Retro PCs: What was your first computer?

Remember your first PC? Retro Thing takes a look back at the original big three computers. We've come a long way since those early days, but it's fun to look back at where it all started. Think about the space and cords those things entailed, and you'll gain a new appreciation of living with computers. Our first PC was a secondhand Tandy that came with a stupid Winnie the Pooh game. What was your first PC?

Comments (17)

Mine was a Macintosh SE. I still have it and it still works.

OMG an Amstrad. Black screen green cursur. Thats all a girl needs to play Pacman!

My first home computer was one that linked into my dad's mainframe via placing a phone call on a regular phone and attaching the phone to a primitive modem.

The first "modern" computer I had was an IBM PS/1 in 1992. 85 mb hard drive, 2 mb memory. I thought I was the coolest thing EVER.

Apple III.

One day we got a 5MB hard drive, we never thought we'd be able to fill it up.

When I was 6 my parents bought my bother and me an Apple IIc. It's still in their basement. I played lots of Mario, Oregon Trail and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego as a child.

I started coding in BASIC on an Atari 2600. Then I graduated to an Atari 400. My first real-ish computer was an IBM PCjr.

My first PC was an IBM PC XT. We had a monochrome (green!) monitor and an AWESOME color monitor. We started off with just two 5 1/2" floppies, but eventually got a hard drive too.

Yup. IBM PC Jr. for me, too. My parents got it for me when I got back from "CompuCamp." Yes. I am that big of a nerd. I remember thinking "What would ever be the use of having a hard drive INSIDE the computer? I'm perfectly happy slipping floppies in and out of the computer." Of course when you only have 128K of RAM, it doesn't take many of those floppies to fill-up the RAM.

I had a beautiful all-in-one TRS-80 Model III. Well, ok, technically it was my dad's computer as I was only five years old at the time, but I was able to run a few games by myself. Our school was quite progressive when it came to computers, so we had an entire room full of these babies in 1981. We used to have weekly visits to the computer lab where our teacher would attempt to run Oregon Trail or various edu-tainment programs for us. Nine times out of ten I had to show her how to get the games running, because I was precocious like that.

My first PC that was mine alone was a custom-built machine in 1993, which I got as a graduation present. 486 25Mhz badass with 32MB RAM, a 500MB HD, and an 8x CD-ROM. When I went off to college I bought a 14.4 modem so I could dial-in to the school's internet connection, which was, of course, all UNIX-based back then. Mozilla came out a year or so later and the rest, as they say, is history.

angry.kitty - Hell yeah, I loved those games. Whenever anyone uses the word "grueling," I always think of Oregon Trail.

Today you can download a Mac simulator and play the same games in all their rudimentary, 8-bit glory. I recommend it.

Early Macs also had an awesome function in Paint that allowed you to create amazing designs with little effort - does anyone know what I'm talking about?

the first computer i ever used was a Commodore 64K. i was 13. it was 1985. we used it in our typing class at school.

my family's first home computer was the Tandy! i was 13/14 when it arrived.

gosh, those were the days!

I can't remember what it was, but I can tell you it had an amber screen and I got it 3rd-hand. I'm pretty sure that I got it around 1992 or 1993, because it was only after it died that I finally decided to buy something new for myself, and I bought an Apple Centris 660 AV for a bout $4,000, which, for a person who really had no business spending that kind of money, I was really, truly hoping that it would last me a very long time. However, a very few months later the PowerMac's came out and the AOL software version I had at the time was not supported more than a week after that new OS came out, and I was madder than a wet hen.

To this day, I will never buy an Apple anything. No matter what. As far as I'm concerned they kind of owe me money.

TRS-80 Model 1 arrived December 23, 1980.

I was the first person anyone knew who had a home computer. It cost A$5,000 - about $50,000 in today's money. As a single woman whose Dad was dead, I couldn't get a personal loan (needed a male guarantor - Dad loved gadgets & would've signed in a nano of a nanosecond), so I spent my life's savings.

People would bring their friends & rellies over to look at.

The operating system loaded from a tape recorder - took forever - went and bought one floppy drive (5.25 inch) then another. Very flash !! I could do word processing; a few months later Visicalc was invented; and a simple database.

It changed my life. This week, it went to a museum and will probably be used for parts. (sniffle)

We got my grandpa's Tandy when I was 8 or 9, and spent hours playing Oregon Trail and playing with the paint.

Apple IIe Plus

With two 5"1/4 floppies, NO HardDrive so I had to boot it from a floppy. I spent hours playing PacMan. I also learned BASIC by myself with this computer, I was 10. I miss it.