What is on Your Mind?

Hey, the What Do You Do for a Living thread got me thinking about this.
My first "computer" was a Timex Sinclair that I built from a kit. I also spent many hours painstakingly programming a Commodore Vic20 to display graphics and sound (and save them on that slooooow tape drive). My first "real" programming was in QBasic on a TRS-80 in high school. And as I said before, my first "dial in, on call" technology was a Compaq Lunchbox that I did IBM Mainframe support on for a manufacturing plant. Oh, and I took my first programming course in college with a Telex machine (I kid you not!) Getting a program listing on that crappy thermal paper was a pain in the butt.......

Tell us some stories, reminisce a little. Bring back some memories...

Later,
David

I don't think most people here would even know about an IBM 650 - magnetic drum memory. I also did trajectory computation on something called NORC that IBM made in the mid-50's, for NOL - Naval Ordnance Lab. I think NORC stood for something like Naval Ordnance Research Calculating machine ~sort of. I programmed it well after the time it was deemed to be the fastest computer in the world.

It read so-called green tape. It was not really green, it had an off color stripe on one side and was used a for high-speed paper tape reader. I think it got the name from the boxes it came in. Regular tape passed through a paper tape duplicator, creating the green tape.

Or. Oracle in 1982. AFI/UFI/OCI anybody?

That does remind me of the TDC (torpedo data computer) that they used for firing solutions in WW2. The military has always used the latest technology to help with the art of war.

Me too. I think my first hobby computers were the computers above. I remember programming "sprites" on the Commodore.

Before that, I used to program some survey instrumentation and plotting, CAD programing when I worked as a field engineer, but I can't remember what they were called at the moment.

Do programming early TI and HP calculators count as computers?

---------- Post updated at 16:18 ---------- Previous update was at 16:06 ----------

I just remember I also had one of the early Apple II computers in 1977.

This link helped jog my fading memory:

Home computer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The first computer I bought was a TRS-80 Model 1. I still have some manuals and stuff. I wrote crude assembler in Basic on that thing.

The first computer I ever worked on was an IBM 1401.

Ok, based on the replies up to now, I'm definitely a youngster

The first computer I used was an Intel 8086, with a 8087 Co-Processor (both at 8MHz), running DOS off 2 5 1/2" floppies.

The first computer I owned was an Intel Pentium at 90 Mhz (with F0 0F bug). Originally with 32 MB RAM, a 2x CD-Drive, and a 14.4 Kbit modem, running MS-DOS 6 and Windows 3.11, upgraded since to 64 MB RAM, a DVD drive, 100 MBit NIC, and running LFS. It still gets its occasional action if I want to test software against older libraries.

Hi,

first computer I owned, was a VIC20, in the early 80ies (and afterwards really each box commodore ever produced), first 'Unix' machine was a pcs cadmus (CAD multi user) in the mid-80ies running MUNIX (and unfortunately I had to support them until 2004), first pc an IBM 8086, first computer I was earning money with was operating a brand new IBM System/370-XA in 1986.

Kind regards
zxmaus