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?

[Huntn]

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.

I remember when dedicated wordprocessors were expensive pieces of equipment, basically computers, and I was actually looking forward to typing out stuff on a computer instead of a typewriter. Purchased a (as I recall) a $2k Apple IIe from the Base Exchange in 1984. It was an expensive purchase + monitor and duo disk drive.

 

[JSRinUK]

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.

Similar here, except my dad brought home a ZX81. I don’t think I knew what a computer was before that, but I think I must have spent every evening after school and weekend bashing away on it to “see what it could do”. I’m not sure I ever changed. 🤣

 

[JSRinUK]

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

I spent a lot of my time in the 80s bashing away on a manual typewriter using carbon paper so I had a backup copy of my stories.

Much later I got a Brother electric typewriter (daisywheel). I still have that now. It had a one-month memory, but I turned it on for the first time after about 2-3 decades and it still holds what I wrote.

 

[martint235]

Similar here, except my dad brought home a ZX81. I don’t think I knew what a computer was before that, but I think I must have spent every evening after school and weekend bashing away on it to “see what it could do”. I’m not sure I ever changed. 🤣

When I was a kid we had a strict £20 max for Xmas presents. I wanted a 16k ZX Spectrum at £100 and had to effectively put a business case to my dad about how it would help develop my future career (in my defence 34 of my 37 working years have been in IT). I then spent much of December in my bedroom “making sure it was working properly for Xmas day”

 

[JSRinUK]

When I was a kid we had a strict £20 max for Xmas presents. I wanted a 16k ZX Spectrum at £100 and had to effectively put a business case to my dad about how it would help develop my future career (in my defence 34 of my 37 working years have been in IT). I then spent much of December in my bedroom “making sure it was working properly for Xmas day”

Since that ZX81, I’ve always been interested in tech - but we never had the money to buy much else. We did have the 16K RAM pack. Spent a good few evenings trying to fill that!

My dad wasn’t really all that interested in the ZX81 or computers, so I’m not really sure why he bought it. He was intrigued by a “calendar” program we got - but I’m not sure any of us used that much either.