What was it like when you bought your first computer

[YAMBA1]

I bought  my  First computer in the early 80 . It was an Australian made one . Microbee 128K . It was pretty advanced with 3 1/4  inch diskette, DOS  was the operating sys . Microsoft then was un-heard to me .  I used  Basic as a language to navigated  and  to make characters!   I remember I was  once was  able to draw  a straight line  from  a pixel  to another  somewhere on the other side of the  green screen. I cherish that straight line  like a trophy of  Conquest . I just mastered this new  technology .

 

Well almost. Since  then  a  bought  many  computers  over the years  and they caught up   with me  quicker that my mind  could follow. Good bye .bat  files    and self made auto.exe .  Adieu forever  DOS > Directory  . I miss  the simplicity those  first computer had.  Those  were the days  when  you still  were in control of the machine .

 

But wake  up Gran Pa,  automatism  has  taken  control . The CPAP  machine Report tell the Desktop Computer that the nasal mask was  to loose  last night.  Another app  tells  me that a forgetful mind left the  fridge door ajar. Oh gosh the drop down menu just remind me  it'is Peter's birthday. Your  files  are now stored on Clouds . Now that is progress , I can access those  files  when I pass through the Pearly Gates .

Computer were made  to increase productivity and made life easier. I wonder now!

 

Happy Flying and  if you see  some floating files in the clouds , as  you cruise past  on your way to FL320 , they are probably my lost files! 

Charles

[Aussie123]

I bought THE first TRS-80 (Trash80) imported in to Australia during late 1977, from a TANBY store in Footsgray in Melbourne. It cost a fortune to anyone. As a young bloke everyone thought I was crazy and that I should have bought a second hand car.

I had researched it for months following it's release in the US, placed an advanced order and when I went to the shop (after weeks of anticipation) the manager asked me to set up the other one in their store.

When I was asked what I was going to use it for, I said it was going to be my home computer.

I can always remember one of the staff who had to start selling them, seriously asking me "Why would anyone want a computer in the home?".

 

For years after that my life revolved around C-30 audio cassettes and programming in Basic.

Not long after purchasing the TRS-80, I spent a weeks wages on updating the memory from 4Kbs to 16Kbs (that's 'K' not 'M')

 

It wasn't until about 1983 that I went to an IBM clone. The TRS80 is still in my shed. The start of home computing.

 

Aussie

[Richard Lincoln]

My first Pc was an Amstrad, thought it was cool because it was black with coloured keys. I got it in Coburg I think, anyway I spent so much time on it, my Father threw it out because I did nothing else (adictive personality)  I remember playing something like a flight sim on it. 

[Sniper31]

18 hours ago, Aussie123 said:

I bought THE first TRS-80 (Trash80) imported in to Australia during late 1977, from a TANBY store in Footsgray in Melbourne. It cost a fortune to anyone. As a young bloke everyone thought I was crazy and that I should have bought a second hand car.

I had researched it for months following it's release in the US, placed an advanced order and when I went to the shop (after weeks of anticipation) the manager asked me to set up the other one in their store.

When I was asked what I was going to use it for, I said it was going to be my home computer.

I can always remember one of the staff who had to start selling them, seriously asking me "Why would anyone want a computer in the home?".

 

For years after that my life revolved around C-30 audio cassettes and programming in Basic.

Not long after purchasing the TRS-80, I spent a weeks wages on updating the memory from 4Kbs to 16Kbs (that's 'K' not 'M')

 

It wasn't until about 1983 that I went to an IBM clone. The TRS80 is still in my shed. The start of home computing.

 

Aussie

 

Haha...the venerable TRS80! I never had one of those, but I had a few friends that did. Funny to see that on the other side of the globe it was known as a Trash 80 as well. For me, my first computer was a Commodore Vic 20. I could not do much on it other than pretend I was programming in BASIC and play a few text based adventure games (remember those?). I eventually upgraded to a Commodore 64 with a tape deck that gave me much more versatility. It was on the C64 that I played my first flight sim, which I am pretty sure, if memory serves, was Sub-LOGIC's Flight Simulator.  

[Iain Emms]

Yes Emmsie had a Commodore 64 as well o the joy of loading something on the tape deck only to wait and wait and wait because it failed.

cheers

Iain

[Stillwater]

5 minutes ago, Iain Emms said:

Yes Emmsie had a Commodore 64 as well o the joy of loading something on the tape deck only to wait and wait and wait because it failed.

cheers

Iain

I joined your experience, Emmsie, I was also starting with a C64. Do you remember all these Pokes to get the settings as you liked them? And the notoriously misaligning floppy disk drive, where you frequently had to readjust the heads? That was a time...

And still, so much fun with it. Zeppelin, Jumpman, Leasuresuit Larry, and what was the name of this space simulation where you only had vector lines of the objects?

[Aussie123]

I was trying to remember the TRS80 version of Flight Sim that I began using and the date I purchased it.

 

Again, I was one of the early adopters of the technology which comes at a price. I think it was around 1980.

I haven't searched my boxes in the shed for the package but I found a reference to it in Wiki.

I flew the sim for hours and days. The scenery in those days was a total 6 x 6 mesh grid with 'mountains' in the background.

Hard to imagine it is now about 40 years ago!

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FS1_Flight_Simulator

[YAMBA1]

11 hours ago, Stillwater said:

And still, so much fun with it. Zeppelin, Jumpman, Leasuresuit Larry, and what was the name of this space simulation where you only had vector lines of the objects?

 

Leasuresuit Larry was  a favorite  game, Searching for clues  I never find . I still have memories of going into that bar, asking the barman  for a drink that I never  got!  ( I thought I would  find the clues at the bottom of glass) 

[andy1252]

On 2/8/2020 at 5:18 PM, Stillwater said:

what was the name of this space simulation where you only had vector lines of the objects?

glancing through here, saw this and "Elite" popped into my head. Not sure if that's true or not but it rings a very faint bell (more of a thud, really)

[Stillwater]

19 minutes ago, andy1252 said:

glancing through here, saw this and "Elite" popped into my head. Not sure if that's true or not but it rings a very faint bell (more of a thud, really)

Oh yes Andy, that rings a bell! And that was the name, absolutely.

[Jack Sawyer]

Like Iain, but an Atari 800 with a tape drive.  Also loved to type in BASIC programs from magazines.  It was 16K and when I got memory to bring it up to 48K I thought I had "arrived."  Those were the good old days.

 

[vanderlay]

On 3/20/2020 at 7:45 AM, Stillwater said:

Oh yes Andy, that rings a bell! And that was the name, absolutely.

You should check out Elite Dangerous. You can play it on VR if you like and is a FAR cry from the original (which I had also on the 64)

 

[Jasmckee]

my first pc was the original mac, and i was so annoyed that i couldn't play sim city on it, it would take a few more years to get a pc that i could play sim city on, and that was a 486 dx4 with 8mb ram and a 1 mb video card, and even then it just played it, cost me $4000 for it too

 

[olderndirt]

Apple II +.  Not sure what the plus meant but this sucker had 64 kb of memory rather than the default 32.  Two floppy disk drives - loved to listen to them moan and grown as they searched for data.

[Aussieflyer38]

The year was 1972 I think, I had my own automotive workshop, walked into the local Tandy store and saw their you beaut 16k computer with tape recorder, just what I needed to keep customer vehicle records on. Little did I know what I had got myself into, talk about slow and faulty data recorded. After a couple of months I revisited Tandy and found they now had a 3.5 floppy drive hooray I thought, but that joy was short lived. A long weekend entering customers vehicle history, all done. Monday I found most of them had disappeared. I also later found out that every time it clicked on and I thought it was writing to disk, well it was, but at the same time it was also deleting part of what I had previously entered. A lot of swearing went on - a lot.  

Comment from Tandy "well it's not perfect, we are still working on it". All those files that disappeared  into the wide blue yonder are probably with Yamba1's.       

[Dr_Watson]

Born 1975, parents got me a ZX Spectrum 48k (the hard keyboard version) in around 1985. Played DI Tomahawk and Fighter Pilot.

 

 

 

Could actually fly Fighter Pilot IFR to mins with ILS, better than current sims at that!

 

Then an Atari ST, then an Amiga, then a 486 PC, 14 inch monitor.  Used to get the bus to Glasgow and go to the market and get games copied for a £1 onto a disk!  A 1MB DRAM was around £100 then. Played every flight sim from then until now. Eventually started as an Engineer in a DRAM Fab, place made millions, but in 2001, it closed as DRAM was less than £1 a MB. All of silicon glen practically closed.

[TuFun]

My very first computer was a kit build.  That was in the late 80"s and it was a 386SX 16 with 1 meg of ram plus an amber 13" monitor.  Two floppy drives 3.5 and 5.25.  Don't recall the size of the hard drive but it was big 5.25 hdd.  All paid for by Pell grant in college.  Pretty much built computers ever since!

[hal9000]

Hi,

 

buyed my first PC, an IBM-XT used, for nearly 1000€ (2000 Deutsch-Mark) in 1986. But my wife hate this thing, which I need a lot of time to understand how it works.

First virus was the MS 3.0 which I fly all the time.

 

Leaving my wife some years later, first thing was to  buy a new AMD 486-66 DX in 1994. And, of cours, the new FS 5.1

 

Here a picture with my oldest Son.

 

PS. The speaker are working in my garage today