singleviking Loc: Lake Sebu Eco Park, Philippines

You got into computers very late in their development. I remember using a set of 24 toggle switches on the front panel of a huge box and installing programs with a punch tape reader. When it crashed, you had to go through the whole boot process all over again. Output was to a teletype machine that had a paper tape punch.

Before that we were attending the Stanford Computer club trying to organize wire wrap configurations to just make tones. Now that's old memories of having Steve Wozniak come running in with a sheet if plywood covered with small chips that played "Twinkle, twinkle little star" over a small speaker after loading his punch tape. Showing my age.

wierdphotoguy Loc: the snow belt in Michigan

Wow, I'm surprised no one has mentioned their steam driven, coal fired computer that was the size of a box car! :-)

When I told my son about the games we used to play on Atari and Commodore 64, he couldn't fathom not having a game without a Playstation controller.

Actually, I was born with the best computer I ever owned. Sure its not that fast, and the memory is getting faulty now, but I never had a crash or a virus. I reboot every night and power it up with coffee in the morning. Best of all I never have to pay Bill Gates to upgrade the OS.

ole sarg Loc: south florida

There is nothing like an Osborne!

Brucej67 Loc: Cary, NC

I had an IBM 1401.

Ron K. Loc: Upstate NY.

My first personal computer was a Tandy 101. For a time after I was discharged from the Army in the early 1960's I worked (unsuccessfully) as a programmer. We had an IBM 1401. It filled up an entire climate-controlled room and came equipped with a Customer Engineer who worked on it full time. We eventually upgraded to a Burroughs B5000.

Bill Houghton Loc: New York area

The Commodore 64, Was my first up grade from a Radio Shack TRS 80 that had an External Tape Drive (Cassette) That you used to upload you program, that YOU wrote and saved because there was no internal Hard or External Disk Drive. Learned my Dos and basic programing.

GeneB Loc: Chattanooga Tennessee

my first computer was a Commodore 64 which I eventually added 2nd disk drive and ram extension with 4 slots for more space. Donated it all to a Commodore club when I got an IBM windows software. I now use a Dell Inspirion all in one 64 bit.

DennisK Loc: Pickle City,Illinois

Yep I had a Commodore 64.There were no plug and play programs.I remember having to type line after line of script just to form a ball that moved slightly.And to this day I still can't type.

Papa Joe Loc: Midwest U.S.

A Sinclair computer was my very first one. It was on 'close-out' sale at Skaggs Drugs for $19.95. The memory expansion sold separately for around $12.95. My next computer was Radio Shack's 'M-something or other'. Small keyboard and took cassette tapes. Then I went 'big time', later with Radio Shack's Color Computer II :o) Good memories, thanks.

EdJ0307 Loc: out west someplace

This was mine also. Bought it about 1980 on sale at Thrifty Drugs for $50. No hard drive and storage media was a cassette tape recorder. Wrote you own programs in Basic. Fun times.

pledwith Loc: Dorset, UK

I remember having to punch cards before running things and learning how t make thetiny pieces of card stay in the holes when you punch the wrong one, just long enough to go through the reader once. That really does make me feel old.

SpeedyWilson Loc: Upstate South Carolina

My first computer was used for typesetting in a print shop. We had the color coded punch tapes to run the photo printers and help us keep organized. Over the years I've lost track of all the different models; I just enjoy what I'm using now.

Ahhh ... the good ole days:

Ron K. Loc: Upstate NY.

I remember those 80-column IBM punch card very well.

Jeff Gordon Loc: East Coast

I had one of the early portable (it weighed about 30 pounds) called an Osborn with 64K memory and a small green screen in the middle with a fold down keyboard. The operating system was CPM. It truly was a luggable.

Radioman Loc: Ontario Canada

Bringing back memories. The first computer that I was involved with was the "Ferranti Atlas"

The first computer used at the college was a GE 400. To start that one, first one manually put in a small program, that told the computer how to read a paper tape. That tape loaded in a program that told it how to read punch cards, the punch cards set it up to read a large disk pack, that in turn loaded in the operating system. (Basic, Fortran or whatever). It had, for that time, a very large storage capacity, about two hundred meg. ( meg NOT gig )

http://sturgeon.css.psu.edu/~mloewen/Oldtech/Media/RigidDisk.html


Regarding the 8 inch floppy. A miracle occurred with one (actually 2) of these in the early 1970's. In the computer lab we had a DEC10 computer. The college had a Wang WP system in the business division and several students from there were using it to write their final papers. The Wang broke down and it was arranged for these students to use our DEC 10 in the evenings/nights. One student, going home late, forgot the floppy disk, leaving it in the drive. These drives were continuos run - and in the morning the 8" floppy had seized up, leaving the centre mounting rotating. Not knowing any better, the student got another 8" floppy, cut a circle out of the disk and taped it over the center hole in his disk. He put it into the computer, it worked OK and he finished his paper.

No one had told him that the center mounting had to be EXACTLY in the centre or that the small hole close to the centre had to be in the right position to indicate the beginning of the data track on the disk. Anyone who has worked with Floppies ( 5 or 8 inch) will know that was like finding a pin in a haystack with the first look.