What Was Your First Computer?

[voogru]

P166 with a 1.19GB hdd

what was yours?


-voogru

[RampageIII]

386SX w/ 100MB HD from Radio Shack. Probably had 1meg RAM. OOOOWWWW! http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif

Oh wait! I almost forgot the Commodore64. Now that's cookin'! hehehe

[This message has been edited by RampageIII (edited 10-20-2000).]

[marcusbateman]

I had a BBC model B then I upgraded to an Amiga 500 with a whopping 3meg of RAM!!

[seti]

P2-266 @ 309 (3*103)
Asus P2B
128MB generic pc100
Diamond stealth g460 (intel i740)
Seagate Medalist 6.4GB 5400rpm
SB Awe64
3Com v.90

[crockett]

a Texas interment what ever they were called...unless you conceder the pong game controller a computer http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/wink.gif

[Eli]

Aside from the ol C64, I started with an IBM PS2 286, with a dead 20 meg hard drive (big loss eh?) and a whopping 1 meg ram. It's MCA as well, so practically nothing works with it. Hmm... It's just sitting on that shelf taking up space. I could strip it down and try to use that mostly plastic case...

[OuTpaTienT]

That Colleco hand held football game. Does that count?

But really, it was system built by a small local computer shop. Had a Cyrix "386-to-486" processor. With the 14" monitor it cost $1400. Geez.

[GroundZero3]

has anyone heard of a peachtext computer?? no one seems to but it was a green screen. only really used for word processing. Man those were the days. my second was a 486
Don't miss them one bit.


JaYsin

[randy48]

The first was a VIC20, followed by a couple C64s with a tape drive AND http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif1541 Disk DRIVE!

[dos7]

another vic 20 and a c64,,

it looks as though most of us are children of the roaring 80's http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif

does anyone remember the games Artillery, and Dam Busters?

dos7

[the_deacon]

386dx with 40 meg of hdd, 4 mb of ram and some video card i dont know what.

[Warthog]

Yikes. Triple posting?

Anyways...the first one that my family owned was a 486 w/win 3.1

...but that one doesn't really count because I never liked it (couldn't do **** on it).

The one that really, really sparked my interest in comps was a Dell PII 233, 32mb ram (since upgraded to 64, soon 128), 24x CD-ROM, 17in monitor and internet access! This comp was exactly 3 years ago, this December (still have it). THAT is how long I've been into computers.

Bought my VERY OWN computer 13 months ago. It was a Dell celery 400mhz, 192mb RAM, 15in monitor, 4mb vid, 4/2/24 CD-RW, AWE 64 soundcard. I sold it this past July.

In August, I bought a Dell PIII 800mhz, 128 PC133 memory, 19" FD Trinitron, 64mb Geforce2 GTS, 8/4/32 CD-RW, SB Live. I love this computer http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif

Warthog

[nunyadam]

compac 286 with a seagate hard drive about three inches thick i think it was a great big 100 meg. whole thing died about a week later . next was a sabre 486dx66 sold it to a b-inlaw who still has it . then i had my first real cpu built amd k6-2 233,4gig h/d, since then i've built my own. k6-2 300,350,450,500,and my current system is a duron 600@900 mhz,256meg ram,13gig maxtor ata66 h/d all in the last 3 years. i just keep upgrading ,and selling,to buy more part's.

[jamis]

1. Atari 400
2. Mac 512K
3. MacPlus
4. 386sx/16 with 4mb ram
5. 486/66 with 16mb ram and a 420mb hard disk
6. 486dx4/100 with 32mb ram and an 800mb HD
7. Cyrix 6x86 P133 with 32mb ram and the above 800mb hard disk http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif
8. P2-233 with 64mb ram and a 4.3gig hd
9. Celeron 300a@450 128mb ram
10. Celeron 466 128mb ram, much better peripherals. (Current machine)
11. To be purchased Q1 of 2001 http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif

[NDC]

Apple IIe

[GenePG]

Radio Shack TRS-80. "Trash-80"

[IbZa]

SONY PCV-90, Pentium 200Mhz, 32MB RAM, 2.3GB HD, 2or4 MB of Vid.RAM cannot remember, Sound Blaster Pro, and a "15 mon.

[mike511]

First was a C64 with a 1541 disk drive, t joysticks, printer, and a wide range of the best games you ever have seen, well, untill now of course, lol. But the C64 served me well from 1982-1992 without a problem. To bad dad through it away when we got our 486, i loved that computer. And it was still going strong.

[Imperion1]

Atari 800, couldn't go for the smaller 400. Yep, had to have that monster 800 take up half my desk space. Then a C64, that lasted about a month. Got an Atari 130XE. Heck I still have my Atari 1200XL somewhere.
No hardrives, cause at the time they were just starting to come out, and cost an arm and both legs to get. So ran with 2 5 1/4 floppy drives, a tape drive,and a dot matrix printer.
Anybody remember the ole controller with the one fire button to play star raiders with?

[Jonty]

A Sharp MZ80K. I still have this computer and it still works although its only reporting half the RAM size. It has a Z80 processor and 48k of RAM. Unusally, the BASIC is loaded from tape each time the computer is switched on and available Ram goes down to 34680 bytes! I used to spend hours on this machine, buying it in 1980 for £582.50 (about $873). It was a bit like the PET (remember those!).

I also still have a Binatone tennis/football game from 1977.

Also the famous Sinclair calculator from 1973!

[Peter558]

How's about the Sinclair ZX81 with the expansion pack RAM which made it up to 16k RAM? Circa 1981.

Followed by the Sinclair Spectrum 48k!

First proper PC was an Olivetti 486/25.

[voogru]

How Long did it take to Load Half-Life?

[awwall]

Kaypro II, 64k memory, single sided floppy 150k, CPM operating system.

ah, those were the days...

[KeriV]

Boy, you sure can tell the age of some of us old fogies. Mine was a (Trash 80) TRS-80 Radio Shack with a cassette tape drive. Oh ya, it was a COLOR computer. Which meant that it had a green screen with black writing. Our first monitor was an old 10" TV and the keyboard was metal. Must have weighed about 10 lbs. I cant remember how much juice that thing had, but boy, did it fly! hehe. The worst part was using the cassette tape drive. FFWD - REW until you found the program. Boy, the good old days.

[Ruahrc]

IBM 8088- yea buddy!

Stunning 4 color display- such vibrancy!

This was back when I was really little so doing things like autoexec.bat (Had to boot off of a disk) was very complicated.

Next was a 486DX2/50 with 8MB RAM. (complete with $200 14.4 modem) This was the one that gave me interest in computers. (and lasted us 5 years until we finally broke down) We still have the case, it now houses a Cyrix MII 200 or something.

After that was a K6/233 which was recently (August) upgraded (Or rather the case and PS was re-used) to an Athlon Classic 700 w/128MB RAM GeForce MX. (I know it's not super-powerhouse but love this thing)

Ruahrc

[This message has been edited by Ruahrc (edited 10-22-2000).]

[TechJumper]

T I L E A R N I N G L A P T O P

My first computer (if you wish to call it that) was a ti learning laptop. It did a lot of cool things, including voice recognition! This simple kiddy computer sparked my interest in technology at the age of 6,,,,

Best,

TechJumper

[TechJumper]

T I L E A R N I N G L A P T O P

My first computer (if you wish to call it that) was a ti learning laptop. It did a lot of cool things, including voice recognition! This simple kiddy computer sparked my interest in technology at the age of 6,,,,

Best,

TechJumper

[vass0922]

TI994A anybody remember it?
Then the classic C64 which rocked http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif
Then the Commodore 128, with of course the hard core tape drive! lol (first learned Basic and some machine language stuff here lol)
Then the blazing 386/33 (can't remember the memory) with a whopping 100 meg HD
The first one I personally bought was a P200 (got it right before MMX came out grrr) Good ol Crapway (err sorry typo http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/wink.gif Gateway
That served me very well until recently I put together a PIII-650 http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif MUCH BETTER!!!

Now the P200 is awaiting some parts and a better internet connection so it can become the Linux firewall is was designed to be http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif

[ablang]

Mine was a Packard Bell 386SX 16 MHz with 1MB RAM and a 40MB HD. No Sound card, CD-ROM, or modem. With 14" VGA monitor, cost me about $1700 in end 1991.

[ablang]

Mine was a Packard Bell 386SX 16 MHz with 1MB RAM and a 40MB HD. No Sound card, CD-ROM, or modem. With 14" VGA monitor, cost me about $1700 in end 1991.

[ablang]

Mine was a Packard Bell 386SX 16 MHz with 1MB RAM and a 40MB HD. No Sound card, CD-ROM, or modem. With 14" VGA monitor, cost me about $1700 in end 1991.

[jad1097]

This was the first one I owned but we also had a Com64.

<IMG SRC="http://www.geocities.com/jad1097/images/IntyCompsm.jpg" border=0>

[Ed_S]

Seems we done this a time or two...or five!

But it's always fun, so why not!

1983 - Radio Shack Color Computer

The original, not the CoCoII) Came with 4K ram, no storage device whatsoever! Built-in BASIC on 2 ROM chips. No lowercase letter display, although they would print out properly. Used a TV rather than a monitor.

Programs came on Rompaks, which were basically what game machine cartridges are now. You could add a tape drive for storage, and BTW that was AUDIO casette tape. Or you could pop for the $350 floppy drive (single sided, low density, 5¼") which used a controller card in the cartridge slot. Max ram you could add was 64K, and then you had to use a custom mem-swapping routine!

Later they came out with extras like a 300 baud modem (external, of course), and the "Multipak Interface" which was the greatest thing! Added expansion slots to the cartridge port so you could FINALLY use more than one thing at a time!

This was a great machine for it's era. There were a lot of modifications done to mine with soldered-in projects.Back then "upgrade" really meant modify. Open it up & start soldering! Quite a challenge & lots of fun. Simple memory upgrade meant pry out the chips. Today's machines are just too simple, haven't made my own circuit for years now & never see any true DIY plans anymore, just slap in a part. No fun there!
I've still got the old beast in storage, it still works. (or did last try, few years ago now)
There are still users groups out there for these, and it was discontinued in '87!!

Ed

[Graham]

Acorn Atom
6502 processor
1K ram !!!!!! (upgradeable to 14 if I recall)
Build it yourself keyboard.
Tape interface @ 300 baud

Made by the same people as, but before the BBC 'B'

memories !!

G

[LeoNDiego]

TRS-80 Model 1 4K RAM Cassette storage.

I upgraded it...

TRS-80 Model 1 "level 2" 16K RAM.

Never did buy one of those $1200 8" Diskettes for it.

By the way, any of you old TRS-80 users remember the usage life of the cassete programs before the tape stretched so bad the cassette 'drive' could no longer read it?

Was it 7 days or 10 days? =)

Talk about 'volatile storage methods'!

[Jeff7]

386 DX 33MHz
4MB RAM
2400bps modem
85MB hard drive.
5 1/4" floppy drive
3 1/2" floppy drive
14" monitor

Got a 4x CD-ROM for the amazing price of $100 a month or so after getting the computer; a few months later, a sound card.

[Thud]

The first computer I recall being exposed to was my big brother's TRS-80 with the casette drive. I also remember spilling a glass of grape juice on the keyboard- after that, you could hit an "S" and watch it go for days! My own first was an IBM PS/2 386 that I inherited from the same brother. He'd upgraded it to a whopping 12mb RAM! Also came STANDARD with the 140mb HDD. I installed Microsoft Office on it, and realized for the first time that Microsoft writes some HUGE software. The poor little thing hardly had a chance.

[Savant]

286 of unknown speed 325MB hard disk I think it had like 4MB of ram

[alondra]

Commadore 64 then Commadore 128, in their day they were GREAT. just picked up a bunch at a thrift store, have a 64 working,so far, had forgotten that primative programing http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif makes you appreciate our PC.

[Mike311]

vic 20
Atari ST 520 with 512k ram upgraded to 1020 by piggy backing the chips and soldering them together. Had to bend the clock legs and daisy chain them. Windows was on ROM!
Those were the days!

486-66
586-133
pentium 133
amd k6 200
amd k6 450
pentium 2 450
celeron 466
p-3 750 laptop with 15" monitor and DVD.
These are the days!

[Mike311]

vic 20
Atari ST 520 with 512k ram upgraded to 1020 by piggy backing the chips and soldering them together. Had to bend the clock legs and daisy chain them. Windows was on ROM!
Those were the days!

486-66
586-133
pentium 133
amd k6 200
amd k6 450
pentium 2 450
celeron 466
p-3 750 laptop with 15" monitor and DVD.
These are the days!

[Flexomarkmtl]

Had a Brown Machine looked like a sewing machine when closed. Yes it was portable.

Flip top keyboard 2 disk drives and a Green 4" crt on the left.

If i recall correctly it was made by Zenith or something with a "Z"

What was peculiar was that it was PC and Apple compatible.

Had 2 Apple IIe after.

the first 1 i blew with a screwdriver (remember the volume control on the back ) fried while standing on carpet.

2 second my nephews dropped it down a flight of stairs (it did not survive this ultimate DROP TEST)

Then bought a 386DX2 for almost 2200$cdn and it was 9 months old.
Then a Compaq 486 sx desktop
Then a 486DX4 100
Another Comapq (5304)Internet PC Piece C...

Scratch built current system.

K6III 500

does someone know the name of that brown box ???

[stylin19]

no flames.......
IBM PC jr.

[stylin19]

no flames.......
IBM PC jr.

[stylin19]

no flames.......
IBM PC jr.

[Wiruz]

a videopack - anyone know them?
then a commodore 64

My first PC was a 5x86-100 8 megs of mem and 850 mb hd.....

[Oli]

Atari 600XL with 48K expansion
Atari 520ST (one of the first with ext.floppy drive)
Amiga 1000 with 256K expansion (one of the first: with designers firms inside the box)
Amiga 500+ with Scsi HD of 120Mb and 6Mb Ram
PC from Pentium 233Mhz to K7 800Mhz and another PII at 400Mhz

[blind to truth]

My first was a hand-me-down from when my parents got a pentiume machine:

IBM - 512k RAM
Two 5 1.2" floppy drives, unsure of capacitiy
8 meg hdd (i think)
DOS 3.3
Monochrome

It was a really fun machine.

[Imperion1]

Good to see that I'm not the only one to ever hear of an Atari computer. Some people used to think that I was talking about the old Atari game systems.

[brainchild]

Compaq Prolinea 425/s 486, 120 mb hdd.
Sssssllllooooowww!!!
Still have parts of it laying around.

[elroy]

I had a Commodore 64 but I'm not sure that counts by today's standards. My first REAL computer was a 486 sx25, 120mb HD, 4mb ram, 2400 baud modem, 512K video card. Christmas 1992. When I upgraded the ram a couple years later I paid $160 for 4 one meg simms. OUCH !!!

[TechDude]

66MHz Intel something
1MB Graphic card
8MB RAM
540MB HD

[Praetorian]

Pentium 100
32mb RAM
56k modem
1.19gb HDD
2mb S3 Virge graphics
Creative Soundblaster something or other
8x Cdrom
1.44 Floppy
15" Monitor

I now use that thing just for playing Starcraft over my LAN with my other comps and as a backup.

Oh, and I got it for FREE!!!

[This message has been edited by Praetorian (edited 08-13-2001).]

[alphageek]

Machintosh SE

9" Monitors forever!!!

...my fish seem to like it though.

[Dovaka]

i had a tandy T1000 andi still have it i dont remember the specs of it but there was dual 5 1/4 floppies no hard drive and something like 256k of ram and a 2400baud modem i was crusing along then

[rh71]

Commodore 64. I actually learned some BASIC with it... I think I was 12 or 13 years old at the time.

[Wizzard~Of~Ozz]

1: 286 10 OC'd to 12, 640KMem (Who would need more) 40Mb RLL Hd, Mono graphics.
2: 386 DX40 4Mb ram (Later 8) 120Mb HD, Trident VGA.
3: 486 DX4120E (AMD) 8Mb (Later 36Mb) 1.336Gig Same Trident Video
4: P166MMX 32Mb (Later 64Mb)1.336Gig ATI RagePro
5: K6-2 450 64Mb (Later 128) 8.4Gig Voodoo3 2000
6a: K6-2 500 128Mb same as above
6b: K6-2 450 64Mb (Later 128, now 256Mb) 8.4Gig ATI RagePro (Second Computer)
7: Duron 750 128Mb (Later 768Mb) 15Gig Voodoo3

That's my list, I left out some upgrades, (486SX25 from 386DX40)Went back to 386, was faster.

[Buck Basher]

Timex Sinclair
TI 99/4a
286
386
486
166 Pentium
AMD 400,450,500
Athalon 1.33 (hehe like I run it that sloooowww)

[Repairman Jack]

My first PC, bought 10 years ago, was the one I'm on now. It started as a 386DX25 with 4MB RAM, 130 MB hard drive, and a 1MB SVGA video card. Woo Hoo!

I've never bought another computer, but this one's been through a dozen major upgrades in the past 10 years. Another one is a few weeks away - TBird 1.333 OC'd to ? on an Abit KG7 MB. Sure beats 25 MHz! http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

[Repairman Jack]

I just saw that someone else almost forgot their C64, and realized that I did forget mine! I actually miss that one. It lasted me far longer than any of the configurations I've had on my X86 machine - 8 years.

[Dan_King888]

Mine was a laser made by Vtech.
8088 Proc. 10 MHz
512 KB RAM
1 5.25" 360K Floppy Drive Internal and another external 5.25" floppy drive.
CGA Graphics
13" Monochrome Monitor.

Daniel King

[Gibbo]

BBC model B
+
Commador 64

Then went to Amiga 1200
P120
P3-450 (Current)

[Ritalin Kid]

IBM PS/2 386 25mghz with DOSSHELL wow!! I think it had a total of maybe 2 megs of RAM or maybe it was just one... who cars atleast it would run Test Drive and King's Quest V.. yeah!!

[Mr Miyagi]

First was a donated NEC Powermate SX20. Had a i386SX 20MHz on a removable card. This one was my favorite:
-Tekram high-end 386 AT VLB Mobo had a removable ETEQ chipset??
-128KB L2 Cache
-AMD Am386DXL 40MHz CPU
-Intel i387DX 33MHz Co-Processor
-16MB RAM (Thats right! 16 1MB 30pin SIMMs)
-Seagate 211MB EIDE hdd on VLB Controller card
-Orchid Fahrenheit Pro64 VLB video (4MB)
-40x CDROM drive
-2 3.5" Floppys (had an extra so...)
-15" Proview Monitor
-Windows 95 w/IE4.01SP1 Browser enhancements
-33.6k Modem
thats all I can think of..

This thing was FAST. It outgunned the 486DX2/66 in the Living Room. Thats probably because the 486 had a 1MB Trident video and a ISA hdd controller.

[christaylors]

VIC20

[Black]

My first contact with computers was a Z80 Sinclair Spectrum Clone. It was a 3.5 MHz machine with 64 kb mem from which that BASIC system had 16 kb ROM.It has a tape interface, and I got a Disk drive for it.It also worked in CP/M which I hated. I still have it and it's still fun to play with.
that's how I learnt programming, and also some of the games were more fun than the ones requiring PII at 400MHZ and 3d Accelerator with 64MB!
In the PC's : Cyrix M2 166MHz Pr, 16 MB, 2MB Ati 3D Rage II, SB16, 600 Mb Quantum upgraded in little time to 4.3 GB Seagate, 16X Defective Lg Cd-Rom.
Now it's Duron 700, 128Mb, Ati Xpert200 Pro / 32Mb, Sound on board, motorola 56k modem, 48x Barely working CD-rom from Creative.

[This message has been edited by Black (edited 08-14-2001).]

[wahrez]

Acorn Electron (16K Memory)! way back in the early eighties.

ZX Spectrum 128 (128 K Mem and Tape) Mid eighties.

Atari ST 512 (512 K Mem and a FDD) 1991

Dell 486 DX2 66Mhz (4MB RAM, 170MB HDD) 1994

AMD 266Mhz (64MB RAM, 4 GB HDD) 1998

Dell PII 400 Mhz (64 MB RAM, 10GB HDD) 1999

PIII 550 Mhz (256MB RAM, 36GB HDD) 2000

How times have changed!

[[Neo770]]

My first computer was a C64.

My first real computer was a 486, 4mb of ram,1mb graphics, 250mb HDD and a SB16.

[Mr.Goodbytes]

Had an old Headstart VX somethingorother. A whopping 4Mhz 8088 and that was in turbo mode. Good enough though for typing and playin my favorite old RPG's like Bard's Tale.

[VERT]

ZX81 and some game that we programmed out of a mag, where you had to catch buckets from some sort of helicopter

[jooksingjai]

APPLE IIe with an external floppy(mega upgrade) and a monochrome monitor!!!!! haha does anyone remember the specs on this?

[Dudster]

My first computer was a Vic 20 (all I can remember is some Space Invaders type game and my favourtite, Apple Panic).

My first PC was a 486 DX/2 66MHz, I can't remember how much memory or what graphics card it had but it had a Gravis Ultrasound Max which I swapped for a Sound Blaster 16 for compatability with games. It also had a triple speed CD-ROM drive with a caddy instead of a tray. I mainly used it for Need for Speed, Tie Fighter and Command & Conquer and of course, Doom. I sold it in 96 for about £400 to buy a PlayStation.

[NDC]

A Matel Intellivision 2 computer! Anybody remember those? Then came the Commadore Vic-20 then Commadore 64 and then an Apple IIe...

[This message has been edited by NDC (edited 08-14-2001).]

[Cruez]

My first was a TI 99a. I believe thats the name, Then went to a Commodore 128....Much Better.!!..

[club_med]

p133 2gig hdd.

[muchmark]

COMMODORE VIC-20

[elevy]

Apple //c - the first one with the 5.25" floppy, not the 3.5". I still have two Apple IIgs'!

[elevy]

Wait! I take that back. Before the //c there was a Mattel Intellivision, like NDC, and now I remember that there was some kind of a Coleco "something-or-other" in there, also.

The Coleco "whatever-it-was" actually had a full function keyboard on it, though touch-typing was out of the question.

[This message has been edited by elevy (edited 08-14-2001).]

[edwelly]

IBM PCjr. Man, that was a long time ago (at least to me it was... http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif)
---edwelly

[Exter]

1 386 (didnt knew what A PC was in 1993, i was 7 years old)

2 Pentium 66 (still didnt know anything about em)

3 AMD k6 400 with 6.4 Gig HDD and 64 Meg RAM with a VOODOO Banshee! woohoo

4 PIII 733 320 MB RAM 10 Gig HDD GeForce 2 MX + ofcourse a Cable Internet connection

[This message has been edited by Exter (edited 08-14-2001).]

[MrFreeze]

besides a C64, my first pc was my fathers old one, 386DX-40 4MB ram 64 MB HD EGA-sreen, it's still lying around here in perfect shape, i've recently played M$ flight sim 4 on it...
I still love the sound that the hard-disk makes *sjak* *sjak* http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

MrFreeze

[RustyGT]

My First exposure to "Computing Systems" was in the mid '70's'.
Storage units the size of washing machines where you would lift a lid, install the platter assy, wait for it to spin up, for 20K.
DEC card readers, units the size of a modern comms cabinet, put the cards in one side, wait till they came the other, the result was a piece of punched paper tape.

I was inducted to the 'In crowd' in '75, I built a 'Pong game', that was, as way cool, as you could get on a B&W TV!

As late as 1990 we were fixing 8 inch floppies.

As late as last year I found another, in a bank, a branch controller, running the Auto Tellers, using an 8 inch floppy, on mains power,[240V AC Bites].

Plenty of banks here, still use IBM 3624 ATMs. Something as simple as a Card Reader is driven by mains power, relays and speed control.
For those who beleive a command line is old.
These old stinkers do everything in hex!

A to your Q: 1st PC I saw, was the Aussie built MicroBee. Circa early 80's.
Cheers R.

[bobcat]

Apple II+ 48k

[Sweeper]

Kaypro II (http://www.ruffboy.com/images/kayproii.jpg)

The Kaypro II was manufactured in the early 80's by Non Linear Systems, Inc. The machine contains 64K of RAM and is based on a 2.5Mhz Z80 CPU. It contains 2 5.25" floppy drives.

Sweeper

[kriisten]

ooooo. I wish I would have kept my junior hs yearbook. There's a pic in there of me in sixth grade sitting in front of a computer, being the geek I would someday become!! http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif I was one of the first students to take the first computer science class offered at my school (err, it was 1979 i beleive). I wrote a program that looped the words "hello" on the screen (when my teacher left the room i looped "bite me" http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif. It was a TI, just a black box with a keyboard attached. Then we eventually moved on to the good old dual 5 1/4" floppy with like 64k or something of ram.

My first "owned" computer was a 33MHz!!!

We have come a long way!

[This message has been edited by kriisten (edited 08-14-2001).]

[conjh13]

My first computer was actually a fairly recent one. I got it spring '99, so I've come quite a ways in computing the last 2 years. Unfortunately, it was a Compaq...
K6-2 350
32MB ram
4 Gig HDD

The only items of any value in the system were the CPU, the ram, the keyboard, and maybe the CD-ROM - a Lite-on 32x that I still use.(Looks pretty generic - doesn't even have a volume control. I'm surprised it's lasting as good as it is.)

I thought it was a pretty decent PC the first half year. Suffice it to say, within 2 years I had to replace the proprietary PSU, which cost about $50 more than most PSU's of similar wattage, and the HDD, which was already beginning its proccess of corruption.

The pictures on "how not to modify your case" http://www.sysopt.com/forum/Forum1/HTML/015340.html show what I've many a time felt like doing with this Compaq.

[This message has been edited by conjh13 (edited 08-14-2001).]

[DougM]

The first computer I used quite a bit was actually a teletype terminal. I have no idea what the back end machine was, it was hidden deep in some building in Toronto.
It was a large metal suitcase with keyboard and paper roll on the left, on the right was an acoustic coupler modem, I believe it was slower than 300 baud.
It used the APL character set so you often had to do overstrike to get the correct characters.

The next one I used a whole bunch used paper cards although you filled them in with pencil, they were not punch cards.

The first machine I owned was a Zenith Z151, 8086 processor at 4.77MHz, dual 5 1/4 inch floppy and 256KB RAM. I managed to get the RAM up to 640KB with an AST six pack plus and overclocked it to 6MHz using a circuit board with a different crystal oscillator that fit underneath the processor.

[Domin8or]

I was reading through this post and saw finally that oli had an amiga. ahh the good old days.

I had an Amiga 500 with a commadore monitor, 512k ram and amiga os ran awesome. i loved the voice emulation software that came with it. wow, nothing like hearing "You are a God" coming from the ol' PC.. http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

Next was a p100 oc'd to 133 w/32mb ram

then a big jump to athlon 500 128mb ram

now a 1.2ghz amd w/ 256 ddr ram

next a 900mhz duron for linux.

[jokostel]

old 8088/ w/ 16k of RAM.. I believe it was like 8mhz.... wow!! a screamer!! http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

jokostel

my 2cd system was a 286 10mhz oc to 12mhz! (Intel) 512k ram
funfun

[RayH]

Apple IIe w/color monitor and 3rd party external floppy! I got a deal on that external drive for $135!

Made my own modem cable! Apple wanted too much for one!

[RayH]

Apple IIe w/color monitor and 3rd party external floppy! I got a deal on that external drive for $135!

Made my own modem cable! Apple wanted too much for one!

[Makaveli]

My first computer was a Packard Bell. I have no idea what it had for a processor, I wasnt into computers way back then. It had like 16 megs of RAM, and like 500 MB of HDD, if even that! This was the slowest **** I had ever gotten. This was about 6 years ago, and the computer cost around $2500 !!!! How crazy is that... That much money today could get a beast of a computer! When I look at what they have today, and how much less it costs, its hard to believe that much was ever charged for a peice of **** like that!

-MaK

[griobhta]

Hey jokostel

That was a screemer. I started on a trusty Tanden PCX 20
8088 4.77Mhz
Hercules Compatible Mono graphics
640K Ram (Shipped with 256K)
20 MB HDD
360K 5 1/4" floppy

[aldtech]

1st - Commodore 128
2nd - Amiga 500
3rd - Packard Smell 486 SX50

[alondra]

Commadore 64 of course, remember when Toys R Us had a whole section for commadore, my collection is growing, have 128 setup and running, several 64s, DDs, still software problem. new floppies dont seem to work???

[dogg]

Tandy500 'Nuff said

[^hyd^]

some sort of Packard Bell(IBM compatible) with a monitor that had orange-ish colored text!! Didn't know squat about computers at the time tho! Year was around 1989 or 90.

since then, the only comp I've had is the one I have now, P3 500 10GB HD 256MB ram...

cya...

[omeyehead]

Tandy 1000. 8088 10Mb drive 512kb RAM. Ran DOS 2.0 and Dbase 2

[Cody]

286 (either that or 386) w/ 256k ram and a 20MB HD.

[Motta]

IBM XT
640 Kb RAM
No HD
5 1/4 360 Kb FD
Hercules Monocrome Display
Panasonic KXP-1180 Printer
Windows? What's It?
http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif
The first game: Prince of Persia!

[MyKCoZb]

My first computer was a little machine called Aquarius. You hooked it up to your TV and the only interesting thing about it was that Microsoft BASIC was included.

[Hawkeye178]

NEC Ready 9701
Key features:
Intel Pentium 150 MHz Processor
2.1 Gigabyte Hard Drive
16MB EDO RAM & 256KB Cache
8X CR-ROM Drive
64-Bit PCI Graphics with full Motion Video (MPEG)
16-Bit Wavetable Surround Sound
16 Watt Stereo Speaker System (8watts/channel)
33.6/45.4 Kbps Faax/Data/Voice Modem
Integrated Fax, Voicemail & Speakerphone
Windows 95 Keyboard, Mouse, & Microphone
NEC's Video Help Wizard "Merlin"
One Touch Internet Access with NEC's webway
Full Suite of Popular Software Titles
Came with a NEC MultiSync XV15+ and bought with it a Hewlett Packard Deskjet 693C
All, computer, monitor, and printer, for the low low price of about $2,300.00 http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif.
Purchased in 1997
**All of the above were copied off the sticker on the front of the PC http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif**
It was awesome back then http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif. The days I knew nothing of computers
First Game: Red Alert: Command and Conquer, still kicks ***** http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif.

Hawkeye178

[IW]

Hmm..

If being programmable is the important item then it was an HP-65.

After that a TRS-80 Model I with cassette and GULP, 16K of memory! WOW, how could we ever fill all that memory space?

[hawkeye177]

first, how come Voogru has all the long topics.
My first computer was faster then all of yours.
120mhz Pentium 16mb mem 1gig hdd
500mhz celeron emachines with 64mb mem
75Mhz amd Chip. Downgrade http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif It was free
1100mhz Amd 128mb DDR
Dual 800 P!!! 512mhz pc133

[CadetStimp]

Mine was an IBM compatible XT
640 KB RAM
5.25" Single density FDD (360k)
3.5" Double density FDD (720k)
10 MB KLH MFM HDD
(Formatted to 7.4 MB using a mismatched BIOS driven MFM controller - who hoo!)
Hercules MCGA adaptor with parallel port
Orange Monochrome monitor

I had to reseat the expanded ram due to 'chip creep’ that occurred quite often because the full height HDD caused a lot of vibration

Anyone else remember King’s Quest II?

[Wookie8662]

Heya,

Compaq XT (breifcase style - large case, keyboard tucked in bottom of case and covered the monitor, and floppies).

4.77 Mhz, 10 Mhz with "turbo" on.
640K ram (including 128k addon card).
20MB Seagate RLL Hard Drive
2 5.25" 360k floppies
9" Amber monochrome monitor.
300 baud modem
MS-Dos 3.31 (still have disks).

Heh, showing my age yet? http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

Wookie

[LostBok]

classic C64 first, but my first "PC" was an X20 clone - 4.77Mhz, turbo'd to 13Mhz, but get this guys.... a 256k accelerated EGA card... that card kicked *****!!

After that a 16Mhz IBM 286, with a curb-weight of about 400lbs, but it did have 12meg of RAM: 2meg onboard (8 x 256k 30pin SIMMs) and 10meg on Intel Above Boards...

Those boards ended up my super-beefed 386dx, which also had 16meg RAM (4 x 72pin simms) onboard... now that thing ROCKED! ATI Mach32, 330meg WD Caviar and 410meg Conner, SB Pro, 1.5x SOny CD-ROM, RapidCAD co-processor.... what a beast! It could actually launch applications and generally ran faster than a lot of the earlier P60's that only had 4meg RAM... mostly 'co sof the 10meg RAMdisk... ooohh what fun... then we hit hte 90's and things got silly!

[bobajob]

Mine was a Sinclair ZX81 with a 16k ram pack, loading and saving to cassette was a nightmare, ah the good old days.
Bob.

[Sandy]

Franklin 8088

[F4_Hunter]

The first PC I used was a ZEOS 486/66. A few years and two (crummy) PC's later I got MY own PII 300MHz all to myself. I was in heaven. http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

-F4

[This message has been edited by F4_Hunter (edited 08-17-2001).]

[PassnThru]

When I finally broke down and bought a computer it was a Pentium 120 with 16MB of RAM. Had a spacious 1G hard drive. I'll never forget adding another 16MB of memory to it for the low low price of $100.

[eagle1]

For me it was the VIC-20 and of course.!!!!
The greatest of all.... the.....

Commodore 64 with the 1541 disk drive. I always remember the green monitor we had and a big black ugly printer that made alot of noise! (I remember I used a Garfield disk we had to print so cool drwaings and things!!!)

Most cool about C64?? A bunch of games...!
Although (at the time) I had an Atari 2600, Coleco, and a Sega Master System, I always went back to my trusty Commodore!!

[Scorpio69]

Very first (Actually the family's, circa 1982. Might as well have been mine.):

Apple IIE
128K RAM (Upgraded from 64K)
Dual Disk Drives
80 column text card upgrade


First PC (Circa 1995):

Pentium 120
Tyan Titan III
16MB EDO RAM
1.6GB Western Digital
8X Acer CD-ROM
Matrox Millennium 2MB PCI
Sound Blaster AWE32
USR Sportster 56K Internal (ISA)

Here's something funny. I just built a new computer for my friends, which had bought this PC from me when I upgraded. They are going to give me this one back in trade. I'm such a sentimental fool. Also, I plan to resurrect the Apple IIE from my parent's house just for fun, too.

Another bit of corny sentimentality (is that a word?) is that the floppy drive from my P-120 lives on in my PIII 850E @ 994, which means that my current 'puter is technically an upgrade.

[voogru]

first, how come Voogru has all the long topics.

Becuase im FAMOUS! YEAH! http://www.sysopt.com/forum/wink.gif

i posted this back in October. i had Reply by email enabled. then suddenly. i got like 50 emails expection spam and it was from Sysopt! someone did some digging http://www.sysopt.com/forum/biggrin.gif thanks lol

-voogru

[This message has been edited by voogru (edited 08-17-2001).]

[DiscoLando]

In chronological order:

Commodore VIC-20
Commodore 64
Tandy 800 (No HD, 3.5" LD and 5.25" LD disk-drives)
386DX-33 (120M HD, 8Meg RAM, original Soundblaster - I was king!)
AMD 486DX-80, (500M HD, 32Meg Ram, Soundblaster 16, 6x CD-ROM)
Pentium 200MMX (2G HD, 64Meg Ram, Soundblaster AWE-64, 24x CD-ROM)

And today...

PIII-1Ghz (60g HD, 512Meg Ram, Soundblaster Live Value, 8x/16x/32x CDRW)

[jl123]

Voog usually does have the long topics...cause they are surveys. http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif To answer it:

Pentium 100@133mhz http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif what a overclock http://www.sysopt.com/forum/wink.gif

~Joel

[medo]

Hello,

It was Commadore 64.

Medo

http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

[alan]

Commodore Vic20

[alan]

opps sorry

[This message has been edited by alan (edited 08-18-2001).]

[alan]

and again..........
Can someone remove these 2 pls http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

[This message has been edited by alan (edited 08-18-2001).]

[Dove19983]

486DX2 77Mhz
410MB HD
RAM dont know
Video dont know.

I still have all the parts.

[vagpap]

I am proud to have started with an Amstrad CPC6128 (4MHz Z80,128K ram, disk drive 3", colour monitor and stereo sound, could connect a printer, a second diskdrive and a tape recorder)
Long live 8-bit.....
Anyone remember these?
Here in Greece they were very popular back in 1986 when I bought it.
It was far better than C128 http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

Vangelis

PS:
Still in use just to play Ikari Warriors, Kick Off and Golden Axe!!!!!!

[This message has been edited by vagpap (edited 08-18-2001).]

[GunHo]

Timex sinclair 2000
vic 20
commodore 64 (and 3grand of software and hardware)
apple 2 gs
486 dx66
etc....

[GunHo]

double post http://www.sysopt.com/forum/frown.gif


[This message has been edited by GunHo (edited 08-18-2001).]

[cooter007]

Apple IIc 1984 and I still have it!!!!

[This message has been edited by cooter007 (edited 08-18-2001).]

[Darknyt]

TRS-80 A.K.A. Trash 80 (16K RAM)

Pretty pathetic until I made my first real PC 19 years later......

Intel Celeron 400
ABIT BX6 Rev.2
8mb VGA AGP card
128 MB PC-100 RAM
9.1 GB SCSI HDD
SCSI CDROM 14X
SCSI Writer 4X

[Tron]

My first computer http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

was a Schneider Euro PC a 286 without
Harddrive and ~640k ram, and Monocrome Monitor in Orange

[This message has been edited by Tron (edited 08-18-2001).]

[This message has been edited by Tron (edited 08-18-2001).]

[awforrest]

A Panasonic Sr. Partner:
a luggable computer with an

8088 processor
10" or 12" green phosphor display
20 MEG hard drive
512K of RAM
5 1/4" floppy
built-in thermal printer
weight: 35 lbs.

[vintron]

Pentium 120 Mhz
8MB 60ns RAM EDO
1.2GB Quantum Fireball
1.44 FDD
14" Monochrome
101 buttons Keyboard
2 Button Mouse


that's all.

[FeOats]

Great topic! My first computer was some IBM clone back in late 1987. It had 2 floppy drives, the big honking floppy drive size, lol. No hard drive. No graphics card, no sound, no nothing. Just DOS and WordPerfect and less than 1 MB of memory. I was such a greenhorn and didn't want to mess with upgrading, besides, I used the computer to work out of my home. Cost $1500. I still have it but it has long since died. Blew out a monitor which was monochrome in the first 3 months. Lost a lot of data due to power surges. That computer was frustrating! It was years before I ventured to get the next one which was a 486, 500MB harddrive, Win95, 1mb video, 8mbRAM, no CD-Rom, no soundcard (I added the CD-Rom and soundcard later). The third computer was a Cyrix 200mhz, 4gig harddrive, 64MBRAM, 2MBvideo, CD-Rom and sound card transferred from the 486. The fourth computer was from Gateway, PII 450Mhz, 40gigs, 16MBvideo, 16xDVD, 16x10x40 CD-RW (yes, some of the hardware are recent additions) and is the one I use now.

[defaultuser]

Tandy 1000ex
640k Ram
2 360k floppies
RGB monitor
DOS 2.1
Then,
IBM 5150
8088
640k ram
Seagate 21MB HDD
360k floppy
Monochrome monitor
And even had a parallel port on the video card.Wow.

Still have the IBM.Still boots.Runs Windows 3.0. (Yeah. I know. Why?)

[nishant]

A 386DX with 8 megbyte ram

[Spelljammer]

In case anybody wants to know:
My first computer was an Amiga 2000 with 1 MB memory and a second floppy drive, bought in 1987. Later it was upgraded with 2 MB and a 120 MB HDD.
When my father bought an AMD 386DX-40 (4 MB RAM, 200 MB HDD, 2 MB VGA) I didn't waste a glimpse on it until 1996. This one got upgraded with a sound card, cd-rom and 4 MB.
In 1997 I built my first self-made PC. It was an AMD 486DX4-133 (P75!) with 16 MB RAM, 4 MB VGA (Matrox Mystique) and 2.5 GB HDD.
Follow ups were:
1. intel Dual P166MMX (later upgraded to 233MMX) with 64 MB, 4.3 GB HDD, Voodoo1 4 MB.
2. intel Celeron 300A@450 with 128 MB PC100, 10 GB HDD, RivaTNT 16MB.
3. (now) intel Celeron2 566@966 with 512 MB PC133CL2, 2 x 30 GB HDD RAID0, GeForce2MX 32 MB.

[SPEEDO]

I think it was a TI64 or something like that. It was a while ago in a time far away!