What was the first computer you owned?

My dad brought home our first family computer in 1990.  I was young at the time and only knew to press F5 to play mixed up mother goose.

My first personal computer was a home brew P4/GeForce4 gaming computer.

I believe mine was a Commodore 64 as well.

Commodore 64 in early/mid 80s.  Also had an Apple II that got me thru College.  Visicalc and Apple Writer were FAR OUT at the time!!!  Ginormous dot matrix printer too!  In law school I upgraded to a REAL IBM 286 machine that may have had only a 14k modem, which made online legal research more a pain than anything!  The coolest game however was Doom, playing it over the early network at work in early 90s.  Hours and hours of killing fun.  Also on the IBM the F15 Eagle game was a blast!

This.

This is actually why I started this thread, I was talking to coworkers about playing doom in the early 90's on my 28k modem and all the young guys had never played it. I remember thinking what an amazing age we live in when I can sit in my house playing a game vs. other friends in their house. The chat function was revisionary for crap talking during games. I bought the 56k modem to play Diablo in 96'.

The first one I owned, or the first one my family owned while I was alive?

In 97 I built my first PC as a sophomore in college cause I wasn't at home, and had an apartment, and laptops suck.

The first computer my family had was a Commodore Vic-20.  That would be 1980.  We probably had the version with 3 kb RAM.  It had a tape drive!  Back in those days, computer magazines used to have code in them for games, as the Commodore OS was just BASIC.  My mom would type them for us to play.

When we replaced it with a Commodore 64 in 82-83, we got a 5.25" floppy drive.  In 85, we upgraded to an Amiga 1000.  My brother and I kept playing the C-64 for a few years.  In 88/89, we got a 386 without a math co-processor, and we've been Intel architecture based since.

mine was a C-64 as well and I remember sitting there for hours typing in line after line of code just to run a program to see a 2D ball (circle) be drawn on the screen and then bounce across it. 

Now I play EA sports baseball and my wife walks in the room, glances at the TV and asks me who's playing... as if I'm watching a live game.

The first computer I ever used was a Trash-80 in a BASIC programming class when I was in high school.

In college, I got an Apple Mac Plus with an external floppy drive. That would be the first computer that I actually owned.

I remember my dad bringing home a VIC20 back when I was about 5.  We never had a Commodore 64 but that was the first computer I used in a school. I think after the VIC20 my dad got a Tandy something or other with an orange screen, and the computer/monitor were all in one big box.  Then came the PC, I think it was an 8086 or 8088 or something like that.  Then came the 286, 386 etc...

My first networking experience was on a 1200 baud modem.  I thought it was bad because my friend was using a 300 baud or something ... its hard to remember that far back!

Commodore 64 here as well, I recall a couple of the games clearly...

Battle Of Midway was a favorite along with winter Games!!

You'll love this. I was in 5th grade, in 1982-83. I sold the most magazines and vinyl albums for the school fundraiser. My grand prize:

a TI-99/4A.

My parents bought cartridge games for it, and the speech synthesizer. I didn't have a disc drive. I had a tape drive, that would mean reloading a program after every time you turned on the power.

In 8th grade, I got an Apple IIc with an Imagewriter color printer. I took that to college in 1990. I was the only person on my floor with a computer. There were no email addresses at my school until 1993, and the computer labs were only open some hours, so I could type papers late night when no one around me could.

When I graduated and went to seminary, for a wedding gift, my parents bought us a Gateway 33mhz with windows 3.1 and a 20meg hard drive. I had finally hit the big leagues.

I bought a Packard Bell 486-SX33 desktop on my brand new Navy Exchange line of credit in 1994.  It had 4MB of RAM (yes MB) and I remember saving for 6 months to buy a 4MB upgrade for almost $250.

My wife was so ticked I bought the computer because we really couldn't afford it at the time, but I absolutely loved it.  I spent hours and hours on it every day learning everything I possibly could about it.

I learned so much that when I got out of the Navy I got a job working on computers and fast forward 18 years I now own a very successful IT company that supports thousands of computers for our customers.  My wife has since apologized for getting mad at me about buying the computer.  

I can still remember everything about that old computer.  lol

My dad brought home an Apple IIE in 82 or 83...I was 6 years old, but I remember going to the computer store with him vaguely while he geeked out. He's always been a tech junkie. 

The first one I bought myself was an HP desktop in 99. I don't remember the exact model, but I went for the smallest processor and smallest monitor possible. Was bummed because it didn't have a CD burner, but we had Napster back then so it all worked out OK

this was the first computer i ever saw & used.  my mom was was of the first 100 employees of compaq and she brought this beast home one day.  it weighed 28lbs and was portable 

RCA Cosmac VIP

(rca_cosmac-vip.jpg)