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+--- Thread: What was your first encounter with a computer? (/showthread.php?tid=252432)
Re: What was your first encounter with a computer? - Mr Downtown - 02-02-2021
Went to see one on a high school field trip, but summer after high school (1975) I took programming at the community college. They taught us Assembler for the IBM 360, on punch cards of course. Because the college also taught keypunching, the keypunch machines nearly all had blank keyboards with no characters shown on the keys. Very frustrating for most of my classmates.
When I got to college that fall, the University of Tulsa's computer was a Xerox (!) mainframe, and the assembly language was called Metasymbol. I suspect I may still have a box of punchcards in a storage closet somewhere.
Re: What was your first encounter with a computer? - Buck - 02-02-2021
Nobody mentioned a DEC10 yet. I must have some punch cards somewhere.
Programming in ALGOL 60.
https://www.theregister.com/2020/05/15/algol_60_at_60/
Re: What was your first encounter with a computer? - space-time - 02-02-2021
1987 or so, it was a clone of a Sinclair Spectrum ZX80
Re: What was your first encounter with a computer? - MrNoBody - 02-02-2021
Buck wrote:
Nobody mentioned a DEC10 yet.
aka PDP-10. Big Brother used hundreds of them back in the day.
ARPANET had loads of DEC mainframes on its network.
Re: What was your first encounter with a computer? - wolfcry911 - 02-02-2021
jonny wrote:
My elementary school has a single computer in what must have been a modified janitor's closet. TRS 80- Model 1.
This - only it was middle school. Educators gave it to the math department thinking they would know what to do with it. They didn't. I fully absorbed everything I could about it and taught the teacher. I should have submitted a bill..
Re: What was your first encounter with a computer? - Will Collier - 02-02-2021
wolfcry911 wrote:
[quote=jonny]
My elementary school has a single computer in what must have been a modified janitor's closet. TRS 80- Model 1.
This - only it was middle school. Educators gave it to the math department thinking they would know what to do with it. They didn't. I fully absorbed everything I could about it and taught the teacher. I should have submitted a bill..
Yep. I had the same experience in junior high.
The only time I really got in trouble in high school was when I reprogrammed a text-only football game on the library's Apple ]['s to change the names of the computer team's players to those of teachers and principals I didn't like. (This should establish that I was not actually all that much of a troublemaker in high school.)
Re: What was your first encounter with a computer? - pdq - 02-02-2021
My chem department around 1977 had a Wang microcomputer that they let us use to calculate a least-squares regression for a lab session. But my first real experience was with a Commodore PET circa 1978 or 9. The faculty member in that (different) chem department taught us the basics of Basic, and for whatever reason, I was entranced. I kept dropping by that lab to play around with it some more, but they were always using it when I stopped by.
Two negative things resulted from this initial experience. For some time, I considered buying software as cheating; properly, one should program things oneself. Secondly, I became a Commodore fan, which was kind of a dead end. Fortunately, in 1986 or 7, I got exposed to a Mac, and have been in that camp ever since.
Re: What was your first encounter with a computer? - raz - 02-02-2021
MrNoBody wrote:
[quote=Buck]
Nobody mentioned a DEC10 yet.
aka PDP-10. Big Brother used hundreds of them back in the day.
ARPANET had loads of DEC mainframes on its network.
We retired the last working DEC20 (essentially two DEC10s) just before we closed the old office. IIRC, DEC gave us plenty of incentives to make the switch. That must have been 1989 or so.
Re: What was your first encounter with a computer? - JoeH - 02-02-2021
raz wrote:
[quote=MrNoBody]
[quote=Buck]
Nobody mentioned a DEC10 yet.
aka PDP-10. Big Brother used hundreds of them back in the day.
ARPANET had loads of DEC mainframes on its network.
We retired the last working DEC20 (essentially two DEC10s) just before we closed the old office. IIRC, DEC gave us plenty of incentives to make the switch. That must have been 1989 or so.
Yeah, by the mid-80s DEC was really trying hard to get everyone off DEC10/20 and onto VAX computers. The computer service I worked for at the university from '84 to 2005 was heavily DEC until the mid-90s, but we only had VAX and then Alpha from them. The machine room had been originally been created - raised floor, AC, etc - in the '60s to house a PDP-1. That went away sometime in the '70s and the space converted to offices. Early in the '80s it was converted back to house computers, they added additional AC. When I started they had several VAX 11/780s, an IBM 4341 for CAD/CAM, a ComputerVision computer, peripherals, and some other computers I am forgetting.
Re: What was your first encounter with a computer? - Robert M - 02-02-2021
Hi everyone,
Got to use a Commodore Pet in 1978. Elementary school. Can't remember what anyone did on it at the time but everyone in the class got a chance to do something. One thing I do remember is shortly after seeing the Pet, some numbnut spent some time attempting to teach us the "proper" way of folding the NY Times so we could read it. Like a seven year old was _really_ interested in reading the newspaper...
Robert