Your first experiences of computers??

[Malc]

My first exposure to computing was a PDP9 mini. Punched cards and tapes. I built a 6502 machine from bits, I with a massive 8k of ram and a CUTS tape interface that did 1200 baud. It has a basic interpreter (beginners all purpose symbolic instruction code - someone asked), so I wrote a disassembler and assembler so I could write a disk interface. The disk OS nearly worked. However the BBC model b was released, so I bought one of those. Then an Atari, an Amiga with hard drive and a PC, a 286, then a 386sx with a maths co processor to run autocad. You could make and drink a cup of tea waiting for the screen to redraw. Now trying Windows 10 and Linux.

[Bealman]

Hi,

My first computer was a Texas Instruments TI59 about 1979.  It had 1k of memory but had the ability to store your programs on magnetic cards.   I taught myself programming on it!
Soon after, I bought a Sharp MZ80k which was a Z80 and had a BASIC interpreter on tape which I had to load before each programming session.   I recollect it cost about £800.00 which was a small fortune in those days.

But what changed the face of computing in this country was the Sinclair Spectrum and, equally important, the disassembly of the BASIC interpreter was published as a book.  This meant that thousands of youngsters suddenly found themselves able to follow the workings of the BASIC and write their own games which were extremely sophisticated.  I believe that is was this disassembly that resulted in the computer/programming revolution in this country.

Happy days

As an aside I wonder how many people remember what BASIC means?

Beginners All - purpose Symbolic Instructional Code?

[NTrain]

Taught mtself to program in basic, on a Commodore PET, tape drive program loading. Some of the programs could take 30 minutes to load from tape.

My manager bought the machine and wrote 2 programs, to help our department to do design calculations quicker and with more accuracy. One was to help me in my job, but it only worked for about 50% of the requirements. I sat down and wrote my own version, which was good for about 90%, because I put a couple of 'human' elements in. ie it asked for input of additional info if it could not make the calculation work.

Was using my version for about 3 months before the manager found out. I was designing electric heating element windings. The ladies who did the physical windings, based on my designs, were known to be very 'difficult'. I managed to work well with them, because I used to ask them for advice.

[PLD]

Being of school age through the 1980s, I was a beneficiary or victim (depending on your point of view!) of the BBC programme to 'put a computer in every classroom'. Starting on Model 'B's, then when they added the second computer room there were some 'Masters' in there ...

I can remember one 'programming' exercise from those days - we had to write code to display a stick-man to run across the screen. Having achieved that in about a quarter of the time allowed, added a loco following at twice the speed with a suitable effect when their location on the screen coincided!

Around 1987/8 the school upgraded to their first networked DOS based machines (RMs IIRC) and then to university where the 'revolutionary' Windows GUI was being rolled out as I arrived...

[railsquid]

My father ordered a ZX81 in 1981 thinking it might somehow be useful for managing the household finances... This turned out to be a somewhat optimistic idea, as after connecting it to the TV all it displayed was a mysterious "K". Turned out the only way to derive any use from it was by typing in programs, a task which somehow fell to yours truly, which turned out to be very useful vocational training for my future career.

A Spectrum arrived a year or so later (after a long agonizing wait due to high demand), first really useful household computer was an Amstrad PCW, on which I learnt to program CP/M in Z80 assembler (due to my age I can't make boasts about walking uphill both ways in the dark to program with punch cards on room-filling beasts with ferrous core memory, but the CP/M stuff gives me some "street cred" among the younger people who seem to be increasing in number who never experienced a computer without a hard disk), then a PC (Atari, XT, dual 5.25in floppies, luxury!), then a 386 which I put together myself and upgraded as finances allowed (the keyboard from that I was still using as late as 2009), now another self-built PC which I don't need to upgrade as often, and also using MacBooks for my portable computing need since 2006. (Fun fact: until a couple of years ago you could find my name and email address embedded somewhere in the depths of OS X).

[Ditape]

I started out on a IBM 1130 main frame at college it was the size of a small house used punch cards and printed out using a printer the size of a small car, my first personal computer was a Dragon 32 which was later updated to a 64 then I got a pc a 386 with 100 meg hard drive and twin discs 3.5 and 5.25 it had 2meg memory and a 16 colour graphics card and ran on DOS I think 4 with a early version of windows I think it was version 3.

[MalcolmInN]

Wow big thread already, lots of nostalgia !
Anyone else here used an analog computer ( no not a DC vs DCC thread diversion !)
in the days of yore, just before 6502 and Z80 micro chips became available I had an EAI 100v analog computer controled by an EAI digital, with a PDP11/45 and a PDP11/10 to do the maths and display,,
-that was at my place of work ! ( hint : it was also used to design the 'barn doors' that enabled the Olympus engines to to efficiently power the Concord(-e) )

EDIT
Typing at the same time as Di, ah yes IBM 360, others would have to punch their maths into cards, send them off to a big room and await the tomorrow for the results. But could not achieve (at that time) the precision and turnround of the analog.
Then a few short years later I could write my own 4096 point FFT on a home BeebB in a couple of minutes that had previously taken a couple of hours to do  a 256 one on the PDP (with its 32k ferrite core store that cost a fortune)
a time of transition !!

[Jools]

We had  a BBC acorns and RM nimbus at primary school, though vary rarely got to touch them - my first experience of programming would have been the "turtle" robot that you would program a route into as a series of instructions, at the time it felt like I was getting too play with something out of Star Trek  .

My grandad had an Amstrad CPC donated from work (it was out of date by the time he retired and wasn't worth shipping back to head office!) that I used to spend hours and hours on in the school holidays running through the basic programs in the user manual, I remember it had a proprietary 3 inch floppy drive that you had to manually flip from the A to B side and the only game my grandad had for it was a very early computerised trivial pursuit complete with animations of a Mr chips type character who would walk around the board "asking" the questions in a speech bubble - ah - memories!

Eventually (probably about 1995) we got a windows3.11 based "386", followed quickly by "486" running windows 95 then eventually one of the original 95mhz pentium based PC's by which point we had the house cabled up for home networking so we could share a 36.6kbps dial up connection and play networked games - to think of the hours spent battling my brother on command and conquer red alert! 

By that point I well and truly had the bug and started to save paper round money for my first new, self built machine,  which I based on an AMD K6 350mhz processor!

[MalcolmInN]

a pc a 386 with 100 meg hard drive

In my case a 286 with a 10Mb MFM hd, which I later upgraded by adding a 20Mb MFM vast !!!

[railsquid]

a pc a 386 with 100 meg hard drive

In my case a 286 with a 10Mb MFM hd, which I later upgraded by adding a 20Mb MFM vast !!!

I used to dream of a hard disk for my XT... 5Mb would have done me fine, 10Mb would have been nice, 20Mb - luxury!

(Talking of that kind of size, the in-laws recently gave me an SD card they didn't need, I was most appreciative after seeing the "16" on the front... only after trying to use it did I notice it was "Mb", not "Gb"... space for about 5 photos max).

[camelback]

My first computer was a small main frame that had a series of little balls on rods.With no key pad to make spelling mistakes for you. It never froze or logged itself off never closed down for updates either. All in all a very reliable computer. As we all know computers evolve , It's just a shame that their speed of evolving is about 50 times greater than mine. Ho hum!

[Webbo]

Unfortunately, I was never able to master the abacus - too complicated for me.

Wow big thread already, lots of nostalgia !
Anyone else here used an analog computer ( no not a DC vs DCC thread diversion !)
in the days of yore, just before 6502 and Z80 micro chips became available I had an EAI 100v analog computer controled by an EAI digital, with a PDP11/45 and a PDP11/10 to do the maths and display,,
-that was at my place of work ! ( hint : it was also used to design the 'barn doors' that enabled the Olympus engines to to efficiently power the Concord(-e) )

EDIT
Typing at the same time as Di, ah yes IBM 360, others would have to punch their maths into cards, send them off to a big room and await the tomorrow for the results. But could not achieve (at that time) the precision and turnround of the analog.
Then a few short years later I could write my own 4096 point FFT on a home BeebB in a couple of minutes that had previously taken a couple of hours to do  a 256 one on the PDP (with its 32k ferrite core store that cost a fortune)
a time of transition !!

Malcolm's post rings a bell with me. My first experience of a computer was also an IBM 360 mainframe which featured something like 100Kbytes of RAM in 1968 (yes kilobytes, not megabytes). My first program on it was a small FORTRAN program on punched cards which solved for the length of the hypotenuse of a triangle using Pythagoras's theorem. My first attempt failed because I had punched a fullstop instead of an asterisk on one of the cards. All programs had to be handed into the system over a counter and output provided a couple of hours later.

I too learned to use an analogue computer as a postgraduate student. Most people nowadays would have no idea what an analogue computer is or was I would guess. Since my start in computing, scientific computing has been an integral and everyday part of my professional life in the analyses of data and in the simulation of the hydrodynamics, thermodynamics, and biogeochemistry of natural water bodies.

Webbo

[railsquid]

My first computer was a small main frame that had a series of little balls on rods.With no key pad to make spelling mistakes for you. It never froze or logged itself off never closed down for updates either. All in all a very reliable computer. As we all know computers evolve , It's just a shame that their speed of evolving is about 50 times greater than mine. Ho hum!

The hardware gets better... the software... sometimes I wonder... especially the way established workflows keep getting redesigned because somehow it's better to have light-grey on white and oodles of whitespace ... grrppmph.

[MalcolmInN]

My first program on it was a small FORTRAN program on punched cards which solved for the length of the hypotenuse of a triangle using Pythagoras's theorem. My first attempt failed because I had punched a fullstop instead of an asterisk on one of the cards.

Eeek Fortran  shhhh ! Ah yes, syntax is everything, even now they talk about AI, yet clever though C++AI may be it cant tell when you mean a this from a that !!

There is another computer (other than the abacus, nice one ! ) that we often used,,,
the slide rule ! which enabled me to demonstrate that a mission to Comet Halley was feasible and could return usefull data given antenna size and power available
Giotto :
that's my bit :- the big dish on the despun platform and the gubbins behind it
your homework :- it's so long ago can you find the pics !

[Webbo]

Slide rule - a wonderful piece of gear and innovative thinking. Soon will disappear from the lexicon I'm afraid as its practitioners gradually drop off their perches. I started university using a slide rule, but by 4 years later they had been pretty much supplanted by the pocket calculator (an HP 25 in my case).

Webbo