First experiences with computers

[khiloa]

I started on a old something with Win 3.1 or something.


Gee, shows you how great my rememberer works.
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[nmcsween]

This brings back memories I remember seeing 286's / 386's back in the day but win 3.1 didn't impress. So when my buddy went and bought an amazing 486 we got the really really old command & conquer on it and played it non stop for HOURS on end.
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[Guest]

I remeber a lot about Apple IIs . I still remember my Apple II BASIC and assembly . Then I got a pentium as my first computer . Then in a couple years I had a pretty good sized collection of vintage computers , which are mostly in boxes .

[aja]

When I was about 10 (this would be early 1970s), my Father made arrangements to take me to work for the weekend. His job that weekend was duty NCO at a Canadian military facility, where they used mainframes (IBM 360s, if memory serves) to calculate information related to ordnance testing. The facility was effectively shut down that weekend, but someone had to be present, and it was my Father's turn. To this day, I don't know how he managed to swing letting his kid spend the weekend at a secure installation. I even got to sleep in a barracks - which is pretty cool for a 10 year old.

At any rate, my father was a Computer Technician (a pretty esoteric MOS in the early 70s), so he was permitted to play with the mainframes over the weekend. (They were on, but not really doing anything). I got a tour of an air-conditioned, halon fire-supression, elevated flooring dinosaur pen (again, pretty esoteric for the time), and then my Father showed me how to load paper-tape programs.

The coolest program he showed me was one that had the processor do some high speed register operations and looping which would appear random if you looked at the code, but which (due to RF leakage) would cause a nearby transistor radio to play (I kid you not) "Daisy".

The geek factor for that has got to be near the top of the scale, including the selection of a song that most of us should recognize as being from 2001: A Space Odyssey (which was the first non-kids movie I ever saw - once again, my Dad took me at around the same age). Come to think of it, I suspect that my current computer-related hobbies and profession have quite a lot to do with my Father's encouragement, during a period when most people had never even _seen_ a computer.

[Combustible]

I came from a C-64 and was used to writing programs in BASIC to do what I needed to do. I shit you not I started doing it at 4. Then came dos:


a:\>

during my first minutes with dos I remember looking through a manual wondering where I could get to the command level from. Was kind of disapointed when I found out I was already there.

I was... Um, (1985) 6 or so.

[plate]

Sorry for AgentMascan, but what started out as an original thread about first experiences with computers has deteriorated into a duplicate of this old thread about experiences with first computers.