Your first time...

[Content Consumer]

With a computer. 

 

Mine was with an 80286 thing running DOS 5. I can't remember exactly, but I think it had a 40mb hard drive and 2mb of RAM. All I ever did with it was play games, but I did a lot of BASIC programming. I couldn't imagine a world where more than 100mb would ever be needed for a hard drive.

 

I remember when we upgraded to the 386 processor - boy that was nice! Expanded memory without hurting speed! It was a whole new dimension! I think it was around then that we got DOS 6.22 and I remember thinking it was a really nice upgrade, but for the life of me now I can't remember what all the fuss was about.

[Guest MonsterFish]

Going to my friends house and playing with his computer playing Sims. Prior to that I thought that computers were for nerds.

And then I stuck my dick in the disk drive.

[Guest]

The very first approach for me was an Intellivision (mid 80s.) but it was pretty much a console.

The first computer where I started programming was a Commodore 64. About end 80s.

Then I got an Amiga 2000. Used for years, started to work (I was in college) as OS developer for Commodore, and moved to an Amiga 4000. (was in mid 90s.)

And with the Amiga 4000 I had my very first had drive: 40MB (split in 4 partitions of 10 MBs. (Yes MegaBytes, not GigaBytes.))

After than my very first PM was a home made one, with a AMD K6 CPU, probably 16 or 32 MB of ram.

 

[myuhinny]

My first computer wasn't anything special I think it was a E-machine or something like that from best buy. It was a piece of crap. When I got my next one it was a huge jump upwards as I wanted something that could handle games as well as be able to be upgradable later on so I got a acer aspire G7750 predator gaming tower. I have since removed the old video card from it and replaced it with a GTX780TI as the old one started to die out.

[srayesmanll]

Apple II (belonged to the middle school I went to).  Not a IIe, the original Apple II.  As for what I owned, started with a Commodore VIC20 (with a tape drive - woo hoo!!!), then Commodore 64 (got the 1541 disk drive for that), finally a Commodore Amiga 500 (yeah, I loved the Commodores - back off!!  ).  During that time in High School, I was using a TRS80 Model 4 for my Computer math class (using Basic, then Pascal language for development).  Didn't own a "normal" PC until early 90's (when the Amiga gave up the ghost...) - an off-the-shelf Sony Vaio.  Didn't start building my own until the Vaio died - around 1997/8 (damn thing lasted longer than I thought it would).  Been building my own since then.

[☀ Dust]

I never knew the specs, but it had W95 and belonged to my uncle. Later, circa 2000 I got a similar one for myself, and shortly afterwards a better one with a Pentium II, Windows 98 and two, TWO, hard drives all for myself (8GB and 9GB).

[Cynical Misanthrope]

I was young and dumb and it was terrible. She was very loud, and you weren't able to do anything basically.

 

[Cymoril]

My first computer was an IBM AT 80286 with 20 MB HDD, 1 MB RAM and it had DOS 3.3 running. I spent many hours with the ROM Basic (yeah, these machines had a basic interpreter built in) and my first "office program" was wordstar. Later I had an Amiga 2000 and it was amazing what was possible with this computer.

 

BTW: Not long ago I cleaned my old IBM keyboard (a model f) and tried it on my computer. It really worked...

Now I know why people love keyboards with mechanical switches.

[Anicae]

'97, bought my first PC with win95, but that's about the only thing I remember about it^^

 

It was custom built and top of the line for the time. First time I was alone with it, I was afraid of breaking it^^ Started it up, tried my first game (Aquanoid, if someone remembers that^^) and didn't know how to end it... so I just pushed a pin into the little hole where the reset button was in. Actually tearing up because I thought I broke my new PC, that I spent all my money on

[gregathit]

Good old Mac 512k:   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_512K

 

and then graduated to an XT:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Personal_Computer_XT

[Captain Cobra]

Compaq Presario 5000 desktop with a 1.8 Pentium 4 running WinXP.

 

It was ass, and being the family (only) computer in the house, it need to be reformatted often.

[Kendo 2]

Mac SE something-something and NeverWinterNights.

[Darkening Demise]

Little kid, playing Humongous Entertainment games such as Pajama Sam, Spy Fox, Big Thinkers, Freddy Fish and others like Blue's Clue Blue's Birthday Adventure and Blue's Clues 1 2 3 Time Activities on a old Windows 95 PC I think. Can't remember too well heck I never had a PC of my own until I was 8 or 9 even then it was so shitty it had a hard time playing Rollercoaster Tycoon! And the monitor was old so you had to smack the living hell out of it on top to get rid of the weird visual tearing or something at the top of the screen. Had shitty PCs all my life so far too. Never knew of the 60FPS or more. I'm used to 11-30 only, if even. Honestly I never had a 'heavenly' experience with PCs as they're either slow pieces of crap, randomly crashing, or even with 'great anti virus software' contracting something bad from Tommy Lee and croaking the next day.

[Guest]

The first time was when I have 6 or 7 at my Dad's office.

I don't even remember what it was but all I know is that I played Space Invaders....

[swords and sandals]

A ZX Spectrum 48K. My dad got it for work but we also used it to play some seriously basic games that were mind-blowing back in those days. I've still got it tucked away - a tiny little thing in an enormous black plastic carry case, along with its printer (that takes a roll of silvery paper about three inches wide) and some kind of gaming controller (that consists of a dial you can turn clockwise or anti-clockwise, and one button.) Good times...

[arpaschad]

first computer I laid my hands on was when I was in Dubai, United Arab Emirates where I spent my elementary years there...it was some kind of MS-DOS machine with those old 8 or 5 inch floppy disks...never did much there except study about something called "LOGOS"...some kind of early program...then around 98 or 99 I spent more time with my cousin's PC a Compaq AP550...me and my cousin's families lived pretty close together during that time (around the same apartment building just one door away) and whenever I get the chance I go to my cousin's house and take turns playing Space Cadet Pinball and Minesweeper...we didn't have internet by that time but we haven't heard about it yet and don't care...

 

first game system I encountered was a famicom...when I was around 6-7ish...played games like Circus, Karateka, Battle City, the first Mario, Robotech, oh and contra...then came SNES, Sega Mega Drive, Sega CD, Saturn, Dreamcast, N64, Playstation...

 

last game console I bought was PS 3 and Xbox 360...since then I haven't touched any consoles and is saved by the PC master race lol...

[Benmc20]

For me :

- a Texas Instruments TI99/4A (it works today if I want to run it)

- an Apple ][e (died by now)

- my first PC, an Olivetti Prodest something with a Nec V40 (crappy processor clone of a 8088 Intel but really bad)

- after that, assembled all my machines (a 486 SX25, a 486 DX266, a Pentium 150 (o/c to 192 !), a Pentium II 333, an AMD Athlon 700 (slot A), an AMD Athlin 1200 AXIA (the ones you could overclock really easily), an AMD Athlon XP 2400 (at 2 GHz only, really good processor), nd after that return to Intel with a Core2Duo 6750 and my actual machine a Core i5 2400.

I have other machines (notebook for example) but ...

[pinky6225]

First PC i used was a friends Amstrad 8086 which he had commander keen for which we played quite a lot, unique feature of this PC was the power switch being on the back and on the monitor

 

Then i got my own pc when i was about 12 which was a 386 SX with a turbo button (that was never off) that ran at a princely speed of 25mhz and had a 50mb HD

[Content Consumer]

First PC i used was a friends Amstrad 8086 which he had commander keen for which we played quite a lot, unique feature of this PC was the power switch being on the back and on the monitor

 

Then i got my own pc when i was about 12 which was a 386 SX with a turbo button (that was never off) that ran at a princely speed of 25mhz and had a 50mb HD

 

That damn turbo button never made sense to me. Why would you ever turn it off?

[Slorm]

First for me it was a Sinclair ZX81 (with the wobbly 16k RAM pack ), then the Spectrum and QL. Went on to an Apple II Europlus for a time then an Amiga 500 and then the Amiga B2000 which I had for quite a few years until I started building PC's.

[ronttu]

 

First PC i used was a friends Amstrad 8086 which he had commander keen for which we played quite a lot, unique feature of this PC was the power switch being on the back and on the monitor

 

Then i got my own pc when i was about 12 which was a 386 SX with a turbo button (that was never off) that ran at a princely speed of 25mhz and had a 50mb HD

 

That damn turbo button never made sense to me. Why would you ever turn it off?

 

 

Some games ran their time based on CPU cycles, so a faster CPU would make the game run so fast you couldn't play it. A well-known example was Wing Commander, but I remember playing a chopper game (maybe Apache something, can't recall), where I couldn't finish a certain mission because the fuel the chopper consumed was calculated in real-time, but the distance it traveled was dependent on FPS. Many frustrated yells ensued.

 

First machine I ever touched was some Commodore with cartridges, but I wasn't old enough to really do anything with it. The one I started to really mess around with was an 80286, 8MHz with 12MB hard drive and an expansion memory card with an astounding 768Kb of extra RAM.

 

Fun points in time were when I got a SoundBlaster to get sounds for Dune 2 (because the units spoke!). Cue me and my brother going "OOHH" at the crazy audio quality. Or how I wanted to be a hipster and got a Voodoo Rush instead of normal Voodoo, just because it could theoretically run 3D apps windowed. Not that anything supported it, nor did it really have the power to do that, but still..

[Content Consumer]

 

 

First PC i used was a friends Amstrad 8086 which he had commander keen for which we played quite a lot, unique feature of this PC was the power switch being on the back and on the monitor

 

Then i got my own pc when i was about 12 which was a 386 SX with a turbo button (that was never off) that ran at a princely speed of 25mhz and had a 50mb HD

 

That damn turbo button never made sense to me. Why would you ever turn it off?

 

 

Some games ran their time based on CPU cycles, so a faster CPU would make the game run so fast you couldn't play it. A well-known example was Wing Commander, but I remember playing a chopper game (maybe Apache something, can't recall), where I couldn't finish a certain mission because the fuel the chopper consumed was calculated in real-time, but the distance it traveled was dependent on FPS. Many frustrated yells ensued.

 

First machine I ever touched was some Commodore with cartridges, but I wasn't old enough to really do anything with it. The one I started to really mess around with was an 80286, 8MHz with 12MB hard drive and an expansion memory card with an astounding 768Kb of extra RAM.

 

Fun points in time were when I got a SoundBlaster to get sounds for Dune 2 (because the units spoke!). Cue me and my brother going "OOHH" at the crazy audio quality. Or how I wanted to be a hipster and got a Voodoo Rush instead of normal Voodoo, just because it could theoretically run 3D apps windowed. Not that anything supported it, nor did it really have the power to do that, but still..

 

 

Now that I think about it, there were a few times I would have appreciated turning the speed of Starflight down a notch. I forgot that a lot of older games did that kind of thing (and some newer ones too, for that matter).

[Sharkness Monster]

My first computer sucked, I dont know what kind of computer but it was old and extremely slow. Couldn't really do anything on it

[nonusnomeni]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orao_(computer)

every 6-8h he was needed to be turn off because of overheating

and he was often used for heating during winters

[peculiaris]

Dell Dimension XPS T500

 

I was so proud about paying for it myself