WWTBAM Bored

On this day in 1977 Radio Shack introduced the TRS-80.

Who bought one? I didn't.

My first computer purchase was a Texas Instruments "Portable", aka luggable, Professional Computer (color screen and all) purchased in 1985.

What was the first computer you personally purchased?

Not sure why the image is not displaying....

I actually got my boss to buy the model III version (with two external floppy drives) for the office; IIRC, that along with the software and printer was about $5000 in 1981. Wasn't a luggable per se, but I often took it home over the weekends for "programming" (OK, games mostly, but...)

Totally programmed the company payroll in BASIC (we only had 25 employees), used other accounting packages and Visicalc. Obviously I've used its descendants since.

SpacemanSpiff wrote: ↑

Tue Aug 03, 2021 9:31 am

I actually got my boss to buy the model III version (with two external floppy drives) for the office; IIRC, that along with the software and printer was about $5000 in 1981. Wasn't a luggable per se, but I often took it home over the weekends for "programming" (OK, games mostly, but...)

Totally programmed the company payroll in BASIC (we only had 25 employees), used other accounting packages and Visicalc. Obviously I've used its descendants since.

IIRC, I paid about $3,200 for the TIPPC. In today's money that would be about $8,080. That would buy a pretty darn nice computer. Of course, back in the day, it was.

If I had foregone the purchase but instead purchased $3,200 of Apple stock (and never sold) it would be worth about $5.9 million. It was not that nice of a computer. I really shouldn't do that type of analysis....



If I had bought Texas Instrument stock it would be worth $329,000 today.

BackInTex wrote: ↑

Tue Aug 03, 2021 10:37 am

SpacemanSpiff wrote: ↑

Tue Aug 03, 2021 9:31 am

I actually got my boss to buy the model III version (with two external floppy drives) for the office; IIRC, that along with the software and printer was about $5000 in 1981. Wasn't a luggable per se, but I often took it home over the weekends for "programming" (OK, games mostly, but...)

Totally programmed the company payroll in BASIC (we only had 25 employees), used other accounting packages and Visicalc. Obviously I've used its descendants since.

IIRC, I paid about $3,200 for the TIPPC. In today's money that would be about $8,080. That would buy a pretty darn nice computer. Of course, back in the day, it was.

If I had foregone the purchase but instead purchased $3,200 of Apple stock (and never sold) it would be worth about $5.9 million. It was not that nice of a computer. I really shouldn't do that type of analysis....



If I had bought Texas Instrument stock it would be worth $329,000 today.

My f-i-l had an early Apple (my memory is fuzzy, but prolly late 70's, very early 80's) as well as some Apple stock. Dumped the stock after a short time because he didn't think it was going anywhere. Bless his heart.

Between age and other aspects of my life, I didn't personally buy a computer until 1998, which was an eMachines at either Best Buy or Circuit City.

First computer I touched was at Computerland (anyone else remember that store?), and it was an Apple II.

First computer I used regularly was my Commodore 64, but I had opportunities to play with the trash 80, and Atari 400 & 800.

My high school had IBM's in their computer lab, with McGaw-Hill integrated software, which was my introduction to modern computers.

My first smart phone was a Huawei of some kind with a slide out keyboard (I still miss that feature); and I had an iPhone 5, now a 7.

Between work and home, I have 3 surface tablets (love those), a dell tower, a Lenovo Yoga and a Lenovo Thinkpad.

There were several Commodores (not the Lionel Richie kind) around for public use when I was at U of Idaho in the early 80s. Eventually, we got a Macintosh Plus that lasted for many years. We still have it under wraps in our attic (still works). MacDraw was a great app.

BackInTex wrote: ↑

Tue Aug 03, 2021 9:23 am

On this day in 1977 Radio Shack introduced the TRS-80.

Who bought one? I didn't.

My first computer purchase was a Texas Instruments "Portable", aka luggable, Professional Computer (color screen and all) purchased in 1985.

What was the first computer you personally purchased?

Not sure why the image is not displaying....

My first computer was an Altair 8800. I put it together which entailed soldering the chips on the motherboard.

In June 1977 I bought an Apple ][ at the Byte Shop, the world's first computer store.

I taught people how to use Visicalc on a Trash-80 but never bought one.

My first computer was a TRS-80 Model 4 that cost around $2,500 (including printer) in the 1970s. I used it primarily for word processing - typing papers not just for myself but for others at the seminary. It had two 5-1/4" floppy drives stacked atop each other, which proved to be a problem because it didn't have a cooling fan. I burned out the computer working on a fellow student's Ph.D. dissertation. I replaced it with a Packard-Bell PC.