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Mine was a Commodore VIC20 - was great at the time (I was 8 at the time and got given this at Christmas instead of the Atari console that I'd asked for - wise move) 
http://oldcomputers.net/vic20.html[^]
Introduced: June 1980
Released: January 1981
Price: US $299 (cost about the same in GBP)
CPU: MOS 6502, 1MHz
RAM: 5K (3.5K for the user)
Display: 22 X 23 text, 176 X 184, 16 colors max
How do you know so much about swallows? Well, you have to know these things when you're a king, you know.
modified 31-Aug-21 21:01pm.
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Ah, the mighty VIC-20. I still remember that special plastic smell when I first unboxed it, more than 30 years ago.
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1.3 gig hard drive - that's huge!
I think my first PC, back in 1989, had around 20 megabytes of hard drive.
“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
― Christopher Hitchens
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I don't care if you count it or not, I've had a wonderful ZX Spectrum 48K and I learned (its) BASIC and Z80 assembly with it.
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I sympathise with your feeling.
My first was a Schneider/Amstrad CPC6128[^] with additional external floppy drive (not an original one but a raw 3" drive).
Then I had a second hand not IBM compatible 80186 based Philips :YES[^] with 640 KB RAM, a 20 MB SASI (SCSI predecessor) hard disk and an additional external 5 1/2" disk drive (again not original but one from a defective IBM PC).
Even my first new PC had less power than the P150 from the strip (a 486DX33 with 8 MB of RAM).
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Technically, my first "computer" was an HP 25C (I think that was the model) calculator, but it was programmable - 49 steps.
My first "real" computer was a Commodore IBM - real keyboard, 32KB of RAM, 6502 1Mhz processor, and a tape drive for storage, which I eventually upgraded to dual floppies, each floppy had double the storage of Apple's drive, mwahaha.
Marc
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In that case mine was a TI 59[^] - but I didn't think of it as a computer then!
Good for it's time, but those magnetic strips were sooooo unreliable!
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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OriginalGriff wrote: Good for it's time, but those magnetic strips were sooooo unreliable!
I eventually also had the HP version with the mag strip reader. It was soooo cool. I wrote Hunt the Wumpus on it - one program to randomize the caves and store them into the 9 registers using 2 digit encoding so I could map 20 caves with 3 routes each, plus 3 pits, 3 bat caves, 1 Wumpus and 1 player location.
A second program on another mag strip was used to actually play the game! It was my first real taste of optimizing code, getting the game play to fit into 240 instruction "cells."
Marc
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I had a Commodore 64 in '83 and was spoilt rotten by my parents as it came with a 5 1/4 floppy drive and printer... Followed by an Amiga 500 in '88
If we're talking about PC, I had a Laser 386 DX 25 MHZ, 2 MB ram and 69 MB Hard drive. It was offered as an alternative to a FM Towns games machine that I'd won though a competition I'd entered in the games Magazine back in 1990, as the FM Towns couldn't be sourced from Japan. Needless to say the PC was far more use than an FM Towns.
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Rhuros wrote: I had a Commodore 64 in '83 and was spoilt rotten by my parents as it came with a 5 1/4 floppy drive and printer... Followed by an Amiga 500 in '88
Started off with a C64 too (with nothing but tape for storage for the first year I've had it), then I got a C128, but I never went the Amiga route. I was looking at auction sites a few days ago and out of morbid curiosity, I looked up a couple of Amiga systems. Seems like price ranges are all over the map. Unfortunately still to this day, I know so very little about them that I don't know what's a good deal or not.
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First computer was an Amiga 1000[^].
I wished I still have it (and the couple of games I had at the time that I really liked).
I'd rather be phishing!
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Steel Taiwan clone XT that flipped open like a funny car.
8088 chip that all who had these swapped out for a NEC V20.
2MB expanded ram board + QEMM
30MB drive
Hercules video then upgraded to a Emulex/Persist Bob-16 graphics adapter.
2400 baud modem - I was a BBS rat.
DOS 3.1 / Desqview
A year later my dear wife got me a Genius Mouse.
I had windows 1.01 on but that sucked more than you can know.
It was more of a side show to show people.
Getcha some of that! 
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The one that doesn't count: Sorry! TI-994a back in '82-83 I think.
The next one was a hand-me-down PowerMac 6100: 1 512MB HDD, 16MB RAM, and a huge 13'' monitor! OS 7.5 was so bad that my first real computer manual was 'Sad Macs, Bombs, and Other Disasters'! Great times! 
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse
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A 520 ST, which I still have.
But, if you ignore the cassette restriction, a TI 99/4A (Which I probably still have...9or maybe my sister has it.)
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The TI99 was great! Got a kick out of looking at ones for sale on ebay the other day... we had one in '83 or '84... Wish I still had it. Loved playing Donkey Kong, Hunt the Wompus, TI Invaders, and Centipede on it!
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My high school computer was an IBM 1620 (go ahead, look it up!) with 40,000 digits (not bits - it was a decimal machine), console typewriter, and card I/O. This was in 1967, you young whippersnappers 
According to my calculations, I should be able to retire about 5 years after I die.
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Yeah we ha a ti994a also but thought it didn't qualify here because of the cassette.
We had great fun writing basic programs to scroll expletives on the screen.
What fun teaching a computer to swear. Just look what we've done!
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I remember messing with the voice synthesizer on it. That was really cool.
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Tandy 1000 HX[^]
Without that, you'd never would've had the pleasure of meeting me.
Jeremy Falcon
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OriginalGriff wrote: What was your first "real" computer? (I'm not counting Spectrums and their ilk here: if it had a cassette tape it doesn't count
Why not? I'd give anyone with such a beast extra points just for having the patience of dealing with tapes.
(that's all I had for storage for the first year I've had my Commodore 64)
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Because the tapes meant that you spent far more time loading (and swearing) than you did running the programs...
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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Amstrad 1512, CGA, one floppy, one HDD (20MB?) on an expansion card.
I wiped the drive and installed MS-DOS 4.1 Spent many hours writing games in Turbo Pascal.
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I built my first computer back in 1978. It was a Netronics Elf II kit[^].
Don't you dare not to call it a real computer, just because I did not have the money for any floppies at that time. 
Indeed have all 'real' computers gone to East Hyperspace (and their physical remains to the trash bin), while the little Elf II still works, including the ancient monitor.
The language is JavaScript. that of Mordor, which I will not utter here
This is Javascript. If you put big wheels and a racing stripe on a golf cart, it's still a f***ing golf cart.
"I don't know, extraterrestrial?"
"You mean like from space?"
"No, from Canada."
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I played about with a Sinclair ZX80 with 1k memory including the video. Then I moved into a Compukit UK101 which had 8k memory and was an absolute s** to get anything to load or save.
I did my degree using an Amstrad CPC6128 and had an external ROM box, which I had an Assembler, and possibly a word processor. I also built an emulator adaptor which I plugged into what would eventually become a standalone computer and I used the emulator to debug the program on the device. Eventually after 10 years, the Amstrad sort of let go - just the rubber band to drive the 3.5" floppy and a replacement was going to cost a fortune. One of these days, I will get it back out and see if I can make it live again.
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In the "not counted" range I had a ZX81 and two rubber key ZX Spectrum 48k (an issue 1 with the hand mods on the board, and an issue 2 when that broke).
Then I had a couple of ACT Sirius computers (early PC clones, called Victor 9000 in the USA) that were cast-offs from my dad's office. The first had twin 5.25" floppy, the second had a 5MB hard drive! Both ran MSDOS 1.0 (although I think I later got my hands on 3.0).
We then had an Acorn Archimedes A440, followed by an Acorn Risc PC - those were some of the best computers I ever owned to this day. When the Sirius died we broke it for parts and used the HDD and the PSU on the table attached the A440, for extra storage.
Since then, I succumbed the x86 hegemony and ran a series of cheap boring PCs.
At school I used some fun machines too. An RM 380Z running CPM, many BBC Model B machines, an Amstrad thing that ran CPM and had Logo, and a CBM 4032 which was like a Commodore PET but with a better keyboard.
modified 21-Jan-15 3:51am.
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