What was your first computer?
32K BBC Micro

When did you buy it?
Around 1983

How much did it cost?
£400

Specification?
Ram 32K ROM 32K - 8 Colours + 8 flashing colours
Tape for saving and loading data
No monitor (Had to use TV)
Built in Basic and Assembler

1995:
P133
16mb RAM
1.2gb HDD
4x CD ROM
14.4k Modem (!)
Lots of useless software (have since learnt to save hundreds buying directly from manufacturers/suppliers, or building myself, as opposed to paying retail prices which pretend to be a good deal offering lots of useless 'free' software)

Cost = £1100.

ahhh

my good old atari

pacman and mousetrap

those were the days ;)

amiga 600 you could type stuff in and it said it in a sort of crap version of microsoft sam way but me and my friends used to giggle away when it said 'im stupid' and if we were feeling really daring stuff like 'gay'

Did anyone else have one of these great machines? if so i really want to know the name of the paint program you got with it cos its bugging me i cant remember. i used to go on it loads and could make really crap animations which seemed good at the time.

Acorn Electron, circa 1983 I think. Cost my parents a fortune i remember :?

Then :-

1987ish Sinclair Spectrum +2A
1990ish Amiga A1200
1996ish P120\16\20Gb

Since then I've been really geeky and built my own PC's
8) 8)

Originally posted by kittykat
Did anyone else have one of these great machines? if so i really want to know the name of the paint program you got with it cos its bugging me i cant remember. i used to go on it loads and could make really crap animations which seemed good at the time.

paint shop

Hull Mackam - that P120.. i think you mean 2GB ;) :lol:

my timeline:

BBC Micro
Amiga 500
Amiga 500+
Amiga 1200
IBM 386
P120 (32mb, 1gb HDD, 28.8k) - this still works and is my backup!
Cyrix 233 (32mb, 8GB, 33k)
then back to the P120 :lol:
then a P4 1.4Ghz :)

I forgot to mention that when I was very young I had a Commodore 64!

Atari 2600 - Does this count?
Commodore 64 with the chocolate keys.
Atari ST
Commodore Amiga 500
Commodore Amiga 600
PC

my dad bought a ZX80, but neither him nor me could make head or tail of it.

My first computer was a BBC model B 32K. What a fantastic machine that was. Light years ahead of everything else. I high resolution display mode, a 16 colour display mode and more digital connectors than you could shake a stick at (not that we ever used them for anything apart from that stunning twin 5.25" FDD - God how that revolutionised Elite, you could now save your position reliably in a couple of seconds)

In the end my dad approriated it for word processing, which it continued to do until 1997 when, bizarrely, it started making a funny smell. My dad switched it off and unplugged it and phoned the computer shop (one that actually serviced them!).

WHile he was on the phone, the BBC suddenly started pouring smoke from every orifice. In the repair shop all the man could say was " That's impossible" over and over. Every single major chip (black rectangle) had a hole in it the size of a cigarette burn, and a corresponding sooty patch on the inside of the upper casing, directly above each chip. And it was unplugged at the time.

Its death was greatly mourned.
since:
1989 - Amiga 500
199? 486SX 33Mhz 8Mb 200MbHDD
1997 Pentium Pro MMX 200Mhz 32Mb Ram (21" Eizo Monitor!!)
1999 iMac RevB Bondi Blue 233Mhz 96Mb RAM 4GB HDD
2004 G5 17" Powerbook?

Commodore 16 - with the cassette tape
Couldnt make a lot of sense out of it

then had
Toshiba 386 Laptop
Toshiba P100 Laptop
Viglen P120 Desktop

Now
HP Pavilion 2.4ghz 40GB HD Desktop
Dell Latitude Laptop
Ipaq Handheld PC

Amstrad... used to have this weird game about Vitamins, Minerals and summat else... Oh and some game where "Mummies" chased you around a massive maze! Was awsome!
Chloé

Atari 2600
Commadore 64
Commadore Amiga 500
IBM 233mhz, Ram 8meg, Pentium P6 processor, with 600mb HDD.

Now:
Packard Bell 2.53 GHZ Pentium 4
80 BG HDD
512 Ram
All sorts of goodies and built in graphics cards (although I'm unsure which they are... should have read up on the spec).

We had a ZX80 at home - it was my Dad's. But my first computer of my own was an Amstrad, trying to remember the model name, PCW180? something like that.

It was basically just a word processor, or it was as far as I was concerned. With strange shaped floppy discs, green text on a black screen.

I typed my dissertation on it in 1988!

I dont know how much it was, I had it given second hand.

The printer was a dot matrix and very slow, it makes you really respect your laser printer when you remember those old ones

Remember that you can still relive the golden days by downloading a free emulator for your favourite machine.

If it's a Spectrum, I heartily recommend www.worldofspectrum.org for Spectrum emulators and games.

Originally posted by alchresearch
Remember that you can still relive the golden days by downloading a free emulator for your favourite machine.

If it's a Spectrum, I heartily recommend www.worldofspectrum.org for Spectrum emulators and games.


I've done this for the Amiga and C64 and found it tarnished my fond memories of these games I used to love.

Yeah, WinUAE is tremendous, runs really well.

Oooohhhhhh tekkies!!!

My first was a Spectrum 48k and not the rubber keyed one either!!!

I then graduated onto a Commodore 64, then that became an Amiga 600 which became a Pentium P75 pile of bobbins which in turn became a TIME AMD500, which in turn became a Satellite Laptop which became another TIME P3 1.2 which became an Emac (for 3 weeks) which finally morphed into a E-Machines 770 from good ol' PC World.

I am not listing the amount of games consoles I have owned (some of which I have owned two or three times over).

ZX spectrum for me, the one with the rubber keys. I used to write my own progs on it in basic (I think).It was allways a laugh trying to load/save with the cassette player.
No internet either.

I got Prestel and Micronet 800 (glorified interactive teletext system) for my Speccy back in 1987. It ran at the terrific speed of 75bps!

Amstrad CPC464 - with colour monitor at the time!

1Man&HisBMW