The first computer I ever used was at the Canadian National Exhibition when I was about ten. I gave the lady fifty cents and after a minute I was handed five punch cards with my fortune printed on them. I became very suspicious of this almost immediately and I've never really trusted computers since then.
On Thu, Feb 13, 2014 at 10:03 AM, John <[email protected]> wrote: > Thinking back on it, I don't even know what the first computer I used was. > > We handed in our punch cards at the window & came back the next day to get a > printout so we could see if the program had run. > > Besides that, the only thing I remember is the telephone bill came on an IBM > punch card that had to be returned with payment, and those cards fit into > the card punch machine so I could write rude messages to the phone company > before sending them back. > > The first computer I ever owned was a 16Mhz Emerson PC-AT clone with a 40meg > harddrive & 5-14" floppy drive DOS 3.3 and a modem. I don't remember now, > but it may have even had a CGA display. > > > On 2/13/2014 3:10 AM, J.C. O'Connell wrote: >> >> The first computer I ever used was a HP85, built in monitor, tape drive, >> and BASIC. >> I forget what these cost, but we used a quite a few of these as >> instrument controllers >> at work in both engineering and production. >> >> >> On 2/13/2014 2:42 AM, John Coyle wrote: >>> >>> Very first computer I ever specified and bought for my employer was an >>> HP86A, green screen, 2 * 5.25 >>> floppies, plug-in 64k memory module, Epson M1500 printer and an HP >>> plotter - bargain at $13,500! >>> My *istD I bought for a heavily discounted $1900 direct from the >>> importer. >>> >>> >>> John Coyle >>> Brisbane, Australia >>> >>> >>> >>> -----Original Message----- >>> From: PDML [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of CollinB >>> Sent: Wednesday, 12 February 2014 10:47 PM >>> To: [email protected] >>> Subject: Re: When did equipment get so cheap? >>> >>>> Yeah, that's it. The same sort of thing happened with PC's. Remember >>>> what the first XT's cost? >>>> >>>> Alan C >>> >>> When I was selling Apple ][ plus computers, people would spend $2500+ >>> on the system to run a $200 >>> VisiCalc program. > > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > [email protected] > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and > follow the directions. -- -bmw -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
