Post your computer experience timeline - what machines you used.

[galacticstone]

I thought it might be interesting to see how others got their feet wet with computers and what path did you take to end up where you are today?

I started out in the early-mid 1980's with a Radio Shack TRS-80 Model II. (the old "trash 80")

Radio Shack TRS-80 ---> Commodore 64 ---> IBM Clone 8088 ---> Dell 286 ---> Dell Pentium I ---> Compaq Pentium III ---> Acer Aspire One Notebook (Atom) ---> Acer One Ten Notebook ---> my current machine (Lenovo Ideapad 14).

I am skipping over a few redundant machines, but these were the major stepping stones I took. All of my previous machines were DOS or Windows. My Lenovo is my first experience with Linux. It felt so good to take a brand new Windows machine and wipe all traces of Microsoft from it. LOL.

How did you get here?

[Frogs Hair]

Home systems-1999 gateway essential pc upgraded to xp and then bought a bare-bones kit (2007)ish with an ASUS mobo and AMD CPU and have been upgrading hardware and peripherals ever since . Added an HP Elite Book with docking station in 2014 The Boston Acoustics speakers from the gateway still sound great. I saw a PC World article for Ubuntu 9.10 and tried Wubi which led me here.

Work-various Windows loaded machines, HP-UX in-circuit testing fixtures and even an old Tandy 102 for defect data collection.

[lisati]

My first hands-on experience was circa 1976, with a Burroughs mainframe (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burroughs_large_systems) at my Dad's work, the exact model number is currently buried beyond easy recollection, later followed by a Wang 2200 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_2200) at school.

On the home front, I started with a Casio PB-100, which was little more than a calculator programmable in a subset of BASIC.

From there, a VZ300 (http://www.vz200.org/bushy/history.htm)->a couple of MS-DOS machines->a couple of Commodore 128s->a DEC machine (my first Windows machine), a Compaq desktop, a couple of Toshiba laptops, and a Compaq laptop. Most have fairly modest specs by today's standards, and are in varied states of functionality.

(The VZ300, an interesting beast, is long gone. Some of the smelly blue smoke that powered it leaked out one day, and it didn't work too well after that.)

[QIII]

Also circa '76, Unix and too many machines to bother to remember.

[galacticstone]

My first hands-on experience was circa 1976, with a Burroughs mainframe (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burroughs_large_systems) at my Dad's work, the exact model number is currently buried beyond easy recollection, later followed by a Wang 2200 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_2200) at school.

On the home front, I started with a Casio PB-100, which was little more than a calculator programmable in a subset of BASIC.

From there, a VZ300 (http://www.vz200.org/bushy/history.htm)->a couple of MS-DOS machines->a couple of Commodore 128s->a DEC machine (my first Windows machine), a Compaq desktop, a couple of Toshiba laptops, and a Compaq laptop. Most have fairly modest specs by today's standards, and are in varied states of functionality.

(The VZ300, an interesting beast, is long gone. Some of the smelly blue smoke that powered it leaked out one day, and it didn't work too well after that.)

I thought I had heard of everything, but VZ is new to me. The casing reminds me of a Commodore VIC.

[lisati]

I thought I had heard of everything, but VZ is new to me. The casing reminds me of a Commodore VIC.

The one I had came from an Australian electronics retailer, and was a Z80A-based machine. Some assembly language software for the TRS-80 could be adapted, due to the similarity of some of the system calls in ROM. I read somewhere that a version was marketed in the UK, under a different brand name.

[DuckHook]

Olivetti Programma 203, (https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivetti_P203) then a Basic 4 BB1 (http://www.ardiehl.de/basicfour/), big jump to a DEC VAX 750 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VAX), then downhill from there with a succession of comparatively boring PCs. Your thread has brought a tear to my eye. I do miss those old clunkers, especially the Olivetti, which was decades ahead of its time.

[djchandler]

Atari 400/800/800XL, Atari ST (my friend owned an Atari only store), Mac+, Custom built 80486, DEC VAX via modem, Mac SE, Mac Quadra, and still the last 25 or so years to account for with many self-built, re-cycled, rescued and re-pupurposed computers. I'm running a Intel NUC clone (Gigabyte) now with memory and a hard drive recovered from a laptop with coffee stains on the motherboard.

https://ubuntuforums.org/album.php?albumid=1268&attachmentid=278156

[galacticstone]

This is fun and interesting. Thank you everyone for the responses. :)

I left out several redundant PC's from my list. I've owned a bunch of Microsoft-powered desktops over the years. I've used every version of Windows from 95 up to 10. And I always had issues of one kind or another with Windows. I just never considered switching to a different OS.

Here is a quick little story - back in 2000/2001, I lived in Oxford Mississippi. I worked for a janitorial service (jobs were hard to come by in that little town) and one of our clients was a business called "Sair Linux". I didn't think much of it at the time, but since then I have learned that some of the people involved with Sair were key early players in the evolution of Linux. Even though I did not know it at the time, I was getting a glimpse of my future OS. We (my wife and I) would go in after hours to clean the place. More often than not, there were one or two employees there who would work into the wee hours of the morning. They were nice to us and we'd sometimes chat a little. One guy had a habit of sleeping there - I think he almost lived there.

I wonder now what happened to those folks. Are they still involved with Linux, or did they move on to something else?

[gordintoronto]

IBM 1401, System /360 Model 40, Model 20, Model 25, Model 85, Model 168.
Commodore PET, SuperPET, 64, 128.
A multi-user CP/M machine whose name escapes me. One hard drive, per-user processor boards, long cables to terminals.
Several 286 or 386-based PCs, then an AMD custom design.
My current daily driver, home-made AMD Phenom II on Gigabyte motherboard.
HP and Lenovo laptops.
A Dell server which exceeds the combined performance of all those computers, two Xeons with 48 GB of memory.

Not bad for 53 years.

[lammert-nijhof]

My Work Computers:
Mainframes: Philips P1000 series (1969-1975); MDS, MPS
Minis: Philips P800 series, DEC PDP 11/34, DEC VAX 11/750, (1976-1987); RSX/11M and S, VAX VMS and our own P800 super reliable, real time OS running across 10-50 P800 minis for one Air Traffic Control system.
Many PCs, PC-Workstations (1988-2010)

My Desktops:
1988 Philips P3105 (XT Clone); MS-DOS 4 and 6
1993 Own build 486DX66 ; Windows for Workgroups 3.11 and Windows 95
Cyrix 686, Pentium IIs, Pentium IIIs, Pentium 4s and AMD Athlon64 3200+; Windows 95/98 and XP
(2010-2013) Pentium 4HT, 3.2Ghz, 2GB; Ubuntu 10.04 LTS - 12.04 LTS
(2014-2019?) HP dc5850 from 10-2008, AMD Phenom II X4 B97, 3.2GHz, 8GB; Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, Host 16.04 LTS and 17.10 + Virtualbox VMs

and extra
(2017-2018?) Built from not used parts: Pentium 4HT, 3.0Ghz, 1GB; Peppermint 7

My Laptops:
Dell Lattitude Pentium III 500MHz; 384MB; Windows 2000 and XP
2008-2017 Dell Inspiron 1521, AMD Athlon X2 TK-55, 1.8Ghz, 2GB; Windows Vista and Ubuntu 8.04, 10.04, 12.04, 14.04 and 16.04 all LTS (8.04 and 10.04 used in dual boot with Vista)
2017-2021? HP Elitebook 8560p from 12-2011, i5-2520m, 8GB, Host Ubuntu 16.04 LTS + Virtualbox VMs

Virtualbox VMs on laptop and desktop;

278193

My idea was that an upgrade from 17.10 to 18.04 would probably be easier then from 16.04 to 18.04, so this week I have upgraded my desktop from 16.04 -> 17.04 -> 17.10. However the first upgrade to 17.04 has been a complete disaster, maybe because I did not disable the Nvidea driver. After the upgrade the screen was incomplete and frozen and both mouse and keyboard were not doing anything. After upgrading to 17.10 with an USB drive I was very lucky and it started to work again. After this adventure I prefer to wait until April for the laptop.

[PJs Ronin]

My introduction was in the early '80s with a VIC-20 soon followed by the bigger Commodore 64. After that I've pretty much built my own mainly around Intel CPUs and Nvidia GPUs. The 'hump' for me was about 8 years ago when I was constantly building the biggest, baddest platforms possible and had a bunch of them networked doing... pretty much nothing.

Now I'm content with a quad core Intel Core i7-4790 handling the leg work and GeForce GTX 650 pushing the monitor. I'm toying with the idea of building a new monster but ... oooh look, a squirrel.

[mastablasta]

1. Spectrum 48+,
2. Dialog (locally made "microcomputer"),
3. 286/12Mhz XT (borrowed),
4. 486/DX2 80Mhz later pumped with at the time massive 32MB ram (still working with win95 loaded) - first "real" family PC
5. Pentium III 400 Mhz, 256MB ram (second family PC bought by my bro and I with some "hard labour" during holidays and scholarship), later upgraded with special socket kit to Celeron 1600 MHz and 1 Gb ram, ran WIN 98 at first and then WinXP. later had Kubuntu 14.04 installed. but then disk died, however monitor is working and running Core i5 under the desk at my brother's house.
6. Athlon 3200+ - which i currently use. i've been upgrading it and aside from CPU, RAM and monitor everything else was upgraded or exchanged. currently still running windows XP, but planning of putting Kubuntu on it.
7. i upgraded my wife's PC which we inherited to Celeron E3300 with 2 Gb ram running Kubuntu 14.04 32 bit
8. we also have a small portable netbook HP pavilion dm1 with AMD E450 running Kubuntu 14.04 64 bit and Windows 7

9. saving money for a new PC, but something always comes up that is more important. :-(

at work we use Fujitsu PC's. and i have an i3 laptop running win 10. not much to talk about but so far it get's the job done.

[pteryges]

Computers I've owned:
Apple //c
Macintosh //cx
Powerbook G3 Pismo, the first machine I installed Linux on.
2 PowerPC G5s,a 1.8 GHz single and a 2 GHz dual
2010 Mac Pro, currently running Ubuntu 17.10
2016 MacBook Pro

Machines I've used:
Too many to remember. Started with TRS-80s, Apple //s and Atari 400/800s. In college I used a bunch of DECstation 3100 and 5000s running Ultrix, and NeXT slabs and cubes, as well as Macs. At work I've used a bewildering variety of Apple and x86 hardware, running Apple operating systems back to System 6 and Windows back to Windows 3.

At the moment I have a 4790K/1070 running Windows 10 in addition the the two Macs, one running macOS and the other, like I said, Ubuntu 17.10.

[spyder77]

Started out in 1980 with a Commodore 64 -> 80286 several years later -> 80386 (my first AMD CPU & experience throwing components together) -> 80486 (a couple. one Intel, one AMD) -> x586 (my first and only Cyrix) -> Pentium 100 -> AMD k5 -> too many Intels to remember -> AMD Turion HP Laptop (first notebook, 1st switch to notebooks exclusively) -> AMD A6 Quadcore APU HP Laptop -> AMD A10-9600P Quadcore APU HP Laptop (2.4 GHz, 8 GBs RAM, 1 TB HD + 4 TB WD USB 3.0 external HDD).

Strong preference for AMD going back to their early underdog days. Have an itch to put together a Raspberry Pi project I hope to scratch soon.

[irv]

I got started in computers back in the 1970's, It wasn't until the year 2000 that I moved into an IT position where I did networking, communication, PC setups, and repair.
My first computer was an Atari XL800 I am going to share a link to all the photos of my computers from the past. the first one is the first computer I started out with. As you can see I used a B/W TV for a monitor and tape drives for storage.
I got into Linux around 2005 and have been using it ever since. By the way, I am totally Windows free. Everything I own has Linux. Ubuntu, Android, and Chrome OS.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/W8RRKNy0JLWce7Lf1
I do a live show on Youtube once a month, it is called Laid Back Bike Report some of the videos and pictures are in this directory along with my old computers.
Some were of my Atari ST and TT. I started out programming with my Atari XL800.
That's my story in the short.

[galacticstone]

Hi Irv!

Those photos are great. I wish I had photos of my old PC's, but I never thought to take pictures of them. I think I do have one photo of my old C64 laying around somewhere, but it's a polaroid. LOL.

Best regards,

MikeG

[dockland2]

Zx-81 early 80's
Commadore VIC 20 and VIC64 mid 80's
Atari 1040 late 80's or early 90's
A lot of desktops and laptops since. Dell, Compaq, IBM...
Currently running a kind of high end computer (i7 6900K with a lot of RAM and storage) and a Intel NUC i7 (BNH)

[friarlawless]

To the best of my knowledge, this was my trajectory. My father was a huge Apple fan back in the day, so a lot of my formative years were spent on them.

Apple ][gs
Packard Bell 486SX/33mHz (learned Pascal and some C)
Unnamed IBM compatible with VGA card, DX2/66mHz
Macintosh II
Power Macintosh 6100
Power Macintosh 7100
Power Macintosh 9600 (learned some Objective-C)
iMac G3 Bondi Blue
Micron Pentium 3 desktop (learned C++)
Custom AMD64 desktop (learned Java and C#)
PowerBook G4
MacBook Pro 1st Generation (Intel processor)
MacBook Pro 3rd Generation (Intel with Retina display)
Mac Pro (Late 2013, the "trash can")
Dell Inspiron 13 2-in-1 7373 (i7 8th gen, current box)

I got into Linux with the Pentium 3 machine (Redhat Linux 6.2, IIRC, purchased from a Fry's Electronics in boxed form) and dabbled with many different distributions over the years. I took a break from Linux after Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy, and only recently picked it back up with the purchase of my Dell. I'm currently running 17.10 with the 4.15 kernel. I don't usually do special kernels but I wanted the patches for Spectre/Meltdown before 18.04.

[SeijiSensei]

IBM 7094
IBM 1401
IBM System 360

My first PC was the original two-floppy IBM PC built by the Entry Systems Division. I later used a Radio Shack clone of the IBM XT (forgot its model), then upgraded to a 386/20 system from an obscure manufacturer when the 386 line of processors was first released. I've owned a variety of laptops from Dell, HP, Asus, and Lenovo. I'm writing this on the HP Pavilion dv6. I also continue to use the Lenovo IdeaPad Y570. I also have a generic Asus tower PC with an i5 connected to my television and just replaced my aging Dell PowerEdge 400sc server with a new T-30 when they went on sale at NewEgg for < $300.

[noahjones12]

I just reading so new stuff for me..,

[hrsetrdr]

In the mid '70s I was attending CSULB (http://www.csulb.edu/) and writing FORTRAN programs and feeding them via punch cards to the University's CDC 3150 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDC_3000_series#The_3150) mainframe. My interest was piqued, but due to life's twists and turns, I did not purchase a computer for the home until 1999. Then things changed.

In addition to using computers for the usual business purposes, I got interested in Stanford University's Distributed Computing effort, known as Folding@Home (http://folding.stanford.edu/about/).

Now I'm making up for lost time, building numerous computers for the Folding@Home (http://folding.stanford.edu/about/) effort. BTW, it was Folding@Home that got me started with Linux.

Dealing with the myriad of Windows issues evaporated, once I became aware of Linux. ;)

First build was a Socket 423 P4, with an expensive 1024gb of RDRAM memory. Then, many many AMD Socket A machines. The dual socket AMD caught my attention, built six systems on that platform.

Then the dual core D820 / socket 775 processors brought me back to Intel.

At present my server, a Supermicro X9DRD-7LN4F-JBOD | (2) Xeon E5-2670 | 128GB DDR3( ECC Registered) machine keeps me company.

[QIII]

Punch cards were such fun...

I don't miss that.

[SantaFe]

Punch cards were such fun...

I don't miss that.
But making Christmas Wreaths out of the old ones was fun! ;)

[makitso]

Punch cards were such fun...

I remember having a punch card case about 3 feet long to hold a huge program on punch cards. In the data center I dropped it and the cards went all over the floor :-((

[galacticstone]

It was the late 80's and punch cards were already fading out, but I recall our computer class teacher brought in a bunch from his old job prior to teaching. He just wanted to show us what they were like firsthand. I remember they were already yellowed with age and had old pre-font typeset printing on one edge.

I imagine floppy disks will provide a similar antique-feel to computer students now.

[lighthousebeacon]

My addiction began in the early 80's with a vic20, then a commodore64, then various intels (386, 486, pentium 4, core 2, i7), then I jumped ship and next came my amd phase (opteron, phenom), to today where my main rig is a Intel Xeon E3 1230.
Into gaming for a long time, so better not get me started on graphics cards.
Was a Windows fan boy that entire time (approx 30 years). Only end of last year did I try Linux. For me has been like those heady teenage early years of discovering your first pc all over again.

[eoore]

A couple spare ASUS motherboards, couldn't tell you which.
Bought some stuff to get said motherboards working.
Curiosity being my next machine, it was very effective at breaking all of the previous competitors.
Then, I got a nice little Raspberry Pi. Still have that in my project room.
My project room is also called my stuff-I'll-probably-never-have-time-for room.
Got a C55 Toshiba Satellite for school. I slotted a new RAM into that one!
And it broke. (@Curiosity) (@Gravity)
But wait, I had a warranty!
Got another C55.

Started from /home and now I'm here!
Where am I?

[SeijiSensei]

Punch cards were such fun...

I don't miss that.

Me, neither. I'm an inaccurate typist, and punch cards allowed no errors. You had to type it again.

My non-PC experience goes back to the IBM 7090, 1401, and S/360. In those days we had a three-hour turnaround time on jobs. What fun it was when your FORTRAN program failed because of a typo on card 237.

[lisati]

My first experience with FORTRAN was on port-a-punch cards at school, the kind of punched cards that you stabbed with a paper clip or pen. The deck was dropped off at one of the local banks, and the results picked up a day or two later. It was great fun when you submission came back with errors because one of the cards got snarled in the reader. I'm not sure what system was in use at the time, but a few years later the company which would have processed the jobs was using assorted models from the S/370 (and similar) range.

[1fallen]

My first experience with FORTRAN was on port-a-punch cards at school, the kind of punched cards that you stabbed with a paper clip or pen. The deck was dropped off at one of the local banks, and the results picked up a day or two later. It was great fun when you submission came back with errors because one of the cards got snarled in the reader. I'm not sure what system was in use at the time, but a few years later the company which would have processed the jobs was using assorted models from the S/370 (and similar) range.

Ah yes those were the days! :D ;) I Don't even miss that whole process.
Kinda makes you set back, and see how far things have progressed.
But this also is a bit sad in regards to: "I possess a device,, that is capable of accessing the entirety of information known to man.
I use it to look at funny pictures of cats and to argue with strangers."
Forgive me but I can't remember who wrote that.

[pretty_whistle]

I started in the mid 80's with Radio Shack TRS-80. Later got an HP anything, still use HPs because I'v had good luck with them.

[PaulW2U]

I started out in the early-mid 1980's with a Radio Shack TRS-80 Model II. (the old "trash 80")
My first computer was a Sinclair ZX81 which I purchased in 1981 followed by a ZX Spectrum which offered full colour as opposed to its predecessor which was only monochrome. I then moved on to a BBC Model B and BBC Master which when connected to a second processor via "The Tube" made my programs run much faster. :shock:

Since then I have had numerous PCs and laptops which have run Windows 3.1, 95, 98, XP, Vista and 7, and since 2010 various flavours and releases of Ubuntu.

[BslBryan]

When I was a kid I enjoyed our IBM Aptiva. I learned how to type "color" so I could launch a graphical coloring application from the DOS prompt. I also liked to play games for Windows 3.0 like Bang! Bang!
After the Aptiva, we got another IBM with Windows 95, later upgraded to 98, and then in 2000 my dad bought this ridiculously overpriced machine from an infomercial called the Systemax. Actually, I found the infomercial! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-xmx9j56xU
I spent a lot of time entering AOL keywords into AOL search and chatting with people in public chat rooms (a/s/l?), whenever someone wasn't on the phone.

[kurt18947]

I started with an IBM XT clone. Two 1.2 MB. floppy drives. Then added an ST506 20 MB. hard drive and thought I'd hit the big time. Replaced the Intel 8088 with a NEC V20 Zoom Zoom!:D. At the time I was doing organ transplant flying and would get calls in the middle of the night to get weather, file a flight plan and get to the airport as soon as I could. Ever try to get Flight Service on the phone at 2 a.m.? "Please stand by, all briefers are busy". Yeah I'm sure. Compuserve was an absolute godsend in those days. I then progressed thru 386, 486SX, AMD K6 and AMD Athlon II which I'm typing this one. I'm really footdragging to upgrade due to the horror stories about UEFI. I have several OS s installed and have good luck switching between them. I'm concerned my luck may run out with UEFI so the longer I can let UEFI mature, the better.

Notebooks I had a Sharp with two floppy drives then a Hitachi with which I learned about putting a hard drive in the freeezer for an hour or two, quick plug it into the machine and copy as much off it as possible til it locked up then back in the freezer and repeat. Since the Hitachi I've had a succession of Thinkpads. Love the pointer stick, don't love touchpads.

[sevendogsbsd]

Oh goodness, this is going to make me fire up some memory cells :p

1993: Packard Bell 486 DX2-66 with 4 mb ram, 420 mb Conner hard drive, 2400 baud modem, 14 inch monitor. Bought from Circuit city for more than $2000 US. Yikes. Used windows 3.11 on this box for a couple of months (complete with Packard Bell Navigator) until I got tired of windows and bought OS2 Warp. Thus began my hatred of anything out of Redmond.

1995 - 2009: homebuilt machines, too many to list. Ran windows until 1998, dumped it and ran Linux ever since, sort of.

2009-2013 - Got tired of constantly tweaking Linux (Gentoo and CRUX) and switched to a Mac Mini. Within this timeframe, upgraded to a monster Mac Pro (8 core Xeon, 24gb ram). Wanted something that "just worked".

2013-present: Got tired of apple holding my hand and more so with an OS that could kill the performance of a dual quad-core Xeon with 24 gb of ram. Really apple? Sold the big mac and bought present machine (HP z800 professional workstation). This box is a beast, despite the fact it is 7 years old. Dual 6 core Xeons (24 virtual cores), 96 gb ram. It chews through anything I can throw at it. I can compile webkitgtk in an hour, libreoffice in and hour and chromium in about the same time. Drives are all SSD for OS, user home, spinning drives for backups. Ran too many distros to list, including a 6 month hiatus on FreeBSD (Unix, for the layman), windows on a separate SSD for gaming. Yeah, tried the Linux gaming thing but I play a mix of stuff and it's just easier on windows 10. Still don't like it but all I use it for is gaming so I am fine with that.

Will never build another PC, no patience any more!

[RobGoss]

I first started out using a WebTV box https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSN_TV I think is was around 1998, after maximizing the usage of this little box I decided to go fully into computer land and got my self a Dell desktop. The rest was history

I still use mostly Dell and no longer use Windows

[galacticstone]

Wow, I forgot about WebTV. My mother had one of those for a while. I used it a few times when I would visit. Interesting little device. She lives in Florida and it had to be replaced three times in as many years because lightning strikes fried the box. I will always have a sentimental spot for WebTV, because it was on that box that I first chatted online with the woman who would become my wife of 18+ years. :)

[RobGoss]

Wow, I forgot about WebTV. My mother had one of those for a while. I used it a few times when I would visit. Interesting little device. She lives in Florida and it had to be replaced three times in as many years because lightning strikes fried the box. I will always have a sentimental spot for WebTV, because it was on that box that I first chatted online with the woman who would become my wife of 18+ years. :)

Yes Webtv was the starting point for me but never being a computer use it open new doors for me. I had two Webtv boxes

[Autodave]

1971 using Fortran on a Sperry Univac in college as an elective. Moved on to TRS80s with tape drives and eventually a floppy drive.
First "real" computer was an 8088 with 128K memory. That was upgraded to one meg memory: took like 36 chips to do so. Then a high density 3.5 floppy. Because an 8088 didn't recognize the high density floppy, a program had to be used to recognize it. Writing to the drive, it was known as B. Reading from it however, it was D drive. Had a massive 20 meg HD in it running DOS 5.0. This machine was then put to work as a Bulletin Board (anyone remember those?) running 4 2400 baud modems. Normally, only 3 modems were in use, but when friends couldn't get through, my voice line then was hooked to the 4th modem. This was a pain because now all the IRQs were used up and I could no longer use my mouse until the 4th modem was disabled! It ran Desqview and QEMM. 512K was reserved as a RAM drive to make it faster.
Moved up to a 286 then the next step 386.
Have owned MANY machines since then. I get old ones and either repair them or salvage usable parts for the next one. I have just given them away to people who can't afford to buy one. Where I used to work, we had about 70 machines running constantly. When one would go down, it was instantly swapped out. Simple repairs were done in house, but a lot of them were just scrapped. Luckily, I was allowed to have everyone of the scrapped ones once the HDs were removed.
Having retired a little over a year ago, I bought (as a retirement present for myself) a new machine (the cost of the parts would have been more than what I paid for the machine) and upgraded a few pieces. I now have an AMD 486 8 core clocked at 3.5, 4 gig Nvidia, 2 SSDs and a 1TB spinner.

[linuxyogi]

2003 Celeron 1.7 Ghz
2005 Cleleron 2.13Ghz
2010 AMD Athlon 64X2 5600+
2018 Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-6100 CPU & Raspberry Pi 2

[DeadEnd]

In class we would write a program in basic, punch it out on 8 bit wide paper tape, then once a week take the tape to the local college where we had some time reserved for a mainframe located on the other side of town.
Teacher would ring a number place the phone inside a black box and then we would feed our program using a tape reader to the mainframe the result would magically be typed out on the teleprinter.

After school I downgraded working on Jacquard looms.

[poet1]

1992(?) Compaq (Windows 3.1, DOS, & Unix, latter was SunOs or Solaris)
CPU upgrade made my pixellated first person shooter make real human voices instead of bleeps and blips, winning.
Also: the modem sounded like a digital 1's and 0's going through a digital blender. Times have changed, uh.

1996 Gateway tower computer (Windows 95 & DOS > 98 && DOS)
Ethernet cable consisted of a USB adapter, oops.
HDD 8GB or something
HAHA && IS A COMMAND LINE JOKE hahaha ha ha

1999 Dell XPS tower (Windows XP > Xubuntu > Lubuntu > Xubuntu)
Still running, suckah. With a few changes.
2.8 GHz CPU, 2nd cheapo PNY video card (original fried), 3 GB RAM, 80 GB x 2 hard drives

2006 Dell Inspiron 15" laptop (Windows XP > Windows 7 > Ubuntu 6.04 > Fedora something something > Ubuntu, probably > FreeBSD > Lubuntu > Xubuntu)
Friend tossed Ubuntu 6.04 at me, and it hit my head. Ow.
2GB Ram, 2.4 GHz dual core CPU, 2nd bottom-range Nvidia graphics card (original fried), 120 GB HDD replaced with 1 TB

2016 Acer Aspire V3 17" laptop (Windows 8 > 8.1 > 10 > Ubuntu > Lubuntu x.xx> Xubuntu 18.04)
Core i7, 16 GB RAM, 1 TB HDD, mid-range Nvidia 750M

2018 Dell Business Desktop (Work computer, Windows 10)
120 GB SDD, Core isomething

Now that my Android phone is in my brain, I can watch my favorite movies on YouTube from the comfort and privacy of my eyelids.

Edit: DOS and jokes

[iggywrite]

Fun topic!

I started with an Apple IIgs back in elementary school.

The first machine I ever owned was an IBM PS/2.

Moved on to a IBM Thinkpad in high school. Replaced that with a Lenovo Thinkpad later. Part of the reason that I used IBM products as a kid was my aunt worked for them and we always got really great deals on refurbished models.

Then I went to a Dell Insipiron 15 for a few years before replacing it with an HP Pavilion. I hated the Pavilion and quickly sold it and bought my first Macbook Pro in 2011. The Macbook Pro was later replaced by the Air a few years later when I decided I valued portability and extended battery life over power. I was in college at this time and thought it made more sense.

I replaced it with a Surface about a year ago. Had tons of issues with the Surface and really never connected with the device. It had some nice features, but for the most part it didn't suit me as a user. I also wasn't crazy about running Windows. Almost all of my previous machines ran either Unix or Linux, so I grew up practically with zero experience with Windows.

I'm currently using a Dell Latitude E6400. It's an older laptop that's running Lubuntu 18.04. I sold the Surface because I needed money and the Dell is sort of a stand in for the next machine. I'm planning on getting another Thinkpad soon.

So, complete history + OS running is as follows:

Apple IIgs - Apple OS
IBM PS/2 - Can't remember but ended up installing Novell's SuSe on it later
IBM Thinkpad T42 - Debian
Lenovo Thinkpad (Can't remember the model) - Debian
Dell Inspirion 15 - Debian and later Ubuntu 11.04
HP Pavilion - Ubuntu 12.04
Macbook Pro - OS X
Macbook Air - OS X
Microsoft Surface Book - Windows 10
Dell Latitude E6400 - Lubuntu 18.04

I also briefly had a Apple ibook G3 for fun. It was a nice little machine. I'd love to get another one.

[grimaldo]

well I started with a Dell Mini 10 experimenting ubuntu, then I become a developer so many of the best environments are based on unix, so I used to have a macbook pro, really good core i5 and video nvida 2gb until I been robed. Htenk I get I new mac from work and this is aweful, all the time like of space, so so graphics and many more, the worst part is you can not upgrade because apple. I had the chance to get a Surface Pro 4 and I try elementary, it works but the new Juno is kind of wierd in the screen area, so I start an ubuntu 18.04 in this pc/tablet... everything chnage.

Excelente management of the ram and the battery is good, no issues, just the cameras not work by firmework but is ok, I did not use them. Also this thing can handle a virtualbox with windows 10pro run fine not laggy but nice and solid I can test and run node, affinity designer, visual code and it works.

I think this could be very good in surface 6... with a nicer graphic card, I play dota, and street fighter 5 using steam and works fine, not amazing but fine.

Hope find the webcam drivers soon, but the rest of the computer is amazing

[Tadaen_Sylvermane]

Wish I could remember them. I do know that I've only had personal access to 5 over my life, being my own. One a Commodore 64. Another Pentium 3 from eMachines for Everquest. Then I built my own, Athlon 64 Clawhammer I believe. Then an AMD 1055t that I played world of warcraft on. And now just my Dell laptop (i gave up gaming so i didn't need a real big machine).

I didn't start my Linux journey until I got my laptop though. Before that I had tinkered occasionally, and I can admit my first experience with Linux involved Virtualbox as a safe environment for.... inappropriate things :rolleyes:

[freemedia2018]

Timex Sinclair 2068 followed by a PCjr with DOS 3, worked up through DOS 5 and 6, Windows 3.0 and 3.1, 95/98/SE, XP, Xubuntu.

XP was my last version of Windows. I've used far too many distros to list here, though the majority were Debian-based (because forays into other distro families were not as pleasant.) Since I'm no fan of a certain init system, I am still exploring the ecosystem. I really thought Debian would continue to be what I wanted, and perhaps someday it will be ideal again.

As to what I use now, I mix live distros together, using automated scripts. I use icewm for pretty much everything-- I sometimes mix in a few pieces of other desktops when needed. If i want to try my own software in the latest version of Xubuntu for example, I just download Xubuntu and run a script to modify it the way I want. This works for most things, and theoretically for everything.

[agklimit]

(Most of these were personal, and some from work - that's why there are devices overlapping in certain time periods.)


YEAR COMPUTER
1986 ZX Spectrum (borrowed)
1989 Amstrad CPC 464
1990 Schneider CPC 6128
1993 PC XT
1994 PC AT 386 DX
1996 IBM PS/1 486SX-25
1997 Compaq Contura Aero
1998 Pentium MMX desktop
1999 IBM PS/2
2002 Psion Series 5mx
2003 IBM ThinkCentre
2006 Dell Latitude
2006 Compaq Presario V5000
2011 HP Pavilion dv6 6136tx
2012 ThinkPad T400
2017 ThinkPad T430
2017 ThinkPad T400 (another one - very cheap!)
2018 ThinkPad Yoga 260

[portalhavoc]

Here is my computer history:

2003 - Custom Built with Windows XP
2004 - Gateway Tower with a Pentium 4 processor and Windows XP Professional
2006 - Dell Inspiron E1505 with Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005
2009 - Dell XPS Laptop of some kind with Vista
2009 - Two HP Compaq's running XP
2009 - Asus EeePC 901 with Ubuntu
2010 - Dell Studio XPS running Windows 7
2011 - HP Compaq running Ubuntu 11.04
2012 - Custom built PC running Windows 7
2014 - Dell Precision 690 with Ubuntu 14.04 LTS
2014 - Custom Built Gaming Rig (Originally ran Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, Then Windows 7 now it's running Windows 10.)

[oldrocker99]

VIC-20, then C=64, then Amiga 1000, i386, Athlon, Athlon 64, FX series. I am trying to assemble a Ryzen 5 2600, when I can straighten out 5 bent pins. I'm a little timid, worrying that I'll clumsily hose the CPU. I do have the spluge,

[oldrocker99]

VIC-20, then C=64, then Amiga 1000, i386, Athlon, Athlon 64, FX series. I am trying to assemble a Ryzen 5 2600, when I can straighten out 5 bent pins. I'm a little timid, worrying that I'll clumsily hose the CPU. I do have the spluge.

Currently an Acer E 15, a $370 laptop with an i3, 1TB HD, 6GB RAM, an optical drive, 1 USB2 and 2 USB3 ports, and a USB-C port, HDMI and VGA, and a M.2 SSD slot. There are a lot of projectors which use VGA. It has gotten a "best bang for the buck" award in <$500 decks.

As a lifelong gamer who is 70, Steam games run fine, as long as I ramp down the settings. A number of Windows games I had bought back in 2012-13 when I was dual-booting work with Steam Play. It's still a crapshoot which Windows game do run. But a few games I had bought run just fine.

[Swagman]

Dragon then Amiga 500. Then Amiga 500+
Then an Amiga A1200 that I spent shedloads expanding (060 accelerator & SCSI module). 8mb of RAM cost me £150 second hand. I was a Wedding Videographer and spent vast sums buying Edit Plugs & Genlocks etc.

I then built my first PC for Non Linear video editing. A Tyan Tsunami Mobo with an intel P2 @ 300mhz ! O/s was Win 95 which was crap compared to AmigaOs but there ya go.
I upgraded that to an Asus CUBX with a P3 and also bought an AmigaONE XE

The PC got upgraded with various iterations of AMD CPU's until I changed back to intel with this latest build. The AmigaONE XE got dismantled and is sitting in a box in the loft !

Oh.. I "Changed" to Linux via that AmigaONE as Amiga O/s 4 wasn't out then. The XE Mobo came with Debian Woody PPC

I changed the O/s on the PC to Debian too early on and finally moved over to Ubuntu at V7:04 Feisty Fawn.

Lets see if I can dig some piccies out...

This first pic was my Amiga A1200 in an Eyetech FULL tower with the P3 - Asus. yes TWO computers in one tower siamesed together. Non Linear Editing was very much in its infancy and the Amiga still kicked PC butt !
You can see the Genlock sitting ontop the tower.

https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1406/999814736_a46a7c6c5e_o.jpg
More bitz..
https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2191/2246534214_86a72b025a_b.jpg

Then the Camera got upgraded to a DCR VX9000 digital, along with the monitor & Pc. You can see the AmigaONE XE next to the fridge. these were both connected via KVM
https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2138/1625734959_95143c3632_b.jpg

Even though the CPU of the PC spanked the XE on raw speed the actual O/s speed of the Amiga trounced the PC. Here's real world use of my Amiga just before I disassembled it.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSAhR7uXcCc

Until finally...

https://i.imgur.com/zXK4T7fl.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/SdPtFTZl.jpg

The monitor is a 28 inch IIyama running @ 4k



https://i.imgur.com/tw0W322l.png

One thing the Eagle eyes among you will have noticed is... I'm still using the same "Natural" Keyboard !
Yup. Must be the best thing Microsoft ever released !
I simply take the membrane out & wash it, reassemble and Bobs your mothers brother !

[Edit]
Oh.. I even played with Water Cooling when it was in its infancy too. I discovered it's actually pointless as you still need fans to cool the radiator, only now you have to keep topping up the resovoir !

https://i.imgur.com/a60mX10l.jpg

[lammert-nijhof]

I started in 1969 with:
- Philips P1000 Main Frames 32-bits 64KB-512KB with a two times slower mass memory of 2 - 8 MB
- Philips P800 Mini Computers 16-bits up to 2 MB.
- PDP-11 Mini Computers 16-bits
- VAX Computers 32-bits
- Philips P3105 (IBM Clone 8088), working last time but missing monitor cable.
- Own build with a 486DX66 with 8 MB of memory, still working.
- Many Pentium II, III and IVs desktops and one Cirix 686 for 67% 2nd hand.
- Many laptops for 50% 2nd hand

Currently I own only the following ex lease machines
- 2013 HP EliteBook 8460P, Intel i5-2520m, 8 GB DDR3, 1 TB SSHD, running Xubuntu 18.04, ZFS and Virtualbox.
- 2008 HP dc5850, AMD Phenom II X4 B97, 8 GB DDR2, 128 GB SSD, 3 x HDDs; 3.5" (1 TB, 500 GB); 2.5" (320 GB). running Ubuntu Mate 18.04, ZFS and Virtualbox.
- 2003 Left Over Mix, Intel Pentium 4 HT (3.0 GHz), 2 GB DDR, 2 x 40 GB IDE HDDs, running Peppermint 9 Respin and BTRFS.

and the last laptop I bought new, with the 2nd defect motherboard and a lot of overheating problems.
- 2008 Dell Inspiron 1521, AMD Turion 64 X2 TL-66, 2 GB DDR2, 320 GB HDD used for USB-3 backups, sold with Windows Vista and did run Ubuntu 10.04, 12.04, 14.04 and 16.04 afterwards.

[physwizz2]

TRS-80 MC10
TRS-80 Coco2
286 pc
386 pc
486 pc
Pentium 2 pc
Nexus 7 tablet
iMac 21.5" desktop
Nexus 5 phone
Samsung Galaxy Tab S

[gradius85]

Started with C64, then upgraded to a x286, and then x486. Used x486 for the longest of time, way into Pentium age. Then one day I upgraded to AMD K6 home grown.

[coralof]

Gateway Solo 9300
- 6GB HDD
- 128MB RAM
- 750MHz Pentium III
- Windows 98, XP || Ubuntu 8.10, 9.04, 9.10, 10.04

ThinkPad T43
- 60GB HDD
- 1GB RAM
- 1.86GHz Pentium M 750
- Windows XP || Ubuntu 9.10, 10.04

2010 MacBook Pro 13"
- 500GB HDD to 256GB SSD
- 4GB to 16GB RAM
- 2.66GHz Core 2 Duo
- Mac OS X Snow Leopard, Lion, Mountain Lion, Mavericks, Yosemite, El Capitan, Sierra, High Sierra || Ubuntu 12.04, 14.04, 16.04, 18.04

Custom Built Tower (died in flood)
- 3TB HDD
- 16GB RAM
- 3.4GHz Core i3
- Ubuntu 12.04, 14.04, 16.04

ThinkPad T430
- 160GB SSD + 320GB HDD
- 8GB RAM
- 3.2GHz Core i5
- Ubuntu MATE 18.04

ThinkPad X1 (2011)
- 256GB SSD
- 8GB RAM
- 3.2GHz Core i5
- Ubuntu MATE 18.04

[SWayneMartin]

These kinds of threads are kinda sad because they get so long it becomes difficult to read what everyone says. Still, here we go:


I had worked with a Mainframe during a High School class, via a Modem to our Teletype machine in Math Lab. I learned BASIC from that, and wanted a computer of my own forever, or until the late 1970's when it became a possibility.

Apple ][+ from around 1980 was my first personal computer.
Macintosh purchased during the "first 100 days" in 1984. Learned to program Pascal on that
Macintosh Plus around 1986, with my first hard disk. Exterior 20MB (Yes, MB) for around $700!
Macintosh SE in 1989, color on my Mac

At this point most of my machines were work related only for many years.

Macintosh IIci
Macintosh Duo Laptop
Doing development for HPUX mostly.

Around 1995 I got my first Windows PC, switched quickly to Windows 95

It was around this time that I discovered Linux in it's very early stages.
Slackware on a PC running a web service was one of my first uses of Linux in a corporate environment. Tiny machine sitting in a Datacenter full of big HP and Sun hardware. Prophetic.

Sun Solaris 6 (I think) I worked for Sun for several years from 1999-2004.
Macbook Pro

The Macbook Pro became my primary work driver from around 2006 to today. The Unix command line combined with a lot of great network and programming tools makes it a real hard workstation to beat.

At the same time, all of the development work I was doing was for Linux. Security tools, Cloud development, docker and kubernetes today.
I've heavily used CentOS and Scientific Linux. Some Ubuntu, though more and more recently. Plus AmazonLinux of course.
And a Distro we made at the security company I worked for that we only sold with our appliances.

During this time I pretty much always had a personal PC running on my home desktop, it's sole purpose is pretty much gaming. DirectX has the development community pretty tied up.

I'm typing this on a Microsoft Surface Pro 4, running Linux Mint.

So pretty much everything Apple has done, with a bunch of Windows and Linux thrown in,.

[TheFu]

I've used thousands of computers over the decades, probably over 100 different "types" in that time. Hard to say.

The first computer that I bought, myself, was an Intel 386/16sx. It had MS-Dos and DESQview - not the X version. Before I got that computer, I'd been working as a programmer over a year. Next was a 486DX/33 which got OS/2 and a single floppy Linux boot. I tried using Concurrent OS (Unix clone) and failed. Not enough Unix background at the time. Lots and lots of upgrade systems Pentium/90, 200, AMD K6-200, Athlons, Celeron Dual CPUs (my first personal multi-CPU system), PentiumM, Core2Duos, Core i5s, Core i7s, AMD Ryzen 2600 is my "power server" now with an i5-8250u laptop. Had a few Chromebooks (wiped chromeOS, running Ubuntu) and Raspberry Pis along the way too. MS-DOS, DR-DOS, OS/2, Win3.0/3.1/95/NT4/2000/XP/Vista/7. Nothing after Win7 from Microsoft.

My parents had an NEC-V20 (8086 clone) when I was in college. I played with MS-FORTRAN on it, but mainly used the University's systems.

The first computer I touched/used was a TRS80 Model-1.

TRS80 Model-3/4 (Learn FORTRAN66 & BASIC)
Apple Mac (friend's)
IBM 370 (Learn Fortran77)
CDC Dual Cyber 750/170 (Engineering school)
Apple SE/30 and Mac II systems (mostly for report creation)
Cray Y-MP (CFD grad work)
Amdal Mainframe - TSO/ISPF
IBM AP101/S (modified IBM 360) https://history.nasa.gov/computers/Ch4-3.html
SPARCserver, IPX, UltraSPARC 140, .... E6x00, E10000, V4x0, Nx000, .... to many different models to list ... Racks and racks of these in many DCs
Auspex NFS Server - a Sparc clone
Tricord Server - Netware 3.12 for NFS https://www.1000bit.it/scheda.asp?id=2379
DEC for a few years - Ultrix and Alpha series. Porting 32-bit SunOS software to 64-bit Alpha was my job for 3 yrs. Also porting all of it to Win32, MacOC, AIX, Irix, HP-UX, OSF/1 and a few other OSes.
HP PA-RISC models ... too many to list - L-class, K580, N4000, V2600-32, Superdomes-64, rp54x0 ... many more. Racks and racks of these in many DCs
IBM RS6000 - AIX Motorola and Power CPUs - P20, F40, lots of P5/P6-series. Racks and racks of these in many DCs, mostly P5-575s.
SGI - only a few models. Lab work on virtual reality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SGI_Onyx
Nokia N800 - Debian-based tablet for travel. Skype from remote hotels in rural Argentina over wifi.
Apple Mac Mini i5
A number of PC servers from IBM, Compaq, Dell, HP - these were all pretty standard.

[ubotbuddy]

Kudos to the old dogs that I read in here. I'm from the IBM 1401 days as well. My favorite OS back then was MVS/XA.

Most of the ones I have read in here are ones I have used as well. When I see them all documented here I just think ...WOW!

Buddy

[kieran-bolger]

First computer I used was a BBC Micro in School (early-mid 80's)
Then we got an Anstrad CPC6128+ in 1986. My brother's eldest now has this, it still works, including the tape deck we got with it, although the diskette drive needs a new belt
School upgraded to Acorn Achimedies in the late 80's/1990 ish
At home we then got Elonex 286 PC running Windows 3.1 in the early 90's
In High School we initially had Amstrat PCW16's, then upgraded to RM PC's running windows in 92 or 93
At some point in the early 90's Dad started bringing home a Compaq Portable III from work from time to time. The first one ran IIRC either DOS or CP/M, later windows.
in 1996 we got a Mitsubishi Apricot running Windows 95 at home - this was was the first PC we had with dedicated graphics and sound card!
In SixthForm College I first used Macintosh Performa 6400, then Bondi-Blue iMac's in '98, along side AVID workstations based around a PowerMacintosh 9500
in 2000 I got my first tower that was my own, a Pentium 250mhz with 128mb RAM, 40Gb HDD, an early ATI radeon card and a sound blaster audio card - I had this dual booting Windows 98 and BeOS 4.5, this was also the first machine I tried linux on, if I remember correctly CheepLinux, Manjaro and maybe YellowTab, I know I definitely tried out ZETA on this machine at some point.
In 2004 I went to Uni (late going) I initially had a Macintosh Performa 6400 followed rapidly by an iMac G3/500 DV SE so I could edit at home.
About a year later I upgraded to a PowerMac G4 digital audio as it was more upgradeable.
In Early 2008 i acquired an SGI Onyx R10k running IRIX 6.4 and some Sun UltrSparc workstations for the Internet Cafe I was running with some friends (the SGI was purely for fun) These lasted about 2 years.
Got an XP tower in late 2008, and a HP laptop which came with XP Pro that I used for VJing, that later had OpenSuse on it
Got an Advent netbook in 2010 whci came with XP but only ever ran Ubuntu on that - still use it from time to time.
In 2011 I got an LG Optimus Pad v900 Tablet
Laptop was upgraded to a Zoostorm/Clevo machine with Windows 7 in 2012, XP Tower got switched to Ubuntu ZorinOS
In 2014 the tower got switched out for a PackardBell iMedia with Windows7. Had this dualbooting with Ubuntu for a while.
2015 - Got a Nexus 5 so I could install Ubuntu Touch which I used until late 2017
2016 i Got a Kindle Fire, briefly played with Ubuntu Touch on this before returning it back to its factory state due to the lack of anything I actually wanted to use it for as a tablet (Netflix, games for the kids)
Shortly after upgrading the PackardHell to Windows 10 in 2017 the mobo melted so I swapped the HDD into a HP hw40 workstation that cost me £10 for a while
In 2017 ******* 7 started to get really temperamental on teh Zoostorm so I messed around with a few Linux Distros, eventually settling on KDE Neon (still running this)
in 2018 the tower got upgraded again - Core i5 3rd Gen 2.5Ghz 8gb Ram, 1Gb Nvidia GTX series GPU (I forget the exact model).