 1 game called 'Revs'...the grass was green, the track was black, the sky was blue and other cars were white who needs 16 million colours ?

[wju425]

My first was a ti 99/4a with a whopping 16k of memory.
I got interested in basic programming and wrote a bunch of programs with help from programming books in library. Soon I ran out of memory so I went got a commodore 64. Wrote a lot of games in basic and assembly languages and sold one to Compute! magazine. A friend bought me a 286 system to get me off my commodore 64 as everybody's going ibm. Then a 386, 486, 586, 686, etc. Sometime I think about my c64 and all that fun I had.

\o/ Billy

[omc1jz]

In 1989 , My friends parents sold me a "state of the art" commodore 64 portable pc.. YES PORTABLE..

Dont know of any specs , But i do know it must have been one of the first laptops..lol .. It had a little 4 inch color screen and floppy in the front..
It was a Rectangle box about 5-6 inches high,14-16 inches deep.
and the keyboard packed in the front and unclipped to reveal the monitor and floppy..

It had this game "street rod" , wich at 9 yrs old was the most awesome game there ever was.. You get to buy a car from the paper , then hot it up and then go racing..you can even race for pink slips (if u lose u lose the car)..

If anyone knows what model it was i would like to know so i can google to show you all what im talkin about...

Come a long long way with a p4 laptop 512mb ram 3d video..

[wju425]

I had one of those portable c64. Can't remember the name but it had an "X" in the name. Something like CX64 or C64X.

\o/ Billy