Your early home computer memories

DBT85

DBT85

DBT85

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what are some of your early memories of home computing?

Being born in '85 I can remember the C64 a little but predominantly it was when home PCs started appearing more commonly that I can most vividly remember. I remember my dads 10MB 5.25" HDD that was as thick as two CD rom drives nailed together. I remember playing Othello on a green screen. I remember having to install a Turbo button s that we could play some older games on our new really fast computer. I remember the hours spent playing Sim City. I remember paying £80 for 4MB of memory from a little dealer down the road so that i could play Premier Manager 2 properly. I remember my dad and his mate paying £250 for a 1 speed CD rom drive. I remember playing Titus Fox!

obviously there are lots since then, but the early stuff is what i'm after!
 
Started off with a Spectrum 48k with Horace Goes Skiing, Manic Miner, Jet Pac and such other awesome games, then a few years later upgraded to a 128k Spectrum with Turbo Outrun, Renegade etc.

Then the dawn of PCs and my dad had an IBM PS/2 beast. Back then it had totally different expansion slots to normal pcs of the time and I remember having to pay upwards of £250 for a sound blaster 16 so I could play Wing Commander with sound.
 
Well, I'm 14 so what I remember wasn't that old! I was so happy when we got our first computer, I was about 3 and we bought it for £10 at a boot fair (god knows how old that was!). Then I remember some of the games I used to play, Star Wars: Rouge Squadron, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Hidden and Dangerous and tons of fantastic games!
 
Remember my Dad's Pentium 133MHz system (not *that* old I know) remember playing FIFA 98, Theme Hospital, Worms and Rollercoaster Tycoon on it. :D
 
The first one we properly had was an old Amstrad that ran from DOS but it seemed amazing at the time. When we upgraded to a Pentium 166MHz it was absolutely amazing lol
 
I think our first family computer was a c64, I remember playing on it quite a lot!

I also remember the really old BBC computers in primary school with the old printers you had to rip the strip off the side with the circles in it after it printed.
 
Crap, here's a thread that makes you feel old. Can we lock it please :D

Please don't hotlink. Thank you.

http://www.rewindmuseum.com/images3/zx80.gif
ZX80 that you had to spend days inputting basic code to get a couple of huge pixels to move around a monochrome 14" portable telly. Hours loading from a tape cassette watching the screen flickering as it does so, only for it to crash before loading complete.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9f/Atari_800XL_Plain_White.jpg
Atari 800XL which was much better, but equally as bad when it came to loading from tapes, I never had a disk drive for mine, they were ridiculously expensive. It also had cartridges that you could plug in to play some pretty terrible games without having to sit through the tediousness of waiting for them to load! What I really wanted was a BBC B!

http://www.maedicke.de/atari/hardware/pictures/520st_1.jpg
Atari 520STFM
I remember going up to London with my mother especially to buy it. Was a huge improvement on the 800XL, it even had a built in 3.5" FDD (single sided of course). Midwinter was my favourite game, but what I REALLY wanted was a PC!

My first PC was an AMD 486DX4 (couldn't afford proper intel) I was chuffed to bits with it as it meant I could play MS flight simulator 3! I always wanted to be a pilot, now I am one!
 
my first ever computer was a commodore 64 with a mad program called big mouth were it spoke what you typed, my cousin had a spectrum sinclaire but i thought the c64 was better, hated loading up from tape tho especially when it was a big game. I then had a commodore amiga cdtv and it was a beast lol never had any of the cd games tho coz all the floppy disk games were much better, premier managers 1 2 and 3, sensible soccer, batman, b17 flying fortress, dogfight 1 2 & 3, i then didnt own a pc till i bought a 800mhz emachines pc from pc world with progect igi, and hitman etc
 
Well I started off quite late in life compared with some here.
I remember playing with a Commodore Pet at senior School in '81 & my cousin's ZX spectrum. I didn't really have much interest in computer's back then, I didn't take up Computer studies in my options. (looking back I wish I had but my schooldays were not enjoyable, another story)

I basically had no interest in Computers/PC's until I was 28, I was far more into Music/Films/Hi-Fi/home cinema. I bought a 486SX/33 for one reason at the time, to write a decent CV for Job hunting as I wanted out of the job I had at the time. Once I bought it my interest in PC's just grew from there.
 
Ooh-err - I'm going to really show my age now.

I recall the school computer lab had a single Research Machines 380Z CP/M machine we could use. With an 8-inch floppy disk drive and a tiny 10 inch green CRT.

The physics lab had Tandy TRS-80s.

And I vividly remember soldering together my own first computer, an Acorn Atom (precursor to the BBC Micro) while I was at school. It came as a kit of parts and you had to solder all the ICs, capacitors, resistors etc onto the motherboard yourself.

The hardest part was aligning then soldering the keyboard (2 springy steel wires per key that each needed to go through the correct 1/4 inch hole, then of course needed soldering.) Needless to say it's not like soldering a copper wire...

Only to find that due to iffy manufacturing, the Return key was normally closed, not normally open. So unless you held it down, the computer would just spew newlines...so I cut one of the steel wires and installed a microswitch using some double-sided sticky tape - it sat under the return key and activated when you pressed it.
 
Todge said:
Oooohh i forgot windows or office coming on about 25 floppys! how did that slip by!
Click to expand...

LOL..... yeah forgot that!

My first computer was a Commodore 64 with tape drive, did finally get a 5.25 floppy drive. Remember always wanting the Commodore 128, but never got one.

Used to enjoy playing Elite and Bubble Bobble..... also recall trying to copy games on tape using a 'Ghetto Blaster' with twin tape deck.... oh those good ol' days LOL
 
my first own computer was an old 386 with a CGA graphics card, later upgraded it to a 486 SX25, 1MB ram and VGA gfx with a monochrone monitor

althou before that we have other computers in the house, like an old 286, in some massive IBM case, its only power switch was on the side at the back and was a big red flick switch, and had a 5.25" dual height 10mb hard drive and 5.25 floppy drive
also had several BBC's and an Acorn Electron with tape drive.

once i got my own pc thou, i just continued to upgrade it through the years to the one i have now.

i've never actually bought a full pc, the first one my dad got me from work and since then its just been upgraded different parts at a time
 
JimboJet said:
....In your blue flecked black trousers, dayglo toweling socks and black slip on shoes with tassles! Oh yeah, the 80's - you can keep 'em!
Click to expand...

:eek: Now you mention the 'fashion' you could be right!! .... and don't tell me, odd dayglo toweling socks! LOL
 
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