What was the very first computer you owned or used ?

[Halcyon]

Sharp PC1211 which I still have today

You inspired me to crack out my Sharp PC-3100 palmtop. I also have a whopping 2MB PCMCIA SRAM card to go with it.

[gamalot]

My first computer was a Sharp PC-1246 pocket PC (in year 1985)

[amspire]

The first computers I used would have been a CDC Cyber mainframe at university with either punched cards or optically scanned cards (marked boxes with a pencil). This was followed by a DEC VAX mainframe with terminal screens or more commonly the DEC LA36 Printer Terminals. With these everything you entered or received back from the computer was printed on paper - there was no screen, but this seemed like heaven compared to punch cards. We even played the famous Startrek game on these which used a massive amount of paper. Graphics from packages like Spice was just done with ascii characters - no real graphics.

The first computer I owned was the Sinclair ZX80 kit.

At work, the first was the HP9825A programmable calculator (used a Basic language) and the HP1000 mainframe with two gigantic 64MByte hard drives! Sounded like jet engines starting up when you turned them on and disk crashes were real disk crashes - the giant multi-platter glass disks totally shattered within the huge removable cartridges and it took about a day for technicians to clean up the mess and get the drive working again with a new cartridge and new heads. You had to boot the HP1000 using toggle switches to enter the first few CPU instructions to load the bootloader. Mainframe computers didn't know then how to start on their own.

[dfnr2]

Used: Xerox Sigma 9 (via punch card/batch, then ASR-33, then Hazeltine 1500)

Owned: Ohio Scientific C2-4P, 8K RAM, cassette interface, BASIc-in-ROM

[JXL]

Used:  IBM System/370 in college, programming in Fortran IV
Owned: Atari 400, 16k RAM (upgraded to a whopping 48k), modded with a 28pin ZIF socket to program UV EPROMS.

[pfrcom]

Used: IBM 1130 & Fortran IV

Owned: IBM Series/1, EDX O/S & EDL language

[boffin]

Used (ie wrote code for), an Olivetti Programma 101


Owned, Commodore PET 2001 (2nd gen, w/ external tape)

[gnif]

This board and any other hand-me-downs my dad had finished with



Not as old as the stuff you guys had, I am not that old

even today i'd just about kill for one of those older machines that was programmed with switches, just so I could have a go

I also had older stuff, commodore and amiga things, but that wasn't the first... they were given to me. Somewhere I still have an original Commodore thermal printer.

[Halcyon]

This board and any other hand-me-downs my dad had finished with

I hope that's an old photo and you've since removed that CMOS backup battery before it leaked all over the place ;-)

[mtdoc]

First used:  Apple II.  1981 or so - college freshman psychology course - had to learn basic and program basic statistics with it.

First owned: - sort of - my dad bought my brother and I a Z80 based Timex-Sinclair TS1000 in 1982.  Hooked it up to a 9" B&W TV and played. Later an Apple IIe.

[gnif]

This board and any other hand-me-downs my dad had finished with

I hope that's an old photo and you've since removed that CMOS backup battery before it leaked all over the place ;-)

That's not my photo, just the same board. I sold a 486 never before used still in original packaging board a few months back, sill had it's battery, and was 100% intact.

Edit: Just found the photos

[GerardWassink]

Hi y'all,

My first computer was an ELF II, see this page on my website.

I built it from a kit around a RCA 1802 processor. It had one full quarter Kilobyte of memory, a two digit hex output, a seventeen key keyboard and one LED we could have blink and some digital inputs and outputs. One had to program it in machinecode starting from address zero, one hexadecimal byte followed by an enter at a time.

Still I was able to program my little model railroad with it.

Those where the days my friends, those where the days...


A picture:

[jhalar]

First computer owned: a Dick Smith Super80 kit computer (was my 2nd kit built when I was a kid).

First practical computer owned: a Microbee 56k system with two 360k  5 1/4" disk drives and CP/M 2.2. Used until the end of my 2nd year of my EE degree before buying a PC.

[netdudeuk]

First computers I learned to program on -

Transam Triton
Altair time sharing system with VDUs and teletypes

First computer I owned -

ZX81 with custom keyboard made from Maplin key switches

First computer I programmed on for a living -

HP85

I had one of those plotters but it was rebranded as a Tandy.

[netdudeuk]

I've still got an original Microprofessor MPF-1 from 1981.

[dave_k]

Since it hasn't been mentioned yet, my first official computer was given to me when i was (maybe) 6 years old. It was a Commodore VIC-20 with tape drive. I spent years learning to program on that.. writing games, little database programs (for mum's recipe collection) and other such nonsense programs. 

[Dan Moos]

First used were Apple IIs and PETs at school.

First owned, was a TI 99-4/a

[tggzzz]

Pah! All modern crap.

There's an example of the first computer I used still running at The National Museum of Computing - along with guides that whip out the circuit diagrams and start discussing them with you. Excellent.

TNMoC also has the world's oldest operating computer.

[Naguissa]

The first computer I've owned was a Sinclair ZX Spectrum, it was a present for my 8th birthday back in 1982. At home we had already Zx80/81 and Commodore Pet amongst others I can't remember now.

I was born at 82, jeez..

Tje first was an Amstrad CPC 6128 with floppy, tv tunner and alarm clock. It was from my brother.

But the one I really was initiated in informatics world was next one, a 486 dx-50 with a Cirrus Logic 1Mb Vesa Local Bus card. That PC suffered me a lot....


Edit:



Enviado desde mi Jolla mediante Tapatalk

[Kalvin]

Telmac 1800 (based on COSMAC ELF II, but had a simple PCB-keyboard) with 2KB of RAM, 64*32 pixel NTSC TV output, sold as a kit. The programs were delivered on a C-cassette. Upgraded to full 4 KB and built better keyboard. Programmed using assembly and Chip-8.

http://itametsa.mbnet.fi/harras/pi_ku_ti_ha/telmac-rak.JPG

[ebastler]

Does this one count? 


http://www.experimentierkasten-board.de/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=50

The Kosmos "Logikus", which I got in the early 1970s. A plugboard, 10 switch banks, 10 little light bulbs (behind a transparent paper overlay). Essentially you could wire logic equations, and the user would position the switches, either to provide input or in response to the output shown via the light bulbs. No clock or registers in this one, thank you very much!

The Logikus did come with a great instruction book and clever application examples. It could help you solve logic puzzles, for example -- I seem to remember the one with the wolf, the goat, and the cabbage which you had to get across a river by rowboat...

Sorry, I could find German web pages only. Has this been sold elsewhere under a different name?
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logikus

EDIT: To answer my own question -- yes, the "LOGIX" was a licensed version for the US market. And the overlay on this LOGIX looks very much like that skipper with the wolf, goat and cabbage:   


http://www.samstoybox.com/toys/LogixComputer.html

[bd139]

Sinclair ZX80. My father built the kit and I inherited it when he'd moved on to better things. It was cannibalised for parts to do Art of Electronics in about 1992 as it had a Z80 CPU and lots of useful TTL ICs. Fortunately he distrusted it so much (being Sinclair this was wise!) to add IC sockets. It was so horrible to use that it deserved to be eviscerated.

[DTJ]

I used a TI Silent 700 around 1978. Not quite a computer as the computer was at the other end of the phone line.

It was terminal that had an acoustic coupler that your land line hand piece sat into. Cutlery being clinked together in the kitchen would make it print out spurious characters.

It had a paper roll "display" on which any input or output was printed.

I used to connect to a PDP11 mainframe @ my fathers work.

[MK14]

Early on I changed the thread title from 'owned' to 'owned or used', so I've added this post, to fill in the extra details. I've already said my first owned computer was a self built MK14 (photo in OP was NOT the one I built, none of the photos are of the machines I actually used, stock ones used).

The first "computer" I remember seeing in real life (which was not really a computer, but from that era, it just about counts as one), was an all valve/tube (but it did have one Germanium transistor in the voltage supply circuitry), was an Anita calculator, probably the first one, which was a MK8. But I did NOT use it, so it does not really count. (But later on I did play around a lot with an early, Toshiba calculator. It had lots of TO-metal-canned ICs in it, and could flash its nixie tubes in a really fascinating way, for lots of seconds, when you gave it a massive calculation).
It looked much bigger than the picture seems to show. It was the size of a very large typewriter.





Ignoring calculators and a programmable calculator (Texas Instruments SR-52), my first access to a computer, was an ancient all TTL (mini-computer like) massive desktop Wang computer. Called something like a 2200. Similar to the picture below (but I remember it being all white in colour, except the top floppy drives).
I use to love programming it (for fun) in its built in Basic language.



Later I had access to (not necessarily in accurate time order, as I can't accurately remember the exact timing sequence):
Commodore Pet, nice for programming in its built in Basic, and even 6502 machine code.

ASR-33 mechanical terminal + paper tape available + modem to talk to a mini-computer, which was probably one of the ICL1900 series, computers. If I remember correctly the language used was CECIL. An early, assembly language like programming environment. One step above machine code.

Commodore 64, which was mainly for gaming.
BBC model B microcomputer (later with floppy disk, external add on, and one or more extra Rom/EPROM chips)

Mainframe computer, made by ICL, 2900 series, in the classical format of the time. A huge (air-conditioned room), with massive cabinets. A very fast line(page) printer (it could print things out, amazingly quickly), many computer operators. Access to the computer was by video display unit terminals (there were VERY few of these) so access to them was VERY rare, printing terminals with built in keyboards (probably Dec). Very rarely access (if you could use one of the more 'modern' terminals, that was the preferred solution), via punched card (which I remember doing).

My first (owned) PC, was an Amstrad PC1512, with colour screen (EGA if I remember correctly), pair of floppies, 20 megabyte external hard disk (internal ones were possible at the time, but I wanted to keep access to two floppies, for easy copying of them). 8086 at 8 MHz, 640K ram (if I remember correctly, but it could of been 512K).
I actually designed schematics and PCBs on it (as well as all sorts of other things, I did with it). I had access to a (long term borrowed) Rowland Plotter.
Turbo Pascal was amazingly fast on it. Eventually I used C as well (Turbo C).

[PA0PBZ]

First one I used - no idea. It was at the other end of a teletype thing on a trade show. Yes, that was the only way to use a computer at the time.
First one I owned was a KIM-1, set me back about a years earning from my paper delivering job. It should still be around somewhere, but with a blown PIA if I remember correctly.