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[slembcke]

Interesting. For a lot of people, it was their fathers that introduced them to the world of computers/got them interested in programming.

Somewhat ironically, my mother was the one that went to school for computers. She doesn't talk about it much now, but I guess she used to write disk drivers for Control Data machines in assembly or somesuch. O_o She put my dad through medical school this way. By the time I was old enough to understand anything, she seemed to care very little for computers though.

[Pirate Hearts]

Some IBM-compatible Commodore 286 with 640KB of RAM (but MS-DOS used about 128KB of that, so I only had 512KB for games), 4-color CGA graphics, and two 5.25" disk drives.  I loved the chunky feeling of inserting those gigantic floppy disks and clicking the lock into place.  Computers were so much more tactile back in the day.  Learned GW-BASIC on that thing when I was like 5 or 6.  Good times.

Next machine was an IBM 386 Windows 3.1 box with something like 2MB RAM and a 20MB hard drive?  I forget.  Upgraded to QBASIC on that thing.  <3 SCREEN 7 <3

Then in like '97 we got a sweet super-gimmicky 200MHz Windows 95 machine.  It was an IBM Aptiva S (my parents had a thing for IBM back then) that came out during the heyday of gimmicky PC designs.  It had a wireless three-button mouse (no wheel, though); the speakers were integrated into the monitor (ha, remember that?), and the monitor sat on top of this little external disc drive thing.  I basically never touched the actual desktop box.  It sat on the floor and collected dust.



Oh yeah and it also came with a flight stick and a folder full of games discs (some demos, but mostly full games).  Sooooo gimmicky in retrospect, but I thought it was the coolest thing ever when I was 13.

I guess I've had about four machines since then, but they've all been fairly uninteresting.  My most recent one was also the first one I built myself (got it back in June '08), and I'm going to build another one next weekend.

[Cthulhu32]

My brother had a Commodore 64, but I never did anything but play pirated games and find hidden porn games so I'm not going to count that as my actual first computer.



Macintosh Quadra 605, the "cheap" version that did not come with a CD drive or anything fancy. It had 4MB of Ram, a 25mhz processor, a 160mb hard drive (we updgraded instead of the lowest 80mb), and an external 14.4kbps modem. I remember watching my first .MOV on that thing, Daft Punk's around the world. (specs http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_quadra/stats/mac_quadra_605.html) And I remember doing my first game hacks on an old shoot the bird game. You could use a resource editor, and modify all the image files. I wonder if I could find those old files and up them somewhere :D

[r.kachowski]

bbc micro! wooo

it was pretty old even back then.

[Melly]

I believe it was a 386, can't remember anything specific about it. Only that we used to play all sorts of DOS games on it. However, there was never any sound.

I played a fuckton of X-Wing and Tie-Fighter.

[OneMoreGo]

First computer was an Amiga 500 when I was 18.

[Hayden Scott-Baron]

Commodore 64 with Datasette.
December 25th, 1984. I was four years old.

My mum helped me write my first program in basic a few months later, but my coding didn't improve much over the next couple of decade.

[Aquin]

My first computer was one o' thems 8086 XTs or something.  I just remember playing typing games on it.  But that kinda goes back before my real childhood memories.

I do recall growing up with a 386 and playing a fuckto-- oh I see Melly has that covered.

[LemonScented]

I learnt to program on a BBC Micro



But my family wasn't nearly posh enough to actually own one, it belonged to my school. The first one I could call my own was a Spectrum +2



Happy days

[JamesPopStar]

And I remember doing my first game hacks on an old shoot the bird game. You could use a resource editor, and modify all the image files.

Yeah! I used to use ResEdit and hack freeware / shareware games like crazy. That comment brought back vivid and amusing memories, like hacking an old Macintosh virtual goldfish program, "Kingyo" to be all sorts of different things in the bowl other than a fish.



My first computer was the Macintosh Performa 3360 running System 7. I made my first games in HyperCard, and Al Staffieri's GameMaker (http://alstaffieri.com/gamemaker.html) if anybody remembers that one...

[Brother Android]

That looks a lot like The Incredible Machine. Is there a relationship, or did one just rip off the other?

[sereneworx]

Ah. Memories...