What was your favorite computer from the Early Days?

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You have a good taste in computers. Let me guess, gamer, artist or spreadsheet man back in the day.

Actually, Tandy is/was Radio Shack...

I never had a computer until 1997. Before that I had quite limited exposure to them with the exceptions being a freind's Turbo XT w/QDOS (1991), a classic Mac that I did word processing on, (1988) an Apple IIc that I did some CBT on, (1986) and another freind that had a Wyse terminal that he used to access The Source as well as a Sanyo 8088 machine that was semi-IBM PC compatible running Sanyo's version of CP/M (1985).

Back during that time I wanted a Commodore 64, and after the Apple Mac came out, I wanted one, but couldn't afford the several thousand dollar pricetag for one.

Spectrum 48k

But i guess you had to be English to remember that one

Was Commodores competitor here

Has anybody ever noticed how fast old computers run. To pull up a game or word processor on a Commodore 64 is almost a automatic process compared to modern computers.

My first computer was the Sinclair ZX81. The Spectrum followed it. The Sinclair was hard work, I forget how much RAM it had, maybe 16k, writing software was an art to fit it into the available memory. I remember writing a version of Ping with the paddles at each end and a bouncing ball.
My true love was the Commodore 64, I really cut my programming teeth on that, and learned the fine art of Assembly and machine code programming. Happy days. Ironically the software I wrote in assembly on a Commodore 64 runs faster than the equivalent software I write in Visual Studio to run on Vista despite the massive improvements in hardware speed. I wonder where all that processing power goes?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX80

I didn't bother with the ZX81, as I had no interest in it running that slow. (Floating point arithmetic? Nah! I'd rather stick with the fast 16-bit integer setup of the ZX80. I did eventually get seduced by the Spectrum... then on to my period with the QL.)

Ahhh
LOVE my Commodore 64.

I have a SX-64 with JifyDOS within arm's reach right now.

Sometimes I just need to turn of the XBOX 360, and turn on the Commodore.

My first computer was actually a Timex-Sinclair 1000, with 2 kb of memory (I also had the 16k expansion pack). It wasn't my favorite, though - the tape storage was way too slow and subject to corruption. My C-64 had a disk drive, with disks that held up to 160 whole kilobytes!

I also think that the glory of the C-64 can be demonstrated if you boot up a copy of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, for either the PS2 or XBox. The opening splash screen is a faithful copy of the screen you saw on booting up your Commodore...

No mention of the BBC model 'B' or Acorn

The c64 for it's soundchip and the Amiga series.

Well the C64 and Amiga did have a state of the art sound chipset for its time.

mac 128k. i stayed up all night playing macpaint when my gp got the first one in at his computer store.

My Commodore 64 was my first love. The first computer I had was a Tandy Color Computer, but to use an analogy the CoCo was like my first kiss, the Commodore 64 was like the girl who took my virginity.

I feel almost sad sometimes when I think about it, because I know that no matter how much I learn about systems and whatnot, I'll never be able to know *everything* about a modern PC like I did the C64, down to the shift registers and chip pin-outs.

Now I have an insane urge to play Ultima IV.

I just fired up The Bard's Tale 2 on my SX-64.

There is just a certain charm to the older hardware. I have an XBOX 360, PSP, and DS for modern games, but I love the Commodore!!

No mention of the Hewlett Packard 85 and the HP83 that had 64KB ram and used their own proprietary
tape system for storage. The 85 had a built in thermal printer the 83 didn't. Peripherals were ran off the
GPIB that can daisy chain up to 14 devices on the same bus, ie automated test equipment and
pen-plotters. We used them quite a bit when I worked in the engineering lab at Frequency Electronics
back in the mid to late 1980s.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_series_80