Re: What's your favorite computer of all time?
 

The Commodore!

The Commodore computer is the first computer I can ever remember using. I used to play those cool games such as California Games and Hotwheels and yes they were stored on those super thin/super big floppies which used this drive http://www.commodore.ca/products/128/1571_drive.jpg

I am not sure what model it was, however, the Commodore I had when I was younger is still buried in my dad's garage. :eek:

Some day I may dig it up and have some good old fun!

Re: What's your favorite computer of all time?
 

Probably the computer I had the most fun with is my Apple II, Serial Number 28, btw. I got to tell Woz I had it at Las Vegas. The Rev 0 cases didn't have the cooling slots so when I finally loaded it with enough stuff, it would overheat and stop. I'd then have to take off the cover, put my thumb on the processor and act like a human heat sink until it cooled down. Then I could do a warm boot and get on with my project. The first time it happened it scared the crap out of me, I thought it had coughed up its toenails and died. :yikes:

Re: What's your favorite computer of all time?
 

my personal favorite? this one:


and these were my lab assistants:

(real engineers use tubes!)

Re: What's your favorite computer of all time?
 

DUH! That was a great computer! Why did it take so long to bring that one up!! Favorite HOME computer. I think I was also impressed with the programmers who wrote software for that machine than the machine it's self. They crammed more stuff into 64K of memory... always amazing. Microsoft couldn't even write notepad for 64K. In fact, I just looked it up. 68KB. Geez...

Best computer ever (that I used but could never have purchased):

"My" Sun Sparc 30 Unix Box I used in Gradschool. I'm a mechE, and I could have that thing do ANYTHING for me. When the HP's (not know what kind) would crash out because my code was too big (poorly written) the Sparc 30 would eat it up. (I was reading in black and white CAT scaned images of a transmission case, .75mm a slice, and rebuliding a solid CAD model. Talk about reverse engineering...)

Re: What's your favorite computer of all time?
 

Boy Ken, you really had assistants that much younger than you were?

Re: What's your favorite computer of all time?
 

I'd have to go with the Silicon Graphics (Silly G) Indy. I used it in a college CAD course around 1993. It ran AutoCAD R12 and ran it well! Unix based, sweet looking blue case, and the school (UW-Stout) sprang for 19" monitors. In 1993 that was HUGE for a college student.

Re: What's your favorite computer of all time?
 

Come on guys lets here it for the Tandy!
I keep trying to buy one off my friend. How can you beat such classic games as Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy and Commander Keene.

Re: What's your favorite computer of all time?
 

I have to split my vote between the DEC LSI-11 (the younger nephew of the PDP-11, a great little 16-bit microprocessor that was the first machine that I ever used to develop hardware interfaces between the computer bus and external proto-boards [my first great success was when I built my first digital-to-analog converter and made it draw a picture of Snoopy on an oscilloscope] all as part of a Chemistry class of all things!) and the Macintosh G-5 2.5Ghz dual processor machine (it's my other favorite right now, just because it is what I have right now - it will soon be replaced by a new favorite when I upgrade to the 3GHz Macs that are coming; I may be sincere, but I am fickle!).

-dave

Re: What's your favorite computer of all time?
 

My first was a Honeywell 6040 running Dartmouth BASIC in timeshare mode. I had a 300-baud Teletype terminal and a BASIC manual. I was in heaven. I wrote my own craps game program that must have taken me three months. With some help I like to think it might have been faster. We also loaded a 450-line BASIC program called "Star Trek" that might have been one of the earliest space-shooter games.

A TRS-80 Model IV running Visicalc helped me to an "A" in Finance in grad school. That might have been my second-favorite computer. No one else submitted spreadsheets as homework.

I really like my current Dell 4600 Windows machine. I'm sure a lot of you 14-year-olds have faster hardware, but I so enjoyed taking a computer out of the box, plugging it in, and having it magically work. Not being a video hound I haven't come close to filling my mirrored 120GB drive, and Windows XP Pro finally delivers the promise made with Windows 3.

Re: What's your favorite computer of all time?
 

Which was? I'm just curious as to what you are referring.

Now that I look back at old computers, I think Windows 3.1 was totally hideous. I believe for the time, the Macintosh System was far superior.

Re: What's your favorite computer of all time?
 

Favorite computer was a Mac Powerbook 520c. It was the first laptop that could truly function as a desktop -- just connect an ethernet cable, mouse, keyboard and monitor. It provided a vision of just how capable laptops were going to be, and now are.

Re: What's your favorite computer of all time?
 

Heh. Windows that worked. Heh.

Re: What's your favorite computer of all time?
 

As much "fun" as it was to toggle machine code into the boat anchors* many of my peers are romantically reminiscing about, I'll have to go with my current: a 1 GHz Titanium Powerbook. It has been rock-solid since I bought it two years ago and continues to meet my computing and communications needs. And with it I can watch FIRST matches or Kill Bill wherever I am.

* My first boat anchor was a DEC PDP-8 we did "high-speed" data acquistion with at duPont in the early 80's. I think we were getting at least ten A/D samples per second! And was it ever sweet when we upgraded to an ASR-11 teletype user interface and read/write paper tape. Ahh, those were the days!

Re: What's your favorite computer of all time?
 

Keep in mind Microsoft also had to make Notepad more than a cursor on a black screen... it has a close button (which has to include a close function, which has to make a prompt that will ask if you if you want to save, which in turn will have to make a window to browse to where you want to save, etc.), a minimize button (which has to have a minimize animation), and an expand button (with correlating animation). It also has to have a print screen, and code to communicate with the printer.

When you take it apart, its so much more than the commodore editor.

Re: What's your favorite computer of all time?
 

This is a tuffy, I'd have to say some of favorite include the tried and tested Comadore family, and the TRS-80. Old school apples and macs also hold a special place in my heart.