A Chronology of personal computers - What have you purchased?

'79 ish... I remember some mainframe beast we used for engineering reports at the TBA workshops at LHR... someone had written a basic that ran tic-tac-toe, but they caught that and shut it down pretty quick...

Our first home PC was an AST 10meg 286 that could be turbo'd up to 12 meg, 2meg of ram (which I upgraded to 4 meg (at a vastly exhorbitant cost - I wanted to be able to play Dark Forces - sadbuttru - and persuaded SWMBO that it would help her run the WP and spreadsheet packages that much better... ) and a 256meg hard drive (doublespaced with win3.11!!!) originally running win2 (supplied on 5.5 floppies)...

Not really fussed about them these days as I mostly use them for WP - presently using a DELL laptop from Tescos but I have a small heap of failed HP's from work, and a variety of others in scrap form, to build up a basic platform for my MS FSX - I have a wonderful virtual Hebrides 3d sim that bolts on rather nicely... even shows the Hebridean ferries running to schedule and has Stornoway lit up at night...

 

BBC News - Commodore 64 turns 30: What do today's kids make of it?

I actually took all of my old stuff including the Commodore 64 to the tip!

 

My first ever laptop was a Sony VAIO which was stolen. After that I've had a string of laptops and a single gaming/work PC since 2008. It died spectacularly after a powersurge (surge protectors are needed...) in 2010 and cost me £600 to rebuild with a friend...

However, it still out performs brand new £1000-1300 gaming rigs so... money really, really well spent.

After a string of laptops (cheap is not better), I've settled on an ASUS Transformer which is a tablet PC with additional keyboard which includes a stonking great additional battery pack. Together... best combination I've ever had. Now just considering a dedicated PC for work, and to move my current PC solely for gaming/additional programmes.

 

In new in­dig­nity for video game trail blazer, Pong pi­o­neer Atari files for Chap­ter 11

 

The first computer in my parents house was a Sharp MZ80k - It was older than I was!

 

What a delightful photo

I myself started on a IBM 360 mainframe at college in 1974, which I only saw once (that was for the Gods!) and which I accessed only through shoeboxes filled with punched cards.

Later on I followed the usual route of the Spectrum, and then I managed to buy my own Amstrad PC1512 which of course cost me an arm and two legs! This one had two floppy drives only (5.25" disks), but I took the plunge and bought a full 80Mb hard disk! Problem was the interface card with disk attached was taller than the computer housing, so I had to use a hacksaw and cut a 2cm slot on the top panel for the disk to fit. This was my first computer hack job

On a different tack, I dug up my old HP 32SII scientific calculator which I got a colleague to bring me from the US in 1990 or so, and it still works in its 384 bytes glory!!! I just love its Polish Notation!

Before that it was the HP 34C but I had to throw this away as the batteries leaked and corroded its innards.

 

Litronix 2230.








1975 was about the time I bought this model (still in a box somewhere) cost me a fortune then. Replaced the slide rule and the Odhner mechanical calculator with rows of slide down buttons and rotating the handle the required number of turns.











Still got my Faber Castell slide rule - be in the same box as the Litronix.


Now I can calculate tapers or compound angles by entering known data into a freeware programm and get the answer in a flash! I too started out on the ZX80/81 then the Amstrad.

 

The oldest machine I have programmed, got the certificate from Professor Tom Kilburn to prove it!

http://www.********.co.uk/ssem/cert.jpg

 

From Norfolk record Office's Friendface feed:



Same company that made this, I believe:

http://www.ww2talk.com/forum/weapons-technology-equipment/49926-french-army-military-periscope-rabbit-ear-binoculars.html#post546806

 

My laptop above cost me $1,200. When I had my 386 it cost $200 for two extra Meg of RAM.

I remember spending £2,000 of my employer's money on 64Mb of RAM in the mid-1990's. I was a little jittery installing that pair of DIMMs I can tell yer! :smile:

I worked for an American company based in Warrington in the mid 90's doing a lot 3D engineering design work (power stations, submarines etc) using Silicon Graphics machines.

When they decided to relocate to Manchester, we had to clear out the old office, and the boss came across a load of old invoices.

One was for a memory upgrade for one of their old Silicon Graphics machines from the early 80s.
The Cost for the 8Mb RAM upgrade was £62,000:wow:

My list of computers started about 83-84 with
ZX Spectrum 16K
ZX Spectrum 48K
Commodore 64
Atari 130 XE (or XL)
Atari ST
Amiga 1200
then a long list of PC's

 

Slide rule, Wills?



My Dad's old 30cm German slide rule, in wood. Still working fine.

 

Indeed, and keyboards were never exactly a Spectrum strongpoint in the first place...


Remember typing in pages of games from magazines for Vic20 etc. Then spending days trying to make 'em work.

My first ever computer was a 48K ZX Spectrum.

I got shot of the rubber keyboard pretty early on. DKTronics sold a case with a "proper" keyboard and you took the Spectrum out of it's case, if I remember, and stuck it inside the DKTronics one.

My next computer was an Atari ST with 512K of RAM. I upgraded that to 1MB - which involved pressing a RAM chip down on top of the existing ram, making sure all the pins lined up, and then packing cardboard on top so that, when the case was put back together, it wouldn't fall off. I kid you not!!

After that it's been a series of PCs - the first with a Pentium processor, then for a long time a Dell Dimension 8200 which I upgraded about as far as humanly possible. I'm now running a quad core Intel (Q6600) on a PC I built from the best of my old components and a secondhand motherboard which supports AGP and PCI-E, as well as DDR and DDR2. I know - all antidiluvian stuff! But I can play Black Ops no problems!

Cheers

Ian

 

For me: Spectrum 48k to MacBook Pro Retina via an assortment of PCs built from salvaged parts and an Amiga 1200. My first laptop--a Toshiba had a 4GB hard-drive, which I used to think was huge. I don't really play games any more, so I can't imagine changing back from Macs to PCs any time soon--to much hassle.

Speaking of which, I still use a Sony Vaio running VISTA for word-processing alone and it is woefully unstable. That said, it is doing well to still function at all with the number of times I've whacked it in frustration.

Still have my NES from 1986 back at the parental home; will never forget coming downstairs for a drink the night before my birthday to find my parents 'testing' it with Duck Hunt.