What was your FIRST exposure to computers?

[tktk104]

Hello!

I'm so much in AWE of the help Guru3D gives to others, I can't help but wonder how you talented and knowledgeable people were first exposed to the world of computers. I notice some posters are familiar with the history of different aspects of computers ... that's so cool! Definitely gives credibility and perspective to the help you give to other posters.

Hope it's ok for me to ask this type of question in this thread, if not, I apologize. Let me know!

Looking forward to your posts!

[Veteran]

Theres an old thread on this here.
http://85.12.17.141/showthread.php?t=331717

Your better off posting your experience there and reviving the old thread

[tktk104]

I'm sorry! I didn't know. This is a BIG forum. I will delete this thread when I get home from work, is that ok? I gotta leave this minute to get to work on time. Thanks for straightening me out... and thanks for the link to the original thread! Have a FANTASTIC day!

[zipper]

Pah, first time I saw something connected to computers was in late 60's when our city library got punch card control system for the books.

[The Goose]

lol,apart from the tills at the local super markets my first experience was a the big all in one commodore PET computer at school then later getting a ZX81 with a 16k memory cartridge and a tape drive and spending hours typing in programs from computer magazines in my bedroom,only to find a friends dad had a BBC A and a BBC B and a Dragon 32,at the time it was like WOW but to rub my nose in it my friend showed me his Atari2600 console,wasnt long before i upgraded to my first ZX spectrum.

How times have changed

[elkosith]

Alley Cat, on friend's computer in 1992. Know nothing about computers back then

www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyAngaNVx5Q

The FIRST time I ever laid my fingers on a keyboard

[Solid_State]

High school, Computer Labs, 33mhz computers with 66mhz turbo buttons.

The school had little to no computer lab/time rules so I would frequent them, and load games from Dos like, "The incredibal machine", "Duke Nukem", "Kings Quest", "police quest", Sim City" ...the list goes on.

Good times. 1997 - 2000

[Pill Monster]

Got a Commodore 64 in 1986, then about a year later I was using the Amiga 500 in my high school computing class.

[Anarion]

Let's just say that I know how to write WINDOWS before I even learned to read and write anything. I.e. early 90's.

[vidra]

Mine was about 30 years ago when I saw a Sinclair ZX 81 followed by a Commodore 64 and a ZX Spectrum. I felt thundestruck! Didn't get my own (a Speccy) until two years later, though, but then I was well and truly hooked.

[bobdude]

Originally Posted by Pill Monster

Got a Commodore 64 in 1986, then about a year later I was using the Amiga 500 in my high school computing class.

ahhh yes the commadore 64....i lived for ultima and pirates of course.


load"*",8,1 anyone?

[airbud7]

C64...

[Pill Monster]

Originally Posted by bobdude

ahhh yes the commadore 64....i lived for ultima and pirates of course.

Yeah I was addicted to Defender Of The Crown.....

Originally Posted by bobdude

load"*",8,1 anyone?

You were lucky - I had a tape drive hahaha. Took like 20mins or something to load a game...

[Speed Weed]

An IBM 1600 which ran Algol 60, and just stopped short at requiring cooling pipes wrapped round it to keep it cool.
Occupying a whole room, this beast had 500Mb ( I kid you not ) memory and we had to punch out our programs on paper tape.
This actually put me right off computers for years, until I got my hot little hands on a Spectrum 48K.
Then I graduated to second-hand desktops with 80286 CPU's running Windows 3.0.

[CronoGraal]

1998, Gateway 2000. Had a PII, perhaps 32MB of RAM, and some ATI Rage gfx. I was in 5th grade and broke it all the time. Called the service center so many times that I was reformatting HD's and troubleshooting my own network problems by the time I was in 7th grade. Funny times. :<

[BLEH!]

My grandda's Amstrad from 198X, 5" floppy drive and that rather awesome ariels game.

[dk_lightning]

Amiga 500 xD when i was 6/7 in 1993

Nothing really then untill 1999 when we got this Pentium 3 PC running windows 3.11 Then soon after a Dell Dimension L667R

Pentium III 667MHz
128Mb RAM Running windows 98se LOL thing was beast xD

[StewieTech]

Around 1998 when my older brother was in highschool and bought a pc with a pentium II at 266mhz and 32mb ram, i think. I used to play carmageddon like there was no tomorrow back then.

[pimp_gimp]

In 1997, when I was 14, our family finally got a home PC. I was exposed to gaming then I well as the PC came with copies of Oregon Trail I and II. A few years later I bought my own PC, a Pentium 200Mhz, with a Voodoo 3, and that's when my interest really started to begin.

[EspHack]

1998 - win98 playing paint all the day and months later got dial-up connection, flash games ftw!

[mmicrosysm]

1995 Packard Bell Legend 415CD. Bought it for doing finances and organization. Within a year I OC'd the Pentium 75MHz (50Mhz FSB) to 100MHz (66MHz FSB) cause games like Monster Truck Racing played very choppy. Ran smooth after the OC . I did have to add a fan on top of the Heatsink but the system ran stable. Every system after this was a custom built system I built myself.

Still have the 14" CRT the system came with and CRT mounted speakers. I gave the desktop part away.

Processor Family - Intel Pentium
Processor Codename - P54C
Processor Speed - 75 MHz (Expandable to 133MHz)
Processor Cache - 16 KB
Bus Speeds - 50 MHz
System Memory - 8 MB (Expandable to 72MB) 72 Pin SIMM SDRAM 70ns
Video - Cirrus Logic CL5430 1280x1024 MAX RES w/1MB (Expandable to 2MB)
Storage Capacity - 1.2 GB (Conner)
Optical Drive(s) - 4x CD-ROM
Networking - 14400 bps Fax/Modem
OS - Windows 3.11 for Workgroups

[BigBlockTowncar]

In about 1991 or so we went to a grand opening for a place called Ballard Computer, my dad won a door prize which happened to be a very expensive PDA-type calculator device. Since we went there to buy a computer anyways, he asked the manager if he could trade it in and put it towards a computer instead. We were the first in the cul-de-sac to have a PC and the first to get a soundblaster 16. Had all of the classic games on that machine.

My grandparents always had a computer though. One of the earliest memories I have is playing Frogger which had to be run from DOS--I was very young at the time and could not read or write very well and my brother would not tell me how to spell “frogger” so I could not play, hahah. My uncle wrote a little front end program that I could use that had a list of all the games on the computer, I just had to select what I wanted to play and it would autoexec all of the DOS commands which I was too young for.

[jeffmorris]

My first computer was TRS-80 Model I computer in 1978. I went through a few TRS Color Computers, Atari 1200XL, and Commodore 64. My first IBM compatible computer was the Tandy 1000 computer. I went through many IBM compatible computers.

[The Laughing Ma]

Spectrum +2A all 128bit of pure gaming goodness. Yes I was one of the folk who would spend hours typing in basic only to find that the clock face didn't display right because I had stuck a ':' where a ';' was meant to go.... ahh happy days.

I then got a 'job' dunno if that's the right word but I was a computer monitor in primary school, which meant wheeling the computers from storage to the class rooms that needed them, setting them up and making sure they worked for whatever the class room was going to use them for. Yup I had my first IT job at the age of 7.

[Ryu5uzaku]

Around the age of 5 playing keen at home when father bought our first pc no idea of the specs anymore. first pc i built myself at age of 11 1997