How old were you...

[qmrq]

Well, I had my first PDA when I was 14! :P Oif, that was years ago. I feel old now. :|

[Kati Compton]

Well, I had my first PDA when I was 14! :P Oif, that was years ago. I feel old now. :|

PDAs existed when you were 14? Don't talk about feeling old.

[nosmohtac]

I guess I could say I had a PDA when I was 14......if you considered the old Casio watch that held 50 names and phone numbers a PDA. At the time, I did (1983-84).

[Jacob]

Well, I had my first PDA when I was 14! :P Oif, that was years ago. I feel old now. :|

PDAs existed when you were 14? Don't talk about feeling old.

I certainly didn't know there was any such thing as a PDA when I was 14...

I was a late blooming geek :|

[TopDog]

I guess I could say I had a PDA when I was 14......if you considered the old Casio watch that held 50 names and phone numbers a PDA. At the time, I did (1983-84).
I agree :-)

Had the same watch myself, with numeric keyboard and everyting... it died a sudden death in the shower unfortunately...

[pocketpcdude1024]

Well, I had my first PDA when I was 14! :P Oif, that was years ago. I feel old now. :|

Beat this: I got my first PDA (Palm m100) a month after my 13th birthday! 8)

[juni]

Well, I got my Commodore 64 when I was 14, so :P

[pocketpcdude1024]

Well, I got my Commodore 64 when I was 14, so :P
I was given an old Apple IIe when I was 11 :razzing:

[yvilla]

Well, I got my Commodore 64 when I was 14, so :P

Talk about old--I gave my 31 year old son a Commodore 64 when he was about 10, and a Vic 28 before that! :mrgreen:

[Kati Compton]

I guess I could say I had a PDA when I was 14......if you considered the old Casio watch that held 50 names and phone numbers a PDA. At the time, I did (1983-84).

I always wanted that watch...

[dcharles18]

PDAs existed when you were 14? Don't talk about feeling old.

Heh, it seems we are in the same boat. :?

[trachy]

I had a Trash 80 (TRS-80) with a tape drive when I was about 12, and saved my first BASIC programs on a cassette tape. Scary thing, is that 6 years later I entered the US Air Force and they were just phasing out punch cards and punch tape. I remember being dazzled with the old timer who could hold the tape up to the light and read it. Yikes.

[orangehat]

i can appreicated that. Years ago (late 70's) we had a guy at work that could hold punch cards up and read them to you. I used to watch him gang punch a object deck and recatalog it on the mainframe so he didn't have to recompile the source. Very scary.....

[nosmohtac]

I guess I could say I had a PDA when I was 14......if you considered the old Casio watch that held 50 names and phone numbers a PDA. At the time, I did (1983-84).

I always wanted that watch...

I guess we've all gottten way off topic here, but I was just looking at watches at walmart the other day, and they still make a model of watch very similar. It still sparks my interest, but with the advent of Pocket PC's I have to ask myself what good is a device that only tells time and stores only 50 phone #'s. Back in the early 80's it was cool but now you've got to expect functions closter to the Fossil PDA Watch.
As far as C64 goes I never owned one, but I did get a TRS-80 model I with 4k of RAM when I was 8, and I've been hooked on gadgets since.

[Pat Logsdon]

I think I've got you all beat. :D

(Or maybe :oops: would be more appropriate...?)

<nostalgia>

I was 2 when I used my first electronic product - the mighty ATARI C-100 PONG (http://www.pong-story.com/atpong2.htm) game, released in 1976. You moved the "paddles" around the tv screen by turning a big knob on a controller. Whee!

I had a bit of a dry spell until I was 6, when the TI99/4a (http://oldcomputers.net/ti994a.html) was released in 1981. It had the Speech Synthesizer module so we could play Parsec (http://www.fatmangames.com/systems/browsegame.asp?gameid=7915).

I still have the whole system (including the tape drive), and it STILL WORKS!

When I was 9, we purchased an IBM PC XT (the same one that Janak uses for his avatar, if I'm not mistaken). I remember playing Below the Root (http://www.mobygames.com/game/sheet/gameId,602/) on it.

</nostalgia>

[Ekkie Tepsupornchai]

Well, I got my Commodore 64 when I was 14, so :P
I was given an old Apple IIe when I was 11 :razzing:
Hey me too!! I could probably guess your age based on that...

[pocketpcdude1024]

Well, I got my Commodore 64 when I was 14, so :P
I was given an old Apple IIe when I was 11 :razzing:
Hey me too!! I could probably guess your age based on that...

I don't doubt it! 8)

[pocketpcdude1024]

Mr. Cedrone has kindly moved our nostalga to this thread instead of bogging down the other one. 8)

[Sven Johannsen]

I think I've got you all beat. :D

Now I'm confused on what the game is. Some seem to be tauting how young they were when the started 'computing', which is unfair to those of us who were born well before there was any technology to use. I was in an extremely progressive High School that had a time share setup with a processing center downtown. Our terminal was a teletype, yellow paper on a roll, paper tape, and keyboard for input. Connection to downtown was an accoustic coupled modem. You dialed the number, and that means 'dial', not punch buttons, put the handset on the cradle when you heard the screech and the teletype would spring to life typing characters on the paper. The rich kids could afford one of those electronic calculators, they did four, maybe a couple more functions, were over a $100, and were a lttile smaller than a paperback. I could do more with my sliderule.

Before that I remember talking a field trip in Grade School to a real computer. We went into a room and the Computer was all around is in rack upon rack. It used tubes. I remember they had it programed to play "Daisy" (the song) for a demo.

I was in college before I got a home computer. RS Color Computer, 4K RAM, hooked to the TV as a monitor. With a 2400B direct connect modem and a Terminal program though I could connect to the University from home and not wait in line at the keypunch room to punch cards to do homework :)

Oh yea, I was already retired (from the AF) before I got my first PDA. :roll:

So do I win :lol:

[Steven Cedrone]

Quick synopsis: We went from a request about the game Everquest, to how old you were when you got your first PDA (including Casio watches), to how old when you got your first computer... :lol:

I think... :?: :wink:

Steve

[pocketpcdude1024]

It's more of how early of an adopter you were. Age and obselecence of technology first used both count. 8) You have a chance of winning...

[jgahr]

Well. seems everyone has an "old age" type story so....
I went to an engineering school (Purdue) and when I started, cards and tape were all that were available. Sitting in those dungeons at 3 am is my fondest memory. My 1st computers were Apple Lisa/IIe/IIc, TRS-80, etc. I can only tell you about the excitement of getting a 10mb, not gig, Chinnok harddrive and hotwiring into a motherboard, wow those were the days. I also had a Radio Shack red led watch. This puts us between 1971 - 1984 ish. Anyone go older yet?

Is tech great, never ever get old messing with toys!! :D

Old age - forgot - 1st PDA 3 yrs ago was a Palm III, then V, VX, IIIc, HP 548, HP 568, iPAQ 3975, HP 5450

[Reinaldo]

When I had my first PDA, I was 9. An old, Palm PC. It was the BEST!!! I miss the interface sometimes.

When I had my first PC, I was 3. Anyone can beat that? I got it because my dad worked as a programer back when PCs were nothing more than a sign that you liked SF (Which he did :lol: ). I am now 13. It was pretty cool.

[Shadowcat]

If I remember correctly I got my first computer when I was 11. It was a Compaq Pentium 75 MHz and I think it was almost top of the line at the time. Now to get back on topic, I got my PDA/PPC just before my 17th birthday. Oh, and I had a couple of Casio databanks in between but I always found data entry on those little thumb boards to be too clumsy. Thank god for PDAs.

[Weyoun6]

Ive been online or used to computers since I was about 9.

I remember that we had commadore-64's at school, my grandparents had a "trash"-80 and a mac plus I played on alot.

My first computer would have to have been my family's 8088 IBM. Hey! do any of you guys remeber Chuck Yeager Flight Simulator? That was a great game. Think it was made by microprose.

I also remeber getting into an argument with my dad, where he insisted that half-a-gig would be "big enough" and I told him to get a gig. never have let him live down that.

My dad would probably go older, he talks about the price point of a 20mb hd

[Pony99CA]

Well, I didn't get my first computer (an Apple II+) until I was a junior in college. In high school, I didn't even want a calculator, but my parents insisted my brother and I get one. We got a TI SR-50 (the SR stood for "Slide Rule" :-)).

Once I got that, there was no stopping me. I got a TI SR-51, a TI SR-52 (programmable with magnetic cards), an HP 67 (ditto) and a TI 59 (ditto, and with ROM cartridges) before I left high school.

I took my first programming class in high school to learn to program my calculator better. :-D We used IBM's VS BASIC on CMS with a Teletype.

When I got to college, they were still using punch cards for freshman classes. One of the reasons I picked my dorm was that it had a keypunch so that I wouldn't have to walk to the computer center (but I think I only used it once).

I was proud that I was one of the few freshmen allowed to use the DECWriter (like a Teletype, but with dot matrix printing).

My daughter has it a bit easier. I bought her her first PC when she was 7, I think. I bought her a laptop two years ago when she turned 10, and bought WiFi networking equipment so she could access the Internet easily.

If I get a new Pocket PC, she'll get my old iPAQ 3650, probably before she turns 12, certainly before she turns 13. (She has my old Hitachi Handheld PC, running Windows CE 1.0 :!:, which I found the charger to while cleaning up my home office.)

Steve

[whatsnext?]

i think i beat all with this- i was 6 when i got my first laptop( it was an old mac.) You know- old OS, B&W screen: i miss it greatly. :cry: it died a painful death- the hard drive quit but it would still turn on. :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry:

[Janak Parekh]

I think we're losing sight of the word "beat" here, as Sven pointed out. ;) For those of us who had computers at an early age: we had the choice. :lol:

In my case, it all started with a Timex Sinclair. Even that blew me away. Those nifty Casio personal organizers didn't exist back then; all we had were HP and TI calculators, not with an LCD screen, but rather an LED screen. I loved those. :) Then came the C64 at age 5... and the rest is history.

--janak

[Kati Compton]

I think I was 5 or 6 (though it could have been younger?) when my father got a Cromenco and wrote a tic-tac-toe program for me to play. When I was 7 or 8 we got a C64. When Macs were new (and booted from floppy) he had one. Moved to a Mac Plus, I think. Later my mom got a Mac Hyperdrive ;). I didn't get my own PC until high school, though.

[baker]

Did the punch card thing with Fortran my freshman year of college. Worked in BASIC the next. An Apple IIe the next, next. First (work) laptop at 31. First home PC at 32. First PPC at 39.

[disconnected]

Well, my first PDA was the iPAQ 3630; it was in 2000, and I was 56.

My first experience with a computer was in a course I took in the mid 1960s. It was an IBM 1401 with 1.4K. We wrote our programs in something called SPS (symbolic programming system or something like that). We coded on coding sheets, then keypunched them onto cards, and fed them into the machine. Compiling was a two-step process. The first pass would output another deck of cards which you fed back through to get a second deck that you used to run your program. The only arithmetic operators we had were add and subtract; to multiply, you had to add and shift, etc.

At my first programming job, I worked for an insurance company in Boston and our computer (64K) was in Hartford. We could only do one compile/execute per day; we would prepare our punch card decks, and a truck would drive them to Hartford for nightly processing, and bring back the results in the morning; "desk debugging" took up most of our time.

[orangehat]

yea, you would 'compile' the source code and if it compiled clean you would get an object deck out that you would run the program with. Your comments on coding sheets bring back memories of RPG (anybody else remember RPG) and all it's different coding sheets. You still have your 'green card' (i do!), I've still got a flowchart template around here somewhere. My how times have changed (not always for the better either).