What was the first computer you used?

[AlexS]

In the quizz forum there were some references to old computers that twigged my memory of some of the old 'technological marvels' that were around.

What was the first type of computer you used, when and what were some of its outstanding features?

The first computer I used was an Olivetti Programma 101, in the late 1960s. It sat on the desk, had flashing red & blue lights (red was baaad) and printed out on a roll of paper about 70mm wide. Programming was by magnetic cards which could also be used for data entry. From memory, it had thirteen registers, some of which could be split if you accepted a loss of precision. jobs that would be done on the fly now used to be left to run overnight, so the cleaner could switch it off before the job finished.

The nicest computer I ever used was a HP9845, a desktop (if you had a bloody big desk) with 64k. Basic was hardwired into it and you could buy graphics, maths and other ROMs. You could buy a hard drive that was about the size of a washing machine, and it came with an inbuilt thermal printer. There were a host of peripherals, including line printers floppy drives, cartridge tape drives, plotters and a digitising tablet, and you could drive them all at once. A great machine.

[Alix]

The first "real" computer I used, as opposed to a handheld or desktop model, was an Elliot 803 installed at RMIT in Melbourne in 1967. It had 400 characters of mercury delay loop memory (that's right 4 hundred).

It was programmed in real binary machine code although you actually input the commands in hexadecimal (I can still remember that x41 was the ADD instruction). It had paper tape input and output.

You had to use a separate teletype machine to create the input tape and then fed the output tape back through it as a printer.

This machine was used for many technical and scientific calculations. It was amazing how efficient and compact your code had to be to fit at all.

Ah, memories.

Allan

[scooter]

Apple II I think, at high school in 1981ish, with the card reader for inputting instructions.

Commodore 64 was pretty good in the next few years too.


Cheers..................Sean

[Skew ChiDAMN!!]

Hmmm... one I built from an article in an ETI mag (I think). Real 8 bit stuff... 8xDPST switches and momentary toggle for data entry and 10xLEDs for output.

Little did I know that 'twas to be the start of a terminal addiction...

(Still got my Vic-20... and C=64... and C=128D... and several Amigas from A1000 thru to A3000... and a shed full of PC-XTs thru to modern day. Not a single Apple though, a bloke has to keep some standards! )

[RufflyRustic]

The first computer I used was an OHIO made in 1871, woops, 1971 It had the screen and monitor all in one and ran the best games loaded from a cassette player I still remember that game, even though I can't remember the name of it I taught myself very basic BASIC on it, you know, this type of stuff:

10 print "Hello"
20 print "Is this as good as it gets?" etc etc

I'm so glad we are past that now

[masoth]

Not sure of the date but certainly early 1960s - huge open reel tape machines housed in air controlled comfort. Specialists who operated them wore coveralls, caps, and shoe coverings. Bank upon bank of these most impressive things (in Canberra) were 'toured' by gaping admirers through wall sized windows.
The entire component closed down on a Friday for servicing and started again about 24 hours later.
I think the information was fed onto the tape via punched cards.

soth

[masoth]

....... and I should have said the performance of these behemoths was less than the Commodore 64.

soth

[Sir Stinkalot]

MicroBee at school?

Apple IIc at home.

[Dangermouse]

First I used was in the 70's, a Wang 2200. 8k of memory. first version the school had was fitted with a cassette player. The following year a huge advance was made with dual 5 1/4" disk drives. high tech stuff, that was!
First machine I worked on professionally was a univac cp901. 128k of memory. core memory too - every memory location was a series of ferrous donuts in a lattice of copper wire. 1 donut = 1 bit. only got retired a few years ago, too (the machine, not me ).

[Stuart]

TSR80 at school, followed by BBC
Apple ][e at home (and I still have a functional one in my office. Also have a working ZX81, but never actually did anything with it).

Anyone hang onto any of the core memory? Would love some for my little historical computing collection (it's actually a pretty poor collection, but interesting none-the-less)

[Gumby]

Commodore 64.

Remember those adventure games. Open Door, look left, get ball....

[Honorary Bloke]

When I joined the Air Force in 1964, they said "you'll be a computer programmer, my son" and I said "what's that?" and they said "Da*ned if we know, but that what it says on the punched card here."

So, an IBM 7040 with 64K of memory (each hard-wired and housed in large, walk-in cabinets), 6 large standing magnetic tape drives, largish operator console with many flashing lights, and a 1200 lines per minute printer. All in a refrigerated room.

Program input was through use of punched cards, data input/output on the mag tapes. Code was written in MAP (Macro Assembly Programming) with instructions based on individual registers, such as Long Left Shift, Short Right Shift, etc. Also accepted COBOL and Fortran, but much less efficient. Many programs ran overnight and would print out one line of data every hour or so.

Also had PCAMs (Punched Card Automated Machines) used to sort the cards, etc. These were programmed using perforated bakelite plastic boards and individual plug connections to turn certain locations ON or OFF.

All rather primitive, but we thought it was the bee's knees.

[snowyskiesau]

Univac 1108 mainframe in the early 70's. I didn't know much about using it but I did know how to fix it when it broke.

[Gumby]

but we thought it was the bee's knees.

You seem to have taken on an unhealthy interest in the knee of a bee lately Bob. That's twice in 2 days you've been on them.

Anything we should know ?

[Honorary Bloke]

You seem to have taken on an unhealthy interest in the knee of a bee lately Bob. That's twice in 2 days you've been on them.

Anything we should know ?

Arrghh, you've caught me out. I've a bit of a bee knee fetish, if you must know. Something from a childhood trauma, no doubt.