All mine had for a monitor was a crappy monochrome monitor. My first flight on it was interesting watching those wireframe planes fly around that wireframe Chicago scenery of Meigs field. Color prolly would not have helped it much.
TI 99/4A here, too - somewhere around 1983 or so. For a while I leeched a C64 at a friend's place, a Schneider CPC at another, then the Atari 1040ST around 1986 or so, then a 486 DX/33 in 1991. Got an Amiga in a fire sale for some games parallel to that, but mostly PCs since then. In retrospect I had access to quite some diverse equipment, and given my age back then and the little disposable money I had, pretty much all of it was sunk in computer hardware, push bikes, science magazines, 2nd hand SF novels, and school equipment.
#3897824 - 01/19/1401:19 AMRe: What was your first computer?
[Re: Scoobe]
Joined: Dec 2000 Posts: 22,405letterboy1
(Heterosexual)Tchaikovsky Ballet Fan
letterboy1
(Heterosexual)Tchaikovsky Ballet Fan
Lifer
Core i9 10900k @ 5.0GHz Corsair H115i CPU cooler Asus ROG Maximus XII Formula Asus ROG Strix RTX 2080 OC 8GB DDR6 32GB Team T-Force Night Hawk DDR4 3200, Corsair HX850i 850W PSU TIR5 With Trackclip Pro Win 10 x64
#3897838 - 01/19/1401:38 AMRe: What was your first computer?
[Re: Scoobe]
C64, then C128, Atari family up to the Falcon, I even had their Portfolio, which I used to keep my lawn accounts in, and could transfer them to the PC at the end of the week. The Atari PC died with the Falcon, and I was forced into window world with a gateway around 1994. I just looked on ebay and saw the Falcon 60 for over $600, yikes I better start packing all mine up! I have the 520, 1040, mega and ST, all in working order. Never imagined anyone would be that interested. The gateway has had the graphics card updated, another hard drive added and is used by my son. He plays Grand Theft Auto on it maxed out and never a lag.
Have you seen the Arrow? WWW
#3897860 - 01/19/1402:52 AMRe: What was your first computer?
[Re: Scoobe]
I had my first CNC machine, same model as the video - Star JNC-25, 1 or 2 years before I had a personal computer. Still have the manuals for it in storage somewhere since I used a machine like it all the way up to the day I closed the doors and auctioned off everything including the lights.
The Colorado Trakker 250, although my tapes hold 120MB. I still use it today to backup and restore to my DOS PC.
So my brother asked me one day, "Mark, how can you still use this crusty old crap?"
Crusty? Nah, I take care of my stuff, my Commodore would look brand new if I still had it.
Old? Ok, I'll give you that.
Crap? Well, this crap from 1994 still works perfectly! I wouldn't call it crap, this stuff was built to last.
Holy crap the transformer (plug-in) is heavy!
The rusty wire that holds the cork that keeps the anger in Gives way and suddenly it’s day again The sun is in the east Even though the day is done Two suns in the sunset, hmph Could be the human race is run
#3897902 - 01/19/1404:06 AMRe: What was your first computer?
[Re: Scoobe]
Had a ZX81 for a couple of days, membrane keyboard just didn't cut it. Picked up a C64 used some time later, first new computer I bought was an Amiga 500. What a great machine that was! It was my introduction to Falcon in fact! Wound up upgrading to an Amiga 1200 not too long after.
Got my first PC in December '98, just in time for Falcon 4's release. Wife gave me the Squadron Commander edition for Christmas!
The start of it all....
Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty. This is known as "bad luck.” -Robert Heinlein
#3897903 - 01/19/1404:08 AMRe: What was your first computer?
[Re: Scoobe]
Joined: Apr 2001 Posts: 121,473PanzerMeyer
Pro-Consul of Florida
PanzerMeyer
Pro-Consul of Florida
King Crimson - SimHQ's Top Poster
Joined: Apr 2001
Posts: 121,473
Miami, FL USA
I grew up pretty poor so the first desktop PC is actually bought with my own money was a Packard Bell 486sx-20 in 1992.
“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”
#3897914 - 01/19/1404:28 AMRe: What was your first computer?
[Re: Scoobe]
When I bought my 486DX2/66 in '93 we had to take out a loan!
- another 8MB RAM (16MB total) - NEC 17" monitor (big deal back then) - Colorado Tape backup (same one in previous pic) - Summagraphics Summasketch 4-button puck digitizer - Calcomp 1024 carousel pen plotter (used)
Geez, I dunno. In a two year period I probably spent at least 10 grand on hardware!
Of course it wasn't for playing games, at least not until I bought a SoundBlaster Multimedia kit (CD-ROM and soundcard) and started playing Wolf3D, DOOM and F-117.
I wish I still had all that stuff now. Firstly, I still love using AutoCAD R12 DOS [my Genoa VL video card included high-res AutoCAD drivers] and secondly, my bedroom office would look like a CAD museum! Don't know if the Mrs. would be amused though.
Last edited by MarkG; 01/19/1404:33 AM.
#3897917 - 01/19/1404:42 AMRe: What was your first computer?
[Re: Scoobe]
My mom in '92 or '93 bought a custom built 486 DX2 66 Mhz machine with Win 3.1, 4mb of ram, a 1x Caddy-loading CD-ROM drive and like a 200mb hard drive with an ET4000 ISA 1mb graphics card.
Don't know if the Mrs. would be amused though.
