What Was Your First Computer

[Canary42]

This is a tad specialist, but is inspired by a couple of entries in Smow's random facts thread, (bhg441's Ferranti Pegasus and TTT's Vax 11/730).

Mine was also a Ferranti (at around the same time as bhg441), the Orion. Ended up coding at machine code level as the compiler for its high level language NEBULA took 60-80 hours or more to compile (non-restartable) and the machine's MTBF* tended to be less.  It was a wonderful machine for its time, with a 48-bit word (against the more common 24-bit) which gave it an immensley powerful instruction set.  However it sold so few that it never really became commercially successful. The technical manual included an appendix of all sites (from memory the Pru had one, there was one in Sweden, and one or two elsewhere). I used to have a newspaper cutting from Computer Weekly of the removal of the one from the Pru but sadly I can't find it now.

P.S. Much was made by its detractors of the anagram of NEBULA being UNABLE. NEBULA as I recall was an acronym of Natural Electronic BUsiness LAnguage.

 

I guess most people's answers will be for their PCs, which should raise a few interesting examples (e.g. ZX81)

 

*MTBF = Mean Time Between Fail, i.e. how long it could keep running without crashing.

[piggynose]

Tell a lie( not deliberately) my 1st personal computer for home use was my apple emac, that was in 2004.  But I seem to have used one or two in 1988, 1993, and in 1999.

[SIRandyraven]

At home in 1979 aged 16 it was a Commodore PET 2001-N16 (16k of memory and a 6502 CPU).

At Polytechnic it was a ICL 1904 running George III.

Then at work in 1983 at South Bank Poly (worked in computer Center) it was a DEC SYSTEM 10 (KL10 processor) 768K 36bit words. PDP 11/34 and PDP 11/44 as front ends. Also 2 VAX 11/750 and a VAX 11/780.

I later worked for DEC / Digital Computers for 16 years ...so every model of PDP-111 VAX and Alpha.

Later years was managing team running a global trading market. We run about 12,000 servers 😆 HP boxes with Linux