Abacus, then slide rule.

What the h did the Timex Sinclair run on? That was my 1st

Back in my day, we used IBM's VM/370, and we liked it! Then TRS-80s came along, but they didn't really have an OS, just BASIC.

mikeclark wrote:What the h did the Timex Sinclair run on? That was my first

Had one of those and I even bought the 16k memory expansion. Doubled the price.

Commodore64 Basic... Peek, Poke, Sprites, 20 goto 10... Those were the days, man!

Commodore BASIC 2.0, on a VIC-20.

TI-994A with Extended Basic - Woo hoo.

IMSAI 8080

HP-2000e time-shared BASIC.

Though the very first programmable computer I used was an Ollivetti Programa 101...

1979 we got a Apple ][+

Good ole 8bit BASIC environment

I still have two game disks from it. Ultima and Castle Wallenstein....bought at my local EggHead

I'm old... *sigh*

johnlafreniere wrote:Commodore64 Basic... Peek, Poke, Sprites, 20 goto 10... Those were the days, man!

I still have a Commodore Plus4 in the attic. Loaned my XT to a (former) friend who didn't bother to return it.
The question should have said "MS-DOS" because there are obviously gobs of us fogeys who used other DOSs.

Plan 9 reporting in

Apple Basic on the Apple IIe

Apple DOS on the Apple II and TRSDOS on the Trash 80.

I guess it was technically one of the 'classic' Mac OS versions, but really only to play games at my mom's office. My first "real" use of an OS was DOS.

Basic, advanced basic for the Color computer, tv version computer

Technically Win 3.x was an operating environment not an operating system. It was a GUI over DOS.

Basic was my first programming language. Not sure if my first computer can be considered to have a real OS, though, since you had to insert several 5.25" discs just to get it to boot up so it could run a program.

Atari OS for the 800. First upgrade was a cassette drive system for storage, later updated to a 360K flopppy disk drive.

For those posting BASIC, that was a programming language, not the operating system itself. Bill Gates originally wrote BASIC interpreters for a lot of CP/M (8 bit) operating systems and IBM approached him to write BASIC for their newly developed PC. IBM planned on using Gary Kildall, the creator of CP/M to write the operating system. However, Kildall was flying out his plane and never met with IBM so Gates told IBM he could write the OS. IBM agreed and Gates then found someone (Tim Paterson) who actually could write an OS. Gates completed his coup by getting IBM to agree to allowing Gates to market his OS (MS-DOS) separately from IBM and the rest is history.

jbgroup1 wrote:Technically Win 3.x was an operating environment not an operating system. It was a GUI over DOS.

You're right. IBM initially hired Microsoft to write the OS/2 operating system for their new line of PS/2 computers, which they did. However, OS/2 was completely incompatible with all earlier operating systems so users had to throw out everything they had and start fresh which they weren't happy about. Bill Gates learned both how to create a GUI and how to introduce it to the public from that experience and created Windows which functioned as a GUI on top of DOS rather than replacing it. Over the years, Windows eventually replace DOS but it was a gradual transition that allowed users to migrate at their own pace. So, in essence, IBM paid Bill Gates to develop an operating system that he then turned into Windows and used to eliminate OS/2 as a competitor.

cpm & Zdos

Chalk up another CP/M. DEC 'Robin' VT180 with 4 floppy drives, yo.

First one? Multiuser Dartmouth BASIC on an HP 21114A the size of a fridge in High School. First one in the home? TRS-DOS. Suck it, blossoms!

baqui63 wrote:HP-2000e time-shared BASIC.

Though the very first programmable computer I used was an Ollivetti Programa 101...

Oooh, I remember those sexy Italian keyboards with round keypads on square buttons. So stylin' in a 60s sort-of way.

rprebel wrote:Commodore BASIC 2.0, on a VIC-20.

Me too. On a Vic 20. I ran out the 5k of memory on my 3rd program and started begging for the 64. How could you ever use 64k of memory!?!

degarmosemail wrote:How could you ever use 64k of memory!?!

It's still enough! If you don't belive start programming PICs ;-)

I started with Commodore Basic on a C64

OS/8 on a PDP-8. OS/8 was copied by Digital Research when designing CP/M for 8080 machines (then Z-80s, then 8086s), which was then copied for MS-DOS / IBM-DOS

markymark77 wrote:IMSAI 8080

That was my second computer ... i actually built an Altair 8800 before i 'graduated' to the IMSAI 8080. But I guess the first 'real' operating system I used was CP/M which was the first 'real' operating system for home computers.

JeffQ wrote:Back in my day, we used IBM's VM/370, and we liked it! Then TRS-80s came along, but they didn't really have an OS, just BASIC.

The TRS-80 did have an OS, it was called TRSDOS. That was the first OS that I used.

Atari BASIC

TRSDOS on a TRS-80

Why was the poll so limited? there were at least three major hobbyist, or small ofc PC OS prior to MS/IBM DOS. Amiga, Comodore and CPM. CP/M or CPM was a SOHO and small business system and could connect to larger mini and mainframe systems in large enterprise networks. I also used Gary Kildall's DRDOS for years which ran all the MS DOs programs and which I found to be better at memory mgmt and more stable than MSDOS. I used DRDOS up to the launch of WIN95. WIN2K(NT) was my fave long term OS, better than Win95/98/98SE.

BTW, the commentary on the Woot ads - is that supposed to be some kind of humor? Is this the product of one person or perhaps outsourced to a team of schizos at a mental institution? Does the Woot-Master actually run the business from a mental institution? I sometimes accidentally read this stuff, and then five or six words into the first sentence I realize this is a sick mentality, and should be avoided. This stuff isn't funny, it isn't clever, nor is it informative. I would describe it as mental vomit. It isn't in any way connected to truth or reality. What exactly is the point?

RT-11SJ

TRS-DOS on TRS-80 (Models I and III)... though mostly just the BASIC. Then when I got to college, TOPS-20, VMS, Unix, TOPS-10, and RSTS/E (in order that I found them) at one school, and *finally* MS-DOS at another. Meanwhile, my dad had gotten a Timex Sinclair and then something with CP/M.

Does anyone remember CPM (the control program for the microprocessor)

brucerobison wrote:Basic, advanced basic for the Color computer, tv version computer

I remember my Tandy Trs80 with
Color Basic...

Timex Basic, Then Atari basic, TI Basic, commodore basic and Microsoft basic in a DOS platform.

After a lot of years off I returned to find that Windows 95 was the OS of the day. That's right, I got to skip all those OS's that you had to boot from a prompt.

Datapoint DOS

Commodore 64 with BASIC.