LOL, 78 at the end of the month, and retired in 2013. Young’un… 
Remember Heathkit, Nixie tubes, and 8080/1802/6502/6800 micros, trained on vacuum tubes and transistors in the Navy, skipped RTL/DTL, worked extensively with TTL SSI semi’s (anyone remember 74121 one-shots?)… oh my, that triggered brain-fart (they do that, ya’ know)… forgotten most everything I ever knew… where am I?
BTW Happy Birthday!
– David
wouldn’t that be awesome if you and my dad knew each other!!!
oh, and thanks!
I was in the Navy from Feb '67 to Feb '71… and was an aviation fire control (radar) tech (AQB-2). Two tours in Vietnam aboard the USS Coral Sea (CVA-43). Maintained the bombing radar (and avionics) on EA- and EKA-3B Skywarrior aircraft. Lots of it vacuum tube and hybrid (tube and transistor) equipment.
Well, my parents married in late 68, so he either got out in 67 or 68.
he was on a boat that did not have to go (there were 3 in the water and were told one was heading to nam in the morning.) his did not have to go. He told me a tale of having to fix the radar boom in heavy waves and storm mast was swaying so bad, but he had to do it.
That is why I went in the army. Water and i are not friends 
he died in 2008 or I am sure he would be glad to chat with you.
Happy bday dude.
I hope you have a great day.
Happy Birthday! 
(belated).
I’m 41. I had an i386 in the house when I was a kid and I didn’t have any electronic kits. Just scrounged parts from broken electronics and rewired them for laughs. I blew the circuit breaker once because my friend and I thought it was a good idea to connect a small DC motor to the AC wall outlet.
When I learned to drive I had a cell phone, but it was only to be used in emergencies and I probably only used it once. I remember getting lost in downtown Denver and I asked the car next to me at a red light for directions. At the next light, he handed me a paper map. It feels like a foreign country (excpet foreign countries are more similar to today’s Denver than old Denver is).
It’s crazy to think that my kids may actually mever need to learn how to drive. My oldest is 9 and youngest 6. Stuff like waymo teen is accelerating pretty fast.
3D printing and the V1CNC machines are nothing I would have predicted or thought would be that interesting. But now that I have them I can’t imagine what I would be liek without them.
Nope, you are early
Oops. Lack of reading comprehension strikes again!
I am 40 and remember getting our first computer when I was in middle school. A Packard Bell. Had 4mb of ram and a 800mb hard drive. Came with a mail in flyer for a free upgrade to windows 95!
I’m 39 and our first family computer was in 1994 and was a Gateway 2000 (came in a cow box) with 60Mhz Pentium, 8mb of ram, and a 700ish mb hard drive. Came with Windows 3.1. Might need to create a WebUI hot dog theme for the nostalgia.
Before that, my grandfather had an 8086 we used to play random games he was sent by mail on 5 1/4 floppies. We’d print out ascii art banners on a dot matrix printer.
Yeah, the good old times of shareware games.
The first game we ever had was Aldo but not like in the fancy video below in colour, no, it was a black and white monitor…
We played it for so long, getting so good that we reached a stage where you couldn‘t continue the game because the timer was too short to finish the stage. Maybe they never anticipated 7-year-old kids to be so tough. 
Later on, we played Commander Keen (that fish… 
), Lemmings, Worms United… In grade 5 my classmate introduced me to Dune II. I was blown away. The graphics looked like the people were real!!
Now, looking back at it, I wonder how I was ever able to see something in between all those Pixels. But Dune II hooked me to RTS games. Command and Conquer was played at my friend‘s house because it was rated 16 and my parents wouldn‘t allow me to play it. I dabbled a bit in Wing Commander 3, but that never stuck (also, damn that cat!! Kilrathi scum!).
I think that was enough of my early childhood and computer games. 
First of all Happy Birthday! I agree with you! this place is awesome!
Soooooo… does this make me the young buck? I’m 32. 
I’m 57. First computer was a Timex Sinclair, with the 16K (not a typo) expansion cartridge connected to a little black and white TV. Saved programs to an audio cassette after painstakingly “typing” in the Basic code on the membrane keyboard.
Things got really interesting when my grandmother typed her name into an Apple //e in front of a shoe store. She thought she might win a pair of boots, but won the computer instead. My dad bought her the boots she wanted and traded with her.
I’ll wish you happy birthday a little late!
I’m also one of those “old guys” that remembers life before TVs were common and my grandparents home with no indoor plumbing. My grandmother made apple butter on top of a pot-belly stove (good stuff)!
I’m “only” 72. I still fly gliders and build my own computers; the first one a MicroMint project from Steve Ciarcia in Byte magazine in 1982.
Mike
My first computer - when I was 5-6 maybe - was an Atari 800XL with the very same Basic prompt and audio tape recorder
I just played some games my dad would launch for me because of course I couldn’t do it…
Jungle hunt, Robotron, and Alley cat come to mind…
Some magazines would even include a booklet with a “full game” , if you were brave enough to type in the whole provided source code
When I was 12, one long boring summer, I found an old box with this computer and multiple documentation binders in it…
One of those was a full course in Basic programming, and thus I started programming, and never stopped up to this day
How about the bad influence a computer can have on a young boy… You tell me
Happy Birthday!
I’m 56, turning 57 in December, and my first computer was an Atari 400. Wrote an entire database to store entries for the County Fair on that membrane keyboard, then stored it on those crazy cassette tapes. Took 20 mins to boot the thing.
Similar to a comment about phones from a few years ago, it strikes me that we are using more computing power to run our V1 machines than NASA used to go to the moon.
Wow!!! I had no idea this would go so far! Thank you all for sharing!
My first computer came with an early version of Windows that was still in black and white! I think it was Windows 3.0. I think 3.1 was when they first added color. I upgraded.
I remember my excitement about getting Windows 95, making sure I found a way to get it the very day it was released.
Oh my word! I remember using both of those things!
I loved that game, and version I owned had an amazing digital music score! I played it with enjoyment for so many hours I got very good and beat all the levels.
Clever man!
