After my recent post regarding the new Mac mini veered off briefly into a discussion about old computers, I thought I would start up a little nostalgic thread for the community geeks, who like myself, can still remember their first Computer / Mac.
My dad had a ZX Spectrum and a Commodore 64 which I briefly played tape games on, but I was fairly young so didnāt really understand what a computer was or how it could be used. It wasnāt until I got my Amiga 600 with Deluxe Paint III and Workbench, that I got hooked on computers and using them creativity.
Iād use Workbench to poke around in the games I had and find the graphic files, open them in Deluxe Paint , edit them and then run the games with my hacked graphics . I also started making my own games with Shoot-Em-Up Construction Kit, which I loved.
I remember looking at Macs in John Lewis (a department store in the UK) and wishing I could afford one, especially the iMac G4 (That design is still ).
It wasnāt until I was in my late 20s that I could afford to get my first Mac (which I still have). A gloriously chunky 27" iMac running OSX 10.5. I nearly fell off my chair when I started it up for the first time and it showed the welcome animation.
What about you? Which computer got you started and what was your first Mac?
first I had an Atari 1040 ST. The interface was quite Mac-like.
Back then there were only 2 factions, either Amiga or Atari.
68000 assembler worked well on both boxes. I think the Amiga had better C tools. Atari had good Pascal. Wirthās Pascal was used in my computer science studies. So I went in the direction of Atari and Apple. The first years Apple PASCAL was the teaching language on the Apple.
My next Machine was an Macintosh Plus.
This was still running until last year. I started it up every week. Presumably the power supply unit is now defective.
Keyboard is still ok and the plastic of the case has hardly discolored.
Have a chat with @JDW Iām not sure if you have seen his YouTube channel but he has high quality videos on classic Apple hardware repairs / mods. Heās very knowledgable.
I have a Macintosh Plus too, mine takes ages to warm up. I get the start up chimes and a blank screen, then after 30mins the screen flicks on. Some cracked solder in there somewhere.
That problem most likely results from bad fluid-filled electrolytic capacitors on the Analog board, which has an integrated power supply.
I created this Mouser Cart containining all the capacitors needed to recap the Analog Board, and this video guides you step-by-step through the process. I also made a marked-up photo showing the capacitor locations.
If you open that video on YouTube, you can then expand the text description beneath the video to access a huge number of links I prepared for you there, including Amazon links to all the tools you would need.
First computer was a ZX-81, a little wedge shaped pre-curser of the Spectrum. Output to a TV, very fussy recording of programming to cassette tape. The screen went blank whenever it was calculating as it couldnāt do two things at once.
Then used Mac Pluses at work, 1986ish, initially to do kitchen planning, then I discovered Excel and MacWrite and that was it!
First Mac I owned was a PB 1400 in 1997. I upgraded it to a G3 and had a Zip drive to plug in it.
Edit - just seen an LC mentioned, and I remembered the my first Mac was actually an LC, in 1991.
As a teenager, I had a C64, but only for playing Way of the Exploding Fist on. My first āproperā machine was a laptop from a UK company called Tiny, who had high street shops. It boasted 12 GB of memory and came with Windows Millennium. I finally got my first iMac around 2010.
Sinclair ZX81 from WH Smiths for a year or two, then the mighty āSpeccyā, Sinclair ZX Spectrum āMum computers are educational, it will help with my schoolworkā¦ā then it was down to Dixons for a Spectrum for Christmas 1982, at a time when interest rates were in double figures, my folks really scraped to get it to āhelp with my schoolworkā, then Bam! primary and secondary school years on Manic Miner, Jetset Willy, Skool Daze and the rest. At Uni an Amstrad NC200 to write my assignments on, when the only other option was a pen. Also an Atari STFM for music sequencing. Then in the 90s home built PCs for music sequencing and a nifty portable Psion 3MX for writing stuff, then 2001 Macs, loads of them from G3 onwards. Speccys set you up though to understand code, although I canāt sit down and write code from scratch I can look through it, see the structure and process to troubleshoot, which I attribute to the use of a Spectrum. Did crap in my exams at school though, an aspect I blame on distraction of my Sinclair Spectrum, worked out in the end though later in life with a Masters in Digital Media after I grew up and grew out of the days of the Spectrum and the follow on of games consoles
The first computer was a Sinclair ZX81, which came with a 1K memory, and programs had to be installed via a cassette recorder. I later added the 16K expansion pack that had to be secured with blu tack.
Next came the Acorn Electron, then years later came the original G3 iMac in 1999 that I was using to retouch images for editorials and ad campaigns, plus page layouts.
Thereās a great BBC drama about the competition between Clive Sinclair and Chris Curry, the guy who made Acorn. Well I say great, great to a geek like me.
Saw that a while back, itās proper mint, King Cliveā¦ legend, dominated the home computer market in the UK with his little rubber keyed delight (allowing the start of the UK games market for the likes of Ocean games, Psygnosis etc from bedroom programmers to grow and become Playstation/console major software houses), created (massively unsafe) electric cars, cracking idea but on a social scale of a Lada, then blew it all on a pocket telly and a business computer that no one wanted or more likely could afford. If he was still around I imagine he would have invented a handy handheld device that spreads refrigerated Anchor butter on bread without clumping of butter or tearing of the slice.
I was a computer monitor at School with the old Acorns during the 80s.
We had a Commodore 64 - great memories of Mission Impossible, Frogger, Monopoly. Cassette tapes and 5Ā¼" disks. Nothing like waiting for something to load on a cassette, and it fails, to start all over again.
Amiga 500+, like Normā¦ Delux Paint, and learnt to program in AmosPro. Cannon Fodder, Persian Gulf Inferno (so much fun).
I upgraded my Amiga 500+ with the Supra 28, and a 20mb HDD. And we installed a Kickstart switch, which allowed us to switch down to 1.3 I think it was? This was a beast for its day, only limited by being 68000.
I setup and had a BSS on this Amiga, my modem (2400 bit/s) had 4 dip switches on the back and no manual, Took me a long time of dialing my friends house to get the combination right.
Amiga 4000 /040 - I only used it for a short time, then sold it to the Animation School I was in. I set it up as a line tester, connected to a vertical camera, and we had software written by a guy here in NZ, that replicated Dope sheets, for us to test out our animation. Worked really well, ended up being the support guy for it for 2 years
I got my first Mac in 2007, after building a Hackintosh with a Toshiba Laptop, 3 days later I purchased a 15" MacBook Pro and never looked back.
Dragon 32, the Welsh beauty, they were like henās teeth to see in the flesh, never saw a real one.I bought an Oric 1 off Ebay in the early 2000s along with an Acorn and a Vic 20 for my own āretro home museumā of vintage 80s stuff to be nailed to the wall on display, also included a Philips CD101 first commercial CD player. Sold them them all back on Ebay early 2010s after accruing too much stuff and getting over that nostalgic early mid-life crisis
. I also started making my own games with Shoot-Em-Up Construction Kit, which I loved.
(That design is still 
).
.
