What was your first computer ?

[alexino2]

[aberco]

It was a Macintosh Plus, around 1987, which we upgraded to a Macintosh SE a couple years after. My grandfather also gave me his 286 PC with color monitor, which I used to learn Basic programming. Friend added a hard drive in it for me and I was able to run Windows 3.11. Then I got what I have always dreamed: a second hand laptop! a Victor V86P (8086). Yes I still have it!

[H3nrik V!]

[cooperalp]

My father's retired 286. He switched to an HP 486 as he was trying to do CAD, it was super expensive.

[Chook]

[max1024]

Finally I found my first computer. This is one of the clones of the ZX Spectrum made by hand my father think ~ in the late late of 80's. Then he worked in one of the microelectronic plants and was engaged in such microelectronics. It exists in a single copy

[CPUShack]

I love that it has mostly Soviet ICs...and a SGS Z80 lol

[Mixeur]

Amstrad CPC 6128

[stamasd]

The first computer that I had for my use for a while (it was borrowed by my father from work for "extended testing" at home ) was a Romanian ZX Spectrum clone, called Tim-S. It was custom modified with a parallel interface that was not standard on the Spectrum, and had extra routines in the ROM for driving several common printers of the time. It also had 64k RAM and didn't run code from the ROM directly, instead at reboot the ROM was copied in the first 16k of RAM (very quick, less than 1s). The first 16k RAM were write-protected immediately after that, but writing a certain value at a special IO port would unlock that protection so you could load your own custom ROM from cassette. I had to return it after a few months, that was a sad day.
I then built my own clone from a kit I bought, a different model called Cobra (still a ZX clone) but it never worked quite well. Later I bought a factory-made clone, HC91 which came complete with Interface1 clone and 3.5" floppy drive. As this one had also 64k RAM and a FDD it could run CP/M. Or rather _can_ run CP/M as I still have it.
I was at the university by then (late 1980s) and had access to a lab with two 286/10 AT clones, and a 386SX-16. The 386 was mostly off-limits as it ran some lab equipment but the 286s were fair game to use if someone didn't need them for office purposes. I played lots of Dune2 on those. I ended up writing my undergrad thesis on the 386SX in Word 2.0 under Win3.1. And spent almost a week printing it on an Epson LQ570 which took about 15 minutes to print a page and would jam frequently, at which time the whole print job had to be purged and restarted (and that took about 30 minutes on the 386). I still hate Epson printers to this day.
Even later in 1996 I was able to afford my own PC, a second hand laptop Thinkpad 755CX with Pentium 75 and 24MB RAM. I had to save a significant part of my grad student stipend for 3 months to afford it. That was my XCOM machine for many years. Still have it, still play XCOM on it.
And then in 1998 I built my first desktop based on the legendary combo Abit BH6 and Celeron 300A.

[kixs]

My father bought Atari 800XL + tape drive in 1985(or 86?). It was actually "smuggled" from West Germany to (back then) Yugoslavia.

I used it mostly from 88 to 91 - even done some tape drive modification for Turbo loading. My PC era begun in 1992 when I and my older brother bought a used no-name 286-16, 1MB, 42MB Conner, 256KB VGA card and VGA color monitor.

It was quite a shock to use a PC/DOS. Atari was so simple But I've learned quickly