My earliest machine I used was a 4.5mhz 8088 with 512k of ram but the first computer I could call my own was a 386sx (no math coprocessor) 16mhz with 4mb of ram. Had a 1.4mb 3.5" floppy drive and a 1.2mb 5.25" floppy drive along with what a the time felt like a colossal 40 megabyte hard disk. How on earth would I fill all of that space?!?! It had VGA graphics and I later added a soundblaster pro sound card and a Sony scsi cd-rom drive. I was really cooking at that point.

My earliest machine I used was a 4.5mhz 8088 with 512k of ram but the first computer I could call my own was a 386sx (no math coprocessor) 16mhz with 4mb of ram. Had a 1.4mb 3.5" floppy drive and a 1.2mb 5.25" floppy drive along with what a the time felt like a colossal 40 megabyte hard disk. How on earth would I fill all of that space?!?! It had VGA graphics and I later added a soundblaster pro sound card and a Sony scsi cd-rom drive. I was really cooking at that point.

First machine was an 8088. Had Wheel of Fortune, Winter Games, Word Perfect 5.1 and Leisure Suit Larry and thee Land of the Lounge Lizards. Learned some great history with that game. I can't remember if I had the Wolfenstein demo or the Doom demo running on it as well. Had the possibility of getting into too much trouble with that thing. I can remember the hours I spend in front of that Word Perfect blue screen carefully recreating the report cards for high school to sell so kids could get the good student discounts. Figuring out all the alt codes to draw the various lines needed. Such a great first computer.

I have absolutely no idea. I remember having DOS and playing Prince of Persia and Alone in the Dark being the most amazing thing ever, and then Wolfenstein came around, also I remember saving scripts I'd write for fun on them square discs...I do know that with the way technology advances, when I get a new one, even if it's the shittiest and cheapest model available, it'll probably be at least twice as better than what I have now lol.

Can't remember the specs but I do remember upgrading 4Mb to 8Mb of RAM to play the original World or Warcraft cost me £80.

my earliest Machone was the now legendary Commodore 64... still have it and it still works

I'll fondly remember loading cassette tapes in waiting 5-10 minutes for a game to load and the overwhelming fear of hoping the load doesn't fail too have to rewind and start again

Exactly this too!

This whole thread is making think of the Friends scene

The first computer I was around was a DEC that was used for inventory at the engine rebuilder and parts warehouse I worked at in 1979-80. I just entered data with a terminal, so it really didn't count. The next ones I used were some Tandy TRS80s at the booking agency I worked at in 1986. We used them to keep track of gigs using (I think) Lotus 123 or something like that. They had modems, but nobody there knew how to use them. The internet as such didn't exist yet, but a soundman for one of the bands we booked would come in and use them to access his CompuServe account.

The first one I owned was a Texas Instruments TI-994a that I got in a thrift shop for $10 in 1991. It had a really decent programming manual that explained how to use TI-Basic and Extended Basic. Eventually I also picked up the Editor/Assembler cartridge and played around with Assembly a little bit. There was a terminal emulator cartridge that worked with serial port modems so I started playing around with the literally hundreds of bulletin boards (BBS) that were around back them. A few of them were interconnected with a primitive modem-based networking system called FidoNet. In the early morning hours, the servers would call each other and exchange information automatically.

After playing around with that system for awhile I realized that it had gone obsolete more than a decade earlier, so I started looking into alternate platforms. A buddy of mine did some contract work for a company and they gave him their old computer. Knowing nothing about tech, he gave it to me. It was a really weird dual-platform machine that had both an 8088 and a Z-80 in the same machine. You could boot it with a 5 1/4" DOS floppy or a CP/M floppy. That was also an antique so I didn't use it too long.

I then picked up a used 12 MHz 286, added a math coprocessor, and jumped online with a Delphi account ($1 per hour!) and a 1200 baud modem. Always seeking more speed, I picked up a used 386 with a monochrome video card and an amber monitor, then stepped up to a blazing fast 2400 baud modem.

My first new computer was a white box 486 66mhz. I added a 14400 modem and switched to Netcom, where I was officially on the "internet" for the first time. This was around 1994. I added a Turtle Beach soundcard that had a PCM digital input so I could plug my DAT machine directly into it.

I quickly spiraled upwards thru Pentium, Pentium Pro, PII, PIII, and P4 machines. Modems went from 28k to 56k to finally a dual 56k "shotgun" modem that used two phone lines and provided 112k speeds. By 1998, I was able to get the first DSL connection in town with an insanely fast 256kbps speed. That got kicked up to 1 mbps within a year.

Things have only gotten more insane over the years. Now I own my own data center with a direct-to-the-net gigabit fiber service and rack after rack of pizza box servers. Since it's on my property, I am now my own ISP.

First ever computer: ZX Spectrum 48k. As a reward for passing seven O Levels. Used it mainly to learn to program, though did play games too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX_Spectrum

First PC: 8086 with 4MB of memory and a 32MB (yes, megabytes) hard disk, MS DOS 4.

Atari 800xl in '83

Despite being a dedicated PC guy these days, my first was an Apple IIc back in the late 80s, from the days before the Mac became Apple's desktop standard. My first PC, on the other hand, came from the days of the first-generation Intel Pentium processors, had an HD measured in - I think (my memory's not great at the best of times) - triple-digit megabytes that my grandparents got for me when I started university.

These days, it's hard to remember what things were like on such relatively primitive devices. Even my cell phone is many times more powerful than either of those two old fossils. Tech progresses at an extraordinary speed...

Apple II Plus in 1979.

A ZX80...swiftly followed by the ZX81. The ZX Spectrum's keyboard was disliked by many, but it was a vast improvement on the two that went before!

And you could play Hungry Horace

ZX spectrum too - but it was more of a recreational thing. My first computer on which I did business documents and spreadsheets was the brilliant Cambridge Z88 (also by Clive Sinclair and with a rubbery keyboard). It was a very compact, lightweight and portable option at a time when people were starting to kit out with Amstrads and the like.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Z88

32kb ram expandable to 3.5MB. I was convinced it would be sufficient when someone told me it would store the contents of a filing cabinet. Not sure how true that was, but document file sizes were very small back then.

I had it hooked up to an equally compact Canon BJ-10v printer.

https://global.canon/en/corporate/history/img/04_03.png

I could take that kit anywhere with me and produce decent work on the go. It wasn't until the somewhat more recent MacBook Air that I was satisfied again with the compactness of my kit!

I picked up one of those cheap at a yard sale. I definitely remember the tapes. I had to buy them separately. And yep, they took absolutely forever to save anything.

I read the manual and then I spent eons creating a text program that flashed fill-in-the-blank problems on the screen. It had 10 problems that you'd assume had very ordinary solutions but after taking the test, you hit the answer button and every answer turned out to be:

"Sex"

Once it worked, I called myself a genius.

Nessie