- IMSAI 8080 S-100 bus (1976)
- 32 KILOBYTES of RAM
- 2 MHz
- ASR-33 Teletype with paper tape input/output
- No ROM ... boot was by toggling in about 22 bytes via front panel switches, then paper tape bootloader, then paper tape
- IMSAI 8K BASIC
A little later added:
- Z-80 CPU (doubled speed to 4 MHz)
- North Star floppy (78 KB per disk)
- North Star BASIC
- 64x16 (if I recall) B&W text only monitor
- 2K eeprom with monitor program I wrote myself in Z-80 assembly language
Later were more modern machines:
- Osborne I transportable with tiny screen and two floppies
- Zenith portable with 10 MB hard drive upgrade ... HD cost $999
My very first was an original (but second-hand) Amiga 500, and I was only about 8 at the time (mid-nineties)! I was disappointed with the loss of a few games as I wasn’t aware that magnetic sources destroyed disks. It also had a Text-to-Speech engine in one of the workbench disks which was pretty cool :D
My second computer was a Packard Bell, bought in 1998:
* Pentium 2 with MMX!
* 32MB RAM
* 2GB Hard disk
* Windows 95 (the disc was packed with goodies - videos (Good Times, Happy Days) and games (Hover)
Price: £999
My really first one was a CIP - a Z80 implementation made in Romania: Z80 CPU, 64kb RAM, load software via tape drive (yeah, really), output on a VGA monitor, and after loading an extra patch to the “operating system”, which was BASIC, you could play with BetaBasic and have some circles drawed on the screen. Each key on the keyboard corresponded to a BASIC function: GOTO (remember?), or Poke 1245 (meaning you can search for some variable that you put there, at 1245, before), or, the mighty RUN! You actually had to write by hand the code and save it onto a tape casette. I wrote one of the first commercials to be featured in a public video cinema in ‘93, I guess, it was a mix of BetaBasic geometric eye-dazzling moving shapes and some voice recorded onto a VHS system. It was show-cased around a year in a home theater in my home town.
At that time in Romania there were produced also some “computers” called HC90, or Cobra, that had 128kb RAM and worked under an operating system called CP/M. If I’m not wrong…
My Very First(tm) computer was a Commodore Vic-20 hooked up to a B&W TV and a cassette for storage. It was neat to play around with, but I never got anything productive done with it.
The first computer I used for utilitarian stuff such as word processing was a Commodore 64. That got me through Junior high and at least half of high school.
Eventually I went the entire Commodore upgrade path to a 128, Amiga 500, and Amiga 2500. After that, I got a PC and have been on PCs (and a few Macs) since.
Apple IIc, 128k RAM, a 5 1/4 floppy drive, green screen, and some of the greatest games that ever lived. Time of Lore, Ultima 5, Lode Runner, Drol. I am yet to be convinced that anything has come close to those classics!
well computer wise mine was commodore 64 with tape drive then i modified it with the cockroach turbo rom, then got a commodore 128 and still have one to this day in the box
then i found the ultimate computer the amiga 500 what a machine that was, far ahead of anything else. modified it also with workbench 2.0 rom, piggy backed ram chips to one another, got an external HD for it which
cost a whopping $500 for 100meg LOL, also at the time purchased a USR 14.4k modem which cost me $1000 :(
then eventually got a PC which was P2 266 with a voodoo card and didnt we think that was all powerful hehehe
My first computer was 8-bit PMD85
, the second was Atari 1040 STFM,
the third was Amiga 500+ with 2MB RAM and 40 MB SCSI HDD !!!
In subsequent years only IBM PC compatibles 286, 386, ....
The Amiga is still at home
Good old days… Anybody remembers? Pet Cbm - green monitor - storage on a cassette tape
and later I bought an Apple II clone - [assembled but naked] - I made a wood box, for motherboard and the keyboard…
Those incredible days…
Commodore VIC-20 with RAM expansion, eventually, and tape drive, eventually. I had to save up allowance for those things.
Then a Commodore 64.
Then the family’s 8086 PC by Epson, if I recall, back in 1986/87.
Then a succession of DOS/Windows desktops and laptops from whoever was building the best machine I could afford. Though there were some points where I had to scrounge—my roommate’s Commodore 128 running GEOS, an IBM PC 5150 Convertible (a machine I still love and miss), and for a while around 1990 this crazy AT&T keyboard with a built-in 14.4 modem that you attached to a TV set as a 40-column, black-and-white terminal, which I picked up at a ham radio festival for $20 and used to dial into the university network rather than walk the 8 or 10 blocks to the terminal room. I kind of miss the oddball computers. I don’t miss any of the Windows machines so much.
Then 3 years ago I bought a 12” Mac Powerbook because I was laid up with a broken leg and bored and wanted to play around. Now that’s all I use. Will probably replace it in January with a newer model.
Surely there must be somebody else out there that bought one of these
It brought back memories of how I had to use a pencil eraser to at least daily clean the tinned connection to the monitor, progressed from loading programs using a a tape cassette, buying the external 5.25 floppy disc, upgrading to 3.5 floppy, bolted on twin 12 inch floppies, my first 10 or was it 20 meg hard-drive, daisy wheel and dot matrix printers, colour, sound, modem. Learning Basic, Assembler, my first spreadsheet and database!
The friends I met at the local users club. How one guy had his very noisy, enormous printer in his shed at the bottom of his garden and connected by a twisted pair cable. The same guy returned from the States with a device pair that enabled him to remotely switch a light on at the far end of the hall by using the computer and sending the signal down the mains. Another guy wrote the program that had his computer talking. Leading edge stuff to say the least!
Also the numerous operating systems. Supplied on a single 5.25 floppy. Punching holes in the floppy and using both sides, double density - wow!
- KC87 (from 1989 ... A “Robotron Kleincomputer”)
- U880D (Z80) 1.75 MHz
- 6 KByte ROM (without additional memory ... couldn’t find some extra mem where i found this piece of equipment )
- Plugged onto TV (res 24(20) textrows with 40 characters each)
- 128 graphical symbols possible
- no color ..just b/w
- storage via Tape-recorder ...just plug onto a mic-jack (thats what I call “Plug ‘n’ Play”)
- some nifty pc-speaker with a hq muttering sound
- you could program with BASIC and assembler
- integrated keyboard
You actually had to write by hand the code and save it onto a tape casette. I wrote one of the first commercials to be featured in a public video cinema in ‘93, I guess, it was a mix of BetaBasic geometric eye-dazzling moving shapes and some voice recorded onto a VHS system. It was show-cased around a year in a home theater in my home town.
