What was the first computer you swore at?

[HEyHEY]

[arwalden]

1. A Digital LED Calculator? Does That Count?

Otherwise, it would have to be my Apple IIe.

[Cleita]

2. All of them, including the one I am answering

your post with.

[BuckeFushe]

3. IBM PS2

I hated original IBM operating system, then I paid $99 for DOS 3.0 and learned how to make it work.

[Deja Q]

4. Mac Plus

Damn thing ate my disc...

Of course, I'm glad I don't own a Mac these days. Those copy-protected music CDs won't play and jam up the Mac's CD player and need to be serviced.

Of course, if I started ranting on PC clones, I'd be taking a while. And while I've bitched about Microsoft before in the past, I've 3.5 years of OS/2 to whine about as well. Freakin' IBM... x(

[RebelOne]

5. 486 PC

[KeepItReal]

6. My brand new Windows 98 Toshiba Laptop

Damn thing wouldn't shut down properly most of the time! Couldn't play sound files without trippin. DVD player would freeze up, too.

I wanted to drop-kick it...but installed Windows 2000 (and maxed out the RAM) instead. Then it behaved like the kick-ass PC it was supposed to be.

I'll be retiring my "Toshibi" soon. Its paid for itself many times over.

[Doc_Technical]

7. Digital PDP-8

No keyboard, just data shitches.
First "real" computer was a Data General Nova 3-12.

[ramapo]

9. Got me beat...pdp-11/70

My first was a PDP-11/70, rsx-11M, .5MB memory. It was a BIG deal when we went to 1MB. This was ~1981.

[DoYouEverWonder]

19. I used to run a PDP 11/23

It had removable disks that were about 2" thick. Then I got a job running a Wang for an accounting firm. My current computer is named WorthlessPieceofShit.

[Snow]

36. A Cyber 1600 -

I hated that thing. Ran the stupidest excuse for an operating system you could ever hope to see. Huge. Occupied a whole building. I was so glad to see my first micro, which was a VLSI machine, a terak. We had Bowles Pascal on that.

[GregW]

42. Whoa! Me too!

Was it a Wang VS90?

[Kathy in Cambridge]

8. Any computer running WindowsNT

the world's most frustrating operating system.

[GAspnes]

10. my SWTP kit

about 1975 or '76. I was swearing at it even before it was fully assembled.

[GAspnes]

14. I forgot the 360/40 in 1972, and the G-15 in 1964

man, I've sworn at a lot of computers.

[Interrobang]

11. My Amoeba.

Generally it was a wonderful machine (all Amiga owners and ex-Amiga owners say that), but occasionally it would crash or something, necessitating a handy outburst of profanity/obscenity. :)

[Liberal Veteran]

31. You mean these kinds of errors?

Software failure! Press left mouse button to continue.
Guru Meditation #84010007.00C13870

[Don_G]

12. An IBM 360

An Atari, a Toshiba and a Dell - each running different Operting Systems.

The Dell was the worst though: Windows ME kept crashing and kept both my mouth and mind active...not that I needed that.

[TrogL]

13. Texas Instruments hand-held programmable calculator

1978 - I was writing a program for it and it wouldn't work as I was expecting to because it was making rounding errors due to using logarithms.

[ironflange]

15. Some sort of HP minicomputer

This was 1980, summer govt. job. I would get really pissed at Super Star Trek at lunchtime, until I figured out how to cheat.


edit: Not sure now, it may have been TI. Did either company make minicomputers then? Might have even been a DEC.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

16. Sinclair

which cost $50 and I bought around 1980.

[Nile]

40. The Timex Sinclair with the huge 16K memory option.

That was serious memory back then.

[GregW]

43. I had one of them too!

Nothing like the ol' "store your programs on casette tape" eh?

[amazona]

17. the first one I met

Computers were just coming into use when I was younger, and I could cause them to crash or to short out just by touching them. There was an experimental model in our lab that I caused the fuses to melt. When I told the instructor that it had melted down, he said, "You can't hurt that one. It can't crash." Ten minutes later he was removing the melted fuses and shaking his head: "This isn't supposed to be possible." I maintained this talent for many years until I got a computer of my own, and I guess once they'd won me over they didn't have to play these stupid mindgames with me any more....

[displacedtexan]

18. Kapro 2000

in 1986.

[frylock]

20. commodore64

[Dragon Turtle]

21. Apple II e

[RebelOne]

48. Same here.

My first computer and I thought I had a state-of=the-art machine at 64K.

[jmowreader]

22. A Microfix

A Microfix is an Apple IIe with a 5MB hard drive mounted in a ruggedized case. The only good thing about a Microfix was that you could drop one out of the back of a deuce and a half going 35 MPH and the Microfix would still work. Don't ask me how I know this.

[JVS]

23. I used the voice addition to make an old TI-99 swear

I might have sworn at it a few times while playing video games

[Bundbuster]

24. Compaq POS

The "customer service" folks' ears are still burning 6 years later.

[coralrf]

27. I second that..

I had a battery of compaqs and they blew me off all the time..

I just make my own now..

Compaq..now HP really really really suck!!!!

[bookman]

25. Apple II+

WHERE EVERYTHING I TYPED LOOKED LIKE THIS!

AND I PRINTED ON A THERMAL PRINTER WHICH CURLED FROM THE HEAT.

[DemoTex]

26. A big damn Cray

Georgia Tech. Or maybe I cussed the IBM at Auburn a few years earlier. Bottom line? I've cussed many, many computers.

[Leftist78]

28. Every computer I ever had

untill I got my first Mac :)

[Padraig18]

29. Is that a flying polar bear in your sig line?

:P

[Jack Rabbit]

30. It was a DEC10

I learned to write FORTRAN on that thing.

Does anybody else here know FORTRAN or am I showing my age?

[cally]

33. I once did

and yes we are both showing our age. ;-)

[pmbryant]

35. I used to know FORTRAN very well

Probably could still pick it up again rather quickly.

Does that mean I'm showing my age too?

:scared:

;-)

--Peter

[ewagner]

37. Wierd!

My son took FORTRAN in College during the Spring semester. Said its used a lot in Meteorlogy.

[Nihil]

45. Still some legacy code out there

Learned Fortran as an evening course "extra" at college (many years
ago) and that helped me get my first job (on PDP-11/60 w/ RSX-11M +
VAX 11/780 w/ VMS ... yep, quite a bit of swearing there <to keep the
on-topic police happy :-)> ).

Haven't used it for about three years now - helped diagnose and fix
some Pro-Fortran (Oracle) code - but not seen much since.

Nihil

[put out]

32. A cobbled together who-knows-what,

And we were happy to have it, I tell you! Uphill in 6' of snow, both ways, no shoes!

I don't even know what its various parts were (1991). I just know that my 2 year old climbed up on my lap very early one morning while I was trying to use it, and said some very naughty words, over and over and over. I think he thought I made the computer work by cursing at it, because he was directly quoting me.

[Spirochete]

34. Never met a computer

that I didn't swear at at some point. From the first to the present ones. And even a few choice words thrown in for the ones that have fucked up my bills and bank account, stuff like that.

[ewagner]

38. Burroughs 3600

U.S. Air Force, Strategic Air Command circa 1970. Believe me, there was a lot to swear at.

[hunter]

41. I briefly worked where these Burroughs machines went to die...

Trucks would arrive with their expensive cargos, the truck drivers so very proud to have avoided thousands of miles of road hazards, and then the Burroughs engineers would tell us to dump the machines out onto the parking lot, sometimes in the rain, so that our crazy fork lift driver could spear them and drag them out back.

My favorites were the washing machines. These were big disk drives. I got to go into the clean rooms a few times where these things were repaired, and I was glad I didn't have that job. These machines had some interesting failure modes, often with critical data that hadn't been backed up. It seemed with some open-ended government contracts all the data was critical, and no recovery expense was too high.

The first computer I cussed at was a machine I built as my school science fair project. It used two alphanumeric Nixie tubes for output.

[mindless]

39. Atari 16

It only understood Basic and you had to do your own programs. My dad bought a Magazine that had line by line entries and I would spend hours entering for a stupid game. If you mis-spelled an entry, you had to review the whole thing...lol. I loved and hated it!!!

[Blade]

44. The Apple IIe...

but I've cursed at every god-damn one of them I've used.

[Gore1FL]

46. Apple ][ +

My that long long time ago.

[wantnobush]

47. I think

HP

[rodbarnett]

49. list below

Trs-80
TI-99 4a
Commodore 64
Apple IIe
Original Compaq "luggable"