What was your first computer?

[ejolson]

I was there the day it was delivered to our university, two or three huge trucks stopped outside the CS building, an aluminium "road way" was laid down from the back of trucks, into through the front door and into the bowels of the CS department. Then a procession of gorgeous looking bight orange main frame parts was rolled out of the trucks into the building.

Mainframes are impressive in a way that the Raspberry Pi can never be
Even if the Pi is more powerful.

As per my post above

viewtopic.php?p=1757529#p1757529

I think it's possible accessories could be added to a single Raspberry Pi so the weight increases up to the point where the entire system falls through the floor of an average house. With clustering, such an impressive feat should be even easier to achieve.

[jahboater]

Heater,

I was there the day it was delivered to our university, two or three huge trucks stopped outside the CS building, an aluminium "road way" was laid down from the back of trucks, into through the front door and into the bowels of the CS department. Then a procession of gorgeous looking bight orange main frame parts was rolled out of the trucks into the building.

I worked for ICL in this building next to the famous Bracknell machine hall:

This picture was just a small part of the BRA01 machine hall (biggest in Europe I think). There was a viewing gallery higher up around the outside (presumably where this picture was taken from) - quite a long walk, much more than a km, around it.
Slowly over the years, as mainframes became smaller, the machine hall was gradually converted into offices ...

[hydra3333]

I do remember all my first three computer - first steps an a PDP-8, moved to a Nova(8) and later to the magnificent and beloved PDP-11.

Ah, those were the days !
Do you recall the 11/45 ? REAL core memory. And running the program where if you held a correctly-tuned hand-held radio next to it, it played a tuned based on RF from the memory accesses patterns Clipping comms circuit board jumpers with a fine wire clipper (a later pdp).
Assembler, if you please Debugging device drivers by the lights (ah, octal) and single-step flip switch and data switches on the front panel.

[emma1997]

The seems to be confusion over what is meant by "my" first computer. The uni mainframes were not 'mine' and neither were the PDP8s that I spent an hour and a half every time toggling in a bootloader to load the bootloader that allowed the paper tape reader to load the real program for the wafer steppers in production.

This was actually MY first computer:

mr-math-analog-computer-radio-electronics-june-1958-1_small.jpg (15.41 KiB) Viewed 1473 times

Actually mine looked much nicer with modern styrene cased meter instead of ugly old bakelite with rounded corners.

After that was a 6502 with resistor instead of crystal and data bus hardwired for NOP so the pretty square waves could be seen on my home grown CRT scope. Worlds smallest and cheapest 64 kbyte ROM years before 256 byte ROMs (1701?) became available.

[Heater]

Actually mine looked much nicer with modern styrene cased meter instead of ugly old bakelite with rounded corners.

Nooo.. those old bakelite meters are things of beauty and fit very well with the black knobs on the dials.

[LTolledo]

just a recap...
this topic is about which type?

(a) the very first ever computer used (whether rented, borrowed, leased, etc, not necessarily personally owned)

(b) the very first ever computer owned and used ...

am more inclined its (a).....though I may be wrong...

[Rudolf]

Or did you actually own those PDP and Nova machines?

I did.

[Heater]

Or did you actually own those PDP and Nova machines?

I did.

In that case my hat is off to you.

And I'm dead jealous.

[Rudolf]

In that case my hat is off to you.

And I'm dead jealous.

The story is quite easy. I used these computer before. When my employer moved forward and upgraded, I got them for very small change.

[forense]

Hi!

It was a IBM PCjr 4860-067 with 128 KB memory

[ON5MF]

I started with an Apple ][ europlus. Back in 1980

[Killaypirate]

ZX 80 followed by Commodore 64, BBC micro, various PC’s, mini ASUS (forget exact model name), various laptops, Macbook and finally Pi4.

[thatchunkylad198966]

256mb laptop running Windows XP - was years ago.
Cost over £400 IIRC.

[Heater]

256mb laptop running Windows XP - was years ago.
Cost over £400 IIRC.

You have my commiserations for being raised in the dark times.

[penguinkid]

Dell Dimensions XPS T700r - Windows 98 and 128 MB RAM

[aNdy/AL/Cosine]

A 'breadbin' style Commdore64 in 1984, which I still have and use.

[slayerofstrings]

My first computer ran windows 3.1, and it was in my room growing up at around five years old. We had that until we upgraded to a windows 2000 machine which we then upgraded to xp, and kept running until about 2009. The only computers I've owned personally, were one windows 98 that was gifted to me in about 2004, two hp laptops both under powered and running windows xp, and now my raspberry pi4b which is running as a desktop replacement solution. I used apple laptops in school, and later my girlfriend had a macbook.

I didn't start experimenting in linux until I was forced to use my girlfriends computer because i didn't have one of my own. I hated the mac os so much that I started running linux externally from an old hard drive I had salvaged from one of my old hp laptops.

[ejolson]

My first computer ran windows 3.1, and it was in my room growing up at around five years old. We had that until we upgraded to a windows 2000 machine which we then upgraded to xp, and kept running until about 2009. The only computers I've owned personally, were one windows 98 that was gifted to me in about 2004, two hp laptops both under powered and running windows xp, and now my raspberry pi4b which is running as a desktop replacement solution. I used apple laptops in school, and later my girlfriend had a macbook.

I didn't start experimenting in linux until I was forced to use my girlfriends computer because i didn't have one of my own. I hated the mac os so much that I started running linux externally from an old hard drive I had salvaged from one of my old hp laptops.

Recently the creator of Linux

I'd absolutely love to have one if it just ran Linux.

about the new ARM-powered Apple laptops.

https://www.realworldtech.com/forum/?th ... tid=196570

It seems you and Linus share a similar reaction to macOS.

My objection to macOS is no longer just the clumsiness of the user interface that was originally designed for a 9" screen, but the the way Big Sur sends Apple an unencrypted report of every program you run and when you run it that can't be disabled.

https://sneak.berlin/20201112/your-computer-isnt-yours/

[Giga_Pi]

My first computer was an acer aspire one ZG5, with:

- intel Atom N270@1.6GHz (single core)
- 528MB of RAM (Yes, 528 megabytes)
- 8GB ZIF SSD storage (the only good thing about it)

It was my Grandma's first laptop, and came with a really old Linux Distro (which I believe is now depreciated), but was shortly replaced with Lubuntu 16.04LTS.

Then the SSD broke, so we bought a small USB dongle/pendrive (I think it's called sandisk fit) and installed Lubuntu 18.04 LTS

Then I got hold of the HP mini 110. Fairly similar spec, but with 1GB of RAM, and a 160GB HDD. I got it with windows 7, but I quickly replaced it with ubuntu MATE.

At present, I have since built my own PC (i5-2500k OC@4.6GHz, 8GB RAM, 120GB SSD + 1TB HDD), and have obtained a Chromebook (HP 14a).

[ejolson]

At present, I have since built my own PC (i5-2500k OC@4.6GHz, 8GB RAM, 120GB SSD + 1TB HDD), and have obtained a Chromebook (HP 14a).

Did you install GNU/Linux on the Chromebook?

[Giga_Pi]

At present, I have since built my own PC (i5-2500k OC@4.6GHz, 8GB RAM, 120GB SSD + 1TB HDD), and have obtained a Chromebook (HP 14a).

Did you install GNU/Linux on the Chromebook?

No, I enabled the Linux container within chromeOS.

To be fair, I don't want to be disabling the in-built protection, as I use the chromebook as my daily driver, and my desktop as my gaming setup.