What was the first computer you put your hands on?

[wread]

An old IBM 650 with radio tubes and a magnetic drum with 10k words capacity, card reader input and card puncher output. Programmable only in machine-language and in an interpreted language called Bell System.

[XAVIER]

A 486 more than 20 years ago. wow tempus fujit!

[fanthom]

Commodore64 -> Amiga 600 -> AMD K5 100Mhz PC

[Ahau]

great topic, wread!

Earliest I can remember was a computer class I took in 3rd grade (age 8 ). I remember it had a green screen. Probably an Apple IIe. I remember drooling over a neighbor's commodore 64, but I don't think I was allowed to touch it!

[guttaslax]

An old IBM 650 with radio tubes and a magnetic drum with 10k words capacity, card reader input and card puncher output. Programmable only in machine-language and in an interpreted language called Bell System.

Wow, I missed this one!

My very first step was IBM /370.

On personal computing:
Commodore VIC20 3,5k > C64 > C16 (still have this last one in good working conditions),
then some Apple clones, Olivetti M20 (not a dos machine) both dropped very soon;

On Dos machines: the IBM Pc (the one before the IBM XT), then almost all what was introduced in the market (still have samples of these machines and components in good working conditions).

[Burninbush]

I guess it would depend on the exact definition of "computer" -- my first touch of programmable hardware was data processing machines in the Army in the 1962 era. They also had rotating drum memories, and you programmed them by moving wire jumpers around on patch panels. Really closer to what you'd call a programmable calculator than what we think of today as a computer.

I still have and cherish a TI SR-52 calculator -- programs stored on little mag cards, and it would interface to a special little graphics printer.

Then around 1973 or so I wirewrapped a cpu of sorts after reading an article in a ham radio magazine about a robot radio -- had an A/LU that would do 15 separate functions [74181 chip!] -- and the microprogram that sequenced it was an array of diodes.

First touch of a commercial home computer of the modern era was an IMSAI in the late 1970's, built from kits. That eventually turned into a career of caring for minicomputers.

[captain_picard]

It was a Pentium III at 660MHz back in the end of 1999 or so. It originally had Windows 98 but I managed to squeeze in XP.

[hypomania]

for me I do not remember exactly , but was Pentium II 200MHz windows 95

[brokenman]

Great topic. It indirectly puts an approximate age to usernames too! Some interesting backgrounds ... burninbush, you were destined for linux with a background like that.
Mine was a kitset by a company in Australia. It was called a Microbee 32 with monochrome display and clock rate of 2 Mhz. I remember text based zork games. The last year of primary school they introduced some other apple machines similar to my microbee. After that it was the C64 which was miles ahead of the previous machines. Holy crap we've come so far ... what will tomorrows children be using. Most definately the lazy human race will head towards integrating electronics with the body to live longer and easier. It has already started!

[82issa]

I don't remember the year but me and my brother used to have these books with programming 20 games using basic. And we would spend hours reading code and trying to type it in on our very impressive Texas Instruments TI-99/4A. I think it was mid to late 80's. That we used to do that.

[francois]

Back in the 80's, at the begining of my 20's, at work as a biologist I used a hp desktop that used audio cassettes as long term memory. I remember that running correlations for 13 x 13 variables could go on all nite.

I also worked with a plotter to convert the data on water flow and levels into data cards as technician for the environment department. These were sent to the head office in Ottawa to be treated on a main frame.

Later, in 1986, back to university to get a degree in psychology, I got aquainted with Apple II and MacIntosh at the computer lab of McGill Education department.

Not very much later, but before 1990, I bought my first PC that would run under windows. I thought this would be a revolution compared to the command line programs available on PC. I got the machine just a little before the widespread use of Netscape on the market.

The revolution turned in a dictatorship and a monopoly. A good thing that Netscape could be resucitated thru Mozilla and now Firefox.

My son got his hands on a computer at age 3. What a contrast!

[82issa]

I was doing some research today and came accross this it made me
laugh so hard. I remember being that happy over crappodore 64.

[Ahau]

Hehehe, 82issa, that's a great pic!

[Hamza]

@82issa, That was you ?

[82issa]

No that was not me. I was about that age when I got my commodore 64. I felt the need to share it with everyone that I felt the same as this kid apparently does.