My first computer

Community General Discussions
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Kurt and I were reminiscing on our early computer experiences. I told him my first computer was an 8052 BASIC that I wire wrapped by hand from nothing. Also mentioned I still have it. He asked to see an image of it. Thought it might be fun to start a thread on “your first computer.” I remember having to work on it at lunch at work because I didn’t have a PC at the time. I added an 8255 I/O processor which wasn’t part of the original design. The LCD display is missing, not sure what happened to it. lol Words could not express the feelings of pride and accomplishment when I lightly tapped the space bar to see the following displayed on the terminal CRT! Hehe those were the days!

[code]MCS-51™ BASIC V1.1
READY

[/code]

8052bas1.jpg
8052bas1.jpg2048×1536 309 KB

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I don’t think I am seeing the big picture with those “old” computers. Whats wrong with new computers? they’re much faster!

Hmm…maybe it’s just me. :unamused:

Anyways, my first computer was a 1.2Ghz laptop. it was probably 5 years old and it needed a new HDD. My parents were going to throw it away, but I “convinced” them to let me fix (I was only 9 lol). I finally got rid of it when the mainboard fan failed back in 2006. After that I actually ended up with a slower computer. 700Mhz, with 128MB RAM. I had to do everything on that for about 2 years until I built my 3.6Ghz machine. :slight_smile:

So that concludes my boring history of computers. Hope you enjoyed! :mrgreen:

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Hi Jim,

Looks great, I have moved too many times to keep my old computers :frowning:

Edit: First computer I ever programmed was in high school. It was an IBM 1620 (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_1620)

I won’t count my Sinclair kit that never really worked, but my first work computer back in 1978 was ones by a company called Datapoint who indirectly started the PCs. old-computers.com/MUSEUM/com … st=1&c=596

My first real computer at home was the Franklin Ace: oldcomputers.net/ace1000.html which I later added a Z80 add on board…

The next was the Amiga 1000: oldcomputers.net/amiga1000.html
I really wish this one would have taken off as they had a lot of innovative ideas back then.

It was only later that I finally purchased my first PC (by PC limited - later called Dell)… The funny thing was that through each of these generations of micros my cost was about the same…

4

Wow Jim! even way back then you were a master at wire routing. It looks very nice and neat. My very fist computer was a TI-994A. It hooked up to a regular TV like a game console and to save programs I used a regular tape recorder. It had no floppy drive.

http://www.sat4all.com/forums/ubbthreads.php/ubb/download/Number/58098/filename/ti-994a.jpg

5

Um, , first computer(s) I got to play with were DEC PDP-8/L and a PDP-11 the high school had inherited in the late 70s - early 80s. What is a PDP-8/L? We had the punched tape reader and teletype which we could load a BASIC interpreter into the 8/L with… the -11 though was mostly reserved for the older kids, science teachers, librarian, etc. :laughing:
From there it kind of went in like 3 different directions… microcontroller kits like the KIM and SIM1, personal computers like the Apple ] and IBM PC (and Zenith clones which were “so” much faster), and mainframe stuff at the university.
The first computer I actually personally owned, like as in my own and not something I had to share, was a '286 I pieced together from parts bought at Jameco… with it’s orange monochrome video and 2400baud modem that I could call BBS(s) with. :unamused:

6

Ha ha! Wowy this only proves you are too young to really appreciate what you have there. Gimme that computer! :smiling_imp: :smiley:

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cough cough…

My first computer that I played with was a DEC PDP-1… (in the basements of MIT, sometime in the late 60’s)

The first computer I programmed was an IBM 1130… (also in the basements of MIT and as well as other local colleges.)

My own first computer was Tandy TRS-80 in the late 70’s.

8

I know! you actually had to -wait- for computers to come out. I didn’t! :stuck_out_tongue:

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The very first computer I programmed was an Hewlette Packard HP-1000E “mini” computer at a local college in 1973. I was in Junior High at the time and we had a 300Bps acoustic coupler dial-up to the machine. We used an ASR-33 Teletype for our terminal. This was seventh grade for me, just before going to High School. A friend of mine and I wrote a BASIC program for the game of Yahtzee.

In High School, three of us got access to a DEC PDP-11/45 at Humboldt State College (later University), where we helped the staff find security holes so they could plug them. We crashed the system regularly! The terminal was another ASR-33 Teletype and acoustic coupler dial-up. We three then moved on to HSU after High School and became student assistants in the Computer Lab where we helped other students with computer issues.

A friend I met after moving to Oregon in 1977 had an MITS Altair 8800a, which he built from a kit in 1976 (Popular Science). I aquired the 8800a when he upgraded to an 8800b. These micros were bit twiddling nightmares!


I had to enter a bootloader using the front panel switches. Then I could use the ASR-33 paper tape reader to load a BASIC interpreter, and then any BASIC program I had on paper tape. I could then run and/or modify the program and write it back out on a new paper tape for next time around. We were completely high-tech at the time! :wink: This was my first actual computer.

I also worked on Apple ]{, ]+, and ][e computers during the late 70’s. I remember programming in AppleSoft BASIC, Apple Pascal (think UCSD Pascal p-machine), and doing program conversions from AppleSoft to Apple Pascal for Osborne & Associates for their new book. I also remember working on a Radio Shack TRS-80 system a friend had.

I got my first real IBM PC hot off the assembly lines in 1981 when they were first introduced and paid about $2100.00 or so even with a 10% discount from ComputerLand where I worked at the time. This was one of the units with the 64k motherboards, which I had connected to a green screen composite monitor and cassette unit for mass storage. Yes, those are both full size 5 1/4" drives.
[img]http://www.myoldcomputers.com/museum/comp/museumpics/83pc.jpg
http://www.myoldcomputers.com/museum/comp/museumpics/83pcinside1.jpg
I was able to get rid of this just before the ones with the 640k motherboards came out. I later got one of the newer 640k motherboard units and upgraded it with a floppy drive and 10MB (megabyte) hard drive. No more paper tape or cassette for me ever again! :wink: I later got to play with 300MB hard drives too! :wink:

8-Dale

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Nah I had to build my own. Before the 8052 computer I actually built a hardware sequencer from TTL logic. Used it to automate a primitive 2DOF arm using steppers… That I no longer have.

I also got a radio shack Color Computer somewhere in there, then finally an XT clone. I remember swapping the on board memory “chips” to get up to 64k. I can remember my first hard drive was like 10mb that’s an M… lol wow how things have changed.

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We had to wait, but it was an exciting time! well at lest for myself. I was able to appreciate the cool new electronic things that came out year after year. It had a sort of magic fealing like Christmas. Now when something new comes out like the Xbox360, I don’t get excited the same way I did when the Atari 2400’s came out. I guess I’m just getting old. The 80s has so many memories, VCRs, Microwaves, PCs, Video game systems, etc…

By the way…

Code decoded:

“Decode this secret ASCII message:”

$52 $4F $54 $46 $4C $4F $4C = ROTFLOL

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ROTFLOL is right! :laughing:

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Well, I’m too late. Pix of my Altair 8800 have been posted, PDP-8E mentioned, and of course the early IBM PC.

Before I could buy a kit to build my Altair, I was contemplating building at least parts of the CDC 1601 (?) computer that we used in the MK 84 Fire Control system aboard the submarine I was on.

The first suggestion of a microcomputer came in '74, called the Mark-8 which used the 8008 chip. A friend on the boat had ordered a Mark-8 kit.

http://www.compusaur.com/Mark8files/re_coversm.jpg

I’d just got some of the details figured out with TTL chips and was ready to buy my own Mark-8 parts, when the '75 issue of Popular Electronics came out. I built an Altair.

No CRT terminals were around, and I couldn’t yet afford a TTY. I scrounged an electro-mechanical keyboard, and managed to cobble-up a keyboard interface. The output was at first directed to a TV Typewriter, although initial experiments drew a line of text on a 'scope. All early programming was in assembly. I did get BASIC.

For a printer, I hacked an I/O Selectric Typewriter, a marvelous printer for the time. I also finally got my hands on an ASR-33 TTY, but I’ve since sold it. I wish I’d kept it. I still have the Selectric. Oh, and the Mark-8 parts as well. I currently have 3 Altairs, including the 8800b.

After getting an offer of software work (reading/translating paper tapes for CNC) on a TRS-80 (which went to my brother), and later on the first PC, I settled on first a PC, and then up through the XT and AT models. Yup, got the PC and it’s followings still as well.

Embedded projects quickly followed with the 8080 and 8085, and on to the 8052 (even BASIC).

I side-stepped into the 6800 family for several commercial frequency counter projects.

I wrote QA+, a PC diagnostic package for a company called Diagsoft that I co-founded.

Stepping up to an embedded '386, I developed automotive tests for a hand held computer called a PDA (Personal Diagnostic Assistant).

I learned about PICs, and later designed/tested industrial laundry controllers using them.

Alan KM6VV

14

Started programming games in BASIC on the Commodore Pet and Vic-20’s they had in the computer lab 7th grade. Sweet-talked my parents into a Commodore 64 with the 1541 5-1/4" floppy drive for the following Christmas! I remember buying single sided floppies and hole punching the top right corner to double my ‘storage capacity’. :smiley: Sold my first program when I was 14, it was a quiz machine for postal workers to help learn their new routes. I wouldn’t come out of my room for days. “Go out and play?”, “Get some fresh air?”, “Girls, what are girls?”… Oh, what happy days! :unamused:

15

My first computer was a vic20. It use a television for a display and an external cassette player for data storage. Next I went the the zx spectrum 48K which had a massive 48K internal memory. This one also use a tV set and an external cassette player for storage. We spent endless hours typing in basic commands and when finally finished we usually got the dreaded “tape loading error” message. Wow did we have patience thous days.
zx-spectum.jpg
vic20.jpg

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Hum, so my first computer is a home-built core i7 OC’d to 4 Ghz with 8 virtual cores, two fullHD screens, 6Gb of RAM and a GTX-275…

Does that count? :unamused:

Nope, I can’t really relate to you guys on this one :arrow_right:

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Go to your room!

Alan KM6VV

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My first computer…

http://hammerheadstoneworks.com/blog-images/quoins/lintel-star-bit.jpg

Input devices…

Sorry guys couldn’t help myself…

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Hi All -

My first personal computer was a 4k Commodore PET. Cassette drive, tiny little 6" or so CRT and miniature keyboard. Was a 6502 processor, I think. It looked kinda like the the video intercom on the classic Star Trek. Boy, have we come a long way since then…

While in service I maintained a UNIVAC, cabinet upon cabinet of discrete transistors - no ICs, Mag tape for outputs (huge Honeywell vacuum drives); 7-level paper tape and a Kleinschmitt teletype for input, had to step in the bootloader into each register by hand (took 2 people about 4 hours!). I remember it had 32K of real CORE memory (a three-dimensional array of hair-fine wires, with ferrite beads at each intersection.) If memory serves, the one core module that failed and had to be replaced cost approx. $390,000 in the early 80’s. Talk about high-priced RAM!!!