Your first experiences of computers

[Journeyman]

Inspired by the thread about your first mobile phone, I thought I'd ask about your first experiences with using computers. I was a kid as the home computer boom took place in the early eighties, and it's a time I'm very nostalgic about.

I remember clearly the very first time I actually saw a computer working and got to use it - I was eight years old at the time, and my primary school didn't have any computers of it's own at that point (early 1983). However, one of the teachers owned her own Commodore PET, and she brought it in one day, for groups of kids to use.

There was some sort of text-based adventure/puzzle game running on it, and I remember being completely blown away by it - I'd seen the future! Up to this point, computers were mythical, distant things. Actually using one was a revelation.

Not long afterwards, I made friends with a kid who had a Sinclair ZX81, and despite its limitations, we had a lot of fun with it. I badgered my parents to buy me one for my ninth birthday. It didn't last long, but it got me hooked on BASIC programming.

I then used BBC Micros a lot at school, but I wasn't much of a gamer, I preferred trying to work out how these things could be useful and labour-saving.

I got a Spectrum +2 in 1987, which I was really excited about, but by then the Spectrum was well past its prime, and I soon discovered it was basically just a gaming platform. Connecting up hardware like printers and disk drives was challenging and expensive, so I never quite managed to do the serious stuff I wanted on it. I sold it about three years later.

I've got another one now, though, and I have access to a printer and an SD card storage device, so I'm having fun doing all the things I couldn't do as a kid with it. It's actually not bad for knocking together quick, simple documents!

What are your earliest computing memories?

 

[Peter Mugridge]

Mine would also have been the ZX81 then the Spectrum. What I remember most about the Spectrum was the very nice comfortable soft rubber keys.

 

[Journeyman]

Mine would also have been the ZX81 then the Spectrum. What I remember most about the Spectrum was the very nice comfortable soft rubber keys.

Certainly a distinctive design choice. I never owned a rubber key Speccy myself, but lots of friends did. Sinclair computers were quirky as hell and had lots of limitations, but they were incredibly affordable.

 

[Tetchytyke]

My mum was a typist at Commodore Computers in Sydney in the very early 80s and so my family had a VIC-20 with a generous staff discount. I'm not old enough to really remember using computers until the late 80s, we still had and used the VIC-20 at home and my first school had BBC Basics. I remember the printer paper which came on a big reel with holes on perforated sides.

The first "modern" computer I used was an RM Nimbus PC-286 with a dot matrix printer. I remember being amazed by modernity when we "acquired" an upgrade from Windows 2 to Windows 3.

I was a gamer. My parents bought it for education, and I just arsed around on SimCity and Lemmings

 

[Bletchleyite]

My Dad got a ZX Speccy 16K when I was about 3. I fairly soon started playing with it and coding in BASIC once I was old enough to work out what that was. I reckon it was the foundation of most of my generation of the IT industry. I remember us taking it to a shop somewhere in Liverpool to be upgraded to a massive 48K!

 

[Journeyman]

My mum was a typist at Commodore Computers in Sydney in the very early 80s and so my family had a VIC-20 with a generous staff discount. I'm not old enough to really remember using computers until the late 80s, we still had and used the VIC-20 at home and my first school had BBC Basics. I remember the printer paper which came on a big reel with holes on perforated sides.

The first "modern" computer I used was an RM Nimbus PC-286 with a dot matrix printer. I remember being amazed by modernity when we "acquired" an upgrade from Windows 2 to Windows 3.

I was a gamer. My parents bought it for education, and I just arsed around on SimCity and Lemmings

Haha! Loads of my friends managed to con their parents into buying BBC Micros for the "educational value", and all they ever did was play Elite on them!

I had a mate who really liked his VIC-20 long beyond its commercial life, because he wired up all sorts of extra bits and pieces to it for electronics projects. He reckoned it was a good platform for that.

The TV ads with William Shatner were quite cool!

My Dad got a ZX Speccy 16K when I was about 3. I fairly soon started playing with it and coding in BASIC once I was old enough to work out what that was. I reckon it was the foundation of most of my generation of the IT industry. I remember us taking it to a shop somewhere in Liverpool to be upgraded to a massive 48K!

Lots of people started out with 16K Spectrums, but very few survive now - almost all of them got upgraded. It's easily the rarest model these days - in decent nick, at least - and if you have one that works, it's worth a fair bit of money.

 

[C J Snarzell]

I would say late 1980s when my primary school purchased a couple of new computers which were shared between all the classes and the year groups. I seem to remember every once in a while it was your turn to go and use it for half an hour with a class mate. The computer was set up on a trolley in the main corridor and you simply got some down time away from class to enjoy a couple of education programmes they had installed which were based around spelling.

As for games consoles - this would have been around 1989. My cousin had the original Nintendo console which was shaped like a VHS player. I remember playing the first Mario Bros game along with Duck Hunt where you fired the gun at the screen.

CJ

 

[Journeyman]

I would say late 1980s when my primary school purchased a couple of new computers which were shared between all the classes and the year groups. I seem to remember every once in a while it was your turn to go and use it for half an hour with a class mate. The computer was set up on a trolley in the main corridor and you simply got some down time away from class to enjoy a couple of education programmes they had installed which were based around spelling.

I think that's a classic British primary school experience from that era, a lot like the TV on a trolley coming out for a show like Words and Pictures or Look and Read. If the show was on video, it's almost certain that the teacher in charge would struggle to get it working, and the brainy kid in the class would bail them out...

 

[Darandio]

Great thread!

First experiences were at primary school with the BBC Micro and the first home computer was a Speccy +2. This was swapped for an Amstrad CPC for a short period before getting the +2 back. I also had a Commodore 64 for short while as well. Then consoles came along and the Nintendo Entertainment System took over for a while before I moved over to the Amiga.

It's gone full circle now though, i've started collecting again and it ain't cheap!

I remember playing the first Mario Bros game along with Duck Hunt where you fired the gun at the screen.

I've bought that very game again in the last couple of weeks!

 

[xotGD]

My Dad got a ZX Speccy 16K when I was about 3. I fairly soon started playing with it and coding in BASIC once I was old enough to work out what that was. I reckon it was the foundation of most of my generation of the IT industry. I remember us taking it to a shop somewhere in Liverpool to be upgraded to a massive 48K!

I've still got my Spectrum. Jetpac was the only game I was any good at.

I did the upgrade to 48k myself after getting the chips from a shop in Newcastle. I remember that to avoid the risk of static damaging the chips you had to wash your hands in cold water and stand on a sheet of newspaper.

We had a BBC Micro at school.

 

[Journeyman]

It's gone full circle now though, i've started collecting again and it ain't cheap!

You're right. Demand for old computers has gone through the roof recently, and my particular area of interest - Sinclair stuff - has seen a huge jump in price. I bought my Spectrum +2 on eBay getting on for ten years ago and it was about £40. You'll be lucky to find one for less than a hundred quid now. I hope it doesn't break, I couldn't afford to replace it.

 

[C J Snarzell]

Great thread!

First experiences were at primary school with the BBC Micro and the first home computer was a Speccy +2. This was swapped for an Amstrad CPC for a short period before getting the +2 back. I also had a Commodore 64 for short while as well. Then consoles came along and the Nintendo Entertainment System took over for a while before I moved over to the Amiga.

It's gone full circle now though, i've started collecting again and it ain't cheap!



I've bought that very game again in the last couple of weeks!

View attachment 83295

Some of the classic games consoles were re-released in a mini format in 2018 with about 20 games built in to them. I know the NES and SNES were released for a limited time and at one point they were on sale in the audio section of my local Sainsburys. They were only made for a short time and any still available to buy on the Internet are double in price to what they were two years ago.

The original consoles are still floating around in places like CEX but like you said you can expect to pay a small fortune for them now. The Sega Matersystem was still my favourite - Alex the Kidd & Out Run!!!

CJ

 

[johntea]

Granny's Garden!

For my sins I've now worked in IT 15 years since leaving education (although my first job was 9 years in education IT!)...you find doing it 37 hours a week the novelty of new technology just isn't there any more sadly, installing Windows 10 is rather boring compared to installing Windows 95 then having to fiddle with device drivers and the like for several hours!

 

[SteveM70]

A lad in the year above me won a BBC Model B for the school in a competition on (I think) Blue Peter. When it arrived nobody really knew what to do with it, least of all the teachers.

That would’ve been around 1982.

A Xmas or two later I got a ZX81 and I’d spend ages copying core out of magazines for games that seemed amazing

 

[GRALISTAIR]

In 1974 my A level mathematics teacher taught us FORTRAN. I learned about computers then. At college I continued along with my sciences and maths classes. I also started using a computer terminal. Then in 1980 I started using one at work but programming in BASIC. I then bought a Sinclair ZX81 In 1980. I used an Amstrad 1680 from. 1987 onwards along with a BBC. My first IBM compatible with mouse etc that I actually owned was purpose designed for me using 386 with a maths co-processor and 8Mb RAM. I got this late 1992. I have been using them and building them ever since. My first Penguin was 1994.

 

[Journeyman]

Yeah, I was a big fan of type-ins from magazines. They were invariably a bit disappointing, but it was a good way to expand your software library cheaply, and I enjoyed customising stuff.

 

[JohnMcL7]

The very first computer I remember was the BBC Micro at primary school which the school had just one of and each class would get it for two weeks each term, there was a balancing game where you had to perform basic arithmetic to get each side of the weighing scales to be the same. At some point in the 80's my parents bought our first home computer which was a Commodore C64C and then replaced by an Amiga 500+ and in the mid 90's an X86 PC in the early Pentium era.

The Commodore 64 started off a lifelong interest in computing and although those PCs look so laughably basic compared to now I like that direct access you had to the hardware through software and how each machine was unique. Nowadays most computing devices are quite generic and many are broadly compatible plus you're very isolated from the hardware, a current console game is a huge amount of code whereas with the C64C and similar you could see the game code and easily just write it yourself by typing it in.

Recently I've been getting into retro computing following a few Youtube channels which I find fascinating because I had no idea what a C64 really was nor how it was placed in the market so I've really enjoyed understanding it and many others better. I also find it amazing how old hardware can be repaired through basic soldering and checking whereas current electronics are often far too complex to be able to do much with. I'd recommend these channels for those interested in retro computers and would like to hear any recommendations for similar channels:

Retro Man Cave (RMC) - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLEoyoOKZK0idGqSc6Pi23w
The 8-bit Guy - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8uT9cgJorJPWu7ITLGo9Ww
Adrian's Digital Basement - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCE5dIscvDxrb7CD5uiJJOiw

 

[Baxenden Bank]

First sight would have been at secondary school in the early 1980's. A local computer distributor donated one to the school. It sat in a room of it's own. Can't remember seeing or using one at college (16-18) but they were more common by my time at polytechnic (remember them). A room with a few rows of green screen terminals and the early Apple Macs. We also did some BASIC programming as one module of the course, I understood it and enjoyed it but took it no further.

 

[GusB]

Our school got a Spectrum 48k when I was in primary 5 - 1984/5 ish, but it wasn't until a year or two later when I received my own - a second-hand Amstrad CPC464, complete with DMP1 printer, green monitor and TV modulator (all still in a box under the stairs).

When I got to secondary school in 1986 it was BBCs and RM Nimbus machines that we had. Comal was the language we used in computing, although I used to play around with Basic on the Amstrad at home.

 

[Butts]

I did A-Level Computer Science 1977/79.

All we had was a terminal connected to the Open University Computer , not even a Screen or Visual Display Unit as they were then known.

It was mostly theory with a lot of Charles Babbage and a bit of basic programming and predictions for the future ( a lot of which came true)

 

[Ianno87]

My primary school got the Acorn computers supplied by Tesco's Computers for Schools promotion in the early 1990s.

 

[birchesgreen]

My primary school had a computer for a short time in the late 70s (probably 79). I didn't really get to use it though much and i can't remember what it was. My Dad bought a Sinclair ZX-80 in 1980, i've still got it!

 

[thejuggler]

In a large manufacturing plant in the 80s. A room looking like 1970s James Bond villains lair. Getting tapes out of a safe and setting them whirring, a printer so large it was lifted into the room using a crane! Tractor paper to run in said printer, tearing off the holes once it had printed. Punch cards to run the daily production programmes.

Within 5 years I was using a Vax mainframe, then I was introduced to an Apple 512k. Rapid progress in a few short years.

 

[xotGD]

Yeah, I was a big fan of type-ins from magazines. They were invariably a bit disappointing, but it was a good way to expand your software library cheaply, and I enjoyed customising stuff.

Having a twin deck tape recorder was also a cheap way to expand your software library!

You could borrow games from our public library, and the then return them after making an, er, 'backup'.

 

[Journeyman]

Having a twin deck tape recorder was also a cheap way to expand your software library!

You could borrow games from our public library, and the then return them after making an, er, 'backup'.

Haha, that worked too. There were plenty of C90s knocking around my school with loads of top games on them. The more enterprising students even had the nerve to charge for them...

 

[bspahh]

My brother went to computer club at school from 1978-9, when I was 11. I remember him explaining stacks, when programming in assembler. He then built his own computer with a 6809 CPU, where the keyboard and screen were a pocket calculator, like the one in the Cornflakes offer http://cerealoffers.com/Kelloggs/Cornflakes/1975/Pocket_Calculator/pocket_calculator.html

He wrote a "driving" game, where you had 3 positions and a stream of characters across the 8 character display.

A couple of years later, we then got a Dragon 32, also with a 6809 CPU

 

[eMeS]

Back in 1956/7 my school took a small group of us to the computer laboratories at Manchester University where I saw their CRT screen based computer memory (a Williams tube) on their very early computer, which is now recognised as probably the first in the World.
Two years later in the RAF I worked in a laboratory where dekatrons were used to provide labelled time signals which were used to time when signals were received. (Masses of processing, but never described as a computer.)
In 1961, at university, we were offered optional computer lectures on a Saturday morning. On my way to maths lectures, I walked past the garden shed structure where the very first DNA molecule models were being assembled.

I started work in 1962, and my first job was to make a He-Ne gas laser, and surprisingly, it worked. More surprisingly, it went into production. Others were working on analogue computers but these were giving way to digital, and we took delivery of our first general purpose digital computer to assist us in our calculations. Marvellous - its room was air-conditioned! It was an Elliott 803, and later replaced by a 503. And Harold Wilson spoke about the "white heat of technology" - 1963.

I became a junior manager, and was instructed by my MD to push all our PCB designs through the site computer facilities which was then a bureau operation. My engineers hated it. Design a circuit board, code it by hand at one's desk, walk to the bureau, and type in one's code. At the earliest of a day later, get an errors list which then had to be corrected, and the data in-put again, normally a week later. Much, much slower then that getting an expert in the DO to do the same task in a morning - and we were severely criticised for late delivery, but it was the start of CAD. I remember being shown the first alphabet letters on a CRT screen, rather than needing to wait for a print-out. This was part of the work to provide "word-processing" facilities to the print industry. Part of my team added the latest in digital signal processing to a WWII radar in one of the RAF's surveillance planes.

Some years later, part of the team was working on the latest in ASICs whilst others, supporting already delivered RAF test gear, were still to be seen carrying large hard-drive platters, protected by their dust covers.

I retired in 2000.

 

[Darandio]

Having a twin deck tape recorder was also a cheap way to expand your software library!

You could borrow games from our public library, and the then return them after making an, er, 'backup'.

Or record them from a special radio station.

 

[Jamesrob637]

Acorns at home in the early 90s. A3010 then A3020. They were numbered similar to Airbus planes hence they were easy to remember.

 

[bearhugger]

For me it was the last year at junior school so 1982/3. An Acorn computer that the teacher was typing a program into. I asked if I could finish doing that and then aved and tested the program, which taught about symmentry if I remember correctly. Learnt basic on BBC Micros at secondary school. My first own computer was a ZX81. I used to get those magazines that had programs for most of the popular computers - ZX81, sinclairs & commodores. Probably the most irritating thing was starting to load a game on the tape, going for tea and coming back to find it hadn't loaded for some reason!