A thread in another echo got me wondering just what everyones first experiences with a "computer" in any meaningful sense was?

For me, I'm pretty certain it was with Apple II systems which were at one of my elementary schools. They may have been IIGS units but just as likely could have been IIe's - I truly cannot recall what they looked like. Of course being in like 1st and 2nd grade all we did was play games on them -- typical edutainment fodder of the time.

Then in 3rd grade I was transfered to a newly-built school which had new Macintosh systems (this was Fall 1993 for context) which I would learn in my last year at that school had access to the "old" games -- turns out the things had the Apple IIe card in them! It's funny to think as a 5th grader those of us in the computer club got to go on a bit of a nostalgia trip to just a few years earlier. Of course, when you're a kid a few years is a lifetime ago.

Yeah, bog standard for a kid born in the mid 80's, but that's my story. What's yours?

______________
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On 03 Mar 2024, Kurisu said the following...

A thread in another echo got me wondering just what everyones first experiences with a "computer" in any meaningful sense was?

Started on aa terminal with a punch tape reader, which went from our school to the University.

Was all over the octal Wang when we got that.

Slightly older friends built an Altair kit computer, but I only got to play with it a little bit.

Fast forward a few years, during which I had on-and-off access to Apple ][ and other machines, when my serious computer work was done by punch cards (even most of my course work was that way), and I got access to a very early IBM PC (true blue) and then bought my own PC-clone.

Had NDAs to use advance IBM and advance Macintosh models at univerisity, and in addition to my own PC had relatively unfettered access to a Harris & IBM mainframe. I think it wasthe Harris that had a "Super Bertha" master terminal, which reduced computer security to physical security.

Wrote utilities for the university (mostly in Turbo Pascal, later Turbo C) on my PC.

Had work access to an Apollo Workstation, a bunch of obscure Ferranti machines, and PCs.

Did a role in a significant industrial project where a C128D machines were being used for economics.

Pretty much have had a top end PC and a top end Mac for the last couple decades.

Current boxes I regularly use are an i7 PC, another i9 Box, one of the last bigger screen iMacs, a bunch of RPis, the BBS runs on a MintBox, and some less common SBCs. OS choices are Win10/11, MacOS, and a variety of Linux distros.

http://k9zw.wordpress.com could be searched to see some of the computers.

73

Steve
K9ZW

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Re: First Computer Experiences
By: Kurisu to All on Sun Mar 03 2024 12:27:05

Hi, Kurisu.

A thread in another echo got me wondering just what everyones first experiences with a "computer" in any meaningful sense was?

My first computer experience was an Atari 800XL which my dad bought for the family - I don't think they were particularly common in the UK and it had a floppy drive so it must have cost a good chunk of change back in the day. We were really poor at that time so it represented a huge investment in my dad's hunch that these computer things would probably take off...

What really sticks in my mind is Pacman on cartridge (opened this up on emulation the other day, really took me back) and a paint program that ran from floppy. I just remember flood filling with a brickwork pattern which very-young-me called "Bill the Brickie".

So sad that they threw that out :(

The next one after that was when I started school and there was a BBC micro in the nursery classroom - I don't remember ever getting to play with it but I remember the owl logo very clearly :)

BobW
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Bob Worm wrote to Kurisu <=-

A thread in another echo got me wondering just what everyones first experiences with a "computer" in any meaningful sense was?

My first computer experience was an Atari 800XL which my dad bought for the family - I don't think they were particularly common in the UK and
it had a floppy drive so it must have cost a good chunk of change back
in the day.

At the West Coast Computer Faire, I saw an Atari 800 playing Star
Raiders and was hooked on what they could be. My first experience
programming a computer was writing BASIC on a commodore CBM 8032, and
realizing that computers did exactly what you told them to do was
intriguing.


... Adding on
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My first computer experience was a 386 that my parents bought. It ran some MS-DOS shell with a textbased GUI. My biggest interest was games, and with shareware abound,there wasn't any shortage. I think they bought it in 1990,
but my memory is hazy on what games I played. Captain Comic and Commander
Keen always come to mind. Nott sure if I played either ZZT or Kingdom of Kroz since they both look similar.

The computer later got updated to Windows 3.1, then my dad
bought a Creative Labs multimedia kit -which was a fancy phrase for a CD-ROM, sound card, and speakers. A bunch of Lucasarts adventure games were thrown in
, too. We really only got that in first place because Alone in the Dark required a soundcard for music.

King's Quest 6 really stood out on a computer back then, but instead of a CD
we had the version that came on 11 5.25in floppies.

Newtype Len
Blog@www.SaturdayAnime.com
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Newtype Len wrote to Kurisu <=-

The computer later got updated to Windows 3.1, then my dad
bought a Creative Labs multimedia kit -which was a fancy phrase for a CD-ROM, sound card, and speakers.

My boss bought a bunch of those for our department, a nice
justification being that we were alpha testing our company's apps and
needed sound.

We ended up using them to play DOOM, we'd do 6 player matches in-house
and use the office phones to make a 6-person conference call.

#shameless_use_of_technology



... Adding on
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Kurisu wrote to All:

A thread in another echo got me wondering just what everyones first experiences with a "computer" in any meaningful sense was?

My parents bought a "family computer" for christmas 1984 and it was a (by
then) outdated VIC-20. So the very first lesson in computing I learned was about the meaning of the word "upgrade". But nevertheless, this unexpanded
3.5 K machine was my introduction to the BASIC programming language and I
did take my first steps learning how to program with it. Oh, and once I
bought a very cheap "Donkey Kong" clone for it on tape. Heh.

Greetings, Niels Haedecke

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Re: First Computer Experiences
By: Newtype Len to Kurisu on Tue Mar 05 2024 02:00 pm

King's Quest 6 really stood out on a computer back then, but instead of a CD we had the version that came on 11 5.25in floppies.

We had that version too. My dad managed our local RadioShack at the time back when they sold software and brought it home after it went on clearance. Great game, no matter which version.

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-=[ On 03-07-24 07:08, Niels Haedecke wrote to Kurisu below: ]=-
-=[ Re: Re: First Computer Experiences ]=-

Hi Niels Haedecke!

My parents bought a "family computer" for christmas 1984 and it was a
(by then) outdated VIC-20. So the very first lesson in computing I

That was my very first computer system ever had in the family, then we upgraded to a Tandy 1000 SX computer... those were the days!

Cheers,
Bryan
bhandfield(at)me(dot)com

... Never go to the cannibal restaurant...Dinner costs an arm and a leg.
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