Our First Computers

Check out these enlightening and entertaining ‘first computer’ experiences from our staff and regular contributors.

Dave Methvin (PC Pitstop)

The first computer I ever used was an HP 2100 minicomputer, at our high school in 1974. I took a class in Basic and we used a TTY and acoustic coupler to connect to it.

The lights on the front panel were also buttons; in college I wrote an assembly language game that flashed the lights in different patterns and if you predicted the next light to go on you won.

The first computer I owned at home was an AT&T 6300, in 1984. It was basically an nice looking IBM PC clone but it had twice the hard drive space — 20MB, woo hoo!


Harry McCracken

The first computer that I used was my dad’s Radio Shack TRS-80 Model I in 1978–with 4KB of RAM (later upgraded to 32KB) and Level I BASIC, the world’s worst programming language. I knew that machine inside and out.

The first one I bought with my own money was an Atari 400 in 1982–the one with the famously terrible flat keyboard. I mostly used it connected to a black-and-white TV.

Leo Notenboom

My first computer? An Apple II Plus, circa 1979.
I’d been learning things like Fortran and assembly
language (using punch cards, thank you) on the University
of Washington’s CDC 6400 mainframe, so loading software
from audio tape seemed like a huge improvement! (I
eventually did get a disk drive for it – a floppy
disk drive.)

That Apple introduced me to both Basic and the 6502
assembly language and allowed me to play “Apple Trek”,
a version of the Star Trek game that was very popular
in the late 70’s.

I can’t say that I ever did anything “serious” with the
II – it was my curiosity and excitement with my newfound
profession that lead me to purchase it. I learned from
it more that I used it, examining the hardware and
software and fumbling with my own first attempts at
software for a personal computer.

School work and eventually my first job – using other
hardware – lead me to leave it behind.

Ultimately it’s kind of ironic given how long I ended
up at Microsoft that it was an Apple computer that I
started with at home.

Augusto Matos (PC Pitstop)

My first computer was an TK90X, in… 1987 I guess.

It used a tape recorder to store the data, like any regular cassete, it used a 70 min audio tape, it was in color and uses the tv as monitor.

Processor: Z80A, de 8 bits 3.5 Mhz

Ram: 16 Kb

Rom: 16 Kb

8 colors

Steve Bass

I first learned about computers in 1982 when I bought an IBM-PC from Computerland. The PC cost me $4000 — and that didn’t include the video adapter or monitor. There were two big, 5 1/4 floppy drives (I had to buy a box of Elephant Memory Systems floppies) and the display was an eye-soothing green monochrome.

At a garage sale the next day I bought a time management software program — and when I tried it, I got my first computer error message: “not enough memory.” LOL — with a whopping 128K of RAM on the PC, the program didn’t have a chance at loading.

When I called Computerland and asked for advice, they cheerfully said, “don’t use your PC in the shower.” The following day, I got my own support system cooking — I founded the Pasadena IBM Users Group.

John Dodge

The first computer I used was a Teleram portable word processing terminal when I was a newspaper correspondent filing from a bureau of the Lowell Sun. It weighed upward of 50 pounds and to send stuff, I used an acoustic coupler for a 300 baud connection over a telephone. That was 1977…..Computerworld used the same thing in the early 80s and called them Telebubbles.

Ironically, I entered the IT trade press in early 1980 at a publication called MIS Week (RIP) and went back on a manual Royal typewriter.

The second computer I used was a Shadio Rack (sic) TRS-80 Model III….different from Harry’s in that computer, keyboard and display were all one piece and resembled a minicomputer or mainframe computer terminal. To do any function, you had to usually press the ctrl key and as I recall, it only worked when you timed it right in concert with the actual letter or number key. That was 1981.

After that, we used an Apple II for word processing and sent the text to our typesetter, which used CompuGraphic pagination equipment – state of the art in its day (1981-82).

When I went to PC Week in 1983 for my 16 year run, I started out with a Compaq luggable (30 lbs.)….5.25 inch floppy disk drives and 8088. We quickly went on an the Atex newspaper system and few of us had PCs at home although portables were starting to show up.

First computer I bought was an 80286 PC AT clone around 1985-86 (might have been an Everex or one the Dell mail order clones w brand names like Bentley).

Chris Pirillo

My first computer didn’t even have a hard drive in it! The first one I purchased with my own money cost me around $200.00 and it had a couple of 5 1/4″ floppy drives. When I bought it back in 1993, it seemed relatively outdated even then.

I then worked to save around $2200.00 and bought my first real computer. I got a machine with 8MB of RAM and 4MB of video RAM. I think it had 420MB worth of storage! It even had a CD drive that could read at double-speed. Back in the day, that was a pretty good system. It was the best that was out there.

I still have binaries (executables) and media that I downloaded from the newsgroups back then that I had to decode and ultimately put on my system. I remember when I’d see a 100k file and think how big it was. I’d wonder if it would even work on my system. Yes… 100 K. Anything 1MB or more was considered “killer” back then.



Mark Lussier (PC Pitstop)

My first computer was an Apple II (1983 or so)
I also had the z80 board (microsoft) and it could do 40 as well as 80 column!
I even had 2 floppy drives!

$900 used

The guy I bought it from did give me a ton of software


Ralf Biesemeier (PC Pitstop)

Has nobody ever owned a Commodore C64? Was that not big in the U.S.? Everybody in my generation in Germany started with a C64 (or an Atari … It must have been 1983 when I got mine.

My first configuration was:

Has nobody ever owned a Commodore C64? Was that not big in the U.S.? Everybody in my generation in Germany started with a C64 (or an Atari … It must have been 1983 when I got mine.

My first configuration was a C64 computer, a tape recorder (which was called “Datasette” over here) to store data and a very small sized TV as a display.
I upgraded from the “Datasette” to a 5 1/4″ floppy disk drive at one time – an external hardware device so big it basically occupied all the desk space.

I used my C64 for gaming (take a look at one of my favorites games back then: http://www.c64-wiki.com/index.php/Impossible_Mission) and I was a very active “Basic”-programmer. I actually established my first business on this PC (while still going to school, aged 16 or so), offering printing services to my classmates (business cards, for example).

Ah … good old times 😉



Keith Linden (PC Pitstop)

Mine was a Commodore 64. I still have ours but the video adapter is broken so I cannot use it. I had the 5 1/4 “ floppy disk and wrote many simple programs in basic. I remember one time for the 4th of July writing a program that played the national anthem and animated a us flag being raised.

Sandra Strand (PC Pitstop)

I think my dad had one kind of like the one pictured below…

…that we played pong, pong with bricks, and things like trajectory and tank games with abstract shapes. I remember mostly that the screen was always all black and the lines, etc were orange. And they ran off of floppies 🙂


We want to know more about the machines that brought you into the wonderful world of computing. Please share in the comments below.

Stop Responding to Threats.
Prevent Them.

Want to get monthly tips & tricks?

Subscribe to our newsletter to get cybersecurity tips & tricks and stay up to date with the constantly evolving world of cybersecurity.

Related Articles