As someone brought up in the 70s, I knew that the arcade games we were playing would eventually be affordable and available at home. As a lad, we went to arcades to play Galaxian (the 1st colour screen game) and Defender, which was incredibly fast for the time.
That keyboard was horrible. We soon found out that making the games we were playing was not possible in BASIC, lol. I still loved the machine. A lovely little computer that plugged into your telly for £150 (?)
I used to love going up to Menzies and seeing what games they had running. Me and ma mates up there all the time. Rumours where that the truant officers would lurk about there catching skivers. I was never caught. Always nervous though
My first computer was the size of a room, and all my interactions with it were by passing punch tape to men in white coats, and after a day or so, getting a punch tape back.
Age yourself with your first computer.
The school I went to got Apple IIcs. My parents were teachers so we got a more affordable Apple II clone. I think my dad was under the impression that he would use it or the IIgs we got later on to work with music, but he never did.
Of course I was just joking, I remember the Apricot I think along with the Amstrads as well, cutting edge at the time, although with some of the changes Microsoft has made recently, it would appear the windows world is regressing, I am talking Windows 11, awful.
First computer was 'Twig 200' 😆 While everyone else in School played on the 'BBC Micro', I was pushed to the back, so fked off into the playground to play with twigs! 😂 (Jokes on them tho-I got a Commodore 64 cos mum 'wanted to learn computers'(NO CLUE) - they got shitty Spectrum 48's and Vic20's 😂
I'm old enough to remember the adverts for the ZX80 as a kit, on the back page of the Radio times ?
But I couldn't afford one back then, and I think I would've been sorely disappointed if I'd got one (I always just wanted to 'use' them, and let someone else
I made the even worse decision of adding a Currah micro speech to the 16k Spectrum and 32k RAM pack creating a horrific daisy chain of unreliable connectivity which crashed constantly. It’s all still in my Mum’s loft - must dig it out & see if I can get it to boot.
“Underwhelming” is such a great word in this context. When I got my first 386 in 1996, I was expecting, as a mid-20’s guy with absolutely NO programming or code experience, to instantly be able to hack MI6 or something equally ridiculous. Green text everywhere, alarms going off.
ZX Spectrum 48K. But only after 3 years playing with Univac 1110a mainframe, Prime 250 mini computer workstation and a PDP 11/2 (Polytechnic and industrial placement year). Bought to load microcode into a self designed mini computer based on a 16-bit CPU from TI, for my final year project.
Not mine, but my first work computer..(it was ancient even then, early 80's) it used magnetic stripe cards... I found it in the technology section of a museum recently.. I am old ,😂
I know!. It ran the programming through a cassette tape on the desk beside it... Now I do everything on this hand held pocket sized thing that has a million times more processing power ( and also makes phone calls) 🤯
I loved my C16+4 Miffy!!! OMG. It was my first computer, my older brother had a BBC Acorn Electron. Can still remember getting my Commodore!!! I can remember how I scoffed about VIC 20 owners! ;)
i never really had a computer.......
i had the nintendo[with super mario,duck hunt,gumshoe,kung fu master]....it had the little robot with spinny things.
the thing is never had the 2 games necessary to use the robot[they only ever released 2 games for it].
it actually came in a nintendo pack without the games[85/86 i think]
me little johnny 5 was absolutely useless.
I remember when these fancy-pants "look at me I have a case" computers first arrived, my richer friends had them 😜. It was a fabulous time of new tech blowing away what we imagined was possible ❤️
That chiclet keyboard tho 👎
Didn't this have the 3.5 inch floppy disk drive not a cassette player?
We had one of these in primary school. I also had a zx spectrum which loaded games via a cassette
It's very possible that I've got the wrong model. I can't remember the model that my dad proudly bought home. He also bought home pictures made of symbols on dotmatrix paper from work, I'm guessing those weren't the most productive of days
I had an Amstrad with a built in cassette deck.
Then upgraded to a colour model with a built in floppy drive plus expansion rooms for word processing software! Instant load.
I played Harrier Attack for longer than a grown man should have!
Commodore Plus 4. Always wanted a C64 but my parents scrimped and saved for this for me. Was very happy as a kid even though it wasn't as good as the C64.
Yeah. Played both C16 and Plus4 games. Was essentially the same machine but came with built in office apps. Graphics and sound weren't as good as the C64 but I loved it and was very grateful that my parents bought it for me.
ZX81 one was my first, followed by one of these, an Acorn Electron (poor man's BBC Micro). Later, a 5¼" floppy drive was added, which was amazing for me at the time!
We must have been poorer than I remember cos we never had a computer back then. I remember going into Tandy’s and looking longingly at the latest tech and being kicked out off several shops in Bromley for lingering too long over their computers. Those were the days 😂 probably still barred 🙃
Yes, used to wear my finger out on the cassette player pressing rewind and play, trying to get Kong to load. Thought I was cutting edge at the time. Now I have intense sweary conversations with my phone!
...and because they were soft and rubbery, the keys were great to use...until the dog chewed them out. Yup. It was my dad's but we all used it. Even the bloody dog, in the end.🙆😂
So many great memories, still don't think I've encountered anything more infuriating in my lifetime than waiting 10 minutes for a game to load, only to be met with the infamous "load tape error" message to pop up. 🤬🤬🤬
Yeah, I had the printer as well. You how to plug it in before the memory pack because there was only one slot at the back. You had special paper for it as well, which was a bit like the old Izal toilet paper. 😳
Actually my wife at the time won it, she was at some sort of exhibition in London, and entered, it was some silly question you had to answer, but apparently she was the only one to get it right. The DMP we bought, and a tape recorder for games.
Toshiba MSX. Had a games cartridge slot which loaded games instantly instead of waiting for a cassette to load! Learned how to write code on this too. Good times!
Yeah. I remember those programming books you could get and a really complex one of a ship dropping depth charges. Took me weeks of trying for exactly that reason....
The sense of anticipation of loading the tape cassette, waiting ages for the program to load and to be mostly disappointed or sometimes elated with the results.
And typing out programs from magazines that were faxed in, meaning that you were never sure if that should be a comma, a semi-colon or a colon. You could do 30 mins of careful typing & just get an error.
Same. Got it for Christmas but it was faulty (a family curse we had) and it was the time when the whole country was closed for days and days. None of these boxing day sales. Longest 5 days of my childhood waiting for Boots to reopen.
Loading Jet Set Willy on that cassette tape, and then blowing all 3 chances to get the silly colour code thing right and having to start it all over again.
My god, the noise that bloody tape machine made, it sounded like it was strangling a cat… I must have destroyed a dozen of those joysticks playing Daley Thompson….😁
I love how, over about 20yrs, the phrase 'the computer room' went from meaning, 'the vast room where we keep the one, fucking huge computer,' to, 'a room with 30+ computers lined up'. Breaks my brain.
When I was 8, my dad introduced me to a ZX Spectrum he had stored in a dusty box. Using a portable TV and a Walkman, he set up the computer and loaded a simple game (Moon Lander?) While I enjoyed the game, he encouraged me to learn how to code, promising access to even better games if I did.
This was my second. I still have a soft spot for them. I'm part of a project writing a new multitasking OS for the enhanced //e and up called A2osX. It even has a tcpip stack!
My online experience with the A2 was BBs using an acoustic couple modem. I’d guess that even a text only browser on an A2 would be pretty slow given the bus bandwidth.
I was 12 when I got one of these. First thing I did was copy the code from the book, which turned the keyboard into a musical keyboard. Maybe they should have just bought me a Yamaha! 😂
Commodore Pet in 1977 at school then at 18 I got a ZX Spectrum 48k. With the Pet just making a square appear randomly on the screen as a major programming feat. But those two “boxes” have shaped my entire career
Agreed. This was cutting edge in 1987. Small companies could have a moderately priced multi-user Unix accounting system with 4, 8, 16 or 32 dumb terminals (usually Wyse) hard wired to the server. Paid my bills as a Tetra software trainer and consultant for several years.
Oh, the hours spent splitting fanfold 14" paper into seperate jobs. Usually in the early hours of the morning in the graveyard shift as a S/370 operator. Mind-numbing!
I’ll also add, it wasn’t old school when it was invented. That was the latest thing in computing. To even think you owned a pc you were considered well off.
These were in the days before a mobile phone had been invented. What is considered old school now was innovation then.
It’s all that could be afforded as a Xmas gift. So I made use of it as best as I could. The only time I saw a Com64 was at school in in the computer class.
Superb cricket and football manager games, both needed different woggles. Ours got nicked. Dad got us a 600. Neither woggle worked, games lost forever. 🙁 We still talk about it.
And I learned to write basic programs on it.
I didn't have a proper computer until many years later, a 386,cobbled together from mates' reject bots. My mate taught me how to put it together.
I remember that! The keyboard was supposedly touch-sensitive, but actually you had to press the keys quite hard, there were little buttons concealed beneath the plastic film. Friend of mine got a Spectrum and we all thought it was a huge upgrade.
Whenever computer nostalgia comes out, I feel the Atari 1040ST (or briefly earlier 520) doesn’t get the attention it deserves. For musicians, it was the one to have as it had MIDI as standard. Pretty much all the 80s & early 90s electronic stuff you love was made on those.
We used to have a dumb terminal at school with a link to the mainframe at Hatfield Poly (as it was), programmed complete with tickertape - I missed nearly a whole year's maths lessons as we could book slots on this instead! 🧓😁
CP/M was the operating system that Gates shamelessly copied and called PC DOS. It was a big deal then.
My school and UNI days predate computers. We had to use 8 figure log tables to do trigonometry. A nightmare for my dyslexic brain.
Hard to explain, but kids in the early 80s played Pong in random places long before getting a home computer. Usually involved three men fretting as they retuned a wood-surround TV.
I'm assuming my stepdad pirated it, given how much time I later spent playing Killer Gorilla.
Commodore Vic-20 'colour computer' !! I think it had 6k RAM?? We would buy computer magazines and type in/debug the game programs for hours just to get some crappy game that we'd play for 10 minutes! Ahhhh the days.
I used a zx81 in computer club. My first was an Aquarius by Mattel which was a really good 16 colour thing. Then a speccie 48k, then 128k with tape drive, then an Amiga 512k....
My mate had a speccie 48k, posh bastard, had a tape deck you could load games with (it would even work sometimes) Many hours watching him play manic miner, I didn't get a go of course, I just had to sit and watch
oh yeah, we wrote games too, they were adventure games like 'The Hobbit' "You are in a room with no windows and a hammer, what would you like to do?" And there'd be a very low res pic of a room, haha, so easy back then and so much fun
For me it was the 1K ZX81 which started my adventures in the world of computing. I later upgraded to a 16K RAM pack (arrggh... the agony of RAM pack wobbles!) and eventually a proper keyboard.
Who needs colour!? Sound!? Lowercase characters!? Give me a Sinclair ZX81!
Comments
Followed by a ZX80.
The school I went to got Apple IIcs. My parents were teachers so we got a more affordable Apple II clone. I think my dad was under the impression that he would use it or the IIgs we got later on to work with music, but he never did.
Wrote a few text-based adventures.
But I couldn't afford one back then, and I think I would've been sorely disappointed if I'd got one (I always just wanted to 'use' them, and let someone else
AVL Eagle II - 1981
Used for programming multi-projector slide programmes.
But it were bloody marvelous.
Games then loaded properly at least 75% of the time, which was nice 👍
Didn’t happen. 😕
No wobbly ram pack?
(Or was that the ZX81? I forget.)
I was a nerd pioneer. Now I’d be cool, then …. Well let’s just say if it wasn’t for rugby I’d still be a virgin.
Two rubber feet to raise the back end, and a lump of blutac on the ram pack. Problem solved 👍
i had the nintendo[with super mario,duck hunt,gumshoe,kung fu master]....it had the little robot with spinny things.
it actually came in a nintendo pack without the games[85/86 i think]
me little johnny 5 was absolutely useless.
(case was optional lol)
That chiclet keyboard tho 👎
Get Dexter and Knight Tyme were my favourite games.
Not computers per se, but I do have fond memories of these.
Treasure Island Dizzy is the only correct answer here - but in green.
We had one of these in primary school. I also had a zx spectrum which loaded games via a cassette
Then upgraded to a colour model with a built in floppy drive plus expansion rooms for word processing software! Instant load.
I played Harrier Attack for longer than a grown man should have!
Tell that to kids nowadays and you have to explain what tape is first!
Dundee?
Certainly the first version ZX Spectrum wit rubber keyboard
I had to make do with the standard 3.5k
The sense of anticipation of loading the tape cassette, waiting ages for the program to load and to be mostly disappointed or sometimes elated with the results.
At least I found out that a career in programming was not for me.
Yeah, Boots sold us our first computer.
It was portable (🤣) but weighed a ton & was the size of a decent sized suitcase.
Old school “copy protection” (which basically was just a few codes or pages in the manual) still makes me smile.
I still fondly remember playing Turrican and Turrican 2 before upgrading to the lofty heights of an Amiga!
https://i.redd.it/trying-to-figure-out-what-to-do-with-my-apple-ii-any-ideas-v0-xp9ofrdt2knc1.jpg?width=4080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3e9bef562f224218375d3b7077dabcbbdc59be7
https://www.facebook.com/groups/5251478676/permalink/10159742300763677/
I remember it having rubber keypad and used cassettes to load programs.
I left school BEFORE calculators were introduced 🤣🤣🤣
The horror!
I am delighted that things are easier now! Particularly for shop workers, the "cash till" must have been a nightmare at the end of day cash up!
"My" first one was a ZX81 (with 16K Rampack, held in place with bent coat hanger, and a pack of frozen peas on top to cool it)
Windows, 3.1....
I then had to learn to use a calculator.
Played Catacombs on it for hours
Played that to death as well
Wish he’d let me have one!
Worth a few quid as well
It used to beat him at chess a lot.
Obvs not counting Babbage and the analytical engine…..
First one at work mostly with Lotus 1-2-3 - IBM PC/XT (10MB HDD, 640k RAM)
First one in proper IT job with Tetraplan business software - Compaq luggable
First multi-user networked computer - Altos 1000
Yes - I am that old!
They were amazing machines - saw a few sites that replaced them with 486 PC servers running SCO that turned out to be slower than the 1000!
They were pricey, but incredibly reliable and performant.
Those rubber keys felt it most during the 100 metre sprint!
It was great
48kb in colour!!
WOW! 😂😂
No, of course it wouldn't load..
These were in the days before a mobile phone had been invented. What is considered old school now was innovation then.
Every byte was great
If a byte was wasted
God got quite irate
😂😂😂😉
This was mine :
I didn't have a proper computer until many years later, a 386,cobbled together from mates' reject bots. My mate taught me how to put it together.
My school and UNI days predate computers. We had to use 8 figure log tables to do trigonometry. A nightmare for my dyslexic brain.
It's black with grey buttons
I can still hear those cassettes loading.
I'm assuming my stepdad pirated it, given how much time I later spent playing Killer Gorilla.
Who needs colour!? Sound!? Lowercase characters!? Give me a Sinclair ZX81!
brother and I nearly broke our wrists playing it with a joystick after the keys ripped our fingers open