The first computer I ever used had a nixie tube display and it was programmed with punch cards.
I had one of those, too, Jim. Mine was made of plastic, though.
My answer varies depending on whether you mean âuseâ or âownâ. The first one I used was an IBM mainframe in undergrad days, when you took your deck of punch cards to the CS window, handed them over to the wizard, and then waited a day before getting a 6 inch thick printout that the wizard told you meant you had caused a core dump - as if you had a clue what that meant! A bit later as a teaching assistant I used a DEC PDP-8 to create the self-paced testing and grading system for a course - programmed in BASIC via slow-speed paper tape on a Teletype ASR 33. Then PL/1 and Fortran on a smallish IBM mainframe at my first job. We had to plead for special configuration at night to get a whopping 1 Mword of storage to run our simulations.
The first one I actually owned was the initial model IBM PC, replete with a whopping 64k of memory. I had to write my own assembler boot routine on a floppy disk to get it to reboot onto the gigantic (!) 20MB hard drive I added a year later, as there was no hard disk support in the BIOS yet.
A3010, best computer I ever had!
Just thinking back, the first computer I used was had a hand built case, small monitor and KB. The thing had a 5.25" floppy for storage. It was built to run a custom made inventory program. The whole thing was put together by a hobbyist around 1987.
Along the same lines back about 1984 or 5, I was visiting some friends in the Boston area. I was given a tour, by my host, of a facility that was prototyping an ink jet printer. The company was named Centronics.
And going farther back, in the early 1970âs I worked for a company that was making disc storage media. As I recall the discs were about 18â in dia, with a capacity of 90 MB.
Yet farther back in the late 60âs I was with Control Data building display equipment for the Apollo program.
The first computer I owned was an Acer DX2/50. 50Hzwith a 73 MB drive. about 1993.
The first computer that I bought for commercial application was in 1984 and was a Tandy 1200 HD (2000$) with a 40 meg Priam hard drive (3000$) a Hercules graphics card (720 X 350 pixels 500$), an amber monochrome monitor and 8087 math co-processor. I also purchased a wide carriage 24 pin dot matrix Fujitsu printer (2000$).
I ran a DOS based CAD system called EECAD written in Fortran. I used it to plot out curved stringers for stair cases. I would load the printer with Wide carriage fan fold accounting paper (green and white striped) before going home at night. In the morning there would be a 16 foot accurate stringer laid out.
During my childhood we were either too poor to purchase a computer or my Dad was not very tech savvy, probably a little of both. We didnât even have a color TV until I was in 11th grade (1989). The TVs that we did have were always these donated pieces of junk that were on their last legs. We had a coat hanger for an antenna, and we had to change channels with a pair of needle nose pliers. We got two channels (Terrace, BC, Canada), there was no cable, but we liked it.
I bought my first computer (386DX) when I graduated high school and went to BYU in 1990 with some extra scholarship money I had. I thought I was really getting something great, it came with MS-DOS (no windows), I really should have spent the $3,000 more wisely and bought myself a used car. I borrowed Windows 3.1.1 floppy drives from my grandparents and installed Windows on it at some point. I think the only useful thing I did on this computer was write a few papers using Wordperfect.
The next computer I bought was actually pretty useful, a Sony VAIO Pentium II (purple computer), running Windows 95 then Windows 98 SE. The one thing I remember about this computer was that the Zip drive got the âclick of deathâ and then I RMAâed it and got another one which promptly died a few weeks later. I think I got a third RMA, eventually I just gave up on trying to replace the silly drive.
This computer went with me to Stanford in 1998 and I started mucking around with HTML, Javascript and Perl and eventually set up a web server on this machine and began to host my own very basic MP3 site using Stanfordâs network (oops), that was relatively short lived. However, it did get me exposed to programming and web servers which shortly led me to start a Web Hosting business in 1999 (www.npsis.com).
Running a web hosting company I eventually had more computers than I care to remember but I did most of my work on a machine running Windows Server 2000 and then Windows Server 2003. I sold the hosting business in 2006 and returned to my engineering roots.
Eventually I switched to XP and then to Windows 7.
I now have a Dell Precision T7600 running Windows 7 with two 24" monitors. Iâm not about to upgrade to Windows 10, I canât stand that version of Windows. At some point I probably will be forced to upgrade but hopefully by that time we will have something better than Windows 10.
Mine was a Sinclair ZX 81, it was â â â â to be honest, but closely followed by a Sinclair ZX Specturm, now this was a computer, it had games, lots of games and they were next level good at the time. Manic Miner, Jet pac etc. Had a ram pac to extend it to a 48k machine⌠I loved that computer. Used to buy Sinclair user and copy the code snippets to add functionality to games etc. It broke in 86⌠
Didnât touch another computer till 1995, A pentium 133, 1 gig of ram, running win95. State of the art at the time⌠My Wifeâs (girlfriend at that time) brother had just installed Doom. I was blown away at how good the graphics were, many late nights playing doom and Monkey IslandâŚ
Oeh, my first pc ⌠thatâs way back in the days * thinking hard *
(1983?)
Iâm not sure what it was called, and if one could call it an computer. The first âgaming pcâ i got for my birthday was PONG! (tennis & icehockey) 
(1990?)
At school i guess we had an Atari, no clue what it was called, with cassettes for storage. 
(1999?)
The first pc i ever bought for myself was, if i remember correct, a no brand - self build - system with a whopping 133 hmz 2 GB Ram with a diskette drive AND top of the notch new cd reader/writer.
(since 2007?)
Dell systems such as the XPS8300 or my current Precision 7720.
I guess smartphones these days are way more powerfull then these first pcâs.
@9Design I had a ZX81 too; wrote rubbish games in basic for it & got bored⌠that must have been around 1982âŚ
Next if I remember was a âBBCâ computer in school, very clunky & also programmed in basic.
The real excitement started for me in architecture school in around 1988/89 with a macSE with an external floppy drive (no hard drive at all) & I learned ModelShop - ModelShop - Macintosh Repository
Then, in 1991 I bought a Mac II Ci to do architectural modelling as a freelancer using ModelShop II
ModelShop II - Macintosh Repository
& quite frankly, things have not really progressed since 
Every time the processors get faster & better, the software gets more bloated, a sort of zero sum game !
Back in the early nineties I thought that we would be doing Sketch Based Modelling on rollable screens by now, but no, weâre still doing clunky laborious mouse-clicks staring at a vertical screenâŚ
Maybe AI will finally change the game, but potentially by replacing us as operators, soâŚ
The first one I programmed:
THE HT-1080Z
It was so long ago and behind such an âiron curtainâ that anyone who wasnât there doesnât know what the life was likeâŚ
HP 25 (1974)
HP 41C (1979)
HP 41 CV
HP 41 CX
HP 48G (1990)
HP 49G
Apple II (1978)
Apple IIe (1983)
Apple IIc(1984)
Mac SE (1988)
Performa 6400/200 (1996)
iMac 24" (2006)
Macbook Pro 16" (2011)
Macbook Pro 16" (2017)
Well, if weâre including programmable calculators, mine was a Wang (no recollection of model) about 1968.
wow ! pretty impressive kit for the early 1980âs !
8086 IBM âCloneâ and a commadore 64 LOL. It was fun reading all the posts and remembering the struggles over the years. The cables, gender changers, adapters. Incompatibilities. As things progressed (early 80âs) I had to have a Unix work station to do real work and could kinda send things to a PC and take an $10k 386 laptop in the field but couldnt do much regarding changes. If you forgot a file at the office you were screwed. I promise I wont complain about anything for a while!!! Sketchup is wonderful!!
I started my first business in 1989 with an IBM PS2 and a Hewlett Packard Laser Jet printer. I remember installing a word processor (wordperfect 5.1) a spreadsheet program (Borland Quattro Pro) and a database program (Paradox) onto its 20MB hard disk which seems unbelievable now. I upgraded to an IBM PS2 with an 80MB hard disk after a year or so which was luxurious.
2 Likes
bee-boop-boop-bee-bee-boop!
How incredible!
Of course I donât understand most of what you describe but I think I know enough to recognise a pioneer.
I love young people (I made 2 myself) but when they talk about how they are âgood with technologyâ I realise what they actually mean is that they have fast twitch muscles in their thumbs.
I had use of (but not ownership of) a Research Machines something something (Iâm going to say 380z) when I was at school and me and my friends wrote some pretty playable games in Basic.