What was your first computer? When did you have it? Feel free to post manufacturers, models, specifications, links & images. However, I'm mostly interested in the stories behind them.

My family's first computer was an Apple Macintosh Performa 550. I believe the year was 1995. My father worked for the government & he salvaged this unit from the dumpster (they would just throw them away). I remember thinking that having a computer was the nerdiest thing ever & I refused to be caught dead using one, until I saw the move "Hackers". I remember downloading all of these "hacker tools" thinking that I was going to do all of these things that I saw in the movie & more. One could say that I became sort of a script-kiddy, causing havoc with applications such as "Sub Seven". I would stay up all night while my parents were in bed, experimenting with war-dialers & the like. I remember sleeping through my last few years of high school because of my obsession with computers.

My brother, who is a bit younger than me & actually had the opportunity to take a computer class in school (we lived in a rural area where this was rather rare), traded his Playstation 1 for a 75Mhz Pentium 1 desktop & showed me the demo of a game called "Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight". Yes, it would run on a 75Mhz computer, although not that well. I remember the level was "Bespin Mining Station" & he was playing with some of his friends over dial-up, via the internet. I knew that I too needed my own computer. I got a job at a Ponderosa, washing dishes & later at a Subway, making sandwiches, & we both eventually saved up enough money to take a stab at building our own computers. I built a computer with an AMD K-6 233Mhz processor if I'm not mistaken with a pirated copy of Windows 95 (I ended up getting 98SE once it came out). I played DF2:JK every day, created a clan for that game & Quake II & I've been hooked on computers since then.

I don't do much gaming these days but I have fond memories of those days & am also curious about how you folks became interested in computers as well.

1990. All I know is that it was a "WANG" computer (not joking, that's what the sticker said). It had a 33Mhz processor and came with Windows 3.0 loaded on it.

Before that, we had a Ti Keyboard that played video game cartridges, but also had other types of programs that could be played by use of a cassette player. There was even a game editor where you could create your own game on a cassette tape, which was my earliest introduction to video game editing.

Apple Macintosh Plus. Used it until 1998 when I got into PC gaming. Still a great machine in its own regard and compared to the other computers of its era.

The first one that my family had.., I don't know..likely a 286.

The first one that was completely "mine" - I built a Pentium II 450 system. For a while, I ran an 8mb TNT2 that I got from MaDaVentor.

My first PC was a Compaq Persario. I don't remember the exact model, but I do remember the specs very well (as I strained to push them to the limits):

486 SX 66mhz (Didn't even have a math coprocessor, that really screwed me)
8MB RAM (rapidly upgraded to 16MB, its max)
2X CDROM (much later upgraded to 24X. CD-ROM speed escalated pretty ridiculously fast if my memory serves)
1MB onboard video chipset, somehow capable of decent resolutions and true color.
14.4kbps internal modem that never worked. Used a 28.8kbps external most of the time. My phone lines aren't capable of 56K, even today.

It was apparently pretty damn good for when it was purchased (1994), but whew it seemed to get outdated FAST.

My first computer was an old Radio Shack model that operated from 8" floppies. It was in the 80's. My collection of software included such great titles as Big Ben (It was a clock!) and Basic.

Later, I had a 286 that ran DOS with some GUI program installed that I don't remember. It was still basically DOS, using ASCII characters to make up the UI. After that I had a 386 with Windows 3.1 on it. When I finally convinced my parents that the family needed a decent computer, we bought a Compaq Presario AMD K6-2 380MHz.

In 1985, the year before I was born, my family got an Atari 520ST. We didn't upgrade our home computer until '91 or '92, when we got a 33 MHz 486 (later upgraded to 66 MHz). By that time my parents both had laptops - I distinctly remember being about 4 years old and my dad bringing his home from work, it had an orange monochrome screen and weighed about a ton.

The first computer that really started me learning about computers was our 100 MHz Pentium, which we had right until 2000 when we upgraded to a PIII.

And the first computer that I myself owned was an AMD Athlon 64 3400+ with 1.5 gigs of RAM and a GeForce 6800GT that I got in 2004 as a graduation present after highschool.

My first computer was a Commodor Vic-20. It was basically a large keyboard that also comtained the cpu/ram/speaker and then connected to a TV. The operating system was built into its ROM, most of the programs were sold on gamestyle cartridges. It did support read/writing data to cassette tape (crappy) but no disk drives or hard drives.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_VIC-20 <- If you really want to learn more.

What I remember most fondly about this computer was learning to program in BASIC.

Timex Sinclair 1000 sometime around the early '80s. Specs below (from wikipedia).

Type Home computer
Release date July, 1982
Discontinued 1983
Operating system Sinclair BASIC
CPU Zilog Z80A @ 3.25 MHz
Memory 2 KB

Family computer was a beige box (likely IBM) that ran Windows 3.1, was introduced to JK and TIE on that machine.

It was a B&W screen mounted on a horizontal beige tower. Pretty sure it was a mac. I played Kid Pix on it.

A Tandy. DonLt remember the model number but I remember the processor speed was 20mhz.

I remember playing Ghost n' Goblins on it from the B drive. I would start the game, go eat dinner, and come back up to it fully loaded. Those were the days. Came with a daisy wheel printer too.

oh jeez i dont remember. i was like 8 or 9 and the only thing it had on it was Mavis Beacon.

A Leading Edge XT. Looked just like this:



Had a 4/7 MHz (turbo switch) 8088 processor, 640 KB of RAM, 30 MB hard drive, 1200 baud modem, CGA graphics. In 1986 it was pretty high end.

I think my first computer was....

Celeron 486
128MB RAM (i remember upgrading to 768 was big for me)
Some ATI video card, maybe ATI Rage Pro?
12GB HD
Sound Blaster

I remember REALLLLLY wanting a GeForce 2 GTS 32MB, and remember the dude telling me how top of the line it was

Pentium 2 233
32/64 megs of RAM (It got upgraded)
Some 4 meg first gen AGP card, we literaly got it the day they became available.
5 Gig HDD (Fat 16- 32 was like, wow)
A really nice sound blaster thingy.

I still have it, but im not allowed to format it on account of it not being mine and my parents being paranoid that they left something useful on it. So for now it sits and collects dust.

I learned how to use MS-DOS when I was 4. I forget the computer, I think it was some sort of Apple II. Which makes it odd that it had MS-DOS so maybe it wasn't, but the Apple II logo was definitely there.

It had no hard drive, just 5 1/4" floppies, and a monochrome text-mode screen.

Bootleg apple?

I don't remember. It was some leftover from my mom's office. We got it in the mid-90s (96?) so it must have been at least 4-5 years old. It came with Windows 3.1 originally, and I can't remember if we even installed Windows 95 on it. It got incredibly virus-laden and I ended up taking it apart and opening the hard drive to study/fiddle with it when we got our first "real" home computer (see below). The best thing about it, though, for sure, was that the keyboard was POSSIBLY an original IBM Model M. I don't remember, but I do remember how disappointed I was with the new computer's keyboard. I'm so sad that we lost the keyboard

Our first "real" home computer (i.e. bought from a store) was an HP Pavilion PIII 800Mhz with Windows ME on it, which I was super excited about (:XD:). Can't remember how much RAM it had originally, but I recall upgrading the RAM and hard drive and even the video card from a TNT2 to a Radeon 9700 Pro. So this was the first computer I really tinkered with.

commodore 64
damn, i miss those games.
ninja and gauntlet and that racing game that was just holding one button for 2 minutes

I don't know what kind of computer it was, but I think we got it in 1987 or 1988. It had a turbo button and could switch between 8 and 12 MHz. I played Civilization and SimCity on that thing.
We had a dot matrix printer whose noises were like music.

I forgot about turbo buttons!

Oh yeah! My first computer had one too.

My dad paid well over $3000 for this thing in the mid-90s. (95?)

1.6 gb hard drive if I recall....90 mhz processor?

Actually not too ancient as far as "first computers" go. It saw SimCity, SimCity 2000, ClarisWorks, Groiler Multimedia Encyclopedia, Rebel Assault 2, Dark Forces, X Wing, TIE Fighter, Oregon Trail, etc.......

What's that big "<" key above the number row? I vaguely remember seeing that on keyboards of that era but I don't remember what it is

That's how you turn it on. Quite handy honestly.

Power button.

I didn't have a home computer until sometime in 2000.

500MHz Intel Celeron
64mb ram
10GB Hard Drive
Intel 810 Chipset Graphics
Windows 98

It seemed pretty badass at the time...

Does a Commodore 64 count?

Sure does.

Hahahaha black and white monitors. My first TWO monitors were black and GREEN. That's old.

PS/1. From IBM.

my sister had a VIC-20

other than that we didn't have a computer until 1997

it was a Compaq with the following specs
300MHz Pentium II
64MB RAM
8GB HD
integrated ATI Rage Pro Turbo (4MB dedicated memory... user upgradable to 8MB)
crappy integrated sound
DVD-ROM drive (not sure of the model or speed but the computer itself was too slow to play DVDs)
56K modem

it came with a 17" monitor with a max resolution of 1280x1024 which also included speakers (not built in but they did mount on the sides of the monitor)

it was later upgraded to 160MB RAM and a Voodoo 2 (12MB) (also later upgraded from Windows 95 to Windows 98)

i could totally rock some Quake 2 at 800x600 with that beast

Something I can't really remember much about from about 2001, it came with XP.

I think I fail this contest.

BBC Microcomputer, Model B if I recall correctly.

486 DX2-66
4MB Ram
~250 MB HDD

I think it's hilarious that my video card now has more RAM than I had hard disk space back then.

One of my early computers was a 486 with a 80mb drive. It had a turbo button too! 25MHz to a blazing fast 66MHz!

Then my dad reused the case for a Pentium computer he built and the turbo button didn't work anymore.

Ok, then, my first computer was a Commodore 64. 1/4 Hz processor (the Commodore 128 boasted 1/2Hz), no Hard drive - everything was saved on an external 5 1/4 floppy disk or cassette tape drive, and either used a TV or a Commodore monitor. Booya.

the C64's processor was 1.02MHz (as was the VIC-20's)