25 Years of PCs

I stumbled across several sites celebrating the 25th anniversary of the PC. Of course IBM has something -- check out their archive page. PC World has a great article that covers many aspects of the days developing the PC at IBM.

There is another site, Vintage Computers, ran by Eric Klein. Here is what Eric has to say about his collection, "My vintage computer collection is small by most standards but it contains examples of what I consider to be some of the most significant machines and items from the early days of personal computer history." Mr. Klein has done a great job in providing photos and facts on so many early computers. Another good site for old computers is OLD-COMPUTERS.COM, ran by Thierry Schembri and Olivier Boisseau.

I remember my first PC, which I bought used during the summer of 1982. It was a Sanyo MBC-555 that used the 8086, so it was not completely IBM compatible. It came with two 180K floppies, which I could use to run WordStar, and a green monochrome monitor. This was the beginning of my adventures in learning to program.

Prior to this, I was lucky enough to have used the TRS-80 and Apple IIe in high school (Do you remember shape tables on the Apple?). I had a friend that was a huge Commodore 64 fan -- he was using this as a game console before we really had game consoles. I did not see him much after this, as he spent some much time alone with his computer. Hmm... sounds familiar for many of us now.

What was your first PC?
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Update 22-Sep-06: I ran across another vintage computer site: Old Computers also know as the obsolete technology site.

Comments

Anonymous said…
My first computer was a Toshiba 1200 laptop.
Portability was key to me.
I must admit that I had a lot of fun and learnt the basics. Even was given as a gift a 300 baud acoustic modem that attached to the phone.
Later I moved up to a 2400 baud model. ( I assume that it 2.4 vs the current 56).
A lot of people actually got their start on Commodore 64s. Expensive enough at the time but not overwhelming if it did not work out.
And to see all of those grandmothers at big box stores with laptops and lcd screens.

http://www.vintagecomptermanuals.com

http://vvintagecomputermanuals.blogspot.com/

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