I remember playing ‘tennis’ on this once when I was a kid. I was amazed.
There was no way we could afford one. It cost about the same as our first house!
I remember playing ‘tennis’ on this once when I was a kid. I was amazed.
There was no way we could afford one. It cost about the same as our first house!
That was my first:
Complete with tape recorder and printer. Loved it very much, helped me with a lot of calculations (programmed in BASIC). And now, you can do it all in an App…
LD
Atari 800XL for me, $100 from a toy store. Picked it up after learning basic on a friend’s Atari 400. Prior to this, though, I had programed a small mini computer (1973 or so) while in high school. It programed with punch cards, and output on a cash register tape.
Later, I joined the local Atari computer club and became SYSOP of their BBS, run on a 800XL with a 10 meg! hard drive grafted on in, one of the few that I knew of-- there was bus access on the back you could graft an aftermarket SCSI interface to. Not long after, I was selling Amigas and Atari STs at the big box stereo store I worked at (Federated Group in Southern California).
Back in the day, I did a fair amount of 6502 machine language programing but I never really hung on to programing. When things went beyond 8 bits, I became a user instead of a programer.
My first computer was a Digi-Comp 1. I still have it in a box somewhere…
I also had a CARDiac, but I’ve lost that somewhere along the way.
I was only 23
My second computer and the first one I wrote games for and learned 6502 Assembly language.
My future path was forever set in those fun days sat in front of that computer ![]()
A friend had a VIC-20, which as I recall was the 64’s cheaper brither. Nice keyboard on it - much better than the one on the Spectrum he had before.
My first computer was an Atari 520 STFM. A few of us used to set up our STs via midi and play Midimaze - great fun!
Michael
Ah nostalgia …
ZX80 was my first , then the 16 M RAM pack that looked like a camera flash gun ,but that edge connector Flex ARGH
Then really up market to an Apple ][ , with 2 drives wowowowo , I couldn’t quite afford the 10M Winchester Drive (yes 10 meg !!! it was as big as the computer keyboard box) ) , but did go 80 column card . Finished up programming in Apple Pascal
Then I gave up and spent fortunes on cameras . Since then all my PC’s have been cheap and cheerful desktops from the local PC shop , not eve a laptop.
Things may downsize sometime !!
Nostalgia indeed! I have been trying to create a list of all these beautiful machines that have passed my desk in 43 years. ![]()
Sinclair ZX-81: added 16Kb but quickly traded it in for a
Sinclair ZX Spectrum with the gummy keyboard - upgraded to 80Kb RAM at some point
Sinclair ZX Spectrum+ with Interface II and 2 microdrives
Sinclair ZX Spectrum 128 - which I still have in the attic and fire up now and then
Commodore 128 with a 1571 disk drive - a beautiful machine with CP/M and 40/80 monitor
Atari 1040STf - a poor man’s Amiga in my case ![]()
By that time the first IBM PC XT entered our home - still in my parent’s attic - followed by a 80286 AT, 80386SX, 80386 DX, 80486 DX2
Even though I liked the flexibility of the PCs, being able to install DOS, Windows, OS/2 and UNIX, I started using Apple computers starting with a Performa 475 which was succeeded by the first Intel iMac in 2006. Since then I have only been using Apple computers, today with multiple retro software emulators installed.
So in a way the circle is round again. ![]()
From the music aspect, no machine could and can beat the C64 and its mixture of digital and analogue sound components. I think, no machine has been brought more above its limits than the C64.
It was the Atari ST that introduced me to MIDI and digital music making… Started with Cubase ST, and now have Cubase 12 on my Windows PC all these years later…
Those were the days… ![]()
I’ve had to Google a bit, but I did find a picture of my very first computer back in 1984. I was 6/7 back then.
A Sony MSX 1, with 32 kb RAM. And everything had to be loaded from a cassette.
My best friend owned a C64. And I was pretty jealous because next to a cassette recorder, he also owned a floppy drive for it. And loading from a floppy was a million times faster compared to a cassette.
I’ve used it till the early 90’s when my sister and I went Nintendo mode. Super NES and a GameBoy. It was 1995 when we finally decided to get a PC. Which turned out to be a 486 with 4 mb of RAM. Which we upgraded to 8 mb of RAM a month later for 250 gulden (about 120 Euro) so it could run Windows 95.
I’ve had several PC’s over the years. And from 2005 onwards I’ve also delved into Apple computers. First as a test a G4 MacMini and a year later my first (and only iMac) with an Intel Core Duo CPU.
The oldest computer that I am still using is my 2nd Mac Mini, a 2014 model, which happily runs my Roon Core. The G4 Mac Mini is stored in a cupboard and it still works.
Wow, my first computer was a Sony MSX:
Can’t remember the year, but certainly mid-'80s and at least a couple of years before I went to university in '88.
I loved (and love) the design of the MSX computers from these days. Especially the Sony and Philips ones looked very mature. Especially compared to my ZX Spectrum. ![]()
Never owned one though, unfortunately. I remember almost having bought a MSX 2 but that never really caught on in The Netherlands from what I recall.
I had an Hitachi version which I seem to remember had a cartridge slot for playing Konami games that were amazing for the time.
A number of my friends had different ones depending on what the differences were and what we needed…
It was a neat idea that never quite worked commercially.
I’ve only ever seen one MSX 2. It was used in my primary school. This was in the late 80’s and before PC’s became affordable.
Yep we all had one with the compusary Space Invaders
Had forgotten all about this thread. Still not gone in loft to find my zx80, too much stuff to move about