What brand was your first computer?

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Old 01-18-2010, 02:10 AM
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Default What brand was your first computer?

Mine was a packard bell.
Which was your!!
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Old 01-18-2010, 05:16 AM
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Compaq
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Old 01-18-2010, 06:02 AM
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Sinclair 80
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Old 01-18-2010, 06:51 AM
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Radio Shack (Tandy) Color Computer connected to a TV set. After hours watching the screen your eyeballs looked like they were bleeding - Serious road maps! Cassette Tape for storage!

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Old 01-18-2010, 07:39 AM
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Another early adopter here.... Radio Shack TRS-80 (trash 80, it was called) with black/white monitor, basic programming language, and cassette tape storage. This was probably about 1980.

Next one was an Osborne "portable" (only because it had a handle; it weighed 27 pounds). Paid $1,800 for it. Woo hoo 5.25 floppy drives for programs and storage. A 5MB hard drive cost well over $500 to add on.
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Old 01-18-2010, 07:59 AM
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The first computer I worked on was a TRS-80 (trash 80) with dual 5.25 floppy drives. The first computer I owned was an IBM portable. It was called partable bacause it had a carry case. It weighed about 40 pounds and some people I know even carried these monsters around! This computer had dual 3.5 drives and an attached printer that could be used with pin feed thermal paper or you could buy a ribbon and print on regular paper.

Conputers have come a long was since the 1980's!
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Old 01-18-2010, 08:39 AM
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A.s.t
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Old 01-18-2010, 08:47 AM
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IBM PC Jr (128K Ram)

Then traded a highchair to my brother-in-law for a Mac 512K that still works.

.
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Old 01-18-2010, 08:49 AM
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Default Add-on Hard Drive

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Originally Posted by villages07 View Post
Another early adopter here.... Radio Shack TRS-80 (trash 80, it was called) with black/white monitor, basic programming language, and cassette tape storage. This was probably about 1980.

Next one was an Osborne "portable" (only because it had a handle; it weighed 27 pounds). Paid $1,800 for it. Woo hoo 5.25 floppy drives for programs and storage. A 5MB hard drive cost well over $500 to add on.
The cost of new computer equipment is amazing! I was in an electronics store last weekend, here in Germany, and looked at a 1TB portable drive (USB) that was about $150. I remember moving to Japan in '95 and upgrading my computer with a new 300MB HD for $500. I have a USB stick I plug into my car stereo and it's 8GB...paid $12.00 for it.
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Old 01-18-2010, 09:51 AM
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My first computer was a Compaq-second was a Dell and now I have a Compaq again. Love Compaq
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Old 01-18-2010, 10:10 AM
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Heathkit H-8 that I had to solder all the parts on the circuit boards. Machine language programming back then with cassette recorder to save the programs. This was before the Radio Shack TRS-80 and IBM PC. 4K of memory and you were king on the streets.

That gave way to a Heathkit H-19 Monitor that in time was upgraded to a H-89 computer. It had 2 hard sector hard 5 1/4 floppy drives that you could notch the disks and flip them over for more storage. Then came came soft sector drives and 8" drives. At one time I had 6 floppy drives attached to that computer. Hard drives were not even a dream for the PC market at that time.

The H-89 gave way to the original Compaq lug-able. I still have that one.

Along the way I built an Apple IIE clone for something to do but got rid of it shortly after getting everything working.

Lost track of how many PC's I have built and upgraded over the years. Don't even ask how much money was spent over the years.

Currently have online an old 800 MHz XP machine with a couple of 250 gig hard drives and DVD burners, a 2.6 Windows 7 machine, an HP Windows 7 lap top, and an HP Windows Home Server with 2.5 TB of storage.

Remember when a program could be no larger that 640k?
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Old 01-18-2010, 10:31 AM
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Compaq with a 700 mg HD. It was nice.
Then a few HP's.....had one "blow up", then switched to Macs 10 years ago and never looked back. That 10 year old G4 imac is still our main house computer....works great...a work of Art.
I mainly now use my new macbook pro.
Can't wait to see the new Apple tablet being announced this month.

Frank
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Old 01-18-2010, 10:43 AM
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Compaq with a 700 mg HD. It was nice.

Can't wait to see the new Apple tablet being announced this month.

Frank
Frank....looks like you've bought into the rumor mill on the Apple tablet. It'll be interesting to see if they announce one, since there's a ton of buzz already.

Do you also have an iPhone? I have one and it's the most amzing phone/computer/ipod/???? I've ever owned...bar none. I gave up a World Edition Blackberry for the iPhone...never looked back. Even used the GPS for golf, here in Germany last year.
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Old 01-18-2010, 11:05 AM
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Mine was a Philco and it was gas operated .......I still have it but my wife won't let me turn it on ...

phew fumar
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Old 01-18-2010, 11:22 AM
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Atari 800 then a Kaypro 2 running CPM which I modified to run at 5MHz instead of the default 2.5...woo-hoo! Used it to write dBase II programs-

Then the IBM PC hit the market and our local Kaypro club soon disbanded.
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