What brand was your first computer???

Ah memories, the first computer in my home was a Dragon 32, we later upgraded to a Dragon 64 ( whoa the power), ah memories of Jet set Willy and Chuckie Egg.

my First computer that was all mine was a AMD K6 500. Kept me through 4 yeears of University...

Very first of my own was a Timex Sinclair 1000 *with* the *16k* RAM add-on. (notable game memory, a text Space Invaders clone that if you shot the same spot twice the alien would reappear)

Then a C64 (notable game memory, LodeRunner and the awesome sound capabilities that until the Adlib board came out for the PC, nothing could touch) then a TI/994a with the speach add-on, (wow Parsec... how did I forget that game?) then an Apple IIe (with 3 floppy drives) (notable game memory Castle Wolfenstein... speach synth on the Apple internal speaker... whoa!) then later I bought the Vic-20 because it had a ton of game carts with it.
(let's see... Congo Bongo is the only VIC game I can remember now)

Always lusted after an Amiga but never got around to it.

The first *real* computer I had access to would have been my buddy's Burroughs R-3 with real honest to gosh CP/M on it. (no games... we had a modem and lots of BBS phone numbers)

The most interesting 'legendary' computer I ever had access to was the Lisa (precursor to Macs) which could TURN ITSELF OFF (this was so neato geeky/keen at the time) of course it was just a solenoid from a pinball game embedded in the switch but it was still way cool. (not on the Lisa but on a regular old original Mac there was some game...Black Castle maybe?... that was the first game I ever played that used the mouse and keyboard simultaneously)

My first IBM clone was bought from parts at a place I worked 640K, CGA, Floppy and no case... just the parts sitting on top of the box for the CGA monitor. wow, another good game memory... Level 42 (that was it's name)... 16 color graphics on CGA.

Every other machine since... built from scratch

L8r,
UU

Nope. CGA, by definition, was 4 colors. If you were gettin' 16 colors, you had an EGA monitor. Woot! Movin' on up... LOL!

I remember the first time I downloaded a .GIF file from a bulletin board (probably 1990). Couldn't figure out why this picture of this naked woman was of such HORRIBLE quality. Try displaying a 256 color GIF using only 4 colors! LOL...



P2

Ah memory lane. My first computer would have been this silly thing if only I had been more persuasive to the household comptroller. I saw it at some tradeshow and for some reason I cannot fathom (looking at the specs now, the shipping box would likely have been more entertaining) wanted one desperately.

The first machine I had access to was some Z80 S-100 CP/M thing that I don't recall being able to do much of anything with except learn assembler. LDIR was easily the coolest opcode evah: only fouir little letters to do what would take "while(bc--) *de++ = *hl++;" in C.

Then came the machine. Dig these phat specs: 1.77Mhz 8-bit processor, 4kB ROM, 4kB RAM, 500 baud external storage port. Oh and 128x48 1-bit graphics! It was an exiting day indeed when we upgraded the RAM to 16kB and got an additional 8kB ROM with it that allowed you to have more than 26 variables! Three things I really loved about that machine: since I had serial number 115, there were a small hardware bug in the early models - the RAM substrate was slightly radioactive, so memory locations would almost always preserve their contents. And although it had no audio output, it threw off RFI so well that you could put a radio next to it and by running no-op loops of various lengths make music. Best of all, the first 168kB floppy drives were decades ahead of themselves in data security: simply by flicking the power switch on them you could completely de-gauss the floppy thus protecting the data from access by any foreign spies or even yourself.

Okay, time to take my Geritol and seek counseling. Sorry.

BZZZZZ... nope, thanks for playing though... CGA could display 16 colors just not all at the same time... usually... Level 42 did a low-rez mode 160x100 and got 16 colors out of it.
didn't get an EGA display till much later.

L8r,
UU

TI99/A. I got mine for $50 when Wal Mart was dumping them. It was a very capable computer for what it was and I even managed to write a game for it. Before I got a tape recorder to store programs I had to type them in by hand, usually from magazines. My brother in law once sat and typed for two hours puttinbg in this game and he was typing the last line when I sat on my bed next to him when the computer went dark. Come to find out when I sat on the bed, the mattress pushed the massive wall wart out of the wall socket. Needless to say that was the last time either of us did that without a tape backup.

My next computer was a Commodore 128, man that was a nice machine. It was way ahead of its time when it came out but was soon eclipsed by the Amega. I could never afford one though and I used that Commodore for years. I gave it to my niece who prompty threw it away because it was too old. Oh well, it still played the 200+ games perfectly fine I gave her.

Next one was a Leading Edge 286 that I messed around with a bit but was not worth fixing when the 20 meg HD died.

Then I plunked down close to $2000 for a Pentium 133 with a 2.1 GIG hard drive! OMG I was in heaven, I actually had a computer I could do something with. It had 32bit color! For 1996 that was high end believe me. And I had internet at a whopping 28.8 that rocked.

Radio Shack MC-10 with 4kB ram expansion.

Macintosh - first i got... and still using them.. it.. . Love them..Cute, stylish - works fine. easy to use..