Before you got your first computer did you see something on tv, movie or irl that you could not wait to do it yourself once you got your computer?

[Arcade]

For me it was in 2 occasions when my science teacher connected a thermometer to an apple II and the other one was when I saw the movie the net when Sandra Bullock ordered pizza online. Those 2 moments for me is what made me fall in love with computers. In 2005 or 2006 Dominos was the first place in my area that was taking orders online.

I just finished ordering an extra large half peperroni half sausage from papa johns.

 

[eyoungren]

Nope. I was aware of computers, but in 1980 my focus as a nine year old kid was on other stuff.

My dad simply walked in the door with a TRS-80 Color Computer and left it to me and my sister to figure out. He'd also gotten a couple of game cartridges, so we played those for a while. Eventually, I learned how to change the background color on the screen and a few things in BASIC.

It wasn't until 1984 when I got a Commodore 64 that I really started using computers.

 

[Herdfan]

Used a typewriter all through HS. Granted it was a nice one.

Got to college (Fall '84) and one of the guys on my floor's dad worked for IBM, so he had an IBM PC-XT with the 10 Meg Hard drive. That computer must have written half the papers on that floor that year.

Got home for summer and begged my parents for a computer. Any computer. Ended up with an identical setup, IBM PC-XT and an Okidata dot matrix printer. Whole setup in June '85, > $5K.

Added a color monitor before my senior year and it was still rockin' when I sold it to a fraternity brother after graduation in Spring '89. Bought a Dell 386, the 486 was out, but very expensive.

Moved over to Mac's in 2011.

 

[Nermal]

At the risk of echoing the other comments here, nope. I was born in 1983 and can't remember not having a computer. We had a C64, probably bought when I was about two or three.

Next came a PC-XT clone with a single (3.5"!) floppy drive and MS-DOS 3.3, circa 1989. This was followed by a 486 in 1992, and various other PCs until I bought my first Mac - an 800 MHz iBook - in 2003.

 

[jz0309]

No. I've been using computers since the early 80s so it is way too long ago to remember if I had seen anything on TV/movie that I wanted one
I guess that makes me (kinda) old

 

[BotchQue]

TV, movie, irl (whatever that is) no, but rather Keyboard magazine. I had been using a Zenith Z-100 at work for several years, then in '89 I finally bought an Atari Mega, because I was starting my master's degree, and it had a MIDI port built-in! It had a GUI interface like the expensive Apples, but a price like a PC; used it for eight years.
Had enough income by then to switch to Apple (Atari was out of business), and haven't looked back. Another twenty years of dreams of composing stellar soundtracks, but as of now neither Hans Zimmer nor Peter Gabriel have anything to worry about...

 

[goldmac2006]

👍 before I got my first iPad (that was my first device I owned) pre-2014, I wasn’t into Apple until I got my first Apple product. I didn’t even get to do photography until I got my first iPhone two years later with the 5s.

 

[Lil Chillbil]

Video connected conferencing! Or FaceTime in Apples dimension was pretty sci-fi until you realized it actually can just be awkward.

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

My Dad brought home a C64 in 1984 or 85ish which they used for word processing. I of course used it to play video games. Jumpman is a favorite of mine. So is Legacy of the Ancients on the C64. Luckily the Atari 2600 joysticks worked perfectly with it.

load*'',8,1 LOL

The first "computer" though is likely the Atari 2600 we had. I think we got it in 1980 or 81? - a console yes, but computer none the less. I still have all this stuff.

 

[eyoungren]

My Dad brought home a C64 in 1984 or 85ish which they used for word processing. I of course used it to play video games. Jumpman is a favorite of mine. So is Legacy of the Ancients on the C64. Luckily the Atari 2600 joysticks worked perfectly with it.

load*'',8,1 LOL

The first "computer" though is likely the Atari 2600 we had. I think we got it in 1980 or 81? - a console yes, but computer none the less. I still have all this stuff.

I played a lot of Telengard on my C64. By 1987, I was running a BBS on Friday nights and the weekends.

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

Before my Dad got our first personal computer, my life was focused on my bike, Transformers and He-Man lol, so I clearly recall life before computers and I must say it was awesome. Of course computers were all over those toy lines/cartoons but I as a little kid (born in 77) did not put the two together at all. Even with the C64, I only ever used it for playing games really. Subsequently the 1701 monitor those came with is a fantastic console monitor (still love mine) too which I later ran my NES through in the late 80s and other consoles after that. The color and definition is fantastic. The focus for me has always been gaming really. Growing up on a farm with no friends around really, I gravitated to them for entertainment and imagining worlds etc. As I moved towards consoles (snes, gen, tg16 etc) I sat aside the c64. I did not really get into computing as an actual hobby until I was a young adult. The catalyst for rediscovery in the late 90s was still gaming and chasing the dream of bringing the arcade experience home - at the time, computers were light years ahead in creating true 3D gaming environments, textures etc. No console was remotely close to what a good gpu & system could provide so even then, 3 dimensional graphically immersive & responsive first person game environments were the reason. Stack growing internet infrastucture, DIY buildable computers & parts, affordable broadband and online gaming (because bots were terribly stupid back then) and one can understand how the pursuit of gaming was a common gateway for folks and computing.

 

[Boyd01]

I was 29 years old in 1978 when I got an Apple ][, the serial number was less than 5000. After using university time sharing systems on mainframes, writing programs in BASIC and FORTRAN, the idea of having all that power right on my desk was irresistable. I was an avid reader of BYTE magazine (and everything else I could find about personal computers) so I was well aware of the landscape. But the Apple ][ especially appealed to me because of the color graphics capabilities and frankly their slick advertising campaign. It was quite a stretch for me at the time - about $1300 (all decked out with 16mb RAM, which was needed for floating point BASIC). Most of my friends didn't understand, or just thought I was crazy.

"Still crazy after all these years" 😄

 

[Rodan52]

We had a Macintosh II in 1986 for our primary school level children. I used it for word processing, web searches and played games like Prince of Persia on it.
It was an investment in the future and a complete departure from MS DOS based computers which I hated. Our children quickly mastered the skills required and were proficient touch typists by the age of 12.
We continued to upgrade to the latest model on a two to three year basis so I've had iMacs, Power Macs and MacBooks pretty much since inception.

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

We had a Macintosh II in 1986 for our primary school level children. I used it for word processing, web searches and played games like Prince of Persia on it.
It was an investment in the future and a complete departure from MS DOS based computers which I hated. Our children quickly mastered the skills required and were proficient touch typists by the age of 12.
We continued to upgrade to the latest model on a two to three year basis so I've had iMacs, Power Macs and MacBooks pretty much since inception.

My elementary school in the early 80s in rural Ohio had a couple Apples (I dont recall which however). I remember none of the teachers knowing how to use them nor any students (at least in my classes as none had home pcs) so I rarely saw them in use. They just sat there in the corner of the library sadly. Fast forward to my sons primary school and they have a STEM lab full of imacs that the kids routinely use. Its entirely possible that the school has more macs running macos than windows machines. My oldests Kinder, first and second grade teachers all had macs. Of course these are all Intel macs, so entirely possible that win10 was on there but from talking with the STEM lab teacher, all of the imacs in the STEM lab, art room and library that students have access to run macos.

 

[rhett7660]

This right here:

"Shall We Play A Game?"

 

[maflynn]

I pre-date computers, so there really wasn't anything on TVs or movies that motivated me to buy a computer

It was the hobbyist movement that pulled me into the computer stuff.

 

[eyoungren]

Before my Dad got our first personal computer, my life was focused on my bike, Transformers and He-Man lol, so I clearly recall life before computers and I must say it was awesome. Of course computers were all over those toy lines/cartoons but I as a little kid (born in 77) did not put the two together at all. Even with the C64, I only ever used it for playing games really. Subsequently the 1701 monitor those came with is a fantastic console monitor (still love mine) too which I later ran my NES through in the late 80s and other consoles after that. The color and definition is fantastic. The focus for me has always been gaming really. Growing up on a farm with no friends around really, I gravitated to them for entertainment and imagining worlds etc. As I moved towards consoles (snes, gen, tg16 etc) I sat aside the c64. I did not really get into computing as an actual hobby until I was a young adult. The catalyst for rediscovery in the late 90s was still gaming and chasing the dream of bringing the arcade experience home - at the time, computers were light years ahead in creating true 3D gaming environments, textures etc. No console was remotely close to what a good gpu & system could provide so even then, 3 dimensional graphically immersive & responsive first person game environments were the reason. Stack growing internet infrastucture, DIY buildable computers & parts, affordable broadband and online gaming (because bots were terribly stupid back then) and one can understand how the pursuit of gaming was a common gateway for folks and computing.

I was born in 1970, so a bit older than you in the mid-80s. For me, most stuff seems to center around 1984-1985. That particular time frame saw three big events for me. Summer 1984 was the Commodore 64, early 1985 was discovering Bulletin Board Systems and summer of 1985 was Robotech.

The C64 meant the computer wasn't just a toy anymore, even though I used it for games a lot. BBSes meant I could communicate outside my room. You grew up on a farm. I did not, but my dad had us living in a rural town that did have farms. So, similar experience I expect.

Then Robotech. The ubiquity of animation in the modern culture of America owes a debt to that show. Because of Robotech, anime became popular. And it just exploded. But trying to find anime in 1985-86? Good luck! Now you can find anything you want on just about any platform.

And Robotech got on TV why? Because, IMO, of the groundwork laid down by Voltron. There was enough popularity in Voltron that when Carl Macek wanted to bring Japanese animation to US television with Robotech, it stuck.

Even if you aren't interested in any of that, you can thank Robotech and Voltron for changing Saturday morning cartoons.

I haven't mentioned RPGs, but that was a big part of my life since 1983 as well. Still is. That and everything I just discussed were huge reasons I used computers from that point on.

Eye of the Beholder?! Advanced Dungeons & Dragons right there on your computer!