I had a Sinclair zx80 in the kit version followed by a 8088 then a 286 ,486 etc
Still got the book with the course on BASIC that was needed to be typed in , or the luxury route with cassette.
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iOS is based on bsd “unix” I believe.
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iOS is for the most part a completely new development, but it’s true that it shares the low-level Darwin core Unix with macOS and has some low-level user space with a BSD heritage. Darwin is, however, mainly based on NeXTSTEP and the Mach kernel.
Sorry, I once was a bit of a Unix history nerd 
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(Or something like that 
GNU is sorely missing here, without which there would not be the Linux system as we know it)
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Yes and Yes … split out to its own topic …
My first computer was a Sinclair ZX80, you had to build / assemble it yourself.
The whopping 16K RAM extension was a must, but if you moved the ZX80 it would crash so I mounted it on a wooden board.
Then I had a Spectrum and when that packed in … switched to BBC Micro A that I then upgrade as funds would allow to Model B and then added a disk drive. I recall getting hold of the drive controller chip was troublesome … and once install the OS took up more RAM so certain games would not load and required innovative work-a-rounds.
I designed and built an EPROM programer that was controlled from BBC as a college project … it worked really well.
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My first computer was an Acorn Atom, which I built from a bare circuit board. I sold that to fund a BBC model A, which I then ungraded to a model B.
Later, I added a floppy, but then sold it for an Apple IIe. This was later replaced by a PC (286 processor 1 MB ran 63 MB hard disk), which cost around £3.5k. About £13k in today’s money. At that time I was developing automatic test equipment—I was the Duke of Hazard (specialising in non-ionising radiation.)
I wish I’d kept the Apple.
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We all used BBC Micro’s at school, must have been circa 1983, my first home computer was the Acorn Electron, a friend in my year, Colin, wrote a simple Tron light cycles games in about 5 minutes in front of my eyes, I thought he was the coolest kid ever. He went onto work for Activision and went stratospheric from there. Last I heard he was a multimillionaire (but that could be wishful thinking 
). Actually, one of the first games he worked on as a professional was Ghostbusters II.
I bought an Amiga 500 and then the 1200 after that, I loved those computers.
Eventually I went on, after becoming a Toolmaker at Rover Cars, to work in CAD on CATIA which was originally run on UNIX and then with later versions on Windows (which I have never enjoyed using).
UNIX always reminded me of using my AMIGA’s, for obvious reasons and that’s probably why I never enjoyed using Windows and ended up an Apple user.
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Mine was too, but my message got left behind in the original thread this was moved from.
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Hi Rod … sorry about that, now sorted …
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My 16 MEG (notice I said meg, not gig) memory upgrade for my 386 (or maybe it was an 8088) cost me $50 a meg or $900 when I bought my new computer back in the early 90’s. You can’t do anything with 16 megs anymore. That is back when Bill was saying nobody needed any more than a few K in memory. Ha Ha.
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Very questionable as far as I know
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I never bothered to research it any further than to think “oh, Bill” ha ha. Thanks for the info.
It’s one of these things that are too good to go away
I still have the book with the instruction set for a zylog 80 processor here.
My first computer was an atari 400. even had the cassette drive. It had a really cool game about maintaining a nuclear power plant . . .
my school was all apple.
I’ve pretty much spent my life picking up anything I can plug in to see if I can root it and use it.
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I can’t remember what my first computer was. It was a kit that I built somewhere around 1979… Not a Sinclair. It came in a substantial metal case that had the keyboard built in and which supported the monitor.
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Yes! That’s the one… I should have held on to it - it seems to be a collector’s item now…
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I started using an Apple II in school.
The first computer I got for myself wan an Amstrad/Schneider PCW256.
I remember comparing a number of different computers at the time and will never forget the words of the salesman:
Think wisely because a computer is something you only buy once in a lifetime
One thing is true. He never sold me another computer.
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I found an old photo taken in 1983 in the flat in Bristol Gardens, Maida Vale that shows (partially) the Powertran PSI Comp80 sitting on the floor. Also shown is my old Quad system, the Revox A77 and a Linn turntable and SME arm, along with an analogue synthesiser - also built from a kit…
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The first “computer” I owned (my parents didn’t believe in computers so I had to sneak it by them under the guise of a fancy calculator). It had BASIC but programming on it sucked
I always got the worst choices for every new tech thing. When younger I had this instead of an Atari
because it had a poor keyboard and they thought I’d learn something instead of playing …
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