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What was your first computing platform?
| 12% | 35 votes |
| 4% | 12 votes |
| 1% | 5 votes |
| 52% | 147 votes |
| 12% | 36 votes |
| 13% | 39 votes |
| 0% | 1 votes |
| 1% | 5 votes |
[ Voting Booth | Other Polls | Back Home ]
- Don't complain about lack of options. You've got to pick a few when you do multiple choice. Those are the breaks.
- Feel free to suggest poll ideas if you're feeling creative. I'd strongly suggest reading the past polls first.
- This whole thing is wildly inaccurate. Rounding errors, ballot stuffers, dynamic IPs, firewalls. If you're using these numbers to do anything important, you're insane.
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What was your first computing platform?
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You can't have your cake and let your neighbor eat it too.
-- Ayn Rand
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Thursday December 10 2015, @02:42AM
It would be interesting to see if the poll results reflect the age demographic of our readers. We'll have no way of really knowing of course, but maybe we'll find out the poll was designed with that in mind...
(Score: 1) by jimtheowl on Thursday December 10 2015, @04:41PM
That, but also at this time there is an equal amount of Minicomputers and 32/64 bits first users. Not many people I know started on Minis. Perhaps it indicates that some groups are more proud of their roots and more likely to vote.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday December 13 2015, @05:31PM
I wonder if maybe we're seeing another phenomenon at work in the voting.
My kids weren't born until 16 bit computing was alive and well established. 32 bit was on it's way, and would make it into homes in just a couple more years. But, at that point in time, the wife and I didn't want to turn them loose on our "main" computer. The two elder boys were introduced to Atari and Commodore computers. The younger boy went straight into a 16-bit environment. Soon after the youngest boy started school, they forgot all about those older machines, because the schools were on 32-bit machines, running Windows 95 and then 98. So, if my sons were to vote on this poll, they could honestly say that their first platforms were 8-bit, and the youngest would say 16-bit. On the other hand, they may not even consider those old consoles as "computers".
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Sunday December 13 2015, @08:00PM
My initial thought is that your kids are outliers.
For those of us who first got our computers in the early 80s as kids, it was probably the first computer our families had ever seen and speaks to some degree of how forward looking our parents were because for most of them, their only computing experience would be through seeing spinning tape spools in movies. Perhaps a very small number had access to a vax-type BOFH family member, but those people would be outliers, and their experiences not representative.
You are not like your parents because unlike your parents, you were a participant in that first wave of home computing. Even so, the percentage of people who participated in that first wave was rather small compared to the entire population. Even in the second wave of 16 bit systems making inroads into the home, you were still not representative of the broader population most of whom had no computer experience. I'm thinking early 90s (16 bit ubiquity) to late 90s (32 bit ubiquity). There were certainly a larger number of people becoming parents in this time frame who had home 8bit experience compared to those growing up in the late 70s or 80s who had familial access to a BOFH, but it is still a small enough number to be considered an outlier.
I would guess that most kids getting their first experience on 16/32 bit systems, were also participating in the family's first computer purchase.
(Score: 1) by redneckmother on Saturday December 19 2015, @03:13AM
"Get off my lawn."
Said in jest.. please don't be offended.
I was an adult when I first used a computer... and it was an IBM 360/40 (no disrespect to the 700 series / 1400 series folk).
I was excited when IBM first announced their PCs, as I had visions of being able to support my mainframe systems and apps from home, via modem.
Once, I answered a support call (obviously, in my sleep) at zero dark thirty, and told the poor soul who called me, "Okay, I'm on it... I'll handle it from here." Fortunately, they knew me well, and called back to tell me I needed to get my ass out of bed and come in.
Mas cerveza por favor.
(Score: 4, Funny) by fishybell on Friday December 11 2015, @11:34PM
Well, I'll say this: voting for "16-bit Intel" has never made me feel so young.
(Score: 2) by skater on Thursday December 17 2015, @01:05PM
I was looking for the 8-bit Intel option...IBM PCjr, which (I just had to look this up) used 16 bits internally but had an 8 bit bus. So I guess it's still a 16 bit intel...but had half of its bits tied behind its back, or something.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday December 10 2015, @03:18AM
Judging from the possible replies, one might think that 8-bit was just an Atari thing.
According to the wikipedia, the Model 4 was designed to accept a 16-bit CPU, but it wasn't implemented, so there were a lot of 8-bit TRS-80's.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80#Model_4 [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 11 2015, @11:22PM
Yes. TRS-80 Level 2 was my first.
(Score: 1) by crb3 on Sunday December 13 2015, @06:22AM
Z80-powered Ampro Little Board 1A, running CP/M, here. Most of my CP/M days work-habits are unneeded and happily forgotten, but I still get on best with a WordStar-like editor such as jstar, so there is a persistent influence.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by jmorris on Thursday December 10 2015, @03:20AM
I'm an eight bit guy. Tandy CoCo 4K Ram, 8K ROM and about half the owner's manual and a coupon for the rest... just as soon as they finished writing it. I think I had already upgraded to 16K Ram before the mailman brought it. And that was the best damned book I have ever seen for starting programming and I have seen a lot of them since.
It was a different time. The manual had many of the hardware details in the back. You could buy the service manual and it detailed pretty much everything. Called Motorola asking for info and they mailed out a datasheet on the 6809 for free. Saw that thing again a decade or so ago, tattered and turning brown. Learned so much from that it, somebody at Moto really made a difference. Hand assembled code, wrote a disassembler in BASIC to explore the BASIC ROM and then some of the carts and other code. There were few real secrets from a determined eye and the machine was simple enough that one mind could encompass the entirety of it's design from silicon to the inner details of the system software.
Now the people building hardware aren't even allowed to know how the inner bits work and no one mind could possibly even grasp it all.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 11 2015, @03:51PM
I was astounded to get a C-64 in the late 90's with documentation including schematic diagrams. That is just not done anymore for some reason. I suspect complexity is part of it.
I also suspect corruption due to the copyright lobby is also part of it. In the absence of that, it baffles me why hardware interfaces are considered trade-secret.
(Score: 1) by stormreaver on Friday December 11 2015, @06:10PM
The CoCo 2 was my first computer, followed shortly by the CoCo 3 (128K); later upgraded to 512K. OS9 Level 2 was absolutely amazing for its time, and I spent much time writing much BASIC09 and assembly language software for it.
The move to the IBM compatible world after the CoCo was discontinued was incredibly jarring. The 6809 was much better designed than the x86 of the time, and was a real pleasure to work with. And OS9 Level 2 blew the doors off of MS-DOS and Windows of the time.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday December 11 2015, @07:58PM
The move to the IBM compatible world after the CoCo was discontinued was incredibly jarring.
Same here. The middle years of msdos 5.0 looking for "OS-9 but on a modern PC" lead to linux around fall of '93
It was weird because my 286 and 386 were a huge hardware upgrade on my 6809 machines, but simultaneously a huge software downgrade until linux.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 13 2015, @04:48AM
Just make it stop. Please let us off this ride you call "interesting conversation"
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 10 2015, @03:43AM
The German branded version of the Amstrad CPC 464.
(Score: 2) by Non Sequor on Thursday December 10 2015, @04:12AM
I was 3 years old. I practiced my alphabet at the keyboard.
Write your congressman. Tell him he sucks.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 10 2015, @04:29PM
...ZXCVBNM. now I know my QWE's, next time, won't you sing with me?
(Score: 2) by Celestial on Thursday December 10 2015, @04:31AM
The Commodore 64 was my first computer, followed by the Commodore 128. Part of me wishes that I still had the 128. I remember many a night programming my own text adventure games as a wee lad.
(Score: 2) by WizardFusion on Friday December 11 2015, @01:52PM
Commodore plus/4 for me, I still have one in my parents attic/loft/roof-space.
It has the cassette desk and 15kb expansion module too
(Score: 2) by Marand on Sunday December 13 2015, @12:01AM
The Commodore 64 was my first computer, followed by the Commodore 128. Part of me wishes that I still had the 128.
Technically my first was a TRS-80 CoCo, but I was too young to really do much with it, so I tend to think of the Commodore 128 as the first computer, because it was the first one I really used for anything. I loved that thing and the gigantic manual that came with it. It seemed amazing, especially compared to my memories of the TRS-80; the difference in BASIC versions was huge (1.0 to 7.0), and you could even use backspace instead of having to retype entire lines, which was incredible. Got it second-hand from someone, I think because they were moving, so it didn't have much with it, just a CP/M disk and a couple others. Unfortunately, the disks were in bad shape so CP/M was the only one I could use reliably. Spent most of my time with it making my own stuff with BASIC, which is why I loved the manual it had.
I actually still have both computers, but I had to leave them in a storage unit near my grandparents during a move. Haven't seen any of that stuff in years, no idea what kind of shape any of it is in. Damn shame.
(Score: 2) by CirclesInSand on Friday December 18 2015, @07:50PM
My first computer was myself, but my first electronic computer was also a commodore 64.
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Thursday December 10 2015, @06:51AM
Bought a TRS-80 in 79, I was 20 at the time.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Thursday December 10 2015, @08:09AM
I was going for the Altair, but when I heard of all the power supply problems and clock oscillator problems that was corrected in the IMSAI design, I went for the IMSAI.
Besides, I liked the industrial-type construction of the IMSAI. Easy to get into it and it used standard parts ( except for that custom power transformer - but it was so well made the only way to make it fail was to leave it outside and run a truck over it. ).
I still have it.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by pogostix on Thursday December 10 2015, @08:57AM
8 bit - PCjr
(Score: 2) by WillR on Thursday December 10 2015, @09:31PM
(Score: 2) by shortscreen on Friday December 11 2015, @08:44AM
No, there are at least a couple more... for instance the guy that made this http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=61547 [pouet.net]
(Score: 1) by CHK6 on Monday December 14 2015, @01:16PM
My friend's father worked at IBM and bought him a PCjr. It was the first time I saw an actual computer the summer of 1986. I remember as we were both going into middle school. Two years prior I swapped out my Atari 2600 for the Nintendo Entertainment System. So my exposure to "electronics" was just games. I was memorized with the ability to get the computer to do things and obsessed with trying to get it to do my homework for me. Once we programmed a simple D&D dice generator there was no turning back, I was hooked. My school grades went through the roof as I found out I needed to really study and apply myself. I wanted so bad to be apart of this future. It took 4 more years of begging and pleading with my parents for a computer and my very own 386. It was my first digital love. I taught myself Turbo Pascal, assembly, and BASIC. This continues on today.
All thanks to the PCjr.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 10 2015, @10:54AM
Why are the 8 bit home computers restricted to Atari 800? There were plenty of 8 bit home computers.
I for one started with an 8 bit ZX81. If the 8-bit option had not been that restricted, I would have chosen it.
Note that other options are much less restricted, although 16-bit Intel is somewhat of a restriction, too; however at least not to a specific computer (like, say, IBM PC/XT).
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Thursday December 10 2015, @12:56PM
I took it to mean "8 bit like an Atari 800"
However at one point we had 2 spectrum 48ks (an original, and a Spectrum+), so I guess that would be 16 bits :)
(Score: 2) by mechanicjay on Wednesday December 16 2015, @10:58PM
My VMS box beat up your Windows box.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 18 2015, @10:38AM
When I wrote the comment, there was no "ex" there. That has been edited in afterwards (possibly due to my comment).
Unfortunately the Wayback machine seems to have no archived version of it, so I cannot prove it.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Friday December 11 2015, @12:36PM
I started out with a Sinclair ZX81 when I was 8. Then I got a 16k RAM pack and next the Skywave Software multitasking FORTH ROM. I've still got it, but I have no idea whether it still works. When I was a bit older I saved up for what felt like an eternity and bought a Spectrum 128. I should have bought a second-hand Amiga instead since it had a proper disk drive and a fancy OS. Having said that, I wrote my first C code on the Spectrum using the HiSoft C compiler.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Thursday December 10 2015, @12:30PM
C64 for me, chiptunes still make me nostalgic.
From there I went Amiga 500 -> A1200, which I clung too for waaaaaaaay longer than was sensible[*]. From there then I went through a "dark ages" period of Windows (Win98 initially, then XP) before discovering Linux (Ubuntu Gutsy, I think. Never looked back.
[*] Just tried to google up the classic Amiga / Dead Parrot parody to link here ("E's gone to meet Jay Miner!") but it seems to have been lost to the internets, or at least it's beyond my google-fu. Anyone got a link?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by LoRdTAW on Thursday December 10 2015, @02:32PM
First: Franklin Ace 1200, an Apple II clone. Came with color graphics, joystick, and used a sakata monitor. The first games I remember playing were Short Circuit which was totally different from the film of the same name. The other was Creative Contraptions, a rube-goldberg machine building game similar to the later Incredible Machine series. My father sold the system but not the monitor which served as a monitor for our Nintendo.
Second: Canon 8086 with EGA graphics, 20MB hard disk. Didn't get to use it much but later used it when my father got it back in the early 90's. I took it apart and that was the end of it.
Third: AT&T PC 6300 (8086), monochrome graphics and a 10MB hard disk. Was a downgrade from the Canon but my father moved the Canon to his business. A lot of school work was typed on that thing in Q&A word processor and printed on a daisy wheel printer and later a Citizen 200GX dot matrix. Again, took that machine apart and that was the end of it.
Fourth: Fastdata (white box maker) 486DX 33MHz, 4MB RAM, 170MB hard disk VGA graphics and a CDROM with caddies, think it was a 1x or 2x. I think it still is kicking around at a machine shop.
Fifth: Micron 486DX2 66MHz, 16MB RAM, 540MB HDD, 2x CDROM (tray load), VGA, 15" MAG monitor. I upgraded the CPU to a Pentium Overdrive and the graphics to a Number 9 VLB card with 2MB and finally being able to play Doom full screen, or maybe it was Quake. Still have that system although it was modified a lot. The case now houses a Tyan Tomcat dual socket 7 with dual pentium 233's (Originally a pentium 166) and 256MB RAM and my ATI 3D pro turbo with 4MB. I still have the original Micron 486 motherboard with the Pentium Overdrive, 16MB SIMM and the original 486 chip as well.
Years ago I cleaned my mother's basement out and threw out a lot of the vintage PC stuff I was collecting. I now kick myself as there were some really nice bits in there but you can't save everything. At work I took home a full Franklin Ace 1200 so I have been reunited with the first system I ever used even though it's not the exact same system. I also took home a Mits Altair 8800b and an IBM system 80. So I pretty much built my crap collection back up. They sit alongside some other goodies including two AT&T unix PC's, a 3b1 and 7300. My 3b1 is the one pictured in the Wikipedia article on the Unix PC. The video of the 7300 booting and running a c program is also mine. I also have a working Next station although no matching monitor. And I have some other older PC's kicking around. My only regret is taking apart the AT&T 6300 PC and the Canon. There were also some 386's my father had at work that I used to play on a lot too. They might still be kicking around at the same machine shop.
(Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Thursday December 10 2015, @02:43PM
So how would you classify the TI-99/4A? A powerful 16-bit processor dumbed down to fit in a wacky 8-bit system.
Imagine all of your system RAM is on your video card. And your video card is connected to your computer via a parallel port. That is about how it was implemented under the hood. And on top of that almost all software was written in an interpreted Graphics Programming Language.
(Score: 2) by CoolHand on Thursday December 10 2015, @02:56PM
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job-Douglas Adams
(Score: 2) by drussell on Friday December 11 2015, @08:34AM
The TI was 16-bit with a mostly 8-bit bus. The same idea as the 8088 setup in the PC. Only the 256-bit "scratchpad" SRAM was on the 16-bit bus, though many people hot-rodded their machines to put additional memory on the 16-bit, 0-wait state, bus instead of the 8-bit bus where memory usually went. (eg. on a 32K card in Peripheral Expansion Box.)
Actually a pretty powerful computer for the time, especially if you put 32K of SRAM on the 16-bit bus once that became somewhat affordable. :)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by shortscreen on Friday December 11 2015, @09:21AM
I'm not sure that people realize how hugely influential the TMS9918 video chip was. The design (dedicated memory bus for graphics data, character-based background, and hardware-multiplexed sprites) was copied a zillion times over.
The NES PPU is pretty much the same thing, but with 2bpp characters.
The TurboGrafx-16 VDC is also pretty similar, but with a faster 16-bit bus and 4bpp characters, and supporting higher resolutions. The SuperGrafx and PC-FX use this same VDC (two of them each).
The Sega SG-1000 used the 9918 and the Master System is backwards compatible with it, but adds a new video mode with 4bpp characters. The Game Gear is a variation of this. The Genesis is a further evolution, which uses VRAM instead of DRAM.
The MSX used the 9918, and later Yamaha's upgrades: the V9938 and V9958. These used faster DRAM configured in two banks to allow some new bitmapped modes.
(Score: 2) by GlennC on Thursday December 10 2015, @06:05PM
I cut my programming teeth in high school on a time-share PDP-11/70 in 1980.
I had to turn in a flowchart and hand-debug my source code on paper before I could even touch a keyboard. I also got a Timex Sinclair as a Christmas gift.
By the time I graduated, I had a command of BASIC, RPG-II, COBOL and FORTRAN.
Unfortunately, neither my parents nor my guidance counselor pointed out that I could probably have qualified for scholarships, so I ended up in an ill-advised attempt at Marine Corps boot camp. By the time I recovered from that tragedy, my skills were already outdated, and I ended up working my way through a lesser school than I could have otherwise attended.
Yes, I'm old....no, I don't mind if you hang out on my lawn, just please don't leave a mess.
Sorry folks...the world is bigger and more varied than you want it to be. Deal with it.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday December 13 2015, @05:50PM
1980 - makes me and my computer nerd buddies just a little older than you. Yeah, funny how doing service kinda put us out of touch, and behind, the younger kids. Timing and location has a lot to do with your development in computing. Until I met one of my shipmates, I never had an opportunity to touch a computer. He opened my eyes to sme of the possibilities of computers, and helped me to start understanding them. But then, with a discharge in hand, and a woefully inadequate knowledge of programming, there really wasn't a lot I could do with computers.
So, I've sat on the sidelines, a hobbyist, and watched the bright boys who went to college build the computing world around me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 10 2015, @10:09PM
I got the use of a used IBM PC_XT in the early 90's The 20MB hard-disk was a nice improvement over using two floppy drives (that was on a PC clone).
I am calling it 16bit because the addressable memory was 20bit (640KB useable), despite an 8 bit architecture.
(Score: 2) by jelizondo on Friday December 11 2015, @04:23AM
I cut my teeth on an HP 260 minicomputer at work, followed by HP 832 (HP-UX) but at home I started on a VIC 20, followed by a Commodore 64... Learned 6502 assembler and then later some 8086 assembler...
...a TRS-80 and an Osborne... I wanted a Sinclair so bad...
I waltzed around AS-400, SCO Unix and OS/2, followed by many years of Netware on 386 and 486 computers...
What a trip, man!
(Score: 2) by drussell on Friday December 11 2015, @08:42AM
Why 16-bit Intel only? What about things like the TI-99/4A. That was my first home computer. Prior to that was exposure to a Wang 2200 (which I think is 24-bit, IIRC, at least 24-bit wide memory sub-system, though I'd have to dig through technical info to remember how the bit-slice 7400-series ALUs which made up the "processor" were arranged.) It didn't have a "processor" in the traditional sense, rather one built out of 7400 series parts spread across a few boards. There were things like 8080s in there doing dedicated tasks but they weren't the "processor".
I still have working TI-99/4As and a working Wang 2200 LVP.
My cousins had a PET, I did do a little programming on that also, back in the day... :)
(Score: 2) by jasassin on Friday December 11 2015, @10:49AM
It was game console, but isn't it a computer? If you mean something with a keyboard, then C64.
I sold my C64 for more than I paid for it, but I had every cool piece of software for it. Mod editors, novaterm and a 1200 baud modem, every game. C64 graphics were way better than EGA. The sidd chip for sound was amazing! The arc shell! Learning assembly on the 6510 was cool.
If the c64 had faster stowage I'd probably still use it. They had a hard drive for it, but it was mass expensive.
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A
(Score: 3, Informative) by Hyperturtle on Friday December 11 2015, @08:58PM
Novaterm! Now that is a word I haven't heard in a long time.
I last used it to emulate 80 columns to connect to a telnet BBS and play some online game while also emulating ansi over a null modem connection to a PC acting as the internet gateway (off an rs-232 adapter on my c64).
You can get the faster storage; look up the SD card adapters. You can fit the entire library of games in probably a 4 or 8 gb SD card. the DOS included in the adapter (jiffy dos or something similar) handles the file system of course, and menus for access.
What annoys/amazes me is that I have diskettes from the early 80s that still work--way longer than other things I've bought. The whole thing still works just as it used to, but some games are better remembered than played again... some of my memories make the games better than they seemed to be to me today, sadly enough.
(Score: 3, Informative) by soylentsandor on Tuesday December 15 2015, @09:57AM
Sure it's a computer. You could even program the thing in Basic [codinghorror.com].
Though, having seen that page I think I should be glad I never had that rom.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by blackhawk on Friday December 18 2015, @01:21PM
I have a couple of SID chips stashed away - after prying them from machines rotting in people's attics and sold for $5 on e-bay. I really should get around to using them some day, like put them into a Raspberry Pi or something.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by UncleSlacky on Friday December 11 2015, @04:38PM
The Spectrum died when I lent it to a friend - threw it away (including box, manual, "Horizons" tape and all) before the coming of eBay and have been kicking myself ever since. I swear the dead-flesh rubber Speccy keyboard is better than most modern laptops, though...
Still have the CPC in the attic (probably still works, though it'll need a new belt for the disc drive by now). There's also an Amiga 600 rescued from the tip, my wife's ZX81, a Mac IIsi, a blueberry iMac, a Gateway 2000 desktop circa 2001 and a pre-Thinkpad IBM laptop (N33sx PS/2 Note) - all of which work, except the ZX81, and that could just be a faulty power supply.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DECbot on Friday December 11 2015, @08:00PM
The 32-bit and 64-bit platforms should really be separated. While technically, yes, most code on a original Pentium will work on an i7, but there is a big difference in performance and development environments between what was around for the 386 processor and what was available when the amd64 spec came out.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 1) by CHK6 on Monday December 14 2015, @12:58PM
This choice starts from the 1960's to today. 5 decades is a pretty broad margin.
(Score: 2) by DECbot on Monday December 14 2015, @03:45PM
Considering that the x86/amd64 architecture spans 3 decades and separating the amd64 from the x86 architecture will delineate at least those who started in the past decade.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 2) by Appalbarry on Friday December 11 2015, @10:49PM
Which, I admit, I never really did much with. Just too limited and too lacking in patience.
The C64 was the first real computer, especially once we added a serial adaptor that let it print to our Smith-Corona daisywheel typewriter, and PaperClip, probably THE word processor for that platform. Then of course the 300 baud modem for bulletin boards.
Then it was on to PC, with DOS and WordPerfect 5.1, then MS Office and various Windows.
A short and thoroughly unpleasant few years with an Apple machine, then back to PC, but with Mint Linux.
Been there ever since.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 12 2015, @02:23AM
I was so fortunate to be exposed to Multics at a young age - Multics prepared me for a long and successful carer. Thanks Multicians for being such a blessing to all those who have been exposed to Multics and the concepts that have found their way into other systems.
(Score: 2) by Rich on Saturday December 12 2015, @02:37AM
I voted for 8-bit, because I started with a ZX 80 and switched to an Apple II soon after (and got to know 6502 rather than Z80 assembly back then). But technically my first turing complete machine was a Casio FX-502P calculator. I still credit my ability to write tight and fast code if it matters to learning coding on that thing. Sometimes I wonder how I was able to write a "one-armed-bandit" game using the "degree-minutes-seconds" display for the wheels at that age with the given "platform". It eventually was confiscated in school and disappeared. Many years later I bought one from eBay to replace it (and on top of that all the nice HPs that my family was unable to afford in those days).
(Score: 2) by meisterister on Saturday December 12 2015, @02:00PM
32 bit PowerPC here. Also, what of all of those folks who had a 68k, or one of the other of the plethora of 16 and 32 bit processors that existed before x86 and ARM conquered the world?
(May or may not have been) Posted from my K6-2, Athlon XP, or Pentium I/II/III.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mendax on Saturday December 12 2015, @02:16PM
My first computer was a Control Data Cyber 174, a third generation descendant of the CDC 6000-series supercomputers from the mid-1960s designed by Seymour Cray. The computer was greased lightning but access to it until toward the end of its life was at 300 baud. Suffice it to say you had to be patient when using it. This was in high school, around 1980, and I learned Fortran on it first. When I started my university career I learned COBOL on a successor machine, the Cyber 170-730, which is very scary because it actually had a decent COBOL compiler and database system. The sucker was so fast that it didn't matter that all the BCD math was done via subroutines and not directly via hardware. I also learned assembly language on it, and that was another amazing feature of that machine. Its instruction set was RISC before the term was coined. It had lots of registers and was actually fun to write code for.
The operating system was a hacked batch system, which acted as if you were feeding it punched cards line by line via the terminal and treated every disk file as if it were a tape, but it had some real elegance. Its control language, unlike IBM's JCL, which is the spawn of Satan, was a pretty decent programming language in itself, not unlike Unix shells in many respects. It's implementation of virtual memory was very primitive: When your went out for keyboard input, the entire program was "rolled out" of memory onto disk and its "control point" was given up to another program that was subsequently "rolled in". Once you pressed return, your program was scheduled to be "rolled in" and its execution continued. When the computer was not busy, the delay was very slight since the speed of disk I/O on Cybers was legendary. But when it was busy and you were working with a memory hog, you might as well go and get a cup of coffee instead of watching the cursor blink.
Lots of fond memories of the Cybers. Someone in Australia developed a Cyber emulator that is freely available. However, you have to supply your own "dead start tape", the operating system, something I don't have, otherwise I'd be playing with these things still.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 13 2015, @10:36PM
CDC 6000-series (iirc, 6400), around 1970. I was in high school and we had to drive over to the big uni nearby to submit our Fortran punch card decks. Output on wide green/white paper with tractor sprocket holes.
There was a card punch at the high school, or if you got fast turn around and wanted to debug at the U there were card punches there too. Didn't get much beyond matrix inversion in that intro class.
(Score: 2) by Koen on Saturday December 12 2015, @02:40PM
I voted 8-bit, but I'm actually older than that...
My first programming platform was the 4 bit Texas Instruments TMS 0501 [datamath.org] processor.
/. refugees on Usenet: comp.misc [comp.misc]
(Score: 2) by Dunbal on Saturday December 12 2015, @08:01PM
IBM System/3 [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by turgid on Saturday December 12 2015, @08:05PM
You poor soul.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by mendax on Sunday December 13 2015, @05:57AM
.... my first computing platform was paper and pencil, followed soon after by my dad's HP 35 calculator I barely understood.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 16 2015, @11:29AM
Really? Strictly speaking, my first computing platform were my fingers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 13 2015, @09:46PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_1620 [wikipedia.org] IBM 1620
(Score: 2) by SDRefugee on Monday December 14 2015, @02:05AM
My first computer was a TRS80 Model 1, the *cheap* "level 1 4K" version, which I bought new in 1979 while in the US Army in Yuma Arizona, for $795, and was the first TRS80 sold in the Yuma Arizona Radio Shack store, as I recall. It was surprising how much you could do with only 4KB of ram, and a BASIC interpreter that only had 26 integer variables and 26 string variables.. Later my computer was an S100 Z80 system with 64Kb of ram, two 8" floppy drives. Unbelievable how far we've come since then.....
America should be proud of Edward Snowden, the hero, whether they know it or not..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 14 2015, @05:13AM
IBM RS6000 with AIX.
(Score: 2) by dltaylor on Tuesday December 15 2015, @12:37AM
The first "computer" I was ever involved with was an analog computer in an air-defence system; didn't program it, though, so the first one that I count was made by Compucorp, a small business desktop and portable computer maker with proprietary hardware and, of course, software; some of their products were also sold by Monroe. There was specialized firmware for bond trading and land survey, which created a secondary market for some time after the company went bust. About that time, Canon came out with an SX-series of general purpose desktop computers, initially with mag cards for storage, and a built-in thermal printer, and I did some programming for those.
At various times, I have programmed all of the listed choices, and a great many more; good times.
(Score: 1) by gznork26 on Tuesday December 15 2015, @06:14AM
The first one I programmed, in 1969, was a thing called a DIGIAC 3080. It was the size of a desk, and it had 4K on a drum. There were bat switches for entering binary, and a paper tape reader/punch for reading in the boot loader. Binary was my first language, and then the assembler it understood. Beyond that, we had to go elsewhere.
Khipu were Turing complete.
(Score: 2) by DutchUncle on Thursday December 17 2015, @08:20PM
Fortran 4. Ah, those were the days.
(Score: 2) by blackhawk on Friday December 18 2015, @01:14PM
The first computer I ever got to touch was in a local library, and it was a Dick Smith System 80 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Smith_Super-80_Computer#See_also [wikipedia.org] - a clone of the TRS-80 with 16kb RAM, in-built cassette, and a BASIC interpreter. I was lucky, the library also had a book on learning BASIC, so a week later I was hitting CTRL-BREAK, listing the code, reading, learning, then putting in pithy hacks.
Every day after school (I was 12) I would head down to that library on the way home. I would book the computer and spend as many hours as I could working with it. Luckily, computer use was a rare skill and pretty much no-one was interested in it, except myself and another guy I met at that keyboard.
I managed to get my mitts on a Sinclair ZX-81 for a glorious and frustrating weekend. Hours of punching in programs and not seeing them all work was taking it's toll, but I was smitten. I literally cried when I had to give it back.
Within a few months I was craving my own machine, but it's hard to buy a computer when you're 12 - and it's 1980. I washed cars every weekend, saved up all my pocket money, mowed lawns, did odd jobs and asked for some cash back from my parents I had loaned them (to buy some land). All up it was enough to buy an Ohio Scientific Instruments C-1P Challenger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohio_Scientific. [wikipedia.org] A computer with 8K RAM (5K addressable), black and white character based graphics, and no sound.
It wasn't much, but it was mine, and I spent every single day learning BASIC, trying programs from a book I'd bought, reading magazines and writing my own games. In time (around 13 years old 1981ish) I had to learn assembler to really push the hardware into doing what I wanted. That meant I also needed to learn how to write a line editor and an assembler. Lucky, there was an assembler for another machine in a magazine listing. I ripped it apart and re-wrote it to handle 6502, and finally the golden age was reached. I could hand-write assembler code and type it in, having the software do the work of turning that into machine code. You can't imagine the amount of hours that saved me.
It took until uni to get access to better hardware, when 8086 machines and a VAX, PDP-11 were available. In the meantime, I'd pushed my BASIC skills as far as I could, was pretty hot at 6502 assembler and ready for a new age of challenges...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 18 2015, @09:44PM
Where is abacus? I've got started on a corinthian pearwood model - the beads were exquisite.
(Score: 2) by ese002 on Friday December 18 2015, @11:32PM
Nobody cut their teeth on an Amiga, Atari ST, or pre-Intel Macintosh?
I will admit I did not either. Amiga was my fourth platform. Apple II -> 8088 PC -> IBM Mainframe -> Amiga