What is on Your Mind?

Honestly, I don't recall. We might have manually input the data, it was a long time ago.

For years, I saved a printout of the code and the results, but eventually tossed it along with old college text books and other stuff I stored for years and never used.

I now wish I have of scanned the old printout of the code, just for fun, so I could have posted it in this thread; but I have become one of those "if you don't use it in a year, toss it" person in my advancing age.

I also started with a Commodore 64 purchased with summer job money in 1984 or 85. I also have an answer for the "how did you get programs saved" question. I remember clearly getting copies of Commodore magazines or other sources of programs and typing them in by hand and saving the files, then doing "load <programname>" followed by "run". I don't think any way other than that or buying your programs on floppy disks or cassettes worked. Certainly nothing like downloading from the internet like you can do today.

Dave, the original poster asked us to reminisce a little:

So, please let some funny stories or give more details about what you did with your first computer or some other story from the past.

It's more interesting if you tell some funny, personal, or tragic "way back when" computer story!

As IBM FE in early 60s got to see all the old stuff still installed prior to the 1401s. Was supposed to go to 7080 school but cancelled at last minute and sent to fixing EAM stuff. Got to "penny a day" on a 1401 and hands on repair on some 1402s if it was card drive stuff. Amusing stuff was not paying attention to signing with penny a day, comparison for last day failed, the high speed 1403 probably went through 30 pages before I got it stopped.
First owned was 6800 SWTP starting with 1 K, ending with 6800 and 6809 mixed manufacturers, up to 48K and hard drives. Proud of hardware hacking a bitbanging serial port to make it SASI and driving up to 3 hard drives and 4 floppies on a WD controller. And the software hacks to patch in the drivers, most of which I wrote in assembler or machine language. Did the full TRS line as a leasing and service company with some basic programming for quick & dirty jobs, then transitioned into PC stuff when I finally saw the handwriting on the wall. Missed the MCA fiasco because the ISA stuff was still selling.
Jumped into a hardware problem when 3 other companies had failed to fix a machine, had to learn Xenix in the process, and ended up with a life consumed by SCO stuff.

Mine was Soviet-made POISK in the late 80`s...It is based around the 1810WM88 CPU a clone of the i8088. It has 4 slots for expansion carts like Floppy-Cart (in this case one could use CPM), Printer, Memory-Expansion (512k), HDD (MFM) controller, ROM-disk, EEPROM programming, RS-232/Centronics.
On long winter nights I still hear how it`s spinning the cassete with Basic on it...I miss that baby..

My neighbor died about a month ago and I was helping her sister clean out some stuff. She knew I was "into computers" as she says (she' in her 80's) and saved some stuff for me. I don't know if it even works but I now have an original IBM AT with all the manuals and a tiny monitor. They ran 12mhz didn't they and retailed for like 6k back in the day.......

Oh boy, that's an interesting thread When I look back, it appears that I've started being "into computers" 17 years ago, I haven't thought about this fact ever. So, on topic : my first computer was "Pravec 8C" - I doubt that anyone outside Bulgaria (or maybe ex-USSR neighbors) is aware of it. Here are the specs, directly from the museum page. I was able to play very few games, all of them were few big green pixels, then the teacher decided we've had enough, and we started learning BASIC. (LET A=10, etc, it was real fun ). I haven't bought such for home, as the price was equal (at that time) to a small car ... You can imagine, Bulgaria just a few years after the Communism ... it was a total mess. But this very first touch with a computer technology was really exciting for a little kid like me. I haven't stopped ever since .... Nice memories