Rebuilding Rob

This prompt is going to really date me, so here goes…

Growing up, my first foray into the world of personal computers was something of a false start. One year for Christmas, I want to guess about 1983, my family had gotten a commodore 64, or at least the CPU, which also included the keyboard.

The Commodore 64 CPU also had a cartridge port on it. We got a few games for Christmas that year. Again, it was a early 80s, so it was nothing mind-boggling. At that point, we didn’t have a monitor, printer, or the floppy Drive – which seemed like an absolute luxury item back then.

So I never really got into the Commodore, as we just didn’t have the money growing up to invest into the other hardware. My father would eventually start word processing with it, eventually getting a printer and a monitor. But that 5 1/4 inch floppy drive was our elusive white elephant.

HERE is an interesting story about the Commodore 64

But, really my first true jump into the computer age would be a few years, almost until I was in college myself when my father purchased a Compaq Presario. Consisering that this was running windows 95 and had a built-in 3 1/2 inch floppy drive, this was a considerable step up. This bad boy was really my proper first step into the modern computing age.

X1 had more or less inherited similar model to this desktop. When that one died, I upgrade to a newer model, as I was working at the local. Office Depot at the time. Of course, this new model was running Windows 98 and was my introduction to the COU tower:

Beyond getting faster, more powerful, cheaper and more aesthetically pleasing , this is essentially the design desktop computers continue to use use to this day. I could continue to go through every model of every desktop and laptop I’ve had to the present; but you get the idea.

It’s amazing the way that a piece of technology becomes so invasive and affects every single aspect of your life. I’m sure that my great grandparents generation could say the same thing about the automobile. While I remember a time in my life before having a home computer, sometimes it’s hard to really think about. probably say the same thing about cell phones.

Tell me about your first computer

Thanks for stopping by Rebuilding Rob. Be sure to like, comment and subscribe to my blog below. It’s greatly appreciated! Also, feel free to follow me on social media as well! Check out my most recent posts as well as some earlier, related posts:

• The Boy Who Looked at His Feet
• Even White People Get Ashy
• The Tricorder in My Pocket
• Challenger 40: The Generational Echo
• Take Kid 2 to Work Day: An Unexpected Win

The article “My first (three) computers” originally appeared on Rebuilding Rob