Your first computer

[RoganDawes]

Hehe. Did you ever get the dreaded "RAM Wobble" and "White Outs", where all your painstakingly entered programming disappeared as the system reset because of the lousy edge connectors on the RAM Expansion Pack? Memories!

Yup, horrible design!

 

[Fulcrum29]

Ahh, the time when sequels were better than the original's: Dune 2, Star Control 2 , Doom 2

Dune (1) isn’t exactly a Dune 2 strategy game, it was an adventure blend with economic and military strategy, thus I can hardly say that Dune 2 was a sequel as per genre. Dune (1) was like Reunion which is in return an adventure space strategy game, like Star Control 2. I liked Dune (1), as it was stated by others being the most immersive Dune computer game.

 

[chrisc]

Yup, horrible design!

The Spectrum's PSU was susceptible to mains spikes. After sitting for 45 mins entering something in BASIC, it used to lock up and that was that. Nearly as bad as Windows....

 

[gregmcc]

Remember these. Seagate mfm drives.

http://home.iae.nl/users/pb0aia/cm/st506c.jpg

 

[Kosmik]

Dune (1) isn’t exactly a Dune 2 strategy game, it was an adventure blend with economic and military strategy, thus I can hardly say that Dune 2 was a sequel as per genre. Dune (1) was like Reunion which is in return an adventure space strategy game, like Star Control 2. I liked Dune (1), as it was stated by others being the most immersive Dune computer game.

2 comes after 1 yes? Sequel. Dune was fun but not really a great game in my opinion, not like Civilization and Eye of the Beholder. It was truer to the books than the strategy games.

 

[Fulcrum29]

2 comes after 1 yes? Sequel. Dune was fun but not really a great game in my opinion, not like Civilization and Eye of the Beholder. It was truer to the books than the strategy games.

Yep, I know, only the nostalgia taking me back in time...

 

[[)roi(]]

It was launched in 1982.

Lol... So what's a few years amongst friends

Yip I clearly remember those pieces of crap quite clearly, a few of my friends got that about a year after I received my TI 99/4A. Keyboard was the worst part of all; typing in code was typically a contortionist's finger nightmare.

 

[[)roi(]]

Remember these. Seagate mfm drives.

http://home.iae.nl/users/pb0aia/cm/st506c.jpg

Yip spent far too much time with those drive, but I'll go one up on this with the drive on the first midrange computer I developed on: an IBM System/36, nothing quite comes close to this one: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=c0mk3Z06qT8

FYI the S/36 copper coated platters have a diameter of about 50cm.

 

[biometrics]

Do you guys remember reformatting those drives to optimize the sector interleave?

 

[[)roi(]]

Do you guys remember reformatting those drives to optimize the sector interleave?

Yip, the good old days when techies had to fire off the occasional assembler routine in debug;
g=c800:5 -- if memory serves me correct

 

[The_Unbeliever]

 

[tRoN]

Started with zx spectrum 16k

Then Commodore 64 with tape drive.

Them commodore 128 with a floppy drive.

I remember my friend had an xt with a green screen and my commodore always had better games and graphics and he was so jealous.

He used to play a game called Larry and the lounge lizards

 

[howardb]

He used to play a game called Larry and the lounge lizards

Lol, loved LLL when it came out, played on a first gen b&w laptop... spent hours on it!

 

[chrisc]

It was launched in 1982.

Yes, you are right. I had something before then, a TRS-80 but it did not belong to me. A guy in Milnerton still has a twin floppy TRS-80. Very noisy keyboard

 

[[)roi(]]

Btw did anyone on this forum attend any of the computer camps that were run in the old Transvaal in the early 80s;

I attended 2 of them but stopped, as it seemed they were focusing primarily on teaching teenagers about computers in general, and as I was already fairly proficient in Basic and Assembler I was so bored!

Yet fortunately one of the camp instructor's gave me a challenge to create an ASCII 3 dimensional tic tac toe game, and best of all allowed me to code on his Osbourne 1

Wow I thought that portable computer was just so cool.

Also did anyone else also take part in the computer olympiads that started up in the 80s?

 

[mightymike]

1981, the Psion ZX81, 1k RAM, then "upgraded" to the ZX Spectrum with 16k RAM in '82. 1990 I got an XT @ 12MHz with 512k RAM and a 20Mb HDD! Just to think how far we have come!

 

[Compton_effect]

A family friend was a electrical genius - had 200 patents to his name. Sued Clapper for patent infringement in the 80's.
He started me on computing with this kit he had - still have no idea what it was.
Then a friend's dad got a ZX Spectrum - so much fun.
Then another friend's dad got a Apple - blew my mind.
Then a buddy got the old XT - without a hard drive - everything loaded from floppy.
And finally - my own 386, with 1 mb ram and 40 mb... I was the envy of the neighbourhood. 40 mb - the possibilities were endless.

Its sad - but now you ask me what I have and I'd really have to think about it.

 

[themank]

I had a commodore 64 back in 1988 when I was 5 if I remember correctly. Then my first real PC after that was a Pentium 1 75MHz. I remember spending hours playing the Leisure Suit Larry collection . That was in 1995.