Irony

[rfssongs]

Before Cakewalk I remember on my Amiga computer that it would have cost me $700 for a 10MB hard drive & interface. (I didn't do it)

[bitflipper]

My first music rig was over the top: 386 with 10 MB drive and 16MB RAM. In the mid-80's that was an enviable setup. The drive was $600 and half the RAM I stole out of a Sun workstation, as I deemed any computer that couldn't make music unworthy of a whole 16MB. Cakewalk 1.0 for DOS, five synths, a 2-track Pioneer and a 4-track TEAC 3340S. Altogether maybe $10-12k or so invested - when I was only making $30k a year.

We have it so much better now!!!

[rfssongs]

2 hours ago, bitflipper said:

My first music rig was over the top: 386 with 10 MB drive and 16MB RAM. In the mid-80's that was an enviable setup. The drive was $600 and half the RAM I stole out of a Sun workstation, as I deemed any computer that couldn't make music unworthy of a whole 16MB. Cakewalk 1.0 for DOS, five synths, a 2-track Pioneer and a 4-track TEAC 3340S. Altogether maybe $10-12k or so invested - when I was only making $30k a year.

We have it so much better now!!!

My second computer was an 8086 - well behind you.

[bitflipper]

Oh, that wasn't my first computer. Just the first one I made music on.

My first computer was a COSMAC VIP testbed. Came with 1KB of RAM; I had to etch my own circuit board to upgrade it to 4KB. It saved data to a cassette tape, sometimes. But it did have a nifty 9" monochrome monitor. And I walked 10 miles to school, uphill both ways.

[RobertWS]

1 hour ago, bitflipper said:

...I had to etch my own circuit board ....

So, you experimented with acid in your younger days?

My Aud.ini:

*ThickHeadOfHair=0*

Well that explains it.

 

 

 

 

[Alan Tubbs]

My first music computer was a Yamaha CMX or something like that in the mid 80s. It used game cards to run music.  You could either edit the 4 op fm synth or run a sequencer.  Only one card slot.  I spent 350$ for a 3.5 inch drive (a step up from floppies.). It was rocking back then and more fun than programing a computer by line code.

[chris.r]

Commodore Plus/4

late 80-ties... my first computer to take the first (and last) attempts in programming... so proud of it (lol)

Edited July 15, 2021 by chris.r

[msmcleod]

I started programming on this, first in BASIC then in Z80 assembler:


My first sequencer was this...



And I first used Cakewalk on one of these (a 20MHz Compaq Portable 386), with a Voyetra MPU401 clone.  Nice machine with an amber plasma display, a whopping 2MB (or was it 6MB? ) of RAM and a 20MB hard disk.  At around 20lbs it was hardly portable though.  Did a lot of Turbo Pascal / Turbo C programming on this thing.


... but as this was my dad's PC, I moved to Music-X on the Amiga for around 6-7 years or so, before moving on to Cakewalk Pro Audio 7 on a P166 with 64MB RAM and a Yamaha DS2416 card.
 

[rfssongs]

Not quite music but it did make some sounds - I had forgotten about this one:

 

 

 

Edited July 16, 2021 by rfssongs

[Kalle Rantaaho]

My first PC had a 80 MB HDD. It was too big for the Mobo to handle, so it had to be partitioned. I couldn't afford such a machine, but my brother in law was working in a PC workshop and could arrange good deals, one part at a time.

[bitflipper]

On 7/14/2021 at 9:45 PM, RobertWS said:

So, you experimented with acid in your younger days?

My Aud.ini:

*ThickHeadOfHair=0*

Well that explains it.

Yes, yes I did. 

In addition to the ThickHeadOfHair variable,  my aud.ini also includes:

HairColor=0xFFFFFF

and

StrongBackMode=0

and

LPFCutoff=13000

 

 

 

[John Vere]

I used an Atari,   first the 1040st then later a Mega st2 from 1984 until 2004. I'd still be using it if the monitor hadn't died. I dragged this to 100's of gigs. The Hard drive I do believe was 20 MB. I never came close to filling it as it was all midi. With the 1040ST you had to load from floppies which took a good 3 minutes. Sucked if the power flicked out. A floppy held about 20 songs. You had to be careful to create midi files that were real small, no fancy stuff then. 

 

[57Gregy]

We don't do irony in the US.

[NokNod]

On 7/14/2021 at 8:30 PM, bitflipper said:

We have it so much better now!!!

True

[RobertWS]

My first PC:

Did I win?

 

Edited July 17, 2021 by RobertWS

[bitflipper]

Tie. Sorry, Robert. I had an abacus in grade school, and was proud of how quickly I could operate it. My dad had brought it back from Japan c. 1957 after being impressed by the agility with which shopkeepers there used them. It would be many years before I went floating-point and upgraded to a slide rule. I even had a miniature one that I carried in my shirt pocket - with a pocket protector, of course - at all times, to augment the fancy one holstered on my belt. Yup, I are a Nerd, and make no apologies for it.

But I'm afraid neither counts as a musical instrument, so apologies to the OP for drifting off-topic.

[John Vere]

What was the topic? ❓This ones more interesting 

[Will.]

Guess who is 36 this year and been using Cakewalk since 2010 independently.

HipHop/EDM/House/Pop - I've done it all with this in the box. Fom chops, PitchShift, Scrooge Voices - you name it. 

Forgot whats the name of this round spinning thingy. ?

Yeah, I should frame this! 

Edited July 17, 2021 by Will_Kaydo

[Mike Z]

4 hours ago, bitflipper said:

But I'm afraid neither counts as a musical instrument, so apologies to the OP for drifting off-topic.

I bet you could shake that abacus and make a nice percussive sound.

[Mike Z]

On 7/14/2021 at 12:06 PM, Ted K. Ling said:

Atari, Cakewalk for DOS, then moved to SAW (which was a great application also!) with two 286's, then the first Windows version of Cake.  

I used SAW32 for awhile back in the early 2000s, I agree it was a great DAW for the time. I recently found a list of "DAWs through the ages" or something like that, and SAW wasn't mentioned so I had to search for it. Apparently there is still a cult-like following for SAW, mainly because of how streamlined and stable it is.