What was the first word processor hardware/software you ever used?

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yelo333

Senior member
Dec 13, 2003
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We had an Apple IIe w/ Apple IIe which I believe had AppleWorks on it. Only played games, though, so I only watched it being used.

The first one I recall using was ClarisWorks (4.0?) under OS 7 on a Macintosh LC III.
 

Linflas

Lifer
Jan 30, 2001
15,395
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Originally posted by: diegoalcatraz
My family had an old Atari, I can't remember the model. The 'keyboard' unit opened up in the back, revealing slots for two cartridges (only one I ever used was for BASIC). Two 5 1/4" floppy drives. I *think* there was a dot-matrix printer, but I might be confusing that with our old IBM PS/2.

Membrane keyboard would make it an Atari 400, regular style keys probably an Atari 800.
 

ZetaEpyon

Golden Member
Jun 13, 2000
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We had Bank Street Writer on our Commodore 128, as I recall.

In middle school, we still did our typing class on typewriters (albiet electric), we also had a word processing class in which we used WordPerfect 5.1, in all its glory.

Now, I'm mostly using FrameMaker 6 (yeah, it's old too) for stuff here at work.
 

Skunkwourk

Diamond Member
Dec 9, 2004
4,662
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Originally posted by: yelo333
We had an Apple IIe w/ Apple IIe which I believe had AppleWorks on it. Only played games, though, so I only watched it being used.

The first one I recall using was ClarisWorks (4.0?) under OS 7 on a Macintosh LC III.

pretty much the same, cept ClarisWorks 3.0 and Mac LC later.
 

mundane

Diamond Member
Jun 7, 2002
5,603
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81
Originally posted by: Linflas
Originally posted by: diegoalcatraz
My family had an old Atari, I can't remember the model. The 'keyboard' unit opened up in the back, revealing slots for two cartridges (only one I ever used was for BASIC). Two 5 1/4" floppy drives. I *think* there was a dot-matrix printer, but I might be confusing that with our old IBM PS/2.

Membrane keyboard would make it an Atari 400, regular style keys probably an Atari 800.

Thank you, IIRC it was regular style. I was fairly young at the time, so I couldn't recall the exact model. Now I'm off to google specs ....

Edit: No printer, so I must've been thinking about the PS/2 having a Dot-matrix.
 

rhatsaruck

Senior member
Oct 20, 2005
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Document formatting software named SCRIPT running under VM/CMS on an IBM 370/158. Output was printed on a Texas Instruments portable dial-up terminal on heat-sentitive paper.

There's only *one* good thing about the "good ole days": they ain't ever coming back.
 

ZoomStop

Senior member
Oct 10, 2005
841
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GEOWrite running in GEOS on a 286. When I needed graphics I fired up GEODraw.
Later we upgraded so I could run EDIT.EXE
 

geecee

Platinum Member
Jan 14, 2003
2,383
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AtariWriter(?) on my Atari 800. Then Appleworks when I switched to an Apple II. My first "real" word processor as a DOS version of Wordperfect on an old IBM XT(?) clone.
 

D1gger

Diamond Member
Oct 3, 2004
5,411
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Mine was the IBM Displaywriter, which ran on the CP/M operating system and had an external 5 1/4 floppy drive that looked like a toaster. Very slow, very painful to use, but they were plentyful back in the day.