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What are your experiences when you first encountered a computer?

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Boss Doggie

Boss Doggie

all my loli wolf companions are so moe
Granted, there is a site dedicated for it, but I want to know how you people "got around" with computers without having formal education on how to use those things.

My first experience with a computer was around prior 98, and my aunt was playing Pac-Man in it. I tried to touch various buttons on the keyboard but Pac-Man wouldn't move! Then my dad used to have this keyboard-only, cassette-activated computer... which is strange. I forgot what it was called but it was really... really weird that it made me frightened to use a computer til 98 came out.
 
Ookami-kun said:
Then my dad used to have this keyboard-only, cassette-activated computer... which is strange. I forgot what it was called but it was really... really weird that it made me frightened to use a computer til 98 came out.
Click to expand...

The Adam?
 
332qser.jpg


My first computer.

Brother helped me build it from a kit.

Played tons of Frogger and Robot Wars with it.
 
Some game whose box looked all cool and metallic with a robot in flames, kinda like a terminator. That, and that first Sonic racing game,
 
The Apple II and some old computer that I used to play Maniac Mansion on in pre-school.

My first computer was a Tandy 1000 and a Commodore 64.
 
An Atari 800XL....with cassette and cartridges...later, a 5inch floppy.

My earliest gaming memory is "Salmon Run" where you guided a salmon upstream avoiding fishermen and bears.

I cannot even find it via google now.

Edit - I think there is a youtube clip on it!
 
LOAD *.* ,8,1

commodore 64 in the late 80s early 90s. I remember my mom trying to do her university essays on it and sometimes after pages of work in basic she would get "REDO FROM START".
 
I remember being in something like the 3rd grade, and playing with my parents 286 (with cassette tape drive), and later a Tandy 1000 with the cartridge slot in the keyboard. We upgraded the RAM in one of them from 128k to a totally badass 512k!

I remember working with versions of DOS that did not support backspace. Fuck up the command line, and you had to hit ENTER and start over again.
 
Limedust said:
I remember being in something like the 3rd grade, and playing with my parents 286 (with cassette tape drive), and later a Tandy 1000 with the cartridge slot in the keyboard. We upgraded the RAM in one of them from 128k to a totally badass 512k!

I remember working with versions of DOS that did not support backspace. Fuck up the command line, and you had to hit ENTER and start over again.
Click to expand...

The 286 was way beyond the era of tape drives.

And I don't think there was any version of DOS that didn't support backspace. Some Unix shells required you to bind ctrl-k to your backspace key in those times, but DOS always supported it.
 
SnakeswithLasers said:
Oregon Trail. DAY ONE!!!!
Click to expand...

Oregon Trail on an Apple II at school and Captain Comic and Golf on the computer in my Dad's home office. He taught some rudimentary DOS commands when I was like 6 so I could play them when he was at work.
 
When I was around 6, my dad brings home this giant beast, I don't even know what it was, only that it was DOS and had the BIGGEST FLOPPIEST disc's ever.
 
The first computer I every used was some old IBM Laptop/Desktop that my dad used at work. It looked kinda like a briefcase with a handle on top. It would unfold and have a keyboard and a small orange screen. I think I played one of the old King's Quest games on it.
 
I think my first computer experience was either the Apple IIE (Remember that bright green light on the keyboard that got REALLY hot?) or the IBM PC jr. Which ever came first. But I seem to remember some other computer before the IIe. Because I remember everyone in school being very excited about that green light on the computers because the old ones didn't have it... Hmmmmm
 
I made a turtle move, spin, disappear... then made the screen flash obnoxiously.
 
Our first computer was a "IBM Compatible" 286 that ran HyperDOS. I remember using the Dr. Halo paint program that came with the mouse (three-button) and being frustrated that the screen was black but it printed white on our Brother dot-matrix printer.

I also remember playing Aquanoid (Arkanoid copy?) and using WordPerfect 5.1 to type papers for school. We must have gotten it in 1992 or 1993.

It wasn't until 1998 when the internet was getting big that I really started to learn how to use a PC.
 
Funny small monitor in green and black, with DOS. I remember playing a DOS based game where you had to shoot falling letters pressing the respectives keys.
 
Probably an apple ][-e and using some rudimentary typing/design programs in a 4th grade typing class. also, number munchers! Funny, I remember some kids not liking the class and wondering what the point of learning computers was since not everyone would grow up to be a nerd. Little did they know... :lol
 
I got my first computer back in 98 or something. It was an HP with a 13.5 gb HDD and like 160 mb of ram. I went online...went to some AOL chat rooms and jokingly (and innocently) started screwing around in them just typing random shit. Well, here's when I lost my innocence. I soon found some dude trying to cyber me. He was all like "talk like a cowboy." Jesus fucking christ.

I also pissed off my mother countless times when I tried to be a hacker and managed to infect my own dumb self with a virus and ended up having to reinstall windows 98.

Ohhh yea...the good ol days.
 
I don't remember it very well but I think I just messed with the DOS prompt in awe (I was very young) and then played some Lemmings? (it was a soft b disk btw)
EDIT: no, I just remembered, first thing was a game called "Livingstone Supongo" (Spanish developer Opera Soft game).
The computer was a BULL something (French manufacturer)
 
It was an old Tandy that hooked up to the TV. I spent like an hour writing out code to animate a giant smiley face :lol I also played a game called Dungeons of Daggorath.
 
I played around with some really basic painting program, Paintbrush (what MS Paint was called back in 1991), on an old IBM PC under supervision. It was fun and kinda hard because the mouse was shit.
 
We had like Apple IIs at my elementary school. I played a typing game where if you typed correctly the little pixelated man jumped over the hurdles.
 
My mom was a computer operator and even though she dealt more with mainframes and servers she stressed tech at home. I was computer proficient by age 5 or 6, but I guess nowadays that's the norm.
 
blame space said:
The guy who was setting up our first PC showed me Megarace. It was also my first experience with a video game, I think.
Click to expand...
ha, MegaRace. Such a awesome game.
 
Use PrintShop Pro to make banners for birthdar parties on my dot-matrix printer.

Play educational games in DOS, like the one with the spelling dinosaur.

CD-ROM was as big as the actual PC, didn't even work with the computer.

Apogee games <3
 
Hover Race
Hover Race was my first game...lots of crazy shit in that game lol. I remember trying to improve my time by working on getting those perfectly angled and timed bounces off walls. That shit was hardcore back in the day.

SubSpace

My 2nd game...and shit..I played that game off and on for like 10 years.
 
I used to get to school super early as a kid. I remember getting a chance to sit in the computer lab back in 91-92 (second grade) and having them teach me a bit. FD50 RT90 and all that shit (Logo).

I loved it

2954g7q.jpg
 
scotty-trek4.jpg



Our school had a single TRS-80 PC the I used to go crazy for. It had a tape recorder, and used basic with a monochrome screen. My folks for me a C64 after I played with one every time we went to Hill's Department Store. I ended up writing a couple games for magazines.

God how I'd love to have those days back.
 
First experience with a PC?

Programming on this:

commodore_pet_2001-321.jpg


Floppy disk to load and save programs? Disk what's that?

Tape cassette baby:

pet2001-cassette-1.jpg


Old school style!
 
Started on a C64 when I was young. Even was doing some programming back then (I was in elementary school).


My main priority was gaming, and once I had a NES, I started using it less and less. By the time the Genesis hit, I stopped using computers.

Didn't regularly start using them again until college. Which is weird, considering I'm a programmer by trade. While I was always relatively at ease with computers, it's strange where I'm at now, given the huge 'lost years' I had with computing. Never went through the awesome 286-to-DX-to-386, etc. days.
 
We had computer classes during my elementary years. Using an apple IIe learning about LOGO, and then playing some karateka, auto duel or oregon trail.
 
My earliest memory comes after I knew my way around a computer. I don't actually know why. Just something that came naturally to me, I guess. A talent I've wasted, for sure!

My first actual computer was a Commodore Vic-20. My parents bought me the first 12 issues of Input Magazine then stopped because "they didn't think it was worth it". Ironically nearly 25 years later many of the concepts of what I know now about computing has a foundation in what I learned from that magazine.
 
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