1980s / early 90s kids - what computer did you have?

bitslice · 23 Apr 2012 at 12:28

2bit said:
Ah It's ok. I'm an embedded programmer and that's how I earn my crust.

My background was in 8051 (and all things 8-bit), but now I specialise in ARM.

What do you do? Still enjoying it - not sure I am.

Ah, embedded programer - that's my dream job right there, I'd love to be doing that right now :cool:

Never happened though, after many dull jobs eventually fell into IT, made redundant, now barely living doing the worse job you could imagine

Daft really, this stuff still excites me after all these years and I've never once worked in the field. Even the other week I bought some AVR and PIC programmers to have a play - I'd love a job doing this, I'd even work for pennies.

Oh and Nascom was the name of that other SB computer around at the time, took me a while to remember.

Firestar_3x · 23 Apr 2012 at 12:33

Fav game was either Lotus Turbo Challenge or Test Drive II:

Happy days!

Wolfe777 · 23 Apr 2012 at 12:34

schumi84 said:
I don't think I ever owned Gryzor . I think it must have been the different Ghostbusters, the one that Angry Video Game Nerd reviews on the Atari 2600 where you have the GB logo and moved around blocks that are buildings, have a short driving stage above the Ecto 1 and then have a side view section where you have to trap the ghost.

Batman was fantastic fun, forgot all about that however I do now remember playing Daly Thompson's Decathlon and had to hold the joystick on my lap when doing the running/rowing sections, as if it was stuck to the desk my mum thought i was gonna come through the ceiling

Haha, you just bought back a memory I'd forgotten. Decathalon was great on the Spectrum, I broke my first joystick playing that aged about 8 using the same method you described.

Also, just looked at some Jet Set Willy again, maybe I was a little harsh, though in truth by today's standards it's terrible, it was something pretty special back in the early 80's.

.

Hades · 23 Apr 2012 at 12:38

rz30 said:

Where's the elastic band holding the RAM pack in place?

it1uk · 23 Apr 2012 at 13:01

Mine was a C64 with the mad football game that you got on a cartridge that plugged into the back of the computer. Then moved up to an Amiga 500 and added the extra 512k ram module with the big toggle switch for turning it on or off.

Those huge TV modules that used to stick out the back of the Amiga were a nightmare!

wordy · 23 Apr 2012 at 13:13

Speccy 48k plastic key one. Used to play Booty with my dad on the big telly in the living room

Narj · 23 Apr 2012 at 13:22

schumi84 said:
I don't think I ever owned Gryzor . I think it must have been the different Ghostbusters, the one that Angry Video Game Nerd reviews on the Atari 2600 where you have the GB logo and moved around blocks that are buildings, have a short driving stage above the Ecto 1 and then have a side view section where you have to trap the ghost.

Gryzor was fantastic for the time and hardware. Cybernoid 2 was another game that wowed me too. I remember the Ghostbusters you're talking about now - that was brilliant fun too, I'd forgotten about that version! I was talking about this one (actually Ghostbusters II):

CPC graphics at their best IMO.

=XDC=FluphyBunny · 23 Apr 2012 at 13:26

Ah those were the days

Zx81 with the memory pack
48K Spectrum
Spectrum 128K+2
Sam Coupé (great little thing but too late to the game)
Amiga 600
First PC 100mhz something or other (I really can't remember would have been in late 1995)

Great memories

Duke · 23 Apr 2012 at 14:24

Admiral Huddy said:
Were you one of the lucky ones at school to use one?

Yep

The primary school had one (tiny village school) with 5" floppy drive. When I went to secondary school in 1994 they still had some kicking around, but were being replaced by some RM 386/486s.

Duke · 23 Apr 2012 at 14:25

Firestar_3x said:
Fav game was either Lotus Turbo Challenge or Test Drive II:

eddiemcgarrigle · 23 Apr 2012 at 15:54

ZX81
ZX Spectrum
Amiga 500 with 512k ram pack
x86

Best games I remember have to be Eye Of The Beholder, Sabre Wulf, Everyone's A Wally, Manic Miner, Sensible Soccer and Cannon Fodder.

Firestar_3x · 23 Apr 2012 at 15:56

Duke said:
Two Amigas connected with null modem cable with Lotus 2 on split screen (so 4 players) was just so epic.

Never managed to do that, mate had an Amiga and i had an Atari.

Used to null modem Quake though

Mr. T · 23 Apr 2012 at 16:03

Acorn A3000

upgraded to

IBM PC with a Pentium 1

boxman2000 · 23 Apr 2012 at 16:06

First 'console' I had was a G7000 which was great fun, then got an Amiga 1200 with a mahooosive 2mb ram upgrade - Alien Breed and Settlers II FTW!

Ghosteh · 23 Apr 2012 at 16:11

Atari 2600 and a Master System were the two earliest computers I owned. However, I used my uncles C64 quite a bit(well, as much as a young child could lol). Eventually got around to building my first PC at 9 though with parts and help from my uncle. Then had the enjoyment(and nightmares) of playing Quake and Doom, and the also a bit of multiplayer against my uncle using the aforementioned null modem cable

.

The rolls are reversed now though, as I'm doing the same sort of thing with my cousin, my uncles kid, and it's awesome.

grimm · 23 Apr 2012 at 16:31

Between my brother and I we had ZX Spectrum, C64, Amiga 1200 and a PC based around a 486 DX2.

Number_25 · 23 Apr 2012 at 16:42

Managed to actually find my first computer.

http://www.garethjmsaunders.co.uk/pc/index.html

Time - AMD K6-2 500 Time AMD K6-2 500

In 1999 this was a fast machine.

Jane and I had just moved to Inverness and the 486 just wasn't going to be enough to cope with what I needed to use my PC for: primarily internet and desktop publishing. So I shopped around and decided on this machine, a Time machine.

Windows 98 Second Edition; AMD K6/2 500 MHz processor; 128 MB RAM (later upgraded to 256 MB); 17 GB Seagate hard drive (later joined by a 40 GB Western Digital drive); built-in ATI Rage 128 VR graphics card which would always crash and I never found any drivers that would cure this problem; I later replaced it with a Creative GeForce 2 MX graphics card that didn't crash, but then it also wouldn't allow you to boot the PC from floppy!!); 56 Kbps v.90 modem; DVD-ROM drive, which was later joined by an 8-speed Creative CD-RW.

One of the success stories of this machine was the peer-to-peer LAN that I set up between this machine and the Dell 486. With excellent and patient help from Mr Paul Ferguson, a networking-guru I met on one of the Windows' newsgroups, I was able to set up a cross-over cable network.

My sister-in-law, Soo, now owns this machine.

Jay794 · 23 Apr 2012 at 17:15

New Zealand Story
Blues Bros 2000
Dizzy
Prehistorik

Those are a few of the games I used to play on the Amiga

Duke · 23 Apr 2012 at 17:19

Number_25 said:
Managed to actually find my first computer.

http://www.garethjmsaunders.co.uk/pc/index.html

Here is mine - had the 'multimedia' version :cool:

MeEsH BaKkA · 23 Apr 2012 at 18:39

The first family computer we had was a Dell Pentium 200mhz with about 32mb of ram and I believe a 300Mb hard drive which according to my mum cost just shy of £2k, my friend got a Pentium 233MMX with a 3DFX Voodoo banshee just after of which I was very envious of!!

My first PC was an AXIA 1Ghz thunderbird with a 512mb of pc133 (I think) purchased from here, I still have it in my spare room, might plug it in later actually and see what it on it... Possibly vast amounts of low res porn