Do you remember your first computer?

[Francois]

What was your first PC?

A Sharp PC1500 with 4 ko memory...
Then the Apple IIe and after a Mac128...

[Francois]

does anyone remember how much memory the 5.25inch floppies had?

124 kbytes

Then came the 400 minifloppy, then the 800 and the 1,4 mbyte...

[Guess]

does anyone remember how much memory the 5.25inch floppies had?

124 kbytes

Then came the 400 minifloppy, then the 800 and the 1,4 mbyte...

i think the different sizes quoted are explained by the formatted/unformatted capacity.

The first 5.25" was 90KB formatted SSSD (single sided single density)
Then there was 180KB DSSD, (double), 360KB DSDD, 720KB DSQD (Quad) and finally for some strange reason was the 1.18MB DSHD (High). By that time the 3.5" DSSD 720KB and DSDD 1.44MB were taking over. They finished on a 2.88MB drive but only IBM supplied them in ready built PCs.

CD_RW took over for a while with a massive 700MB but costly until Flash memory became a viable option.

In between floppies and CD-RW there were a whole load of 500MB drives available for backup. They were generically known as Zip drives but there were nay incompatible formats.

The most cost effective devices now are external hard drives which will become the standard until flash gets down in price.

[richard]

First non mainframe?

Amstrad was my first

Since then I've had 15 laptops (6 with HP when I worked for them for 18 months!!!, they had a habit of self destruction back in year 2000)

Current one is now 5 years old and still going strong (Fujitsu)

[Rider]

Vic-20 then a commodore 64.
Back in the days when we made our own computers

[VincentD]

Ohio superboard with 8K of memory. You could only download by cassette tape, the poker game took all of ten minutes.

I later got an Apple II plus...

[Guess]

First non mainframe?........................Since then I've had 15 laptops (6 with HP when I worked for them for 18 months!!!, they had a habit of self destruction back in year 2000)

Current one is now 5 years old and still going strong (Fujitsu)

Interesting. What was your first main frame?

You were unlucky with laptops. My first (luggable) was in 1986 and it was a Sharp. I then had a Mac, Toshiba and three Compaqs. The last Compaq is still running now and was manufactured in 1997.

I still can't remember which home computer I had first that I owned. I had a ZX80, Spectrum, Commodore 64 and Amstrad (256 I think) with the first home floppy drive. I also got a second hand BBC B somewhere along the line.

[richard]

An ICL 1903a which took up a quarter a football pitch in 1968 I think

[buksida]

I had the Vic-20 also, keyboard the size of a sofa and high tech tape deck for loading up games!

[JW]

Cant remember if it was me or a mate had a ZX81, i know i had a Spectrum - first game was Jetpac!

[Jaime]

Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48k. Games would load from a standard tape cassette and were dead easy to copy. Not that I would do that of course....

Fave games were: Manic Miner, Knight Lore, Daley Thompson's Decathlon and Yi-Ar Kung Fu. I actually wrote a program on it in BASIC of about 200 lines for my computer O level. I'd be clueless now but I do remember this little beauty (a classic of its time):

10 PRINT "F*CK OFF"
20 GO TO 10

RUN

[Jaime]

At home, we still use our first PC - at least 10 years old now. It completely died after 4 years and 11 months, and had just about every component replaced. That combined with several major upgrades means that it is still in regular use today.

I have a broom like that - still going strong after 20 years. Only changed the head 10 times and the handle 5 times......

[Big Boy]

But I bet your broom can't run MS Office

[MrPlum]

I was Unix trained on dumb terminals, then moved over to the PC world 5.25" floppies.

Computer happiness was 'Leisure Suit Larry In The Land Of The Lounge Lizards'.

[buksida]

Yi-Ar Kung Fu.

Oh yes, remember that one! What about Commando on the BBC, Spy Hunter and R-Type? Classics!