When was the first computer bug discovered?

[OCR]

My first computer didn't have a name...

Mine had a name, but... it most likely wouldn't get past the auto-censor... .

Lol... sometimes it had several names !

 

[Mark44]

The first computer I ever worked with was an IBM 1130 at my undergraduate alma mater, c. 1972. FORTRAN IV programs and data input were on punched cards, and output was via a line printer.

Something like that for me, as well. Probably an IBM of some kind. I took a programming class in which we used PL/C, a subset of the PL/1 programming language. Same deal with the punch cards and 17" wide fan-fold paper for output.

 

[I like Serena]

I'm starting to feel old.
My first computer was a ZX Spectrum with 48 KiB of memory, which I wrangled from my parents.
(After I was enamored by a ZX81 with 1 KiB that I could only access in a store.)
And the first computer I bought myself was a 286 AT computer (around 1986), which was replaced every 2-3 years by a newer model (as long as Moore's Law was still in effect).
To be honest, I felt cheated by the lack of features in PC's that my ZX Spectrum used to offer. ;)
Oh, and I do recall that in high school a particular teacher was trying to understand computers, and he felt kind of superior since he was able to type blind, while I couldn't (yet!). ;)

 

[phinds]

And they were quite expensive at the time, somewhere around $5000, based on my memory of ads in computer magazines back then (~1982). I didn't get a hard drive until my 4th computer, a PC clone with a 386 CPU around 1987 or so. It came with a whopping 30 MB HD that I thought I would never fill up. About a year later, I upgraded to a 120MB drive.

I don't remember what I paid, but I'm sure it was nowhere near $5K. Maybe they had been out for a while when I got one. As I recall it was somewhere around 1980.

 

[I like Serena]

I don't remember what I paid, but I'm sure it was nowhere near $5K. Maybe they had been out for a while when I got one.

In 1991 I paid about $3.5K just for a monitor. That was a NEC 6FG with a 21 inch diagonal, which was the best monitor one could get at that time.
My boss didn't want to pay for it, so I bought one myself.
Afterwards, my boss kept bringing in people to look at that monitor, after which the company bought a whole lot of the exact same monitors to satisfy the business needs. :)

 

[Janus]

First computer I ever owned was a TRS-80 pocket computer. The first one I ever used(in a high school programming class) was "Valentine", it was a Hewlett-Packard 9830-A, with 4Kb of memory, a 32 character LED display, and a built-in tape drive. It had the optional thermal printer.
Before the day of microprocessor chips, it used 7400-series gates, shift-registers and decoders for its logic boards.

 

[I like Serena]

First computer I ever owned was a TRS-80 pocket computer. The first one I ever used(in a high school programming class) was "Valentine", it was a Hewlett-Packard 9830-A, with 4Kb of memory, a 32 character LED display, and a built-in tape drive. It had the optional thermal printer.
Before the day of microprocessor chips, it used 7400-series gates, shift-registers and decoders for its logic boards.

And what did you use it for?

 

[Janus]

First computer I ever owned was a TRS-80 pocket computer. The first one I ever used(in a high school programming class) was "Valentine", it was a Hewlett-Packard 9830-A, with 4Kb of memory, a 32 character LED display, and a built-in tape drive. It had the optional thermal printer.
Before the day of microprocessor chips, it used 7400-series gates, shift-registers and decoders for its logic boards.

Years later, when the school was holding a garage sale, I could've bought it for a cheap price. But it would have just been for sentiment's sake, and it probably just ended up gathering dust in the attic.

 

[I like Serena]

Years later, when the school was holding a garage sale, I could've bought it for a cheap price. But it would have just been for sentiment's sake, and it probably just ended up gathering dust in the attic.

I still have my very first ZX Spectrum. The only computer I've ever kept.
And yes, it has been collecting dust for about 35 years now, but as yet I haven't been able to throw it out.

 

[Janus]

And what did you use it for?

which one. the TRS-80 or "Valentine". The TRS-80 wasn't much more than a toy. You could write a few simple BASIC programs for it, but that was about it.
Valentine was used to teach programming In BASIC, Though I do remember that the instructor also used it for keeping sports statistics for some of the School's teams.

 

[I like Serena]

which one. the TRS-80 or "Valentine". The TRS-80 wasn't much more than a toy. You could write a few simple BASIC programs for it, but that was about it.
Valentine was used to teach programming In BASIC, Though I do remember that the instructor also used it for keeping sports statistics for some of the School's teams.

The TRS-80 came after the ZX81, and on a ZX81 I could program Space Invaders (just within 1 KiB!)
I could choose to either track high scores or add a special bomb, but not both, since then I'd run out of memory.
In high school we had a TRS-80 which was nice, but nowhere near as much fun!

 

[russ_watters]

My parents: The IBM PC. I was in junior high I think: it cost $3500 in 1988 dollars, including the not-standard 20MB "hard card" hard drive and all-you'll-ever-need 640k ram card upgrade. The first I owned myself was in 1995, a Zenith PC clone requisitioned by the Naval Academy. It had a 100mhz 486 processor and 400ish MB hard drive.

 

[Nik_2213]

I suppose you could say I began with a 'Sinclair Scientific' calculator. I replaced that battery-chomper with a rechargeable TI-57, shoe-horned my 'complex' 3D astronomy calculations into its 50 steps. The display was so 'beady eyed', and the keypad so tiny, I made a lot of mistakes. Late in 1979, I got an Apple ][ Europlus, the very first in UK with FP Applesoft in ROM. A month later, I had to add eight RAM chips to take it up to 48 kb, then totally maxed it out with math, graphics and my tape-loaded databases of nearby and background stars. Yes, my TV screen really was 'full of stars' !
Refreshing the 'orrery' view could take 1~~5 minutes for the smaller database, or fifteen minutes for the larger, but you could plot a route around the neighbours...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liverpool_Software_Gazette

 

[anorlunda]

I first learned FORTRAN on an IBM 1620, and machine language on a GE 4020.

My first home computer was a Commodore Pet followed by an Apple 2 Plus, but I used to sneak home an ASR33 teletype before that.

I recall the delight when the Commodore Pet said HELLO after power up without me needing to punch in a bootstrap program first.

But I think the most amazing computer I ever bought (for my sister) was a Texas Instruments Speak and Spell. That was a real breakthrough machine. If they still sold them today, I would buy one for my great granddaughter.

 

[ISamson]

Toshiba laptop. Pretty modern, but all I can remember.

 

[Ibix]

Acorn Electron. It was a cut down version of the BBC Model B microcomputer, the spiritual ancestor of the Raspberry Pi, in that it was a machine designed with exploring development in mind. It had a built in Basic interpreter, eight colour graphics, and a sound generator capable enough that you could write a speech synthesiser for it.

I used it to toy with programming, although it wasn't until much later that I got good at it. I also played games, notably Frenzy and Elite.

Does anybody else remember Spectrum vs BBC religious disagreements? As an Acorn/BBC owner, I believe I'm still obligated to sneer at the poor benighted Spectrum owners on this thread. BBCs are just better, right, and I'll fight you behind the bike sheds if you say otherwise. (I don't remember anyone actually coming to blows over it, but that was about the level of debate...)

 

[Asymptotic]

sneak home an ASR33 teletype

Guard at the gatehouse: "Hey fella, whaddya got there under your coat?"

Image by courtesy of Wikipedia.

 

[Asymptotic]

Arguably, a TI-30 calculator, if only because it needed a 9V battery, and my Pickett slide rule didn't. The first 'real' computer was a Commodore 64, but I'd tried three or four Timex Sinclair 1000s (none of which worked properly out of the box) after spending a companionable Christmas Eve with a friend and his girlfriend getting one programmed for her younger brother. Next was a PC-XT clone ...

 

[Fra]

My very first was A programmable 11k char code limit pocket calculator and a commodore 64 with math cardtridge.

But i remeber them as toys. I used them to exactly calculate pH in complex multi-acid-base systems and i recall it took my commodore a ridicilous 5 minutes with netwon raphson.

I consider my first "real computer" to be an 12.5Mhz 286 with 20 mb hd and hercules monochrome grahpics. I used that for a lot of numerical simulations in turbo pascal. It was awesome! and also had a 2400bps modem :)

/Fredrik

 

[DrClaude]

My first computer was a TI-99/4A. Still have fond memories of it, and was happy to find an emulator for it about a year ago.

First computer that I paid for myself was a 386SX, assembled by a small local shop. I couldn't afford a full 386, but it did have a 387SX math coprocessor

 

[RonL]

How many of you people can go out to your shop or store room and pull out your first computers ? (I can ) mine was an 8088, then in 1984 a 286 running windows 3.0 .
If my memory is right the 8088 ran at a speed of 4.75 Mhz

Edit: The years didn't seem quite right, I checked and it must have been 2.0, the memory gets fuzzy after that many years ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_2.0

 

[TurtleMeister]

TRS80 model 1. I later added the expansion interface which gave me 16k of ram. I then added the 360k floppy drive for $500 and then the line printer for $1000 (the line printer was used).

 

[dlgoff]

IBM PS/2 Model 30 286

 

[Janus]

The TRS-80 came after the ZX81, and on a ZX81 I could program Space Invaders (just within 1 KiB!)
I could choose to either track high scores or add a special bomb, but not both, since then I'd run out of memory.
In high school we had a TRS-80 which was nice, but nowhere near as much fun!

The "pocket computer" version I had was limited to a 1 line, 25 character display, unlike your ZX81 which output to a CRT screen. You needed to buy an additional interface to store your programs on tape or to print (on a strip of paper that was like that from an adding machine). At the time, just getting the "computer" involved spending more than I should have splurged on, so getting the extras that would have made it a bit more useful was not in the cards.
I was able to pick up a regular TRS-80 and monitor at the same garage sale where I saw Valentine, and for 25$

 

[I like Serena]

The "pocket computer" version I had was limited to a 1 line, 25 character display, unlike your ZX81 which output to a CRT screen. You needed to buy an additional interface to store your programs on tape or to print (on a strip of paper that was like that from an adding machine). At the time, just getting the "computer" involved spending more than I should have splurged on, so getting the extras that would have made it a bit more useful was not in the cards.
I was able to pick up a regular TRS-80 and monitor at the same garage sale where I saw Valentine, and for 25$

I seem to recall that the TRS-80 at least had significantly more memory than the 1 KiB the ZX81 had.
That allowed for some 'real' programs to be written, which were more than about 10 lines of BASIC code with peeks and pokes before running out of memory.
Still, without the CRT display, that was indeed quite a different ball game.

 

[Nidum]

My Apple acquired several add on boards . A bought Z80 board and several DIY ones .

https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/measuring-the-power-output-of-a-generator.928285/#post-5861082

 

[Nidum]

With the Z80 installed I was able to run small but viable finite element programs .

 

[OmCheeto]

How many of you people can go out to your shop or store room and pull out your first computers ?

Sheepishly raises hand...
(all of them, actually...)

(I can ) mine was an 8088, then in 1984 a 286 running windows 3.0 .
If my memory is right the 8088 ran at a speed of 4.75 Mhz

Edit: The years didn't seem quite right, I checked and it must have been 2.0, the memory gets fuzzy after that many years ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_2.0

I went in halfsies with my brother on a "Sol", but it ended up being his, as I was in the Navy at the time, and only got to play with it when I was on leave. That would have been between 1977 and 1980. [ref to what a "Sol" was]

Around 1980 I purchased my own Tandy Color Computer:
0.00098 GHz with 4k of ram.
It would be another 10 years before I upgraded to an Intel based machine. (1990?)
And then another 17 year before I upgraded to a Mac. (2007)
Currently running a newer model Mac(2014):
2.3 GHz quad core with 4G of ram.

Amazing how much faster this new thing is.

Funniest anecdote: Everyone at the time, made fun of the keyboard on my original 1980 computer, derogatorily referring to it as "Chiclet keyboard", as the keys were flat, and "real" keyboards had voluptuous "IBM Selectric typewriter" shaped keys. So Tandy obligingly switched to the "proper" shaped keys on later models.
And here I'm sitting typing on a state of the art device, with a chiclet keyboard.

ps. My favorite computer? The 1980 Coco. >5000 programs written.
I've successfully written ONE program on my two Macs: "Hello World". Took me TEN YEARS!

 

[sandy stone]

The first computer I ever laid hands on was an IBM 1130, as part of an experimental educational program for high schoolers. About a year after that, I actually got to run a program on a 1950's computer that used magnetic drum memory(!).

No way we could afford an Altair or Apple II back in the '70's, so the first computer that ever came into our house was what was called a "homebrew" computer. It used a Z80 chip, and I tinkered it together on a breadboard. It ran a monitor program that I wrote, assembled by hand, and had burned onto an EPROM by another hobbyist that worked at, I think, the only computer store in New Orleans. It had a full keyboard and displayed on a TV through an RF modulator. I guess I was quite the geek.

Finally prices came down enough for us to afford a Color Computer 2, and that was a cool little computer for a hobbyist. As Radio Shack would put things on sale, I gradually acquired 2 5-1/4 floppy drives, a dot matrix printer, and a mouse. The 64K disc version could run a multitasking operating system called OS/9, very much like Unix. Under OS/9 you could run an advanced version of Basic with user-defined data types (that compiled to intermediate code), Pascal, and an assembler. Maybe even C, I forget. Unfortunately the OS took up some 3/4 of the available RAM, which limited you a lot, but I really liked that machine. Radio Shack released just about all the technical information on it there was, except for the entry points of the support subroutines in ROM for the native Basic, which really aggravated me. One could have taken user-written programs to a whole new level.

 

[Mono Kakata]

If I don't count my HP-97 (magnetic strips!) then my first computer was a DEC PDP-11/23. It had 8" (512 kb) floppies in their own case. This was 1981.

 

[anorlunda]

The Commodore Pet (see #49) circa 1977 stands up well compared with other starter PCs up through 1983. But few people heard of it.

 

[Janus]

I seem to recall that the TRS-80 at least had significantly more memory than the 1 KiB the ZX81 had.
That allowed for some 'real' programs to be written, which were more than about 10 lines of BASIC code with peeks and pokes before running out of memory.
Still, without the CRT display, that was indeed quite a different ball game.

The pocket computer version had 1.5 KB of RAM ( I had the PC-1 model, which did not have the option to add memory) , so it had ~50% more memory, but that was it. The zx81 was at least expandable up to 64KB.
The PC-1 also used two 4 bit processors rather than an 8 bit one like the Z-80 in the Sinclair.

 

[Laurie K]

In 1986 I used a Unitron XT with 640k ram, a 10mb HDD and a Norton Sys Info (SI) of 0.98 of an IBM PC.

 

[Merlin3189]

Since no one else has mentioned it, the first computer I owned, was a Nascom 2. Even though it cost me more than 2 month's salary, it came as a couple of PCBs and hundreds of components which took two or three weeks of spare time to solder up - I estimate about 5000 joints. Since I had the memory expansion card, it had a total of 56kB ram and an 8kB Basic interpreter in Rom. The Z80 CPU ran at 4MHz and most instructions completed in 4 clock cycles, so it was very fast - double the speed of the Nascom 1 at 2MHz.
The great thing about it was that every wire, component and every bit of ROM was listed, so if you chose, you could know exactly how it worked. It gave an enormous feeling of being in total control, that I've never felt on any other computer. I haven't had it out of the attic for years, but with no moving parts I can't see why it should not still work - well maybe some capacitors would be dry, but that's easy to fix.

I sometimes regret I didn't build an 8080 machine or even an 8008 or 4004, but I think I came in at the right time as I was still working with Z80 machines more than 10 years later.

The first computer I used was a KDF9, so my first programming language was Algol 60.

The first computer in our house was my younger brother's TI 57.

 

[RonL]

Though not my first, this is my favorite antique, I thought I needed something portable
http://www.oldcomputermuseum.com/compaq_lunchbox.html

Then the 486's hit the market
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_80486DX2
I have been left behind since then.