cpu-museum.de

[Grampa]

Hi,
what was your first computer?
Place your story here - if you don't want to spend the time writing stories, you can use the poll above.


--
Okay, mine (my Dad's as well) was a C-64 by Comodore, but i was too young back then, so that I consider my family's second computer to be my first.
We bought it in january 1992, it had a AMD Am386sx25 processor (oh, i will have to add this one...), 512k VGA, 2MB RAM (5MB later) and a 40MB HardDisk from Seagate, which soon failed so we got a 60MB replacement half a year later (from Conner, still in use in my router). We had DRDOS 5 back then and we have been happy with it for almost 5 years.

Looking forward to hearing your story...
- Grampa

[Simmayor]

Well let me think, its been a while! Yes! It was a C64 with a tape drive mind you! Aaaahhh there is nothing like the sound of block's! Never heard of bytes in those days.

But like Grampa, my father bought it. So MY first PC was a 286-16! It had a 40MB hard disk, 2 MB RAM (EMS if i remember correctly) in SIPP modules, 256K videocard and a monochrome monitor. Of course 5 1/2 and a 3,5 floppy disk! I later upgraded the video card with a Tseng Labs ET4000 1024!! Wow! I played Silent Service and Test drive on it, what a beast it was! Can't remember the DOS version, probably DOS5 but i can remember QEMM!!

Who's next?
Simmayor

[fritz]

I remember that I bought me a 4 slot XT backplane, because I got a 8086 CPU with 512 kB, KB, COM1 from someone, I really cant remember (it was built out and replaced by something better) Then I bought the other components (EGA, Floppy IF I guess) and made a box out of aluminium with a power supply in the bottom.
Sad to say that I did not make any photographs. It must have been in the middle of the eighties.
I cant remember havin done anything else than playing "cats" or other CGA games with it.

My very first computer I built when I was 13. I used surplus relays and other telephone hardware to build it. It was capable to multiply up to 10x10. I needed one complete roll of soldering wire (500 g) and one month! Power was 60 Volts / 1 Ampere peak.

Later, when I was a student in 1979, I had a 1-bit selfmade with 8 instructions, diode matrix programm, etc. TTL chips were very expensive at this time. It took me some months to buy the chips but at the end it was really running. It was the time, when the first 8080 CPU was used by Siemens, so I had a good resource for further playing with micros - mainly hardware.

Fritz

[dahup]

...I laid my filthy hands on was a Robotron KC 85/2. My first own computer was an Atari 1040 STE. Both are not listed in the vote

[MC Hammer]

[Bikkel]

Sinclair ZX-Spectrum+, with 48kB and tapedrive

[Nachtmotte]

1988......during my military time in Germany I´ve to work with a 386-Generation - ´think it was a INTEL 386DX20 - later in
1991 I bought my own first computer for music works: Atari-1024 STF.
1996 I owned my first INTEL-machine: INTEL 486DX80:
1998 INTEL Pentium 75-233MHz (P5-P55C);
1999 AMD K6-2 350-450, AMD Athlon (Argon) 500-700MHz;
2000 AMD Athlon (Thunderbird) 900MHz;
2001 AMD Athon (Thunderbird) 1-1.3GHz;
2002 AMD AthlonXP (Palomino) 1900+
2003 AMD Opteron (Sledgehammer, 2-way) ?GHz.........

[zarrooo]

[Guest]

HI,
My fisrt computer (which belongs also to my brother) was an Amiga 500 + Ram extension (512 ko !) + external Floppy drive.
It still there and i didn't restarted it since at least 10 years, but what i remember is simply fabulous.
The year was 1985 and no other personal computer was as powerful as this machine. Motorola 68000+FatAgnus+Denise+Paula was a very good recipe from Commodore/Amiga.
Even today, when i format a floppy disk, what can you espect from your computer to do at the same time ?
On the Amiga 500, it wasn't a problem: when the processor was working for your spreading sheet, the other chipsets were doing the stuff (Denise for the FDD). Multitask hard-coded by two multiplexed buses (1 for the CPU, the other for the chipset) was a great idea.
The second one was an Amiga 3000 (68030), very powerfull, unfortunatelly one of the last Amiga...

[lvsmo135]

The first computer I ever used was an IBM 360 mainframe at the High Energy Physics Laboratory at Argonne National Laboratories in Argonne, Illinois USA. It was a monster with several 16" reel-to-reel tape readers for data storage and filled a 50X50 foot room. I remember how excited all the scientists were when we started using Hollerith-type punch cards to program "The Beast" instead of those difficult-to-handle 100-foot rolls of 1-inch-wide black punched paper tape!

The first computer I owned was a Timex-Sinclair 1000; it had 256Kb memory and plugged into a TV set by means of an RF adapter. However, I had no tape cassette for the programming tapes, so I had to type in every program when I wanted to use it!

An aside--one of the physicists at Argonne Labs bought a "pocket calculator" one year; it used four C cell batteries, could display only 6 digits, and did only simple addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division; it was too big to fit into a shirt pocket, but did fit in your back pants pocket...and it only cost $250.00 US! (What a bargain!!!!)

[Guest]

The first computer-like machine I used was a game machine that played ping-pong. 1977. But there was no programming

The very first real computer I put any program on was an IBM S/360 (mainframe). It was my very first time programming, with FORTRAN IV and WATFOR compiler. The year was 1979 or so.

Next, in 1981 there was the Texas instruments TI-994A (with BASIC). in 1982 HP had and TI had some pocket computers, like the HP-41C, and TI had their counterparts, whose names were TI-58 and TI-59. Everyone in the Enginering School wanted to have one. Radio Shack also had a machine that ran Tandy D.O.S., a propietary OS, with SuperCalc, WordStar and BASIC.

In 1984, there were the IBM PC, and the EPSON QX-10, with CP/M. I used both, and also there was the Osborne 1, an incredible portable machine with a 5" screen, 64KB RAM and two 90K-FDD units. It was really an incredible machine! and I did my Bachelor Thesis on it, with WordStar, Basic (with a Simplex simulation package), and SuperCalc. All runnig on top of CP/M-80.

The firts time I bought a computer was 1989, and the election was a powerful AMD 386/33 MHz, with huge 4MB RAM, 100 MB of Hard disk and DOS 5.0 / Windows 3.1.

This machine was incredible!. When I upgraded to Windows 95/ 8MB, 500 MB HD and OS/2 it performed exceptionally well. I'm very sure it was faster than my actual 1.0 GHz - 256MB / 20GB machine.

Sometime I obtained a Cyrix 486 CPU, and replaced the AMD 386 CPU, AND THE BIOS RECOGNIZED IT!!!!. incredible; thus, the machine was upgraded to a 40 MHz i486.

When I decide to upgrade to a Pentium class machine, in 1995, the old machine was performing well as usual, and the upgrade went because the old motherboard did not support a high speed modem (the UART was very slow).

[Guest]

Hm, difficult ... let me try if I can make a small tour through my past. The PCs never was really bought new, only upgraded from time to time.

1. Commodore 116
2. Commodore 64
3. PC Intel 486DX 25 MHz, 8 MB RAM
4. PC AMD 5x86-P75 133 MHz, 32 MB RAM (later 48 MB)
5. PC Cyrix 6x86-PR166, 64 MB RAM
6. PC IBM 6x86MX-PR266, 64 MB RAM
7. PC Intel Celeron 300A (Slot), 128 MB RAM
8. PC Intel Celeron 366 PPGA, 128 MB RAM
9. PC Intel Celeron 466 PPGA, 192 MB RAM
10. AMD Duron 650, 384 MB RAM

Now I have three PCs here:

1st: Athlon 1400 / 512 MB
2nd: Intel Pentium III 700 / 256 MB
3rd: Intel Pentium Pro 200/256kB Dual CPU / 192 MB

[Erich]

Hi,

the first machine I was working with was a AMD 2901 system, some 8080 machine were used as I/O systems in the late Seventies.

The AIM-65 with a 1 MHz 6502 was my first machine at home.

I went all the way from PDP-11, µVAX-II, 8086, 80186, .. up to a dual Athlon.

So, I came from AMD and landed there again.

Erich

[panhead]

here too was an 8087 cpu........it was (and still is) in a Grid Scancase portable.....stackable floppy drive..power supply..40 meg hard drive..portable??....i think not..lol...heavy......

[Michael S]

i386DX 16 + 4Mb + HDD 50Mb + Video 512K
Pentium 166@225 + 32Mb + HDD 2Gb + ATI 2Mb
K6-2 266@300 + 96 Mb + HDD 2Gb + ATI 2Mb
K6-2 450@533 + 128 Mb + HDD 2Gb + Rendition V2200 8Mb
Duron 750@900 + 256 Mb + HDD 20Gb + GF 2MX200 32Mb
Duron 1100@1250 + 512 Mb + HDD 20 Gb + GF 3Ti200 64Mb

Im old overclocker My site on Russian: http://www.history-of-cpu.euro.ru u