Wednesday, January 16, 2013

First Computers

Lifehacker asks "what was your first computer?"

My uncle loaned us a Kaypro of some flavor. I remember playing a lot of an ASCII Donkey Kong clone. (About this time, a friend has a Commodore VIC-20 that we played with as well.)

We then bought an IBM PCjr. I saved my pennies and we bought the BASIC cartridge, so I could do some simple programming.

When I went off to college, I bought a new computer. I think it may have been an AT&T branded 286. I remember connecting it via a null modem cable to the computer of the guy in the dorm room next door, so we could play a submarine game together.

A few years later, I bought a Radio Shack 486. It had a modem and I could dial up to various BBS. I think I had an AOL account then, too.

My wife claims I fell for her only because when we met, she had just taken delivery of her new Pentium Gateway computer.

The next one, I built using an Intel Celeron 300A - that was easily over-clocked to 450 MHz by changing the FSB to 100 MHz in the BIOS. Toss in a 3D video card along with my ISDN connection and I had an awesome Quake II gaming rig!

2 comments:

  1. 1978: TRS-80 with 4K of RAM. I bought the first generation Apple Mac in 83 or 84 but went back to PCs around the time the IBM XT came out.

    Tony/K3SZ

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    Replies
    1. I'm not sure how I missed out on the TRS-80. I remember in middle school we had an Apple something - played Oregon trail on it. A friend in the neighborhood had an Apple around that time as well.

      Come to think of it, there was another IBM clone that we would have had in the late eighties.

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