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Technically, my first "computer" was an HP 25C (I think that was the model) calculator, but it was programmable - 49 steps.
My first "real" computer was a Commodore IBM - real keyboard, 32KB of RAM, 6502 1Mhz processor, and a tape drive for storage, which I eventually upgraded to dual floppies, each floppy had double the storage of Apple's drive, mwahaha.
Marc
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In that case mine was a TI 59[^] - but I didn't think of it as a computer then!
Good for it's time, but those magnetic strips were sooooo unreliable!
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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OriginalGriff wrote: Good for it's time, but those magnetic strips were sooooo unreliable!
I eventually also had the HP version with the mag strip reader. It was soooo cool. I wrote Hunt the Wumpus on it - one program to randomize the caves and store them into the 9 registers using 2 digit encoding so I could map 20 caves with 3 routes each, plus 3 pits, 3 bat caves, 1 Wumpus and 1 player location.
A second program on another mag strip was used to actually play the game! It was my first real taste of optimizing code, getting the game play to fit into 240 instruction "cells."
Marc
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I had a Commodore 64 in '83 and was spoilt rotten by my parents as it came with a 5 1/4 floppy drive and printer... Followed by an Amiga 500 in '88
If we're talking about PC, I had a Laser 386 DX 25 MHZ, 2 MB ram and 69 MB Hard drive. It was offered as an alternative to a FM Towns games machine that I'd won though a competition I'd entered in the games Magazine back in 1990, as the FM Towns couldn't be sourced from Japan. Needless to say the PC was far more use than an FM Towns.
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Rhuros wrote: I had a Commodore 64 in '83 and was spoilt rotten by my parents as it came with a 5 1/4 floppy drive and printer... Followed by an Amiga 500 in '88
Started off with a C64 too (with nothing but tape for storage for the first year I've had it), then I got a C128, but I never went the Amiga route. I was looking at auction sites a few days ago and out of morbid curiosity, I looked up a couple of Amiga systems. Seems like price ranges are all over the map. Unfortunately still to this day, I know so very little about them that I don't know what's a good deal or not.
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First computer was an Amiga 1000[^].
I wished I still have it (and the couple of games I had at the time that I really liked).
I'd rather be phishing!
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Steel Taiwan clone XT that flipped open like a funny car.
8088 chip that all who had these swapped out for a NEC V20.
2MB expanded ram board + QEMM
30MB drive
Hercules video then upgraded to a Emulex/Persist Bob-16 graphics adapter.
2400 baud modem - I was a BBS rat.
DOS 3.1 / Desqview
A year later my dear wife got me a Genius Mouse.
I had windows 1.01 on but that sucked more than you can know.
It was more of a side show to show people.
Getcha some of that! 
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The one that doesn't count: Sorry! TI-994a back in '82-83 I think.
The next one was a hand-me-down PowerMac 6100: 1 512MB HDD, 16MB RAM, and a huge 13'' monitor! OS 7.5 was so bad that my first real computer manual was 'Sad Macs, Bombs, and Other Disasters'! Great times! 
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse
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A 520 ST, which I still have.
But, if you ignore the cassette restriction, a TI 99/4A (Which I probably still have...9or maybe my sister has it.)
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The TI99 was great! Got a kick out of looking at ones for sale on ebay the other day... we had one in '83 or '84... Wish I still had it. Loved playing Donkey Kong, Hunt the Wompus, TI Invaders, and Centipede on it!
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My high school computer was an IBM 1620 (go ahead, look it up!) with 40,000 digits (not bits - it was a decimal machine), console typewriter, and card I/O. This was in 1967, you young whippersnappers 
According to my calculations, I should be able to retire about 5 years after I die.
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Yeah we ha a ti994a also but thought it didn't qualify here because of the cassette.
We had great fun writing basic programs to scroll expletives on the screen.
What fun teaching a computer to swear. Just look what we've done!
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I remember messing with the voice synthesizer on it. That was really cool.
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Tandy 1000 HX[^]
Without that, you'd never would've had the pleasure of meeting me.
Jeremy Falcon
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OriginalGriff wrote: What was your first "real" computer? (I'm not counting Spectrums and their ilk here: if it had a cassette tape it doesn't count
Why not? I'd give anyone with such a beast extra points just for having the patience of dealing with tapes.
(that's all I had for storage for the first year I've had my Commodore 64)
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Because the tapes meant that you spent far more time loading (and swearing) than you did running the programs...
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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Amstrad 1512, CGA, one floppy, one HDD (20MB?) on an expansion card.
I wiped the drive and installed MS-DOS 4.1 Spent many hours writing games in Turbo Pascal.
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I built my first computer back in 1978. It was a Netronics Elf II kit[^].
Don't you dare not to call it a real computer, just because I did not have the money for any floppies at that time. 
Indeed have all 'real' computers gone to East Hyperspace (and their physical remains to the trash bin), while the little Elf II still works, including the ancient monitor.
The language is JavaScript. that of Mordor, which I will not utter here
This is Javascript. If you put big wheels and a racing stripe on a golf cart, it's still a f***ing golf cart.
"I don't know, extraterrestrial?"
"You mean like from space?"
"No, from Canada."
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I played about with a Sinclair ZX80 with 1k memory including the video. Then I moved into a Compukit UK101 which had 8k memory and was an absolute s** to get anything to load or save.
I did my degree using an Amstrad CPC6128 and had an external ROM box, which I had an Assembler, and possibly a word processor. I also built an emulator adaptor which I plugged into what would eventually become a standalone computer and I used the emulator to debug the program on the device. Eventually after 10 years, the Amstrad sort of let go - just the rubber band to drive the 3.5" floppy and a replacement was going to cost a fortune. One of these days, I will get it back out and see if I can make it live again.
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In the "not counted" range I had a ZX81 and two rubber key ZX Spectrum 48k (an issue 1 with the hand mods on the board, and an issue 2 when that broke).
Then I had a couple of ACT Sirius computers (early PC clones, called Victor 9000 in the USA) that were cast-offs from my dad's office. The first had twin 5.25" floppy, the second had a 5MB hard drive! Both ran MSDOS 1.0 (although I think I later got my hands on 3.0).
We then had an Acorn Archimedes A440, followed by an Acorn Risc PC - those were some of the best computers I ever owned to this day. When the Sirius died we broke it for parts and used the HDD and the PSU on the table attached the A440, for extra storage.
Since then, I succumbed the x86 hegemony and ran a series of cheap boring PCs.
At school I used some fun machines too. An RM 380Z running CPM, many BBC Model B machines, an Amstrad thing that ran CPM and had Logo, and a CBM 4032 which was like a Commodore PET but with a better keyboard.
modified 21-Jan-15 3:51am.
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Move over, parvenus!
My first computer was a Commodore PET 2001 with 8KB (that's KILO-bytes)! My dad bought it in 1977, and it was one of the first five of its kind in Israel.
The Commodore PET 2001 had a built-in cassette recorder/player, which could be used to store/load programs and data. Given that many (most?) mainframes of the time still used tape for mass storage (a disk drive might be used for the O/S and for commonly-run programs), I take exception to the assertion that a computer with a cassette tape was not a computer.
I used it for many things, from calculating e and pi (to about 10,000 digits - all that I could do in-memory) to learning 6502 assembly language to game playing (I purchased an incredibly slow version of chess that ran in those 8KB).
Those were the days!
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I sooooo wanted one of those... but my dad bought an Exidy Sorcerer[^]. I later borrowed it for an extended period of time. My actual first computer was an Amiga 1000.. which I still have and fire up once in a while. I even still have the original monitor and Rom Kernel manuals (a set with the mislabeled manual).
We can program with only 1's, but if all you've got are zeros, you've got nothing.
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C64, at first with NO storage, as I got it from a school buddy at 12..13 years or so, but his FDD was broken. So I learned BASIC from the manual and wrote little programs, each day a new one  Until I got a floppy drive from someone else weeks later.
Interestingly it came with a mouse. So I learned a bit asm and wrote a IRQ based "mouse driver" moving a HW sprite arrow around, something I'd seen on a PC at a buddy's house ^^
As for PCs, it was a Tandon PC XT, 5MHz, 640KB RAM, no hdd, dual 5.25" floppy, monochrome orange monitor, MSDOS 3.2 or so. With GWBASIC, ugh ^^ The school had dumped it, so I thought, let's try a real PC.
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If the Spectrum doesn't count (guess which one from my username) then the Atari STFM - 8Mhz CPU and 512KB of RAM.
First PC? 486 with a 25Mhx CPU overclocked to 33Mhz, 4Mb RAM, 170Mb HDD - that thing cost me nearly a grand in 1994. I still have the CPU
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My first "real" computer? Are we counting only computers we've owned personally, or should we include computers we've used that belonged to others (e.g., employers)?
The first computer I ever owned was a laboratory-surplus ADDS MultiVision prototype: an Intel 8085-based machine that ran a CP/M-80-compatible O/S that I designed. It had 64 KiloBytes of RAM, two 5.25-inch floppy disk drives, interfaced to an external RS-232 terminal, and was patched together with clip wires and faith. I managed to snarf a 30 MegaByte Seagate Winchester disk drive prototype for it, but as the thing required more electrical power than my home could supply it -- it weighed 60 pounds and had 14 inch platters -- I never got it to work properly.
The first computer I ever worked on was an IBM 1800 "minicomputer" that took up a room the size of a small cafeteria. It had 6.2 KiloWords of 16-bit-wide core memory, 256 KiloBytes of disk storage, and a single 9-track tape drive. It was originally intended for the control of laboratory equipment, but was never used for that purpose...possibly because it would crash at a harsh look and took approximately 20 minutes to bootstrap.
Feeling a little younger now?
(This message is programming you in ways you cannot detect. Be afraid.)
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