IBM PC-XT w/ AST Six Pac Plus & 8087
Single 5 1/4, 20MB HD, Hayes 1200B
14″ Amdek (amber)
Epson wide carriage dot matrix
DOS 2.xx, I think
Ran AutoCAD 2.xx
Kermit!

I still have the machine, packed away in my garage, w/all original manuals.
Hardware/software no longer original spec.
Modem upgraded to Zoom 9600 baud
DO6 6, IIRC
ACAD 10

It booted up just fine, last time i tried (some years ago).

First computer programmed:

IBM 1130

First computer paid to program:(1970)

IBM System 360 model 30
running IBM Sys 360 DOS
(the disk drives were the size of washing machines,
and had removable disk packs which reminded me of the cake displays in coffee shops, complete with clear plastic cover w/ handle on top)

First computer language:

FORTRAN IV

It was my first “portable”, too! I made up a foam-rubber cut-out to fit a suitcase for the computer and drive, and carried it back & forth to work every day.

$2700. Imagine the system I could build with that budget today!

I had bought a TI programmable calculator about 2 weeks before these came on the market and I had to have one so I returned the TI and bought the PC.

This had a 4 color mini printer/plotter attachment and I also purchased at a later date an RS232 modem for it. I used it in my basic programming class and my first assignment which I had printed out on the 2 1/2 ribbon was returned with a comment by the teacher “where can I get one of these”

http://blog.jtbworld.com/2006/08/linus-torvald-about-visual-basic-and-me.html

This was my first computer book.
http://web.ukonline.co.uk/sinclair.zx81/

As you do Steve, I still have an original (and our first) Tandy TRS-80. 64Kb, an external floppy drive and a pen printer. Shortly after its purchase we upgraded it with an expansion unit (total 128Kb), Tandy dot matrix printer and a dedicated Tandy ‘green screen’.

I used it to develop a program (in Basic) to calculated heavy vehicle performance – previously only done on main frames in the hands of GM, Caterpillar etc. My brother-in-law used it for accounting purposes with software he wrote.

Packed-up now: never had the heart (or commonsense) to throw away something that had so much impact on our lives, was still working fine until the day we never turned it on again and, never found any person who actually wanted it, to use, either.

(If you bought a double-sided floppy drive, you could get the Victor to recgonize it by soldering a short wire across two points in the disk drive controller board.)

My first computer was the Amdahl mainframe at the University of British Columbia, where I learned to program with punch cards in 1975.