Jim's Cafe - Saturday, July 5, 2025

Hello SF family! Hope this finds you well as can be.

Today's questions:

What was your first computer?
What is your current computer?

My first computer depends on how you define computer lol

In the late 70s I worked on machines from IBM called Mag Card Selectric Typewriters. It recorded keystrokes then played them back. After there there were a series of office machines that were strictly word processors. They were clunky, expensive, and had a huge learning curve.

My first "personal" computer was a 286 that was strictly a DOS machine. It ran Word Perfect and Quicken and a few simple games.

Today I use a MacBook Air, and love the simplicity of it. My last Air lasted 8 years without a single hiccup. I'd still be using it if drivers were available for the new printer I bought. I hope this one, bought in May of this year lasts as long.

@LumberJack @Baywasp @Lisa the Goatgirl @Gard
@Atreides @CodeX @FFurry @JMG

just a few tags, but remember everyone is invited!

First computer was in the late 90s. Family computer.
It had like a 2 gb hard drive. Rest of the specs I wouldnt know.
Think it was IBM.
We had no internet ofc.
Games I remember playing on it was Worms, Aladdin, Diablo, Sims
Some of those old classic shooters.
I remember once trying to clear space on it to fit more games, and I ended up ruining the windows install by removing essential windows stuff 🤣
Our neighbor had to come and fix it
Later I mostly used it to store guitar tabs on. I would go to the library that had internet with my floppy drive 😂

Lol, what a great cafe! Reading what you guys wrote sure brings back memories. Wasn’t actually alive til the 80’s, but ya the “old, clunky” description definitely does fit for those 90’s computers.

My first one was also a family computer, but it was an IBM PC, so pretty user friendly overall. It had Win 95 on it, and when we got Win 98 I remember being really excited with how “updated” I thought it looked lmao. Compared to W95 it did look comparably better. I was even more blown away when Win XP came out. Had to wait a bit longer to get that one, but always loved using it whenever I went somewhere with a computer that had it.

The computer I have now is somewhat in a “state of transition” cos I technically have a Mac desktop, but it’s 15 years old, system can’t be upgraded to a new one, so therefore the browser can’t be updated either. That’s a major problem cos 2 of the sites I love going on most don’t really work on it. So as of next week I will be getting a much more updated computer with Win 10 on it. Looking forward to that, just hoping I can get one that has a decent amount of RAM for a good deal. Plus I’ll need to get a monitor for it too, so ya, doing my best to not worry about the cost of all that.

Anyway, thanks for opening this great cafe Angie and for tagging me too. Got a few more tags here as well, and also a pic

Tags: @Witty_Sarcasm @1964dodge @cymbele @puffymilk @Kiwi2016 @Inastorm @Road to Nowhere @1Lefty

Windows 10 support ends soon. So you will probably want windows 11, or you will be in a similar situation again 😫

It’s ok, I have a plan for how to deal with that lol. As much as I’ve loved using Windows over pretty much my whole life, I will be switching OS’s (to Linux). Sounds like that will be far smoother to use, and tired of Windows silly bs wanting people to always have to get a new computer when new versions come out.

Oh good plan 😎
I have been tempted to as well. But getting some music software I use to run is a pain I hear.
Im thinking of doing a dual boot soon though
Installing linux on a separate SSD
Might check out steam OS (Valves new OS, based on linux)
Im sure it will take some getting used to new OS for you, but will be totally worth it

Thanks, ya my friend switched to it years ago and has had pretty much only good things to say about it, so I feel confident that I’ll be happy with it too. That sounds like a good idea with installing Linux on a separate SSD.
Ya, I think it will be worth it with Linux too, sure love that it’s free too

My first computer was a Commodore 64.

I have two PCs now. A Lenovo laptop. And a high-end AMD X870 gaming PC.

Thanks for opening the cafe @Angie and tagging me @JMG.

The first computer I owned was a Amstrad CPC 464. I enjoyed playing games on it and spend hours doing so.

I have a PC laptop now, but it's not as fun as hearing the sounds of the tape machine cracking up the software as its loading.

thanks for opening @Angie and @JMG for the tag! My first computer was also a 286. (Also at the time we had 1 tv channel through the rabbit ears and when we turned the computer on we lost the channel!). We were engineers who couldn’t get a computer at work because they were “too valuable “ For peons to touch. My favorite story was my daughter who was 5 years old at the time who had a favorite game that didn’t work right. We told her that it had a bug in it. She just looked at us and asked “why don’t you just squish it “
now I have a laptop and a tablet. The tablet has more huspah than the 286. My laptop is windows 10 and I don’t know how long I can keep it going since it has standalone copies of MS Office and photoshop. My music and photos are on there.

in junior high school my daughter had to do a presentation on comouter history and she got the period just before the 286 computer. I had so much fun learning i just about did her presentation. I knew about the 5 and 1/4 disks but not the 7. In high school I remember programming with punched cards and 12 inch drums of school data. ever expected me to be a programmer even in college. what interesting times I have seen.
again sorry to be so wordy.

Thanks for opening and tagging me @Angie.

If we're including family computers, then it was probably my grandad S's, back in the 90s/2000s. I used to love playing all sorts on there, cos he always had all these odd little collections of games. So i played a lot of 90s kid classics like DIablo, Freddie Fish, and weird little adventure games i can't even remember the names of any more.

Folks, meet my baby:

An absolute beaut, ain't she?
She's about 5 years old now, starting to show her age a bit in some regards, but i made her to be an absolute beast when i got her, so she's faithfully served me all this time.

The only times she's really had issues is from Windows not being very good, and one time i stupidly used an experimental Steam feature in such a way that meant she was constantly accessing the HDD i only have for media storage. I'm planning to swap out that HDD for an SSD at some point, and probably update the graphics card, but the rest is still keeping up perfectly with all my games.

Can't run most new games on Ultra settings without occasional framerate drops any more, but she has no problem with high settings on everything with half-decent optimisation.

Great question, Angie!

Our first computer was an Amstrad.

I now have a Macbook Air. I no longer have a PC.

My first and only PC that I’ve owned was an HP laptop with Windows 8 back in 2014. I used it for college and whatever game I could manage to run on it without dealing with graphical oddities.

I can't remember what the hardware was on my first PC in '95 but I ran Slackware which is still the oldest currently running and supported Linux distro. In 1999 I did get a Compaq PC back when Compaq was a quality and not budget system running Windows 98 since it helped with being able to at work related tasks at home. Currently I have and use a Mac Mini and heavy use on two different Linux systems, openSUSE Tumbleweed and one I use for work doing tasks for work in system security anti hacking which dual boots using Kali and Kali Purple.

I had an Atari 2600 and a Commodore vic 20 when I was a kid. I can’t remember which was first. They both ran BASIC and I felt like I was hot shit when I managed to write a little program that would make the screen go dark and make all sorts of lightning bolts. My dad (before he went batshit crazy) was very keen on getting his sons (me and brother) into science. He was pretty sure that computers were going to be important for careers and that was mid 80s at the latest, so he got that one right. He also believed in chemtrails, so win some, lose some. For me chemistry and the glowing box took and I have been a geek ever since. I feel like I *think* in computer code and when I talk to humans I have to translate my thoughts into one-dimensional constructs. Later on, my mom got me a 386 with win 3.1 and it was amaaaaaazing! To me, at least. She pretty much set it up next to the sewing machine and told me to go figure it out for her.

This would have been around 1990 or so and like a dutiful son, I was fluent in a matter of months. I discovered the help files, and being the type of kid that I was, I would ride by the seat of my pants until I broke something and then read the help files until I solved the problem. I also discovered a bundled educational suite that I don’t know where it came from, but it had math, English, and music appreciation.

And that’s how I became a musician. Not really the topic of the thread, but I don’t think it surprises anyone here when I do that, lol!

My first computer had a Celeron 433 processor. Today, I have a notebook with an i3 processor. It's already 9 years old, and I don't plan on replacing it. I recently cleaned it

First @Angie thanks for opening and @JMG thanks for the tag

So, I'm going to date myself... I remember my father as a physicist working with some massive computer at University of Pittsburgh that had the punched cards (I dropped them --- never got to go to "work" with Dad again...lol).

In college only the guy down the hall had a computer and I never even knew where the "computer lab" was and still got paid to type papers...lol. So first computer was an IBM AT -- 2 5 1/4" floppy disks which I got in grad school. Now have Dell Inspiron laptop.

Me too