lightning101

1.Lightning101 - Since the old IBM Mainframe - Reel Based.

Then XT with the 5 and a quarter using PC Dos
Then BBC Micro, Atari ST, Amiga, Amstrad PC1640 (20mb HDD), IBM PS2 with windows 1, no 2, then 3 then 95, 98, NT, Me, 2000, XP, Linux (derivatives)

Plus Sinclair ZX80,81, Spectrum 16,48,128 +1 2 3 and a QL

Forgot about the amigas UNIX derivative operating system - what a great machine.

So that will be the 70's till now


Feeling old - yet still experienced.

judgejules

JudgeJules - Since 1982, aged 6

Acorn Electron, BBC B, BBC B+, RM Nimbus (school), IBM 5150 (school), Acorn Archimedes (various models), Atari ST, Gateway DX4 100 (first "PC"), P1, PII, PIII, P4. Too many Pentium configs to list Most OSs including Gos+RiscOs (archimedes), Gem (atari), WFWG, OS/2 Warp (installed, tested, then uninstalled), 95, 98, 2K, (skipped ME), XP, 2003

Where next?

Jules

lightning101

Forgot about the archimedes - we have one at our work as a simulator using the Acorn RISC O/S.

What line business are you in Judge ?

if you don't mind me asking.

Soulgirl

Not as long as you lot.. Started with a 486 - I thought it was the dogs bollox back then... I must have been around 23 I guess. It was a hewlet packard with 4mb memory and an 80mb hard drive LOL. Im now sporting over 500 gig and its still not enough

lightning101

Remember you could get thousands of games for the spectrum and all loaded into 48k.

That is smaller that a header file for a word document with nothing in it.

And programming a ZX80/ZX81 - there were only about 10 sinclair games, you had to learn to program your own, or type in machine code from magazine articles - week by week.

IWatkins

First computer was a VIC20 the day after it first came out. I was about 10 then. Been playing with them all since then.

Slowest computer I've used = VIC20
Fastest computer I've used = NEC SX-6

Cheers

Ian

judgejules

Hosting Manager/programmer/dabbler at a design and communications agency

boomer

1967ish - "invented" a simple calculator using cards with holes in them.

1976ish - ICL 1902 running MAXIMOP/MINIMOP, accessed via a teletype and a 300-baud acoustic coupler to Blackburn Tech (or code sheets/punched cards). Programs mainly in BASIC.

1978ish - Elliot 903C "minicomputer" with 16K of core memory. This was useful as if you turned off the computer at night, your program would still be there the next day. Bear in mind that there were no hard drives whatsoever - just punched tape in and punched tape out! Programs in ALGOL or assembler (although i did write my own machine-code interpreter).

1978-1982 - Leeds University, thus loads of computers The computer studies mainframe was a DEC-10, plus PDP-8s, PDP-11s and a GT42. The Uni mainframe was an Amdahl (IBM clone), which was a hackers dream! Later came a VAX or two (courtesy of Systime), and Mr. Sinclair moved beyond the Oxford and Cambridge calculators. Programs in Pascal, Macro10/11, BCPL, Lisp, Prolog, Basic, ADA, C, GPSS, Snobol, Spitbol, Cobol, Algol and FORTRAN.

From 1982 onwards, things got easy

mb

Scooby Dooby Blue

Got a VIC20 for Xmas when i was 7. No games or anything like that, no, i got 'Introduction to BASIC Parts 1&2'

3k RAM. Fantastic! Thought i was the man with my 16k expander


Paul

MooseRacer

Texas Instruments TI994a at home sometime in the mid 80's

First work machine was an ICL2966 in 1985 - George3, what an o/s!

Loads of stuff since then - mainframes mainly until 1990'ish then midrange stuff since then.

Geezer

Started on an IBM 3083 (mainframe) in 1985, had a whopping 8MB of memory!!!

Been on AS400, various UNIX boxes, some Honeywell boxes.

Personal - did'nt really get into PCs until years after I was working with 'proper' computers - Compaq presario with Win98, then some self build with XP, now another selfbuild with XP.

Still working with proper cmputers, just use PC for playing games.

Geezer

Andy Tang

iTrader: (3)

Personal computers and age I had them!

1985 (12) - Apple IIe
1986 (13) - Spectrum ZX81 (bought of a friend to play with)
1988 (15) - Atari ST 520
1991 (19) - Clone 386
1994 (21) to present (31) - 486 DX2/66 -> P4 (with almost everything inbetween)

At school/college/uni - BBC Micro, BBC Archimedes, Mac, 386's

I've worked on all sorts of strange things! Worse place was an office with 50 286's running DOS in 1999!!!

Jiggerypokery

Lucky sod! I inherited a VIC20, and a box full of games. Unfortunately all but the most basic of games needed the memory expansion card, which I didn't have

Miles

Started off Christmas 1984 [1] with a Amstrad CPC 464, aged 8, slowed expanded over time.
Then approximately in 1988 got an Atari STe 1040 and a ZX+ Spectrum.
Sold those three for a Watford Electronics 486SX-25Mhz with 4Mb RAM and 105Mb HD in 1991. Combination of Win3.11 and Win95.
Used that and my folks computer (brought in 1995) until purchased a Sony Vaio PII 366Mhz. Win98/W2K/XP
Last year purchased parts from Ebuyer to make an Althon based system, 2100+/512Mb/4200Ti/80Gb/NEC TFT.

Started using the Internet in 1993 at uni, first online community I was a member of, was a Pink Floyd discussion list! At uni used a combination of Sparc Stations/Silicon Graphic Indys and Viglen PCs (anyone remember them?).

At work I've worked with single HP Pentium Pro servers running NT 3.51 all the way through to EMC SAN based Dell clusters running W2K Adv Server.

[1] Whoo, this Christmas will be twenty years of computing for me....

GaryK

Hmm from the dim and distant past, started on teletype at school(!) before the whole school had *one* research machines 380z where you had to load the BASIC compiler before you could use it! Then as I was leaving they decked out a computer room full of BBC Model Bs

at home I had:

ZX81
Vic-20
C64
Atari STFM then an STE

Started cutting code in 83 on a motorola workstation running MDOS (Motorola Disk Operating System) using 6800 two pass macro assembler then shortly onto XTs /ATs 2/3/4/586 machines and now full circle running emulators for spectrum/c64 etc. etc.

Gary

scoobyboy

anyone remember the toshiba msx back in the early eighties? my first computer that was.

Iain Young

Machines I've owned...

Dragon 32
Toshiba msx
BBC Micro
Atari st 520
Atari ste 1024
Amiga a600
Then a number of pcs from 286 through to my current Pentium 4 3.2Ghz laptop

Dragon 32 was the best

john_s

iTrader: (1)

The air is crackling with enchantment

John.

ScoobyDoo555

Dragon 64
MSX - well Yamaha derivative (used for music)
Spectrum 48K
Spectrum 48K+
Spectrum 128K+2
Atari ST 1040 (with 4meg ram update)
Atari Mega STE
Atari Stacy 4
Apple PowerBook 190cs
Apple PowerBook 5300
Apple PowerMac 7600 (with ProTools)
Apple G3 500 (ish)
Home-grown Pentium 2 266
AMD K6-2 450
AMD Athlon 1Ghz
AMD Athlon 1.7 Ghz
AMD Athlon 2800
Apple G4

phew!

Dan

towzer

you've all missed out on the Oric1, what a nightmare of a machine that was.

BBC model B was the best, but I do remember being 13 and getting an Aaiga 500 with 512Kb memory upgrade (there was a swithch on the card but I can't remeber what it was for?). I was the king of the school when I got a SCSI drive, second floppy and XCopy hardware.


Phil

16vmarc

Texas TI
Commordore Amiga A500
Gateway 2000 150mhz 1.5gb
Compaq Presario 2.3ghz 20gb

MR Fusion

What a great thread! Memories coming back of hours spent hunched over a computer in my bedroom...to present day where I still spend hours hunched over a PC (but in the dining room!).

I've kept most of the machines mentioned on here, as I just never had the heart to throw them out or sell them/give them away.

The MSX was great. A real shame it never really kicked off in this country as it had bags of potential as well as technical capability.

Phil Harrison

ICL 1907 (back-to-back 1901s) now in the Science Museum. And a Pre-IBM-PC 8-bit Sirius running Wordstar 1 in CP-M! Happy days!

Phil