TRS-80 Model II
16K memory
Green Screen monitor
Cassette Tape Storage

All this for $800

Upgraded later to 48K memory, 5 1/4 in floppy drive, Text to Speech card. The driver of the card had filtering software in it that would not allow it to cuss. IE: F*** you would be "I can't say that word - you" Workaround: Phonetics ph*** you would be "f*** you"

Later went to the Model 3P (Sewing Machine type case)

I remember actually being excited about getting the spec's for "The Kansas City Standard."

Knew a guy who made his own TRS80 following just the schematics he got from SAMS. Found several mistakes in the schematics!

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Later, upgraded to 16K of RAM, a floppy drive (5.25-inch), a better keyboard and an $800 daisy-wheel (letter-quality!) printer... all from Radio Shack. The printer still worked when I put it in a box about 10 years ago... and it's still in that box.

So, here's the interesting part. I still have a Model 100 laptop computer from Radio Shack (first introduced in 1983 but I bought it in 1986). It has 32K of RAM, runs on 4 AA batteries and it boots up/shuts down instantly with the flip of a switch. It's the most stable operating system I've ever used and... it still works! And I use it often. I can type 5 pages or so and then, at the end of the day, I plug in into my newest computer, dump the data and, presto! I'm back in business.

Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 1. I chose it over Apple because it could display 64 chars. per line -- the Apple was limited to 40 chars. Subsequently added the Expansion Unit with 32KB additional RAM and floppy drives. Discovering how horribly unreliable the system was, I wrote and sold memory & disk diagnostic software (Z-80 assembly language). Made a nice side income from that for several years and iterations of TRS-80 including the Model III, which was actually not a bad system for its time though at a disadvantage due to being B&W only.

I also bought a Radio Shack Line Printer, $1000. Was actually a Centronics 779. Could only print in upper-case (would be called SHOUTING now). A friend designed a new character-generator chip for it that added lower-case capability, and I sold that upgrade to a lot of users of the printer.

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- dave
Avoid the meadow...

In 1982, having learned basic TTL design from Radio Electronics or Popular Electronics, I forget which, I started studying the schematics that came with the computer. After a fair amount of planning, I went to Radio Shack, purchased a wire-wrap PC board, two 7402 NOR gates, a 7400 series octal latch, a D/A converter, an op-amp chip, and a handful of resistors and capacitors. I used these to build an 8-bit mono sound card. It worked. That was one EASY computer to interface to. Flat-out trivial. I still have the sound card, and it's an ugly mess of solder, missing all of the chips, but it worked!

I never got further then playing sine and square waves, and watching them on the oscilloscope, so I can't really say that I was an early USER of a sound card ...

However, I was certainly one of the earliest OWNERS of a personal computer add-on sound card, and I've always wondered if I was the first. There were a handful of add-on cards available at the time, but I don't remember ever seeing an add-on sound card.

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The first computer I ever used was an Apple II. It was simply awesome. 720k 5.25" floppies kick ass! Who needs rewritable DVDs anyway??

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First home computer: 1978--Ohio Scientific Challenger II running OS-DOS. 6502 processor with 20k of RAM. Rack mount B&W monitor that I salvaged from an old TAV production truck. 8" floppy drive, no HD, no sound, no modem.

Upgraded to a "luggable" Kaypro 10. Z80 processor with 10MB HD and 64k RAM. 9" green monitor, 8" floppy, no sound. 9-pin dot matrix printer, bi-directional logic seeking with descenders. Later added a 2400 baud modem. My first "real" computer--could use CalcStar for the checkbook, WordStar for the homework, and DBase II for the pilot logbook!

Finished undergrad on a 386SX running Windows 3.11 at 8MHz. Now using an old 200MHz Pentium MMX box. Planning on building an HTPC when I get back to work.

Cheers!

Paul

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If we're talking about the first computer ever used, it was an IBM/360 running APL, timesharing the CPU. The terminals were converted IBM Selectric typewriters. I was in college, physics professor had his students taking tests via the computer center. I was like, whoa, I have to know more about how this works. Learned APL and actually got pretty good at it. APL (which stands for A Programming Language) was amazingly powerful, but is now probably extinct.

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- dave
Avoid the meadow...

much respect