Computers What was your first home computer? 🖥️

[Kevin]

Recently I've started building up my home collection of Commodore 8-bit machines, in particular the C128. As a kid in the 80's, between me and my brother, we had mostly Commodore and Apple machines, such as a Commodore VIC-20, Commodore 64, Apple //e, Apple //gs, Amiga 2000, and a color Macintosh II. In-between those we also were building our own DOS based PCs starting with 8086 machines and working our way through 286, 386, 486, Pentium, and up. During that time I was also running a PCBoard BBS with RIME & FidoNet running multiple phone lines; I kept that going for years till finally switching to a web site in the late 90's.

After a lifetime of making a living as an IT geek I've recently switched career paths and am now able to go back and play with tech for personal enjoyment only. I'm slowly working on building up a Commodore 128 system because I did not have one back then. I started with a VIC-20 and was using a cassette player for storage. On the C64 I eventually was able to get a C-1541 disk drive. I really, really wish I held on to all that hardware from back then. I honestly can't say what the fate of all of those machines were; I know some of the Commodore stuff I gave to my brother-in-law who also had a big C64 system built. But we live, we learn. Just expect more stuff showing up here for vintage computing!

So what was your first home computer? Apple? DOS? Atari? Commodore? CP/M? Sinclair? Tandy? Adam?

 

[Kahuna]

Atari 800XL and later PCs and now Windows. I really wanted an Atari ST but never got one.

 

[Kevin]

Atari 800XL and later PCs and now Windows. I really wanted an Atari ST but never got one.

In alternate realities Atari and Commodore were able to stay alive and be the equivalent of the Apple of our reality. The Amiga and ST machines were great machines done in by bad business decisions.

One a related note, I always thought the Atari ST machines were some of the nicest looking designs of the time. Even the XL and XE machines were nicer looking than their counterparts. After the 1000, Commodore went with the PC-ish boxy design for their subsequent Amiga models which was a shame; AmigaOS was such a great OS for the time but their hardware made them look like PC clones. Which is kind of funny, to me, since I never cared for the version of GEM Atari used on the STs. Having AmigaOS running on the sleek looking designs of the ST would've been killer.

 

[Bella]

laptop with windows

 

[Kevin]

laptop with windows

Ah, but what version of Windows?