# What is the first thing you remember using a computer for?



## nádej (Feb 27, 2011)

Just curious. 




For me: ClarisWorks painting. I was 3 or 4, and we got it with our first computer (1993?), and there was literally nothing cooler to me than being able to make 'art' without using actual crayons, markers, or paints.


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## GhostCrow (May 3, 2010)

Trying to type in BASIC code, for a Star Trek game published in Byte magazine, on my cousin's Tandy TRS-80. It took us forever to debug the thing and get it to run, because of the typos in the magazine.  The game was actually pretty fun. Very crude by today's standards though.


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## Zombie Devil Duckie (Apr 11, 2012)

My first was the same as @GhostCrow, TRS-80, with a cassette tape drive and a Hayes 300 Baud modem 

We used it to log onto Compuserve after 7M and play BB chess. That would have been sometime around 1983...



-ZDD


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## SenhorFrio (Apr 29, 2010)




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## GhostCrow (May 3, 2010)

@ZDD Ah, the BBSs. That brings back memories. I didn't get a Compuserve account until much later. There were several local BBSs that people ran from their homes. Mostly crappy games and grainy gifs from skin mags that you would have to wait hours to download.


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## Everyday Ghoul (Aug 4, 2009)

Oregon Trail, somewhere in the late 80's. Think I played Centipede and Snake on my sister's home Apple thing with a cassette drive, around the same time frame. What do I use a computer for now? Video games. I guess some things never change.


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## unINFalliPle (Jul 8, 2012)

A document for school. I actually got one pretty late compared to other kids. 

Remember floppy disks?








I actually got the square metal piece stuck in a teacher's computer when she let me use it for something. I think I had to tell her and they managed to pull it out with tweezers.. 

Also, I was pretty late for lap tops too. When I had to present a PowerPoint with no mouse, the touch pad was so difficult for me. It was pretty embarassing. XD Someone did it for me.


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## koalaroo (Nov 25, 2011)

The game _​Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego? _


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## BelovedDay (Feb 7, 2013)

Playing Ragnarok online.


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## knght990 (Jul 28, 2009)

Pole Position.


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## alya (Jan 14, 2013)

girly dress up games


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## Orchidion (Jan 3, 2013)

Porn


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## pmj85 (Jul 31, 2010)

Using the 'new' computer in my primary school to colour in templates on MS Paint.

That was back in '95.


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## smolio (Mar 7, 2013)

The earliest I can remember is 3rd grade/4th grade-ish, playing kiddie PC games and looking up game FAQs with my cousin lol


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## McSwiggins (Apr 2, 2013)

Playing video games on a Commodore 64. Donkey Kong, Dig Dug, and a lot of others that I can't even remember anymore.


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## Adrift (Apr 5, 2011)

Back in 1985, my algebra textbook contained snippets of Basic code for solving problems, but I didn't have access to a computer except during a typing class. Instead of learning how to type, I'd try to input the code and hope I didn't get caught.


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## peabrane (Nov 1, 2009)

Etc.


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## Stelmaria (Sep 30, 2011)

Typing stories on a TRS-80 when I was 3/4. Probably why I never learned to type properly. :tongue:


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## Aya the Abysswalker (Mar 23, 2012)

This awesome game.


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## Devrim (Jan 26, 2013)

I used it for Age Of Empires


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## SocioApathetic (May 20, 2012)

MS Paint and pinball.


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## countrygirl90 (Oct 11, 2012)

I was in school and I had to learn basics of computing like MS office ,programming etc but I was sucker for music so first I did was to load my favorite songs in drive and listening to them while doing my school work .


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## 0 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 (Nov 22, 2009)

minesweeper. That was when I was a kid and we had an old computer and no internet. That computer stopped working after not long. Later we got a new one that had a Jurasic Park game demo on it. That was fun. And I had a space ship game on this big game collection disk.


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## Donkey D Kong (Feb 14, 2011)

I vaguely remember playing Zoombinis, being my first PC game, and the first time I used a PC.


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## Monsieur Melancholy (Nov 16, 2012)

Oh wow, I have to go way, way back for this one. All the way back to elementary school. I remember there were these educational activities and games they used to have us do in the computer room where I went to school. I think you were able to design some type of animated scenery picture using a list of various backgrounds, objects, people, and creatures. It's very vague in my memory but I remember the settings of the place quite well.

That elementary school was closed in late 2000, and was torn down in August 2003. Can't believe it's been that long. Looking at the location now where it used to stand, you'd never really guess there used to be a school there.


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## SirDave (Sep 1, 2012)

When working in naval communications in 1966-67 we went from numerous manual relay stations, ours being on the east coast - with others being at the west coast, the Far East, and Europe- to a single computer controlled relay station at Hancock AFB in Syracuse NY for the east coast region. 

When we went online, as a learning experience, I travelled from the US Naval Ammo Dep Crane Indiana to Hancock field to get a visual of how the communication traffic was handled and the physical facility there. 

The communications center to me looked like the control console of the Starship Enterprise with all the mysterious screens with people working them, and the memory cells were each about 3x3x6' tall, and they were spaced apart enough for service avenues between them and presumably for cooling. They occupied several floors of a very large building dedicated to their operation.

this computer system provided routing, prioritizing by precedence, and delivery to the ultimate destination by routing indicators, a coding of letters with each letter directing the message through the huge military communications network. The computers allowed the three (four including the US Coast Guard) US military services to consolidate their whole system, 

The previous system was called the 82B1 system and it was replaced by the new computer driven AutoDin (Automatic Digital Network) System.

AutoDin JANAP 128-I Rev March 1983


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## Giratina (Aug 15, 2012)

When I was like 4, I remember going to the pc just to doodle on paint, and to play minesweeper and solitaire.


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## Outside_The_Box (Apr 17, 2013)

I think it was Paint, or a similar program. It could have been on an Apple II. It was the late 80's and I was only in first grade. We went to the computer lab and drew pictures.


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## stillakidatheart (Sep 13, 2012)

Huh... for me, I can only remember the earliest was that I was playing some Jimmy Neutron game online.


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## Aquamarine (Jul 24, 2011)

To play Windows 95 computer games for a few hours.


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## junshibuya (Feb 4, 2010)

play music player


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## dotMute (Sep 27, 2011)

When i must of been about 8 my dad had this computer, it just displayed in green and black; dont ask me what operating system or what computer it was since i got no clue. Me and my little brother would go onto it and make picture in a word editor, essentially ASCII images. OFC nothing great just things like stick men, a house etc..


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## Class (May 1, 2013)

The first thing kinda remember doing, my parents remember more, is bashing the keyboard because I was too young to know what a computer was.


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## MrsAndrewJacoby (Apr 11, 2013)

SirDave said:


> When working in naval communications in 1966-67 we went from numerous manual relay stations, ours being on the east coast - with others being at the west coast, the Far East, and Europe- to a single computer controlled relay station at Hancock AFB in Syracuse NY for the east coast region.
> 
> When we went online, as a learning experience, I travelled from the US Naval Ammo Dep Crane Indiana to Hancock field to get a visual of how the communication traffic was handled and the physical facility there.
> 
> ...


Wow! That is going back, lol. I thought I was old school with the Apple II and C64. :happy: But, I just had a thought...who remembers Hypercard stacks? Lol, I had NO idea what I was doing with those things, but it looked cool back then!


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## Jman Ninja (Apr 4, 2013)

Earliest possible thing I can remember is playing toontown in 2003 on my crappy white-nasty dial up desktop. I'm sure I used the computer earlier than that, but i just don't remember it, and I really started using the computer when I got my laptop. Which reminds me, so happy laptops got lighter, my old laptop weighed like 20 pounds and barely worked. I also had to put it in a humongous case that weighed 10 pounds.


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## Death Persuades (Feb 17, 2012)

Some site that you could make a dancing stick man. macromedia or something


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## Fleetfoot (May 9, 2011)

When I was about 3 or 4 I played a golfing game on a Mac. Before then I played Kid Pix with the guy that says "Oh No!". That's the only thing I remember about it, and I still laugh.


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## Wellsy (Oct 24, 2011)




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## Class (May 1, 2013)

Wellsy said:


> View attachment 69722


SkiFree!! I remember playing that all the time when I was younger


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## Wellsy (Oct 24, 2011)

Class said:


> SkiFree!! I remember playing that all the time when I was younger


Somehow, for a game that's impossible to win, it was addictive.


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## Fear Itself (Feb 20, 2013)

Playing weird low quality computer games like the after dark games-hula girl... Oh and the paint application.


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## TheProcrastinatingMaster (Jun 4, 2012)

We got our first household computer when I was maybe seven, I remember when I first got to use it, I was immensely entertained by typing into the web search things like 'garbage' and 'town' just everyday things, so many websites, so much information, I was astounded.


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## quan (Mar 20, 2013)

I remembered looking intensely at a small white Compaq "TV set" after coming home from school. That was when the PC used Windows 3.1 and MS-DOS operating systems. 

I enjoyed playing and working with it so much that I decided to become an IT specialist in 9th grade. Now I dread of working with a PC :dry:


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## geekofalltrades (Feb 8, 2012)

My family's first computer was an old IBM box that ran MS-DOS. I used to like to type random stuff on the screen and then watch the dot-matrix printer spit it out on paper.

When my uncle got a Windows 95 PC, Microsoft Word rocked my world. I could make the printer spit out clipart, too.


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## mushr00m (May 23, 2011)

First computer I used, an Acorn.


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## mimesis (Apr 10, 2012)

A whopping 64k memory!!! (37k BASIC) lol. Still took ages to load from a cassette. dry:What's a cassette?)


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## mimesis (Apr 10, 2012)

MrsAndrewJacoby said:


> Wow! That is going back, lol. I thought I was old school with the Apple II and C64. :happy: But, I just had a thought...who remembers Hypercard stacks? Lol, I had NO idea what I was doing with those things, but it looked cool back then!


Haha yeah...actually I remember using it as an artwork, when I did art school but some teachers refused to look at it and stayed outside the computer room at my end of year presentation. Even though they were very much thrilled the etchings I made, I thought it was pretty lame.


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## mimesis (Apr 10, 2012)

Dear Sigmund said:


> DOS and D base. I remember that old dot prompt. and those 5 inch floppys. Later I had a 144k external modem in the prehistoric days of the internet.


...I think you mean 14k4, state of the art in 1994. =)


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## MrsAndrewJacoby (Apr 11, 2013)

mimesis said:


> A whopping 64k memory!!! (37k BASIC) lol. Still took ages to load from a cassette. dry:What's a cassette?)


Oh wow! 64K! :laughing: I laughed hard on that one. And that Atari 2600...man, I loved that thing. Pac-Man, Asteroids, Eggomania, and my favorite - Tac-Scan! Good times.


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## Siggy (May 25, 2009)

@Nemesis

yes, ( 14k4 )thank you. Indeed state of the art in 1994. First "kid" on my block to have one LOL


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## RandomNote (Apr 10, 2013)

The first thing i used a computer for was looking up the word cow..... don't know why i just did it.


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## mimesis (Apr 10, 2012)

Dear Sigmund said:


> @_Nemesis_
> 
> yes, ( 14k4 )thank you. Indeed state of the art in 1994. First "kid" on my block to have one LOL


Haha...makes you almost miss the sound of dialing up...


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## Pom87 (Apr 7, 2012)

Prince of Persia.


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## INFJRoanna (Dec 20, 2012)

Playing the game Pharaoh on the computer when i was about 5. I loved that game! :crazy:


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