[LAU] [OT] first computer ?

[Ken Restivo]

On Fri, Oct 31, 2008 at 10:47:05AM -0400, Dave Phillips wrote:
> Greetings,
> 
> For no reason beyond boredom I decided to pester this list with an OT 
> topic or two. So, without further delay:
> 
> What was your first computer ?
> 

The first computer I used was a Data General minicomputer running BASIC, accessed through an Olivetti TTY terminal with yellow rolls of paper, huge Linotype-style keys, an acoustic-coupled 300-baud modem, and a punch-tape reader/writer.

The first computer I "owned" (my dad bought it) was an Apple ][ with a floppy disk and an 80-column color monitor. I ended up using it more than him, and it migrated from his office to my room a few years later, when he bought himself the original IBM XT.

> 
> And for extra points:
> 
> What was the first music/sound software you used that really hooked you 
> into this making-music-with-computers fad ?
> 
> 

The first computer I bought for myself with my own money was a complete Atari 1040 ST system in 1988, along with a greyscale monitor, a Roland MT-32 and a Roland RD-250 piano and a copy of HybridArts SMPTETrack. I bought it explicitly to make music. Made a ton of MIDI music with that setup for about 4 years, then bought an Apple Macintosh Classic with EZ-Vision. Quite a few years after that I got a PowerMac 7100 running DECK II and released a CD using that. I didn't do any music for many years (but plenty of Linux stuff) until 2006 when I bought a Mac Mini running Debian and then the year after I bought the ASUS laptop I've been recording and gigging with ever since. So that's the complete history.

-ken