Blue Chip brand bought at Target with 512k of memory . Actually made by Hyundai. Then I added a full height Quantum HDD of 35 Meg. Splurged for the amber screen. No modem, only 5 1/4 disk drives and took like 10 or so floppies to install a small program

Tree Hugger said:

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1984-ish, IBM PCjr 128K RAM all for playing Zork

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This one right here.

The trash 80


Then it was on to the Commodore 64 with 5 1/4 floppy in the keyboard.

In about 8th grade, we moved up to the big time with an IBM 486sx. It had 170 MB hard drive, 25 mhz processor, and we upgraded from 2MB to 4MB of RAM.

Gateway 286...

Cow boxes and all!!!!

Actually bought this instead of an engagement ring... GF came over, saw the new computer, and well, the 4 hour break up session began! I held strong!

zephyr88 said:

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In 1984, I was the only guy on my floor that had a computer in my room. It started up with a boot disk (floppy), then you had to load the program disks (WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3) each time. I think it had 20mb hard drive.

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Think dad bought that one in 1986 or so. Thankfully I guess out had enough memory that software was loaded without the use of disks, just the appropriate Dos commands.

oldschool87 said:

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Gateway 286...

Cow boxes and all!!!!

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Met a guy last week that was at Gateway in the mid/late 80's and knee Waitt and Hammond very well. Said they had week long strategic planning retreats at a mansion on West Lake Okiboji complete with professional escorts flown in from Vegas and cocaine flown in from Columbia.

I guess nerds like hookers and blow too!

TI 99/4a

MOS 6502



The Franklin ACE 1000

When I first attended A&M in the early 80's they still had an Amdahl 470 V6 and V8 in the basement of the old library building (facing the academic building). We would write our programs on consoles over at Zachary, then somehow they would show up as a stack of punch cards that a controller would run for you and print your output on a high speed matrix printer.

Here is one of their Fujitsu logic chips (encased in transparent carbonite):



Here is how they were assembled on a board inside the magic box:



Heres how they were wired together on the back of the board:

Uncle Gunnysack said:

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compaq presario 1990. anyone have a coleco?

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Holy shizz - exact same

Texas Instruments TI-99/4A

It was a huge piece of cacky.

I was born in '85. Another degree of separation from UG.

Apple IIe and a dot matrix printer.
Eventually moved on to a Mac IIsi - with a 40mb hard drive.
And that was plenty of space for the OS, family software and several games. If corse when an app on my phone updates now it's often over 50mb.

Atari 800XL

Builder93 said:

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TI-99/4A

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Ditto.

My first computer was a TACCS (Tactical Army Combat Support Computer System). I PLF'd like a sack of crap on a night jump into Yakima. My unit PA put me on light duty for several months. They put me to work in the battalion PAC where I learned how to use one of these.

It looked something like this...

The Fife said:

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GiveEmHellBill said:

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Family's first computer:



My first CPU in college was a Compaq Presario like this one:

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Ugh, thanks for the reminder of how miserable those things were.

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Y'all too huh! Same here, my first "college computer". What a piece of crap!!! I had to use uninstall programs to remove as much of the compaq software as possible just to get it somewhat functional.

But hey, Q from Star Trek had a really cool FMV Intro when you first booted up the computer... it was completely kick-ass back in the day... and then my computer froze as soon as Q left and it tried to boot up for the first time. Suck it Compaq!!!

ArmchairCowboy said:

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oldschool87 said:

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Gateway 286...

Cow boxes and all!!!!

---

Met a guy last week that was at Gateway in the mid/late 80's and knee Waitt and Hammond very well. Said they had week long strategic planning retreats at a mansion on West Lake Okiboji complete with professional escorts flown in from Vegas and cocaine flown in from Columbia.

I guess nerds like hookers and blow too!

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Wow, I started my own consulting company installing these and Networks... I bought at least a 100 of them. That's rather interesting.

Not that anyone cares, but Gateway in its hayday (pun), built a couple of 50,000 sq foot warehouses that did nothing but box and ship the computers. Pretty crazy.

Zilog Z80 microprocessor (on a Kaypro II).

I still can't get DOS commands out of my head or how to survive a blue screen of death

I can't believe no one has mentioned one of these turds yet...

Ag03 CQE said:

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I can't believe no one has mentioned one of these turds yet...

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So does that have a 14.4 fax/modem or a 28.8 fax/modem?

Ag03 CQE said:

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I can't believe no one has mentioned one of these turds yet...

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Wasn't the first, but I think we had one similar. Had to have the CD rom so after half an hour you could try to look up something on Encarta.

I still have a picture somewhere of me hugging my Commodore 64 boxes at Christmas....

US airlines are still using these computers....

jr15aggie said:

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The Fife said:

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GiveEmHellBill said:

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Family's first computer:



My first CPU in college was a Compaq Presario like this one:

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Ugh, thanks for the reminder of how miserable those things were.

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Y'all too huh! Same here, my first "college computer". What a piece of crap!!! I had to use uninstall programs to remove as much of the compaq software as possible just to get it somewhat functional.

But hey, Q from Star Trek had a really cool FMV Intro when you first booted up the computer... it was completely kick-ass back in the day... and then my computer froze as soon as Q left and it tried to boot up for the first time. Suck it Compaq!!!

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Even worse than owning one - I supported a few, including a friend with a somewhat newer one that had a Windows ME recover disc in a clear slot on top of the computer. She could not, to save her life, figure out how the hell you turn on the computer and insert the CD immediately so I ended up having to go over there and do it for her. IHNFC what she was trying to do, maybe push the CD eject button while it was still turned off then stand there baffled that the little drawer didn't come out. I honestly wouldn't have put it past her.

She's the same friend who I convinced putting the tower part of your computer higher up than the monitor makes it run faster because the when it builds up pressure on the electricity like how a water tower works. Next time I went over there it was, perched way up on a bookshelf.