So when and how did computers grab you?

[Thomas]

For me it was about 1982. My father brought home his new Osborne1 it was the first computer I ever got to touch. He bought me a pacman game for my birthday and I was hooked. I didn't get my own computer until much later when he brought me home an IBMps2 I remember PFS-First Start being the first os I used. I built my first computer many years later. A socket A duron, and I still have it to this day. Its been a whirlwind the last 8 or so years. It seems like I barely get one built before its out of date!

Anyway where did it start for you?

 

[Trotter]

We (my sister and I) got a Tandy TRS80 Color Computer II for Christmas. I don't remember the year but it was early 1980's. I sat up all night working through the manual for it. A year or two later my high school offered their first computer course and I took it. We used Apple II's and IIc's... the first semester was computer history and the second was BASIC programming. The teacher was clueless as she taught typing so I breezed the class and helped her with her computer homework from college.

I got out of computers for a while and then came back when my wife and I bought a 233MHz Packard Bell for a cool $1k. 32MB of RAM and an internal hard drive! It came with Windows 95 which a friend upgraded to Win98 for me. Several years later we bought an eMachine that had a AMD 2000+ CPU and XP. I was still on that computer when I found Tech-Forums.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

 

[Oreo]

Well i'm young so my story isn't quite so interesting. The first time i went on a computer i was playing this game and i can't remember what it was called. It started with a CGI intro of a boy and a dog that were in a field when a dark storm came over and swept the dog up or something. And then in the game you had this electric gun and shot at some weird black goo or something..

Would love to know what it's called. Anyway that was my first time on a pc and playing a game, when i was a year or two older i started using the internet with 56k dialup, then when DSL came out at the start of last decade i remember being the first out of my friends to get it, my dad always used to speak to me about it and how fast it was. That pretty much got me interested in tech thereafter Infact i remember our first connection was 512k, very soon thereafter it went up to 1.5mb. And about 11 years later it has improved by half a meg. *yawn*

 

[strollin]

I was a manufacturing manager at IBM in 1984 and they provided me with an IBM PC with 128K of RAM. It sat in my office unused because I didn't know how to use it. My manager literally ordered me to learn how to use it. Started out writing appraisals using a text editor but then discovered Lotus 1-2-3 and became a whiz at using spreadsheets and writing macros. I went out and bought a PC for home then took an evening C programming class at a local community college. After that I was hooked, gave up my management position and volunteered to go thru programmer training. Went to school 8 hrs a day for 6 months studying System 370 Assembler language. Been working as a programmer/software engineer ever since.

 

[Nitestick]

My first experience with a computer would have been either at my godmother's house or when I started pre-primary at about 4-5. I wouldn't say I was hooked until about 11 when my dad helped me fix my first computer. Since then I've learned a heck of a lot and now work in IT.

 

[Harper]

Always been into computers. Back in 1984, i remember my dad purchasing an Apple II+. This got later upgraded to an Apple IIe.

Was programming in BASIC in 1985. I was in 3rd Grade at the time. Few of the teachers at my primary school hated the fact that i was using a computer.

1984 - Apple IIe
1984 - Apple II+
1989 - Mac SE30 (and shufflepuck cafe)
1994 - Mac IIci
1996 - PowerMac
1996 - Pentium 100Mhz
1997 - AMD K6 233Mhz
1999 - AMD K7 900Mhz
after that is starts getting extremely messy.

 

[MindoverMaster]

I remember our first PC was a Packard Bell. Can't remember model, but it ran off DOS.

My first personal computer was a CTX. Early Celeron, I think. It was an old computer my great-uncle gave me. It ran 95. I remember when it was on its last leg, I was reinstalling 98 every day.

After that, I can't remember...

 

[Druid]

We had a gateway with windows 95. I played 3D dinosaur adventure on it. First real pc game for me though was Empire Earth on a Dell we got when windows XP was fresh. Once I learned how to download patches, I was playing that online like crazy. Built my first computer two and a half years ago. I'm still on it. I've also built two others now, not for me though.

 

[35g700]

I can't remember the first time I used a computer because I was so young...

My parents were really into computers and owned a computer store during the 80's (that's why I have an old 8088 computer under my bed ) so I was around them all my life (born in September '92). The first computer I remember using was an old AMD K6 and another computer that had a Pentium CPU in it and if I remember correctly they were both socket 7 CPU's. My dad always built all of our desktop computers (with the exception of one that he needed immediately) so I never had the joy of using pre made computers. My first "gaming computer" had an Intel Celeron Willamette-128 1.7ghz socket 478, Nvidia FX 5200, 512MB of DDR RAM, and a 20gb HDD. It lasted me until '08 when I decided I wanted a real gaming computer so I built my first computer in September of '08 (after a summer of working) and since then I've helped two or three friends build custom rig's and now they'll never go back to pre built stuff

 

[C0RR0SIVE]

The first computer I touched... Well, I think I was 5, in school, learned very basic typing for 3 years, played games most the time though. Then I moved and not a single school had computers, talk about being more red neck than the country school that did have such classes. We bought a computer when I was 11, was an old HP P3 with 32mb of ram, 20gb hdd, and win98 SE. About 4 years later, I built my first system, and that's about it, since then I have been playing around with them and working on them every day.... I actually type more than I have wrote, last time I picked a pen up was ~5 years ago, and I have basically forgotten how to write smoothly.