When did you buy your first computer?

[White Israelite]

Radio Shack. Tandy CoCo II with 16K RAM. Data storage was to a cassette tape. I took the free Basic class that came with the purchase. I then typed for 3 days to make a small clock that told the time. It was at that point I decided I did not want to be a programmer.




My first PC was an IBM XT with 2 360K floppy drives. I saved up for weeks to buy a 10MB hard drive which was $400 (more than 2 weeks pay) and I thougt, "that will be the last computer I will buy, this will hold all the data in the known world!!"   

Know what's sad? Nearly all this stuff used to be made in America and very high quality, it was expensive (I think my computer was around the 9,000 dollar mark at the time) but it was well made. Now we have these bundled computers for 150 dollars with free keyboard, speakers, and a mouse made in China and it's all made to last a year before you need to buy another. I can't think of a modern motherboard, cpu, or video card not made in China today. Some of the transisters are made in Japan but even thats changing.

I actually think you're wrong. Intel has factories all over the world so most CPUs are made in America, Europe, Israel and other countries. And other components such are motherboards and RAM are made in Taiwan (for example Asus) and Japan. And even China has some very high quality products they don't necessarily produce only cheap crap.

Actually your thinking of the architecture of the CPU which is the conceptual design. The actual manufacturing of the parts for the most part is done in China or Taiwan, I can bring up the factory names. RAM, yes there are some Japanese manufacturers but not common at all, optical drives as mentioned are primarily made in Signapore, Malaysia, Thailand and occasionally China. Power supplies and motherboards are primarily China or Taiwan now, Video cards, primarily China although some of the transisters are made in Japan which is changing. Accessories like webcams, mouses, keyboards, etc. are primarily made in China though some keyboards are made in Thailand now. 

Theres a reason behind this, corporations want to expand their profits, it's not cost effective to hire American workers anymore, this is why you can get a computer so cheap but not built as well as they used to be.

[Zelhar]

@Meir, I meant that Intel actually manufacturs in western countries (but not exclusively). They have FABs in America, Europe, and Israel. And anyway I never experienced hardware failure of CPU, RAM or even Moboard (though I am just a simple home user). Some firms keep their high standards regardless of where they manufacture. 

[White Israelite]

@Meir, I meant that Intel actually manufacturs in western countries (but not exclusively). They have FABs in America, Europe, and Israel. And anyway I never experienced hardware failure of CPU, RAM or even Moboard (though I am just a simple home user). Some firms keep their high standards regardless of where they manufacture. 

I've had motherboard failures, I've had failures on Gigabyte as well as Asus.

[muman613]

Shalom,

I got my 1st computer when I was 16 years old, which was 1981.

This was during the time of Hobbyist computing, when Byte magazine was 200 pages of homebrew computing. And people built their own microcomputers from the CPU up. It was much different than building a machine today, where all you do is select the components and snap them together. In the 80s we used to solder the sockets onto the PC board and program the ROM chips. I still have a bunch of that technology. I have my Aim-65 which was a 6502 based microcomputer learning kit. The Apple II used the 6502 CPU also and I was very proficient at this microcode. The 6502 was an 8bit CPU which ran at around 1MHz.

Then I moved on to the 68000 CPU from Motorola which was a 16bit CPU which had a very nice assembly language. I learned about this CPU from the Commodore Amiga which I started to develop for around 1989. The Amiga used various generations of this CPU, up to the 68040 chip which had improved virtual memory controllers. I liked Amiga architechture because of its integrated Video and Audio processors which allowed 16 voice multisynth music and high resolution multi-plane graphics. I was involved with development of the Video Toaster which boasted the ability to do 3D graphics with mixed in special fade effects. It was used to render the 3d graphics of the TV series Babylon 5. I went to the studios where they rendered this show and met the writers and staff.

After working on the Amiga I immediately started to work on digital video on the IBM PC which we know today as the PC. I started on Windows 3.0 which ran on a 386 CPU at 60MHz. I worked on the device drivers and Microsoft Multimedia drivers which were required to allow digitizing video into Motion JPEG files. This was just before MPEG2 became popular. The AzeenaVision 500 was the product which I worked on and developed.

I went on to work at various video game software developers including JVC where I helped develop a video game system targeted to kids learning. It was developed around a 386 which i thought was crazy, because pentiums were already out and they were becoming cheap. I worked in 386 assembly language and developed a game development system used by a team of artists and musicians and game producers.

Ive been in the Computer software business for 20+ years now and it is awesome to see what I had forseen back in 1984, when I was famous. I knew that computers were going to become an integral part of our daily experience. And it turns out that I was right.

muman613