What was your first encounter with a computer?

[lost in space]

steve....'s thread brought it to mind.

I went to a programming trade school in 1970, where they had an IBM 360, which read 80 (?) column punch cards. We learned COBOL, RPG, BAL and some others I don't recall. Looking back, it's like we were rubbing sticks together to make fire.

[jonny]

My elementary school has a single computer in what must have been a modified janitor's closet. TRS 80- Model 1.

[cbelt3]

Engineering day at my Dad's university.. probably 1964. They had a mainframe with spinny tape drives. AND a robot that looked like a big mouse ! It was awesome. Later I got to play 'Pong" on a mainframe at Amherst College thanks to an uncle who was a professor there.. I was perhaps 7.

Oh, and I took apart my mom's wind up alarm clock when I was about 3. Almost got it working again. Probably should not have used a hammer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dx6HojLBsnw&ab_channel=sgispider

[Acer]

Apple II's (I think) running Bank Street Writer, 1982. A dozen brand-new machines, grant funded I assume, in a random classroom that also happened to be where my tiny French III class was held.

[NewtonMP2100]

....it was a close encounter.......of the third kind........

[samintx]

Back when the PLUS came out. I decided typing was not cutting it and I would need to buy and learn about computers. The PLUS was 2400.00 and I could not afford that so I bought a color AMIGA for 1600.00. Went to the book store. Bought a book titled Norton’s DOS and taught myself the gentle art of computers. We could rent software then. Learned Pagemaker 1, etc etc. then needed a Mac to run certain things. Bought a PLUS FINALLY. Taught myself IBM DOS and simple programming with a Transformer that turned the AMIGA into a DOS machine.

Well, long story short here I am. Dumb as a rock but love DOS and the GUI of the Mac.

[macphanatic]

cbelt3 wrote:
Engineering day at my Dad's university.. probably 1964. They had a mainframe with spinny tape drives. AND a robot that looked like a big mouse ! It was awesome. Later I got to play 'Pong" on a mainframe at Amherst College thanks to an uncle who was a professor there.. I was perhaps 7.

Oh, and I took apart my mom's wind up alarm clock when I was about 3. Almost got it working again. Probably should not have used a hammer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dx6HojLBsnw&ab_channel=sgispider

Got to play with TRS-80 in 77. Bought an Apple II when it came out.

Took my dad's old Timex watch apart when I was 7. Didn't break anything in doing so. My mom still has all of the parts in a pill bottle as she was so impressed with my work. Probably could have put it back together in my teens. Now, I'd need a good pair of magnifying glasses to even attempt it.

[jdc]

Maybe your first Mac encounter?

TRaSh-80 for me as well. Prob 1982?

We had an Atari consol, and inellivision... so early gaming computer?

[hal]

an ATM in 1979 (if you don't count TI calculators)

I had a brush with a main frame terminal in 1979 also and decided that this computing stuff wasn't ready yet. I'll come back to it when I can talk to the thing. The mac was close enough.

[Ombligo]

Late 70s', I am pretty sure it was a TRS-80 that I used at school. I almost bought a Commodore VIC-20 at one point just to use as a word processor, but it was over a thousand dollars and I bought a used Underwood 5 typewriter for less than a hundred instead. It would be a decade later before we bought a home computer - a Packard-Bell 386SX with 2MB or Ram and a 20MB hard drive [I rebuilt it a few years later to a 486].

The paper gave us laptops so I didn't get my first Mac until 1997, and then I got two - a PowerBook 1400 and a G3/233. That was the last desktop I bought, been portables ever since.