What system did you first use?

[phenomlab]

I thought it would be good to start a thread so all on here can reveal the first systems they used I’ll start…

My interests in programming actually started in 1984 (yes, I suppose there is a parallel with George Orwell’s novel, but it wasn’t intended) and I started out on one of these

At the time, my year of school was the very first to sit the new GCSE. My Computer Studies teacher offered me a chance to write my own application for my exam, so I did. It was in tandem with the Geography department, who at the time, were studying rainfall over the course of a 6 month period. I collected rainfall data every day (I distinctly recall having to go into school an hour earlier to do this every day), and then added that to a database. I then wrote a front-end (all in BASIC) that allowed you to query the database, and return results. When printed, the entire program list stretched 5 lengths of the classroom! The final part was for me to highlight the various sections of the printout to explain what they did, and why they were there.

I have fond memories of this. It was DOT Matrix 3-part NCR paper, printed by a Daisy Wheel. For those who aren’t sure of what that looks like, here it is.

Oh, I remember this well. It printed NLQ (Near Letter Quality) - long before fonts were even a thing. It was as noisy as hell - and S U P E R slow

I submitted my program, and got an A

Our school was a bit behind the times in terms of hardware. At home, I had one of these

This is the machine that I actually learned BASIC on. For those interest in what BASIC stands for, it’s Beginner’s All Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code

I spent HOURS writing code on this machine. One of the “applications” I wrote was over 5,000 lines - at the time, this was unprecedented, and in fact, the computer crashed because it ran out of memory as soon as you typed run…

Oh, those were the days. Seriously though, looking back on this now, it’s amazing how far technology has advanced.

What systems did you use ?

[DownPW]

My first system I use is an Atari Mega STe.

I played games with it and work on mathematic software

[phenomlab]

@downpw wow. I definitely remember the Atari ST. One of my favourite games was R-type

[DownPW]

me i twas :

• North & South Les tuniques bleues
• golden Axe
• The Secret of Monkey Island
• Ghosts 'n Goblins
• …

R-type was a very good shoot 'em up

[phenomlab]

@downpw yeah, loved R-Type but Golden Axe brings back so many memories !

[Sala]

My first system was hp 4000 , then followed by hp folio 9470m, i have used hp for a very longtime. Its the best ever machine i learned windows with it, 25 yrs in same background.

[phenomlab]

@Sala An era I recall well. I used the predecessor, before HP acquired Compaq - and this was back in 1997

Pentium I 166mhz MX

[Sala]

@phenomlab lol dont make me laugh, pentium
The cd drive was in high demand 🤭… php was not so popular. XML was the main thing! Pentium has been a walkthrough for all of us.

[Sala]

@phenomlab do you still have it? The picture looks fresh. It could sale big maybe in 2050’s

[phenomlab]

@Sala heh, MMX technology was bleeding edge at that time! And yes, the CD-ROM was king until the DVD came along and stole it’s crown. I distinctly remember running Windows 95 on these machines, then (with a memory upgrade) Windows NT4 Workstation with service pack 3.

They also made a small form factor model with no floppy disk (yeah, I’m that old) and the only 2 ways to get an operating system on it were network boot or cloning a hard disk in another system then installing that into the one without the floppy.

We avoided those like the plague.

[Sala]

@phenomlab there’s one guy who i knew back then, he was able to collect all torn pieces of floppy black disc and put them together and make it read.

Computer skills

[phenomlab]

@Sala impressive. That’s actually a lot harder than it looks. I once worked for a trading firm in the 90s and a trader came to me with a corrupted floppy disk demanding I get it to work.

Evidently, it had all of his trading positions on it and he had no backup and he wasn’t impressed when I told him that the chances of data recovery were less than zero.