What was the very first computer/console you owned?

[Shawn Dimery]

ZX Spectrum
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Never trust a man with a mustache...
Danielle Dimery

[CTOJAH]

[Biscuit]

[MIK UK]

[Biscuit]

I expect I'll be joining the forum in the not too distant future - some games there I'd love to get more info on. Cheers, I'm taking it easy (at the mo), probably could have been ready over a month ago. Been doing other things, strangely one was going on holiday to Hungary. If I'd known I'd have gone looking for some Plus/4 accessories.
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Lemon/EAB Super League 2013 - Round 7: Risky Woods

[MIK UK]

Would of been cool if you walked into an old shop full of Plus4 stuff by chance in Hungary. Before they joined Europe I once sent the author of Yape a couple of things and it took over a month to reach him. Customs had torn it apart, MAD! I'm sure they are ok now tho.
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A1200T, Apollo 1260, 32MB RAM, 3.1 ROMS, 4GB HD, Z4 Board, Picasso II, IOBlix (Serial/Parallel), Squirrel SCSI, 2X CD, IDE 100MB Zip Drive, OS - DOpus Magellan II. Plus an A500+ Yum.

[SkydivinGirl]

[Anazzau]

Amiga 500 for games, then WIN95 when I was like 6 or 7 for.... More games?

My first real game console was PlayStation 1 maybe in '99 or '00. I never owned SNES or anything until quite recently.

[akabei]

Don't even know the name of the first and second console I owned, the third one was an Atari VCS(later known as 2600).

[a_three_headed_monkey]

Our first computer/console was a Commodore Vic 20.



I was very young & the only two games I really remember was a shameless Donkey Kong clone called Mickey the Bricky...



...and Blitz.


Link

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[Rekrul]

My first console was an Atari Video Pinball, which had seven built-in games. My grandparents were actually the ones to buy it. They lived right downstairs, so I got to play it practically every day. Eventually my parents bought one of our own. We had the Atari brand one, while my grandparents had the Sears version.

My second console was a Coleco Tank game with four handles on it for working the treads. It never worked properly. The picture was distorted and rolled. It also didn't have a one player mode, unless you count the one where the other tank drove in a straight line constantly shooting.

Third was a Coleco Telstar Arcade, a triangular console that used metal, triangular cartridges. Luckily my parents got me a second cartridge to go with it, since the pack-in one never worked properly. After a couple of months, the lightgun started registering hits no matter where it was pointed. Gee, I'm starting to think Coleco had a serious quality control problem. I'm not sure why we never returned any of this stuff for a replacement.

After that came the Atari 2600, which again, my grandparents got first and bought the Sears version. For the longest time, they only had the pack-in game, Target Fun/Air Sea Battle. However, just like the video pinball console before it, it worked perfectly, unlike the Coleco games. Eventually they got more games and I ended up with my own system for Christmas, Atari branded.

About maybe December 1983 or so, I was watching TV and I saw a Toys 'R' Us commercial which advertised the TI99/4a for $50. I'd been reading a little about computers in the video game magazines, but up to that point, I considered them expensive, mysterious machines that were unobtainable. I started asking my parents for one for Christmas. I read that tapes were the most common storage method for the TI, so I also asked for the tape interface to go with it. I really knew nothing about specs, the software library, etc, I just knew I wanted a computer. Shortly afterwards, we went to the mall and I started looking at the computers in the video game section of Child World. They had some obscure models, one of which another customer used to create a moire pattern on the screen, greatly impressing me. They had the Vic-20, but I didn't like the over-sized text and the single joystick port. The C64 next to it was much nicer, although the only things I could get it to do were to change the text color and make it print SYNTAX ERROR. I still wanted it and switched from asking for a TI to asking for a C64. I still asked for a tape drive, because I didn't know any better. I got it for Christmas.

For a while, it was a real novelty in the house with everyone interested in watching me type in the example programs in the manual. Even my father, who didn't care for video games, would watch. Eventually the novelty wore off. I had a few games on cartridge, but only one commercial game on tape; Zaxxon. It took 20 minutes to load and failed half the time. The following Christmas, I asked for a disk drive and never looked back.

I received an Intellivision for Christmas a year or so later. I'd expressed interest in it and because of the video game crash, they were selling at bargain prices. It was hooked up in my grandparents living room, next to the Atari. My grandmother didn't like the disc controllers and my grandfather refused to touch it since it was more complicated than the Atari. This, despite the fact that for years, he would look at the box for Sub Hunt in the stores and ask "Is this for Atari?"

I got my Amiga 500 toward the end of the 80s. I upgraded it to 1.3 and a Fat Agnus chip so that I could use PAL mode. Later I got KS2.0. Eventually I also added a Supra Turbo 28 accelerator, which I discovered was useless without fast RAM. and a GVP 100MB hard drive. Since the memory modules for the GVP were fairly expensive, I bought a used A500 setup (mine had developed a crashing problem due to a bad solder joint somewhere; jiggle the case and it would crash), which came with a Supra 8MB RAM expander. Unfortunately, the expander wasn't in the best shape when I bought it and it wasn't really meant to be plugged in with other devices, despite the pass-through connector. This lead to even more damage, which I was unable to repair, and eventually it stopped working completely.

At some point, I bought a used Atari 7800 over the net. I'd wanted one since seeing the preview of it in the magazines. I guess I got lucky since mine had the original power supply and works with the Starpath Supercharger.

A while after that, my grandmother brought home an Atari 5200 that she'd bought at a tag sale for $5. It was boxed with about a dozen games. She figured that they could replace the aging Atari 2600 that was still in service, however just as with the Intellivision, my grandfather refused to even touch it. She decided to re-sell it and get her money back and I convinced her to sell it to me.

At this point, my friend was getting out of the Amiga and I ended up with his A2000. I was mostly into action games and he was into simulators. Unfortunately, he'd used mostly Commodore brand add-ons. I say unfortunately, because Commodore made some of the crappiest Amiga expansion products. My GVP controller worked perfectly with my Zip drive, allowing me to change disks on the fly and use it like a giant floppy. The 2091 controller in the 2000 wouldn't even mount the drive unless there was a disk in it at boot up, and then it wasn't possible to change disks. I couldn't even figure out how to format a new disk without using the third party program SCSIMounter. He'd added a Commodore brand 68020 board and the only way to disable it was to reboot and hold down one of the mouse buttons. Coincidentally, that was also how you activated the Kickstart switcher he'd installed. It's also the method used to disable Degrader's PAL mode. Additionally, the Kickstart only stayed switched until the next reboot. As you can imagine, this made it impossible to disable more than one component at a time and as such, backwards compatibility with action games was about 25%.

I used this system up to about mid 2000 or so. Then I was given a Pentium 233Mhz with 64MB of RAM, a 6GB hard drive and Windows 98. I used this for a couple years and then the same friend tried to give me an Athlon 800Mhz system. I nicknamed it The Crashmaster. Use it for more than an hour at a time, it crashed. Run a game that used the 3D card, it crashed. After a couple months, I switched back to the P233. It was slower, but at least it was stable.

In mid 2004, he sent me my current system, which at the time was a 1.8Ghz P4 with 512MB of RAM, a 40GB hard drive, GeForce 4 MX440 and Windows 98SE. He recommended Windows XP, but I insisted on 98 because I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to run a lot of older software. Over time, I've upgraded it with a second HD (160GB), DVD burner and a 2.8Ghz processor. I know that it would run XP, but as long as it works, I really don't want to mess with it. Maybe I'll get a new HD and try installing XP, so that I can always fall back to 98 if there are problems. However, from the little I've used XP and Win7, I really don't like them. Just last night I was over a friend's house and was trying to figure out how to get WMP to load other files on Win7. Call me stupid, but I couldn't figure it out. There's no "Open File" option, the "Media Library" wanted me to choose things like the genre, etc. Then it wouldn't let me manually re-arrange the icons on the Desktop, the "New Folder" icon vanished when I tried to move it. It showed up inside another folder from Explorer, but not from inside Total Commander. Not to mention that a nearly created directory vanished from Total Commander after dragging it to the Desktop, even though Explorer still showed it to be there. It's like MS is trying to screw with people by giving the OS a mind of its own.

In recent years, I haven't bought any new consoles, but from scavenging in the trash during bulk trash pickup month, I've acquired a complete Playstation system, bare (but working) Gamecube, untested SNES, non-working Colecovision and most recently my friend gave me an Xbox system that he found, but I don't have any games yet to test it with.

[Gyro]

Here we go in order from 1980-2012.

Atari 2600
Commodore 64
Sega Genesis
PS1
Dreamcast
XBox
Amiga 500 w/ GVP
Wii
PS2

I still have all of them and all are attached and ready except Atari and PS1
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Member of Louisville KY area C64/Amiga BBSes
Handle "Gyro" or "Gyromite" 1986-1993

--- 1200 baud rules!!! ---

[OLDGAMER]

Well my dads ZX 80 computer and Colecovision for me i wish i could find that ZX 80 its around mums house some were
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A500 1 Mb K1.3 HxC Slim
A500 512k K1.2
A600 1mb K2.0

[zeropolis79]

The Amstrad CPC464..

I recently dug it out of my mother's attic and it still works.
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Patrick Furlong

[Lonewolf10]

ZX Spectrum 128k +2 was the first computer I owned, and my first games console was the Sega Megadrive/Genesis.

I have a fairly big collection with over 500 games (non emulated) and 17 consoles (I have a few duplicates as spares).


Regards,
Lonewolf10