What is your earliest computer related memory?

My first computer experience was programming on a commador64 that was hooked up to the tv. I was about 12? which was... um... a long time ago

You got me to quit lurking after all it seems. My first experience with computers was in 1968-1969 and I was asked to come to the college where the husband of the girl I worked with at a dime store was teaching. I was brought down into a basement area and there was this machine the size of a wall, or a 62 caddy, you can take your pick, and it was old school made. Krinkle black finish, hard knobs and little 10inch black screens with lots of wires.
I was asked if I wanted to play a new game that this guy had just developed. It was called asteroid hunt. And he showed me how to play it. My tiny arrow shaped spaceship skitted about busting up jagged rocks and shooting little triangle saucers using two round knobs I had to twist like an etcha sketch. Yes it was asteroids as we know it today in a prehistoric form.
Then this guy asked me if I wanted to play this really new thing against his friend in california. I said how am I going to do that? He said watch. So he starts up this screen and it has a little startrek ship in the middle. He then showed me how to fly it shoot and go to warp with it. All the while I was flying in formation with his buddy in California who was on a loud speaker of some kind. I never had so much fun ever. I was hooked. I think pong had just come out or had been out a couple years but this was mindboggling ahead of that.
The guys name was Stuart, thats all I can remember. His wife and him moved to San Fransico area that next summer as he was hired by a firm in a place now known as silicon valley. To this day I wonder if he ever become one of the shakers of the industry. I vaguely remember his looks. His wife I would know for sure since I saw her everyday after school.
It was a few weeks later I asked my dad for a advance in money to start a new idea I had to cross pinball machines with video input. He scoffed at me. He said and I quote. "Who would ever pay a quarter to put into a box to play a video game? No I won't give you any cash for that stupid idea."
And thats why you never heard of me. This was at least 5-6 years before video arcades took fast root.
I have since come to realize my parents were idiots and I was held back by them. I did ok yet, but I could have done better or changed the world maybe a bit with a bit of help when I had a good idea.

I have no idea what 99% of the posts in this thread mean.....

This is a great topic. My first computer related memories was being set in front of keypunch machines at the local university in the early 70's, both of my parents worked in the computer center there and I absolutely loved it. They used to let me play on the keypunch machine to keep me entertained. I used to spend hours trying to punch cool patterns out on the punch cards. I also remember the computer room there, filled to the brim with cool blinking lights and machines that made cool whirring noises. I was hooked from then. I think the systems at the time were an IBM System 360 and I seem to remember a bunch of Interdata main frames lined up against the back wall as well. Of course there were huge line printers and gigantic tape drives and hard drive systems all over the place too.

Actually it reminds me of an interesting story, this was of course the very early days of computing and they had just built a new building to house the computer center which was on the 3rd floor. The building itself was built with a huge open area in the center of it with all the classrooms, etc. around the outside of that open area. I found out later that the huge open area was created because they thought they would need a way to get the computer hardware up to the 3rd floor as it became bigger and more powerful. LOL, I guess that's not exactly how things turned out.

my first computer, was i think 5-6 was from 1988 everything ran threw a dos command base brings back so many memorys.

Maximo. That's a great story - thank you for dropping out of lurk and telling it.

I've been wondering who among us was the first to encounter a computer. If I say I worked at Bletchley Park, would I win?

Oooooo...now your dating yourself

Unless someone claimed they are Grace Hopper, and have been hiding out since they faked their death.

I have to these days - nobody will go out with me

Playing Lunar Lander and Omega Race. Then writing a program in BASIC calling my brother an idiot when the space bar was hit. All on a Vic 20.

Oh, and how could I forget, using cassette tapes for data storage. Still on the Vic 20.

In SL? Don't know why.....

I thought you had a bot for that.

I do, but even she has started to not want to be seen with me - even in private

The annoying dialup connecting sound.

No, you'd just get arrested for breaking the official secrets act

After this length of time? Cancel my earlier post about the bi-magnetic cores then.

Whooo! Still the *only* computer game I play; now Civ III though.

my first one was this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Amiga_1000DP.jpg
with 2 mb fast ram, and external floppy disk .
it have follow and work with every OS upgrade, since 1.0 to the last one, 3.1, due to his unique ability to load the Kickstart in WOM . That mean 10 years.. without having to change the machine or lost software...
Kind a dream in 2009, no ???
He is still perfectly working, even If I don't use it anymore.
It remain for me the best personal computer ever made, some features he had are still missing in modern computers.
Shame on Commodore CEO !
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_1000

I would have killed for a floppy disc for my C64. I remember carefully entering lines of code from computer magazines, only to have the tape get ruined after a few loads. A friend of mine managed to get his hands on a 1 MB hard drive to use with his...the platter was 12" or so.

Still have my DigiComp 1 on the shelf in my study. Perhaps needs some new rubber bands. Had that when I was eight. See

east coast? early 90's? atlanta area? 0 day? I think I know you =)


or a trunk disconnect signal =X or a coin tone for pay phones.... the good old days =)

and Grace Hopper is a personal hero of mine (plus who could forget the story about the the origin of computer bugs)

Ps
crypto is one of my favorite hobbies phil meshes well with prime theory (another hobby)

First memories:

My older brother was a computer geek. At various times in the late 1960s I remember him trying to build a chess-playing computer using a big plywood chessboard with switches mounted on each square (never finished it); him building a plastic analog computer that he ordered from a science catalog (he finished it, and it worked, but it was very annoying); him teaching me how to program in Itran ("EXECUTE ITRAN".. DATA (1,2,3,4..))

My first computer was an Amstrad semi-dedicated word processor/computer. I think it had 512 k of RAM, no HDD. Processor was in the green-screen monitor; it had an attached keyboard and a printer. The word processor was pretty advanced; I remember you could use the function keys to store many different items in "clipboard"-type buffers for copying/pasting. It had 3-inch (not 3.5) double-sided hard-case floppy disks; you had to manually turn them over in the drive to access both sides. In addition to the word processing software, it came with CP/M, Logo and Basic. I used to play a "play-by-mail" adventure game in those days and I set up the word processor to generate my game map. You could get text games for it; the first computer game I ever played was "The Pawn" on that machine.

The first thing I ever programmed was a text adventure game using the AGT system. Eventually one of my games got an honorable mention in one of their contests. You can still download it from an archive if you search for AGT contest winners. It had sound, but the sound won't work anymore; modern computer processors play it faster than you can hear it.

I had the Floppy Drive and FastLoad cartridge.

400+ floppies full of games too!



And best of all........ I still have it all!

Naw, he means he worked on British Rail when that bloke got rid of the Milk Trains or something. I studied it in school. I think.