What was your first computer? (1 Viewer)

[pete]

apparently they cost a few grand back in the day?!

looks a bit like an SX-64... http://oldcomputers.net/sx64.html

[FONT=arial,helvetica] As the world's first portable color computer, the SX-64 was designed to be a portable Commodore 64, with a built-in 5-inch color monitor, 5-1/4 inch floppy drive, and power supply.

Although heavy at 23 pounds, it is a very nice and sturdy system. Almost 100% compatible with the C64, it runs all cartridges and floppy based programs. The only thing missing is the cassette port, which is a minor consequence.

While the Commodore 64 was an extremely popular computer, the SX-64 didn't even come close. Probably because it cost twice as much, and has a small 5" (diagonal) screen.

Although it is considered a portable computer, you still have to plug it into the 110VAC power outlet, there are no batteries to run it.[/FONT]

 

[Jerry Twig]

i suppose the keyboard just fit in the top there like a lid. so much style back in the day.
i've actually been inspired enough here by the talk of the Spectrum ZX to download a few emulators and fool around with them. there's 1000s of emulators and games here http://www.worldofspectrum.org/ (and some major geeks, that's a fact).

A good book here too
ftp://ftp.worldofspectrum.org/pub/sinclair/books/ZXSpectrumOnYourPCThe.pdf

 

[nofriendo]

Any Takers
http://cgi.ebay.com/COMMODORE-SX-64...ryZ74945QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

 

[jack nance hair]

ORIC-1

I remember that my parents decided to buy the family Christmas present in October and were convinced by a salesman that this was going to be that years hot computer. Turned out that it's major competitor, the Spectrum took a little more of the market share that Christmas. So we were left with a computer hadn't any decent games available for it. Not only that, but we had the 16K version so any half-decent Oric games didn't even work on it. Nothing like being forced into learning how to write BASIC programs in order to have something to play on your machine...

All reminds me of the MJ Hibbett song Hey Hey 16K (just looked - can be downloaded from http://www.mjhibbett.com/)


We bought it to help with your homework
We bought it to help with your homework
And the household accounts
If your dad ever works it all out
lunchtimes in the library writing down the pokes and peeks
copying an access code, get a taste for home taping
Fetishists of map-making
Rubber keys and rotten leads, rand and run and load and screens
Then five minutes fingers crossed hoping not to witness the terror
of R: Tape Loading Error
zx spectrum 81, dragon vic and oric1
commodore 64, amstrad and an acorn electorn
cheaper BBC micro
jet set willy, sabre wulf, lords of midnight, underwurlde
dark star, transam, ant attak
and of course, manic miner
the hobbit and knight lore and elite
It made a generation who can code
A bubble before proper consoles, who all know
That the games you get today, may be very flash
But there'll never beat the thrill
Of getting through Jetpac
Hey Hey, 16K, What does that get you these days?
You need more than that for a letter
Old Skool Ram Paks are much better.
Personal Computer Games, Your Sinclair, 16K
Kempston Competition Pro, Crash and Cursor Keys and GO TO
Dixons and bother Saturday staff with loops that never end
For n=0 to 2
Those were the days
Next N
(c) MJ Hibbett 2003

 

[Dktr. Faustus]

apparently they cost a few grand back in the day?!

Yeah, apparently they did, but I don't know where this appeared to my parents, and when, I guess they got a bargain from someone few years from it's hayday

 

[nlgbbbblth]

i suppose the keyboard just fit in the top there like a lid. so much style back in the day.
i've actually been inspired enough here by the talk of the Spectrum ZX to download a few emulators and fool around with them. there's 1000s of emulators and games here http://www.worldofspectrum.org/ (and some major geeks, that's a fact).

A good book here too
ftp://ftp.worldofspectrum.org/pub/sinclair/books/ZXSpectrumOnYourPCThe.pdf

That's a cool site, I bought two CDs worth of Spectrum games off 'em a few years ago for £12. Must be thousands of games on them - great fun.

 

[Doctor Muscles]

there's 1000s of emulators and games here http://www.worldofspectrum.org/ (and some major geeks, that's a fact).

They've got a chatroom too...

 

[piratio]

A guy I worked with downloaded every windows OS in a ZIP off of limewire, put X amount of partitions on a new XEON machine and put an OS on each partition. He sold the box on ebay for 5 grand!

It was really cool to see the boot screen give you so many options! Some of the olders OS's needed software help to co-exist on there but basically it was as 'authentic' as possible.

B

 

[Squiggle]

I had a ZX81 with the 16K ram pack. The day I got it I set it up on the kitchen counter and typed in 5 pages worth of a game called 'Pyramids of Mars' from Computer & Video Games.
3 hours later and a couple of lines from the end of the code - my mother moved the ZX when cleaning, the ram pack wobbled and I lost everything.
The memory (no pun intended) still haunts me to this day.

I typed the game in safely a few days later. It was shit

I had one of these too - one of the mags at the time actually referred to RAM pack as the "wobble pack" for that very reason.

One of my strangest memories was recording the typed programs to audio tape and then waiting with baited breath for them to load again (hoping that they had saved ok).

 

[pete]

sys 64738

 

[theweeyin]

One of these bad boys:

Before that one of these:

And then of course:

And Flymbos Quest?! What a fucking fantastic game! But mine stopped working after a while and I've never been able to get a version to play since....gutted.

 

[snap-apple]

1980? - First electronic thingum - Pong!

1983? - Spectrum 48k with ye olde rubber keyborde (eventually
upgraded to hard plastic keyboard unit with memory module and microdrive!) Horace and the Spiders was the first game we had. Football Manager and Chuckie Egg 2 were two of the games I spent unhealthy amounts of time on.

Many moons passed (many hours spent playing Elite on a mate's BBC Micro)

1990 - IBM Compatible PC - Can't remember the processor speed, but I remember the hard drive was 20MB! Gorilla.bas - great days. Again, many moons passed. I remember playing Championship Manager and it taking 16 minutes to calculate the results each week. Got alot of reading done.

1998 - Eventually bought my own 400MHz PII DELL PC

2003 - Replaced with self built P4 2.4GHz which is what is still rattling away here...

 

[snap-apple]

Actually, at the height of my sickness with the 48k speccy i used to get up at 6am and get a couple of hours of football manager in before school, unbeknownst to (or unacknowledged by) the folks. i feel dirty.