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What Was Your First Computer?

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I'm NJ vintage. The first I worked on was looooong before I owned one.

It was a Honeywell with about 64k (not meg or gig - k) and no hard drive.

Sold for about three-quarter million.

It also ran using BCD - i.e. a six bit byte.

And yes, we helped create the Y2K problem. And we did it because we were good at our jobs.


Most amazingly, since I worked for DoD at the time some of my code is still running.
 
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Oh8ch;895916; said:
And yes, we helped create the Y2K problem. And we did it because we were good at our jobs.
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Not many folks now realize that "optimizing" every byte of code was huge back then. The less storage taken the better...storing date values in two bytes vice four was the only thing to so then.
 
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I remember when I went up to my 486-33 with 4 megs of ram. I got a job at Babbages, around the time when Doom 2 and Dark Forces came out. I traded in my Sega Genesis and about 70 games. Got $385 in credit, and I bought another 4 meg of ram with that. I could run those 2 games, and had never been so happy. $385 for 4 megs of frickin ram. Now you can get a gig for $45 :biggrin:
 
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atari800xl.jpg
ataricarts.JPG

Atari 800XL

I was only 5 or 6 years old when we got it... mostly for playing games. We also had a BASIC book to write some programs... we didn't have the floppy drive so the programs never got saved. I got tired of that pretty quick.
 
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My first programmable computer was an Apple IIe. It was loaded too: Hayes modem, DuoDisk 5-1/4" unit, external 5Mb hard drive, color monitor ... it was the bomb! I still have it, and it still works. :biggrin:

Lode Runner and Conan. Yeah! :banger:
 
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We got an IBM, probably an 8088 or something like it, when I was in high school (early 80's). Black screen with green letters, BASIC programs, big 5 inch floppys, etc...

The first one I bought on my own was in 1992 or so- a PC clone thing with 120 meg of memory. I remember getting into the internet and buying a book on how to use Compuserve so I could learn what it was all about. It's funny to think that now you can get little USB sticks with gigs of memory for less money than my whole computer setup back then.
 
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FCollinsBuckeye;896946; said:
:lol: :groove:

Karateka rocked too:

karateka_lg.gif
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Wow I've never seen it on a green monitor before! lol

I hated the damn bird.

I was a big fan of the early CRPGs...Temple of Apshai, Ultimate, Wizardy etc. My favorite was the Eamon series, it was the first game I remember where you could actually get new scenarios for it! (Tres cool in the mid 80's) I can remember swapping for new modules/dungeons at the Apple Dayton Club every month.

I also loved the early "starship" games that all seemed to be ripoffs from Star Trek in one form or another. :biggrin:
 
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FCollinsBuckeye;896988; said:
:lol: That's how it looked on our Apple IIe. Seeing that screenshot brought back a flood of memories - hehe.

Mine had a color monitor, although before I had it I had a buddy who had a II+ with a monochrome monitor.

That's where I first played Temple of Apshai.


I played a few of the text-based RPGs back in the day... Zork I and a few others.
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I played Zork on the TRS-80 but never on the Apple.
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