Intel Pentium 1 + Protel.

Istanbul Ataturk Science High School (1985-1988):

Casio FX-3600P. This one was like a standard issue for all students. Every student had one, except a few with more advanced machines. Attending to the science exams without a Casio scientific calculator was unthinkable:

This one was in computer lab, and having a computer lab in a high school in 1985 was totally unheard of in my country. We had 12, and the classes were 24 person, so we shared it even during the class. They were teaching DOS and BASIC programming. It is an Apricot F1 (256KB RAM, green monochrome graphics, 3.5" floppy, no HDD and an IR keyboard):

For me high school happened in the early 2000s. I was already well versed in computers thanks to my interests and having one at home since the mid-late 90s. Computers and the Internet were becoming mainstream but still seen as nerdy by most. Having a home computer meant your family was well-off. I was the 'cool' kid with cable Internet and a CD burner at home. Informal 'computer clubs' of sorts formed around the school's computer lab, irrespective of the teacher knowing anything about computers. Most high schools in my area didn't have a computer literacy curriculum or had a woefully inadequate one, so you were on your own. Flash cartoons were a popular attraction for non-nerds at the school's computer labs. Encarta and some local encyclopedia software was our copypasta source for lazy homework.

During my high school experience the technology landscape changed considerably, along with its mainstream acceptance. When I started high school VHS tapes, CRT TVs and overhead projectors ruled the classroom, when I left, DVDs, laptops for the teachers and LCD projectors were catching on. Kids/teenagers didn't have cell phones. I had a hand-me-down D-AMPS brick which I didn't bother carrying with me most days. Minutes cost a fortune, none of your mates had one, taking it to school was a sure way of getting it stolen or confiscated. That quickly changed when cheap PAYG feature phones hit the market, along with school policy which started semi-tolerating the things. I finished HS with a cheap monochrome LG CDMA flip phone which I still didn't use much. 😜

Flash/HDD MP3 players also were too expensive at first for the average teenager, cheap Walkmans and Discmans from the 90s carried on as the popular choices for music on the go. MP3-playing Discmans were briefly popular during my HS years as sort of a stopgap solution. I started HS with a cheap Walkman and left with a cheap S1-based MP3 player. My portable gaming needs were satisfied by a Game Boy Advance and pockets full of AA batteries and cartridges.

Digital cameras were barely starting to become popular during my final years of HS, decent ones were pretty rare. Cheap horrible ones with webcam-type sensors, 7-segment displays and battery-backed volatile memory were popular and thus the majority of the pictures of that period were captured in such craptastic quality. When someone brought a real digicam to school it was quite an event.

I feel like when I started HS the whole 'techno-clueless' mainstream culture from the 90s was still going strong, when I finished things started changing, and to me it felt like two different eras.

First off, I should mention that I attended high school from 2009-2013, which meant that I was seeing modern or semi-modern computer systems throughout. Being very computer literate, though, and having my own since a few years prior helped me a lot. Because my school system was so poor, a good chunk of P2/P3 systems were still in service when I started high school. Some even lasted until the year I graduated. Throughout the time period I went to high school, the school system received lots of money specifically meant for upgrading tech throughout, which meant goodbye to the mishmash of P2/P3/older P4 systems, and hello shiny new C2D and late P4-era systems:

Should also mention that all of the older, P2/P3 systems were also Dell OptiPlexes of many kinds. As far as laptops, they were absolutely forbidden on school grounds, in addition to any other kind of electronics such as cellphones and MP3 players, though the toleration level of those kinds of electronics did increase as time went on. One interesting fact I remember was that one of the science teachers that I had in the first year of high school had a LaserDisc player. Yes, it did get used every now and again, hooked up to a more modern LCD projector if I remember right.

Side note: My middle school had a few truly ancient computers lingering around throughout my time there (2004-2009). I'm talking about Apple IIgs and various older Macintosh models (LC 475 etc.) here!

Elementary school I remember lots of old Beige 486 and Pentium systems with 5 1/4 floppies in operation in places like the library and Secretaries and some teachers using Pentium 3 systems. In fact I know of at least a single Pentium 2 Dell Dimension system being used up until 2010ish with an AT keyboard by one stubborn teacher that had the RAM maxed out to 1gb and was running XP Sp3. Pretty sure the PSU and video card had been replaced by high-end stuff to at some point, since it had a modern black PSU and double slot video card.

Middle School and late Elementary was a mix of P4's from 423 Gateways and lga775 Optiplexs with 30-40 bad caps a piece! Oddly enough the IBM p4 machines were even worse and would take over 10 minutes for XP to start up. By HS in 2009 all the CRT's were gone and the half decent Compaq and HP p4's have been relegated to emergency spares, having been replaced by DC7800 and DC79000s. Along with some XW4600 workstations and higher end Core2Quads for the secretaries.

High school ran from '89 to '94 for me - we had Macs (Plus, SE/30, later LC, LCII and LCIII) in computer labs in those years - mainly used for using basic desktop applications, learning Pascal programming and Hypercard. In the first couple of years of HS I also used Atari 1040STs for MIDI work in the music labs.

In my high school some of the labs were full of XTs and ATs. Most of them were equipped with nice 5154 displays too. By this time they were mostly used to teach typing classes. Most of the PCs in the school were MCA based PS/2s though. They had pretty much everything from model 25s all the way to 9595 Pentiums. They were starting to phase the PS/2s out with IBM branded PCI Pentiums running at 75-133MHz during the time I was there. In the programming labs there were mostly 486 beige boxes, and occasionally you'd run across Compaq 386s as well.
Primary/middle school was a little more interesting. All the classes were equipped with Unisys ICON machines. I believe these were specific to the Canadian education system. They had track balls and speech synthesis. I also remember using Apple ][es and IIgs systems during my early years at school. Occasionally I got to look into the store rooms, where I saw neat things like Apple ///s, Altairs and Commodore PETs gather dust on shelves.

Cool thread.

In 1985 the French government set up an ambitious plan to bring computers to every school and teach kids to use them. That's how I was introduced to computers in primary school - the machines were THOMSON MO5 (48kb RAM and 1Mhz CPU). We really didn't do much with them as we had a one or two hours of class every few weeks. I just remember playing with the optical pen and attempting to write a few lines of code using maybe Basic or Logo.

Following the failure of this plan it would be a while since we were able to use computers in school again, but in the meantime I used these for mathematics class:

Casio FX-82B (circa 1988)

Casio FX-8800GC (circa 1992)

Texas Instruments TI-83 (circa 1996)

This is a pic of my actual calculator that I took before giving it away recently. I had the optional RS-232 connector so I could link it to my Pentium 90 machine with Windows 3.11 and transfer documents from the computer to the calculator... a very handy feature for university 😀

This were the computers in high school: PC 286-10 in 1991/92, later 386DX-40 and in the end 486DX2-66.
At home I had: PC 286-16, upgraded to 486slc-33, downgraded to 386DX-40, upgraded to 486DX2-80 (from 1991/2 to 1996 - then came Pentiums...)

I also had some HP calculators:

At first: HP 32S-II

Later: HP 42s which I also have till today

Both nice machines 😁

133MHz wrote:

computer lab

Actually, what is a computer lab? I've got the general idea because it's a common reference, but how was it structured? Was it a regular instruction class, or just regular access for mostly self-study time, more like the library?

MP3 players

I totally forgot to think of these. I've got an old iRiver T30 for listening to podcasts while out. (Uses an AAA battery, so it's effectively immortal.) The options and menu system of this little player-recorder were clearly designed to be someone's ideal study-aide.

None. Zero. Zilch. Nada 😜

At the time I was a High School student (1980-1984) machines and electronic devices were available to teachers & staff only (there wasn't even a typing class listed in the curriculum). Calculators were banned, and if you got caught with one it was grounds for immediate expulsion. It wasn't until my University years that I was allowed access to typewriters, copiers, calculators, you name it. It was also then that I got my first electronic calculator, a Texas Instruments TI-35 LCD:

Too bad it doesn't work anymore 😐

pewpewpew wrote:

133MHz wrote:

computer lab

Actually, what is a computer lab? I've got the general idea because it's a common reference, but how was it structured? Was it a regular instruction class, or just regular access for mostly self-study time, more like the library?

Depending on the school it could be both. I went to a very small school so we had classes in the computer lab, which was in a corner of the library. We learned to program in lisp with logo writer (well not really lisp but anyway). But you could also go to the computer lap for fun during recess. We mostly had Apple IIc computers.

In high school, I used a P-III 600E @ 800, so that's my age 😉 I bought it freshman year and when I graduated I got a P4 1.6A @ 2.4. That lasted me until my E6600, which lasted me until my 2600k.

Oh and I had a Ti83.

Different computers, both the one I had at home and the school had a computer room too. (No internet at home)

Calculators. First a TI-35-Solar, and later a TI-68.

High school computers? Errr, here I go:

A month after starting high school, I upgraded my very old Celeron 1.7Ghz/768MB RAM to Athlon 64 3500+/768MB RAM/Gigabyte K8NSC-939.
The rest of the PC remained the same: Ati HIS 9600 Pro, 160GB HDD IDE.

Some months later, I further upgraded the 9600Pro to ASUS 6600GT AGP with DDR3. Big upgrade!
A year later, the whole system was upgraded to Core 2 Duo E4300, the same 768MB DDR1 RAM, combined with Asrock 4coredual-vsta. Asus 6600GT AGP in the beginning, Club3D X1800XT later on. That hybrid motherboard was good! 😀

All of these happened during 2005-2008 of my high school years. Shortly after that, I got my first decent PC: E8400/Abit IP35Pro/2GB DDR2/Thermalright Ultra 120 extreme cooler and so on.

The student labs at my school all used Apple IIe and Mac LC II machines until 1997 or so. Then, a massive upgrade to Compaq Deskpro P200 systems running Win95. During my senior year, one of the labs received a bunch of PII-400 and PIII-550 Deskpro EN towers as a part of the big multimedia push of 1999. I remember attempting to make a Blair Witch Project of my own and editing it on one of the newer towers. I probably still have it on VCD somewhere. 🤣

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My personal computer during high school was a 486/33 from TC Computers out of Louisiana. At school, our computer lab was a bunch of dumb terminals hooked up to an AT&T 3B2 mini computer running System V Unix. I recall taking the AP computer science test in Pascal.

TRS-80 Model III and IV.