computers...I remember the 80's

[Suave]

My first computer was a Radio shack color computer II with a cassette drive. Which is bragable because it could display COLORS man!

I could write a program in basic that would display the likeness of a boob in fleshtone!!

My first computer in the 90s was a 486 with 8mb of ram. I remember upgrading it to a whopping 12mb of ram so that I could play mechwarrior.

My first flight sim was "Their finest hour" which I played on a 386 in my high school comp science class room, which the teacher would leave unlocked for us after hours. We'd get baked after school then come back and bomb england untill it got dark... good times.

[Charon]

AMD made a real flash with their 386 DX40, that's probably what you got.

My first major upgrade (of dozens) to the only computer system I ever bought new/complete, a PC Brand 286/12 in 1988. I had bummed around on a roomates Apple 2 and a friend's PC for some years previously. The final piece of that old machine, the long unused 5 1/4 floppy, was dropped in the late 1990s.  

In fact, I came across the invoice for that first big upgrade a month or so ago:

1992 prices

4 1meg SIMMs: $156.00 ($39 ea.)

MAHA 386/486 Syphony MB (w/6 ISA slots!): $260.

AMD 386-40: $110

All purchased from vendors in Computer Shopper. Too bad it was killed (functionally) by the Internet.

Charon

[dedalos]

Originally posted by Nilsen
yeah I do    They were never very popular here in the mid eighties (i think) but I thin they were in germany if im not mistaken..

Not sure about Germany but if you were in Greece, you either had a Spectrum or an Amstrad.  Then they came up with the Disc drives and the 128 RAM fro the Amstrads and the spectrum/synclears died off.  Some comodore 64s but the Amiga ended up being the most popular at the end.

[Furious]

'87-'88

Amiga 2000 with a 14" monitor.  4,096 glorius colors.  $3,500.

[rshubert]

1973.  PLATO (programming language for automated teaching organizations).

PLATO was a terminal-connected network over DARPANET that allowed us (at Purdue in Ft. Wayne, In.) to access the CDC Cyber 6000 at Champaign (University of Illinois).  We had games.

Remember that lunar lander game?  We had it.

Chess?  We had it.

Artillery battle?  We had it.

Star Trek?  We had it. (AFAIK, the first multiplayer game over the internet)

All keyboard commands, of course.  The screen was an orange-on-black plasma panel.  I spent many a late night looking at that screen, figuring out what the Klingons were going to do...

[Charon]

1973. PLATO (programming language for automated teaching organizations).

PLATO was a terminal-connected network over DARPANET that allowed us (at Purdue in Ft. Wayne, In.) to access the CDC Cyber 6000 at Champaign (University of Illinois). We had games.

My stepfather who was getting his psych degree smuggled me into a university hospital (where he had a friend working security) to play on it a a number of times in the late 1970s. Played Airfight some but the frame rate (1-2 seconds per frame) was a bit too rough. My first online kill was a Roumlan Battle Cruiser I hit with three photon torpedoes in the Star Trek game Empire (not to be confused with Interstel's Empire). Still remember the kill clearly and keys commands, sort of. There was another Star Trek based single player game that was fun too.

Anybody ever own a Magnavox  Odyssey 1

Charon

[dedalos]

Ha, 300BC Greek dual 0.0001Mz CPUs 100b flash RAM, MRBL computer
http://www.ee.ryerson.ca:8080/~elf/abacus/history.html

[Ouaibe]

Amstrad 6128 (+ 464 tape to buy cheap games)
Amiga 500
Amiga 1200 + 8Mo of RAM + 250Mo HDD
386 SX 33
486 SX 33 + DX 66 upgrade
Pentium 60
Cyrix P166+
Celeron 400
Athlon 800
P4 3Ghz...

Missed the old days on my amiga

PS : and the best of all console : 3D0 REAL Panasonic FZ10 !!! Still have it and still have a blast with it.

[StarOfAfrica2]

Originally posted by Suave
My first computer was a Radio shack color computer II with a cassette drive. Which is bragable because it could display COLORS man!

I could write a program in basic that would display the likeness of a boob in fleshtone!!

My first computer in the 90s was a 486 with 8mb of ram. I remember upgrading it to a whopping 12mb of ram so that I could play mechwarrior.

My first flight sim was "Their finest hour" which I played on a 386 in my high school comp science class room, which the teacher would leave unlocked for us after hours. We'd get baked after school then come back and bomb england untill it got dark... good times.

Whats braggable about displaying color?  My Commodore Vic20 did that.  It was the big competition back then, color computer vs the Commodore.  Radio Shack lost.    

I had the Vic20 with tape drive and the dot matrix printer, upgraded to the 64 and got a 5.25" floppy for it.  At school we used the Apple IIe and Apple II+.  I can still remember learning the "Peek" and "Poke" codes for programming the Apple II's.  Our first PC was a Laser XT clone of an IBM XT model.  It had a 5.25" floppy, a 20MB RLL hard drive, and a top of the line EGA video monitor.  It also had a 2400 Baud modem, gave me my first introduction to the world of Compuserve and GEnie in 1987/1988.  And an introduction to my dad's belt after he found out I was making long distance calls with the computer, and using his credit card to join online services lol.  But more importantly it introduced me to MSFS.

[Gunslinger]

the first my parents had was an Apple IIc.  After that they upgraded to an AppleIIgs.  I remember playing Pirates and dam busters on it.

MY first computer was a gateway Pentium 166 W/ MMX
I upgraded that to a celeron 333 (still have the mobo and it works great with Windows95/98)

[brendo]

Furball, as scary as this sounds, the A500 was only SEVEN megahurts.

[Mini D]

Originally posted by NUKE
Here's one for you. You remember the Osborne Executive? Look it up. It had one (well, dad bought it for us kids) 5.25 floppy only, "basic" language and about a 4 " monochrome screen.

I still have it...it's from 1982 or so. The world first "portable" computer......lol.

My mother-in-law gave me her old KPRO which was basically the same thing.  I gave it to a friend who modified it for his kid's science project.  I'll post pictures and stats on it when I get the chance.  We're still trying to find a plug-in keyboard solution, but wireless is working fine for it now.

All I really remember is my first 20 meg HD cost $500.  At that $/meg cost, a 200Gig HD would cost 5 million.

Old computer threads are cool, but I couldn't afford a computer until I was in the military.  I bought a Tandy 1000SL.  I learned on something that we built in HS, but can't remember what... then we "upgraded" to Commodore Pets.  I even remember us getting one of the earliest versions of the "mac".

[Chairboy]

Originally posted by Mini D
I even remember us getting one of the earliest versions of the "mac".

Was it this?

[Mini D]

I don't remember what it looked like, to be honest.  That was a couple of years ago.

[gweibe]

After "playing around" with mainframes in the mid-sixties...

Heathkit H-8, 8080, 8K RAM.  Literally built by hand (circuit boards, components, and soldering iron).