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Products => Computers => Vintage Computing => Topic started by: MK14 on July 28, 2017, 06:14:41 pm

Title: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: MK14 on July 28, 2017, 06:14:41 pm
Mine was, a Science of Cambridge, MK14, self build computer (effectively from Clive Sinclair's, Sinclair Radionics new venture).
It was based on the National Semiconductors, 8 bit SC/MP (also known as a 'scamp') microprocessor. With a huge 256 bytes of ram.
8 (or 9 if rewired) digit, seven segment (calculator) display, a membrane hex (plus a few more keys) keypad.

I did have access to some computers, before this. But it was the first that was all mine and owned by me.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MK14 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MK14)

This is apparently the first new thread, since the new "Vintage Computing", sub-forum has started. Apparently a number of existing threads have already been copied into it.


Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned ?
Post by: NivagSwerdna on July 28, 2017, 06:23:57 pm
I used other peoples computers for a while (especially COSMAC ELF, PDP11, ICL1902T & PET) but the first computer I ever bought (after working the summer holidays) was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tangerine_Microtan_65

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c0/Tangerine_Microtan_65_In_System_Rack.jpg)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned/used ?
Post by: blackbird on July 28, 2017, 06:28:57 pm
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.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned ?
Post by: MK14 on July 28, 2017, 06:32:57 pm
I used other peoples computers for a while (especially COSMAC ELF, PDP11 & PET) but the first computer I ever bought (after working the summer holidays) was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tangerine_Microtan_65

I changed the title from 'owned' to 'owned/used', so it is more flexible.

I've heard lots of good things about the COSMAC ELF, but never used one. The Pet's were really fun at the time.
I've heard of the Microtan 65, but not had anything to do with them. But it looks like a decent/useful computer, for that era.
Amazingly low price, for something in such a big case, as well.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned/used ?
Post by: pelule on July 28, 2017, 06:34:18 pm
My first computer I used was a Siemens System 3003 (https://www.f10479.de/siemens_edv.html (https://www.f10479.de/siemens_edv.html))
My first computer I owned was a z80 based self-made CPM80 system.
/PeLuLe
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: AndyC_772 on July 28, 2017, 06:44:45 pm
Commodore 4032:
http://oldcomputers.net/pet4032.html (http://oldcomputers.net/pet4032.html)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: nali on July 28, 2017, 06:47:30 pm
First "proper" computer was probably a Sinclair ZX81. Followed shortly by a homebrew Apple ][ as someone at work managed to get hold of some  ripoff blank motherboard PCBs that were doing the rounds, probably around 1982/3.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: bsudbrink on July 28, 2017, 06:53:24 pm
Make up your mind!   :)

Used: HP-1000 E-Series
Owned (and still own): Ohio Scientific C1-P

(http://q7.neurotica.com/Oldtech/VCF-East2008/VCFEast2008-50L.jpg)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: grumpydoc on July 28, 2017, 06:55:11 pm
Used: TRS80, Exidy Sorcerer, RM380Z

The latter got me into slightly tepid water at school when a friend and I edited all the error strings in the basic interpreter to be, ahem, slightly more pointed.

Owned: Nascom 2
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: awallin on July 28, 2017, 07:06:54 pm
Commodore 64, with a tape drive  ;D
BASIC programming, with mysterious PEEK and POKE commands.
later got a 5.25" floppy-drive, and also a Pascal compiler at some point.

The C64 was replaced with a 286 running at 8 MHz.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: sarel.wagner on July 28, 2017, 07:20:57 pm
Mine were an Apple ][, Commodore Vic 20, Sinclair Spectrum, HP 150 and Apple Lisa. Also Later a Commodore 64 and Olivetti Portable  :-DD  Still have a few of them today.

Rgrds
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: CJay on July 28, 2017, 07:22:13 pm
Used, whatever was at the end of the teletype at Manchester Uni and a Commodore PET with, I think, 8K or 16K memory.

Owned, Commodore VIC20
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned ?
Post by: NivagSwerdna on July 28, 2017, 07:39:01 pm
I've heard lots of good things about the COSMAC ELF, but never used one. The Pet's were really fun at the time.
The Head of Physics at our school built one from the design in Practical Electronics.  It was awesome.  (I should probably build http://www.cosmacelf.com/gallery/membership-cards/ (http://www.cosmacelf.com/gallery/membership-cards/) as homage if I ever get the time).  You programmed it via switches.. one bit x8 forming one instruction at a time.  The bootstrap to enable the external hex page he also built was around 100 instructions... it didn't take long one you had the hang of it an an assistant calling out the hex.  :)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: rolycat on July 28, 2017, 07:57:25 pm
Used, Hewlett-Packard HP9810A from 1971 (at school in the late 70s):

(http://www.hpmuseum.org/98xx/9810n3qs.jpg)

Owned, Compukit UK101 from 1979:
(https://www.eevblog.com/forum/vintage-computing/what-was-the-very-first-computer-you-owned/?action=dlattach;attach=336047)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned ?
Post by: MK14 on July 28, 2017, 08:03:16 pm
I've heard lots of good things about the COSMAC ELF, but never used one. The Pet's were really fun at the time.
The Head of Physics at our school built one from the design in Practical Electronics.  It was awesome.  (I should probably build http://www.cosmacelf.com/gallery/membership-cards/ (http://www.cosmacelf.com/gallery/membership-cards/) as homage if I ever get the time).  You programmed it via switches.. one bit x8 forming one instruction at a time.  The bootstrap to enable the external hex page he also built was around 100 instructions... it didn't take long one you had the hang of it an an assistant calling out the hex.  :)

The RCA1802 microprocessor, has some special (unique at the time), properties (if I remember correctly). It was both CMOS and certifiable for spaceflight/satellites.

That (or a similar variant) tiny computer you just mentioned, is just, so, so, cute!  :)

(https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4143/4827284508_c67b8dbf5e_z.jpg) (https://flic.kr/p/8mz6vf)1802 Membership Card Powered Up (https://flic.kr/p/8mz6vf) by Todd Decker (https://www.flickr.com/photos/ptdecker/), on Flickr
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: darrellg on July 28, 2017, 09:04:31 pm
Commodore PET with the Chiclet keyboard and built-in cassette drive.
(https://www.eevblog.com/forum/vintage-computing/what-was-the-very-first-computer-you-owned/?action=dlattach;attach=336063)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: nctnico on July 28, 2017, 09:39:53 pm
A Yamaha CX5M MSX-1 computer with Midi interfaces (actually my father bought it)
(http://museo8bits.com/yamaha_cx5m.jpg)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Astrodev on July 28, 2017, 11:12:01 pm
I am afraid I went in the deep end, as at the time I was trying to get hold of an Ohio Challenger but they were in short supply so I ended up going with a TI TMS990/101 TMS9900 (16bit) based board with 2 serial ports and a massive 4K (2K x 16) of RAM, the unusual feature was that it would handle 2 users (provided you had 2 terminals) I am afraid that I had to run it from a Teletype ASR33 which meant that the storage medium was good old paper tape.

I still have both the board and the Teletype (don't really use either these days), might be fun to use a modern PC as a terminal to run 70's computer, it wont be the first time as back in the 80's I used a BBC B with a Tek 4010 emulation ROM to run a Data General Nova 820 that I also still have (64K of core memory) was part of an original EMI scanner.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Halcyon on July 29, 2017, 12:12:33 am
Mine was the Sharp MZ-800 (http://www.sharpmz.org/mz-800/mz8tdata.htm) (released in 1985).

Z80A CPU running at 3.5469MHz, 64KB RAM and supported a resolution up to 640x200 (albeit in only 4 of the 16 available colours).

Mine had the tape drive, "Quick Disk" floppy drive (which could load 64KB of data in 8 seconds) and the 4-colour plotter printer. It was a pretty powerful machine at the time and the way it utilised sound and graphics hardware was pretty amazing.

I spent many hours as a kid playing on that machine. I even learned basic programming using Logo (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logo_(programming_language)). I sold it all in the 1990's along with a box full of tapes and disks for $50 -- I now wish I hadn't.


Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Astrodev on July 29, 2017, 12:15:18 am
Was that the plotter with the 4 colour biro refils
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Halcyon on July 29, 2017, 12:17:20 am
Was that the plotter with the 4 colour biro refils

It sure was! It drew one colour at a time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19ItGu2vZB0 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19ItGu2vZB0)

The down-side was that it wasn't long before the pens dried out.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: tautech on July 29, 2017, 12:26:57 am
Commodore 64, with a tape drive  ;D
BASIC programming, with mysterious PEEK and POKE commands.
later got a 5.25" floppy-drive, and also a Pascal compiler at some point.

The C64 was replaced with a 286 running at 8 MHz.
Very similar pathway with C64 and floppy drive added soon after.

First real PC was 486 @ 100 MHz (Otech Mobo) with 8 Mb 7ns RAM that cleaned up P100's running the same spec.  :)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Jay_Diddy_B on July 29, 2017, 12:34:42 am
Hi,
The first computer I used was a KSR 33 teletype and an acoustic MODEM to link to a remote mainframe. This was around 1970. I believe the MODEM ran at 110 baud, which is 10 characters per second.

I used the RCA 1802 COSMAC ELF II as a summer student.

The first computer I owned was the Acorn Atom (6502) 4k RAM 4k ROM. I also owned a BBC model B. Acorn developed the Acorn Risc Machine. The Acorn Risc Machine later became ARM.

I was a late adopter of the PC, around 1987. My first PC was a 386 I paid $4000.00 it had a 68MB hdd, divided into three partitions. I later bought the 387 Maths co-pro ($750.00) , so I could run Intusoft SPICE.

Regards,

Jay_Diddy_B

 
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: MK14 on July 29, 2017, 12:35:15 am
Was that the plotter with the 4 colour biro refils

It sure was! It drew one colour at a time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19ItGu2vZB0 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19ItGu2vZB0)

The down-side was that it wasn't long before the pens dried out.

That youtube-video/plotter looks, so cool now!
Pity that the pens would run out too quickly and maybe expensive and/or hard to obtain, these days.

I just love the way it plots out the schematic. The noise it makes is pretty fantastic as well.
I guess the modern day printers (especially Laser), whereby it comes out almost instantly (maybe 3 seconds per page, on a middle of the road, laser printing single sided, with lots of pages at the same time) and silently (in comparison).

I suppose I would get fed up with it, after a while, and go back to modern printers. I pity you, that you sold the lot for $50 a while ago. That's life I guess.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Specmaster on July 29, 2017, 12:44:59 am
My first computer was a pocket one, Sharp PC1211 which I still have today and followed by Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48K, also still have that as well, Since then there has been many others but all were and still PC clones, the first of which was an Amstrad 1512 with the power supply built in to the monitor.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Halcyon on July 29, 2017, 01:09:22 am
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.


Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: gamalot on July 29, 2017, 01:22:32 am
My first computer was a Sharp PC-1246 pocket PC (in year 1985)

Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: amspire on July 29, 2017, 02:05:48 am
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.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: dfnr2 on July 29, 2017, 02:31:01 am
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
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: JXL on July 29, 2017, 02:37:44 am
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.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: pfrcom on July 29, 2017, 03:20:16 am
Used: IBM 1130 & Fortran IV

Owned: IBM Series/1, EDX O/S & EDL language
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: boffin on July 29, 2017, 05:30:10 am
Used (ie wrote code for), an Olivetti Programma 101
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5e/Olivetti_Programma_101_-_Museo_scienza_e_tecnologia_Milano.jpg/1200px-Olivetti_Programma_101_-_Museo_scienza_e_tecnologia_Milano.jpg)

Owned, Commodore PET 2001 (2nd gen, w/ external tape)
(http://www.cosam.org/images/pet/pet.jpg)


Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: gnif on July 29, 2017, 05:44:00 am
This board and any other hand-me-downs my dad had finished with :D

(http://www.biocomp.net/DTK_286_board.jpg)

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.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Halcyon on July 29, 2017, 05:47:56 am
This board and any other hand-me-downs my dad had finished with :D

I hope that's an old photo and you've since removed that CMOS backup battery before it leaked all over the place ;-)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: mtdoc on July 29, 2017, 05:49:22 am
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.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: gnif on July 29, 2017, 05:59:05 am
This board and any other hand-me-downs my dad had finished with :D

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 :)

Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: GerardWassink on July 29, 2017, 06:00:15 am
Hi y'all,

My first computer was an ELF II, see this page on my website (http://nerd.gerardwassink.nl/computers/specific-computers/elf-ii/).

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:

(http://nerd.gerardwassink.nl/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2016/11/PB134897.jpg)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: jhalar on July 29, 2017, 06:04:17 am
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.

Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: netdudeuk on July 29, 2017, 06:32:06 am
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.

Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: netdudeuk on July 29, 2017, 06:33:57 am
I've still got an original Microprofessor MPF-1 from 1981.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: dave_k on July 29, 2017, 06:52:18 am
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.  :-+
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Dan Moos on July 29, 2017, 06:59:04 am
First used were Apple IIs and PETs at school.

First owned, was a TI 99-4/a

Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: tggzzz on July 29, 2017, 07:21:57 am
Pah! All modern crap.

There's an example of the first (http://blog.abodit.com/2010/03/elliott-803-early-computer/) computer (http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/CCS/res/res03.htm#e) I used (https://www.scienceandsociety.co.uk/results.asp?image=10303580) still running (https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Elliott+803) 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.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Naguissa on July 29, 2017, 07:39:36 am
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:

(http://www.museo8bits.com/wiki/images/4/45/Amstrad_CPC_6128.jpg)

Enviado desde mi Jolla mediante Tapatalk
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Kalvin on July 29, 2017, 09:01:30 am
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 (http://itametsa.mbnet.fi/harras/pi_ku_ti_ha/telmac-rak.JPG)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: ebastler on July 29, 2017, 09:14:12 am
Does this one count?  ;)

(http://galerie.experimentierkasten-board.de/data/media/1/Logicus02.png)
http://www.experimentierkasten-board.de/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=50 (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 (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/toypics/LogixComputer.jpg)
http://www.samstoybox.com/toys/LogixComputer.html (http://www.samstoybox.com/toys/LogixComputer.html)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: bd139 on July 29, 2017, 09:46:41 am
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.

Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: DTJ on July 29, 2017, 10:25:12 am
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.

Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: MK14 on July 29, 2017, 10:56:43 am
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.

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b7/AnitaMk8-01.jpg/550px-AnitaMk8-01.jpg)

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/44/AnitaMk8Inside1.jpg)

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.

(https://www.mvmag.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Computer-Montage-Sept-16.jpg)

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).
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: PA0PBZ on July 29, 2017, 10:59:57 am
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.

(http://www.old-computers.com/museum/photos/mos_kim1.jpg)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: digsys on July 29, 2017, 11:12:31 am
CDC6400 Fortran 4, Adelaide University 1970? approx. Charge out time $20 per processor sec. Computer club members - free 10Sec a week.
Had a job cleaning the valve pins !! Heaven :-)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Nusa on July 29, 2017, 11:44:46 am
Hard to say, since I've been around computers my entire life, wound up in it as a career, and I've used many of those things you now call vintage.

I don't personally remember the incident, but my parents have a story about me in 1960 (at the age of 2) hitting the big red emergency stop button in the university computer room and shutting down the mainframe. That's the risks of taking your kid to work!
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: amspire on July 29, 2017, 11:54:29 am
CDC6400 Fortran 4, Adelaide University 1970?
Sounds like all Australian engineering students in that era did Fortran with the Watfor compiler. It resided in core memory and could compile at an unbelievable 100 lines of code per second! Perfect for handling thousands of student assignments without having to reload the compiler for each job. I never touched Fortran again after the course.

Pascal became really big a few years later. The C language seemed to be reserved for the Computer Science students only. Probably the compilers were not very efficient.

Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: digsys on July 29, 2017, 12:48:11 pm
Quote from: amspire
  ... Pascal became really big a few years later. The C language seemed to be reserved for the Computer Science students only ...
Ahhhh yeah, I remember the introduction of Pascal, and the first programming language wars (on PUNCH-CARDS  :-) ) !!  Never got interested in C
I moved to Flinders University, SA's rival uni, and moved into other science fields. There were sooo many new ones to discover :-)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: SL4P on July 30, 2017, 01:26:35 am
Signetics KT-9500 board (expanded to 8KB)
ETI serial  terminal kit.
A long time ago!
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: SL4P on July 30, 2017, 03:13:01 am
My boss had an SC/MP based kit (before EDUC-8)
It was playing with that which led me on to a bigger & better world!
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: amspire on July 30, 2017, 04:59:57 am
Did anyone here make the Electronics Australia EDUC-8 or the Miniscamp? Still got it?
I wanted to build something like the IMSAI 8080 that came out a little later, but I was never rich enough. It was a pretty huge investment back then but at least is was expandable into something practical. It looked like a real computer at the time.

The EDUC-8 was just too limited for anyone but a college in my opinion. It was a computer built totally from TTL logic I believe with an incredibly small amount of RAM. When they said it was a learning computer, they meant it. You probably had to write in machine code directly.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: joeqsmith on July 30, 2017, 05:03:22 am
I guess my brain was the first. 

Does this one count?  ;)

(http://galerie.experimentierkasten-board.de/data/media/1/Logicus02.png)
http://www.experimentierkasten-board.de/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=50 (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 (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/toypics/LogixComputer.jpg)
http://www.samstoybox.com/toys/LogixComputer.html (http://www.samstoybox.com/toys/LogixComputer.html)

I believe I have that same model that I got as a child.  I remember it taking me a fair amount of time to assemble and then work my way through all the examples.  I remember having a favorite example but it's been so long.  Maybe some sort of cannibal and missionary..  Maybe TIC-TAC-TOE.   
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: tggzzz on July 30, 2017, 07:24:20 am
Quote from: amspire
  ... Pascal became really big a few years later. The C language seemed to be reserved for the Computer Science students only ...
Ahhhh yeah, I remember the introduction of Pascal, and the first programming language wars (on PUNCH-CARDS  :-) ) !!  Never got interested in C

I first sampled "wars" with character sets and 5 channel punch tape, as used by teleprinters. My first assembler program was to convert from something-or-other to Elliott code. It worked first time, partly because I had unwittingly and triumphantly reinvented FSMs :)

Exercise for youngsters: how do you encode all the digits plus a few symbols plus the upper-case alphabet in the 25=32 codes available in 5 channel paper tape?
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: rolycat on July 30, 2017, 11:30:15 am
Exercise for youngsters: how do you encode all the digits plus a few symbols plus the upper-case alphabet in the 25=32 codes available in 5 channel paper tape?

I dunno if I qualify as a youngster - I never encountered paper tape, but I have punched cards in anger.

Anyway, the answer is that you don't. You encode the alphabet plus a 'shift to figures' code. Then you re-use the same 32 codes (less the 'shift to letters' code) for digits and symbols until you need to switch back.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Gary350z on July 30, 2017, 12:04:08 pm
The first computer I used:
Some type of small main frame in the basement of the college library that was connected up to several terminals, I remember three CRT terminals and two teletype terminals. You saved your programs on paper tape. This was 1976.
I heard there was a computer in the library basement and thought that was interesting. I played around with it for a while, then printed out one of its programs (it was in BASIC). By studying the program I figured out how programming worked, and started writing my own programs. I had no programming instruction, classes, or books. I learned just by studied that original program. My first programming class was two years later, which was very easy because of what I already knew.

The first computer I owned:
Ohio Scientific C1P, bought in 1979 for $350.
4K RAM
8K BASIC in ROM
Programs were stored on an audio cassette recorder.
Had a keyboard and hooked up to a TV through a home made RF modulator.
See photos below:
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: brucehoult on July 30, 2017, 01:10:05 pm
Personally owned? Pick between TI57 in 1979 (8 floating point registers, 50 bytes of program space) or Apple IIcx in 1989 (16 MHz 68030, zero RAM, zero HD at purchase .. I added my own 3rd party of each. Anything from 1 MB - 128 MB RAM was supported).

Used: HP97, TI58, Burroughs B1800, PET, TRS-80, Apple ][, PDP11, VAX, Macintosh, DEC Rainbow, Sanyo MBC555, IBM 5150, DG MV...
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: tggzzz on July 30, 2017, 01:24:03 pm
Exercise for youngsters: how do you encode all the digits plus a few symbols plus the upper-case alphabet in the 25=32 codes available in 5 channel paper tape?

I dunno if I qualify as a youngster - I never encountered paper tape, but I have punched cards in anger.

Anyway, the answer is that you don't. You encode the alphabet plus a 'shift to figures' code. Then you re-use the same 32 codes (less the 'shift to letters' code) for digits and symbols until you need to switch back.

Almost correct :) There's also a "delete" code (all holes punched) which works in both lettershift and figureshift modes; hence there are a total of 60 symbols available.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: rob77 on July 30, 2017, 01:41:03 pm
first i used was a Tesla PMD85-1 (8 bit 8080 with 48kB RAM)
(https://www.eevblog.com/forum/vintage-computing/what-was-the-very-first-computer-you-owned/?action=dlattach;attach=336554)

and the first i owned was a Didaktik gama - it was a ZX spectrum clone with 80kB of RAM.
(https://www.eevblog.com/forum/vintage-computing/what-was-the-very-first-computer-you-owned/?action=dlattach;attach=336556)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: ebastler on July 30, 2017, 01:46:04 pm
Almost correct :) There's also a "delete" code (all holes punched) which works in both lettershift and figureshift modes; hence there are a total of 60 symbols available.

Almost correct :)  The essential control characters (letter and figure shift, carriage return, line feed, space) all need to work in either state. That reduces the number of encodable symbols a bit further.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: cdev on July 30, 2017, 02:01:09 pm
The first computer I actually owned was probably a VIC-20 I owned for a while in the very early 1980s. I had a lot of fun fooling around with that but, as I couldn't connect up to anybody else I eventually exhausted all its possibilities and then life changes made it so I didnt have the time or money for several years to get another one. My next computer was not really a computer, it was a dumb Televideo 925 terminal that I found being thrown out which worked and had a 80x24 screen. That was the machine that I used to hook up to my first Unix BBSs - a process that gradually led me to the Internet. After I got an Atari 520ST I started being able to get bits of computing related work, and my income rose a bit. Then I got a used Mac, the first in a long chain of Macs.

Eventually I was able to afford non-used computers too.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: tggzzz on July 30, 2017, 02:02:23 pm
Almost correct :) There's also a "delete" code (all holes punched) which works in both lettershift and figureshift modes; hence there are a total of 60 symbols available.

Almost correct :)  The essential control characters (letter and figure shift, carriage return, line feed, space) all need to work in either state. That reduces the number of encodable symbols a bit further.

<expletive deleted>

You might think senility is creeping up on me; I could not possibly comment :(
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Nusa on July 30, 2017, 02:23:11 pm
Almost correct :) There's also a "delete" code (all holes punched) which works in both lettershift and figureshift modes; hence there are a total of 60 symbols available.

Almost correct :)  The essential control characters (letter and figure shift, carriage return, line feed, space) all need to work in either state. That reduces the number of encodable symbols a bit further.

Known as Baudot-Murray code, after Emile Baudot's hand-keyed telegraph code, later modified by Donald Murray to minimize wear on punch machines (common letters used the fewest holes). Western Union used it for over 50 years. The TTY version of the code was a slight modification of that.

Baudot is also where we coined the term "baud rate", which refers to symbols per second. In modern usage, baud rate usually uses symbols defined as 1 bit, which makes it the same as bit rate.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Richard Crowley on July 30, 2017, 02:36:29 pm
First computer programmed:  IBM 1620 at school

(http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8278/8942466121_db0327bc2e.jpg)

First computer owned: a system built on the S-100 bus with CPU, DRAM, I/O cards from several vendors...

(http://www.artsci.net/bill/first-computer/first-computer-insides.jpg)

And I built several "Ferguson Big Board" computers. Z80, 64K RAM, CP/M, on-board dual floppy interface, and on-board 80x24 CRT terminal.

(http://www.stevenjohnson.com/pics/big-board-ad1.jpg)


Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: tggzzz on July 30, 2017, 02:48:41 pm
Almost correct :) There's also a "delete" code (all holes punched) which works in both lettershift and figureshift modes; hence there are a total of 60 symbols available.

Almost correct :)  The essential control characters (letter and figure shift, carriage return, line feed, space) all need to work in either state. That reduces the number of encodable symbols a bit further.

Known as Baudot-Murray code, after Emile Baudot's hand-keyed telegraph code, later modified by Donald Murray to minimize wear on punch machines (common letters used the fewest holes). Western Union used it for over 50 years. The TTY version of the code was a slight modification of that.

There were several such 5-channel codes. My school had one, the local tech college with the computer had another - hence my foray into assembler for a 39-bit machine.

Quote
Baudot is also where we coined the term "baud rate", which refers to symbols per second. In modern usage, baud rate usually uses symbols defined as 1 bit, which makes it the same as bit rate.

Except where it isn't, with all the OFDM modulation systems being modern examples.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: ebastler on July 30, 2017, 03:06:54 pm
Almost correct :)  The essential control characters (letter and figure shift, carriage return, line feed, space) all need to work in either state. That reduces the number of encodable symbols a bit further.

<expletive deleted>
You might think senility is creeping up on me; I could not possibly comment :(

Ahh, don't be too harsh on yourself there!
I cheat -- I am keeping a Baudot teletype in the study to refresh my memory occasionally.  ;)

(Fond memories of that one: It was actually my first computer printer. Obtained third-hand in 1980, when radio amateurs were happy to replace those noisy buggers with microcontroller-based RTTY solutions.)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: CatalinaWOW on July 30, 2017, 04:59:21 pm
My first use computer was an IBM 1620 that was the training computer at university.  It was student operated, the console, card reader and card punch were all just walk up and use.  Used magnetic core memory and punched cards and the memory were the only storage options.  Languages available were assembly and FLAG (Fortran Load and Go) a memory resident version of FORTRAN II. 

From there it was on to a Burroughs 6600 which was the university mainframe.  Batch input on card decks, or, drum roll please, you could use the new experimental time sharing system using teletype terminals.  Reliability was not one of the strong points of the time share system.  I will always remember the frequent -

P
  L
    O
       P

System Failure.  Restarting.

Burned the old "Save Early, Save Often" mantra into my brain.

My first personal computer was the COSMAC Elf II.  Fun but basically unsatisfactory.  The only really redeeming feature was that it was the embedded computer used in my job at the time and it was nice to have the extra background/knowledge.

Then went to a homebrew Z80 based S100 bus machine with dual 8 inch floppyies that was my workhorse for several years, even after building a single board Z80 computer into a terminal to take to work.  This was a few years before my employer provided anything other than mainframe computer support to employees.  That S100 machine with upgrades lasted until I finally decided that the IBM compatible desktop thing was for real and bought a clone.








Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: eugenenine on July 30, 2017, 10:12:01 pm
I feel young now starting with a Commodore 64.  Then I got an SX64 then an Amiga 500 then a 20MHz 286 and ah HP48SX and PIC16c54.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: brucehoult on July 30, 2017, 10:57:23 pm
I remember those "Big Board" ads well and wished that I had a spare $500 in US money, plus whatever it would cost to send money to the US and a board back.

It probably would have cost a heck of a lot more to make it useful.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: alanb on July 31, 2017, 01:18:04 pm
First used computer - Manchester University Atlas (Atlas Auto code)
First owned - home made 6800 (Newbury labs? PCB)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: capt bullshot on July 31, 2017, 01:29:47 pm
My first computer was this one:
(http://computermuseum.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/pics/christiani/scmp_2s.jpg)
http://computermuseum.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/dev/christiani/ (http://computermuseum.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/dev/christiani/)

Bought it at a local flea market, half of the documentation was missing - still got some use out of it, like programming blinky LEDs on the 7 segment display (with only half of the instruction set of the SC/MP documented)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: alank2 on July 31, 2017, 01:43:06 pm
Great pictures here everyone.

First computer I saw was a PET at school playing this gold miner game.  It was amazing how fun mining for gold was and going up and down that elevator to get to more exploration!

First computer my family had was a VIC-20.

My first computer was a NEC PC-6001A.  I recently bought one from eBay and repaired the bad diode rectifier in it that was pulling 2.5A at 120VAC.  The composite output it pretty nice, but the RF output is pretty noisy.  Other than that it works pretty well.  I ordered a slot backplane that plugs into its cartridge port to turn that into 4 slots using double row header along with a 16K RAM module and 512K ROM module.  I'm going to make a microSD to FDD interface module for it as well.

Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Stefan Payne on August 01, 2017, 02:21:06 am
Well, of course the 'Brotkasten' (=Bread Box). C64 in that ugly brown case.
After that some time later I got an Olivetti PC286S. Sadly no pictures of that unit were ever made by me.

Also with an 14" VGA Monitor...
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: MarkF on August 01, 2017, 05:47:12 am
My first computer used out of school was a Honeywell DDP-516.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: tggzzz on August 01, 2017, 07:26:19 am
My first computer used out of school was a Honeywell DDP-516.

Ah, I did my final year project on one of those.

It was fun to see
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: poorchava on August 01, 2017, 12:10:49 pm
My first was a PC, going from my memory:
-Cyrix 133MHz
-16MB RAM
-2MB Matrox Millenium 2D video card
-no sound card
-2x 850MB interchangeable HDDs (one was for my mom's CAD work, the other one was for mine and my sisters' games)

IIRC it was quite expensive back in 1996, as most parts were picked to provide room for epansion and upgrade... one year later it was a total junk, such was the speed of technology development back then.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Tepe on August 01, 2017, 06:45:27 pm
The first computer I used was a Regnecentralen RC7000 (basically a rebranded Data General Nova 1200, I think).
The first I owned was a VIC-20...
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: fable on August 01, 2017, 08:21:43 pm
Comodore 64 then atari 1040st
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: retrolefty on August 01, 2017, 08:31:38 pm
First were various mini-computers in the early 70s as a field service engineer. Around that time I took a night class at local community college on Fortran taught on a IBM 1130 system.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: rdl on August 03, 2017, 06:47:35 pm
This is the first computer I owned. It's an IBM PS/1 Model 2168-37C. I pulled it out of the closet this morning and started it up for the first time in over a decade. It seems to be working fine. The clock was off by just under a minute.

(https://www.eevblog.com/forum/vintage-computing/what-was-the-very-first-computer-you-owned/?action=dlattach;attach=338090;image)

The processor is a 486DX2-50 with 4MB RAM and the hard drive is 256MB. I added many upgrades over the next few years. It came originally with Windows 3.1 and DOS 6 but now has Windows 95.

(https://www.eevblog.com/forum/vintage-computing/what-was-the-very-first-computer-you-owned/?action=dlattach;attach=338092;image)




Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: rdl on August 03, 2017, 09:11:04 pm
Yes. I am a pack rat.

(https://www.eevblog.com/forum/vintage-computing/what-was-the-very-first-computer-you-owned/?action=dlattach;attach=338141;image)


I still have the original box also, but that's buried too deep in the outside closet to get to easily.



Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: ebastler on August 03, 2017, 09:16:57 pm
Yes. I am a pack rat.

Hey, that's great! So you still have the number to call for repair service, if you ever need it.  ;)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: MK14 on August 03, 2017, 09:17:10 pm
Yes. I am a pack rat.

No, a pack rat would still have the CRT monitor, it originally came with (or the one you were using at the time). I presume you didn't get an LCD monitor, in 1993.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: rdl on August 03, 2017, 09:41:37 pm
Sadly, the original monitor did not last much longer than the warranty. I don't think I got my first LCD monitor until around year 2000 or later. I still have it though and it probably still works.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: MK14 on August 03, 2017, 09:52:13 pm
Sadly, the original monitor did not last much longer than the warranty. I don't think I got my first LCD monitor until around year 2000 or later. I still have it though and it probably still works.

Yes, now you mention it. I remember, many of them only did last a few years and the picture deteriorated, after a few years as well (even if it still worked). I'm NOT 100% sure, as it is a distant memory, now.

Like you. I did have a 486 system at one point, but (unfortunately, as I would like to have it now, as a legacy system) I sold the motherboard, and replaced it with a Cyrix cpu based motherboard, or whatever the upgrades were at the time.

The monitors from that time point, were often really small, and the picture quality was often not that great. So I guess you are not missing too much.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: metrologist on August 03, 2017, 09:56:33 pm
What, no claims of an Antikythera computing machine?

Apple IIe+
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: bitseeker on August 03, 2017, 10:23:42 pm
Used: TI 99/4 (at school)

Owned: TRS-80 Color Computer (still have it -- has RAM issue -- but it's low in the repair queue)

Neither had storage devices. Want to run a program or play a game? Type the source code in and don't turn it off until you're sure you don't want to use it anymore.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: rdl on August 03, 2017, 10:32:04 pm
The first computer I actually used was a Commodore PET when I took a class on BASIC programming in college in the early eighties. There was one Apple computer of some kind in the computer lab, but you had to be an advanced student before you were even allowed near it.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: joeqsmith on August 05, 2017, 09:29:28 pm
Now that I see it, this was the box mine came in.   I've attached a few pictures of the manual.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-1971-Logix-0-600-Electronic-Computer-50-Programs-Assemble-w-Manual-Box-/162600265476?hash=item25dbbb2704:g:rccAAOSwUsJYWFCv (http://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-1971-Logix-0-600-Electronic-Computer-50-Programs-Assemble-w-Manual-Box-/162600265476?hash=item25dbbb2704:g:rccAAOSwUsJYWFCv)


Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: ebastler on August 06, 2017, 05:57:13 am
Thanks Joe! Especially for the "farmer & goat" manual page, which is exactly what I recall.  :)
I will need to go looking for my "Logikus" computer. I have a feeling that it is still in storage at my parents' place...
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: joeqsmith on August 07, 2017, 02:25:31 am
Thanks Joe! Especially for the "farmer & goat" manual page, which is exactly what I recall.  :)
I will need to go looking for my "Logikus" computer. I have a feeling that it is still in storage at my parents' place...

No problem.  I found mine when I was cleaning out my parents house.  Surprised they kept it.  That farmer goat program was the missionaries and cannibal problem I remember.  I think this is really what set the hook for my love of digital hardware design.  At this age, I had played with old TVs and radios but nothing digital.  We had no calculators yet beyond an old adding machine that someone had given me.  This was really my introduction to the digital world.

I started reading the manual but now have a much better appreciation for it. 

Here is the chess game.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: ebastler on August 07, 2017, 05:21:35 am
Here is the chess game.

Thanks for that one too! I don't recall it from my Logikus computer, and the American author attribution suggests that they have added further programming examples for the U.S. version.

I'll definitely go looking for the Logikus at the next oportunity. I don't recall whether I ever got around to designing my own programs as a kid -- time to do that now, maybe?
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: joeqsmith on August 07, 2017, 10:57:12 am
I don't recall whether I ever got around to designing my own programs as a kid -- time to do that now, maybe?

It will be interesting to see what ideas you come up with that would translate to the switch logic available.  That in itself may be the hardest part.   What, no clock?  What, no FFs?   :-DD :-DD
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: ebastler on August 07, 2017, 11:49:12 am
It will be interesting to see what ideas you come up with that would translate to the switch logic available.  That in itself may be the hardest part.   What, no clock?  What, no FFs?   :-DD :-DD

Just put a metronome next to it to clock the user!  ;)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: MK14 on August 07, 2017, 12:09:30 pm
It will be interesting to see what ideas you come up with that would translate to the switch logic available.  That in itself may be the hardest part.   What, no clock?  What, no FFs?   :-DD :-DD

You can, just get a similar kit, with all the wires and switches, plus a motor (as the clock) and a few relays to give flip flop like actions. See here:
(Apologies, soundtrack NOT English, He runs it later in the video, just after the 1 min 30 sec mark).

Amazingly it can play Naughts and crosses (Tic Tac Toe) against the computer from 1961, even though it only consists of wires, switches, lamps, a motor (which effectively is a ROM and hence the program and program counter), and 6 relays.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6OA8HfnxxU (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6OA8HfnxxU)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Towger on August 07, 2017, 12:20:15 pm
Used: Apple II
Owned: Oric 1
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: VK5RC on August 07, 2017, 12:56:43 pm
Used ; DEC I think PDP, belonged to the Uni where my father worked - played Moon Lander ! 1978 I think
Owned ; PC 386 1997
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: IanMacdonald on August 08, 2017, 06:19:24 am
Years ago the Birmingham science museum had an electromechanical computer that played fox and hounds. Cabinet about 6ft high and 2ft deep filled with PO 3000 style relays. Worked very well too, although like chess programs it had one or two strategy weaknesses that you could exploit to win every time once you knew them.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: WastelandTek on August 08, 2017, 06:31:29 am
"owned" is relative

"had use of"?

would have been the HP calculator Dad brought home from work

you could feed the "moon lander" game strip through it, some sort of mag strip memory, then attempt to feed fuel and not crash...what    a     machine

"owned" would have been a suitcase Osbourne rig with a flaky CRT circuit, I had to jam a pencil in it just so to make the HV work, a hand-me-down from my...yes...grandfather, it ran CP/M as I recall
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: MK14 on August 08, 2017, 06:56:34 am
Years ago the Birmingham science museum had an electromechanical computer that played fox and hounds. Cabinet about 6ft high and 2ft deep filled with PO 3000 style relays. Worked very well too, although like chess programs it had one or two strategy weaknesses that you could exploit to win every time once you knew them.

I would have liked to have seen that.
Presumably the Birmingham Science Museum is no more. Replaced by the Millennium Thinktank (with its Museum), I think.
Unfortunately I've never been to the Birmingham Science Museum, the wiki says it no longer exists, closed in 1997, replaced in 2001 by the Millennium Thinktank, in a different location.

The (London) Science Museum made a good visit. Most of the time I did not even know Birmingham had one, by the time I did, I was mostly NOT visiting Museums.

In general, I preferred UK museums, many decades ago, because they were potentially more interactive and you could get closer to the stuff, or at least feel like you are closer, even if you are not.

So many of the computers (which I used, many, many years ago), and I presume some others posting in this thread in some cases feel the same. Now are mainly viewable in museums. Especially big mainframe/mini computers, which are mostly NOT in peoples homes, or gathering dust in peoples attics.
Is this because the computer age has come and moved so quickly, or is it because time has moved on ?

I've still got it partly in my head, that mainframes are the only real and proper computers. Yet they are (in my opinion), mostly extinct these days (*** To avoid forum disagreements, I AGREE, Mainframe computers are still around, but in general Big Server Racks are more the normal now ***).
Replaced by rack servers and PC computers. I guess it was a marketing ploy by IBM and other manufacturers to help them sell these very expensive huge big Iron Mainframe computers.
Even mini-computers (still huge by todays standards), were somewhat ridiculed as well. Again, probably by Mainframe computer sellers, I presume.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: tggzzz on August 08, 2017, 07:27:10 am
In general, I preferred UK museums, many decades ago, because they were potentially more interactive and you could get closer to the stuff, or at least feel like you are closer, even if you are not.

As I've mentioned before, The National Museum of Computing is superb in that respect. Both times I've been I've had long discussions with people about the internals of the first computer I used - including poring over the (very large) circuit diagrams.

(One day i suppose I'll go to the Bletchely museum next door.)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: MK14 on August 08, 2017, 07:43:27 am
In general, I preferred UK museums, many decades ago, because they were potentially more interactive and you could get closer to the stuff, or at least feel like you are closer, even if you are not.

As I've mentioned before, The National Museum of Computing is superb in that respect. Both times I've been I've had long discussions with people about the internals of the first computer I used - including poring over the (very large) circuit diagrams.

(One day i suppose I'll go to the Bletchely museum next door.)

Thanks!
I'm embarrassed to admit that I've still not been there yet. Lots of people I've met or know, thoroughly recommend it for me. It seems to be something (visiting there), that is waiting for this particular "rainy day", which never seems to come.
So far, when I've been somewhat close to it, I've been too tired or busy with other things, to pop in.

My only excuse is that I want to spend a long time there. Which makes it harder to do that, and do/visit what ever else I was doing, at the time.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: tggzzz on August 08, 2017, 08:08:22 am
In general, I preferred UK museums, many decades ago, because they were potentially more interactive and you could get closer to the stuff, or at least feel like you are closer, even if you are not.

As I've mentioned before, The National Museum of Computing is superb in that respect. Both times I've been I've had long discussions with people about the internals of the first computer I used - including poring over the (very large) circuit diagrams.

(One day i suppose I'll go to the Bletchely museum next door.)

Thanks!
I'm embarrassed to admit that I've still not been there yet. Lots of people I've met or know, thoroughly recommend it for me. It seems to be something (visiting there), that is waiting for this particular "rainy day", which never seems to come.
So far, when I've been somewhat close to it, I've been too tired or busy with other things, to pop in.

My only excuse is that I want to spend a long time there. Which makes it harder to do that, and do/visit what ever else I was doing, at the time.

I used to invoke such pathetic "reasons" :) Now I'm more enlightened, I drop in when I'm in the area, even if only for a couple of hours.

Feel the clunk of an ASR33 under your fingers.
Listen to the music being played on a 2kIPS room-sized computer.
See the world's oldest operating computer.
Play adventure on a mainframe.
And be very irked that your once-prized possessions are now museum pieces :(
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: ebastler on August 08, 2017, 09:05:57 am
Years ago the Birmingham science museum had an electromechanical computer that played fox and hounds. Cabinet about 6ft high and 2ft deep filled with PO 3000 style relays. Worked very well too, although like chess programs it had one or two strategy weaknesses that you could exploit to win every time once you knew them.

The Heinz Nixdorf Museum (in Paderborn/Germany) still has a similar game on display. Called "Wolf and Sheep", but I believe it's the same game. Their version was built by an electrical engineering student in 1951. He did slightly shrink the playing field, to 8*7 instead of 8*8, because he did not have enough relays. ;-)  Managed to fit everything into a pretty compact box though, much smaller than what you describe.

The only photo I could find online does not quite do it justice: https://goo.gl/images/ohHYru.

Unfortunately one cannot play the vintage game in the museum; it is displayed behind glass. But they have an interactive explanation including the playable game on a touch screen next to it.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: CJay on August 08, 2017, 09:33:25 am
In general, I preferred UK museums, many decades ago, because they were potentially more interactive and you could get closer to the stuff, or at least feel like you are closer, even if you are not.

As I've mentioned before, The National Museum of Computing is superb in that respect. Both times I've been I've had long discussions with people about the internals of the first computer I used - including poring over the (very large) circuit diagrams.

(One day i suppose I'll go to the Bletchely museum next door.)

I've done the opposite, Bletchley twice now but haven't managed to visit the Computing Museum.

It's worth spending a day on but try and find a day when they're demonstrating the machines, it's really very impressive to see them running.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: tggzzz on August 08, 2017, 09:45:33 am
In general, I preferred UK museums, many decades ago, because they were potentially more interactive and you could get closer to the stuff, or at least feel like you are closer, even if you are not.

As I've mentioned before, The National Museum of Computing is superb in that respect. Both times I've been I've had long discussions with people about the internals of the first computer I used - including poring over the (very large) circuit diagrams.

(One day i suppose I'll go to the Bletchely museum next door.)

I've done the opposite, Bletchley twice now but haven't managed to visit the Computing Museum.

It's worth spending a day on but try and find a day when they're demonstrating the machines, it's really very impressive to see them running.

Agreed.

Is Bletchley worth seeing? My prejudice is that it will be static and the information available will be polished, canned and limited.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: CJay on August 08, 2017, 10:02:17 am
Agreed.

Is Bletchley worth seeing? My prejudice is that it will be static and the information available will be polished, canned and limited.

I think it's worth a visit, there's an atmosphere to the place, it's got a fair few non cipher/code breaking displays which have little interest for me and the tech stuff is pitched at a level that's intended to make it easy to understand for the average museum visitor.

It is quite interesting but feels 'corporate' in places, there's a full room dedicated to (from memory) GCHQ and it's all 'fluff' for instance.

I wanted more detail and tech things which is why I'd recommend going on a day when the machines are running, speaking to the guys who do the demos is rather informative and just seeing the machines run explains how it was done a lot better than any static display would, for me at least.

Oddly, the RSGB have a nice display there too, some good working demos of basic radio/electronics principles.




Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: bd139 on August 08, 2017, 10:05:41 am
I've got the week off next week. I'm trading NMOC vs Science Museum. The latter has rockets in it which means it's currently winning.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: CJay on August 08, 2017, 10:14:14 am
You could do both, depending where you're traveling from one could well be on the way to the other and if you need to do overnight MK is far cheaper than London at this time of year.

Science museum is spitting distance from V&A, Natural History and a stone's throw from the British (and they are all capable of soaking up a whole day or more, I'd recommend at least two days each for the big ones) as well as dozens of other smaller museums, all worth a visit.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: bd139 on August 08, 2017, 10:17:09 am
Not a bad idea actually. I'm in West London so neither are a terrible journey from me.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Dataforensics on August 08, 2017, 03:21:39 pm
First used either an IBM/360 or an Olivetti Programmer 101. It was at school in my early teens. My school had the 101 and I still have my issued mag card somewhere. With the 360 we had a punch card machine and had to send them to North East London Polytechnic that was nearby. The language was Fortran.
My first owned one was also a Sinclair MK14 that soon got modified with a home assembled micro switch one to replace the awful rubber one.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Old Don on August 09, 2017, 01:13:46 pm
Quest Super Elf kit and later on added the optional S-100 expansion board. First laptop was a NEC PC-8500 with CP/M and Wordstar plus other "Star" programs all in ROM.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Old Don on August 18, 2017, 12:27:12 pm
After posting my 1st post to this forum got me looking on eBay and there was an As-Is "parts" Quest Super Elf going for a few bucks and so I put an under $50 bid in on it. It sold for about $250! It was missing a key top and didn't even have the optional expansion board, Tiny Basic or other stuff. Yikes, I need to dig my original one out of storage and get it up and running!!!!!
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Shred on August 19, 2017, 07:39:20 am
The first I used was a PDP/11 at a local community college. My friend's father was a teacher there and took us in on a Saturday afternoon. I think we played "Super Star Trek" on an amazing new VT100 "glass tty". (Look: it has smooth scolling).

First owned, like a couple of earlier posters was a Dick Smith Super-80 kit.  It ended up being extensively modifed - to the point that the original board served mainly as a common point for all the extra boards to plug in to. It has an 80 column video card, a floppy disk controller and a memory expansion board. I still have it and it still worked last time I fired it up. I had an ASR33 teletype that I used as a printer. My parents complained that it sounded like a machine gun going off when I used it.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Smith_Super-80_Computer
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Insatman on August 19, 2017, 10:01:18 am
First computer I used was an NCR Century 50.  It had magnetic core memory...a whopping 8K of RAM.  I programmed it in a high school computer class, one of the first for my area.
We upgraded to 16K before I left school.  The only input was punch cards...the only output was printer paper.   No CRT back then.

The first computer I owned was an Osborne Exec.  I got it when Osborne went bankrupt for the then bargain price of $600.   I probably put another $3000 into it over the years.  Adding Quad Density 5.25" drives, a harddrive kit, various modems and memory upgrades and of course external monitors.

Memories....I replaced it with an Amiga 2000, but that's another story
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: djos on August 30, 2017, 09:40:58 am
First Computer I ever:

used was an Amstrad CPC-6128 in primary school:

(https://i.ytimg.com/vi/OwPUzsDRJpQ/hqdefault.jpg)

owned (family) was a Tandy 1000 EX

(http://www.1000bit.it/lista/t/TANDY/1000ex/Tandy_1000EX.jpg)

owned (personally) was an Amiga 500:

(http://computers.mldgroup.com/src/articles/amiga-16-bit/amiga-500/amiga-500.png)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: sprintcarfan on September 18, 2017, 11:52:07 pm
First post ever...

First computer ever used was an Apple II or II Plus (~1982) in 3rd grade at school.

First computer ever owned was a TI-99/4a (with cassette player!) received as a Christmas gift in 1983 or 1984 after TI had pulled out of the market and were practically giving them away.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: TK on September 19, 2017, 12:41:20 am
Used IBM 5100 in High School

(https://www.eevblog.com/forum/vintage-computing/what-was-the-very-first-computer-you-owned/?action=dlattach;attach=352365;image)

Owned TI 99/4a at home

(https://www.eevblog.com/forum/vintage-computing/what-was-the-very-first-computer-you-owned/?action=dlattach;attach=352367;image)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: kaz911 on September 19, 2017, 06:47:24 pm
My first computer was some  4004 demo kit with 0-9/A-F keyboard and a few bytes of ram .. and a bloody paper roll to "print on" :)

My 2nd was a self-assembled Sinclair ZX80 kit much like this;
(http://searle.hostei.com/grant/zx80/original_zx80_kit.jpg)

Then I had a Lambda something

Then a Vic 20

But my favourite was the BBC-B (Bleep) - with great basic and teletext graphics and ?High? resolution mono graphics. Hours/Days/Months spent on typing in code from magazines like the dancing skeleton playing ?Sweet things are made of..?

Then in ''84'ish I got upgraded to the first clone PC's.

Apart from that I played on other peoples C64/Amiga/AmstradCPC/AcornRiSC's/Atari 520/ZX Spectrum etc.

But my favourite is still the BBC-B... I think I have to find one in good condition to keep safe. :)

My first own hardware project was a Midi interface for ISA bus PC's back when only Roland did PC Midi Interfaces nobody in their right mind could afford. I even wrote a 16 track sequencer for it? Darn one had a lot of spare time when one was young.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: jmelson on October 04, 2017, 10:27:51 pm
Used:

PDP-5  (forerunner to PDP-8)
LINC  (12 bit mini, discrete transistor)
IBM 360/50  (via punch cards, 8 hour turnaround, UGH!!!)
Kind of about the same time, so hard to figure which was first

Owned:
I built an 8008 computer with 256 bytes of memory in 1976.  Couldn't do much on such a limited system, but learned a lot!
I got an S-100 backplane and built up an 8080 system by 1977, upgraded to Z-80 CPU, added a floppy drive and CP/M.
eventually added an SASI disk drive and 9-track mag tape backup.

Later moved up to a MicroVAX-II.  Rather a LARGE step up!
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: austfox on October 05, 2017, 03:57:53 pm
Used:

Exidy Scorcerer (running a Zilog Z80)

Owned:

Casio PB-100 Pocket Computer (a whopping 512 bytes), which is still in great condition!



Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: tggzzz on October 05, 2017, 05:23:53 pm
I built an 8008 computer with 256 bytes of memory in 1976.  Couldn't do much on such a limited system, but learned a lot!

Just so, except in my case it was a 6800 (still have the chip), 128 bytes RAM + 16 byte bootload/dump, and 1977.

It was very helpful w.r.t. getting an interesting final year project, and a great talking point in job interviews.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: khs on October 05, 2017, 07:14:35 pm
My ZX81 kit. My best computer ever.

For me it was a development system like the adruino today, because on the rear side all pins of the Z80 are available.

With the Basic peek and poke commands it was easy to control external hardware via the Z80 in/out commands, so it was not quite difficult to make an EPROM programmer.

With the self made EPROM programmer, it was possible to burn a (I think it was a 4K EPROM) Hex code printed on some pieces of paper (after hacking in...)

I think the name of the program was ASCMIC, it replaced the Sinclair PROM.

ASCMIC was a quite powerful Z80 assembler / debugger, so I had all to make the firmware for a video card with 512 x 256 pixel.

Due to my special DRAM timing (built with a lot of 74LSxx logic chips), it was possible to read / write the DRAM during the CRT readout. Sure, the card was not as fast as video I/O today, but not slow for it's time.

It was possible to mix graphics and text, so the way to a layout program was not far. It used just pixel, so the layout was somewhat angular, but usable. Since this time I'm a proud owner of a (quite expensive) HP7475 plotter to generate the 2:1 plots for the pc-board manufacturer. It was quite expensive to make pc-boards this time..

The video card then was a part of a CPM system with an ECB bus. I was quite surprised my cheap CPM computer was more flexible than the PDP11's of the institute I worked.

With Turbo Pascal and the ECB bus it was quite easy and fast to control an experiment.

Later the ECB bus was controlled by a PC via the ISA bus.

My job this time was to help the students to make their computer control of their (in most cases optical or laser) experiments. This time I invented standardized ECB cards and standardized Turbo-Pascal units. So for the students it was not difficult to make their work without me, so I had more time for myself.

My first self made CNC mill worked with steppers controllers via the ECB/ISA bus many years until it was replaced by a professional machine.

Meanwhile the ISA to ECB interface is replaced by an USB to ECB interface, so I can still use all of my old cards e.g. to program microcontrollers or control DAC's for calibration or debug purposes.

Since last year my Windows XP runs in a virtual machine on a Linux OS, but the 19" rack with the old ECB backplane of the ZX81 era is still used and works fine.

So even in 2017 a little bit of the spirit of my good old ZX81 is still alive in my lab.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Bicurico on October 05, 2017, 10:03:52 pm
My path went this road:

1981 - ZX81 (with 16KB RAM expansion)
1984 - C64 (with 1541 floppy disk drive, later with 1701 Color Monitor, Datasette and Commodore needle printer)
1988 - Amiga 500
1989 - Casio FX-850P Pocket Computer (with 32KB RAM expansion)
1994 - Silicon Graphics Indy, Indigo, O2 (at work, of course - they cost a 5 figure sum each back then)
1994 up to today: PC's

I still own a lot of them: ZX81, C64, Amiga 500, Casio FX-850P & FX-880P, HP 200LX, HP Omnibook (the first one), Silicon Graphics Indy and O2, etc.

I had a MacIntosh, but gave it away, which I now consider a mistake.

Never had an Apple ][, but got to use them at school. They sucked compared to my C64 (at least in my opinion, back then).

As a kid I used to visit the German stores (Kaufhof and Hertie). They had all the home computers in display and you could actually try them out, so many kids even brought their own floppy disks with pirated games to play and trade them there with other kids... Some kids didn't even have any computer at home and just "lived" with the computers available at the stores. People were much poorer back then, which is something we forget nowadays, when we complain that a new iPhone or Samsung Note 8 cost 1000 bucks. 1000 Deutsche Mark was the initial price of a C64!!!

Anyway, using the computers at the stores gave me some insight on:

- Amstrad
- Atari 600, 800, etc.
- MSX
- ...

At a friend I got to see and use an Atari ST. Pretty interesting high resolution B/W monitor for that time and the MIDI interface connected to a synthesizer (Roland DX-7) was cool, too.

I am a TEA (Test Equipment Addict), but I suffer from OCCS (Old Computer Collection Syndrome). I have it under control right now and the last outbreak was contained to programmable calculators. This got me the HP 11C (great device, bought for peanuts), amongst many other calculators. I still lack a representative of the pocket computers made by Sharp, like the E500 and I would love to get a Casio PB-1000 and PB2000. Not to mention the Epson HX-20 which I loved to use in the stores back in the eighties. It was unbelievable small and yet complete with tape and printer!

Cheers,
Vitor
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: djos on October 05, 2017, 10:20:25 pm

I am a TEA (Test Equipment Addict), but I suffer from OCCS (Old Computer Collection Syndrome). I have it under control right now and the last outbreak was contained to programmable calculators. This got me the HP 11C (great device, bought for peanuts), amongst many other calculators. I still lack a representative of the pocket computers made by Sharp, like the E500 and I would love to get a Casio PB-1000 and PB2000. Not to mention the Epson HX-20 which I loved to use in the stores back in the eighties. It was unbelievable small and yet complete with tape and printer!

Cheers,
Vitor

Me too, I just recently whittled my collection down to 10.  :-DD

Currently I have:
1x Commodore 64
2x Amiga 500's
1x Amiga 600
1x Amiga 1200
Tandy 1000 EX
Mac SE
Mac LC630 (effectively a Quadra as it has the full-fat 040 in it)
PowerMac G3 Beige Desktop
K6-III+ Clone PC with S3 Virge graphics , SB AWE64 + Roland MT-32 Synth

I recently sold of several LCIII's and a 3rd spare Amiga 500 to pay for the Tandy 1000 EX and some peripherals.   8)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Selectech on October 05, 2017, 10:49:15 pm
Started with a 6800 and 256 bytes of ram on a breadboard, with a CRT display made from a TV, around 1976.   Eventually expanded it to have 48K ram, some 8" floppies, then added a couple of 1 mbyte  fixed head disks and ran UCSD pascal. ( still have the chip, but not the breadboard ).

Added an Apple II clone ( orange ) to the mix, booted from the fixed head disks, running Apple / USCD Pascal. Pseudo local network, just not Ethernet.

Had a teletype unit as a printer, but eventually replaced that with a DEC LA36 printer made from some salvaged, repaired materials and a bit of mechanical & woodworking.

Made another USCD Pascal machine from an AM29116 and another from AM29201.

Eventually migrated the lot to MC68000, then MC68020 with a few mbytes of ram and integrated colour CRT display.

Many PC's along the way, 8080, 8085, 286, 386, 486, 586, Pentium, Xeon ... . Current notebook is a fanless Core m3, but have several desktops around that I use for test setups and file-stores.

Now doing a lot of work with embedded ARM controllers, Cortex-M3, Coretx-M4, Cortex-M7 using Astrobe Oberon tools.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: djos on October 05, 2017, 11:01:53 pm
Started with a 6800 and 256 bytes of ram on a breadboard, with a CRT display made from a TV, around 1976.   Eventually expanded it to have 48K ram, some 8" floppies, then added a couple of 1 mbyte  fixed head disks and ran UCSD pascal. ( still have the chip, but not the breadboard ).

Added an Apple II clone ( orange ) to the mix, booted from the fixed head disks, running Apple / USCD Pascal. Pseudo local network, just not Ethernet.

Had a teletype unit as a printer, but eventually replaced that with a DEC LA36 printer made from some salvaged, repaired materials and a bit of mechanical & woodworking.

Made another USCD Pascal machine from an AM29116 and another from AM29201.

Eventually migrated the lot to MC68000, then MC68020 with a few mbytes of ram and integrated colour CRT display.

Many PC's along the way, 8080, 8085, 286, 386, 486, 586, Pentium, Xeon ... . Current notebook is a fanless Core m3, but have several desktops around that I use for test setups and file-stores.

Now doing a lot of work with embedded ARM controllers, Cortex-M3, Coretx-M4, Cortex-M7 using Astrobe Oberon tools.

Nice, despite never having used them myself, I find 8" floppy disks and drives inherently sexy ... prolly got something to do with one of my fav movies being WarGames.  :-+
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: wkb on October 07, 2017, 08:23:20 pm
The first computer I had my hands on was a home-built Motorola M6800 design. At a tech youth club called "De Jonge Onderzoekers" here in NL ("Young scientists & inventors", "Jugend forscht" etc).

I went on to build my own M6809 based system, running at a whopping 2MHz and with 1MB of DRAM. It was a Dutch variant of the SWTP/09 system. It runs Uniflex, a Unix V6-spin of written in assembly.  I wrote runs instead of ran because I still own it. On last power up it told me it's Rodime RO204 harddrive has bought it :( Looking for a solution I ordered a MFM disk emulator PCB at http://pdp8online.com/mfm/mfm.shtml (http://pdp8online.com/mfm/mfm.shtml)
The PCB arrived this week, I hope to be able to get the whole thing running again, I still have all the distribution floppy disks, both in 5.25" and in 8" format.  And yes, I also have the 8" floppy drive to go along with it..

Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: radar_macgyver on October 07, 2017, 09:42:35 pm
Mine was a Sharp EL-5500 (http://Sharp EL-5500)

(http://pocket.free.fr/images/sharp/el-5500.jpg)

I remember programming it to play Battleship, one had to scroll to see the playing field.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: bitseeker on October 07, 2017, 09:45:10 pm
Hey, I had one of those, too. It met an unfortunate demise during a move. So sad.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: jcrubin on October 16, 2017, 01:52:44 am
I still own my very first computer i've ever used, its a Commodore 64 and all of the same hardware is used in this video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueAz00thGAg (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueAz00thGAg)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: djos on October 16, 2017, 09:28:12 am
Hey, I had one of those, too. It met an unfortunate demise during a move. So sad.

I had an Atari Portfolio that got thrown out during a move too, I'm still irritated by its loss to this day - especially after I checked eBay to see what they sell for now.  |O
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: hli on October 16, 2017, 12:11:46 pm
The first computer I actually used was an East German A5120 (see http://www.robotrontechnik.de/index.htm?/html/computer/a5120.htm (http://www.robotrontechnik.de/index.htm?/html/computer/a5120.htm) - the one with 3 5.25'' drives). I played around learning BASIC programming. THe first computer I owned was a Commodore C16 - there I also learned assembler programming and building my own hardware extensions.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Alex Eisenhut on October 18, 2017, 02:49:09 am
My parents got me a VIC-20 for Christmas. I must have been 12, 13?  By then, I already wanted a 64 but they were still too expensive. I had used Atari 800s at a neighbor's and at a computer camp.

Another neighbor had a VIC in the basement, I borrowed game cartridges and I learned (through sheer stubbornness and curiosity, because I was left to myself!) how to copy them. I had an article in a magazine describing how to make a 24K RAM expansion for the VIC, I could only afford 16K. (Each chip was 20$ at the time, I remember that! It took a while to scrape that together at the time.) Radio Shack supplied the PCB and solder.

Eventually, by age 15 I had various odd jobs and bought a weird C64 motherboard from the surplus shop. This was from a "PET64". It was a 64 with modified ROM to boot up in black and white (because Commodore shoved those 64s into PET cases!) and no SID. This 4064 had no power connector or switch populated; seems C= just soldered them in directly.

http://www.floodgap.com/retrobits/ckb/secret/4064.html (http://www.floodgap.com/retrobits/ckb/secret/4064.html)

I shoved that motherboard into my VIC case, it's the same power supply and keyboard. The VIC case had a much larger expansion connector, but the rest was the same. The 64's narrower expansion slot fit just right, with the left over space used by the 64's built-in RF modulator. I drilled a hole in the top of the case to put a big old DPDT switch for the power.

Then I got a SID from the repair place, I popped that in and I had a 64 that booted with a B/W screen. This didn't affect anything AFAIR.

Eventually I got a 1541 drive, a 256K expansion, a 1581 3.5" floppy, a printer, and a proportional mouse for the thing and I was handing in printed assignments in high school. GEOS really made that silly 1526 (identical to the MPS-802. Why C= felt the need for two part numbers I don't know) printer much better, even if it took 20 minutes per page.... (No, I ain't kidding.)

I also got a replacement KERNAL to boot up with the correct 64 colors and boot up message.

Ooooh, I managed to upgrade that 256K expansion to 512K with DRAM chips I found in the bushes outside a Microserv. Someone upgraded their Mac and threw the old DIMMs out on the street. Didn't take me too long to pick them up and desolder the 41256 DRAMS!

This was all a lot of fun, and I'm not even talking about the warez scene at the time....
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: rrinker on October 20, 2017, 02:47:24 pm
 First used? TRS-80 Model 1, when they first came out. I bought the manual for a whopping $5 and taught myself BASIC. I was ll of 11 years old at the time, and loved when we went to the mall - I made a beeline for the Radio Shack store and stayed there the whole type using the store demo machine. I eventually even had a binder with my programs and some cassettes to save them on.

 First owned, was a kit built Quest Super Elf (RCA 1802). Built from a kit, the original machine had a whole 256 bytes of RAM. I was about 13, managed to build it all and get it working. The following year I got the expansion add on which gave it 4K of memory. Still have it, and it still works. and I still remember most of the opcodes so I can quickly key in short demo programs for people. There is a VERY active Yahoo Group for 1802 enthusiasts.


Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Smokey on October 20, 2017, 08:35:40 pm
Used = Apple2
Owned = Custom built 486 with windows 3.1

Looking back I'm so glad I didn't get the apple at home.  That PC was the start of the path to where I am now.  Good times.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: ebastler on October 20, 2017, 09:15:00 pm
So what did you do during the 10 years between that Apple II and the 486? ;-)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Smokey on October 23, 2017, 01:17:51 am
I was in a coma.  You are so inconsiderate!!!!!  Say you're sorry!

Really though, Apples2 were in school computer lab at time I got 486.  When was the last time you saw brand new computers in a school lab?  Aren't they always at least 10 years old?

According to Wikipedia:
Apple2
Release date    June 1977, Discontinued    November 1993

486
Produced    From 1989 to 2007

That overlaps anyway :)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: ebastler on October 23, 2017, 05:45:21 am
Apples2 were in school computer lab at time I got 486.  When was the last time you saw brand new computers in a school lab?  Aren't they always at least 10 years old?

Ah -- at that time, you were smart indeed not to get an Apple II for home use. ;)

You had mentioned Windows 3.1 running on your 486, which dates it even later; 1992 and onwards? By that time, one had to have very specific reasons (legacy software etc.) to buy an Apple II, I guess. Even a newfangled one like the IIGS, or whatever model was still being sold then...  :)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: CatalinaWOW on October 24, 2017, 01:06:12 pm

 By that time, one had to have very specific reasons (legacy software etc.) to buy an Apple II, I guess. Even a newfangled one like the IIGS, or whatever model was still being sold then...  :)

Totally agree.  I got one of the IIGS free as a bank promotion somewhere around 1992.  It was a bad deal at that price.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned ?
Post by: schmitt trigger on October 24, 2017, 01:14:42 pm


The RCA1802 microprocessor, has some special (unique at the time), properties (if I remember correctly). It was both CMOS and certifiable for spaceflight/satellites.

(https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4143/4827284508_c67b8dbf5e_z.jpg) (https://flic.kr/p/8mz6vf)1802 Membership Card Powered Up (https://flic.kr/p/8mz6vf) by Todd Decker (https://www.flickr.com/photos/ptdecker/), on Flickr

And if I remeber correctly, it could also operate at Vdd = 15v.
Which was kind of pointless, because the available memory devices ran at 5v.

I also had a Cosmac 1802 board.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: MarkL on October 24, 2017, 02:57:42 pm
Used:

APL on an IBM 2741 terminal with dial-up to an IBM System/360, 1974 or so.  APL was my first language.  That took a major amount of un-learning when I started learning BASIC as my next language.

The 2741 was actually a converted IBM Selectric typewriter, which was needed to accommodate the special APL character set.  Stock photo of a 2741:

(https://www.eevblog.com/forum/vintage-computing/what-was-the-very-first-computer-you-owned/?action=dlattach;attach=363562)

Owned:

Some single-board 8085 system, I don't remember the manufacturer anymore.  It had no peripherals but I had fun hand-assembling programs and typing them into the console monitor with a clunky CRT terminal (SWTPC CT-82).

The first useful computer I owned was a home-built Z80 system with a 5MB hard drive (yes, that's megabyte), with 256kB of bank switched memory.  It ran CPM and later ZCPR.  It still runs after 35 years, although I had to hit the hard drive spindle with a hammer because the brake had frozen on it.  It was all wire wrapped, except for the Xebec SASI disk controller which was purchased.

(https://www.eevblog.com/forum/vintage-computing/what-was-the-very-first-computer-you-owned/?action=dlattach;attach=363564)
(https://www.eevblog.com/forum/vintage-computing/what-was-the-very-first-computer-you-owned/?action=dlattach;attach=363566)
(https://www.eevblog.com/forum/vintage-computing/what-was-the-very-first-computer-you-owned/?action=dlattach;attach=363568)

I thought the converted Selectric was a neat idea, so when I needed a printer I built a Z80 controller for a junked Selectric.  I still have it, but it needs a good cleaning and re-oiling.

(https://www.eevblog.com/forum/vintage-computing/what-was-the-very-first-computer-you-owned/?action=dlattach;attach=363570)
(https://www.eevblog.com/forum/vintage-computing/what-was-the-very-first-computer-you-owned/?action=dlattach;attach=363572)
(https://www.eevblog.com/forum/vintage-computing/what-was-the-very-first-computer-you-owned/?action=dlattach;attach=363574)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: bitseeker on October 24, 2017, 09:10:31 pm
Hmm, I suppose one could also convert a Selectric into a PC keyboard. Such a flexible machine. ;D
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: MarkL on October 25, 2017, 01:14:39 pm
Hmm, I suppose one could also convert a Selectric into a PC keyboard. Such a flexible machine. ;D
I suppose you could, but it would be a horrible thing.

The Selectric keyboard is completely mechanical and inseparable from the print mechanism.  Whatever you type on the keyboard is printed by the typeball.  The only electrons in the stock version were to run the motor for the mechanics.

Being truly half-duplex, it made a pretty lousy terminal too.  While the computer was typing the keyboard would be locked out.  But the keyboard was one of the nicest to type on, back in the day.  Sure beats an ASR33 Teletype, which was my next encounter while learning BASIC.

Ancient trivia: Ever wonder why a baud rate of 134.5 exists?  It was to support the mechanical speed of these Selectric terminals.  It was the speed where the print shaft could keep turning and not disengage/engage the clutch every rotation (which would cause unnecessary wear on the clutch).
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: bitseeker on October 25, 2017, 08:33:39 pm
Hmm, I suppose one could also convert a Selectric into a PC keyboard. Such a flexible machine. ;D
I suppose you could, but it would be a horrible thing.

The Selectric keyboard is completely mechanical and inseparable from the print mechanism.  Whatever you type on the keyboard is printed by the typeball.  The only electrons in the stock version were to run the motor for the mechanics.

Ah, that's a bummer.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Rolo on October 26, 2017, 03:44:28 pm
ZX81 from Sinclair. And was happy with it. Even build a RAM extension that was piggy bagged on the original RAM.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Naguissa on October 26, 2017, 03:48:51 pm
First computer I ever used was a Turion or Athlon desktop from around 1996 - and about 512 MB of RAM. What a pig that thing was.
Add arround 10 years ti the date to let that machines exist...

Enviado desde mi Jolla mediante Tapatalk

Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: TopLoser on October 26, 2017, 04:00:46 pm
1978 Elektor SC/MP built on a scrap of veroboard, eventually upgraded to run NIBL basic.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: jmelson on October 27, 2017, 09:57:31 pm

The Selectric keyboard is completely mechanical and inseparable from the print mechanism.  Whatever you type on the keyboard is printed by the typeball.  The only electrons in the stock version were to run the motor for the mechanics.
However, there were some units derived from the I/O Selectric, such as the IBM 2741 (I think I have that # right) and the Dura.  I had a Dura MANY years ago.  It had about a dozen small circuit cards in the back with discrete transistors and diodes that converted from Selectric code to EIA codes, and had a paper tape reader and punch, as well as I/O connectors.  I managed to get it to run as a printer on my CP/M computer for a while.  I managed to snap one of the bands in mine when something went wrong.  I just took it to the local typewriter shop, the guy measured it and gave me the correct replacement part.  Put it in, and it worked like a charm.  But, it was pretty slow...

Jon
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Richard Crowley on October 27, 2017, 11:04:41 pm
Back in the late 1960s my school had a room full of 25-30 of the Dura-branded Selectric terminals with APL font balls, linked to a time-share server at UCI or UCLA(?)

We lab-assistants regularly demonstrated a stunt where we could take a program in any other language and translate it into 1/10 the number of lines of code in APL. Of course, while the APL code would run properly, it was nearly indecipherable to humans (including the one who wrote it).
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: MarkL on October 28, 2017, 08:33:43 am
We lab-assistants regularly demonstrated a stunt where we could take a program in any other language and translate it into 1/10 the number of lines of code in APL. Of course, while the APL code would run properly, it was nearly indecipherable to humans (including the one who wrote it).
For me, going the other way from APL to other languages was a bit of a shock.  What do you mean I have to iterate over each element of this matrix?

We called it "write-only" code.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Astrodev on October 28, 2017, 01:56:55 pm
Just been thinking back to the ASR33's (which I still have) and I remembered that I had the idea of making use of the spare space in the stand so made a chassis out of wood and mounted the TI 990/101 board I was using as a computer at the time in the stand making it my first "all in one computer" as well.

Funnily enough I still have most of the bits including the wooden chassis.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: raptor1956 on October 28, 2017, 08:30:56 pm
Commodore VIC-20 in 1981.  Then, a couple weeks after joining IBM in March of 1982 I order an IBM PC under the employee discount program which saved me, if I remember correctly, about 10%.  But, as an employee we were not a priority and I had to wait nearly a year before my PC arrived and during the interval I made a couple of changes to the order as IBM upgraded the PC.  When I eventually received it in January of 1983 it came with DSDD floppies of 320KB each.  I think the installed RAM was 48KB and I later installed a RAM card that added 256KB bringing my total to a bit of 300KB.  My Nikon D800E takes still images that average about 43MB/file in RAW so this first generation PC would have had no chance of doing anything with a file that large.  I got the PC with the monochrome display which had a resolution of something like 480x720 which was way better than the 320x640 color monitor I picked up a bit later.

If I added up all the PC's, both desktop and laptop, that I've owned over the years it would be well over 20 -- I still have about 10 in my possession though only about 6 of them work.  I think I've also had about 20 HD failures in that time as well.


Brian


Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: eugenenine on October 28, 2017, 10:50:33 pm
I've surprisingly had very few hdd failures.  I had one get bad sectors when I moved in my house in 1995.  Then a laptop drive in 2006 that was in an external case my newborn got hold of.  And one last year in my daughters laptop but thats all I can remember.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: rhb on October 28, 2017, 11:58:24 pm
Computers I've owned:

Vic20
C64
Generic 386SX w/ FPU
Sun 3/60
Sparcstation 1+
Sun 4/110
Microway 164LX DEC Alpha
Sun Ultra 20
Various x86 based machines too numerous and varied to describe
Various microcontrollers too numerous and varied to describe (most more powerful than a Vic20)

Computers I've worked on:

IBM 360/167 running MUSIC
IBM 370 series running  VM/CMS
Perkin-Elmer 3200 (nee Interdata )
VAX 11/780 w/ FPS AP-120B & Gould-DeAnza graphics display
MicroVAX II in BA123 world box
Sun 386i
DECstation various MIPS based
SGI various models
Intergraph Clipper
HP "snakes series"
AIX various Power series
Sun most SPARC workstations
Alliant FX8 and the i860 nightmare
Intel i386 Hypercube
Intel i860 Hypercube
CDC 6400 (???) UT Austin mainframe w/ custom OS

Operating systems I've used:

MUSIC
VM/CMS
OS32 (?) Perkin-Elmer
VMS
Sun OS 4.x
Irix
Clix (Intergraph)
HP-UX
AIX
Ultrix
Minix
Coherent
Linux
OpenIndiana
MS-DOS (only under duress)
CP/M
Windows (only under duress)
MVS/TSO (only under duress)
UT Austin CDC OS

Worst computers:

Alliant i860
Intel i860 Hypercube

Things they had at work that I didn't use:

Connection Machine CM2 & CM5
Stardent
Cray Y-MP
PDP11/??

I'm sure it's not a complete list, but it's pretty close.

Favorite CPU:

 6502
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: oldtubeguy on October 29, 2017, 12:41:20 am
   i was hired by IBM in Poughkeepsie NY (USA) in 1965 as a test technician. Systems Test for IBM 7090, 7094, 360 Model 91/95.
Moved into programming in 1968. Professionally programmed 1401 autocoder; 7080 assembler, 360 assembler, Fortran, PL1; IBM RS6000 Fortran;
Windoze assembler, basic, c, c++. First code was to enter debug routines directly into memory of 7090 via systems console.
    Wound up in IBM Consulting group, specializing in large scale data management for Mechanical design system (CATIA). worked for internal IBM HQ group responsible for Corporate-wide mechanical CAD systems. Finally did a lot of consulting for US Auto and US defense companies. Fully retired in 2012.
     It was a great ride, but not-so-great for current workers IT workers.

Originally I was a an electronics tech. Now I just screw around with simple electronic circuits, especially with Arduino.
FWIW for a few years I was buying broken HP 475 Oscopes on Ebay (works of art inside) and repairing/reselling. Lost interest and now I have a 1/2 dozen on the shelf.
Want to get rid of them, but too lazy to pack for shipment, so if anyone in Florida wants to take a drive, I will give them up fo free -  they are non-functional but complete. Usually a capacitor or two to fix.

 
   
   
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Specmaster on October 29, 2017, 12:54:18 am
I may be wrong, but I have never heard of a HP 475 scope so I googled it and google also came up blank. I think you might mean Tektronix 475. If you lived in the UK I'd take you up on that very kind offer as I love to repair scopes as well, always loved them and currently have 5 working ones in my collection, 1 x HP1740A (just finished repairing it), 1 x Iwatsu SS5710, 1 x Goldstar OS-9100D, 1 x Rapid 1725A and Hitachi V-525 with undergoing repairs now a Hameg 408-1A.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: bitseeker on October 29, 2017, 01:09:28 am
Hehe, when I saw "HP 475", my brain automatically filtered out the "HP" part. So, I comprehended the references as Tektronix 475. Only after you pointed it out did I realize that there was an HP there.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: oldtubeguy on October 29, 2017, 01:25:32 am
   Umm, Of course they are Teks. I had HP on my mind because I actually did have an HP unix-flavored computer that I played with for awhile.
At one time HP was another great name, but sadly like IBM and Tektronix  long ago put the Marketing Geniuses in charge. I will concede that it may be the time of well engineered, reliable (and expensive) equipment is over.

Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: brucehoult on October 29, 2017, 11:11:38 am
Favorite CPU:

 6502

You were doing so well up until that point! :-) :-)

What criteria do you use in deciding that? Other than being the CPU in the first couple of machines you personally owned. (and me too .. I still 35-40 years later remember the hex codes for a lot of the common instructions: 20, 60, 4C, A9, A5, 85, B1, 91, D0, F0

The 6502 was cheap, and got a lot of performance bang out of a minimal amount of random logic and given speed of DRAM (much better than 8080/Z80). But they're really awful to try to write large well structured programs with, and a terrible compiler target (worse than 8080/Z80, far worse than 6809).


My favourite CPU of all time? If I have to pick a single model then ARM7TDMI.

Cortex is better of course, but new. And RISC-V is better than Cortex, and (currently) covers the range from M0 - A53. That's my new love.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: rhb on October 29, 2017, 01:03:33 pm
Favorite CPU:

 6502

You were doing so well up until that point! :-) :-)

What criteria do you use in deciding that? Other than being the CPU in the first couple of machines you personally owned. (and me too .. I still 35-40 years later remember the hex codes for a lot of the common instructions: 20, 60, 4C, A9, A5, 85, B1, 91, D0, F0

The 6502 was cheap, and got a lot of performance bang out of a minimal amount of random logic and given speed of DRAM (much better than 8080/Z80).

I like the architecture. It's elegant in its simplicity.  It also maps neatly to forth. And then there was the cheap and cheerful aspect ;-)

Bear in mind that I used to read processor manuals for entertainment and have read 3 of the first 4 editions of "Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach" by Hennesy & Patterson in their entirety.  So I'm clearly a bit twisted. 

The real horror was the i860.  An acquaintance made a good bit of money hand coding FFTs and similar for that thing.  When the salesman said, "And this is how you dump the assembly language so you can optimize the code." I backed out of the room and left the i860 hypercube to torment someone else.

Today the agony is trying to figure out how to keep the cache from thrashing while doing a few million sums of a few million values each with execution order basically unknowable.  Don't get me wrong.  Things are *much* better now, but there is always the desire to squeeze a few more FLOPS out of the machine.  This is especially true with problems that take 10,000 cores a week or two to finish.

The last machine I really got down and dirty with was the Alpha 164LX.  Quite a marvel in its day.  It was 3-4x the fastest available x86 while running at 533 MHz even though the x86 was clocked much faster.  It was a real pity that HP disbanded the Alpha team.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: richnormand on October 29, 2017, 04:44:38 pm
IBM 1130.
FORTRAN, COBOL and assembly.....

 ::)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: forrestc on October 29, 2017, 05:02:16 pm
The first computer I used was an Apple II while in elementary school.

The first one I owned was a Timex Sinclair TS1000 (aka prebuilt ZX81 w/NTSC modulator and 2K Ram).   Complete with 16K plug pack and printer.   I think I got the 16K plug pack and printer as they were closing them out somewhere.  Don't really remember for sure.   One note:   The crappy keyboard was there for a reason - at some point I modified the computer to use a real keyboard, and I could type faster than the computer could handle..... and of course anyone who used the plugpacks knew how mechanically unstable they were...

Sometime shortly after, my parents bought an Apple IIe at home (which I also still own), and sometime in the same period I bought an Epson PX-8 laptop.  The PX-8 ran CP/M.   I've got that around here somewhere too.   

I kinda miss the days of unique computers.....
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: SeanB on October 29, 2017, 06:05:33 pm
Anyndoy here ever work with the IBM 360/44? Or wind any ferrite memory arrays?

did fix broken core wires and replace broken cores, though that was a lot smaller core, just 16 by 16 array. There was a new version being developed when I left, using a whole 2k of Dallas battery backed RAM in a Timekeeper, with the use only being in the top 1k of the memory to avoid the RTC address space. Had to be compatible with the old memory as a drop in, so there was a lot of work done on emulating the core read and write operation, spreading it out over the timekeeper address space and using only a single data bit. 1 Timekeeper, and then a half dozen TTL chips on the board did it, plus a load of resistors to emulate the core lines and attenuate the data level to not saturate the read amplifier. Still only did 16 words as well, but at least was not unobtanium and almost as reliable.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Kilo Tango on October 30, 2017, 04:45:35 pm
The first I had/built was the Wireless World SC80 designed by John Adams. It had a Nat Semi number cruncher and ran BURP ( Basic Using Reverse Polish).

I then built his SC84, a CP/M machine. I found a pair of 35 track floppies that caused a lot of fun storing stuff high up on the floppy !.

Ken
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: bd139 on October 30, 2017, 07:24:03 pm
The first I had/built was the Wireless World SC80 designed by John Adams. It had a Nat Semi number cruncher and ran BURP ( Basic Using Reverse Polish).

I then built his SC84, a CP/M machine. I found a pair of 35 track floppies that caused a lot of fun storing stuff high up on the floppy !.

Ken

Was that the massive scary thing built out of a metric shit ton of UMUT PNP transistors?
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned ?
Post by: rrinker on October 30, 2017, 08:55:33 pm


The RCA1802 microprocessor, has some special (unique at the time), properties (if I remember correctly). It was both CMOS and certifiable for spaceflight/satellites.

(https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4143/4827284508_c67b8dbf5e_z.jpg) (https://flic.kr/p/8mz6vf)1802 Membership Card Powered Up (https://flic.kr/p/8mz6vf) by Todd Decker (https://www.flickr.com/photos/ptdecker/), on Flickr

And if I remeber correctly, it could also operate at Vdd = 15v.
Which was kind of pointless, because the available memory devices ran at 5v.

I also had a Cosmac 1802 board.

 It also has 16x 16 bit registers, and ANY of them could be the program counter, any of them could be the pointer (index) register. And you could change it in the middle of program execution - this formed the basis of RCA's standard call and return for subroutines. And any micro with the mnemonic SEX (for SEt X) is an automatic winner.

 A prior message mentioned the 6502 as a favorite - of the four 8-bitters I learned, the 6502 was my LEAST favorite, such a pain to work on compared to the 1802. The lack of registers and the absolute need for a stack for even fairly trivial programs made is so in my mind - I had to code a large part of my Apple II program in high school with assembler because it ran far too slow in BASIC. At the time I already knew 1802 and Z80, in college I did some 8080. 1802 was very elegant, 91 total instructions and since many of them referenced the 16 registers, or one of the 7 I/O ports, the first hex digit was a family and the second digit specified the register.
 
                            --Randy
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: ebastler on October 30, 2017, 09:58:43 pm
Not my first computer; but since we are drifting towards the topic of "favorite CPU":

My favorite CPU is the 68000, due to its relative simplicity and regularity. And the first 68000 machine I owned was the "DTACK Grounded" board for the Apple II. Anyone remember that one? Hal W. Hardenberg of Digital Acoustics was probably best known for his strong opinions on Intel's processors and Apple's 68000 computers, as voiced in the DTACK Grounded Newsletter, and for his great humour in expressing them.

The original DTACK Grounded board had a whopping 96 kByte of painfully expensive static RAM. No wait states here, thank you very much!  :)
I still have mine. Note the elegant tilt of the SRAMs, which made taping down those bus traces so much easier for Hal... ;)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Kilo Tango on October 31, 2017, 09:10:10 am
The first I had/built was the Wireless World SC80 designed by John Adams. It had a Nat Semi number cruncher and ran BURP ( Basic Using Reverse Polish).

I then built his SC84, a CP/M machine. I found a pair of 35 track floppies that caused a lot of fun storing stuff high up on the floppy !.

Ken

Was that the massive scary thing built out of a metric shit ton of UMUT PNP transistors?

No the SC80 design was a clever design using a Z80 and an MM57109 number cruncher chip to do all the math. I think it used 1K x 1 2101 static ram. It was quite good. PowerTran offered a kit for it, and I bought one that didn't work and managed to get it going. There was a user group for it, pretty good, I learned a lot.

Then 4 years later out came the SC84, a 3 board design, CPU card, Video card, and floppy/serial channel card. It ran CP/M and so you had access to all the software on the CPM user group.  Some of us overclocked the processor up from the original 4MHz to 6MHz, most of the Z80A's would run at 6MHz, although whether you noticed the difference was debatable.

I've still got it tucked away somewhere, " just in case " !

Things have moved on a bit since then .....

Ken
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Kilo Tango on October 31, 2017, 09:11:50 am
Oh yes, I've also got an Apple Lisa awaiting attention.

Too many projects, not enough time...

Ken
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: djos on October 31, 2017, 09:21:53 am
Oh yes, I've also got an Apple Lisa awaiting attention.

Too many projects, not enough time...

Ken

Nice, I have a Mac SE 40MB awaiting recapping, it's so unstable it wont boot off anything anymore - Im pretty sure the PSU is the culprit but havent had time to put it on the healing bench and catalogue the caps and measure the outputs etc.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: brucehoult on October 31, 2017, 11:29:58 am
Oh yes, I've also got an Apple Lisa awaiting attention.

Too many projects, not enough time...

I used to have a Lisa (converted o Mac XL) that I picked up almost free.  As recently as 1994 I was making it available to houseguests who wanted to do email etc. I gave it away to someone in the great aborted move to the USA in 2001 :(

I still have an original 128k Mac (not *quite* original as it actually says "128k" on it, meaning the Fat Mac was already out), and several SE/30s. Now that was a great machine! Came with 1 MB of RAM, expandable to 128 MB .. in theory.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: bitseeker on October 31, 2017, 11:39:34 pm
Nice, I have a Mac SE 40MB awaiting recapping, it's so unstable it wont boot off anything anymore - Im pretty sure the PSU is the culprit but havent had time to put it on the healing bench and catalogue the caps and measure the outputs etc.

Hmmm, I've got a Mac Classic that won't boot from its HDD, only from the onboard ROM. In the queue...
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: EncomLab on November 01, 2017, 01:33:00 pm
My first was a TI99-4/A...though honestly I did not use it for much.  The first computer I actually used effectively was an Apple II/C - LOGO changed my life ;)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: brucehoult on November 01, 2017, 02:33:09 pm
My first was a TI99-4/A...though honestly I did not use it for much.  The first computer I actually used effectively was an Apple II/C - LOGO changed my life ;)

LOGO is great. Thinly disguised LISP.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: JohnPen on November 05, 2017, 09:35:22 am
My first computer was a home built Z80 system back in 1979.  It consisted of the Z80 plus 2K of RAM and a 1K UV ROM.  The UV ROM was programmed in machine code to provide a very simple 'operating system' and the RAM provided the screen display via a character generator chip.  The result was displayed on a portable TV slightly modified.  To prove the hand drawn, photo resist ink pen, PCB I coded a simple looping program and checked the address and data lines were working with a multimeter.  I did have a home built 10 Mhz scope to assist but triggering was a little difficult but at least one could recognise that tri-state on the lines was also working correctly.

The very first genuine program was the well known Hangman which could accept up to a maximum of 23 letters before impinging on the screen display.  The character generator chip provided the dashes and strokes to draw the scaffold etc.  Later developments added a 2K UV ROM with  a modified 'Tiny Basic', to suit Z80 rather than 8080, and drive the screen character generator.  The whole assembly was then built into a home made case with a dedicated PSU and the portable TV stood on top.  Following the addition of a 16K Dynamic RAM board other programs were created for my children a crude space invaders, geography capitals quiz etc. I also added a solenoid operated 'golfball' printer using a diode matrix to provide text for letter writing. It all survived a few years and then the inevitable happened more games for the family so I purchased a Texas TI 99, followed by a couple of AMIGAs. 

Now sadly I am just  PC box user and other H/W interests take priority.  I guess that's life.

Edit  Just a thought I still have a Z80  and an unused 68000 plus a few UVROMs  hanging around if anyone has a need.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: jprozas on November 07, 2017, 04:45:42 pm
Used, Hewlett-Packard HP9810A from 1971 (at school in the late 70s):

(http://www.hpmuseum.org/98xx/9810n3qs.jpg)

Owned, Compukit UK101 from 1979:
(https://www.eevblog.com/forum/vintage-computing/what-was-the-very-first-computer-you-owned/?action=dlattach;attach=336047)
I buyed in London , diy a UK101. Cpu 6502  ram 8KB.
Basic and asembler.

Enviado desde mi Aquaris_A4.5 mediante Tapatalk

Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: rrinker on November 07, 2017, 06:34:18 pm
 Reset - so good, they had to do it twice!  :-DD
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: bsudbrink on November 07, 2017, 06:59:41 pm
Reset - so good, they had to do it twice!  :-DD

Reset, right next to enter.  Very annoying to hit it by accident, so you have a double key to avoid it.  Same as OSI-C1P.  You could also do a "fancier" circuit that required several seconds of keypress to take effect.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Specmaster on November 07, 2017, 07:06:25 pm
Hmm, with my fat fingers I could easily press them both together by accident.  :-DD
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: bsudbrink on November 07, 2017, 07:26:46 pm
Hmm, with my fat fingers I could easily press them both together by accident.  :-DD

That's some fat pinkies! :-DD  Notice also, the big slashed zero.  A tribute to the active (back then) argument between IBM and the rest of the world about whether the zero or "letter O" was to be slashed.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: ebastler on November 07, 2017, 08:32:19 pm
Notice also, the big slashed zero.  A tribute to the active (back then) argument between IBM and the rest of the world about whether the zero or "letter O" was to be slashed.

It seems that, even within IBM, there were different practices between various IBM systems and user groups:
https://www.circuitousroot.com/artifice/letters/characters/slashed-o/index.html (https://www.circuitousroot.com/artifice/letters/characters/slashed-o/index.html)  ;)

That being said, I would assume that by 1979 the debate had long since been settled. I don't think anybody wanted to make a particular point with the slashed "0" on that keyboard.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: bsudbrink on November 07, 2017, 09:11:08 pm
That being said, I would assume that by 1979 the debate had long since been settled. I don't think anybody wanted to make a particular point with the slashed "0" on that keyboard.

The thing is that the slashed and non-slashed O's are reversible. Also, I think the UK101 is a little older than 79, but I'm not sure.  Anyway, the early hobbyist companies were known to use surplus components.  I would bet that those keycaps sat in storage for several years before being built into that computer.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: dschnur on November 08, 2017, 03:57:43 am
The first computer I used was a TRS80 model II.  They had just been acquired by the school I was attending and I chose basic programming as an elective.   The first computer I ever owned (Thank you Clive Sinclair) was a Timex/Sinclair ZX80.  It was marketed as a $99.00 computer and you really got what you paid for.  Good, No.  Fast, No.  Cheap? Yes.   That was when other machines went for well over $2000.00.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: ebastler on November 08, 2017, 05:38:01 am
The thing is that the slashed and non-slashed O's are reversible. Also, I think the UK101 is a little older than 79, but I'm not sure.  Anyway, the early hobbyist companies were known to use surplus components.  I would bet that those keycaps sat in storage for several years before being built into that computer.

Ah, right -- you have a point about the interchangeable key caps. They chose to use the exact same basic shape for the letter "O" and digit "0", rather than making the letter more round and the digit more narrow. So the two keys would indeed not look out of place when exchanged.

Thanks for an interesting bit of computer history -- I had not expected to still find traces of the O vs 0 debate in the early micro-computers!
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Specmaster on November 08, 2017, 11:12:05 am
The first computer I used was a TRS80 model II.  They had just been acquired by the school I was attending and I chose basic programming as an elective.   The first computer I ever owned (Thank you Clive Sinclair) was a Timex/Sinclair ZX80.  It was marketed as a $99.00 computer and you really got what you paid for.  Good, No.  Fast, No.  Cheap? Yes.   That was when other machines went for well over $2000.00.
Yes because of the pricing point of the Sinclair machines, it got more people into computers than otherwise would have been the case and indeed many programmers today did indeed get their first introduction to computers and programing from those Sinclair machines that for sure.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Nusa on November 08, 2017, 11:23:28 am
The thing is that the slashed and non-slashed O's are reversible. Also, I think the UK101 is a little older than 79, but I'm not sure.  Anyway, the early hobbyist companies were known to use surplus components.  I would bet that those keycaps sat in storage for several years before being built into that computer.

Ah, right -- you have a point about the interchangeable key caps. They chose to use the exact same basic shape for the letter "O" and digit "0", rather than making the letter more round and the digit more narrow. So the two keys would indeed not look out of place when exchanged.

Thanks for an interesting bit of computer history -- I had not expected to still find traces of the O vs 0 debate in the early micro-computers!

It predates computers entirely, although many of you aren't old enough to have personally seen it. Most manual typewriters did not have a 1 key and many did not have 0 keys. The typist was expected to type l and o instead. So they literally were the same symbol on paper. Sometimes there was no exclamation point...so one typed . backspace ' instead. And a few other tricks like that, designed to make space for special symbols used in various fields.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: bsudbrink on November 08, 2017, 02:24:35 pm
It predates computers entirely, although many of you aren't old enough to have personally seen it. Most manual typewriters did not have a 1 key and many did not have 0 keys. The typist was expected to type l and o instead. So they literally were the same symbol on paper. Sometimes there was no exclamation point...so one typed . backspace ' instead. And a few other tricks like that, designed to make space for special symbols used in various fields.
As late as 1982, the GSA (United States Government, General Services Administration) was still teaching typists to use uppercase "o" for zero and lower case "L" for one.  I worked for the Social Security Administration for a few years, programming Wang OIS machines.  The OIS implementation of BASIC (yes, I really programmed BASIC for money) had a number of "forms" extensions, including a date entry field.  I programmed some of the first forms and, as soon as we released them to the field offices, we started to get complaints.  My boss and I tested and tested the code at our office and couldn't see anything wrong.  Finally, we went to a field office and watched one of the clerks there cause the problem.  We were baffled. I asked the clerk to let me enter a form and it went in fine.  My boss typed one and it went fine too.  Clerk sat down, no good.  It took us most of the morning to figure it out.  Once we did, we met with several supervisors.  They would not retrain their clerks.  I finally wrote a custom date field that performed the translation, upper case "o" to zero and lower case "L" to one.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: bsudbrink on November 08, 2017, 04:26:52 pm
One last thing, both the Wang date field and my "enhanced" date field used 2-digit years: MM/DD/YY.  So did the document store that the forms were eventually archived in.  I sort of doubt that those systems were still in service in 2000 but sometimes I like to imagine that I contributed to the notorious Y2K(tm).
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: peppper on November 11, 2017, 02:25:26 am
My first was a TI99-4/A...though honestly I did not use it for much.  The first computer I actually used effectively was an Apple II/C - LOGO changed my life ;)

I have one of my TI99/4A's sitting on the bench with a bad TMS9900. Great machines.

Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: basinstreetdesign on November 15, 2017, 05:22:47 am
The first computer I ever OWNED was a home-built "pineapple" in 1981.  It was an unauthorized copy of the Apple ][ main board and then I built it with parts bought/scrounged.  Afterwards it was expanded with a genuine floppy drive and a cheap crt monitor.  It had a MTBF of about 4 hours so backups had to be religiously done often.

I learned the value of backups the hard way.  Once when I was working on a sizeable BASIC program the CPU decided to crash and wipe my only floppy copy of my program.  This was after about 3 weeks of work on it.  I couldn't look at it again for a couple of days so went out on my bike a saw a few movies.

The first computer I ever USED was a PDP-8 in 1967.  That one was completely assembled into an ad hoc rack frame by one of the electronics teachers at my high school in Ottawa.  Ours was the first school in Ottawa to ever have a real computer.  That teacher, Carl Weick worked on the Avro Arrow, the only Canadian fighter jet to intimidate the US military and president into demanding its program be cancelled and all materials destroyed.  To PM Diefenbakers' discredit, he did just that.

Too bad I have no pictures of either of those computers.

As for stuff waiting to be fixed I have a Fat Mac (512K RAM, floppy only, no HDD) which worked last time I tried it maybe 6 years ago and an external 45 Mb HDD which won't spin up.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Howardlong on November 15, 2017, 05:50:45 am
Regarding the 0 vs O (zero vs letter O), the first computer I built in the mid 70s was based on the GI LP8000, a dim ascendent of the PIC. It was programmed directly in machine code hex, usually hand written on paper first. For some reason which I don’t know, instead of uisng standard hex nomenclature 0-9, A-F, the standard was to use 0-9, J-O, called “modified hex”.

I guess it was perceived to be ever so slightly easier to convert the J-O to and from ASCII as you could do it without adding: it seems bizarre nowadays, but that was the mindset back in the day.

Of course, it was going to be a minefield between 0 and O in machine code hex listings. The solution was to use both a slashed zero and the letter O was written as a square. When verbally discussing a listing, the letter O was always said as “square”. In context, to a trained programmer fluent with the instruction set encoding (a very common skill then, not at all nowadays), it was pretty universally obvious in context whether it should be 0 or O.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: brucehoult on November 15, 2017, 08:57:23 am
That same year, 1982, I was a 2nd year university student. At the end of the year I got a summer job in my small home town (~40k) as the sole programmer doing a project to computerise the city's 30 cm thick binder of loans various individuals and institutions had made to them to build or upgrade the town water supply or library or whatever. Each loan had an interest payment due quarterly, half-yearly or yearly and every quarter the finance manager would leaf through the binder noting the payments due that quarter. Some terminals were available connected to a PR1ME minicomputer at a nearby bureau (which had essentially two customers: the city council, and a dairy factory). COBOL and FORTRAN were available, and an ISAM database.

Even in 1982, some of the loans matured a little into the 21st century, while others had issue dates as far back as the early 1950s. I suggested that we should store years with 4 digits but it was impressed on me that this would not be acceptable due not only to the wasted disk space (ha!), but also would not be compatible with standard data types and ad-hoc query software for the database.

I came up with a scheme where a single global parameter was stored, a two digit year, such that years in the database greater than or equal to the parameter were considered to be in the current century, while years less than it were considered to be in the next century. I initially set the parameter to "50", meaning that dates from 1950 to 2049 could be represented. Once loans from the 1950s had all matured they could be aged out of the system (there was a function for this), and the parameter increased to "60" etc. This was also done automatically by the ageing function.

And so in 1982, at 19 years old, working alone, I avoided the Y2K problem! I'm a little bit chuffed about that :-)

[There was another rather interesting problem in this system ... some of the debenture certificates listed explicitly the date and the amount of every payment. I of course didn't want to store every payment, but calculate it from the principal and interest rate. However some of the printed numbers (in particular from the AMP insurance company) were one cent different from what calculation would suggest. It was also impressed on me that if an incorrect payment was made the AMP was actually stupid enough to send an invoice or refund for 1c and we didn't want that to happen. I eventually solved the problem, after noticing that the problem debentures had all been issued before 10 July 1967. A chocolate fish to anyone who can tell me why, and how to fix the calculation :-) :-) ]
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: djos on November 15, 2017, 09:08:43 am
Something to do with leap years Perhaps?
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: brucehoult on November 15, 2017, 09:46:11 am
Something to do with leap years Perhaps?

No.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: rolycat on November 15, 2017, 01:59:24 pm

[There was another rather interesting problem in this system ... some of the debenture certificates listed explicitly the date and the amount of every payment. I of course didn't want to store every payment, but calculate it from the principal and interest rate. However some of the printed numbers (in particular from the AMP insurance company) were one cent different from what calculation would suggest. It was also impressed on me that if an incorrect payment was made the AMP was actually stupid enough to send an invoice or refund for 1c and we didn't want that to happen. I eventually solved the problem, after noticing that the problem debentures had all been issued before 10 July 1967. A chocolate fish to anyone who can tell me why, and how to fix the calculation :-) :-) ]

That was the date that New Zealand adopted decimal currency. Presumably the fact that one old penny was worth 5/6 of a cent gave rise to rounding errors which needed to be compensated for.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: brucehoult on November 15, 2017, 03:26:19 pm
That was the date that New Zealand adopted decimal currency. Presumably the fact that one old penny was worth 5/6 of a cent gave rise to rounding errors which needed to be compensated for.

Yes. Giving the precise date rather gives it away :-)

Any exact number of pounds -- or even shillings -- converted exactly to decimal currency. Most of the debentures had the principal converted to dollars and then the payments recalculated in dollars and cents. The AMP, for reasons known only to themselves, took the originally calculated payments which had already been rounded to the nearest penny, converted each payment to decimal, and then rounded again to the nearest cent. This double rounding would sometimes give a different result to calculating directly in dollars and cents and rounding once.

What a pain!

But easy enough to compensate for, once understood, with a flag on each loan indicating whether this had been done.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: bsudbrink on November 15, 2017, 07:07:42 pm
Regarding the 0 vs O (zero vs letter O), the first computer I built in the mid 70s was based on the GI LP8000, a dim ascendent of the PIC. It was programmed directly in machine code hex, usually hand written on paper first. For some reason which I don’t know, instead of uisng standard hex nomenclature 0-9, A-F, the standard was to use 0-9, J-O, called “modified hex”.

I guess it was perceived to be ever so slightly easier to convert the J-O to and from ASCII as you could do it without adding: it seems bizarre nowadays, but that was the mindset back in the day.

Of course, it was going to be a minefield between 0 and O in machine code hex listings. The solution was to use both a slashed zero and the letter O was written as a square. When verbally discussing a listing, the letter O was always said as “square”. In context, to a trained programmer fluent with the instruction set encoding (a very common skill then, not at all nowadays), it was pretty universally obvious in context whether it should be 0 or O.

I think the idea was that "J" is the tenth letter in the alphabet.  I remember seeing some hex dumps using that nomenclature.  It also brings to mind the hex-vs-octal arguments at my high school... "numbers don't have letters, period!"... I was always more comfortable with hex myself.  By the time I got to college, it didn't really matter.  Later, I found it pretty funny that they created a "pre-computer science" "weed out" course that was essentially nothing but "number bases, get it or get out".  As I understand it, a lot of people flunked or dropped that class.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: jmelson on November 15, 2017, 11:54:23 pm
I guess it was perceived to be ever so slightly easier to convert the J-O to and from ASCII as you could do it without adding: it seems bizarre nowadays, but that was the mindset back in the day.

The Bendix G-15 and others used Sexadecimal, with UVWXYZ instead of ABCDEF.  The G-15 was a vacuum tube and drum computer from about 1958.

Jon
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: ebastler on November 16, 2017, 01:43:13 am
The Bendix G-15 and others used Sexadecimal, with UVWXYZ instead of ABCDEF.  The G-15 was a vacuum tube and drum computer from about 1958.

And the Librascope LGP-30, a vacuum tube and drum computer from 1956, used the digits "FGJKQW", because that's how the characters' binary codes fell on the Flexowriter... Easily remembered as "fiber glass javelins kill quite well".  ;)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: John Heath on November 17, 2017, 12:00:31 am
Thank you for posting the picture of the chiclet pet commodore. That was my first computer that I payed for and owned. What a sweety with that great look and a auto cassette data input. Way better than the 100 buss system with the cold cold boot from a line of with switches. The top of the pet lifts up somewhat like the hood of a car with a metal bar to keep it up. This way you could stare at the mother board and power supply. That was a nice computer for it's time.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: daybyter on November 17, 2017, 03:05:31 am
https://m.youtube.com/watch?amp=&v=7eaMhdRFoRA

The pet was donated to the vzekc and should be turned into a fully functional computer.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Specmaster on November 17, 2017, 06:09:47 pm
https://m.youtube.com/watch?amp=&v=7eaMhdRFoRA

The pet was donated to the vzekc and should be turned into a fully functional computer.
One question comes to mind, WHY?
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: daybyter on November 18, 2017, 12:25:08 am
It was at the entrance of the classic computing 2015 and it looks better than a simple sign, or so?

http://www.classic-computing.de/wp-content/gallery/classic-computing-2015/cc2015_bild4.jpg (http://www.classic-computing.de/wp-content/gallery/classic-computing-2015/cc2015_bild4.jpg)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Specmaster on November 18, 2017, 01:04:52 pm
Now it makes sense.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: @rt on November 22, 2017, 02:49:14 pm
Sega SC3000H, but it probably should have been a C64.
I had no support for it, no magazines, no new games, no local club,  and couldn’t really learn anything outside of the manual.

So the Amiga, I’d like to think of my first computer, because I had friends with them, one of which at least tried to tech me programming.

Strictly speaking, my first computer might have been a serious mechanical adding machine given to me as a kid.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: paulca on November 22, 2017, 03:36:35 pm
First used was a ZX81 (later with 16k expansion) in about 1981.  Wrote first code on a ZX Spectrum 48K - 1982

First owned a Spectrum 48K Plus 1984-1985 ish, then Amstrad CPC464, CPC6128, Amiga 500, Amiga 1200... long break...  Pentium Celeron 600Mhz (circa 2000).
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: ChrisLX200 on November 22, 2017, 07:11:39 pm
First computer I bought was.. an Oric 1, and I still have it :)  Lulled by the advertisment of 64k memory (compared to the 48k of the Spectrum) but not realising that extra 16k was used by the system! Probably the worst keyboard of any home computer of that age. Anyway, I took some pics for your amusment.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Old Don on December 01, 2017, 04:34:19 pm
The first computer I ever OWNED was a home-built "pineapple" in 1981.  It was an unauthorized copy of the Apple ][ main board and then I built it with parts bought/scrounged.  Afterwards it was expanded with a genuine floppy drive and a cheap crt monitor.  It had a MTBF of about 4 hours so backups had to be religiously done often.

I learned the value of backups the hard way.  Once when I was working on a sizeable BASIC program the CPU decided to crash and wipe my only floppy copy of my program.  This was after about 3 weeks of work on it.  I couldn't look at it again for a couple of days so went out on my bike a saw a few movies.

The first computer I ever USED was a PDP-8 in 1967.  That one was completely assembled into an ad hoc rack frame by one of the electronics teachers at my high school in Ottawa.  Ours was the first school in Ottawa to ever have a real computer.  That teacher, Carl Weick worked on the Avro Arrow, the only Canadian fighter jet to intimidate the US military and president into demanding its program be cancelled and all materials destroyed.  To PM Diefenbakers' discredit, he did just that.

Too bad I have no pictures of either of those computers.

As for stuff waiting to be fixed I have a Fat Mac (512K RAM, floppy only, no HDD) which worked last time I tried it maybe 6 years ago and an external 45 Mb HDD which won't spin up.

I built a few "Orange" clones of the Apple II and sold them for a few $'s spending extra money.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: shawty on December 13, 2017, 04:04:45 pm
My first computer was a Sinclair ZX80, quickly followed by an 81 with "Drum Roll...." 16K RAM PACK!!!

WOW... 16K, that was a HUGE memory :-)

Not long after that I had a VIC20, then a Commodore 16+4.

I went through a succession of second hand machines bought from the wanted ad's and such like (Early 80's) I had an Atari 800XL, Tandy TRS-80 among others, and that was until I discovered...

THE BBC MODEL B Micro

That was my first computer LUST...   I saved money like it was going out of fashion.  Birthdays, Christmas, Paper Round etc then it arrived.

16 Colours, 4 Channel sound, More I/O than I could shake a stick at, I was in heaven, it was my first real computer and I paid for it ALL myself, so I didn't have to share it with my sister or the rest of the family.

Up until I left school and got dragged kicking and screaming into the world of the IBM Compatible/Clone and Dos/Windows I stuck with Acorn.

BBC B up to a Master, then an ET Turbo, and eventually with the pay check(s) from my first summer Job an Acorn Archimedes A5000

I had to get rid of all my BBC Stuff about 10 years ago, when myself and my wife moved to the house we now have, it broke my heart to see it all have to go.  Some of it went to new owners, but a big chunk went to the breakers yard too :-(

I do however, still have my A5000, but she's in a sorry state these days.  The CMOS Ram's buggered on it after an Alkaline battery leak, I removed the battery and soldered in a double A twin holder, but to no avail.  Board outside looks fine so I suspect there's track damage inside the layers somewhere.  It powers up, but beacuse it has no settings, and I can't make it store anything, I'm really not getting it to do much more than give me a supervisor * prompt.

I'll get the time to fix it one of these days however :-)

Aside from that, I have a server rack full of modern day PC's but I do still have a few gems kicking about in my workshop.

Got an original Sun Netra T105 Blade server somewhere, and an original set of Solaris/Sun OS disks somewhere for it, and got various bits and bobs Iv'e picked up at car boot sales with the intention of junking them for interesting parts.

I'll always have a soft spot for Acorn though, British Designed, British Made, British Invented.  IMHO Opinion, Acorn should get so much more recognition than they actually do, after all, the world would be a very different place today without the ARM Processor.

:-)



Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: djos on December 13, 2017, 08:44:21 pm
Those old dual layer boards are easy to trouble shoot, just put a bright led light source behind then and you can usually see broken tracks quite easily.

E.g.

(https://i.imgur.com/ECsGb78.jpg)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: frozenfrogz on December 13, 2017, 09:20:35 pm
My first computer was an Apple II with two floppy drives and a green monochrome CRT. I don’t know how much RAM it had, but I can remember playing »Lemonade« and »Nibbles«.
I still have this unit but it is sitting in storage at my parents place and has not been turned on for at least 25 years.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: ebastler on December 13, 2017, 09:21:31 pm
Those old dual layer boards are easy to trouble shoot, just put a bright led light source behind then and you can usually see broken tracks quite easily.
E.g.

Heck, where is the broken track?
(And which 68000 machine is that, anyway?)

Thanks, nice photo!
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: djos on December 13, 2017, 10:06:24 pm
Those old dual layer boards are easy to trouble shoot, just put a bright led light source behind then and you can usually see broken tracks quite easily.
E.g.

Heck, where is the broken track?
(And which 68000 machine is that, anyway?)

Thanks, nice photo!

To the left of the 40 pin ROM socket.

That's a rev 4.5 Amiga 2000 motherboard.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: jpb on December 13, 2017, 10:31:07 pm
I don't know what the first computer I used was as it was a main-frame and I had a pre-university job at Scicon back in 1979.  I learned to program in FORTRAN on punched cards and these were loaded by computer operators. I often wonder what became of all the computer operators when their jobs disappeared.

The first computer I owned was a BBC micro model B with a cassette player for storage. It took five minutes to load games and then the cat would jump on the keyboard and you'd have to start again!

My present workstation (which is 8 years old) has nearly a million times the RAM (24GB vs 32k), over a 1000 times the CPU speed (3GHz vs 1MHz) with 8 times the core count and a million times the hard-drive storage yet it takes longer to boot up than my BBC micro did!
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: shawty on December 14, 2017, 11:29:15 am
My first computer was an Apple II with two floppy drives and a green monochrome CRT. I don’t know how much RAM it had, but I can remember playing »Lemonade« and »Nibbles«.
I still have this unit but it is sitting in storage at my parents place and has not been turned on for at least 25 years.

I'll give that a try thanks.

I did however have an interesting Idea Last Night.

The RTC/Cmos chip in the A5K is an PCF8583 which is an I2C based device.

I know what the I2C address of it is, as it's in the programmers reference manuals, so I got to wondering if I could just remove the SMD that's on the mobo, and wiring the I2C lines SDA/SCK and GND directly to an Arduino Nano/Micro or similar.  I know which 3 lines I need and where to get them, and importantly I know there active, I also know where to get a 5v supply from to power the Arduino.

My thinking is to program the Arduino to be an I2C slave, on the address the computer looks for the RTC chip, then just let the Arduino save the settings and such like in it's on board Eprom.

In all honesty, I'm really not too bothered if the clock actually keeps the correct date/time, the important part is that the system settings are saved, and looking at the data sheet for the RTC chip, i recon I can quite easily emulate it using an Arduino, or even just something like a DSPIC (I have a few of those lying around too)

Anyway, it's all just theory at the moment, like everything I want to do for me, it'll end up going on the "Stuff for my Retirement" pile :-D


Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: manzini on December 16, 2017, 10:10:21 pm
SECOINSA (FUJITSU)
SERIE 20 AT School (cobol & Fortran with IBM 8" disk recorder , Sharp mz80b that I ever love (ever searching on ebay) at local computer club an finally zx-pectrum 48k at home, some years after Amiga 1000 for C & 68k assembler and Now!! ORIC ATMOS  only for nostalgic, non rational  things :)

(http://davidporcel.com/SERIE20.jpg)
(http://www.museopc.it/images/sharp/MZ80B_3.jpg)

Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: shawty on December 22, 2017, 08:10:18 pm
My first computer was an Apple II with two floppy drives and a green monochrome CRT. I don’t know how much RAM it had, but I can remember playing »Lemonade« and »Nibbles«.
I still have this unit but it is sitting in storage at my parents place and has not been turned on for at least 25 years.

I'll give that a try thanks.

I did however have an interesting Idea Last Night.

The RTC/Cmos chip in the A5K is an PCF8583 which is an I2C based device.

I know what the I2C address of it is, as it's in the programmers reference manuals, so I got to wondering if I could just remove the SMD that's on the mobo, and wiring the I2C lines SDA/SCK and GND directly to an Arduino Nano/Micro or similar.  I know which 3 lines I need and where to get them, and importantly I know there active, I also know where to get a 5v supply from to power the Arduino.

My thinking is to program the Arduino to be an I2C slave, on the address the computer looks for the RTC chip, then just let the Arduino save the settings and such like in it's on board Eprom.

In all honesty, I'm really not too bothered if the clock actually keeps the correct date/time, the important part is that the system settings are saved, and looking at the data sheet for the RTC chip, i recon I can quite easily emulate it using an Arduino, or even just something like a DSPIC (I have a few of those lying around too)

Anyway, it's all just theory at the moment, like everything I want to do for me, it'll end up going on the "Stuff for my Retirement" pile :-D

BIG THUMBS UP TO A FELLOW BEEBER :-)
 8)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Calambres on December 23, 2017, 08:24:40 am
My first computer was a Sinclair ZX-81. I loved programming that semi-toy. I got the infamous 16KB expansion dongle: the connector was so flimsy you couldn't move even the slightest. Otherwise you got a beautiful system reset.

Next was the obvious step: Sinclair Spectrum 48K. I used it very thoroughly and even programmed a financial program using "Microdrives" that was used commercially by a friend's firm. I ended installing the guts inside the keyboard of an old AS/400  :-/O  It worked very fine!

My first "proper" computer was an IBM Portable 5155. 15Kg of portability, go figure! The system was only 256KB RAM and I hacked it to 640KB. In Bill Gates' own words: "640KB is all you'll ever need for RAM". It had two 256KB 5 1/4" floppy drives. Later I added an IBM 5161 "PC Expansion" that was the size of an IBM Personal Computer, with  a 10MB disk drive. In IBM's own words: "10MB is all you'll ever need for file management"  :-DD

Then I got an IBM XT-286, a strange mix between an IBM-XT case and IBM-AT guts, only a bit faster. That was the sexiest XT-286 in the world  ;D : It had a 20MB disk drive, 16MB RAM, 2MB "Expanded" memory option, 287 Math coprocessor, External tape backup system, Token Ring adapter, VGA adapter (IBM 8515 monitor), Monochrome adapter (IBM 5151 monitor) for a dual display system,  SoundBlaster, IBM ProPrinter 4201 and other options I no longer remember... all card expansions were used. You couldn't expand it any more!. I still have it.

The next computers were a lot less glamourous  :)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: boffin on December 25, 2017, 01:13:11 am

My first "proper" computer was an IBM Portable 5155. 15Kg of portability, go figure! The system was only 256KB RAM and I hacked it to 640KB. In Bill Gates' own words: "640KB is all you'll ever need for RAM". It had two 256KB 5 1/4" floppy drives. Later I added an IBM 5161 "PC Expansion" that was the size of an IBM Personal

Actually the 640k quote is a well reproduced myth.  The 640k limitation was instead based on the architecture of the IBM PC that put the graphics memory starting at A000:0000 (the mono card put the text at B000:0000 and the colour card put the text at B800:0000).  If you could forgo graphics, and used a CGA for text only, you could happily make a PC run with 736k of RAM.  Later invocations of MS-DOS (6 IIRC) allowed you to load TSR programs "high" (using LOADHI), and you could map RAM into the D000:0000 and E000:0000 spaces (C800:xxxx was used by HD controllers)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: rrinker on December 25, 2017, 04:17:19 am
 There were actually a lot of 'holes' in upper memory you could exploit, depending on the hardware you had installed. When programs like QEMM came out, I became an expert at getting the most free DOS memory and organizing resident programs in the upper memory holes. I always took it as a challenge to get the most free memory in the lower 640K.
 And speaking of QEMM - their other product, Desqview, brought a pre-emptive multitasker to DOS. I was able to run my Opus BBS in college while still reserving enough of my machine to write reports and such with WordPerfect, or even run circuit simulations with pspice.

Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Calambres on December 25, 2017, 08:31:31 am
One of those "holes" is what allowed the "Expanded Memory" I have in my XT-286 (2MB max) to be paged into real memory. It was only accessible via a resident program loaded in "config.sys"
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: cowasaki on January 14, 2018, 11:10:16 pm
My brother's VIC20 in 1982

My first computer was an Amstrad CPC464 followed by a CPC6128 - I was in 4th/5th year at high school 14/15 and wrote an expansion ROM which added 150 new commands but was also programming 6502 on BBC model B at school where I completely re-wrote the networking software making it quicker and fairer as it queued stuff (they were still using it 5 years later!)....

Then on to the Atari 1040STFM where I had my first hard drive £420 for 30Mb (they had no 20Mb left so did a 30 for the same price if I turned up with cash!)

Then onto The Archimedes range as I was then a component level service engineer for Acorn machines.....
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: GeorgeOfTheJungle on January 15, 2018, 12:00:05 am
1st an hp9830 in 1973..74, an hp65 1975, an Apple II 1977, TRS-80 1977 (but didn't like it), Compucolor II 1979  (but didn't like it), switched from the Apple II to a Mac in 1984, and then always Macs ever since. I've never had any "PC" nor any DOS/windows machine. Now I prefer Macs for the job, linux and small sbcs for everything else.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: skyshaver on January 20, 2018, 03:49:46 am
My first computer was a Vic20. I spent the savings bond my grandparents gave me to buy a tape drive and copied code from the back of magazines. Though my fondest memory of that machine is the text-based RPG "The Count"
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Bruce Abbott on January 20, 2018, 06:09:25 pm
Actually the 640k quote is a well reproduced myth.
Actually (https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/09/08/640k-enough/)...

"I have to say that in 1981, making those decisions, I felt like I was providing enough freedom for 10 years. That is, a move from 64k to 640k felt like something that would last a great deal of time. Well, it didn’t – it took about only 6 years before people started to see that as a real problem." - Bill Gates

Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: ferdieCX on January 20, 2018, 07:14:58 pm
I went in 1979 straight to repair Olivetti Audit 5 boards, it was my first job
First owned was a home assembled 8080 S-100. It took two years to get the naked boards and the chips to South America,
carried by mail (only 20 USD at month allowed)  :palm: or by relatives and friends who visited the USA
I still have the CPU board
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Gyro on February 22, 2018, 07:29:46 pm
Used (in order):

Education:
ICL1902S
DEC KL10

Work:
PDP-11/44 2xRL02(10MB)
Dual headed VAX-11/780 (Altara and Krell), with all the toppings!  8)
MicroVAX 1 -> MicroVAX II Workstations
(a bit of a DEC theme there!)
...
PCs.

Owned (in order):

Science of Cambridge (Sinclair) MK14 (NS SC/MP)
UK101 (6502 based UK clone of the Ohio Superboard)
DEC PDP-11/05 (unibus, 32k word core memory), 2 x TU56 DECTape1 random access tape drives (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DECtape (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DECtape)). Later upgraded to 2 x RX02 dual 8" Floppy.
PDP-11/23plus, home built Q-Bus cabinet, RD52 (30MB) HDD, RX50 Floppies. Later upgraded to PDP-11/53 as handy bits became 'available'  ;).
...
PCs :=\
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Mister35mm on March 10, 2018, 03:38:44 am
PSI comp80?

Was that this one?

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/391977282124 (https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/391977282124)

I saw one at a computer show, I think. Powertran were showing off the TI9995 Cortex and this thing.

Z80 & maths chip.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: 1audio on March 10, 2018, 06:18:26 am
PSI comp80?

Was that this one?

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/391977282124 (https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/391977282124)

I saw one at a computer show, I think. Powertran were showing off the TI9995 Cortex and this thing.

Z80 & maths chip.
My first computer experience was a Bendix G-15. At a nearby high school in the mid 1960s.  I also worked on CDC computers in the early 1970s and built a z80 system in the 1970s before getting an IBM pc. At the time I was working at Four Phase systems designing peripherals for their computer systems. Too much early computer experience so I moved to Consumer Electronics.

Sent from my LG-H830 using Tapatalk

Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Bryce on March 19, 2018, 08:15:48 pm
The first computer I used was an MS-DOS based PC clone, a 286 of some description, that my father bought in the late 80s when I was a baby.  I think it was the second computer in the household, since my father had a TRS-80 MC-10 before that, but I have no memory of that computer and I believe it was sold prior to the acquisition of the PC. The PC had a modem, 9600 Baud I believe, which at some point Dad set up so that we could track the Space Shuttle on a map display.

The first computer that was mine personally was either an 8088 based "Eagle" PC clone (uncertain model number) or a Epson PX-8 Geneva laptop. I don't remember which was first; my father got both of them in state surplus property auctions in the mid-90s and gave them to me. Neither was my main computer though, I primarily used the family Macintosh (an 68030-based Performa that later got a 68040 accelerator card.) If you don't count family computers and surplus sale junkers, I got my first computer in '97, which was an Apple PowerBook 1400. I still have it, though it developed a bad LCD connection. (I still have the PX-8, too, I think, though it's been a long time since I've actually seen it and I am not 100% sure.)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: oldtubeguy on April 30, 2018, 05:17:51 pm
I was hired at IBM in Poughkeepsie NY as a System Test Techician in 1965, worked on final test of IBM 7090 Series System.
http://www.computer-history.info/Page4.dir/pages/IBM.7090.dir/images/Picture.9.jpg shows some of an IBM 7090. In that image the four frames behind man standing is the actual processor and I/O contollers.
Also in pic are some tape drives, card reader, line printer and operator console.
Not in picture is Memory --initially discrete cores in an oil-bath, later air cooled. Also 'Power Convertor' which was a motor-generator set which  changed 60 cycle power to 400 cycle  (a noisy piece of gear).
Moved into programming in 1968 and spent years writing Assembler code, Fortran, PL/1 and other languages.
My first personal computer was a Radio Shack TRS80. Had many IBM PCs and home built.
Retired from IBM in 1999. At the time worked for IBM as technical consultant on large scale commercial  implementations of CATIA 3D design system.
After retirement went private and the last thing I did was software development on RS/6000 for Computer Sciences Corp.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: meeko on May 07, 2018, 09:08:20 pm
In the summer of 1980, my Dad borrowed a Commodore PET (I don't remember if it was a 2001 or one of the later ones with a proper keyboard) from his school for the summer.  (He was a teacher.)  Then we got a C64.

The first computer I personally owned was an Apple III that was given to me by a friend of my Dad's.  It also came with a colour monitor and a broken ProFile 5 MB hard drive.  I rarely used it, though, as by that time we had an Amiga 500.

The first computer I bought with my own money was a Pentium 120, with I think 64 MB of RAM, 1.6 GB hard drive, ATI Mach64 video card, CD-ROM drive and a no-name SB16-compatible sound card, initially running Windows for Workgroups 3.11 with Win32s and the Microsoft "Wolverine" TCP stack.  Wolverine didn't support dial-up networking, though, so I had to use a DOS terminal program to dial in and start a SLIP session, exit the terminal program without hanging up the modem, start the SLIP packet driver, then a packet driver to NDIS shim, before finally starting Windows.  And that was still more stable than Trumpet Winsock!
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: intabits on May 08, 2018, 02:49:26 pm
First used, all at Monash Uni in 1974/1975:-
DEC PDP-11
HP2100A
Burroughs B6700

Unless Wang programmable calculators qualify, then in high school, 1970
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: bob225 on May 08, 2018, 05:27:16 pm
8080, hand built 8088, Ibm XT, 286 ps/2 - all very used in the mid to late 80's

zx81 > ZX128+2 > Commodore 386 16 with 8mb of ram > Amiga A600 >  486 dx33 upgraded to a DX4 100 > Amd 5x86 then it gets fuzzy for a few years > Intel P3 >


Now running X99 5820K with all the trimmings - 8th Gen I7 on the wish list but I'm happy with what I have now

Seem to have lost my passion for computers the last year or so, possible to do with no major jumps in tech


edit. there was the odd Mac (g4 and intel based) Acorn electron and Acorn Archimedes along the way too
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: brucehoult on May 09, 2018, 01:29:02 am
8080, hand built 8088, Ibm XT, 286 ps/2 - all very used in the mid to late 80's

Apple ][, PDP11/VAX (not personally owned!), home built wire-wrapped 6809, 68k Macs, PPC Macs G3 - G5, Linux Pentium Pro 200 then Athlon 700 then Athlon 3200+, Core 2 Duo Macs, Hackintosh i7-860 then Linux i7-4790K, i7-6700K. Various ARM boards (Pi, Odroid) and Arduinos. Now RISC-V HiFIve1 (Arduino) and HiFive Unleashed (1.5 GHz Quad core).

Quote
Now running X99 5820K with all the trimmings - 8th Gen I7 on the wish list but I'm happy with what I have now

Definitely still a great machine, with no reason to replace it unless you want 10 - 18 cores (i9) or similar performance in a smaller lower power package.

I'm very impressed by my new 100mm x 100mm x 35mm NUC with an i7-8659U CPU. I can put it in my pocket and travel the world, it uses 15W, and the performance matches a 2.5 years old 65W i7-6700 desktop CPU! (and beats it by 20% on single-core tasks).

Quote
Seem to have lost my passion for computers the last year or so, possible to do with no major jumps in tech

Wow! Even at 55 years old I'm the opposite!

Clock rates have peaked, yes, but that makes things MUCH MORE interesting than any time since 1990! It's no longer enough for Intel to simply spend their billions on a new FAB process and lazily crank out the same design as last year but at 50% higher clock speed.

Now they have to actually *think*.

So far Intel have mostly been thinking "Lets put more of the same old cores on on chip". That's reasonably exciting. It makes tasks such as compiling software or video transcoding or responding to a lot of web requests much faster without a lot of effort, but it's a very interesting challenge to figure out how to use this for other things.

But even more exciting is that YOU DON't NEED TO BE INTEL to innovate any more. Basic CPUs aren't getting faster any more which means that speeding up particular tasks often now requires special hardware to directly implement the main part of the task, with a conventional CPU there as well to supervise and control it.

There is an absolute *explosion* happening in people building this special hardware inside FPGAs, and the successful and high volume designs migrate to custom SoCs. Sometimes this special hardware can be done as a co-processor with relatively loose coupling to the main CPU (and you can license ARM cores for that), but often it works better if you can hook your special hardware up to custom instructions in the CPU and incorporate it in the normal program flow in a much more fine-grained way. You can't do that with ARM.

Some companies are creating their own proprietary and customisable CPU architectures and that's exciting to see that happening again (like in the 70s and 80s). But even though gcc and linux etc are pretty portable it's still a lot of work to actually port them, and that work doesn't actually add any unique value to your company. So more and more people are grabbing an existing open-source and license-free processor design and customising that with their own special sauce.

Mostly now, that means RISC-V, which is getting very good momentum.

And so I've made my way to a RISC-V startup where our business is making customised CPUs and SoCs.  Exciting times!
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: djos on May 09, 2018, 10:14:06 am
Seem to have lost my passion for computers the last year or so, possible to do with no major jumps in tech

I simply must concur with your sentiment, my 2012 i7 Mac Mini still does everything I want it to and if I want to pay games I use my dozen retro computers, particularly my Amiga's and Tandy 1000 EX. I find them to be a lot more fun than modern computing which is iterative and boring.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: rrinker on May 10, 2018, 06:50:30 pm
 I'm not so sure I've lost my passion for computers so much as I just can't justify spending money to replace my current desktop, which is now something like 6 or 7 years old. It still plays the few games I play, and everything else runs just fine. It does have an SSD, and I did replace the video card a few years ago, I built it with a GTX480 and not have a 970. But it runs everything I need it to run just fine.
 I sort of satisfied it by building a new machine for my workbench, which I also built, about 2 years ago. On that one I went for small, a mini-ITX cube case, no discrete GPU, low power was the primary criteria. It's still plenty powerful enough for KiCad and various toolchains for programmign micros and runnign test equipment even with just the built in Intel graphics.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: MapleLeaf on May 10, 2018, 07:18:19 pm
My first was a S100, Z80 i tried to build from pieces in the late 70s. It almost worked  :)
Then a working 8085 that i got MS basic running on. Used it for my Computer Science degree.
Ah the joy of doing home work in my dorm room instead of going to the CS building to punch cards for
an IBM 360 computer.
I am nearing retirement and have all the bare S100 boards and parts to make a working system. Will start
on it soon. It should be so much easier now that i have a complete electronic lab. The first time i only had an analog volt meter.
 Still can't figure out how i can use my spectrum analyzer in building this new system  :D
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: stenbror on May 11, 2018, 08:22:42 pm
My first that i owned myself was a Commodore Vic 20, but i did own 50% of a Sinclair ZX81 together with a friend back in 1982.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Stavos122 on May 11, 2018, 08:30:23 pm
After a lot of articles and comparisons in PC Mag, first PC owned was a Compaq Presario - purchased is '93 or '94.  We laughed on the way home from the store that it was more expensive than the car it was being transported in.   
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: precaud on June 09, 2018, 12:44:31 pm
My first were in 1980/81, two Apple II systems (unbelievably expensive), one for the lab, one for the office. Both choices turned out to be a mistake. Replaced them with an HP 9845B for the lab and Eagle IIe (Z-80 CP/M) for the office. Both great choices. Never had a lick of a problem with either. Both still work today.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Richard Crowley on June 11, 2018, 05:04:21 pm
In the E-test (test wafer probing, measurement and evaluation) lab I managed, we had several Lomac LM80 automated test systems. They had a 40-channel (or 48??) switch matrix, and four SMU source-measurement units which could source/sink voltage or current and simultaneously measure voltage/current.  Perfect for evaluating transistors, etc.

The LM80 came with an S-100 bus CP/M computer with a full 64Kbytes of memory and two 8-inch floppy drives.  I got several Xerox 820 computers to allow users to enter test parameters for the LM80s (so that the LM80s could spend their time testing and the programming could be done off-line).  The Xerox 820 was a commercialized version of the Ferguson BigBoard (referenced in Reply #71)  Xerox (whose PaloAlto Research Center, PARC invented the windowed GUI with mouse control and local networking) took a giant step backwards and licensed this rather basic CP/M board from a small company in Texas (Digital Research, not the same as the CP/M people).

But we quickly outgrew the 64K Z80 computer that came with the Lomac test system.  So I reverse-engineered the control bus and the control software to operate the SMUs and the switch matrix, and wrote a driver for the HP 9845, a couple orders of magnitude more sophisticated machine than the little CP/M sytems.  The HP 9845 came with several plug-in I/O modules, one of which was a 16-bit, bi-directional  parallel port which was perfect for talking to the Lomac hardware (with only five or six 7400 series TTL "glue" chips in-between)

(http://calc.fjk.ch/images/hp9845b_2.jpg)


The Lomac people came to visit one day and were astounded that we had upgraded their system on our own.  Those systems were used during development of a couple generations of CPU chips (386, 486, Pentium, etc.)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: CatalinaWOW on June 12, 2018, 12:25:15 am
9845 was the dream machine of its time.  You could have purchased 50 or so big board based computers for the price they brought.  Best I could do in that era was limited shared access to one, so I threatened to bring my own big board computer to work.  My threat, with others was what finally started breaking the ice on the company actually providing computers for engineers to use at their desks.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Peter63 on June 17, 2018, 10:28:43 am
Commodore VIC-20, sold it 1988  :'(
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: tggzzz on June 17, 2018, 02:52:49 pm
Clock rates have peaked, yes, but that makes things MUCH MORE interesting than any time since 1990! It's no longer enough for Intel to simply spend their billions on a new FAB process and lazily crank out the same design as last year but at 50% higher clock speed.

Now they have to actually *think*.

So far Intel have mostly been thinking "Lets put more of the same old cores on on chip". That's reasonably exciting. It makes tasks such as compiling software or video transcoding or responding to a lot of web requests much faster without a lot of effort, but it's a very interesting challenge to figure out how to use this for other things.

But even more exciting is that YOU DON't NEED TO BE INTEL to innovate any more. Basic CPUs aren't getting faster any more which means that speeding up particular tasks often now requires special hardware to directly implement the main part of the task, with a conventional CPU there as well to supervise and control it.

There is an absolute *explosion* happening in people building this special hardware inside FPGAs, and the successful and high volume designs migrate to custom SoCs. Sometimes this special hardware can be done as a co-processor with relatively loose coupling to the main CPU (and you can license ARM cores for that), but often it works better if you can hook your special hardware up to custom instructions in the CPU and incorporate it in the normal program flow in a much more fine-grained way. You can't do that with ARM.

Some companies are creating their own proprietary and customisable CPU architectures and that's exciting to see that happening again (like in the 70s and 80s). But even though gcc and linux etc are pretty portable it's still a lot of work to actually port them, and that work doesn't actually add any unique value to your company. So more and more people are grabbing an existing open-source and license-free processor design and customising that with their own special sauce.

Mostly now, that means RISC-V, which is getting very good momentum.

And so I've made my way to a RISC-V startup where our business is making customised CPUs and SoCs.  Exciting times!

Most of those efforts are merely variations on a theme, which run into the standard problems:
The only exception to that I'm aware of is the XMOS xCORE processors and xC. They have up to 32 core 4000MIPS chips with guaranteed instruction timings (IDE specifies the worst case, no measure-and-hope required), interrupt latencies typically 10ns, and solid inter-core comms and synchronisation built into the language.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Squarewave on June 19, 2018, 03:31:18 pm
I think mine was a Wang computer. Green mono display, massive computer base to it with a hard drive referred to as a Winchester.

It didn't do much apart from some data base stuff and a word processor.

My printer was a massive daisy wheel printer.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: JimS on July 06, 2018, 07:34:30 am
As I recall it was a Timex / Sinclair kit.
I do not recall the model number.
From searching on the web it it looks like it was a ZX80 in a ZX81 case.
It had a Z80 running at 1 Mhz with 1k sram.
I got the extra 1k sram and a video fix option/part(s) for it.
It did not have the second 40 pin chip like the ZX81 & 1000.
I replaced the Z80 with a Z80A and added extra ceramic caps to the power rails.
Traded it in on a 'trade in your old computer' special and get $100.00.
So my next one was a Commodore 64 with a floppy drive (cost more than the C64  ::)
I even modified my TV for a YC input for better video quality.
Thanks for the thread and bringing back fond memory's.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: luiHS on July 06, 2018, 09:25:21 am
My list of computers, owned and used, in order of date are:

Owned:

1.- Sinclair ZX Spectrum
2.- Amstrad PC2286 (an expensive and very noisy compatible PC)
3.- PC compatible, several MCU up to now with Intel I7

Used:

1.- Sinclair ZX Spectrum
2.- IBM S36 5360, 5363 and 5364
3.- IBM AS400
4.- Amstrad PC2286
5.- PC compatible, several MCU up to now with Intel I7

I remember with fondness and nostalgia the IBM S36 5360, 5363 and 5364 with which I worked for several years until migrating to the IBM AS400 with which I was many years, until 2004. All the programming in RPGII and RPGIII language.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: spudboy488 on July 06, 2018, 11:48:56 am
My very first was a 8080 development/training board in college.
Then tried a TRS-80
Then used HP85 controllers (and their various iterations) for my job (followed by the 200 series)
Then built (from a bare board) an Apple II clone.
Then purchased a Sinclair ZX81 (I think I still have it)
Then purchased  a used Apple IIC.
Then built (component level) a 486 PC.
Then just purchased various other PC based laptops and desktops.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: bsfeechannel on July 06, 2018, 01:09:07 pm
It was one of those Intel 8080 or 8086 training kits at school. It didn't have the fancy hexadecimal keypad or the eight-segment LED displays of later versions. Instructions  were entered in binary to an EPROM. You had a row of switches representing a byte and you had to turn them on or off to get your ones and zeros. If you made a mistake, you would have to wait for 30 minutes until the whole memory got erased under UV light. EEPROMs hadn't been invented yet. You had to "retype" your program byte by byte again because of a misconfigured switch on the 999th word. Fortunately things got a little better since then.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: exit_failure on July 06, 2018, 09:04:14 pm
My first one was a Highscreen 386 DX-33. Complete with a 40MB hdd, 1.44" floppy and an externally attachable battery pack.

If anyone is interested, I can take a couple of pictures and maybe even take it apart when I'm at my parents' again.

(https://trisquel.info/files/Highscreen_386-DX_33_Notebook__42449_6.JPG)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: pamperchu on July 08, 2018, 01:56:47 pm
IBM XT in 1990(https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/ANOCYKQQQzNrrvQTlOj3EfxEtcCcboUlWCzyvsrqnlEG21xr6yF6k0ae57pPFjJcak1cTbqWpQ4X32WtI3CN=w1896-h1071)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: bsfeechannel on July 08, 2018, 04:58:52 pm
9845 was the dream machine of its time.  You could have purchased 50 or so big board based computers for the price they brought.  Best I could do in that era was limited shared access to one, so I threatened to bring my own big board computer to work.  My threat, with others was what finally started breaking the ice on the company actually providing computers for engineers to use at their desks.

Back in the day we had an HP9845T in our lab. It cost US$20K. In today's money it would be more than $60K. They built a small closet with a locked door to house the computer and only me and other two technicians and two engineers had access to that room. It was used to run a program written by Brüel & Kjaer that calculated what in technical terms was called the "Verständlichkeitsgrad". It was an statistical calculation that gave you the percentage of words you could understand given the acoustic noise. Which was recorded using a calibrated microphone. The signal was analyzed by a sophisticated B&K piece of equipment that simulated the response of the human ear and gave out a list of data that should be fed into the computer.

What was hilarious is that, although the HP9845T could easily exhibit graphs, the program returned a table of values which the engineers would take to manually plot them using paper and crayons and so compare the results of their tests. This happened because no one knew how to program. In fact they had no idea that the HP9845T could do that. Although they were used to electronic calculators, computers were an absolute novelty to them.

I, on the contrary, the youngest in the lab (at least 10 years younger than the youngest until then) and a newcomer, had a background that included computers and programming. Even not being authorized by the management, I read the manuals and figured out how to plot the graphs--that the engineers spent their whole afternoons drawing like kids in the kindergarten--using that very crown jewel that they kept in that "vault".

I can remember one of the engineers that had previously rebuked me for "tinkering" with the most expensive item in the lab saying "Sensational!" when he saw his tedious work done in seconds by the machine.

In comparison to HP9845s back then, PCs, even today, seem nothing more than a cobbled arrangement held together by binding wire.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: CatalinaWOW on July 08, 2018, 05:52:30 pm
While much more mechanically robust, I don't think the HP9845 compares well with today's desktop machines.  They weren't very fast by today's standards.  The color graphics were far ahead of their time, but very pedestrian today.  RAM was nonexistent by today's standards and mass storage was magnetic tape.  In one way it was infinite capacity - if you bought enough tapes.  But slow, slow, slow.  The sound of those tapes winding as they went for data or a file at a distant section of tape is still with me.

While I still have a bit of lust in my heart for that dream machine of my youth, if offered the choice of a well configured workstation today or the HP9845 there wouldn't be even a bit of hesitation in selecting the new machine.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: bsfeechannel on July 08, 2018, 07:42:18 pm
Of course I'm not comparing the technical performance of an HP9845 of yore with that of a PC these days. That'd be ridiculous.

What I'm discussing is from the perspective of the user's experience.

PCs these days keep on being the same P.O.S. (and I don't mean Point Of Sales) they have always been.

People do not complain much because they know nothing better. Those of us privileged enough to happen to have had contact with such a consciously engineered work like the HP9845 can assess how far PCs (especially those running MS Windows) are from decent computing.

While I'm posting this message I've been struggling for three days with an update and a backup of a PC running a licensed OEM Windows  7. That's ludicrous.

The experience I had with HP9845 made me boost my career for serious work. The experience I have with PCs makes me loose precious time and money. Sorry.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: MK14 on July 08, 2018, 07:55:58 pm
Of course I'm not comparing the technical performance of an HP9845 of yore with that of a PC these days. That'd be ridiculous.

What I'm discussing is from the perspective of the user's experience.

PCs these days keep on being the same P.O.S. (and I don't mean Point Of Sales) they have always been.

People do not complain much because they know nothing better. Those of us privileged enough to happen to have had contact with such a consciously engineered work like the HP9845 can assess how far PCs (especially those running MS Windows) are from decent computing.

While I'm posting this message I've been struggling for three days with an update and a backup of a PC running a licensed OEM Windows  7. That's ludicrous.

The experience I had with HP9845 made me boost my career for serious work. The experience I have with PCs make me loose precious time and money. Sorry.

I agree with you.
What upsets me, about the modern day PCs. Is that they are all so similar to each other.
I could sit by my PC and do stuff on windows (not that I use it much, or at all, it varies), then fly to Australia and use someone else's. Which to all intents and purposes, the experience would be, almost exactly the same.
This is not very good, as I'd prefer there to be much more variety.

Whereas, you look back over this thread, which shows many of the computers, which have been available in the 1950s (maybe), 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and later. There is a tremendous range of completely different looking, computers and operating system/software etc.
With many of them, I just wish this was a futeristic virtual reality (game), which would let me click on any of the images and then be immediately transferred/teleported (via virtual reality), into a big room.
With just me, that fantastic looking computer system, and some free time on my hands.
I could then just jump in and play around with that nice looking computer. Watch its flashing lights, mess and change its front panel buttons, hear its disks whirring and spinning up. Feel the huge warmth from some of the older computers and smell the hot electronics at work.
Play around with paper tapes and punched cards again (The paper tapes are/were way more fun, than the cards, in my experience).
Then when/if I eventually get fed up, waft back into the present (2018), and back home.
Only to find another computer system which I just love the look of and then go into that scenario, in the same way.

Alternatively (in real life), I have to either go to one of the computer museums or choose one of these computer systems, that is practicable for home use. Then try and buy it on ebay, then play with that. A bit like Dave's video on the HP85.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: exit_failure on July 08, 2018, 09:36:40 pm
I agree with you.
What upsets me, about the modern day PCs. Is that they are all so similar to each other.
I could sit by my PC and do stuff on windows (not that I use it much, or at all, it varies), then fly to Australia and use someone else's. Which to all intents and purposes, the experience would be, almost exactly the same.

How is that a bad thing? If there is anything good in the (still ongoing) monopolization of the OS market it is exactly that. Being able to sit down in front of a device and recognize a familiar user interface and thus being able to pick up the operation of said device relatively quickly is something that is almost universally lauded.
One of the few ways one could complain about something like this is, if your usefulness relies on other people not being able to operate the device you are basing your livelihood on and that would be a pretty weak argument.

Having worked with machines that were so completely different that you basically had to start from scratch to do exactly the same thing has always been a pain in the arse.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: MK14 on July 08, 2018, 09:52:48 pm
How is that a bad thing? If there is anything good in the (still ongoing) monopolization of the OS market it is exactly that. Being able to sit down in front of a device and recognize a familiar user interface and thus being able to pick up the operation of said device relatively quickly is something that is almost universally lauded.
One of the few ways one could complain about something like this is, if your usefulness relies on other people not being able to operate the device you are basing your livelihood on and that would be a pretty weak argument.

Having worked with machines that were so completely different that you basically had to start from scratch to do exactly the same thing has always been a pain in the arse.

I agree with you (but disagree a bit or more, in another sense).

I agree with you, that as a usable tool. Having, consistency, between different computers (PCs), is a very good thing. It means people can write software for these devices. People can get familiar, with the sorts of user interfaces, and hence they can be very productive and efficient.

EDIT: But on the other hand, Windows10 and some other stuff, don't seem to be good things as such. I wish there was decent completion on the Operating System front, so that us users, could buy a decent/useful/sensibly-priced PC operating system. There are Linux's/MACos/Android and stuff, so it is not that bad a situation.

But what I meant, was from a point of view of having fun with computers, enjoying and admiring all the flashing lights, and whirring tape drives, on older machines. They are almost a sort of artwork, very appreciated, by at least myself, and probably other people, perhaps with similar interests, especially.

Analogy:
If you want a powerful, modern, available, cheap, tiny, mosfet transistor, you can buy whole reels with thousands of surface mount ones, on a reel, ready to solder paste onto you own PCBs, with pick and place machines or by hand.

But if you want a large collection of Transistors and Valves/Tubes, going back to early last century, for your own collection (small, private museum). You want to obtain, a wide range of large (through hole), transistors/valves, produced in quantity over the years. They will come a wide variety of packages, and sizes.
Which you can then mess with, look at, and put on display, for your own amusement.

You could, instead, buy a x3000 reel of surface mount transistors, for perhaps £20/$30. Then put just that up, on display. But I argue, that reel, would be considerably less interesting.

tl;dr
It is NOT a bad thing, it is a good thing for most purposes, except for enjoying the immense variety, types and operations, of computers, over the years.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Richard Crowley on July 08, 2018, 10:21:26 pm
What upsets me, about the modern day PCs. Is that they are all so similar to each other.
I could sit by my PC and do stuff on windows (not that I use it much, or at all, it varies), then fly to Australia and use someone else's. Which to all intents and purposes, the experience would be, almost exactly the same.
This is not very good, as I'd prefer there to be much more variety.
You mean like Linux?    :-DD
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: exit_failure on July 08, 2018, 10:24:41 pm
tl;dr
It is NOT a bad thing, it is a good thing for most purposes, except for enjoying the immense variety, types and operations, of computers, over the years.

I'm sorry. I misunderstood you. Its just that I heard "every dumb idiot can use a computer nowadays" a lot when talking to other people about old computers.

But I agree with you. Seeing the inner workings of this old tech and recognizing the ingenuity that went into the solutions they found with the limited resources they had back then is fascinating.
My university has a computer museum and one of their most precious pieces is a fully working ZUSE Z23. I must watched them run it half a dozen times now and talked for hours to the people who rebuilt it.

https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=de&sl=de&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.iser.uni-erlangen.de%2Findex.php%3Fort_id%3D329%26tree%3D1%26inventarnummer%3DI1325 (https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=de&sl=de&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.iser.uni-erlangen.de%2Findex.php%3Fort_id%3D329%26tree%3D1%26inventarnummer%3DI1325)

(http://www.iser.uni-erlangen.de/pictures/I1325_02.jpg)

Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: MK14 on July 08, 2018, 10:37:27 pm
You mean like Linux?    :-DD

To some extent, Linux does do things better than windows.
But to another extent, Linux does not really perform as easily/compatibly/usably as windows.

I use Linux a lot (I'm typing this message out, on a dual-boot Linux computer), and like it a lot. But it can be a real pain at times, and cause difficulties which are very difficult to resolve. Which windows tends to NOT do.
Many things such as programming, virtual machines and servers (web, NAS etc), seem to work out very nicely, on Linux.

But gaming, is best done on Windows (I much, much prefer win7 to win10. But latest hardware can force win10 on me and others, as win7 lost support for latest hardware, especially cpus).
Many applications either run best under windows, or even only work on windows, unfortunately.

I try and avoid windows10 like the plague. But can't always avoid it, for various reasons.

I'm sorry. I misunderstood you. Its just that I heard "every dumb idiot can use a computer nowadays" a lot when talking to other people about old computers.
No problem, and a very nice looking computer, you have posted there. I'm temped to go and see it, if I am ever near, there.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: exit_failure on July 08, 2018, 11:49:06 pm
No problem, and a very nice looking computer, you have posted there. I'm temped to go and see it, if I am ever near, there.

They showcase it every second Thursday. The dates for the next month or so can be found here:
http://www.iser.uni-erlangen.de/aktuelles/ISER-Fuehrungen.pdf (http://www.iser.uni-erlangen.de/aktuelles/ISER-Fuehrungen.pdf)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: bsfeechannel on July 08, 2018, 11:50:26 pm
To some extent, Linux does do things better than windows.

For instance, make Intel's hardware look less pathetic.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: djos on July 09, 2018, 12:34:40 am
To some extent, Linux does do things better than windows.

For instance, make Intel's hardware look less pathetic.

Dont you mean make windows look like a huge resource hog?

one thing I miss from the 80's was seeing what different systems were up to - it was exciting seeing what new systems from Amiga, Atari, Acorn, IBM & Apple could do! Heck I even got excited when Windows NT 4.0 was launched, my dad an I actually when to a convention centre to see the launch! I could care less about Windows 95 because I new it was just lipstick on a pig, but WinNT 4.0 was actually a big deal. Likewise OS/2 before it, I went to the OS/2 Warp 3.0 launch and was super impressed (I ran 2.x then 3.0 for a few years before switching to WinNT 4.0).


These days the landscape is pretty dull for the most part, There's Windows PC's, Apple Mac's and Linux. I run all 3 OS's in our house but Windows (server) and Linux (ubuntu) are both relegated to Server duties and the two Mac's are our daily drivers.

The only real fun stuff to be had in computing these days (imo), is with RasPi's and Arduino type devices.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: bsfeechannel on July 09, 2018, 01:57:41 am
To some extent, Linux does do things better than windows.

For instance, make Intel's hardware look less pathetic.

Dont you mean make windows look like a huge resource hog?

I was being a little sarcastic. But yeah, you can look it that way.

Quote
I could care less about Windows 95 because I new it was just lipstick on a pig

Microsoft lost me with Windows 95. For those seriously working in the field that meant much more than a useless OS.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: djos on July 09, 2018, 02:14:42 am
To some extent, Linux does do things better than windows.

For instance, make Intel's hardware look less pathetic.

Dont you mean make windows look like a huge resource hog?

I was being a little sarcastic. But yeah, you can look it that way.

Quote
I could care less about Windows 95 because I new it was just lipstick on a pig

Microsoft lost me with Windows 95. For those seriously working in the field that meant much more than a useless OS.


To true, I couldn't comprehend why many folk thought it was so great, it's so called plug and play was just garbage - Mac OS and OS/2 had real plug and play that actually worked and it's multi taking was not really better than apples crude cooperative system. OS/2 also had true pr-emptive multi taking.

I could go on  :-DD
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: exit_failure on July 09, 2018, 02:28:17 am
To some extent, Linux does do things better than windows.

For instance, make Intel's hardware look less pathetic.

Dont you mean make windows look like a huge resource hog?

I was being a little sarcastic. But yeah, you can look it that way.

Quote
I could care less about Windows 95 because I new it was just lipstick on a pig

Microsoft lost me with Windows 95. For those seriously working in the field that meant much more than a useless OS.


To true, I couldn't comprehend why many folk thought it was so great, it's so called plug and play was just garbage - Mac OS and OS/2 had real plug and play that actually worked and it's multi taking was not really better than apples crude cooperative system. OS/2 also had true pr-emptive multi taking.

I could go on  :-DD

(http://www.tothepc.com/pic/fake-funny-message-boxes-windows.png)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: djos on July 09, 2018, 03:48:14 am
 :-DD
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: IanH on July 09, 2018, 04:53:45 am
Elliott 803 at RMIT 1968
Algol 60 was the programming language
Program entered by punched cards created with either IBM 026 or 029 keypunch
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: MapleLeaf on July 09, 2018, 07:27:19 pm
Mid 1970s, built a S100 system from bare boards and components. Did not work. I only had a cheap volt meter to debug with.
Then built an Explorer 85 kit (Intel 8085 CPU) , worked, used it getting a Computer Science degree.
After 40 years of doing software and electrical engineering, i am back building a S100 system. I am using some of the
same boards on my first attempt. It is much easier now with all the electronics instruments i have now. ;D
Can't wait to get a REAL computer running. One with toggle switches and LEDs for the front panel.

 
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: hendorog on July 09, 2018, 08:38:31 pm
What upsets me, about the modern day PCs. Is that they are all so similar to each other.
I could sit by my PC and do stuff on windows (not that I use it much, or at all, it varies), then fly to Australia and use someone else's. Which to all intents and purposes, the experience would be, almost exactly the same.
This is not very good, as I'd prefer there to be much more variety.
You mean like Linux?    :-DD

Maybe I am getting old but to me, right now, windows is way less consistent than linux - or osx for that matter.

 I think MS are doing exactly what seemed to happen in the ubuntu world a few years.ago - groping around blindly for the next ui paradigm.

Fortunately company has employed an admin so i no longer have to google how to fix error 0x80007025.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: bd139 on July 09, 2018, 10:39:27 pm
I think Microsoft are throwing poo everywhere and working out what it sticks to, which they’re identifying with telemetry.

Unfortunately everyone is fed up of having poo hurled at them by a deranged schizophrenic monkey that steals your wallet and watches you while you sleep.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Specmaster on July 09, 2018, 10:49:43 pm
Come on. be fair, Win 10 if you have installed all the updates is now pretty good, just wish it was more backwardly compatible with older programs and games especially, I have a few that will not run on it.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: bd139 on July 09, 2018, 10:52:17 pm
If I’m being paid to wrangle windows you pay me by the hour.

If I’m being paid to wrangle Linux you pay a fixed rate for job done.

That’s all I’m saying :)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Specmaster on July 09, 2018, 11:02:01 pm
That might well be an area where problems could exist but for the average user, running standard office and games etc then it is what seems to be a stable and good platform these days.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: bd139 on July 09, 2018, 11:11:25 pm
We’re power users. I’ve seen normal users machines. It’s not pretty. The average user can fuck up an etch-a-sketch. It’s like watching the monkeys around the monolith at the start of 2001.

Anyway back on first computers, I was talking to placement student in the office today and his first computer ran windows 7. Now I feel old.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: bitseeker on July 09, 2018, 11:56:24 pm
His first computer ran Windows 7? :o Yup, I'm instantly feeling ancient too.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Specmaster on July 10, 2018, 12:05:28 am
Anything running Windows XP makes me feel very old  :-DD
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: djos on July 10, 2018, 12:07:54 am
We’re power users. I’ve seen normal users machines. It’s not pretty. The average user can fuck up an etch-a-sketch. It’s like watching the monkeys around the monolith at the start of 2001.

Anyway back on first computers, I was talking to placement student in the office today and his first computer ran windows 7. Now I feel old.

Ouch! DOS 2.11 was my first MS OS!  :scared:
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: ljwinkler on July 10, 2018, 06:18:18 am
I'm not sure if you can call it a 'computer' but it was an Atari 65XE with a tape recorder.
It was an 8-bit 6502, 64kB of RAM and a tape that took 30 minutes to load a game. It was then upgraded with a 'turbo' switch to allow having 20...40 games on a single, 60-minute tape.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_8-bit_family (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_8-bit_family)

Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: bitseeker on July 10, 2018, 06:31:21 am
It certainly is a computer. I wrote reports for school using Atari Writer on an Atari 130XE and printed them with an Atari 1027 printer. That took a while and what a racket it made.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: ljwinkler on July 10, 2018, 06:44:38 am
When I got mine I was like 8 or 9. For me it was just a gaming machine with a crude joystick with just one button :)
My dad was involved in all those upgrades back in the day.
I remember one mysterious thing (it was happening from being new, I don't suspect a wear back then). When the tape recorder was put next to the computer (it was in the left side, the right one had joystick ports) there was a humming noise while loading games. It sounded like a poor ground in an audio equipment. The games of course couldn't load as the noise was stronger than the recording. The solution was to put the tape unit on top of the computer, right in the middle - all keys were accessible and the noise was gone. 100% load rate.
I wonder if this could be caused by a broken/not soldered wire in the plug? My guess was that putting it on the computer protected the tape recorder using the computers ground/shields.

Then I had an Amiga, 486, first Pentium and now I'm surrounded by Raspberry Pi single board computers :)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: bitseeker on July 10, 2018, 09:04:48 pm
Yeah, could be the shielding on the top of the XE's case helped (and/or any shielding on the bottom of the cassette drive).
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: IconicPCB on July 11, 2018, 11:33:50 am
An abacus...
My grandfather got it for me and taught me to program beads in terms of place value number base 10.
It was a great little abacus... blue and red beads.
Man you should have seen those beads fly upon the programing wire grid. I was barely five.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: GregDunn on July 12, 2018, 04:44:28 am
The first computer I ever got a look at was an IBM 1130, safely esconced behind glass in the college's computing center.  No student could touch it; you laid a deck of Hollerith cards on the counter, and if you were lucky, an hour or two later you'd get your deck and a printout back.  Usually proclaiming that you had a syntax error on one of the cards (good luck figuring out which one).

I was sitting with friends one day musing about having a computer that we could actually sit down at, type in commands, and run programs without waiting for the batch jobs to run.  One of the guys (who lived down the hall from me) said, "Oh, you don't know about Ben?".  He pulled me aside and informed me that the school had an old ex-military computer down in the basement in a locked room.  But if you were a serious student and wanted to learn about computers, the school's EE department head would arrange for you to get a key to the room and after some instruction, leave you alone with the computer!

The computer?  It was this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bendix_G-15

(Yeah, the nerds called it "Ben" for short)  It was all vacuum tube logic, and the memory was a rotating drum coated with multiple stripes of magnetic material.  I/O was a Friden Flexowriter with relays and contacts wired under the keys so that the computer could use it for output as well as accepting user input.

To boot the thing, you had to set up the front panel to initialize the Flexowriter's I/O channel, then use it to type in a couple of octal commands that, when executed, copied the boot loader into memory from a punched paper tape.  That allowed you to read the OS in from another paper tape.  After that, any user programs you wanted could also be loaded from the tapes.  If you were careful and paid attention, you could boot the machine up and have a program loaded in 10 minutes or so.  We'd run a Blackjack game or its version of ELIZA, use the machine's utilities for running some calculations, and try to figure out how to write a program that didn't freeze the machine, requiring a power cycle.  I hope it made it into a museum somewhere, because that computer certainly started a few serious programmers on their path to software development.

But that was the first computer I ever actually used
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: bsudbrink on July 12, 2018, 02:18:30 pm
If you ever want to visit one again (a Bendix G-15, that is), the Vintage Computer Federation museum in Wall, NJ has one that is partially operating and is in the process of being restored.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: jsantoro on July 12, 2018, 02:43:32 pm
IBM 360 Mod 30, yes I'm old
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: ebastler on July 12, 2018, 03:47:59 pm
The computer?  It was this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bendix_G-15 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bendix_G-15)

(Yeah, the nerds called it "Ben" for short)  It was all vacuum tube logic, and the memory was a rotating drum coated with multiple stripes of magnetic material.  I/O was a Friden Flexowriter with relays and contacts wired under the keys so that the computer could use it for output as well as accepting user input.

The Librascope LGP-30 was a contemporary of the Bendix, and also a magnetic drum computer with a very similar concept. Not my first computer (I'm not quite that old...), but I found it fascinating enough to build a little FPGA-based replica a couple of years ago: http://www.e-basteln.de/lgp30 (http://www.e-basteln.de/lgp30)

It helps that excellent documentation is available online, including a service manual with full schematics and a step-by-step explanation of the inner workings. Also, quite a few paper tapes with original software have been scanned and published. A few links are on the above web page.

(http://www.e-basteln.de/lgp30/img/LittleGP-30%20handheld%20small.JPG)

Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: GregDunn on July 12, 2018, 05:00:59 pm
Glad to see people maintaining these old dinosaurs or even building replicas.  I always wanted to have a PDP-11 in my lab just because the front panel is one of the coolest looking things ever.   8)

Coincidentally, I'll be in Philadelphia next week, but the NJ museum hours don't line up with my free time or else I'd run over there.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: blv1946 on July 21, 2018, 11:38:42 am
Got a Southwest Technical Products 6800 kit in 1976. Came with a whopping 2K of ram. Used my Sony TV for a monitor until the TV typewriter kit came along, used audio cassettes for storage.
I was in the USAF stationed at Clark AB in the Philippines at the time. After a few months discovered that I wasn't alone, had 4-5 other people with the SWTP 6800, a couple more with the MITS Altair 8800's, another had the 8800 and the MITS 680b. And a Major had lugged an ASR-33 teletype terminal(they had a very substantial discount at the time to rope in the hobbyist with money) all the way across the Pacific but his wife banished him and it to a closet with the door closed every time he used it. Think someone had one of the Kim-1's or something similar with a 6502 too. Don't remember any one having an Apple I at that time.
My friend Lynn, who worked for VOA, got one of the first SWTP 40 column impact printers. We did a few mods for the 6800 stuff and had one tiny article in published Dr Dobbs Journal in 77. 

Had the first issue of Byte magazine, but someone borrowed it and it never came back, still have 2nd and 3rd issues somewhere in a box.
After a few years got the Heath H-19 terminal(80 beautiful columns and real descenders on lower case) to use with the 'puter. Later, a brown case Commodore 64 and few years later the 128D. First PC was one of the Commodore models with a 8086 chip.

Still remember the first time I turned on the 6800 and the flashing asterisk prompt staring me in the face.  "Ok, you built me and turned me on, now what?" was the implied challenge.
Definitely an exciting time for electronics technology and the future we are still exploring.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: shawty on September 07, 2018, 08:54:59 pm
Glad to see people maintaining these old dinosaurs or even building replicas.  I always wanted to have a PDP-11 in my lab just because the front panel is one of the coolest looking things ever.   8)

Coincidentally, I'll be in Philadelphia next week, but the NJ museum hours don't line up with my free time or else I'd run over there.

My current "Pet Project" is using Microchip PIC's to emulate some of these older devices.  Currently I have an old unused dsPIC33F4011 that I'm trying make behave like a rockwell 6522 VIA :-)

Iv'e already took an old tube of PIC16F54's that where no use for anything else, and turned them into discrete logic IC's like Quad AND/NAND/OR/NOR/XOR gates , my big target however, is to see if I can pull off a trick of the century and make a PIC18F4550 believe it's a Rockwell 6502 CPU :-)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: ebastler on September 07, 2018, 09:01:17 pm
[...] my big target however, is to see if I can pull off a trick of the century and make a PIC18F4550 believe it's a Rockwell 6502 CPU :-)

I notice that the two have the same package size. But you don't expect to make the PIC a pin-compatible, drop-in replacement for the 6502 -- or do you?  :) 
I would assume that the supply and clock pins don't do you the favor of being in the right locations, to begin with?
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: MK14 on October 15, 2018, 08:11:03 am
[...] my big target however, is to see if I can pull off a trick of the century and make a PIC18F4550 believe it's a Rockwell 6502 CPU :-)

I notice that the two have the same package size. But you don't expect to make the PIC a pin-compatible, drop-in replacement for the 6502 -- or do you?  :) 
I would assume that the supply and clock pins don't do you the favor of being in the right locations, to begin with?

I think it can be done, because you can "cheat", and bend upwards, the incompatible pins (e.g. power pins). Replacing the missing (bent upwards) pins, with little pins, which can then, with extremely narrow gauge/thin wires, connect to the needed positions.

In the "old" days, tricks like that were done, to allow first production PCBs, to leave the factory. Despite having one or more, initial mistakes in the design. Some of Dave's videos, show things like that, if I remember correctly.
If you are desperate, you can bend through hole IC legs out of the way. Solder in alternative wires into the PCB, and even solder other wires to the top of the bent upwards pins.

Like this:
(https://tuukan.fliput.net/prem1.jpg)

Alernatively. Make a 40-pin adapter, pcb like this, which converts between a tiny surface mount cpu and the larger 40 pin through hole one:

(https://media.rs-online.com/t_large/F1582929-01.jpg)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: ebastler on October 15, 2018, 08:51:32 am
Alernatively. Make a 40-pin adapter, pcb like this, which converts between a tiny surface mount cpu and the larger 40 pin through hole one:

(https://media.rs-online.com/t_large/F1582929-01.jpg)

Bent pins and jumper wires are possible, of course, but nasty. :-) And I would not consider them if a large number of pins need to be redirected that way, starting with power and clock pins.

The adapter you show is intriguing for me due to its pins. I have made a similar adapter a couple of years ago (a little high score saver for an old arcade game, with a couple more ICs:  http://www.e-basteln.de/arcade/asteroids/highscore/ (http://www.e-basteln.de/arcade/asteroids/highscore/)). I used an old bag of solder pins for it, but struggled to find new stock in the right size.

I assume the adapter in your picture uses press-fitted pins. I have not come across these yet -- would you have details? Where to get them; are special tools required to install?

Thanks,
Juergen
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: MK14 on October 15, 2018, 09:00:16 am
Bent pins and jumper wires are possible, of course, but nasty. :-) And I would not consider them if a large number of pins need to be redirected that way, starting with power and clock pins.

The adapter you show is intriguing for me due to its pins. I have made a similar adapter a couple of years ago (a little high score saver for an old arcade game, with a couple more ICs:  http://www.e-basteln.de/arcade/asteroids/highscore/ (http://www.e-basteln.de/arcade/asteroids/highscore/)). I used an old bag of solder pins for it, but struggled to find new stock in the right size.

I assume the adapter in your picture uses press-fitted pins. I have not come across these yet -- would you have details? Where to get them; are special tools required to install?

Thanks,
Juergen

They can be ridiculously expensive. But I have (VERY rarely) seen IC like/equivalent pins for sale. Especially designed for using on PCBs, to plug straight into IC sockets and similar.
The ones I saw, were from some kind of indigo/kickstarter or similar thing (if I remember, correctly).

(as requested, in your post) Sure, details here (R.S. supplier):
https://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/ic-socket-adapters/1582929/ (https://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/ic-socket-adapters/1582929/)

(https://media.rs-online.com/t_large/F1582929-02.jpg)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Herr R aus B on October 26, 2018, 04:56:40 pm
First contact was a PET 2001 with buildt in tape and that ridiculous chiclet keyboard and whopping 12K RAM at school - I was 16 then in 1980 and I remember they called for a dedicated school conference just to decide whether the school could afford purchasing the RAM upgrade from 2,5K to 12K which at the time was in the 1000s of DM and thus VERY expensive :-)

Then messed around with a buddy's VIC20 and my base player's ZX81 - the latter just being a terrible nightmare, sorry.

1982 I bought a C64 & 1541 and used it for MIDI controlling in my home recording setup together with the frst available MIDI interface and sequencer software by Steinberg.

https://www.forum64.de/index.php?thread/83843-c64-steinberg-research-midi-interface/ (https://www.forum64.de/index.php?thread/83843-c64-steinberg-research-midi-interface/)

http://www.muzines.co.uk/images_mag/articles/SOS_apr_1986_the_professi_1_large.jpg (http://www.muzines.co.uk/images_mag/articles/SOS_apr_1986_the_professi_1_large.jpg)

A friend of mine preferred playing Impossible Mission on the thing tho until he was able to play the damn game blindfolded and with earplugs from start to end in under 2 hours or so. :-)

Later I've got me a 1040STF in 1985 also for MIDI controlling and first C programming stuff until it got a lethal RAM upgrade by a friend who afterwards wasn't a friend any longer :-)

I then purchased my first 386 with stunning 8MB of RAM - remember a certain Bill Gates claiming that noone would ever need more then 640K of RAM, well, yeah, right... - and a ridiculously large 125MB HDD, which at that time (1990/91) was thought to be a beast of a machine - at least the seller was quite impressed as he had to order "special rare parts" for that one and I paid almost 5.000 DM - being around 4.300 € in today's money... well, given the fact that I was a poor student back then and compared to the 6.000 € for a little used cabin boat I bought three months ago, that was quite an investment, being rendered almost worhtless 4 years later... :-)

On that thing I did programming under OS/2 1.2 - 1.4 for my master thesis in CS using the Glockenspiel C++ pre compiler, the C/2 Set C compiler and ORACLE 5 as RDBMS - quite a setting as I also connected an old VT220 terminal to the serial port to use for starting the compiler and displaying error messages, while the 14" (!!!) Monitor displayed the Editor - there was no IDE at that time under OS/2 and the REXX Editor with some basic command line integration came later :-)

Those were they days and now I feel VERY old  :(

 ;D
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Herr R aus B on October 26, 2018, 05:20:17 pm
Commodore PET with the Chiclet keyboard and built-in cassette drive.
(https://www.eevblog.com/forum/vintage-computing/what-was-the-very-first-computer-you-owned/?action=dlattach;attach=336063)

This thing is still the best design ever and I am so many times close to buy one - trying to be reasonable tho and staying away from the drug while thinking, it just looks nice, catches dust, takes up non-available space and is exactly capable of: not much :-)

Anyway - I love the thing, as it also was my first contact to CS  ^-^
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Herr R aus B on October 26, 2018, 05:27:13 pm
...
Not as old as the stuff you guys had, I am not that old :)
...

Define OLD!!!  >:(

 ;D
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: MK14 on October 26, 2018, 05:28:18 pm
This thing is still the best design ever and I am so many times close to buy one - try to be reasonable tho  it just looks ice, catches dust, takes up nonavailable space and does exactly - not much :-) Anyway - I love the thing, as it also was my first contact to CS  ^-^

Many years ago, I was at a radio-rally, and a pet computer, just like you pictured (or similar, if a different model), was apparently for sale for just £1 (maybe it was poor condition and/or not working, I didn't find out). I looked at it from a big distance, and thought, "nah" (No), and didn't even take a closer look at it.
These days, it would probably be worth a small fortune. (£100's I guess).

But as you say, they take up lots of room.

I think it is a real classic of a computer (design), and maybe iconic for the early development of home PCs (pre-real PCs that is, i.e. I mean PC=Personal computer, NOT IBM-PC), in the history books.

Although, there were computers available before it, in general, they were too expensive to hit the mass market and/or too difficult to use by normal people.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Herr R aus B on October 26, 2018, 05:30:26 pm
Does this one count?  ;)

(http://galerie.experimentierkasten-board.de/data/media/1/Logicus02.png)
http://www.experimentierkasten-board.de/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=50 (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 (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/toypics/LogixComputer.jpg)
http://www.samstoybox.com/toys/LogixComputer.html (http://www.samstoybox.com/toys/LogixComputer.html)

My uncle once brought that to a party - we all were VERY impressed and indeed he just had "programmed" this goat wolf cabbage riddle ;-) I was 8 then and rather liked the backlights in the "display" :-)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: rrinker on October 26, 2018, 07:25:47 pm
 I had one of those, although it was the Radio Shack/Tandy version. Same basic thing, they were just multi-contact slide switches and you built 'logic' by using the jumpers between various contacts. Fran Blanche did a video on one of them, though based on her reaction I think she forgot about what it really was until she got it out of the box and started playing around.

 The original chicklet keyboard PETs - we had those in physics lab in college, they were pretty much obsolete by then (around 1985) but no one had the time to rewrite the programs used for various experiment data gathering in some other BASIC. So the PET soldiered on.

Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Nusa on October 26, 2018, 10:40:11 pm
I think most kids start with some version of an abacus. Even today.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: MK14 on October 27, 2018, 12:21:33 am
In the E-test (test wafer probing, measurement and evaluation) lab I managed, we had several Lomac LM80 automated test systems. They had a 40-channel (or 48??) switch matrix, and four SMU source-measurement units which could source/sink voltage or current and simultaneously measure voltage/current.  Perfect for evaluating transistors, etc.

The LM80 came with an S-100 bus CP/M computer with a full 64Kbytes of memory and two 8-inch floppy drives.  I got several Xerox 820 computers to allow users to enter test parameters for the LM80s (so that the LM80s could spend their time testing and the programming could be done off-line).  The Xerox 820 was a commercialized version of the Ferguson BigBoard (referenced in Reply #71)  Xerox (whose PaloAlto Research Center, PARC invented the windowed GUI with mouse control and local networking) took a giant step backwards and licensed this rather basic CP/M board from a small company in Texas (Digital Research, not the same as the CP/M people).

But we quickly outgrew the 64K Z80 computer that came with the Lomac test system.  So I reverse-engineered the control bus and the control software to operate the SMUs and the switch matrix, and wrote a driver for the HP 9845, a couple orders of magnitude more sophisticated machine than the little CP/M sytems.  The HP 9845 came with several plug-in I/O modules, one of which was a 16-bit, bi-directional  parallel port which was perfect for talking to the Lomac hardware (with only five or six 7400 series TTL "glue" chips in-between)

(http://calc.fjk.ch/images/hp9845b_2.jpg)


The Lomac people came to visit one day and were astounded that we had upgraded their system on our own.  Those systems were used during development of a couple generations of CPU chips (386, 486, Pentium, etc.)

That computer (HP 9845) looks really cool (to me).
HP seemed to have, in some cases, put together some very desirable computers.
Some of the vintage computers (in general), still look amazingly desirable.

I suppose the PC computers we use today, will look really old and only be in museums one day.
They have already partially gone out of fashion. With some people I know (especially younger people), only using/having laptops/tablets and mobile (smart) phones, as regards their own personal computing devices.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Herr R aus B on October 27, 2018, 04:14:50 pm
I had one of those, although it was the Radio Shack/Tandy version. Same basic thing, they were just multi-contact slide switches and you built 'logic' by using the jumpers between various contacts. Fran Blanche did a video on one of them, though based on her reaction I think she forgot about what it really was until she got it out of the box and started playing around.

 The original chicklet keyboard PETs - we had those in physics lab in college, they were pretty much obsolete by then (around 1985) but no one had the time to rewrite the programs used for various experiment data gathering in some other BASIC. So the PET soldiered on.

So did IBM mainframes :-) We just got rid of our trusty 370 4 years ago ;-) And what did they do? Set up windows servers running ADABAS and ported all the NATURAL code stuff... darn  |O
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: bob225 on October 27, 2018, 05:41:36 pm
I think most kids start with some version of an abacus. Even today.

only if its a phone app  ???
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Wolfgang on October 27, 2018, 06:03:08 pm
The first computer I programmed was a Siemens 4004 Mainframe (/370 architecture clone) in the early 70ies, in FORTRAN.
My first "computer" I owned was a TI-59. My first PC was an IBM XT. So - guess how old I am :)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: SilverSolder on October 27, 2018, 06:43:58 pm
I suppose the PC computers we use today, will look really old and only be in museums one day.
They have already partially gone out of fashion. With some people I know (especially younger people), only using/having laptops/tablets and mobile (smart) phones, as regards their own personal computing devices.

If you use mobile/tablets only, you are probably mostly a consumer of information (web sites, movies, etc.)

If you are a designer, artist, financial trader, etc. that needs large screens and powerful computers with massive power and storage capabilities...   you are still a customer for a PC!

The size of PC is definitely shrinking though.  For example, the Dell Optiplex SFF size units - they take up little space yet can be filled with fairly serious capability that would have required at least a mid sized tower previously.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: MK14 on October 28, 2018, 01:43:59 am
If you are a designer, artist, financial trader, etc. that needs large screens and powerful computers with massive power and storage capabilities...   you are still a customer for a PC!

Not always though.
Some people go an in-between route, whereby, although they only have laptops (perhaps very powerful and expensive ones), they can be plugged into full sized monitors or big TVs etc (with external mouse and even keyboard if necessary).
Effectively giving them a "sort of" PC, anyway.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: MK14 on October 28, 2018, 01:51:53 am
The first computer I programmed was a Siemens 4004 Mainframe (/370 architecture clone) in the early 70ies, in FORTRAN.
My first "computer" I owned was a TI-59. My first PC was an IBM XT. So - guess how old I am :)

Yes, the TI-59 would have been a nice "computer". I liked playing with calculators (programmable), like that one.

http://www.h-peters.com/siemens_1970/index.html (http://www.h-peters.com/siemens_1970/index.html)

It is amazing how different, computers look, compared to the 1960s/70s. I wonder how fast that computer is, compared to Dave's latest $0.03, 3 cent one ?
It wouldn't surprise me, if the 3 cent one is faster. I think most people would agree, it is a fraction cheaper, smaller and uses less power as well.

(https://www.eevblog.com/forum/vintage-computing/what-was-the-very-first-computer-you-owned/?action=dlattach;attach=557213;image)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: SLJ on November 06, 2018, 01:08:56 am
1980/81 built a a Ferguson Big-Board computer that was offered by Digital Research Computers as a bare board, a kit, or a ready-to-go populated board. Just add power supplies, 8 inch disk drives, a keyboard, case, and monitor. It was powered by a Z-80 processor with 64K of RAM and ran the CP/M operating system.
Since home computers had not arrived yet, or at least any that I could afford at the time, I decided to build the "Big Board" so I could do work at home. Started with just the unpopulated board and parts list. Tracked down all the parts, machined the panels and keyboard case, built the chassis, found a bare keyboard and 8" drives, and power supplies. Took me a year. By the time I got it done they were switching to IBM/DOS computers. |O  I still have it and it still works.

(https://stevenjohnson.com/pics/big-board-completesm.jpg)
(https://stevenjohnson.com/pics/big-board-back.jpg)
(https://stevenjohnson.com/pics/big-board-inside.jpg)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: brucehoult on November 06, 2018, 10:38:05 am
1980/81 built a a Ferguson Big-Board

I remember lusting over BYTE magazine ads for those. As a teenager was infinitely far from being able to actually afford one.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: rrinker on November 06, 2018, 06:39:19 pm
 I had a TI-57 programmable calculator. I never found it when I cleaned out my Mom's house, I don't know what became of it. But I DID have the manual for it. I got a lot of use out of that machine, even if the battery life was a bit limited (but it did use rechargeables). I lusted after the TI-59 but that was beyond what I could afford.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: IconicPCB on November 06, 2018, 07:44:05 pm
My first post abacus "computer" was a robot similar to this image.

Irt had a grid of numbers and electrical contacts along with  electrical probes and eyes that light up.

The probes were an " input device " and the eyes would light up when the correct product was identified by the user.

Vintage early sixties
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: MK14 on November 06, 2018, 08:33:04 pm
My first post abacus "computer" was a robot similar to this image.

Irt had a grid of numbers and electrical contacts along with  electrical probes and eyes that light up.

The probes were an " input device " and the eyes would light up when the correct product was identified by the user.

Vintage early sixties

WOW, just wow, that looks really neat and cool.
I would imagine, I would have loved to have had a toy like that.
It can even teach you to learn basic mental arithmetic.
Pure wired up logic. No microprocessors, digital logic, transistors or even any passives.

I guess a simple internal bell/buzzer (all electro-mechanical) could be included, to give further incentive for getting the right answer.

The basic concept, reminds me of these things :

(https://www.eevblog.com/forum/vintage-computing/what-was-the-very-first-computer-you-owned/?action=dlattach;attach=565240;image)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: brucehoult on November 06, 2018, 10:33:43 pm
I had a TI-57 programmable calculator. I never found it when I cleaned out my Mom's house, I don't know what became of it. But I DID have the manual for it. I got a lot of use out of that machine, even if the battery life was a bit limited (but it did use rechargeables). I lusted after the TI-59 but that was beyond what I could afford.

Same here. Although in 7th form the guy I was jealous of was the one with a TI-58C, because it had non-volatile memory.

No one in my high school peer group had a TI-59, but I went to a meetup where someone did. They'd actually hacked their '59 to run about 10x faster by snipping the lead of a capacitor on the board and soldering in a smaller value one! However this made the mag card reader not work.

My '57 was just big enough to do things like numerical integration with a reasonable function to be integrated. I used that a *lot* in exams to check I hadn't made an error. I knew the program by heart and could enter it quickly.

Another small program I used a lot was one to find the best fraction corresponding to a decimal number, using continued fractions. Usually I made it loop improving the fraction until the next term was bigger than 1000. So, for example, 0.33 would return 33/100 and 0.333 would return 333/1000, but 0.3333 would return 1/3. Another example, I liked 3.141592654 to return 355/113.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Nautilus on February 18, 2020, 03:48:38 am
Not my first computer; but since we are drifting towards the topic of "favorite CPU":

My favorite CPU is the 68000, due to its relative simplicity and regularity. And the first 68000 machine I owned was the "DTACK Grounded" board for the Apple II. Anyone remember that one? Hal W. Hardenberg of Digital Acoustics was probably best known for his strong opinions on Intel's processors and Apple's 68000 computers, as voiced in the DTACK Grounded Newsletter, and for his great humour in expressing them.

The original DTACK Grounded board had a whopping 96 kByte of painfully expensive static RAM. No wait states here, thank you very much!  :)
I still have mine. Note the elegant tilt of the SRAMs, which made taping down those bus traces so much easier for Hal... ;)

WOW ebastler!  It's been so long since I've even seen a pic of this board!  They're basically unobtanium.

We used these at Cascade Graphics, just around the corner from Hal's place. Basically an Apple//e UI front-end with the DTACK Grounded board and Hal's 7220 graphics controller board on top with a large vector display as a drafting system. Always looked forward to receiving the newsletter to see what Hal had to say that month.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: ebastler on February 18, 2020, 05:02:51 am
Glad you enjoyed the memories, Nautilus!

Yes, Hal Hardenberg(h?)'s "DTACK Grounded" newsletter was something special. A bit like an earlier incarnation of Dave in a different medium -- "no script, no fear, all opinion"!  ;)

In Germany, I got my copy of the newsletter via multiple  stages of photocopiers. Including the "Redlands" pages with source code, which you were not meant to copy; hard-to-read but not illegible... I am sure you have found the scanned and OCR'd versions of the newsletter, which are all available online?  http://www.easy68k.com/paulrsm/dg/ (http://www.easy68k.com/paulrsm/dg/)

I imported my DTACK Grounded board directly from the US, which felt like a major adventure at the time. Heck, even sending money to the US was an adventure! Used my board to develop a Modula-2 compiler, to bootstrap the software development for a new 68000 computer a few friends of mine were developing in a startup. No, you won't have heard of that one -- the "Gepard", which unfortunately imploded after just a few 100 units had been sold, when Atari came out with the ridiculously low cost Atari ST.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: worsthorse on February 18, 2020, 05:15:54 am
The first computer I programmed was a PDP-8 owned by my high school and accessible through a teletype stored in a closet in the physics lab. I think there were three kids in that school who thought computers were cool and we spent every minute we could using it.  That was 1974 and I learned how to write computer programs (there was an appendix in my trig textbook on BASIC) on that machine.

The first computer I owned was a KIM-1, based on the 6502, in 1978. It was really the first single board computer, I think. I added memory and a cassette drive to it so I could write and store tiny BASIC programs for it. At school, I was working as a tech in the meteorology department, which had an MITS Altair to play with. It had a paper tape reader and BASIC, too.

those were fun days!  ;D


edit: someone else mentioned this but... BYTE magazine was the coolest rag in the world in those days and Popular Electronics was pretty close. I bought the first three or four issues of Byte on the news stand before getting a subscription. For a long time, I had the first five collection on my bookshelf.   :-+
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: worsthorse on February 18, 2020, 05:26:53 am
We’re power users. I’ve seen normal users machines. It’s not pretty. The average user can fuck up an etch-a-sketch. It’s like watching the monkeys around the monolith at the start of 2001.

Anyway back on first computers, I was talking to placement student in the office today and his first computer ran windows 7. Now I feel old.

oh my. me, too. now i am wondering how many people on this thread have ever seen a punched card, let alone programmed a computer with a deck of them and then waited an hour for a big stack of two tone green paper output to see if worked...  ;D
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: digsys on February 18, 2020, 06:39:58 am
Quote from: worsthorse
oh my. me, too. now i am wondering how many people on this thread have ever seen a punched card, let alone programmed a computer with a deck of them and then waited an hour for a big stack of two tone green paper output to see if worked...
Around ~1970, The SA Institute of Technology (I think that's what it was called then), came up with a "punch your own" punch card. The entire card was made up of pre-cut "bits". Deal was, operators took home a pile, and pushed out the codes with a paper-clip (following a binary pattern chart). Us "pre-historic geeks" didn't need no steenken chart, we knew all the binary codes :-)
Idea was great, worked awesome at first ... then came the reality. Chads would start to become static and furry and stick to everything. We had the job of constantly cleaning the bastids out of the entire machinery chain ... bastids got everywhere !! It was the era of the chadalypse :-) They stuck to everything / everyone !! ahhh memories
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: brucehoult on February 18, 2020, 07:09:32 am
Quote from: worsthorse
oh my. me, too. now i am wondering how many people on this thread have ever seen a punched card, let alone programmed a computer with a deck of them and then waited an hour for a big stack of two tone green paper output to see if worked...
Around ~1970, The SA Institute of Technology (I think that's what it was called then), came up with a "punch your own" punch card. The entire card was made up of pre-cut "bits". Deal was, operators took home a pile, and pushed out the codes with a paper-clip (following a binary pattern chart). Us "pre-historic geeks" didn't need no steenken chart, we knew all the binary codes :-)

That's how I did FORTRAN programming in 7th form at high school in Whangarei, NZ in 1980. The card had the pre-scored chads only in every second column, so we effectively had only 40 columns to work with. A custom program was inserted between the card reader job and the compile job to remove the useless columns. The programs were run on a small (48k word) Burroughs B1700 series machine with a card reader, 1200 LPM chain printer, two swappable 5 MB disk packs, and a teletype-style printing terminal.

Some other schools nearer to Auckland did ALGOL-W using felt-tipped pens to mark cards that were if I understood correctly (I never saw it) pre-printed with ALGOL keywords.


Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: tautech on February 18, 2020, 07:16:04 am
Quote from: worsthorse
oh my. me, too. now i am wondering how many people on this thread have ever seen a punched card, let alone programmed a computer with a deck of them and then waited an hour for a big stack of two tone green paper output to see if worked...
Around ~1970, The SA Institute of Technology (I think that's what it was called then), came up with a "punch your own" punch card. The entire card was made up of pre-cut "bits". Deal was, operators took home a pile, and pushed out the codes with a paper-clip (following a binary pattern chart). Us "pre-historic geeks" didn't need no steenken chart, we knew all the binary codes :-)

That's how I did FORTRAN programming in 7th form at high school in Whangarei, NZ in 1980. The card had the pre-scored chads only in every second column, so we effectively had only 40 columns to work with. A custom program was inserted between the card reader job and the compile job to remove the useless columns. The programs were run on a small (48k word) Burroughs B1700 series machine with a card reader, 1200 LPM chain printer, two swappable 5 MB disk packs, and a teletype-style printing terminal.

Some other schools nearer to Auckland did ALGOL-W using felt-tipped pens to mark cards that were if I understood correctly (I never saw it) pre-printed with ALGOL keywords.
Gidday K1W1.  :)
At Massey High in west Auckland we hand punched cards that were sent away (can't remember where) to return a print out a few days later. Early-mid 70's when I was there.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: brucehoult on February 18, 2020, 08:51:24 am
Quote from: worsthorse
oh my. me, too. now i am wondering how many people on this thread have ever seen a punched card, let alone programmed a computer with a deck of them and then waited an hour for a big stack of two tone green paper output to see if worked...
Around ~1970, The SA Institute of Technology (I think that's what it was called then), came up with a "punch your own" punch card. The entire card was made up of pre-cut "bits". Deal was, operators took home a pile, and pushed out the codes with a paper-clip (following a binary pattern chart). Us "pre-historic geeks" didn't need no steenken chart, we knew all the binary codes :-)

That's how I did FORTRAN programming in 7th form at high school in Whangarei, NZ in 1980. The card had the pre-scored chads only in every second column, so we effectively had only 40 columns to work with. A custom program was inserted between the card reader job and the compile job to remove the useless columns. The programs were run on a small (48k word) Burroughs B1700 series machine with a card reader, 1200 LPM chain printer, two swappable 5 MB disk packs, and a teletype-style printing terminal.

Some other schools nearer to Auckland did ALGOL-W using felt-tipped pens to mark cards that were if I understood correctly (I never saw it) pre-printed with ALGOL keywords.
Gidday K1W1.  :)
At Massey High in west Auckland we hand punched cards that were sent away (can't remember where) to return a print out a few days later. Early-mid 70's when I was there.

What language?

The ALGOL-W stuff was done by Databank, at least in 1980ish, but I think they'd been doing it for a while. Student programs went off to Auckland every night with all the cheques.

We happened to have access to that small Burroughs at a local bureau that did work mostly for the Whangarei City Council and the dairy factory (long gone, now "Tarawera Centre") on whose land on Lower Tarawera Rd they occupied a building. One of our math teachers (who also ran the electronics club in '76-'78 where we ordered 555s and 741s and 7400 series etc from David Reid Electronics) left to become a partner of the computer bureau.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: tautech on February 18, 2020, 09:08:32 am
Quote from: worsthorse
oh my. me, too. now i am wondering how many people on this thread have ever seen a punched card, let alone programmed a computer with a deck of them and then waited an hour for a big stack of two tone green paper output to see if worked...
Around ~1970, The SA Institute of Technology (I think that's what it was called then), came up with a "punch your own" punch card. The entire card was made up of pre-cut "bits". Deal was, operators took home a pile, and pushed out the codes with a paper-clip (following a binary pattern chart). Us "pre-historic geeks" didn't need no steenken chart, we knew all the binary codes :-)

That's how I did FORTRAN programming in 7th form at high school in Whangarei, NZ in 1980. The card had the pre-scored chads only in every second column, so we effectively had only 40 columns to work with. A custom program was inserted between the card reader job and the compile job to remove the useless columns. The programs were run on a small (48k word) Burroughs B1700 series machine with a card reader, 1200 LPM chain printer, two swappable 5 MB disk packs, and a teletype-style printing terminal.

Some other schools nearer to Auckland did ALGOL-W using felt-tipped pens to mark cards that were if I understood correctly (I never saw it) pre-printed with ALGOL keywords.
Gidday K1W1.  :)
At Massey High in west Auckland we hand punched cards that were sent away (can't remember where) to return a print out a few days later. Early-mid 70's when I was there.

What language?
Dunno, tooooooo long ago to remember.

Quote
The ALGOL-W stuff was done by Databank, at least in 1980ish, but I think they'd been doing it for a while. Student programs went off to Auckland every night with all the cheques.
Ah yes Databank it was IIRC. Yep that sounds correct.  :)

Quote
We happened to have access to that small Burroughs at a local bureau that did work mostly for the Whangarei City Council and the dairy factory (long gone, now "Tarawera Centre") on whose land on Lower Tarawera Rd they occupied a building. One of our math teachers (who also ran the electronics club in '76-'78 where we ordered 555s and 741s and 7400 series etc from David Reid Electronics) left to become a partner of the computer bureau.
Nice, sounds like the north was a bit better prepared in things 'tronic as all we had was science and physics that only dabbled around the edges.  :=\
Later when my kids went through it was heaps better and youngest son won a few prizes in school electronic classes. Dad was real chuffed !
Ah yes, DRE brings back memories, bought a couple of kits from them over the years while trying to keep an interest in electronics when other life at the time was dragging me sideways.  :scared:
Still, the interest never died and later after family responsibilities diminished I eventually got into this game and really by pure luck when Siglent offered me the NZ agency after selling a class set of 15 scopes to a Govt dept.
Take care Bruce.
Rob.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: worsthorse on February 18, 2020, 06:02:51 pm
Quote from: worsthorse
oh my. me, too. now i am wondering how many people on this thread have ever seen a punched card, let alone programmed a computer with a deck of them and then waited an hour for a big stack of two tone green paper output to see if worked...
Around ~1970, The SA Institute of Technology (I think that's what it was called then), came up with a "punch your own" punch card. The entire card was made up of pre-cut "bits". Deal was, operators took home a pile, and pushed out the codes with a paper-clip (following a binary pattern chart). Us "pre-historic geeks" didn't need no steenken chart, we knew all the binary codes :-)

That's how I did FORTRAN programming in 7th form at high school in Whangarei, NZ in 1980. The card had the pre-scored chads only in every second column, so we effectively had only 40 columns to work with. A custom program was inserted between the card reader job and the compile job to remove the useless columns. The programs were run on a small (48k word) Burroughs B1700 series machine with a card reader, 1200 LPM chain printer, two swappable 5 MB disk packs, and a teletype-style printing terminal.

Some other schools nearer to Auckland did ALGOL-W using felt-tipped pens to mark cards that were if I understood correctly (I never saw it) pre-printed with ALGOL keywords.
Gidday K1W1.  :)
At Massey High in west Auckland we hand punched cards that were sent away (can't remember where) to return a print out a few days later. Early-mid 70's when I was there.

My punch card days were at university, in an antenna engineering course. We'd get these problems like, using two antennas at these two locations, generate this antenna pattern. We had to write FORTRAN programs to interpret the results we got from the modeling programming, which spit out tables and an antenna pattern printed with asteriks; it was like spice only much much more primitive.  The average turnaround time from deck input to pile-of-printer-paper was about forty minutes and making mistakes   We were only allowed to run a single job at a time, so making mistakes or experimenting meant a lot of hours stuck in the center.

Of course the computer center was on the far edge of campus, surrounded by open fields and as far away from pubs and food as possible. This was not my favorite course.   :-DD
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Deni on February 18, 2020, 06:38:38 pm
When I was at the university (a LOOOONG time ago) we had IM6100 (Intersil's PDP-8 single chip version) develpment board (some LED's and buttons, standard stuff). You can punch in your code (manually assembled, of course) over hex keyboard. Must add that I had no previous contact with any kind of computer. I wrote my version of "running ligts" , entered the code and pushed RUN. And something was wrong - instead of single LED being lit, all 8 (or 12?, don't recall) were (as it looked) constantly on. I scratched my head, go over the (very simple) code over and over again but couldn't find the reason for odd behaviour. And then I realized that the program loop was executed so quickly that it only looked as all LED's are permanently on  :palm:. I had no idea how fast the CPU actually runs... :).
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: unknownparticle on February 18, 2020, 08:47:21 pm
Something called a Sirius, we had a small family business and bought it in 1982 to run our accounts and sales order system.  Don't recall the software or OS, only that it had no HD, just dual floppy drives. 
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: brucehoult on February 18, 2020, 09:43:57 pm
Nice, sounds like the north was a bit better prepared in things 'tronic as all we had was science and physics that only dabbled around the edges.  :=\

Ahh .. just a couple of switched-on math teachers at one school. The one who ran the electronics club (a lunchtime thing) and later the commercial computer bureau had industry experience -- in the UK I think -- before he became a teacher. I recall he also brought along some 2m radio gear at some point and showed using simplex mode to chat to other people using a repeater. So I guess he must have been a HAM too. Again, this was mid to late 70s.

The music teacher was notable too. In 3rd and 4th form (76+77) we had music classes but they were more like "music appreciation". We got exposed in class to things ranging from "Dark Side of the Moon" to "Anarchy in the UK" and "God Save the Queen". He had a friend in the UK who recorded music from London's private (even pirate?) FM stations and regularly sent cassettes to NZ. Mr Green would bring his Nakamichi 1000 deck in from home to play them for us. In 6th form we could take music appreciation as an option and went every week to his house (some people had cars by then) and used the Nakamichi turntable, preamp, amp, and some huge blocky speakers with curved low and wide electrostatic tweeters on the top. "One of These Days" (from "Meddle") was a favourite that got played there most weeks at high volume -- and then flip the disk straight to "Echoes" :-)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: SilverSolder on February 18, 2020, 10:16:38 pm
Nice, sounds like the north was a bit better prepared in things 'tronic as all we had was science and physics that only dabbled around the edges.  :=\

Ahh .. just a couple of switched-on math teachers at one school. The one who ran the electronics club (a lunchtime thing) and later the commercial computer bureau had industry experience -- in the UK I think -- before he became a teacher. I recall he also brought along some 2m radio gear at some point and showed using simplex mode to chat to other people using a repeater. So I guess he must have been a HAM too. Again, this was mid to late 70s.

The music teacher was notable too. In 3rd and 4th form (76+77) we had music classes but they were more like "music appreciation". We got exposed in class to things ranging from "Dark Side of the Moon" to "Anarchy in the UK" and "God Save the Queen". He had a friend in the UK who recorded music from London's private (even pirate?) FM stations and regularly sent cassettes to NZ. Mr Green would bring his Nakamichi 1000 deck in from home to play them for us. In 6th form we could take music appreciation as an option and went every week to his house (some people had cars by then) and used the Nakamichi turntable, preamp, amp, and some huge blocky speakers with curved low and wide electrostatic tweeters on the top. "One of These Days" (from "Meddle") was a favourite that got played there most weeks at high volume -- and then flip the disk straight to "Echoes" :-)

Of course, today the music teacher (assuming the position isn't cut due to attempting to save money) would be arrested for taking school kids home to his house, no matter how noble the purpose...
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Nautilus on February 19, 2020, 04:06:05 am
Glad you enjoyed the memories, Nautilus!

Yes, Hal Hardenberg(h?)'s "DTACK Grounded" newsletter was something special. A bit like an earlier incarnation of Dave in a different medium -- "no script, no fear, all opinion"!  ;)

In Germany, I got my copy of the newsletter via multiple  stages of photocopiers. Including the "Redlands" pages with source code, which you were not meant to copy; hard-to-read but not illegible... I am sure you have found the scanned and OCR'd versions of the newsletter, which are all available online?  http://www.easy68k.com/paulrsm/dg/ (http://www.easy68k.com/paulrsm/dg/)

I imported my DTACK Grounded board directly from the US, which felt like a major adventure at the time. Heck, even sending money to the US was an adventure! Used my board to develop a Modula-2 compiler, to bootstrap the software development for a new 68000 computer a few friends of mine were developing in a startup. No, you won't have heard of that one -- the "Gepard", which unfortunately imploded after just a few 100 units had been sold, when Atari came out with the ridiculously low cost Atari ST.

Actually, I had Paul over about (yikes) two+ decades ago to copy any disks or newsletters I had that he didn't.

Did your Modula-2 compiler get mentioned in the newsletter? I vaguely remember something like that.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: ebastler on February 19, 2020, 10:59:47 am
Actually, I had Paul over about (yikes) two+ decades ago to copy any disks or newsletters I had that he didn't.

Did your Modula-2 compiler get mentioned in the newsletter? I vaguely remember something like that.

Ah, it's a small world... (The world of DTACK Grounded enthusiasts in particular!)  :)

I don't think the news of my Modula-2 compiler made it back to Hal and the DTACK Grounded newsletter. Happened in a far-away country and at a very obscure computer company, after all... Some technical details and historical information about the "Gepard" computer have just recently been compiled by another German hobbyist, by the way: https://randoc.wordpress.com/tag/gepard/
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: rrinker on February 19, 2020, 06:18:53 pm
 I was always about 1 year behind punched cards. I've used a keypunch, but not for programming. In High School, my year was the first year the FORTRAN class used Apple II's, the year before, they used punch cards and sent everyone's card deck to the district office to run on whatever system they had there, I have no idea what it was. In college, when I started, there were a few keypunch stations but everything was CRT terminals - the CDC Cyber 730 in the engineering department still reported what in most systems would post as "syntax error" as "error on input card" even though there were no cards involved. I believe it was the summer between 3rd and 4th year they announced the retirement of the last punch card reader, and if anyone still had any card decks they needed, to bring them to the computing center to have the read and stored on tape.
 The odd juxtaposition was the Tek graphing terminal sitting next to the very last keypunch terminal. At least, I think it was the Tek. It was all built in to the desk. I' not even sure which system it was connected to - we weren't allowed to use it as undergrads.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: CatalinaWOW on February 19, 2020, 06:41:46 pm
The change from punched cards to other media was stunning in its  magnitude.  When I was a student everyone, students, faculty, staff had boxes and boxes of the cards with programs and data.  Each box held 500 cards, and I had four boxes by the time I finished my first computer course.  The cards themselves were ubiquitous, in business, schools, government.  There were craft articles on how to make Christmas ornaments and other arty things out of surplus cards.

But terminals were being introduced.  By the time I left school the keypunch machines were orphans, the card sorter sat idle, and cards were starting to disappear.  They held on for a couple of decades in places.  For example, microfilm frames were often stored on a specialized punched card, and these lasted a decade or more after data processing uses disappeared.  As I recall the US income tax refund checks were on punched cards through the 80s or early 90s.   That was easily ten years after I had seen them anywhere else.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: rrinker on February 19, 2020, 08:05:06 pm
 You're right, I almost forgot about that. I do remember the punch card checks I got during my early working years.

I did have a class that required the use of an 8" floppy disk. Those who haven't had the pleasure - if you ever hold an 8" floppy, you'll quickly realize they came to be called 'floppy disks'. 5 1/4" disks are downright rigid in comparison, and the 3 1/2" just kind of inherited the name because other than the media inside, it's not at all 'floppy'

The fun part was it was an 8080 assembly programming class. The need for the disk was because we had to write and compile the programs on the Cyber mainframe, and in the lab where we could then test run the programs on CP/M machines, only one was connected to the mainframe. So we had to download the program to our disk on that machine and then switch to another one to try running it. If it didn't work - back off to the computer lab (in another building!) to access the mainframe and edit/recompile. The hardware was generic 8080 S-100 bus, it wasn't a known name system like Altair or IMSAI.

Mine always worked first try - because at that time, my personal computer was my TRS-80 4P, and I had CP/M for it, so my programs were fully tested and debugged prior to keying anything in to the mainframe. A step which I still had to deal with (actually, I dialed in and text transferred it from my room, then I only had to go to the lab in the engineering building with my 8" floppy) because the requirement was to have a printed program listing and when your program worked, you had to show it running successfully to the lab TA< who then signed off on your printed copy which was what got turned in.

The year after I took the class, they filled out labs with PC compatible MS-DOS machines, I had one myself, and they used an emulator instead of the old S-100 machines. Since the process was now easier, they made the programs more difficult - I was helping someone out that next year, and their FIRST program as as complex as our LAST program. Good thing 8080/Z80 assembly was the second one I ever learned, and strongest next to my first, from my venerable old 1802 first computer.

Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Nusa on February 20, 2020, 01:30:16 am
I literally knew how to jam and un-jam keypunches before I knew how to read. Says something about my childhood, doesn't it?
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: worsthorse on February 20, 2020, 02:20:42 am
The change from punched cards to other media was stunning in its  magnitude.  When I was a student everyone, students, faculty, staff had boxes and boxes of the cards with programs and data.  Each box held 500 cards, and I had four boxes by the time I finished my first computer course.  The cards themselves were ubiquitous, in business, schools, government.  There were craft articles on how to make Christmas ornaments and other arty things out of surplus cards.

But terminals were being introduced.  By the time I left school the keypunch machines were orphans, the card sorter sat idle, and cards were starting to disappear.  They held on for a couple of decades in places.  For example, microfilm frames were often stored on a specialized punched card, and these lasted a decade or more after data processing uses disappeared.  As I recall the US income tax refund checks were on punched cards through the 80s or early 90s.   That was easily ten years after I had seen them anywhere else.

I forgot about making Christmas wreaths with punch cards!  You are right, punch cards were everywhere. When I was in school, you used decks for all of your programming and modeling courses, unless you were in the graduate computer science program. One of my friends in the CSci program showed me a room in his class building that had ten terminals. That was the closest I got to one until I got a job with a computer workstation startup.

That same guy was driving to class near the end of the semester, with his compiler project organized into three or four boxes of punch cards. He got rear ended at a light. He wasn't hurt but the boxes came loose and spilled. The poor guy was devastated. He had a complete printout of the deck but had to rebuild it from scratch.  |O   |O
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: CatalinaWOW on February 20, 2020, 02:31:09 am
The change from punched cards to other media was stunning in its  magnitude.  When I was a student everyone, students, faculty, staff had boxes and boxes of the cards with programs and data.  Each box held 500 cards, and I had four boxes by the time I finished my first computer course.  The cards themselves were ubiquitous, in business, schools, government.  There were craft articles on how to make Christmas ornaments and other arty things out of surplus cards.

But terminals were being introduced.  By the time I left school the keypunch machines were orphans, the card sorter sat idle, and cards were starting to disappear.  They held on for a couple of decades in places.  For example, microfilm frames were often stored on a specialized punched card, and these lasted a decade or more after data processing uses disappeared.  As I recall the US income tax refund checks were on punched cards through the 80s or early 90s.   That was easily ten years after I had seen them anywhere else.

I forgot about making Christmas wreaths with punch cards!  You are right, punch cards were everywhere. When I was in school, you used decks for all of your programming and modeling courses, unless you were in the graduate computer science program. One of my friends in the CSci program showed me a room in his class building that had ten terminals. That was the closest I got to one until I got a job with a computer workstation startup.

That same guy was driving to class near the end of the semester, with his compiler project organized into three or four boxes of punch cards. He got rear ended at a light. He wasn't hurt but the boxes came loose and spilled. The poor guy was devastated. He had a complete printout of the deck but had to rebuild it from scratch.  |O   |O

Things like that accident were what the card sorter was for.  Columns 71-80 were reserved for a card index number.  The keypunch machines could be set to punch those index numbers automatically, with an initial number and step count.  Smart guys used 10 or more for the step count so you could insert lines later.  With those index numbers a spilled deck could be re-organized with ten or less passes through the card sorter.  The only thing you had to do was get them right side up, and the clipped corner did that job.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: rrinker on February 20, 2020, 06:54:11 pm
 Like line numbering in BASIC. Only a fool would number them 1-2-3-4-etc. By 10's at least, and then if you had to stick a line in, it was x5, so you still had room before and after the new line to add even more.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: PA0PBZ on February 20, 2020, 07:22:09 pm
Like line numbering in BASIC. Only a fool would number them 1-2-3-4-etc. By 10's at least, and then if you had to stick a line in, it was x5, so you still had room before and after the new line to add even more.

"AUTO 10,10"
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: rrinker on February 20, 2020, 09:38:43 pm
 If your BASIC supported it  :D

Radio Shack had a RENUM utility you could change the line numbers (fixed GOTOs and GOSUBs as well) for Level II BASIC.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Martinn on February 23, 2020, 10:02:14 am
Outing me as youngster: UMS-85, must have been mid-80s
8085, 256 bytes RAM, HEX code entry (I still know C3 00 08...)
Picture: https://makerprojekte.de/tag/ums-85/ (https://makerprojekte.de/tag/ums-85/)
No punch card reader, but cassette drive interface which I connected to my dad's tape drive (https://www.radiomuseum.org/r/philips_el3541_00k.html (https://www.radiomuseum.org/r/philips_el3541_00k.html))
I still remember writing a "connect four" progam I mostly lost against. That was fun.
Later C-64, Sinclair QL and then PC.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Nautilus on February 24, 2020, 06:11:13 am
Actually, I had Paul over about (yikes) two+ decades ago to copy any disks or newsletters I had that he didn't.

Did your Modula-2 compiler get mentioned in the newsletter? I vaguely remember something like that.

Ah, it's a small world... (The world of DTACK Grounded enthusiasts in particular!)  :)

I don't think the news of my Modula-2 compiler made it back to Hal and the DTACK Grounded newsletter. Happened in a far-away country and at a very obscure computer company, after all... Some technical details and historical information about the "Gepard" computer have just recently been compiled by another German hobbyist, by the way: https://randoc.wordpress.com/tag/gepard/

I've been pondering, and yes I think I heard about someone doing Modula-2 then. How many customers were doing that?  ;) 
I think my 30yo memory is from Hal, if it didn't make it into the newsletter.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: bobcat2000 on March 06, 2020, 04:11:31 pm
My first computer was a Casio FX-700P, and then slowly upgraded to a Sharp PC-1350.

I learned programming with the Casio.
The Sharp is great.  You can program the Sharp with machine language.  Make the program run very fast in the Sharp.  The Casio can only do BASIC.
Both have expansion ports.  You can plug all kind of craps to them.  The Sharp even has a serial port.

[attachimg=1]
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: SilverSolder on March 06, 2020, 06:11:08 pm
My first computer was a Casio FX-700P, and then slowly upgraded to a Sharp PC-1350.

I learned programming with the Casio.
The Sharp is great.  You can program the Sharp with machine language.  Make the program run very fast in the Sharp.  The Casio can only do BASIC.
Both have expansion ports.  You can plug all kind of craps to them.  The Sharp even has a serial port.

(Attachment Link)

I had one of those Sharps...   great little tool.   Had it programmed to calculate probabilities for Bridge (card game)!
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: bobcat2000 on March 06, 2020, 07:08:14 pm
I had one of those Sharps...   great little tool.   Had it programmed to calculate probabilities for Bridge (card game)!

I used to have a kind of Street Fighter game written in machine language for the PC-1350.  I had the game in a tape.  The tape was lost somewhere in the garage.  I think if I can covert the tape to MP3, I may still be able to load the game to the PC-1350.

Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: ebastler on March 06, 2020, 07:21:21 pm
I used to have a kind of Street Fighter game written in machine language for the PC-1350.  I had the game in a tape.  The tape was lost somewhere in the garage.  I think if I can covert the tape to MP3, I may still be able to load the game to the PC-1350.

Better use a lossless audio format (.wav, .flac or such). MP3 is designed to avoid artefacts perceptible to human listeners, but your computer's demodulator might be offended anyway.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Wilksey on March 06, 2020, 11:30:34 pm
Acorn Electron
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: bobcat2000 on March 07, 2020, 05:55:33 pm
I was watching someone on youtube testing the performance of his calculators.
He ran this calculation.

[attachimg=1]

My PC-1350 does not have summation.  So, I run a for-loop to add up X-2.  It takes my Sharp 2 mins and 25 seconds to finish.  Cool!
I then downloaded an app called SmallBasic to my phone.  Run the same for-loop.  My phone finishes the calculation before I can blink my eyes.  So fast compared to this old relic.


Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Nusa on March 07, 2020, 11:16:17 pm
I was watching someone on youtube testing the performance of his calculators.
He ran this calculation.

(Attachment Link)

My PC-1350 does not have summation.  So, I run a for-loop to add up X-2.  It takes my Sharp 2 mins and 25 seconds to finish.  Cool!
I then downloaded an app called SmallBasic to my phone.  Run the same for-loop.  My phone finishes the calculation before I can blink my eyes.  So fast compared to this old relic.

Now see how well your phone does if you limit to the energy reserves of two CR-2032 lithium batteries, with a maximum consumption rate of 5 mA.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: brucehoult on March 08, 2020, 02:00:52 am
I was watching someone on youtube testing the performance of his calculators.
He ran this calculation.

(Attachment Link)

My PC-1350 does not have summation.  So, I run a for-loop to add up X-2.  It takes my Sharp 2 mins and 25 seconds to finish.  Cool!
I then downloaded an app called SmallBasic to my phone.  Run the same for-loop.  My phone finishes the calculation before I can blink my eyes.  So fast compared to this old relic.

Now see how well your phone does if you limit to the energy reserves of two CR-2032 lithium batteries, with a maximum consumption rate of 5 mA.

The good old ATmega328 can run at 4 MHz at 1.8 V using about 1 mA. Or 8 MHz at 2.7 - 3.3 V is under 4 mA.

I timed summing 1.0/(i*i) for i from 1.0 to 500.0 using the AVR gcc single precision soft float library and got 112 ms at 4 MHz and 56 ms st 8 MHz.

The stm32l476 (ARM Cortex M4) datasheet says it can run at around 16 MHz to 24 MHz on under 5 mA depending on the exact operating conditions. And it's 32 bit with an FPU.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: ebastler on March 08, 2020, 08:24:06 am
The good old ATmega328 can run at 4 MHz at 1.8 V using about 1 mA. Or 8 MHz at 2.7 - 3.3 V is under 4 mA.

I timed summing 1.0/(i*i) for i from 1.0 to 500.0 using the AVR gcc single precision soft float library and got 112 ms at 4 MHz and 56 ms st 8 MHz.

Thanks for givig that a try! So technical progress is real, after all...  ;) 

Amazing how far we have come in a few decades. I will try that program on the LGP-30 at Technikum29 (https://technikum29.de/en/computer/lgp30.php) when that machine finally comes back to life. Be prepared for minutes of execution time and a kW of power intake...

By the way, better run that loop counting down from 500 to 1, for improved precision!
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: bobcat2000 on March 08, 2020, 08:38:11 am
Does the LGP-30 have enough memory to run this calculation?  :-DD
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: ebastler on March 08, 2020, 08:40:41 am
Does the LGP-30 have enough memory to run this calculation?  :-DD

Sure does; 4096 words (31 bit each). The large memory was one of the big selling points of these magnetic drum memory computers -- besides the low cost and the compact, freezer-sized form factor.  ;)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: bobcat2000 on March 08, 2020, 08:55:48 am
Sure does; 4096 words (31 bit each). The large memory was one of the big selling points of these magnetic drum memory computers -- besides the low cost and the compact, freezer-sized form factor.  ;)

I am reading from Wikipedia.  Do you load the program from the tape to the memory first?  Or the program is being run while the tape is being read like a BASIC interpreter?

So interesting.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: ebastler on March 08, 2020, 09:03:38 am
The program resides on the magnetic drum while it is executed. (And the data too, it's a von Neumann architecture.) A drum rotation takes 17 ms; with carefully optimized programs, up to 7 instructions per revolution can be executed. But that's a somewhat theoretical optimum, a couple of instructions per rev are probably more typical.

Edit: As a nice side effect of the magnetic drum architecture, all information is non-volatile, including the CPU registers (which reside on the magnetic drum too). Stop the program, switch the computer off, and restart execution in the exact same place tomorrow. "Hibernate" mode is not a 1990s Windows innovation! ;)

The hardware supports 31-bit fixed-point arithmetic, including division and multiplication in hardware. But there are floating point libraries, and even a compiler for a basic Fortran-style language, ACT.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: bobcat2000 on March 08, 2020, 04:48:19 pm
Wow!  Cool!

So the whole machine is actually a CPU entirely. (kind of...)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: iMo on March 08, 2020, 06:28:01 pm
DIY 8085 based, then ZX81..
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: SiliconWizard on March 08, 2020, 06:53:54 pm
My PC-1350 does not have summation.  So, I run a for-loop to add up X-2.  It takes my Sharp 2 mins and 25 seconds to finish.  Cool!

Hehe, sure. Running intepreted Basic on a 768kHz CPU. ;D
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: brucehoult on March 08, 2020, 07:43:41 pm
My PC-1350 does not have summation.  So, I run a for-loop to add up X-2.  It takes my Sharp 2 mins and 25 seconds to finish.  Cool!

Hehe, sure. Running intepreted Basic on a 768kHz CPU. ;D

BASIC is not sooo bad if the code is tokenized, the variable names are replaced with offsets into the symbol table, and the operations being performed are using a soft float library (which is going to be slow even with a native compiler).

BASIC's biggest fault is not the speed but the sheer pain of coding anything complex in it. I don't recall UCSD Pascal being any faster than AppleSoft, it was just far more pleasant to write and read.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: HobGoblyn on March 29, 2020, 10:13:01 pm
Vic 20 followed soon after by C64

Then C128, next Amstrad 6128, Atari ST

Then started my never ending PC self build
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: bobcat2000 on March 30, 2020, 06:21:49 pm
Vic 20 followed soon after by C64

Then C128, next Amstrad 6128, Atari ST

Then started my never ending PC self build

I wished I had an Atari ST or an Amigo.

I went straight from an Apple II to an IBM PC-XT clone skipping all the good stuffs in between.  Not a C64.  No IIe, IIc, IIgs or Mac.  Nothing in between.

Do you know how bad the XT was without any good sound or fancy color graphic?!!!  It was heavy and bulky.




Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: bobcat2000 on March 30, 2020, 06:28:10 pm
BASIC's biggest fault is not the speed but the sheer pain of coding anything complex in it. I don't recall UCSD Pascal being any faster than AppleSoft, it was just far more pleasant to write and read.

I like BASIC better.  I don't have to plan ahead too much when writing BASIC.  BASIC is so basic.

And I don't have to type BEGIN and END all over the places.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: SiliconWizard on March 31, 2020, 12:56:09 am
BASIC's biggest fault is not the speed but the sheer pain of coding anything complex in it. I don't recall UCSD Pascal being any faster than AppleSoft, it was just far more pleasant to write and read.

I don't know about UCSD Pascal on a 6502, never used that, but I did use Turbo Pascal back in the days on a Z80 CP/M system, and it sure did beat the crap out of any BASIC interpreter's pants in terms of speed.

As to the language - no contest here for sure.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Tepe on March 31, 2020, 01:43:18 pm
I don't know about UCSD Pascal on a 6502, never used that, but I did use Turbo Pascal back in the days on a Z80 CP/M system, and it sure did beat the crap out of any BASIC interpreter's pants in terms of speed.
Almost the same experience here but with Compas Pascal and later Poly Pascal on a Z80 CP/M system. They are both in the lineage of Turbo Pascal.

As for the 6502 it doesn't seem a great fit for Pascal like languages.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: SilverSolder on March 31, 2020, 02:10:56 pm
I don't know about UCSD Pascal on a 6502, never used that, but I did use Turbo Pascal back in the days on a Z80 CP/M system, and it sure did beat the crap out of any BASIC interpreter's pants in terms of speed.
Almost the same experience here but with Compas Pascal and later Poly Pascal on a Z80 CP/M system. They are both in the lineage of Turbo Pascal.

As for the 6502 it doesn't seem a great fit for Pascal like languages.

UCSD P-system Pascal on Apple ][  ?
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: SiliconWizard on March 31, 2020, 05:21:10 pm
I don't know about UCSD Pascal on a 6502, never used that, but I did use Turbo Pascal back in the days on a Z80 CP/M system, and it sure did beat the crap out of any BASIC interpreter's pants in terms of speed.
Almost the same experience here but with Compas Pascal and later Poly Pascal on a Z80 CP/M system. They are both in the lineage of Turbo Pascal.

I actually still have the TP 3.0 manual in my library. I opened it recently just to take a look. Ah, memories! The amount of features you got with this (for a compiler that IIRC took about 30KB) was mind-boggling! ;D
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: brucehoult on March 31, 2020, 07:21:22 pm
BASIC's biggest fault is not the speed but the sheer pain of coding anything complex in it. I don't recall UCSD Pascal being any faster than AppleSoft, it was just far more pleasant to write and read.

I don't know about UCSD Pascal on a 6502, never used that,

It compiled to a stack-oriented bytecode very very similar to the JVM 15 years later, which was then run by a simple interpreter. It needed a system with two floppy disk drives and the full 64 KB or RAM (48k plus 16k "language card" that overlaid the ROM). The environment had a graphical file manager, a reasonably decent full screen editor, compiler and assembler, linker. You could write external functions in asm. Performance was relatively usable, with changing between modes requiring a mass overlay swap to floppy which sounded about the same as and took the same time as racking a pump action shotgun twice.

I believe the bytecode was portable between different systems, and was not a very good fit to the 6502.

Quote
but I did use Turbo Pascal back in the days on a Z80 CP/M system, and it sure did beat the crap out of any BASIC interpreter's pants in terms of speed.

I used Turbo Pascal 1.0 on Z80 and 8088 systems in 1984. The generated code was abysmal but it generated it very very quickly, and anything compiled is massively better than anything interpreted...
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: brucehoult on March 31, 2020, 07:59:58 pm
I don't know about UCSD Pascal on a 6502, never used that, but I did use Turbo Pascal back in the days on a Z80 CP/M system, and it sure did beat the crap out of any BASIC interpreter's pants in terms of speed.
Almost the same experience here but with Compas Pascal and later Poly Pascal on a Z80 CP/M system. They are both in the lineage of Turbo Pascal.

As for the 6502 it doesn't seem a great fit for Pascal like languages.

It's not, but neither is the Z80.

The Z80 lures you into thinking it might have enough registers to be useful -- and it even has 16 bit registers! But it really doesn't, and you can't do much with them as 16 bit registers. It's enough for hand-written memcpy() or strcmp() etc, but not a lot more. And once you admit that you can't do much in registers, the 6502's 256 bytes of "zero page" pseudo-registers are just sooo much more useful. If you treat zero-page the same way registers are treated in a register-rich RISC CPU (or x86_64), with a similar ABI with argument/caller save registers, callee-save registers, temporary registers, special registers (e.g. a 16 bit stack pointer), and a whole bunch of permanently-allocated registers (i.e. frequently used globals) then you can generate pretty decent code for it -- and easily.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: KV6O on April 20, 2020, 02:47:37 pm
TRS80 Model I, Level II was the first owned.  Used Wang 700 (dad worked for Wang), PDP 11 and PET's in high school.  Atari 800 with 88K floppy's was next at home, and added a 300baud acoustic modem - online in the early 80s!
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: MK14 on April 21, 2020, 12:41:20 pm
TRS80 Model I, Level II was the first owned.  Used Wang 700 (dad worked for Wang), PDP 11 and PET's in high school.  Atari 800 with 88K floppy's was next at home, and added a 300baud acoustic modem - online in the early 80s!

The 'Wang 700' seems a fascinating computer. With 2 massive rows of nixie tubes, it must have been impressive to use it.
I've never seen or used one (in real life), but it looks like a huge programmable calculator, with interesting nixie tubes.

Downloadable emulator/simulator here:
http://wang700.durgadas.com/ (http://wang700.durgadas.com/)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYwChiHVTHo (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYwChiHVTHo)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: KV6O on April 21, 2020, 05:31:06 pm
The 'Wang 700' seems a fascinating computer. With 2 massive rows of nixie tubes, it must have been impressive to use it.
I've never seen or used one (in real life), but it looks like a huge programmable calculator, with interesting nixie tubes.

My dad sold a number to a local community college in the early 70's, and in the early 80's he came across them being sold in a surplus auction by the college, and bought 3 for about $10 each.  We were able to get one running with the parts from the 3, and it was pretty cool to play with.  They sold for many thousands of dollars originally, a great early lesson on how the latest and greatest piece of tech becomes trash in a few short years!

I have a soft spot for nixies, probably from playing with the Wang 700 back in high school.  So much so, that I designed a Kenwood DG5 emulator (frequency counter/dial indicator for the Kenwood TS-520S amateur radio) that uses nixies (Russian IN12's):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYMaK-Dg370&feature=emb_logo (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYMaK-Dg370&feature=emb_logo)

Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Neomys Sapiens on April 22, 2020, 01:27:08 am
First computer that I encountered as a user (text processing etc.) was a AppleIIe. Followed by Atari512 and an Olivetti M21. My first own one was a Zenith183 which drew the monicker of 'Gabi' due to it being compared by someone to the Triumph-Adler 'Gabriele' portable typewriter.

The first computer that I did programming on was a Procontik PLC from BBC, followed by Siemens S5-110 with the PG (Programmiergeraet) 670. Also Rockwell AIM65 for learning.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: MK14 on April 22, 2020, 02:37:30 pm
The 'Wang 700' seems a fascinating computer. With 2 massive rows of nixie tubes, it must have been impressive to use it.
I've never seen or used one (in real life), but it looks like a huge programmable calculator, with interesting nixie tubes.

My dad sold a number to a local community college in the early 70's, and in the early 80's he came across them being sold in a surplus auction by the college, and bought 3 for about $10 each.  We were able to get one running with the parts from the 3, and it was pretty cool to play with.  They sold for many thousands of dollars originally, a great early lesson on how the latest and greatest piece of tech becomes trash in a few short years!

I have a soft spot for nixies, probably from playing with the Wang 700 back in high school.  So much so, that I designed a Kenwood DG5 emulator (frequency counter/dial indicator for the Kenwood TS-520S amateur radio) that uses nixies (Russian IN12's):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYMaK-Dg370&feature=emb_logo (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYMaK-Dg370&feature=emb_logo)

I like the video, thanks. It brings back nice memories.
Both the transceiver and the Nixie tube display (emulator), you have made, using the Arduino. It looks good. The '5' looks fractionally out. Which is a common issue with the Russian Nixie tubes, or so I've heard.
Some rumours, say it is because they made the '2', then just 'reversed' it to make the '5'.
Instead of taking the time to properly design a nicer '5'.
It is not that easy to cope with the high voltage drive requirements on nixies, with modern parts. There use to be chips available, which would do it, but they are probably long obsolete, these days.
It can be done and there are tricks for doing it with lower voltage parts, as well. I think Dave/EEVblog, has at least one video about how he did it, as a design exercise.

If I walked by (today), and there were Wang 700 calculators selling for $10. I think I'd go crazy.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: 386SX on July 03, 2020, 06:43:39 pm
First computer used (as game console) a Commodore 64. First x86 computer used mostly as a game console too was a friend brand new Compaq 486SX-25/33 and after that my own very first x86 pc was an older 80386SX-20 based one with a very cheap config, 1MB of ram, around 50MB hard disk, an Oak OTI-37C vga probably, no sound card, 5,25" and 3,5" floppy drives with MSDOS 5.0.  :)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: paul@yahrprobert.com on July 03, 2020, 08:28:46 pm
Used:  IBM 360 at RPI (Troy NY) in 1971 or so.  Had to hand a lady my punch cards and wait for printout.  Wrote in assembly.
Owned:  Kaypro II, running CP/M.  Two 51/4 floppies.  Wrote my thesis on it around 1984.  Halfway through my thesis the floppies quit working.  I had to re-magnetize the stepper motors with a big electrolytic capacitor and some physics.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Bud on July 03, 2020, 08:46:19 pm
My dad sold a number to a local community college in the early 70's, and in the early 80's he came across them being sold in a surplus auction by the college, and bought 3 for about $10 each.
I imagine the bid war at the auction was not too deadly ?  :D
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: MK14 on July 22, 2020, 02:55:03 am
Used:  IBM 360 at RPI (Troy NY) in 1971 or so.  Had to hand a lady my punch cards and wait for printout.  Wrote in assembly.
Owned:  Kaypro II, running CP/M.  Two 51/4 floppies.  Wrote my thesis on it around 1984.  Halfway through my thesis the floppies quit working.  I had to re-magnetize the stepper motors with a big electrolytic capacitor and some physics.

Fixing the floppies, sounds really hairy. Especially during such a busy (thesis) time.
The punched card era, is probably a good thing that has passed us by. But it was good, for the time.
As the alternative would probably be pencil, paper and slide-rule, or a mechanical calculator, if you were lucky.
Your own CP/M machine, must have seemed, hugely better than the punched cards.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: ferdieCX on July 23, 2020, 04:03:15 pm
Used:  IBM 360 at RPI (Troy NY) in 1971 or so.  Had to hand a lady my punch cards and wait for printout.  Wrote in assembly.
Owned:  Kaypro II, running CP/M.  Two 51/4 floppies.  Wrote my thesis on it around 1984.  Halfway through my thesis the floppies quit working.  I had to re-magnetize the stepper motors with a big electrolytic capacitor and some physics.

In the early 80s, I learned to program in an IBM 360/44, also with punched cards.
Later, I married the lady that received the deck and gave me back the printout  :)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: MK14 on July 23, 2020, 04:06:07 pm
In the early 80s, I learned to program in an IBM 360/44, also with punched cards.
Later, I married the lady that received the deck and gave me back the printout  :)

That's an amazing story!
I wonder how many other friends/relationships, started that way ?
I bet you were not unique.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: eugenenine on July 25, 2020, 05:38:27 pm
Did you propose to her with a punch card?
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: ferdieCX on July 25, 2020, 06:05:50 pm
Did you propose to her with a punch card?
No, it was not so romantic. She left her job at the University before I had finished my studies.
Later we met by accident and she asked if I could take a look at an electronic typewriter at her new job, that was having an issue.
After diagnosing the typewriter, I invited her to the movies.
Cupido came under the form of an Olivetti ET-121  ;)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: bd139 on July 25, 2020, 06:17:54 pm
Same thing happened with my ex. Fix her pc. Turned out she was a mental bitch. Be careful  :-DD
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: ferdieCX on July 25, 2020, 08:36:40 pm
I have had good luck, after 35 years of marriage she is still an angel
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: cliffyk on July 25, 2020, 11:01:20 pm
DEC PDP-8...
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: djos on July 25, 2020, 11:02:21 pm
I’m fortunate too, despite having two autistic children and an autistic husband, my wife is still amazing.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: djos on July 27, 2020, 09:00:57 am
Came across some Vintage computer madness today that really left me wondering what drugs the Tandy / Radio Shack engineers were on in the 80's.

So for context, Tandy came up with a clever powered, dual-drive solution based on the Shugart standard for the wedge-shaped 1000 HX. it used a Y floppy cable that flipped the pins to opposite sides of the connector - so signal lines closest to the notch and ground + power lines on the opposite side to the notch.

(https://cdn.tindiemedia.com/images/resize/TTqeayxi5unONDdBOQgz5JzPeag=/p/full-fit-in/1378x1034/i/742711/products/2019-02-14T08%3A10%3A31.934Z-Screenshot%202019-02-14%2019.08.38.png)

Anyway, for most of the big box Tandy 1000's they reverted to the standard layout .... BUT, in the last couple of days I've discovered that on some machines (eg the TL/3) they used one connector in the standard orientation and one in the flipped orientation.  :palm:

I made a video showing this crazy cable because I had a customer use the wrong adapter on his TL/3 and BBQ his floppy drive and blow out a ferrite bead on his mainboard after they got 12v fed back through the signal lines!  :scared:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msfqIpt7jx4 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msfqIpt7jx4)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: jmh on July 27, 2020, 09:36:28 am
Scratching at brain cells I think the first computer I had was a Newbear 6800 or 6809 board, switch programmed with LEDs and a speaker for output. That was either 1977 or 78. After that, and from one extreme to the other came a Litton 1231 with printer and two tape units that filled most of my workshop.

The Litton at least had i/o other than switches and LEDs. I had the programming manual but no way to program the thing until I rang Litton who told me they could not give any info because the system was still in production but whispered that if I unscrewed the rear panel a microswitch put it into program mode!
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: PKTKS on July 27, 2020, 10:02:24 am

My first use of a computer came with something  by Burroughs circa 78 to 80.

Probably some sort of Unisys Univac huge assemble.
I remember just the print job had dedicated a full floor.
The rest of the thing was in the upper floor.

Of course punch cards was the unique media available
mostly to introduce FORTRAN and COBOL.

No idea about the real hardware because accounts were
restricted to single dedicated student jobs.

Later early 80s switching to IBM and Cray hardware
and very soon Z80/8085 CP/M micros (dedicated micro-controllers).

Since late  80 - exclusive 8086 PCs.

Paul

Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: paul@yahrprobert.com on July 30, 2020, 03:20:13 am
After the IBM 360 (early seventies) there were still a few years with the punch cards.  The Univac machine at UW Madison, then a Harris machine at UW Engineering Computing Lab.  Then they had a great advance - you could store your program on a hard disk, and just submit some edits in your card deck.  Then the real advance was when they got terminals and you could use some kind of one-line editing program  (ed??) to fix your bugs.  So by the time I got my Kaypro cpm machine I had already experienced the transition away from cards.
  It was horrible when people had big programs and they carried around a box of cards as long as your arm. If you tripped and spilled them, your life was over!
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: brucehoult on July 30, 2020, 04:22:10 am
After the IBM 360 (early seventies) there were still a few years with the punch cards.  The Univac machine at UW Madison, then a Harris machine at UW Engineering Computing Lab.  Then they had a great advance - you could store your program on a hard disk, and just submit some edits in your card deck.  Then the real advance was when they got terminals and you could use some kind of one-line editing program  (ed??) to fix your bugs.  So by the time I got my Kaypro cpm machine I had already experienced the transition away from cards.
  It was horrible when people had big programs and they carried around a box of cards as long as your arm. If you tripped and spilled them, your life was over!

I chose my university in 1981 based largely on the computing facilities.

Auckland University had a big Burroughs mainframe (6700), as did the other major NZ universities (Victoria, Canterbury). Students submitted programs on punched cards and picked up a printout the next day. Ugh!

In contrast, the much smaller and newer Waikato University in Hamilton had acquired a PDP 11/70 (in quite an entrepreneurial and controversial way that upset the Department of Education considerably!) and had plans to upgrade to a VAX. Rooms of VT52 terminals were available to 2nd year and later students 24 hours a day. There was also a PDP 11/34 used to teach first year students BASIC and FORTRAN and (starting in 1981, my first year) Pascal. That pretty much sealed it for me, with the facts that overgrown cow-town Hamilton was much more comfortable for a Northland farm boy than downtown Auckland and that my grandfather's brother and his sons had a large farm 20 km from the university (bicycling distance!) was icing on the cake. The university being 310 km from my parents instead of 180 km didn't make much difference. My '74 XL350 was just as capable of one distance as the other with only about 1.5 hours travel time difference.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: duckduck on July 30, 2020, 04:32:56 am
Apple ][
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: saipan59 on August 01, 2020, 02:31:49 pm
Circa 1974: Wrote a simple BASIC program on an ASR-33 teletype; saved my program on a paper tape. Don't know what type of computer it was behind the scenes.
1977: Used the university CDC Cyber 172 to write Fortran code for a class. Punch cards; card deck submitted to the cubby holes in the Computer Center; pick up the output the next day.
1979: Bought a used Commodore PET 2001, with 8KB of RAM, chiclet keyboard, and cassette tape drive.
1980: Bought a CBM 8032 and 8051 disk drive.
Circa 1982: Bought a DEC VT-103 (LSI-11).
Etc...

Pete
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: sokoloff on August 01, 2020, 02:45:22 pm
First used: a borrowed from the school district over the summer TRS-80. Taught myself programming in BASIC from the excellent manuals.

First owned: Atari 1200 that we pre-ordered.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: MK14 on October 23, 2020, 10:47:29 pm
It seems interest in vintage computers, has reduced for this thread.
These are not the best of times to be visiting computer museums and/or vintage computer fairs or meet-ups.
Many of them have been suspended, stopped (for now), or are seeing reduced numbers (I believe), because of the virus situation.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: ebastler on October 24, 2020, 06:12:46 am
Not a good time to visit museums, maybe, and the vintage computer festivals either go virtual or get cancelled. But on the other hand, plenty of time to spend at home and tinker!  :)

I built this 100 MHz 65C02 over the past months, to give my Apple II and various old chess computers a boost:
http://e-basteln.de/computing/65f02/65f02/ (http://e-basteln.de/computing/65f02/65f02/)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: brucehoult on October 24, 2020, 06:23:53 am
Not a good time to visit museums, maybe, and the vintage computer festivals either go virtual or get cancelled. But on the other hand, plenty of time to spend at home and tinker!  :)

I built this 100 MHz 65C02 over the past months, to give my Apple II and various old chess computers a boost:
http://e-basteln.de/computing/65f02/65f02/ (http://e-basteln.de/computing/65f02/65f02/)

Mate! That's fully sick!

(this is an Aussie BBS after all)

I've been playing with 15 MHz 65C02 recently, but that's something else. Cool idea cloning the system ROM and RAM internally.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: MK14 on October 25, 2020, 11:16:06 pm
Not a good time to visit museums, maybe, and the vintage computer festivals either go virtual or get cancelled. But on the other hand, plenty of time to spend at home and tinker!  :)

I built this 100 MHz 65C02 over the past months, to give my Apple II and various old chess computers a boost:
http://e-basteln.de/computing/65f02/65f02/ (http://e-basteln.de/computing/65f02/65f02/)

You're right, there are balancing pros and cons, about the current (virus) situation. I had plenty of opportunity to visit such places, in the past. But now I can't (in some cases, i.e. meetings cancelled, some are shut down at the moment, etc), it is sort of annoying/frustrating.

WOW!, that is amazing (A 100 MHz 6502 (65C02)). As brucehoult said. It is clever/inventive to use the very fast FPGA ram/stuff, rather than the relatively much slower, external RAM/ROM/stuff.

It will be good, when you have the public release version of the PCB, as it seems a neat and interesting project. That particular FPGA, seems to be relatively affordable/cheap, at something like £15 a time.
Although BGAs can be a pain to put on to PCBs.

The old Chess computers, had interesting (vintage) playing styles. But could take a long time, when set to a high setting, in order to give a somewhat good move. E.g. 2 .. 15 minutes. Call it 5 minutes (assuming 1 MHz 8 bit cpu, such as a 6502, or equivalent).

So, that 100 MHz 65C02, would allow playing with the Chess computer thinking it was set to 10 minutes a move, but it would only take, typically, 6 seconds a move. Allowing investigations, into how old vintage Chess computers, can analyse interesting positions/games, at long (equivalent) time settings, and yet the results would come out very quickly.

As your notes say. You do need some kind of 'Turbo' button, or normal (x1), medium (x10) and full turbo (x100), speed settings. Ideally external, without needing to open the devices case. But I suppose a simple turbo mode on/off, would suffice.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: ebastler on October 26, 2020, 08:38:46 am
WOW!, that is amazing (A 100 MHz 6502 (65C02)). As brucehoult said. It is clever/inventive to use the very fast FPGA ram/stuff, rather than the relatively much slower, external RAM/ROM/stuff.

Thanks for the kind words! The concept was actually borrowed from a 1980's accelerator for chess computers, the TK20 from Schaetzle & Bsteh. The TK20 also plugged into the CPU socket and copied the ROM contents into fast on-board RAM. It filled an external box of electronics back then, and would run at 18 MHz max., but was conceptually the same as my little FPGA board: https://www.schach-computer.info/wiki/index.php/TurboKit (https://www.schach-computer.info/wiki/index.php/TurboKit)

Quote
It will be good, when you have the public release version of the PCB, as it seems a neat and interesting project. That particular FPGA, seems to be relatively affordable/cheap, at something like £15 a time.
Although BGAs can be a pain to put on to PCBs.

I do intend to publish the PCB layout and VHDL code as open source; still need to do a bit of cleanup. Soldering the BGA and the little leadless packages for the level converters was a first for me too; I got some good advice on this forum. I am using a $50 pizza oven plus a temperature probe connected to a multimeter. No closed-loop control; I just switch the heating on and off while watching the thermometer to get reasonably close to the specified ramp, soak time, and peak temperature.

Quote
The old Chess computers, had interesting (vintage) playing styles. But could take a long time, when set to a high setting, in order to give a somewhat good move. E.g. 2 .. 15 minutes. Call it 5 minutes (assuming 1 MHz 8 bit cpu, such as a 6502, or equivalent).

So, that 100 MHz 65C02, would allow playing with the Chess computer thinking it was set to 10 minutes a move, but it would only take, typically, 6 seconds a move. Allowing investigations, into how old vintage Chess computers, can analyse interesting positions/games, at long (equivalent) time settings, and yet the results would come out very quickly.

Folks on the German schachcomputer.info forum have done quite a bit of testing already. Typical 65(C)02 chess computers in the 1980s had 3 to 5 MHz clock rates, so you don't get an acceleration factor of 100. But even a factor of 20, which applies to the later 65C02 chess computers with smarter programs, provides a big improvement:

The established rule of thumb seems to be that doubling the CPU speed provides about 80 ELO points of improvement in playing strength. (Although that tapers off with further doubling -- slowly or quicker, depending on the program and its approach to pruning the search tree.) The better 6502 chess computers can now hold their own against the later generations of 68020 and 68030 machines!

Quote
As your notes say. You do need some kind of 'Turbo' button, or normal (x1), medium (x10) and full turbo (x100), speed settings. Ideally external, without needing to open the device's case. But I suppose a simple turbo mode on/off, would suffice.

The idea was to connect a reed contact to the 65F02's speed selector input, so that the acceleration can be disabled from outside with a magnet, without the need to drill a hole into the case for a toggle switch. None of the handful of chess computer users has opted to install that, I believe -- they all keep the acceleration active permanently. (Being collectors, they probably have a second system at original speed anyway...)

For the Apple II and Commodore PETs one would definitely want the switch, either to compare original vs. accelerated speed, or since acceleration is simply undesirable for some software -- say action games.

Anyway -- this project has been good fun. But I would enjoy showing it off "live" at a vintage computer festival at some point, when these get back on the map!
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: MK14 on October 27, 2020, 01:30:31 pm
The TK20 is a clever idea. Using 100 fast logic chips of that time era, to make a much faster 6502. Copying the relatively slow EPROM, into faster (presumably) static ram, is good.

I'm glad you intend to publish the PCB layout and VHDL source code. Because 40 pin DIL outlines, are relatively small, already. Using BGAs, is sort of forced, if you want the device to have many pins as well, which that FPGA application needs.

When I said x100 faster, I meant when it was the original 1 MHz 6502 applications/hardware. Such as most Commodore Pets/64's, early home computers, and (presumably) some of the early standalone dedicated Chess computers.

E.g. The KIM1 1 MHz 6502, running Microchess.
http://www.benlo.com/microchess/index.html (http://www.benlo.com/microchess/index.html)

Amazingly, the above link, has the actual Microchess program, which you can type in, in 6502 Hexadecimal format.

But, you are right. The later Chess computers, with faster cpus, such as 5 MHz 65C02's, would **ONLY** be x20 times faster. But that would still be a substantial speed improvement.
E.g. 5 minutes a move, would then be a much more palatable, 15 seconds a move. So, well worth it.

Anyway, speed up the old commodore Pet computer by around x100 times, sounds amazing. That would work, not just for any chess programs, but everything!
It would be fun, to see/play with such a turbo charged pet computer.

On the other hand, there may be some technical hurdles which still need to be solved/fixed. I know you mentioned about 'slowing down', when I/O activities (via memory map), are detected. But some things are timed in other ways, let me explain.
I've played around with simulators/emulators, of computers of that era, but the huge speedups, can cause it to malfunction. E.g. Keyboard denouncing failure, on a Jupiter Ace (Forth) machine emulator.

E.g. The Commodore Pet, probably does keyboard denouncing in software. So if you speed it up by x100 times, it might cause the keys to bounce (unwanted extra repeat keystrokes, when typing), in a very annoying way.
Because the (guesstimate) 10 msec denounce, would then only be 100 usec in duration, which would probably not be long enough.
Similarly, that (and maybe other) related timing issues, may apply to other computers and things.

EDIT: I'm probably being too pessimistic here. Hopefully/probably the Pet uses a timing reference, such as the screen refresh rate (50 or 60 Hz), to act as a reliable timing signal, for debouncing the keyboard and/or uses ICs, which automatically read/control the keyboard, and send the results to the 6502.
With it being such an old computer design, I wouldn't be surprised, if it reads in the keyboard matrix manually, but as long as the timing is still exact (i.e. independent of the 1 MHz 6502 clock signal), you should be fine.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: m k on October 27, 2020, 06:48:29 pm
First used '82 or '83, any of
Z80 proto board (1st ASM coding)
ABC 80
MikroMikko 1

First owned '82 or '83
Commodore Vic-20 (2nd ASM coding)
- brain damaged by BASIC
2. DEC Rainbow 100 (ST412 upgrade)
3. Commodore C-16 (hardly ever used)
- brains partially healed by Pascal
4. Amiga 500 (later heavily upgraded)
- USA high-tech embarco softens
- Xenix was also around
5. Unisys PC
- found a mess called simply C

Around '90 I wondered what I'm gonna do with
VAX 11/750 with RL disks, RM disks, TS11 tape and silky LA120 console.
The machine had a 20A mains plug.
Luckily it wasn't finally my problem.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: ebastler on October 27, 2020, 07:59:47 pm
When I said x100 faster, I meant when it was the original 1 MHz 6502 applications/hardware. Such as most Commodore Pets/64's, early home computers, and (presumably) some of the early standalone dedicated Chess computers.

E.g. The KIM1 1 MHz 6502, running Microchess.
http://www.benlo.com/microchess/index.html (http://www.benlo.com/microchess/index.html)

For the Apple II and the various Commodore PET generations, we do indeed get very close to a factor of 100. (With a bit of loss for e.g. keybord polling, and some more loss if printing or plotting to video RAM.)

The minimalistic chess programs like Microchess might in fact benefit nicely from the acceleration -- relatively speaking, starting fro a low level -- since they probably don't use pruning of the search tree much, if at all. But then, they might run into memory limitations soon when the recursion goes too deep?

Quote
E.g. The Commodore Pet, probably does keyboard denouncing in software. So if you speed it up by x100 times, it might cause the keys to bounce (unwanted extra repeat keystrokes, when typing), in a very annoying way.
Because the (guesstimate) 10 msec denounce, would then only be 100 usec in duration, which would probably not be long enough.
Similarly, that (and maybe other) related timing issues, may apply to other computers and things.

In most cases this should work with the 65F02 accelerator. As soon as an I/O address (which is known to be time critical) is accessed, the 65F02 falls back to the original host speed. And it stays in that mode as long as code on the same subroutine level, or in deeper subroutine calls, is being executed. Only when the code returns "upwards" from that level via an RTS or RTI, the 65F02 switches back to accelerated mode.

While this is not waterproof, and it is easy to show coding patterns where it fails, this works well in practice. The Apple II runs Apple DOS nicely, and the Woz disk controller and RWTS routine are notorious for relying heavily on software-defined timing! Keyboard polling, speaker beeps, and timing the RC delays on the analog paddle inputs also work.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: MK14 on October 27, 2020, 08:45:32 pm
this works well in practice. The Apple II runs Apple DOS nicely, and the Woz disk controller and RWTS routine are notorious for relying heavily on software-defined timing! Keyboard polling, speaker beeps, and timing the RC delays on the analog paddle inputs also work.

You're making me too jealous, being the first (or one of the first), to try that 'new' 6502/65C02 100 MHz cpu, on the Apple and things.  :)

I like the way you are automatically slowing down (back to the original base speed), when the slightest hint of I/O activities, are taking place. Using the RTS/RTI is clever as well, to help detect when to do this.

As you seem to be saying, software delay loops, can be problematic. Tricky to easily/reliably/robustly detect, yet potentially a pain, if run too quickly. E.g. Things shown on screen, way too briefly, as the delay loops are running too fast.

Even on the original vintage machines (not 6502, but DOS X86), running a game on, say a 80286 at 12 MHz, when it was designed for an 8088 at 4.77 MHz. Would sometimes result in a completely unplayable game (way too fast), even in those 'old' days.
Hence some had turbo buttons, to help solve that problem. Which is why I like the option of an external magnet, to activate a reed switch (or hall effect device), and hence switch the speed of the FPGAs emulation of the 6502/65C02.

As you said,m some early chess programs, weren't designed for long computation times and/or didn't have access to enough memory. Which may mean they can't usefully use time periods, greater than some amount, such as 15 minutes.

I remember playing with an ancient (now) Chess program (I think it was Psion Chess, by Richard Lang, for Dos), on an ancient 8086 computer, or later. When it was current and freshly available, around the 1980's. (Possibly later in time, when I revisited that program).
I seemed to find that the maximum useful search time (despite infinite time settings), was around 15 minutes. Any longer, and it never seemed to update the move or do anything useful, after that time period.
That seemed to correspond with something like 8 moves (ply), which was the most, it was happy to display (advanced thinking, moves line).

I.e. you leave it overnight, and the results seem to be the same as they were, after the first 15 minutes, on a fairly powerful computer.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: MK14 on October 27, 2020, 08:54:30 pm
First used '82 or '83, any of
Z80 proto board (1st ASM coding)
ABC 80
MikroMikko 1

First owned '82 or '83
Commodore Vic-20 (2nd ASM coding)
- brain damaged by BASIC
2. DEC Rainbow 100 (ST412 upgrade)
3. Commodore C-16 (hardly ever used)
- brains partially healed by Pascal
4. Amiga 500 (later heavily upgraded)
- USA high-tech embarco softens
- Xenix was also around
5. Unisys PC
- found a mess called simply C

Around '90 I wondered what I'm gonna do with
VAX 11/750 with RL disks, RM disks, TS11 tape and silky LA120 console.
The machine had a 20A mains plug.
Luckily it wasn't finally my problem.

That's a nice lot of interesting computers, to learn from. But I'm not sure I'd fully agree with your opinions, on the various programming languages.
Pascal is nice, we seem to agree!
The old/original C, (in my experience), was marred in the early days, by rather/very buggy and arguably poor quality C compilers, of the time. But it could of been, that I didn't have access to, or obtain, the best C compilers, available, all those years ago.

Some people, seem to dislike Basic, but I think it is quite a good language, within limits, as regards the original/old versions of Basic.
E.g. To write a quick/short program in, to do some useful things with. It just seems quicker and easier, than some of the other languages.
But as the program, becomes bigger and more complicated, the short comings (at least of older Basic dialects), seems to become an increasing hindrance. I.e. not so good (Basic), for bigger and/or more complicated programs.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: SilverSolder on October 27, 2020, 10:56:33 pm
First used '82 or '83, any of
Z80 proto board (1st ASM coding)
ABC 80
MikroMikko 1

First owned '82 or '83
Commodore Vic-20 (2nd ASM coding)
- brain damaged by BASIC
2. DEC Rainbow 100 (ST412 upgrade)
3. Commodore C-16 (hardly ever used)
- brains partially healed by Pascal
4. Amiga 500 (later heavily upgraded)
- USA high-tech embarco softens
- Xenix was also around
5. Unisys PC
- found a mess called simply C

Around '90 I wondered what I'm gonna do with
VAX 11/750 with RL disks, RM disks, TS11 tape and silky LA120 console.
The machine had a 20A mains plug.
Luckily it wasn't finally my problem.

That's a nice lot of interesting computers, to learn from. But I'm not sure I'd fully agree with your opinions, on the various programming languages.
Pascal is nice, we seem to agree!
The old/original C, (in my experience), was marred in the early days, by rather/very buggy and arguably poor quality C compilers, of the time. But it could of been, that I didn't have access to, or obtain, the best C compilers, available, all those years ago.

Some people, seem to dislike Basic, but I think it is quite a good language, within limits, as regards the original/old versions of Basic.
E.g. To write a quick/short program in, to do some useful things with. It just seems quicker and easier, than some of the other languages.
But as the program, becomes bigger and more complicated, the short comings (at least of older Basic dialects), seems to become an increasing hindrance. I.e. not so good (Basic), for bigger and/or more complicated programs.

There is nothing inherently wrong with Basic...  even VBA in Office applications can be pressed into service and produce useful results.  :D
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: bd139 on October 27, 2020, 11:12:25 pm
Depend which variety. I used a fair number of derivatives and the only one that stuck was BBC BASIC on ARM. That was pretty good.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: SilverSolder on October 27, 2020, 11:47:16 pm
Depend which variety. I used a fair number of derivatives and the only one that stuck was BBC BASIC on ARM. That was pretty good.

I recall doing Spice network analysis with an Acorn Atom,  that would have been a 6502, running a very terse version of Basic.  It didn't actually perform too bad, thinking back!  :D
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: m k on October 30, 2020, 06:22:05 pm
I'm still picking Basic for LibreOffice macros.

That Rainbow was a sophisticated machine, 3 in 1 and toolless case.
Forgot that I also got a bargain deal for a color monitor that was not available without a service agreement.
And of course the monitor was RGBC or SOG, so not compatible there eighter.
The motherboard had no general bus but it had "second floor" for add-on boards.
Memory seems to be mixing things with PC350 but I'm quite sure they both were no tools needed style.

Amiga then, it had external add-ons, finally so that without tweakings it was sort of a dinner table machine and original part being just a peripheral pass through controller.
It had a straight through board side extension connector system, like a backplane that can't be separated.
For that I also installed a piggy pack ALF? ST01 SCSI disk controller with a ribbon cable bus, it was finally quite stable, after adding so much groundings that twisted pair alternative would have been easier.
Luckily that machine had RGBC available but a small pain still, the connector was Cannon D-sub but 23pin, nothing normal 25pin and a saw can't handle though.
On the other hand, all of my Commodore manuals have been very good ones.

Much later that RGBC came back.
That time it was Playstation and regular H/V-sync PC monitor.
Luckily time passed and I didn't need those on purpose ordered, sync separator and video driver chips, with what I missed their package types and got msops.
I thought it was too much, even for trusted Magnastat.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: RJSV on November 01, 2020, 05:40:47 pm
My first, owned was a Commodore 64.  I was ambitious, early 1980's and wanted (more) success, than hanging out... waiting for my tech company employer to get bought out or worse...

   Guys in office said "C-64 is the happnin thing, this year ('83), so off to TOYS R US I went, including purchase of an assembly language enabling CART called HESMON.
  Funny, all that software, (we sold Z-80 controllers with a mid level main frame), all thoses smart people, and they crowded around my C-64 like they never saw microcode before.  Hesmon could do some real-time tricks, such as running at one thousandth the usual rate, which made screen graphics functions entertaining and informative.
Commodore rocked, in 1983
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: SilverSolder on November 01, 2020, 07:10:36 pm
I had the C-64, and also the Vic-20.  Fun and well thought out,  well made mechanically too.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: m k on November 02, 2020, 11:19:57 am
Were you Elite?
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: DrG on November 02, 2020, 02:38:13 pm
Were you Elite?

That's 1337 (Leet) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leet  ;D
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: SilverSolder on November 02, 2020, 02:42:56 pm

Aren't we all?  :D
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: m k on November 02, 2020, 05:56:14 pm
Nope.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: gooligumelec on February 16, 2021, 05:59:06 am
First computer?

Commodore CBM 4016 with 12" display (aka the "fat 40").
It was the family's, but I upgraded it to 32k by soldering RAMs (4116s, I assume) to the motherboard.  Luckily it still worked!

Stayed loyal to C= after that: C64, then Amiga 1000, Amiga 2000 (later upgrade to 68030), Amiga 4000 (PowerPC card added later).  Fun times.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: m.drachov on May 18, 2021, 04:53:57 pm
Guess I'm a bit younger than most here.

My first computer was a Packard Bell (don't remember the specific model), looked exactly like this one:
(http://[attachimg=1])
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Smokey on May 18, 2021, 07:20:47 pm
...
2. DEC Rainbow 100 (ST412 upgrade)
...

I was at a swap meet about 20 years ago and bought a fully functional Digital Rainbow for $15.  I took it home, plugged it in, confirmed it worked, then stuck it in a closet where it has sat ever since.  One day when I have a ranch or something I'll dedicate a room to obsolete stuff like the Rainbow and Tek 7000 series mainframes and such.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Phil_G on May 24, 2021, 01:48:55 pm
My very first wouldnt really count as a computer, an intel 4004 based on a practical electronics (practical wireless?) article.  Then came a homebrew switch-&-leds SC/MP, then my mainstay for many years, a Nascom-1 built from a kit.  It was expanded to the point it was unreliable but with ZEAP assembler and MS Basic both in ROM it was a great development machine.  It helped me persuade work to buy a Nascom-2 which was perfectly reliable apart from one day when a tantalum suddenly burnt like a match-head, it had been reversed since its build.
Eventually I got fed up with my own Nascoms problems and bought an Eaca Genie which was great for a few years using ZEN assembler.  Next was a CP/M box, the Micronix MX800 which was a badged Ferguson Bigboard and took me to the PC era and an Opus XT-Turbo (8Mhz!). The rest is of no real interest to a retrobate, except to say that the story has gone full circle back to CP/M Z80s :)
Cheers
Phil
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: YurkshireLad on May 24, 2021, 02:13:11 pm
I don't know what it was, but my friend's dad brought a computer home from work. It must have been somewhere in the late 70s to '81. All I remember is that it had a green screen and I used it to play and ascii based golf game for hours. Addiction baby!
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: DrG on May 24, 2021, 02:26:42 pm
My very first wouldnt really count as a computer, an intel 4004 based on a practical electronics (practical wireless?) article.  Then came a homebrew switch-&-leds SC/MP, then my mainstay for many years, a Nascom-1 built from a kit.  It was expanded to the point it was unreliable but with ZEAP assembler and MS Basic both in ROM it was a great development machine.  It helped me persuade work to buy a Nascom-2 which was perfectly reliable apart from one day when a tantalum suddenly burnt like a match-head, it had been reversed since its build.
Eventually I got fed up with my own Nascoms problems and bought an Eaca Genie which was great for a few years using ZEN assembler.  Next was a CP/M box, the Micronix MX800 which was a badged Ferguson Bigboard and took me to the PC era and an Opus XT-Turbo (8Mhz!). The rest is of no real interest to a retrobate, except to say that the story has gone full circle back to CP/M Z80s :)
Cheers
Phil

whoa real old-school stuff - do you have any of the 4004 gear left?
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Phil_G on May 24, 2021, 07:58:39 pm
whoa real old-school stuff - do you have any of the 4004 gear left?
Alas no, all long gone. It wasnt very successful, I recall numerous corrections to the article and numerous mistakes I made... thankfully it didnt put me off!   Now I think about it, it may have been a 4040... I'll have to find the article  :)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: woofy on May 24, 2021, 08:19:12 pm
whoa real old-school stuff - do you have any of the 4004 gear left?

If you want a 4004 board to play with, the CPU Shack sells a test board. You need to supply your own 4002 and 4004/4040. I bought one and got the chips from ebay when designing my 4004 anniversary board.
http://www.cpushack.com/mcs-4-test-boards-for-sale/ (http://www.cpushack.com/mcs-4-test-boards-for-sale/)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: brucehoult on May 25, 2021, 05:50:29 am
I read about all that stuff at the time, but as a kid I couldn't afford any of it, and living in the wilds of New Zealand I wouldn't have known how to get hold of it even if I had money. I studied all the circuit diagrams and program listings carefully. The SC/MP looks like a rubbish CPU -- I remember the Signetics 2650 looking much better. I remember thinking the BigBoard looked very interesting but expensive. The Kim-1 looked much more realistic, or maybe an Ohio Scientific Superboard.

My first actually owned and used computer was a TI 57 in 1980, after which I used other people's PDP-11, Apple ][, VAX, Lisa and Macintosh, DG MV10000 computers until buying my own Mac IIcx in 1989.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Phil_G on May 25, 2021, 10:48:07 am
The SC/MP looks like a rubbish CPU
Ooooh  heresy :-)   In its defence, decades on, this rubbish CPU is still guiding thousands of lifts ('elevators') up and down tall buildings and was ideal for small control operations having 5 bits on on-chip I/O. Nationals NIBL interpreter was a better implementation than many Tiny Basics, having a do-while construct, fixed program execution, indirection, I/O control, memory paging, multi-processing...  it was (and is) a cheap and cheerful processor that hobbyists could afford to build and expand. I've built a few SC/MP systems and I like it!
Cheers
Phil

Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: coppice on May 25, 2021, 10:55:12 am
The SC/MP looks like a rubbish CPU
There is no higher praise for a CPU than this. The big bucks have always been made by the CPUs the average engineer considered rubbish. :)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: DrG on May 25, 2021, 03:01:08 pm
whoa real old-school stuff - do you have any of the 4004 gear left?

If you want a 4004 board to play with, the CPU Shack sells a test board. You need to supply your own 4002 and 4004/4040. I bought one and got the chips from ebay when designing my 4004 anniversary board.
http://www.cpushack.com/mcs-4-test-boards-for-sale/ (http://www.cpushack.com/mcs-4-test-boards-for-sale/)

Nice link.

I have too much to play with (a great problem to have), but I do like looking at the original stuff as well as the modern remakes.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: brucehoult on May 26, 2021, 09:13:25 am
The SC/MP looks like a rubbish CPU
Ooooh  heresy :-)   In its defence, decades on, this rubbish CPU is still guiding thousands of lifts ('elevators') up and down tall buildings and was ideal for small control operations having 5 bits on on-chip I/O. Nationals NIBL interpreter was a better implementation than many Tiny Basics, having a do-while construct, fixed program execution, indirection, I/O control, memory paging...  it was (and is) a cheap and cheerful processor that hobbyists could afford to build and expand. I've built a few SC/MP systems and I like it!
Cheers
Phil

Bear in mind this was my opinion in 1976 or 77, looking at it as a machine to do general-purpose computing on, for example to target a Pascal (subset) compiler at. If you regard it as a replacement for random logic in an application where speed wasn't important then a different conclusion can be reached -- it looks pretty reasonable when compared with early PC or 8051, neither of which existed at the time.

Much the of ISA is very reasonable, even good. Being able to access +/- 127 bytes (or a calculated dynamic offset) from the PC or three other pointer registers with a single instruction is nice. The ability to write back the EA into the pointer register is nice. The "co-routine" nature of function calls is nice if you only need one level of call. Having 11 bytes of registers in a $25 CPU in 1976 is nice, vs 7 bytes in the 6502.

What isn't nice:

- being able to add an 8 bit offset to a pointer and have carries ripple from bit 7 up to bit 11, but not the remaining 4 bits is ... wtf? And the same for PC increment. That's completely needless penny-pinching, and the single biggest obstacle to running generic software. I suppose the justification is that if you only want to attach 4K (or less) of memory and not demultiplex the upper 4 address bits from the data bus then you can just assume that the top 4 bits are always zero because everything wraps. But ignoring them would work just as well. Or making sure your program didn't exceed the memory limits -- any program which does actually wrap almost certainly has a bug. The 6502 definitely wins here, even if the code to access at a known offset from a pointer is a byte bigger (but you can use a lot more pointers).

- the large amount of code needed to call a function at an absolute address, loading one byte at a time into the accumulator, swapping it with the hi or lo byte of a pointer register, save the old contents on the stack, then finally swap the pointer with PC. It's 11 bytes of code, on a machine with limited memory. The 6502 and Z80 use 3 bytes of code.

- very limited conditional branching. No branch on negative (need to branch positive around an unconditional branch), and no branches on carry or overflow set or cleared. Those require transferring the status to the accumulator, anding a constant, then branch on zero/non-zero. Maybe those are uncommon operations, I don't know.

- complement and add. My gripe is really just about the name, as in reality it's exactly the same as the 6502's subtract (SBC) instruction. With both, you need to set carry/link before a subtract.

- just the general slowness. Instructions take typically 3 to 5 times more clock cycles than the 6502, and both run at 1 MHz. The z80 takes a similar number of clock cycles to the SC/MP, but it runs at a higher clock speed. That 11 byte 7 instruction function call sequence takes 79 clock cycles. The 6502 takes 6 clock cycles. The z80 takes 17 clock cycles.

Ok, controller applications often don't need much speed. 50k to 100k instructions per second is fine. And they often don't need a lot of generalized nested function calls.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: coppice on May 26, 2021, 12:33:54 pm
Ok, controller applications often don't need much speed. 50k to 100k instructions per second is fine. And they often don't need a lot of generalized nested function calls.
In the days of the SC/MP memory cost was a serious issue. Code and data density mattered a lot. A real weaknesses of many of the early MPU cores, and the basis on which many engineers selected an MPU family, was poor code density in typical bit twiddling controller applications when 256 byte RAMs and 4k PROMs were state of the art. I can't remember how the SC/MP stacked up for that.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: brucehoult on May 26, 2021, 09:27:07 pm
Ok, controller applications often don't need much speed. 50k to 100k instructions per second is fine. And they often don't need a lot of generalized nested function calls.
In the days of the SC/MP memory cost was a serious issue. Code and data density mattered a lot. A real weaknesses of many of the early MPU cores, and the basis on which many engineers selected an MPU family, was poor code density in typical bit twiddling controller applications when 256 byte RAMs and 4k PROMs were state of the art. I can't remember how the SC/MP stacked up for that.

I was there. I remember how much memory cost. SC/MP has ok code density for computation on 256 bytes located near a pointer (same as 6502 in Zero Page, basically). As discussed above, code density sucked as soon as you wanted function calls, or even to jump to something more than 127 bytes away. Unlike PIC, 8051 (later chips) there are no specific bit-twiddling instructions. Load into accumulator, AND or OR or XOR with a constant, write back. Three instructions, two bytes each.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: typematrix on June 26, 2021, 08:36:56 pm
Amstrad 6128 plus ~ 1990

(https://www.nightfallcrew.com/wp-content/gallery/amstrad-cpc-6128-plus-monitor-mm12-white-phosphor-crt/IMG_0554.jpg)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: NiHaoMike on June 27, 2021, 01:01:33 pm
25MHz 486 with 4MB RAM. Even found the motherboard documentation for it:
https://stason.org/TULARC/pc/motherboards/P/PACKARD-BELL-486-PB400-4MB.html
A lot of the microcontrollers I use nowadays are faster than that...
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: SiliconWizard on June 27, 2021, 05:39:57 pm
25MHz 486 with 4MB RAM. Even found the motherboard documentation for it:
https://stason.org/TULARC/pc/motherboards/P/PACKARD-BELL-486-PB400-4MB.html
A lot of the microcontrollers I use nowadays are faster than that...

Yep... But that's still a lot more powerful than what many of us started with...
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: brucehoult on June 27, 2021, 10:31:17 pm
25MHz 486 with 4MB RAM. Even found the motherboard documentation for it:
https://stason.org/TULARC/pc/motherboards/P/PACKARD-BELL-486-PB400-4MB.html
A lot of the microcontrollers I use nowadays are faster than that...

Yep... But that's still a lot more powerful than what many of us started with...

Sure is.

When I was at university the main university computer, a VAX 11/780, ran at 5 MHz (commonly reckoned to be 1 MIPS), had 2 MB RAM, and supported 50 simultaneous users.

And that was the advanced computer. First year students got a PDP 11/34 with 256 KB RAM, two 5 MB hard disks, and 22 VT100 terminals and 2 LA120 printers. It's impossible to give a definite clock speed as the UNIBUS was asynchronous and after the CPU made a request to access memory (for example) if waited as long as necessary until the memory replied. And there was no cache. Something between 400 KHz and 1 MHz would be a good guess.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: cfbsoftware on June 28, 2021, 12:20:08 am
The first computer I used was an Elliott 903 (http://www.computermuseum.org.uk/fixed_pages/Elliott_903.html) when I was at Campion school in the UK in the late 1960's. We travelled once a week to load our programs into the computer at the Royal Liberty School which was a few miles away. It was one of the first schools in the UK to have its own computer.

We had to load the FORTRAN compiler in from paper tape every time we wanted to switch from the SIR assembler. I've attached one of my early masterpieces.

The first computer I owned was the 'Mini 2650 computer' published in Electronics Australia Magazine in 1979 which used the Signetics S2650 and a whopping 4 KBytes of RAM. I built this, along with a VDU, from a Dick Smith kit. Programs had to be typed in in hex and stored to cassette tape. After many weeks of programming I still only managed to fill 1 KByte:

https://microbeetechnology.com.au/forum/showthread.php?tid=336 (https://microbeetechnology.com.au/forum/showthread.php?tid=336)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: brucehoult on June 28, 2021, 01:45:29 am
My goodness. Had they not invented .LT. and .GE. etc yet? I've *used* computed goto, but never been forced to use it for lack of an alternative.

I remember reading the same EA and/or ETI projects and liking the ISA of the 2650 more than the other low cost microprocessors at the time (certainly compared to SC/MP). The single 5V power supply was also nice.

One weird thing is the 2650 was designed in 1972, but not released until 1975, by which time the clearly better (but much more expensive and harder to use) 8080 and 6800 had already been out for a year, and the more powerful and cheaper and easier to use 6502 and z80 were imminent.

Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: woofy on June 28, 2021, 01:25:44 pm
The first computer I used was an Elliott 903 when I was at Campion school in the UK in the late 1960's.

They have one at the centre for computing history in Cambridge. It's maintained by Andrew Herbert, the same guy that's heading up the team recreating EDSAC at the National Museum of Computing, Bletchley Park.
Andrew can be seen discussing the 903 in the video at http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/32480/Elliott-903/ (http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/32480/Elliott-903/)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Nusa on June 28, 2021, 02:59:02 pm
My goodness. Had they not invented .LT. and .GE. etc yet? I've *used* computed goto, but never been forced to use it for lack of an alternative.

I assume you're referring to the arithmetic IF's, which were the only option in early FORTRAN. Computed goto is actually an indexed form of the GOTO statement. It's likely the FORTRAN available to him on that machine predated FORTRAN IV / FORTRAN 66, which is when logical IF came to be. The implementation was too simple to allow structure (no statement blocks, else or else if), so arithmetic IF was still actively used. It wasn't until FORTRAN 77 that structured logical IF features were added. And early 80's for implementations to reach most users. Today, of course, it's considered an obsolete feature.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: coppice on June 28, 2021, 03:32:43 pm
My goodness. Had they not invented .LT. and .GE. etc yet? I've *used* computed goto, but never been forced to use it for lack of an alternative.
He said that was 1969. Most machines still had Fortran II compilers at that time. The transition to Fortran IV was in progress.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: cfbsoftware on June 28, 2021, 11:11:45 pm
A summary of the statements included in "903 FORTRAN" is contained in the document Elliott 903 Computer Facts published in April 1968:

http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/downloads/39396 (http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/downloads/39396)

More information about how the Elliott 903 came to be at the Royal Liberty School is in this 2011 Romford Recorder article:

https://www.romfordrecorder.co.uk/lifestyle/london-s-silicon-valley-romford-was-the-real-home-of-2916992 (https://www.romfordrecorder.co.uk/lifestyle/london-s-silicon-valley-romford-was-the-real-home-of-2916992)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: coppice on June 29, 2021, 01:17:11 am
A summary of the statements included in "903 FORTRAN" is contained in the document Elliott 903 Computer Facts published in April 1968:

http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/downloads/39396 (http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/downloads/39396)
Fortran IV or 66 was complete by 1966, but it took quite a long time for most implementations of Fortran to gain full Fortran IV functionality. I expect many were struggling to find space for the extra code on smaller machines. 4k byte machines were quite common, which doesn't allow a great deal of room for fancy features.

I used a 903 for a few things in the late 70s, but I think our machines had more resources than the one you used.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: cdev on June 30, 2021, 01:07:58 pm
My first computer that could act as a decent terminal was an Atari 520 ST. But its video chip was flaky.
Sometimes it would become loose and the computer's screen would go flaky on me, and I would need to reseat it and reboot.

:)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: bborisov567 on June 30, 2021, 01:38:36 pm
It was a Pravetz 8M - bulgarian clone of the Apple ii. It had Z80 cpu and 64k of ram. 
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: brucehoult on June 30, 2021, 02:52:39 pm
z80!! Shirley not?

Ok, 6502 plus integrated CP/M card wth z80.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: esepecesito on June 30, 2021, 04:57:00 pm
I started with a Talent MSX DPC-200 (z80, 64k RAM, MSX --DOS compatible system from Microsoft--)
The computer was a daewoo that was sold around the world under different names.
https://www.msx.org/wiki/Talent_DPC-200 (https://www.msx.org/wiki/Talent_DPC-200)
It was at the time much superior to others available.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: ebastler on June 30, 2021, 05:53:18 pm
I started with a Talent MSX DPC-200 (z80, 64k RAM, MSX --DOS compatible system from Microsoft--)
The computer was a daewoo that was sold around the world under different names.
https://www.msx.org/wiki/Talent_DPC-200 (https://www.msx.org/wiki/Talent_DPC-200)
It was at the time much superior to others available.

A Z80 machine launched in 1986? Which machines are you comparing it to, and in which respects was it superior?

I must admit that I never heard about this family of machines, so I'd be curious about available software too. The operating system might have understood the same commands as MS-DOS, but it can't have executed DOS (8086) programs, right?
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: SiliconWizard on June 30, 2021, 07:33:57 pm
I started with a Talent MSX DPC-200 (z80, 64k RAM, MSX --DOS compatible system from Microsoft--)
The computer was a daewoo that was sold around the world under different names.
https://www.msx.org/wiki/Talent_DPC-200 (https://www.msx.org/wiki/Talent_DPC-200)
It was at the time much superior to others available.

A Z80 machine launched in 1986?

Of course. Other than Talent, haven't you heard of Amstrad?
The CPC 6128 plus was launched in... 1990!
The PCW 9512 in 1987.
The PcW 16, an odd machine with a GUI, was launched in... 1996! It had a Z80, albeit a beefed up CMOS version running @16 MHz.

So, yeah. The Z80 has had a pretty long life. ;)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Canis Dirus Leidy on July 01, 2021, 02:02:56 am
A Z80 machine launched in 1986? Which machines are you comparing it to, and in which respects was it superior?
Well… My  Delta-S (https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Дельта-С) was a ZX Spectrum clone launched in 1989 and, from a user point of view, was not much inferior to "Poisk-1" (https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Поиск_(компьютер)) with it's single FDD and software emulated CGA.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: ebastler on July 01, 2021, 06:41:18 am
OK, so the Z80 co-existed with the 8088/8086 computers for longer than I had realized. I lost sight of Amstrad (sold as Schneider CPC here) after the last model in the basic CPC line was realeased, in the mid-80s I think. After that, 68000 computers and then 80x86 took over in my perception.

The major makers of 6502-based computers switched over to 68000 at that time, and I had assumed that a similar generation change was occuring from the Z80 to to 80x86. But it seems that Z80-based home and entry-level computers were hanging in there for a bit longer -- maybe due to the initial business focus of the IBM PC and its clones, which made it a gaming machine only with the gradual release of suitable add-on cards?
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Canis Dirus Leidy on July 01, 2021, 09:28:08 am
If we talk about the exUSSR, then it's about the price. PC-compatible machines were too expensive even for those lucky people who received a salary in money and without half-year delay. Thanks to this, various "spectrum-compatible" ones were popular enough until the last third of the nineties.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: SiliconWizard on July 01, 2021, 04:25:21 pm
OK, so the Z80 co-existed with the 8088/8086 computers for longer than I had realized. I lost sight of Amstrad (sold as Schneider CPC here) after the last model in the basic CPC line was realeased, in the mid-80s I think. After that, 68000 computers and then 80x86 took over in my perception.

The major makers of 6502-based computers switched over to 68000 at that time, and I had assumed that a similar generation change was occuring from the Z80 to to 80x86. But it seems that Z80-based home and entry-level computers were hanging in there for a bit longer -- maybe due to the initial business focus of the IBM PC and its clones, which made it a gaming machine only with the gradual release of suitable add-on cards?

I wouldn't know for sure how to really analyze the market for the Z80 in the 80s and 90s compared to its "competitors", but it has certainly had a long and successful life. Pretty amazing actually. We can also mention the MSX standard. At the time, there was no other similar standard around any other CPU that I know of - apart of course from the IBM PC, but the IBM PC was targetting professional uses, not home use. (Sure they attempted this with the PC Junior, which was a big failure AFAIR and never set any standard in itself either.)

Apart from MSX, the Z80 of course was at the heart of most CP/M machines.

So yeah. Although the 6502 stays in the heart of many and has also been pretty successful, it was never part of any similar standard, at least that I know of. Due to MSX and CP/M, there was a huge software base for the Z80.

Regarding the 6502, I also think Apple has been one of the major actors which determined its earlier "demise", and the switch to the 68k. We have to remember how it was all part of the internal "war" between the Apple II platform and the new Macintosh. Commodore, that also made the move to the 68k, did so after Apple.


Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: esepecesito on July 01, 2021, 04:35:50 pm
I started with a Talent MSX DPC-200 (z80, 64k RAM, MSX --DOS compatible system from Microsoft--)
The computer was a daewoo that was sold around the world under different names.
https://www.msx.org/wiki/Talent_DPC-200 (https://www.msx.org/wiki/Talent_DPC-200)
It was at the time much superior to others available.

A Z80 machine launched in 1986? Which machines are you comparing it to, and in which respects was it superior?

I must admit that I never heard about this family of machines, so I'd be curious about available software too. The operating system might have understood the same commands as MS-DOS, but it can't have executed DOS (8086) programs, right?

I have used MS-DOS from my PC-XT in the talent. It do works. The PC-XT contrary to which most people think used to have a 8088 or V-20 from NEC (as the clone I had) The instruction set of the Z80 and 8088 are compatible (to certain extent) and the Systems calls where compatible.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: SiliconWizard on July 01, 2021, 05:50:21 pm
The instruction set of the Z80 and 8088 are compatible (to certain extent) and the Systems calls where compatible.

Well huh... to a "certain" extent, as you say. Since the Z80, except for a few extensions, is mostly compatible with the 8080, and the 8088 has a certain level of compatibility with the older 8080... I don't remember the original 8088 enough though to tell off the top of my head what could be possible and what could not.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: langwadt on July 01, 2021, 06:02:14 pm
I started with a Talent MSX DPC-200 (z80, 64k RAM, MSX --DOS compatible system from Microsoft--)
The computer was a daewoo that was sold around the world under different names.
https://www.msx.org/wiki/Talent_DPC-200 (https://www.msx.org/wiki/Talent_DPC-200)
It was at the time much superior to others available.

A Z80 machine launched in 1986?

Of course. Other than Talent, haven't you heard of Amstrad?
The CPC 6128 plus was launched in... 1990!
The PCW 9512 in 1987.
The PcW 16, an odd machine with a GUI, was launched in... 1996! It had a Z80, albeit a beefed up CMOS version running @16 MHz.

So, yeah. The Z80 has had a pretty long life. ;)

Commodore 128 released in 1985 alos had a Z80

Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: woofy on July 01, 2021, 07:39:51 pm
The instruction set of the Z80 and 8088 are compatible (to certain extent) .....

I don't think I would describe the z80 and 8088 as compatible, even "to a certain extent".
The 8080 and Z80 were compatible at the machine code level, but not the 8088. Different instruction sets, different registers.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: brucehoult on July 02, 2021, 12:19:22 am
The instruction set of the Z80 and 8088 are compatible (to certain extent) .....

I don't think I would describe the z80 and 8088 as compatible, even "to a certain extent".
The 8080 and Z80 were compatible at the machine code level, but not the 8088. Different instruction sets, different registers.

The 8086 registers, status register, and instruction set were designed to allow automated translation of 8008, 8080, 8085 assembly language programs to efficient 8086 code. Not binary compatible, obviously.

The 8086 even has vestiges of the 8080 flags register being the other half of the A register in the LAHF and SAHF instructions. So A/flags map onto 8086 A register, and HL, BC, DE onto B, C, D registers.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: ferdieCX on July 05, 2021, 11:17:26 pm
IIRC, the NEC V20 has an 8080 emulation mode
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: coppice on July 06, 2021, 03:25:44 am
The instruction set of the Z80 and 8088 are compatible (to certain extent) .....

I don't think I would describe the z80 and 8088 as compatible, even "to a certain extent".
The 8080 and Z80 were compatible at the machine code level, but not the 8088. Different instruction sets, different registers.

The 8086 registers, status register, and instruction set were designed to allow automated translation of 8008, 8080, 8085 assembly language programs to efficient 8086 code. Not binary compatible, obviously.

The 8086 even has vestiges of the 8080 flags register being the other half of the A register in the LAHF and SAHF instructions. So A/flags map onto 8086 A register, and HL, BC, DE onto B, C, D registers.
Intel had an assembler that would assemble 8080 source code directly to 8086 machine code.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: SiliconWizard on July 06, 2021, 05:35:55 pm
The last 2 posts show that emulating 8080 code on a 8088/86 was easy and didn't cost much. But that was still emulation, not direct binary compatibility.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: brucehoult on July 06, 2021, 11:11:34 pm
The last 2 posts show that emulating 8080 code on a 8088/86 was easy and didn't cost much. But that was still emulation, not direct binary compatibility.

Translation. Mostly a very straightforward one.

I found the manual for Digital Research's tool to do this.

Register mapping:

8 bit

AL A
AH PSW // only for PUSH/POP
CH B
CL C
DH D
DL E
BH H
BL L

16 bit

AX PSW
CX B
DX D
BX H
SP SP


As I surmised, PUSH PSW becomes LAHF;XCNG AL,AH;PUSH AX;XCNG AL,AH and POP PSW becomes POP AX;XCNG AL,AH;SAHF.

http://www.s100computers.com/Software%20Folder/Assembler%20Collection/Digital%20Research%20XLT86%20Manual.pdf (http://www.s100computers.com/Software%20Folder/Assembler%20Collection/Digital%20Research%20XLT86%20Manual.pdf)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Nusa on July 07, 2021, 12:27:54 am
The last 2 posts show that emulating 8080 code on a 8088/86 was easy and didn't cost much. But that was still emulation, not direct binary compatibility.

No, they don't show that.

One post is referring to a cross-assembler, which is not emulation at all. The resulting binary still only runs on the target processor, and there is no attempt to make a portable binary.

The other post mentioned the NEC V20, which was a much faster pin-compatible 8088 CPU with added instructions. It had a hardware emulation feature for 8080, which actually is direct binary compatibility once enabled. The Intel 8088 did not have that feature! (Which doesn't rule out software emulation, but that's a completely different set of costs.)

Similarly, the NEC V30 was a pin-compatible 8086. So good that Intel and NEC had a legal fight that ended up being one of the first significant rulings about the legality of reverse-engineering.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: SiliconWizard on July 07, 2021, 01:58:21 am
You can call that emulation in both cases. At least, I do. That answers Bruce's post as well.
In both cases, the 8080 instruction set is emulated. The fact that it merely requires a translation is what made it easy and simple, but that's still "emulating" a 8080.

And no, I wouldn't call the assembler you mentioned a cross-assembler, at least not in the usual sense. A cross assembler typically takes assembly code for one CPU, is run on another type of CPU (thus the "cross" term), and translates said assembly code to machine code for the CPU meant for the assembly code in question. The one assembler mentioned here would *translate* 8080 code to 8086 machine code that would execute as intended. That's emulation in my book, not a cross assembler. Again a simple form a emulation only requiring translation - and, in the assembler case, the translation being done *before* running, while in the hardware emulation mode, it was done in real-time.

Now if you want to nitpick about what "emulation" is or is not, have at it.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: SilverSolder on July 07, 2021, 03:52:50 pm
You can call that emulation in both cases. At least, I do. That answers Bruce's post as well.
In both cases, the 8080 instruction set is emulated. The fact that it merely requires a translation is what made it easy and simple, but that's still "emulating" a 8080.

And no, I wouldn't call the assembler you mentioned a cross-assembler, at least not in the usual sense. A cross assembler typically takes assembly code for one CPU, is run on another type of CPU (thus the "cross" term), and translates said assembly code to machine code for the CPU meant for the assembly code in question. The one assembler mentioned here would *translate* 8080 code to 8086 machine code that would execute as intended. That's emulation in my book, not a cross assembler. Again a simple form a emulation only requiring translation - and, in the assembler case, the translation being done *before* running, while in the hardware emulation mode, it was done in real-time.

Now if you want to nitpick about what "emulation" is or is not, have at it.


"Emulation" is something pretending to be something it isn't...
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: SiliconWizard on July 07, 2021, 05:10:00 pm
You can call that emulation in both cases. At least, I do. That answers Bruce's post as well.
In both cases, the 8080 instruction set is emulated. The fact that it merely requires a translation is what made it easy and simple, but that's still "emulating" a 8080.

And no, I wouldn't call the assembler you mentioned a cross-assembler, at least not in the usual sense. A cross assembler typically takes assembly code for one CPU, is run on another type of CPU (thus the "cross" term), and translates said assembly code to machine code for the CPU meant for the assembly code in question. The one assembler mentioned here would *translate* 8080 code to 8086 machine code that would execute as intended. That's emulation in my book, not a cross assembler. Again a simple form a emulation only requiring translation - and, in the assembler case, the translation being done *before* running, while in the hardware emulation mode, it was done in real-time.

Now if you want to nitpick about what "emulation" is or is not, have at it.


"Emulation" is something pretending to be something it isn't...

Guess you can say that. :) In particular, running code made for a given CPU on another CPU, generally speaking, is emulation. Whatever the means. Obviously depending on the respective CPUs, emulation can be more or less involved. But I don't think the "emulation" term depends on the difficulty of doing this, or whether the needed steps are taken at "build time" or at "run time".
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: RPM on July 07, 2021, 06:50:44 pm
Timex Sinclair 1000, with a 16K memory expansion a cash register type thermal printer and a copy of vu-file and flight simulator on cassette.  :-+
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: jonpaul on July 08, 2021, 08:17:26 am
Bonjour a tous...

I Built analog with 3 potentiometers and Shurite null meter for a science fair ~1957...from Scientific American Amateur Scientist column.

City College of NY, key punched programs for IBM 360 that filled the basement ....~ 1965

CPM machine (forgot which one) for office use ~ 1981

Built a IBM PC type from Faraday bord ~ 1985

Designed  first digital audio 16 bit stereo DSP boards for IBM AT ~ 1986

Just the memories of an old retired EE..

Bon Chance,

Jon
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: DiTBho on July 08, 2021, 11:08:23 am
My first computer was a SHARP Z80 home computer running GW-BASIC. My uncle gave it to me. I did nothing special with it. Then I bought a 386DX, and I played with DOS and I learned Pascal.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: brucehoult on July 08, 2021, 12:40:46 pm
Bonjour a tous...

I Built analog with 3 potentiometers and Shurite null meter for a science fair ~1957...from Scientific American Amateur Scientist column.

City College of NY, key punched programs for IBM 360 that filled the basement ....~ 1965

CPM machine (forgot which one) for office use ~ 1981

Built a IBM PC type from Faraday bord ~ 1985

Designed  first digital audio 16 bit stereo DSP boards for IBM AT ~ 1986

Some cool things there!

I guess the science fair thing must have been at 12 or so years old.

I didn't have access to any electronic things at that age, but was playing with a lot of basic electrical things, making electromagnets and buzzers and relays to implement logic (this was early 70s, on a farm in a remote part of New Zealand).

When I was 11 the school did a stage production that needed a "flying saucer". Others built the actual spaceship (big enough for several people to go inside) and I was entrusted with adding small coloured lamps around the perimeter and making a sequencer for them, which I did using a wooden rolling pin with thumbtacks in it, contacting copper fingers, rotated by a salvaged electric motor driving through an alarm clock gear train. Speed control (and reversing!) was by a rheostat borrowed from my uncle's Hornby model train set.

In 1977-79 my high school got a maths teacher who had programming and electronics experience in industry overseas (UK I think). He set up an electronics club where we were designing and building simple things using veroboard, 741s, 555s, and 74nn chips (and the odd transistor).
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: coppice on July 08, 2021, 05:19:10 pm
I Built analog with 3 potentiometers and Shurite null meter for a science fair ~1957...from Scientific American Amateur Scientist column.
You aren't really a serious contender in this discussion if you haven't used an analogue computer. :)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: coppice on July 08, 2021, 05:24:17 pm
I guess the science fair thing must have been at 12 or so years old.

I didn't have access to any electronic things at that age, but was playing with a lot of basic electrical things, making electromagnets and buzzers and relays to implement logic (this was early 70s, on a farm in a remote part of New Zealand).
Late starter? I was designing things with vacuum tubes when I was 12, because access to semiconductors for an amateur was quite restricted in the 60s. Looking back, the kinds of voltages my father let me play with at that time bother me. I didn't think much of it at the time. I was just very cautious.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: brucehoult on July 09, 2021, 02:57:56 am
I guess the science fair thing must have been at 12 or so years old.

I didn't have access to any electronic things at that age, but was playing with a lot of basic electrical things, making electromagnets and buzzers and relays to implement logic (this was early 70s, on a farm in a remote part of New Zealand).
Late starter? I was designing things with vacuum tubes when I was 12, because access to semiconductors for an amateur was quite restricted in the 60s. Looking back, the kinds of voltages my father let me play with at that time bother me. I didn't think much of it at the time. I was just very cautious.

And you were where? What was your father's job?
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: AaronLee on July 19, 2021, 01:34:19 am
First owned was an IMSAI 8080. I also have an IBM 5100 from the same era (1975 or there abouts). First to use was a DEC PDP-11/35.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: gcewing on August 08, 2021, 05:59:10 am
Miniscamp, built from a design published in Electronics Australia. National SC/MP CPU, 256 bytes RAM, switches and LEDs for program entry and I/O.

Much hacked upon over the next few years. RAM was expanded to 1.5k, a hex keypad and display was added, a cassette tape interface was added. The CPU was replaced with a 6800 (big improvement!). I experimented with random-access tape storage based on an old 8-track cartridge player (kinda sorta worked, not very reliable or practical). I connected it to a 5-bit teleprinter (worked well, but was very noisy!)

My next computer was a Dick Smith Super 80 built from a kit, but that's another story...
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: SiliconWizard on August 08, 2021, 05:04:50 pm
Miniscamp, built from a design published in Electronics Australia. National SC/MP CPU, 256 bytes RAM, switches and LEDs for program entry and I/O.

Much hacked upon over the next few years. RAM was expanded to 1.5k, a hex keypad and display was added, a cassette tape interface was added. The CPU was replaced with a 6800 (big improvement!). I experimented with random-access tape storage based on an old 8-track cartridge player (kinda sorta worked, not very reliable or practical). I connected it to a 5-bit teleprinter (worked well, but was very noisy!)

My next computer was a Dick Smith Super 80 built from a kit, but that's another story...

Would be nice if you still had photos of either to share.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: DrG on August 08, 2021, 05:09:08 pm
/--/
My next computer was a Dick Smith Super 80 built from a kit, but that's another story...

Was looking at that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Smith_Super-80_Computer At lest than 300 for the kit looks like a nice price for the time!
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Bassman59 on August 08, 2021, 09:18:27 pm
The first personal computer I used was the ubiquitous Apple ][, owned by a family on my paper router. I was a Freshman in high school. The school eventually set up a computer lab with Apple ][e and later ][g and in addition to BASIC we had courses in FORTRAN and Pascal. (Back then FORTRAN was also compiled down to p-code.)

The school also had an office that had a time-share terminal with a dial-up modem to some big mainframe somewhere and they let students come in and use it. We'd play that text-based Star Trek game, Hunt the Wumpus, and of course the grandaddy of 'em all, Zork/Adventure. To this day I still say "It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue."

At university my freshman year, every student got a DEC Professional-350 desktop machine. It was DEC's first ill-fated attempt at personal computers, and it was based on the LSI/11. It had two 5 ¼" floppy disk drives (which were not compatible with IBM PC diskettes), a 10 MB hard disk drive, and it ran a desktop version of VMS.  The university was a big DEC shop. The summer before my arrival they decommissioned the DEC System10, but the full-up VAXcluster was still operational. The choice of the Pro350 would have made more sense had we all been given modems to dial in to the big system, but since the dorm rooms didn't have telephones they wouldn't have been of use anyway. There was never much of an attempt to integrate the computers into the curriculum, and that was the biggest flaw of the scheme.

(Later DEC released the second ill-fated attempt at personal computers, the IBM-PC-compatible DEC Rainbow, but it used the same weird incompatible floppy disks as the Pro350, so while software was "available" for it, you couldn't buy a box in the store and use it. But wisely the school changed from the Pro350 to actual IBM PC-ATs (or XT, I don't remember) and skipped the Rainbow.)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: gcewing on August 09, 2021, 11:25:30 am
Miniscamp, built from a design published in Electronics Australia. National SC/MP CPU, 256 bytes RAM, switches and LEDs for program entry and I/O.

My next computer was a Dick Smith Super 80 built from a kit, but that's another story...

Would be nice if you still had photos of either to share.

It never occurred to me to take any photos of them at the time. This was long before both digital photography and the internet, so I wouldn't have had any easy way of sharing them with anyone.

I could take some photos of what's left of them. Only the case of the Miniscamp remains, unfortunately -- it was long since gutted. I still have the main part of the Super 80, but not the somewhat cruddy expansion cabinet I made for it...
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: coppice on August 09, 2021, 03:13:23 pm
At university my freshman year, every student got a DEC Professional-350 desktop machine. It was DEC's first ill-fated attempt at personal computers, and it was based on the LSI/11. It had two 5 ¼" floppy disk drives (which were not compatible with IBM PC diskettes), a 10 MB hard disk drive, and it ran a desktop version of VMS.
That can't be right. The 350 was definitely an LSI/11 based machine, which means it would not run VMS. VMS was a 32 bit VAX (and later 64 bit for the Alpha) only OS. I think most 350s ran RT-11, although there are other PDP/11 OSes it could run, even a good old 16 bit Unix.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: coromonadalix on August 10, 2021, 07:12:48 pm
A 8088, a 386, 486 ...  and briefly an real 586 133mhz board+cpu, returned it after a 24hours battle to make it work lol

My most precious was a 486 100mhz  overdrive cpu, the heatsink on them was beautiful  lolll
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: DrG on August 11, 2021, 02:23:28 pm
My most precious was a 486 100mhz  overdrive cpu, the heatsink on them was beautiful  lolll

*damn* you are making me feel old. My 486 was, I think, 66 MHz and I was so happy to move on to the Pentium days, but I am understanding that there is a little retro-resurgence going on with these.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Gyro on August 11, 2021, 06:41:35 pm
At university my freshman year, every student got a DEC Professional-350 desktop machine. It was DEC's first ill-fated attempt at personal computers, and it was based on the LSI/11. It had two 5 ¼" floppy disk drives (which were not compatible with IBM PC diskettes), a 10 MB hard disk drive, and it ran a desktop version of VMS.
That can't be right. The 350 was definitely an LSI/11 based machine, which means it would not run VMS. VMS was a 32 bit VAX (and later 64 bit for the Alpha) only OS. I think most 350s ran RT-11, although there are other PDP/11 OSes it could run, even a good old 16 bit Unix.

PRO-350s shipped with P/OS (not POS :D) which was based on RSX-11M rather than RT-11. As you say though other OSs could be used though.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Bassman59 on August 11, 2021, 08:26:35 pm
At university my freshman year, every student got a DEC Professional-350 desktop machine. It was DEC's first ill-fated attempt at personal computers, and it was based on the LSI/11. It had two 5 ¼" floppy disk drives (which were not compatible with IBM PC diskettes), a 10 MB hard disk drive, and it ran a desktop version of VMS.
That can't be right. The 350 was definitely an LSI/11 based machine, which means it would not run VMS. VMS was a 32 bit VAX (and later 64 bit for the Alpha) only OS. I think most 350s ran RT-11, although there are other PDP/11 OSes it could run, even a good old 16 bit Unix.

The Pro350 ran something called/like ProDOS, which was some variant of whichever DEC operating system ran on the LSI/11. It was a long time ago!
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: ferdieCX on August 12, 2021, 01:41:33 am
The Pro350 came with P/OS.
In the few Pro350 that our customers had, we installed RT-11 and the time-sharing  TSX-plus from S&H Computer Systems
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: m k on November 13, 2021, 03:57:11 pm
DEC Pro350 was originally LSI-11/23 (DCF-11).
Later Pro380 was LSI-11/73 (DCJ-11).

https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/DEC_Professional_(computer)

I have a faint memory that there was a VMS port, something where original motherboard bypassed to I/O only module and new CPU was in a slot.
If the recollection is not totally bogus it also includes that the invented VAX-11/7xx was slow.

PC100 was CP/M and MS-DOS machine.
It later got a MS-DOS 3.xx port for non standard graphics.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Garry G on November 28, 2021, 03:58:48 pm
The first computer I ever owned was also the first computer I ever used, a VIC-20.
I got this when I was around 12 or 13 and still have it... although it's a bit poorly now!
I do have another fully working one now though, and should try to get around to fixing my original one.

I've recently started looking a writing a few games in assembly for the VIC, just to see what I can come up with now, compared to all those BASIC games I wrote way back when.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: paulca on December 03, 2021, 08:12:05 pm
You know it occurred to me the thread title might have been more controversial in the 1940s when a "Computer" was usually a woman performing repetitive computational tasks.  Updating ledgers etc.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: granzeier on December 06, 2021, 01:29:09 pm
   The first time that I ever used a computer was sometime in the late 1960s, when I went to the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry, and saw a computer that played Tic-Tac-Toe. It used a telephone dial for data entry, and displayed your move, and then its move, on a light panel above the dial. I think that I was allowed to play one game with the computer. You can see a good description of a recreation of the computer here: https://www.museumofplay.org/2018/08/08/an-expansion-pack-for-a-history-of-video-games-in-64-objects/ (https://www.museumofplay.org/2018/08/08/an-expansion-pack-for-a-history-of-video-games-in-64-objects/) (item # 1,) and there are four pictures of that recreation here: https://twitter.com/jpdysonplay/status/948258557773910017?lang=en. (https://twitter.com/jpdysonplay/status/948258557773910017?lang=en.) A couple years later, I used a bunch of Christmas Light sockets and bulbs (the old kind that screwed into their sockets) and switches to attempt to recreate the Tic-Tac-Toe computer myself – not a computer, but pretty good for a pre-teen.

   First used on a regular basis: HP 2000 (not sure, but probably an A model.)
(https://www.hpmuseum.net/images/2000touched-35.jpg)
This was upgraded to an HP 2000F/Access during summer break (summer of '76, or '77.) A few days prior to graduation, an older friend took me to what became my high school, and sat me down in front of a large "typewriter" (what I now know was an ASR-33 Teletype.) He then picked up a phone, dialed a number and placed the handset into a white box next to the "typewriter" (the modem.) Then he typed something, and the Teletype typed back - All... By... Itself...!!! I was hooked. He got me logged in and ran a tutorial program (TUTxx, from the HP library) and it got me started in programming.

   The first "computer" I owned (other than that tic-tac-toe computer) was a Bell Lab's CardIAC (Cardboard Illustrative Aid to Computation - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CARDboard_Illustrative_Aid_to_Computation. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CARDboard_Illustrative_Aid_to_Computation.) If you would like to build your own clone, check out: https://www.kylem.net/hardware/hardware.html (https://www.kylem.net/hardware/hardware.html)).
(https://www.cs.drexel.edu/~bls96/museum/cardiac.jpg)
Miss McGuigan, one of our math teachers, and the sponsor of the computer club gave the CardIAC to me. While still in high school, I wrote an emulator for the CardIAC on the HP 2000, in BASIC. I actually still own a CardIAC, and am working on building an electronic hardware emulator.

   My first real computer was a Sinclair ZX-81.
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8a/Sinclair-ZX81.png/440px-Sinclair-ZX81.png)
I ordered this in December of 1980, received it in early 1981, and took it to work (an Air Force shop where we maintained mainframe air defense computers - I was on active duty at the time) to assemble. All of the guys in my shop kept "finding things to do" near the workbench that I was using. One thing that I noticed was that there was a dual RAM option on the PCB, allowing either the two 2114 1KX4 RAM chips, or a single 6116 2K RAM chip. Unfortunately, I did not have the 6116 chip to double my RAM. This computer quickly received a 16K RAM and a real keyboard. I talked a co-worker into getting one, and helped him give it a real keyboard, just like mine. I actually still have a couple of ZX-81s and Timex-Sinclair TS-1000s.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: DrG on December 06, 2021, 02:16:55 pm
I had never heard of the Cardiac [CARDboard Illustrative Aid to Computation] and I did some digging and, wow, that is quite cool for 1969 [and today] https://www.cs.drexel.edu/~bls96/museum/cardiac.html (https://www.cs.drexel.edu/~bls96/museum/cardiac.html)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: granzeier on December 06, 2021, 02:51:06 pm
The CardIAC was (and is) a lot of fun - although tedious.  ;D

I blame Bell Labs, and their CardIAC, for my firm grasp of assembly language. It really made the computer understandable.

Also, that Drexel page is one of my favorite. Lots of good information about the CardIAC there.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Neomys Sapiens on December 06, 2021, 06:07:10 pm
The CardIAC was (and is) a lot of fun - although tedious.  ;D

I blame Bell Labs, and their CardIAC, for my firm grasp of assembly language. It really made the computer understandable.

Also, that Drexel page is one of my favorite. Lots of good information about the CardIAC there.
Would you care to show some pictures here:
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/those-old-cardboard-sleeved-slide-charts- (https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/those-old-cardboard-sleeved-slide-charts-)!!
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: granzeier on December 07, 2021, 02:03:49 am
Would you care to show some pictures here:
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/those-old-cardboard-sleeved-slide-charts-!! (https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/those-old-cardboard-sleeved-slide-charts-!!/)
Unfortunately, the final !! and the slash got taken out of the URL, so I fixed it in the quote above.
That looks interesting, I'll go ahead and post about the CardIAC to that thread.
Thanks
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: ebastler on December 07, 2021, 07:59:34 am
   The first time that I ever used a computer was sometime in the late 1960s, when I went to the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry, and saw a computer that played Tic-Tac-Toe. It used a telephone dial for data entry, and displayed your move, and then its move, on a light panel above the dial. I think that I was allowed to play one game with the computer. You can see a good description of a recreation of the computer here: https://www.museumofplay.org/2018/08/08/an-expansion-pack-for-a-history-of-video-games-in-64-objects/ (https://www.museumofplay.org/2018/08/08/an-expansion-pack-for-a-history-of-video-games-in-64-objects/) (item # 1,) and there are four pictures of that recreation here: https://twitter.com/jpdysonplay/status/948258557773910017?lang=en. (https://twitter.com/jpdysonplay/status/948258557773910017?lang=en.)

The Chicago Tic-Tac-Toe game might have been inspired by an earlier version published in Radio Electronics in 1956:
https://www.vintagecomputer.net/cisc367/Radio%20Electronics%20Dec%201956%20Relay%20Moe%20Plays%20Tic-tac-toe.pdf (https://www.vintagecomputer.net/cisc367/Radio%20Electronics%20Dec%201956%20Relay%20Moe%20Plays%20Tic-tac-toe.pdf)

The article gives quite a bit of technical detail, although not a complete set of building instructions. This was an electro-mechanical device, with a rotating drum to control the timing sequence. It also featured rotating cams to cause less-than-perfect moves "at random", to keep the game interesting.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: AardvarkM31 on December 11, 2021, 04:02:40 pm
Well, IIRC it was a Commodore VIC 20, soon replaced by a Commodore 64, added a cassette tape backup.
Cheers
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: DiTBho on December 13, 2021, 11:03:33 am
My first computer was a mini-portable notebook, produced by Olivetti in 1992: the - smaller than a regular - Quaderno PT-XT-20!!!

It was powered by a NEC V30HL @ 16MHz CPU (x86 compatible), 1MB of memory, and 20MB, 2.5" (CHS, pre-LBA, and loaded with proprietary firmware) hard-drive, while MS-DOS v5 was loaded in ROM.

1992..1997, I used the the notebook with Lotus 123, QuickBasic v4.5, TurboPascal v6, and Procomm (thanks to a PCMCIA-to-RS232 adapter).
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: x86guru on December 13, 2021, 03:00:22 pm
My very first computer was a new Commodore VIC-20 when I was ~10 years old
My next computer was a used Apple ][ (Not the ][+ or //e, the original ][) when I was ~12-13 years old
My next computer was a used Amiga 1000 when I was ~17 years old
My next computer was a used PC-AT clone when I was ~19 years old with a i386/33 CPU, 50MB 5.25" HD, monochrome monitor.
Then a flood of PCs from there.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: MK14 on December 13, 2021, 03:10:40 pm
You know it occurred to me the thread title might have been more controversial in the 1940s when a "Computer" was usually a woman performing repetitive computational tasks.  Updating ledgers etc.

That's true. I may get some of the following wrong. But I think in that era, 'programmer' was actually ladies (usually), who 'programmed' the desired actual program into the computer. Using things similar to telephone exchange patch cables, to the different computational units (before stored program computers, were available and/or in common use).
'Bugs' were literally causing faults because of actual insects getting caught between the computers relay contacts, and hence causing it to malfunction.
'Calculators' were also humans calculating stuff, rather than actual mechanical/electronic calculators.

Also, condensers (capacitors), clock frequencies in non-SI units, etc.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: woofy on December 13, 2021, 05:39:17 pm
Ah, I still groan when I hear folks referring to capacitors as "condensers".
But then, I like to tease by measuring speed in furlongs per fortnight.  ;)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: brucehoult on December 13, 2021, 09:15:50 pm
'Bugs' were literally causing faults because of actual insects getting caught between the computers relay contacts, and hence causing it to malfunction.

The term "bug" for a fault in a mechanical device -- and debugging -- has been used by engineers since at least the mid 19th century. It can be found a number of times in Thomas Edison's notebooks.

When those computer engineers found a moth caught in computer relay contacts Grace Hopper wrote in the logbook "first actual case of bug being found". i.e. the term was already in common use.

I believe "bug" is short for "bugbear", an imaginary creature, also goblin or gremlin -- all of which can be used to describe hard to find problems with complex mechanical things.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: ebastler on December 14, 2021, 05:55:50 am
Ah, I still groan when I hear folks referring to capacitors as "condensers".

That's how they are still called in German: "Kondensator". And yes, we call a device where vapor gets liquified a "Kondensator" too...

I don't know who transferred the term to electronics initially, and what the mental model was behind that. Maybe the idea that the volatile electricity from the clouds was "condensed" into the Leyden bottles in Franklin's experiment?
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Nusa on December 14, 2021, 06:04:55 am
They were called condensers before they were called capacitors. The automotive industry STILL calls the capacitor in a distributor a condenser.

Capacitors condense or collect electricity, much like radiators condense or collect water. Not an unreasonable use for the word in the early days.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: SiliconWizard on December 14, 2021, 06:28:26 pm
Ah, I still groan when I hear folks referring to capacitors as "condensers".

That's how they are still called in German: "Kondensator". And yes, we call a device where vapor gets liquified a "Kondensator" too...

Same in french, those are called "condensateurs".
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: ebastler on December 14, 2021, 06:52:10 pm
Capacitors condense or collect electricity, much like radiators condense or collect water. Not an unreasonable use for the word in the early days.

Sure; but what about the phase change (gas to liquid) which is implied in the "condenser" term? If it were just about collecting electricity, capacitors might have been called "buckets" or "balloons". :)  What "condensation" were people visualizing when they chose the name?
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: MK14 on December 14, 2021, 07:21:48 pm
Sure; but what about the phase change (gas to liquid) which is implied in the "condenser" term? If it were just about collecting electricity, capacitors might have been called "buckets" or "balloons". :)  What "condensation" were people visualizing when they chose the name?

I looked it up. Apparently, it is because the 'capacitor' has the ability to 'condense' the electricity into a much smaller space, compared to just a bare conductor.

Quote
The term was first used for this purpose by Alessandro Volta in 1782

The source I got that from, is claiming they originally got the information from the wiki article on early capacitors.

My initial source, is here:
https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/222137/why-was-a-capacitor-called-a-condensor-condenser-in-the-early-days-of-electro
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: m k on December 15, 2021, 06:06:04 pm
Capacitor Kondensaattori
Condenser lauhdutin, kondenseri(optics)
Evaporator höyrystin

Here temperature and water oriented things have clearly had names a bit longer.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: CatalinaWOW on December 15, 2021, 10:11:44 pm
While I am all for standardized terms for items, there is way to much angst about the use of the term condenser for a capacitor.  The term was in common usage in the US in my youth, and older folks will still use it. 

Think of it like reading a German or French language web page.  Only bigots would complain about the language used, even though they used different words for items than they normally do.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: coppice on December 15, 2021, 10:21:42 pm
While I am all for standardized terms for items, there is way to much angst about the use of the term condenser for a capacitor.  The term was in common usage in the US in my youth, and older folks will still use it. 

Think of it like reading a German or French language web page.  Only bigots would complain about the language used, even though they used different words for items than they normally do.
Condenser was a more common term than capacitor in the UK when I was young. In fact, for certain types, like variable condensers, condenser was almost the exclusive term.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: SiliconWizard on December 15, 2021, 10:29:01 pm
As we can see, this all depends on the country and language used. Terms equivalent to "condenser" are still very common in many other languages than english. It's probably at least partly a cultural thing only. And add to the mix that "condenser" has more words than one in some languages. For instance, in french, "condensateur" is how we call a "capacitor", but some other uses of the term "condenser" in english, such as for gas condensing, have a different word. We call that a "condenseur" in french, so that's two different words. The fact there was only one word in english for both uses probably is what led to this term "capacitor". That makes sense.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: ferdieCX on December 15, 2021, 11:26:47 pm
In Spanish, the most commonly used word is  " condensador ", some people say also "capacitor "
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: garrettm on March 01, 2022, 03:58:04 am
If I'm not mistaken, it was Alessandro Volta who coined the term condenser. So blame the Italians... Later, Oliver Heaviside coined the term "permittance" for the storage of electrostatic energy. He also pulled a Shakespeare and made up most of the terms we still use to describe most electrical quantities:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Heaviside#Electromagnetic_terms

I quite enjoyed reading Heaviside's work (Electromagnetic Theory Vols I and II). The man had a razor sharp wit and hated quaternions with a passion. See page 7 for a good laugh:

https://ia904607.us.archive.org/28/items/electromagnetict01heavrich/electromagnetict01heavrich.pdf

Page 134 gives a good overview of his dislike for quaternions:

"But I came later to see that, so far as the vector analysis I required was concerned, the quaternion was not only not required, but was a positive evil of no inconsiderable magnitude; and that by its avoidance the establishment of vector analysis was made quite simple and its working also simplified, and that it could be conveniently harmonised with ordinary Cartesian work. There is not a ghost of a quaternion in any of my papers (except in one, for a special purpose). The vector analysis I use may be described either as a convenient and systematic abbreviation of Cartesian analysis; or else, as Quaternions without the quaternions, and with a simplified notation harmonising with Cartesians. In this form, it is not more difficult, but easier to work than Cartesians. Of course you must learn how to work it. Initially, unfamiliarity may make it difficult. But no amount of familiarity will make Quaternions an easy subject."
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Neomys Sapiens on March 01, 2022, 06:48:04 pm
If I'm not mistaken, it was Alessandro Volta who coined the term condenser. So blame the Italians... Later, Oliver Heaviside coined the term "permittance" for the storage of electrostatic energy. He also pulled a Shakespeare and made up most of the terms we still use to describe most electrical quantities:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Heaviside#Electromagnetic_terms

I quite enjoyed reading Heaviside's work (Electromagnetic Theory Vols I and II). The man had a razor sharp wit and hated quaternions with a passion. See page 7 for a good laugh:

https://ia904607.us.archive.org/28/items/electromagnetict01heavrich/electromagnetict01heavrich.pdf

Page 134 gives a good overview of his dislike for quaternions:

"But I came later to see that, so far as the vector analysis I required was concerned, the quaternion was not only not required, but was a positive evil of no inconsiderable magnitude; and that by its avoidance the establishment of vector analysis was made quite simple and its working also simplified, and that it could be conveniently harmonised with ordinary Cartesian work. There is not a ghost of a quaternion in any of my papers (except in one, for a special purpose). The vector analysis I use may be described either as a convenient and systematic abbreviation of Cartesian analysis; or else, as Quaternions without the quaternions, and with a simplified notation harmonising with Cartesians. In this form, it is not more difficult, but easier to work than Cartesians. Of course you must learn how to work it. Initially, unfamiliarity may make it difficult. But no amount of familiarity will make Quaternions an easy subject."
I'm totally with Mr. Heaviside here. One project on which I was working involved a computation which could supposedly only achieved by the method of quaternion transformation. To furnish the necessary algorithm, a professor of mathematics which also operated as a consultant was applied. When we met with him over lunch, he got a bit carried away about his vectors and quaternions and started to illustrate things with multiple pieces of cutlery. When he asked his neighbour to  join him in order to depict more variables, we returned the topic forcibly to 'when will we get the code and how much will it cost'. It was a very close brush with one sort of 'crazy scientist'.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: CatalinaWOW on March 02, 2022, 02:09:55 am
I am not an expert on any type of rotational transforms, but where I worked quaternions were widely used in motion simulation.  The stated reason was that quaternions avoided the division by zero problems that occur in Euler transforms and others for certain rotations.  Can't say if this is true, but if so it is a reason well worth whatever extra effort is involved in setup. 
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: garrettm on March 03, 2022, 12:32:27 am
I think the primary use of quaternions in modeling 3D motion is to avoid the dreaded "gimbol lock."

https://courses.cs.washington.edu/courses/cse474/17wi/pdfs/lectures/Orientation-Quaternions.pdf (https://courses.cs.washington.edu/courses/cse474/17wi/pdfs/lectures/Orientation-Quaternions.pdf)

I'm sure there are other practical applications of quaternions, but for ordinary electromagnetic phenomena, quaternions obfusicate an already difficult subject. Though they seem to pop up when more complicated electromagnetic phenomea are studied, like magnetohydrodynamics.

https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Quaternionic+Approach+to+Dual+Magnetohydrodynamics+of+Dyonic+Cold...-a0578045073 (https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Quaternionic+Approach+to+Dual+Magnetohydrodynamics+of+Dyonic+Cold...-a0578045073)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: CatalinaWOW on March 03, 2022, 01:03:41 am
Gimbal lock is another way of describing division by zero problems. 
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Nominal Animal on March 03, 2022, 07:59:06 am
If you don't like using unit quaternions (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternions_and_spatial_rotation) (also called versors (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Versor)) for 3D spatial rotations, use bivectors (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bivector) instead.

The elementary algebraic operations you end up implementing stay exactly the same.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Herr R aus B on April 09, 2022, 12:29:38 pm
PET 2001 at school, first owned computer then was a C64  :)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: jonpaul on July 28, 2022, 12:08:02 pm
https://bletchleypark.org.uk/our-story/75-years-since-colossus-arrived-at-bletchley/
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: MK14 on January 05, 2023, 06:52:08 am
   The first time that I ever used a computer was sometime in the late 1960s, when I went to the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry, and saw a computer that played Tic-Tac-Toe. It used a telephone dial for data entry, and displayed your move, and then its move, on a light panel above the dial. I think that I was allowed to play one game with the computer. You can see a good description of a recreation of the computer here: https://www.museumofplay.org/2018/08/08/an-expansion-pack-for-a-history-of-video-games-in-64-objects/ (https://www.museumofplay.org/2018/08/08/an-expansion-pack-for-a-history-of-video-games-in-64-objects/) (item # 1,) and there are four pictures of that recreation here: https://twitter.com/jpdysonplay/status/948258557773910017?lang=en. (https://twitter.com/jpdysonplay/status/948258557773910017?lang=en.) A couple years later, I used a bunch of Christmas Light sockets and bulbs (the old kind that screwed into their sockets) and switches to attempt to recreate the Tic-Tac-Toe computer myself – not a computer, but pretty good for a pre-teen.

   First used on a regular basis: HP 2000 (not sure, but probably an A model.)
(https://www.hpmuseum.net/images/2000touched-35.jpg)
This was upgraded to an HP 2000F/Access during summer break (summer of '76, or '77.) A few days prior to graduation, an older friend took me to what became my high school, and sat me down in front of a large "typewriter" (what I now know was an ASR-33 Teletype.) He then picked up a phone, dialed a number and placed the handset into a white box next to the "typewriter" (the modem.) Then he typed something, and the Teletype typed back - All... By... Itself...!!! I was hooked. He got me logged in and ran a tutorial program (TUTxx, from the HP library) and it got me started in programming.

   The first "computer" I owned (other than that tic-tac-toe computer) was a Bell Lab's CardIAC (Cardboard Illustrative Aid to Computation - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CARDboard_Illustrative_Aid_to_Computation. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CARDboard_Illustrative_Aid_to_Computation.) If you would like to build your own clone, check out: https://www.kylem.net/hardware/hardware.html (https://www.kylem.net/hardware/hardware.html)).
(https://www.cs.drexel.edu/~bls96/museum/cardiac.jpg)
Miss McGuigan, one of our math teachers, and the sponsor of the computer club gave the CardIAC to me. While still in high school, I wrote an emulator for the CardIAC on the HP 2000, in BASIC. I actually still own a CardIAC, and am working on building an electronic hardware emulator.

   My first real computer was a Sinclair ZX-81.
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8a/Sinclair-ZX81.png/440px-Sinclair-ZX81.png)
I ordered this in December of 1980, received it in early 1981, and took it to work (an Air Force shop where we maintained mainframe air defense computers - I was on active duty at the time) to assemble. All of the guys in my shop kept "finding things to do" near the workbench that I was using. One thing that I noticed was that there was a dual RAM option on the PCB, allowing either the two 2114 1KX4 RAM chips, or a single 6116 2K RAM chip. Unfortunately, I did not have the 6116 chip to double my RAM. This computer quickly received a 16K RAM and a real keyboard. I talked a co-worker into getting one, and helped him give it a real keyboard, just like mine. I actually still have a couple of ZX-81s and Timex-Sinclair TS-1000s.

Thanks for making such a nice, detailed post.  Which seems a good point, to get this thread, back on topic.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: granzeier on January 05, 2023, 11:31:10 am
Thanks, glad you enjoyed it. Interestingly enough, when I saw a new post in this thread, while clicking to read the newest post, I was wondering if I had ever posted to this thread. It was funny seeing the answer to my wondering when I got to your post  :) - and I enjoyed rereading my post, too.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Dave Wise on January 06, 2023, 05:27:55 pm
First used: In high school (1976), an HP 2000G school district machine running BASIC, via 300-baud ASR33 teletype with paper tape reader/punch.
First owned: In college (1978), an IBM 1620 which the school gave me in lieu of scrapping it.  I still have it, and AFAIK it's the last operational one in the world.  Serial number 98, originally bought by Pettijohn Engineering, then donated to Vernonia High School when Pettijohn got an 1130, then donated to University of Portland (where the paper tape reader was interfaced to a PDP-8/e), then me.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: granzeier on January 06, 2023, 05:44:42 pm
Cool. I did not remember the 1620 and had to look it up. Variable length words, and decimal rather than binary. I'll need to look into that a bit more.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: ebastler on January 06, 2023, 07:29:23 pm
First owned: In college (1978), an IBM 1620 which the school gave me in lieu of scrapping it.  I still have it, and AFAIK it's the last operational one in the world.

That is a pretty cool machine to own! But here's at least one more (unless it is yours, or it has become non-operational again during the past 10 years -- both of which are possible of course):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epD-wYuPYbg&t=26s (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epD-wYuPYbg&t=26s)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Dave Wise on January 06, 2023, 08:36:54 pm
I helped restore that one.  For some years it was a live interactive exhibit, but today it's disassembled and in storage.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: metertech58761 on January 10, 2023, 05:52:48 am
First computer I got to see: Commodore PET 2001 (the one with the chiclet keyboard) - 1978/79 school year

First computer I had access to: Apple ][ - ca. 1982

First computer I owned: Commodore 64 - Christmas 1984

Them were the days!
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: pzlingo on December 22, 2023, 03:05:41 am
I used to have a kind of Street Fighter game written in machine language for the PC-1350.  I had the game in a tape.  The tape was lost somewhere in the garage.  I think if I can covert the tape to MP3, I may still be able to load the game to the PC-1350.

Better use a lossless audio format (.wav, .flac or such). MP3 is designed to avoid artefacts perceptible to human listeners, but your computer's demodulator might be offended anyway.



Hi. If you want still play this game, here is where you find it.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/sharpcasioworld (https://www.facebook.com/groups/sharpcasioworld)

It is called TheKarate and one of the most cool games written in machine language for Sharp pc-1350

Have fun and stay tuned!
Modify message
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: brucehoult on December 22, 2023, 05:39:53 am
First computer I got to see: Commodore PET 2001 (the one with the chiclet keyboard) - 1978/79 school year

First computer I had access to: Apple ][ - ca. 1982

First computer I owned: Commodore 64 - Christmas 1984

If we are making so many categories...

First computer I got to see: ca 1972, some kind of mainframe (IBM? ICL?) operating behind a large viewing window at L D Nathan in Auckland, while with my father while visiting his uncle who was a big shot there. Also my first time (and quite deliberately without prior explanation!) in an elevator.

First computer I touched: near tie, 1977, Commodore Pet in an office equipment shop in Whangarei, TRS-80 in the HQ of David Reid Electronics in Takapuna Auckland. I was a customer, having mail-ordered literally ten 7400-series ICs, 555, veroboard, soldering iron, wire from their huge catalogue with the distinctive Moire-pattern cover.

First computer I programmed (low level language): 1978, HP-97 calculator (mag card storage, printer). 26 registers, 224 bytes of program code. Owned by Tikipunga High School (not my HS, but nearby)

First computer I programmed (high level language): 1980, Burroughs B1700. My HS maths teacher had after-hours access to this machine in a bureau in Whangarei. He took our (hand) punched card FORTRAN decks there in the evenings, brought us printouts next day. Sometimes I (and one or two other students, but mostly me) accompanied him, enabling multiple debugging cycles for our (personal, more ambitious than the assigned task) programs. I got to put our HUGE 5 MB disk pack in the drive, enter the 1st stage bootstrap program into RAM using the console, use the TTY console and card punch machine.  My teacher died in August this year, aged 99. I last visited him Nov '22.

[attach=1]

First computer I had long term possession of (low level): 1979 TI57 calculator, mail ordered from the aforementioned Davred. 8 registers, 50 bytes of program code. No non-volatile memory. Most complex program I wrote on it (including working out the equations): Great Circle bearing and distance from one lat/long point to another.

First computer I had long term possession of (low level): 1980 Apple ][+. My HS bought it, the aforementioned maths HoD told me to take it home over xmas/ny, figure it out, and then teach him about it. Technically I wasn't a student there any more as it was after the end of term and exams.

First computer I owned: 1989, Apple Mac IIcx. I'd been using/programming Macs for years at work, and been able to take them home when desired, but I finally bought my own because Actrix BBS in Wellington offered shell accounts and UUCP and access to internet mail and "news" (usenet) which they themselves got via UUCP. And I bought a cheap (US$99?) Chinese non-approved 2400 bps modem at Macworld SF (before I had a computer). I also had been using BYTE magazine BIX bbs via X.25 at work, and continued using my work login from home. Maybe a year later both Actrix and BIX got TCP/IP connectivity and I could use the almost free telnet instead.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: pqass on December 22, 2023, 06:34:22 am
First computer I programmed (in BASIC, of course): Commodore PET - 1979

First computer I owned: TI-99/4a - 1981
Out of the box it provided too sanitized/polished user experience; eg. menus and BASIC.
Assembler was out of reach ($$) unlike the competition.  Little info in magazine articles.  As such, I missed out on understanding the bare metal.

First computer that left a unforgettable impression: Fairlight CMI (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairlight_CMI) - 1982
Computers are not just for games or counting money!
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: dare on December 25, 2023, 02:17:03 am
First computer I programmed, but did not touch: IBM 360/unknown model. Programmed in FORTRAN using punched cards. This was 1977; I was 12 or 13 at the time.

First computer I got to actually touch: Altair 8800 with ASR33 teletype. Programmed in machine code and BASIC.  Same year (1977), and same computer room as the 360!.

First computer I owned: Homemade COSMAC ELF computer.  RCA 1802 processor, 256 bytes(!) RAM, switches and LEDs. Built around 1980-81.

Still have that one, although I rebuilt it a few years ago:
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: J911 on January 20, 2024, 05:51:19 pm
First comp, Commodore VIC-20.. my father picked it up at a garage/moving sale across the street for ~$20
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Martinn on January 24, 2024, 06:47:36 pm
Still have that one, although I rebuilt it a few years ago:
Hand wrapped? Or did you put the wire wrap tool there for decoration...?
Pictures please  :popcorn:

My first computer was a UMS-85, https://makerprojekte.de/tag/ums-85/ also 256 bytes RAM. Hex code entry, I still know that C3 00 08 meant Jump to 0800 (which was the start of the RAM area).
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: coppice on January 24, 2024, 07:18:55 pm
Still have that one, although I rebuilt it a few years ago:
Hand wrapped? Or did you put the wire wrap tool there for decoration...?
I hope not. Wrapping with those manual twiddling tools produces some lousy wire wraps, and is just masochism. There were lots of trigger activated manual tools that worked well, and there were inexpensive battery powered tools, from people like OK, that were not too expensive. I still have an OK battery powered wire wrap tool that I produced a huge amount of hobby stuff with.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned/used ?
Post by: Gerhard_dk4xp on January 25, 2024, 12:49:29 am
My first computer I used was a Siemens System 3003 (https://www.f10479.de/siemens_edv.html (https://www.f10479.de/siemens_edv.html))
My first computer I owned was a z80 based self-made CPM80 system.
/PeLuLe

Telefunken TR4, the first commercial microprogrammed machine, 48 bits/word.
Some of us students were even allowed to operate it, so in some sense it was
my personal computer at night when the paid-for operators were at home.

There was a Siemens 3003 next to it, but not really for us.
(Cobol, move inzeile to outzeile, pah!)

Then came a Siemens kit 8080, and I wrote a cross assembler for it in Fortran
on the TR4, with punched tape output.

I then had a homebrew Z80A with DMA and double floppies, wired on a
double Eurocard.

My first AT was a Bullet speedboard 286 pimped to 10 MHz with a
Fujitsu 70 MB disk, some kind of hubris, when the VAX of the uelectronics institute
had just a 330 MB Fujitsu Eagle for all people together.

I ran Interactive Unix on it and even tried to compile Spice 2G6,
but f2c wasn't up to snuff.  Sh***y small segments. Think of
memory management in Fortran by indexing over the limits
of an array.

Gerhard

hubris, hybris, ύβρις = arrogance against the gods

And a blast from the past: last weekend I repaired a W&G SNA-33
spectrum analyzer, 20Hz to 26 GHz with 1 Hz filter BW. Runs under
DOS 6. Still not completely stable, but Phar Lap tools is nothing
I want do deal with any more.


Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: dare on February 07, 2024, 02:28:50 am
Hand wrapped? Or did you put the wire wrap tool there for decoration...?
Pictures please  :popcorn:

(Not sure why I didn't get a notification of your reply...)

All hand-wrapped, using the same wire wrap tool I used in high school!

[attach=2]
[attach=1]
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: N0NB on February 11, 2024, 02:57:26 am
The first computer I owned and used was a Radio Shack Color Computer 2 with 16k Extended Color BASIC (wow!) purchased about a week before Thanksgiving 1983 for around $150 as I recall.  Of course I needed an interface cable for the portable cassette recorder we already had.  Probably $15 for that alone.  I quickly learned peripherals were not cheap!  I first connected it to the 25" black and white console TV in the basement recreation room.  Later I used a portable BW TV given by my grandparents.  I finally put a small Quasar color TV on it a few years later.

I really never got along with BASIC.  The books that came with it were probably adequate for explaining the language but it wasn't until years later that I picked up the concepts of logic, program decision branching, modularity, and so on.  By then C held a strong attraction.  Despite that I put it to good use for about six years and picked up a printer and disk drive for it.  The latter proved useful as it freed up the cassette port to be a serial port that I used for packet radio.  I edited the local radio club newsletter on it. I upgraded it to 64k with chips mail ordered from a shop in Kansas City via info received from another ham operator (I no longer recall who   :(  ).

The local RS had a stack of them for sale but I never ran across anyone locally that had one. Most were probably given to the kids and then tossed a few years later.  In the mid '90s I gathered it up along with all of the disks and gave to a good friend who was into that stuff at the time.  He passed away some years ago and that pile of stuff probably went to the landfill.   :(

In the summer of '89 I bought an XT clone (DTK MB) that was a collection of interesting parts from a local ham who dealt in that sort of thing.  It was built into an XT clone case, had a genuine IBM 62.5 Watt PSU that I upgraded later.  Two "half height" 360k 5.25" drives, 640k, serial port, Hercules monochrome adapter with a parallel port.  It came with a genuine IBM 88 key keyboard and Amdek amber monitor.  A copy of PC-DOS 3.3 was included of questionable origin.  :-DD   I learned to edit files with edlin.   :palm:

About a year later I started using it seriously in electronics tech school and the video combination worked for Orcad and WordPerfect.  I bought an Epson 24 pin dot matrix printer and generated crisp and clean (this side of a laser) lab reports and schematics.  While in school I added a 20 MB MFM HDD, 1.44 MB 3.5" floppy drive, 2400bps modem, V20 processor, Super VGA video adapter and VGA monitor.  All of that was an investment that paid off well for me.  After I graduated I added a Microsoft Inport Bus Mouse and MS-DOS 5.0 (purchased legally).

Once I graduated I used it to run a packet radio BBS for a few months with DesqView running three instances of W0RLI PBBS and one more screen as a monitor and all of this on top of an instance of G8BPQ node software.  Setting that all up was great fun and then I got a real job in a new area.  That computer went with me and while I used packet radio there I never set up the PBBS on it again.  Looking back I should have done more with DesqView and other software.

My jump into the 32 bit world was in early 1993 with a "white box" 386DX/40 ordered from some outfit advertising in Computer Shopper.  The summer of '96 saw me replace the MB with a 486DX/100 and about a month later I was handed a Slackware 3.0 CD and I've not been the same since!

Now I buy Lenovo computers and Raspberry Pis.   ;D
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: brucehoult on February 11, 2024, 03:49:47 am
The first computer I owned and used was a Radio Shack Color Computer 2 [...] I really never got along with BASIC.

Doesn't matter ... you had the easiest 8 bit chip to program in assembly language.  And the only one it was possible to write an actually good C compiler for -- whether they were good at the time or not I don't .. some friends and I designed and built a wire-wrapped 6809 computer and wrote a BCPL code generator in our spare time that gave pretty decent code.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: Geektronix on February 11, 2024, 05:41:06 am
TI99

Edit, forgot about this one

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8a/Sinclair-ZX81.png/440px-Sinclair-ZX81.png)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: N0NB on February 11, 2024, 10:13:56 pm
The first computer I owned and used was a Radio Shack Color Computer 2 [...] I really never got along with BASIC.

Doesn't matter ... you had the easiest 8 bit chip to program in assembly language.  And the only one it was possible to write an actually good C compiler for -- whether they were good at the time or not I don't .. some friends and I designed and built a wire-wrapped 6809 computer and wrote a BCPL code generator in our spare time that gave pretty decent code.

I didn't pursue assembly either as my interest at the time was in using it with applications.  I didn't really gain an interest in programming of any sort until I had semi-retired it and was deep into the DOS world at that point.  The programming interest was likely kindled as a roommate was in the computer science program and in one of the later classes we did some simple stuff with debug and writing to the parallel port of IBM PC style machines as part of lab work.  After a few years with Linux I started to learn Perl and Python (late '90s) so that is when I started doing some hobbyist related development.

At one point I was loaned an OS-9 cartridge but there was no documentation so I really didn't know what to do with it.  Had there been some local sort of Coco user group that would have been a big difference maker.  I got to know a few students in various programs at tech school ('90/'91) and that was a lot of fun as they were a great source of ideas and inspiration.

Like you noted earlier in the thread, I was/am a farm kid as well but I was certainly not as inventive.  Phone calls to dial-up BBSs were out of the question (everywhere was a "long distance" call, even to the county seat eight miles away).  Packet radio was my first exposure to any sort of "online" activity.  By that point the most popular systems in use by hams were the C64 and IBM PCs/clones.  I chose the latter route.  C64s were still quite popular with hams until the mid '90s.  By that point I was jumping onto the Linux train.

If I still had the Coco I might revisit it but it's gone and I'm looking forward.  :)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: coppice on February 12, 2024, 01:06:44 am
The first computer I owned and used was a Radio Shack Color Computer 2 [...] I really never got along with BASIC.

Doesn't matter ... you had the easiest 8 bit chip to program in assembly language.  And the only one it was possible to write an actually good C compiler for -- whether they were good at the time or not I don't .. some friends and I designed and built a wire-wrapped 6809 computer and wrote a BCPL code generator in our spare time that gave pretty decent code.
The 6809 was specifically designed to be a good platform for C code. However, the way instructions changed as many flags as possible meant you had to insert a lot of test instructions to restore flags it had just stamped all over when if's, for's and while's were trying to act on the result of a piece of arithmetic which had just completed. It had a lot of good qualities, but the flag handling really hurt performance.

Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: brucehoult on February 12, 2024, 04:57:14 am
The 6809 was specifically designed to be a good platform for C code.

C really wasn't a factor in 1977 or so when the 6809 was being designed. Pascal was.

Quote
However, the way instructions changed as many flags as possible meant you had to insert a lot of test instructions to restore flags it had just stamped all over when if's, for's and while's were trying to act on the result of a piece of arithmetic which had just completed. It had a lot of good qualities, but the flag handling really hurt performance.

Relative to what? I was using the 6809 at the time and don't remember any such difficulty, certainly not compared to other similar CPUs such as 6800, 6502, 68000, or more recently ARM Thumb. Or even compared to dissimilar CPUs such as 8080/Z80.

Do you have an example?

Separating arithmetic result or compare from the conditional branch is quite a rare operation, to the point that modern RISC-V does both in the same instruction and x86 and Arm fuse them into one µop.

Doing a TST on a previously calculated value can work, but it loses information vs branching directly after doing the operation, specifically it loses the carry and overflow flags, so is not useful for a general "if a < b then ..." operation, but only comparisons against zero. TO be more general you could TFR the CC to and from A, B, or even DPR, or PUSH and POP it on the stack. Both options took the same number of bytes and cycles.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: SiliconWizard on February 12, 2024, 06:35:38 am
The 6809 was specifically designed to be a good platform for C code.

C really wasn't a factor in 1977 or so when the 6809 was being designed. Pascal was.

Yes, nobody would have thought of using C on a 8-bit CPU in the 70's. Madness. I think many people do not realize how big (and expensive) C compilers were at the time. Despite being born in the early 70's, C didn't become popular outside of the Unix world until much, much later. Something around mid-80's even. No wonder why even Lisa OS and macOS were written in Pascal (and assembly) too, even with 68k CPUs.

Which makes a point interesting: while C has been around for more than 50 years, and still going strong, it has been relatively short-lived as a general-purpose language, outside of Unix (Linux, BSD...) and GNU, and of course embedded development and low-level parts of OS's. But if you consider "desktop" programming on "modest"(/home) machines, C has been used approximately between 85 and 95, mostly. And that's being generous. In early 90's, C++ was already beginning to take over for this kind of area.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: coppice on February 12, 2024, 12:56:08 pm
The 6809 was specifically designed to be a good platform for C code.
C really wasn't a factor in 1977 or so when the 6809 was being designed. Pascal was.
Pascal was only ever a major factor in one computer design - the Pascal Microengine from Western Digital. PL/1, in the form of MPL or PL/M, was big. Other Algol-ish languages had a presence. PL/M and MPL dominated professional development in a high level language on MPUs in the late 70s and early 80s. C was rising by the end of the 1970s, as cheap compilers for the 8080/Z80 and other MPUs were becoming available. When real 6809 machines became available. in 1979/1980. a C compiler was available for it. The needs of PL/1 and C are comparable. I was told, some years later, by one of the designers of the 6809, that trying to build a small machine that could run like a small Unix machine was a key part of their thinking. The instruction sets of the 6809 and 68k were sculpted around getting good performance on PL/1 and C like code. They did extensive analysis of large amounts of real code, across a range of program complexities. They expected the 6809 to have a longer life than it did, as they expected things like the 68k to take longer to become cheap. As it turned out the 68k quickly became affordable, and the embedded market for a 6809 class processor didn't form a big enough market segment until the early 90s. So Motorola dropped the 6809, and focussed on 6800 derivatives - 6801, 6805, 68HC11, etc - as basic MCUs, and the high end with the 68k family. The low end 6805 and HC08 were a huge success. The HC11 did well, but played second fiddle to the 6805. In the early 90s Motorola tried a new middle ground with the HC16, but it had limited success.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: pdenisowski on February 12, 2024, 01:23:03 pm
The ZX81 - still have mine, in the original box with the manual.  There are even still traces of the Silly Putty I used to keep the 16K memory module from wobbling (and crashing the compuer) during typing :)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: cosmicray on February 12, 2024, 04:00:46 pm
Since the topic is ambiguous (about owning or using), I have several possible answers ...

The first time I ever touched a piece of hardware that might be close to the definition of a programmable computer, was in high school (around 1971-72). It was made by Wang, looked mostly like a calculator, and had a box on the side that read an 80-column punch card. The punch cards were plain cards, with all the chads pre-perforated. You decided what sequence of calculations you wanted it to do, punch out the appropriate chads, insert the card, and tell the calculator to read the program. The Wang museum web site shows a Wang 500 with a card reader attached, so maybe that's the one. The Wang 700 triggers a distant memory, and the timing is right, so that could be it as well.

The first proper computer I ever touched would have been about 1973 (February or March) at the local community college. It was a Univac 9400 mainframe (which was approximately a 360/30 clone). The Univac had 128K of plated wire memory (later upgraded to 196K), three 800/1600 BPI tape drives (later replaced with drives that did 6250 BPI), and eight 20 MB removable disc drives (model number escapes me). The unit record equipment was a Univac 0768 drum printer, a 1004 printer/card-reader, another 1005 printer/card-reader, and a card punch. All was local channel attached with no remote terminals. The first summer session, I was part of a group of five students, who did a crash learning experience on how the executive program was generated, and what we could change to gain more efficiency. That experience helped me thru my career. One night, when I was excessively bored, I found the manuals for the 1004/1005 and a stack of old wire plug-boards. After some reading, I was able to program a plug-board to read a card, print a line, and repeat until out of cards. That goes back to mid 1960s technology.

The first personal computer I actually owned was a SWTPC 6800. It was assembled about the time I was working for the community college, along with a some custom electronics hacks/boards I did for it. I still have that (very early) PC, along with the manuals and all the various prototyping boards. A couple of days ago I dug out a box, with a dozen anti-static chip tubes from the early 1980s, and all the DIP chips I bought back then for projects. That is where the 8008 (as seen in my avatar) resides. Lots of 68K peripheral chips, and quite a few SRAM chips.

Those days were special, but nothing like 2024.

edit: In 2019 when I passed the FCC amateur radio technician license, the first thing I did was file the paperwork for a vanity callsign. The high school's ARC call sign had been sitting dormant for about four decades, and I was granted it by the FCC. Currently licensed as a general class.
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: metertech58761 on February 12, 2024, 09:04:38 pm
Y'know, I remember picking up a ZX81 without power supply in the late '80s... since it took 9 volts, I rigged it to a 9V battery and the darn thing worked!

Too bad the membrane keyboard was shot (it had those stress lines where the cable made a bend coming through the case and again into the connector).
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: kripton2035 on February 12, 2024, 09:27:39 pm
a diehl alphatronic, one with hole paper input... the tape deck came later ...
https://auge.de/projekte/computermuseum/exponat/diehl-alphatronic (https://auge.de/projekte/computermuseum/exponat/diehl-alphatronic)



(https://auge.de/auge/files/Diehl-090.jpg)
Title: Re: What was the very first computer you owned or used ?
Post by: PeterW on March 21, 2024, 10:29:16 am
Around 1979 I bought a second hand Interton Electronics VC4000 TV games computer from a friend at work. I had discovered it was based on the same chipset as the Elektor TV games computer and I wanted to modify it to be the same as the EleKtor machine.  It turned out the Interton circuit was almost identical to the Elektor circuit and I just needed to make a custom cartridge for the Interton to turn it into an Elektor TV games computer. The cartridge added some Ram, a custom (Elektor) Rom and some additional address decoding logic. It work fine (first time) but I soon got bored of hand assembling 2650 code.

Shortly after finishing the Elector TV games computer I got my first "proper" computer. A few guys at work got together to buy 5 Compukit UK101 kits. We got them a bit cheaper as a bulk buy. Two of the guys made a trip to Compshop to pick them up. I built my kit the same evening, I did not expect it to work first time but it did. After a while I sold the UK101 to a friend and bought an Atari 400. I wish I still had the UK101.