Just for fun, what was your first PC?

When I was much younger, im 18 now, my parents bought one of those old school Ibm systems with the green and black screens for my sister and I. That thing is slower than my calculator now.
 
By that time I had learned quite a bit about the hardware workings of a PC and build my first computer. A speedy Celeron 400, 128mb RAM, etc etc, but the "diamond in the rough" so to speak was my beloved Voodoo 3 3000 :) I used that card in my primary machine for a few major overhauls, until it was replaced with a voodoo5 5500! Aaaah 3dfx.
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bahh Voodoo 3...my worse card ever!!! :mad: :mad: :mad:
 
ycchan said:
bahh Voodoo 3...my worse card ever!!! :mad: :mad: :mad:
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Mine too. I got one of those once. Replaced it with a TNT2 the next week.

BTW, I have a TI-83. Lol, this thing puts some of those old things to shame, ne? Scary to think of how outdated it is though.
 
First pc
xt with 12mhz processor 40mb hdd
Okay it was my dads but I still played those wonderful dos games on it. Still works.. and you say hard drives only last 4 years.

The first real pc was umm a 200mmx 4gig hdd 84 megs of ram or something weird. Ati all in wonder in it collecting dust because no one uses it. (no dont think it will work good as a server too lazy to replace my ram I know theres at least 1 crappy stick in there)
 
Back in 83 a Commodore Vic 20 w 3500 Bytes of mem and a tape drive, in 84 a C64 Then Amiga 500, in 92 an Amiga 1200. First x86 Machine Packard Hell 486sx 33. my Mom has it now. Them were the days!!
 
I was relatively late on to the PC scene. First computer was a Commodore 64, but my first PC was an Intel PIII 500MHz, 128MB, S3 Savage 4 Compaq thingy. Yes, you read Compaq ... :eek: After that I built them myself.
 
Our first computer was an Apple Macintosh Performa 550. I used to play Chuck Yeager's Air Combat on it all of the time with our old gravis joystick. But I was so mad when it wouldn't run Dark Forces. We even got a 6gb external scsi drive, but the computer was too slow. The hard drive was something like 120 mb, and it had about 2 megs of RAM and a 33mhz processor. Our first PC, however, was an IBM Aptiva L61 with a P2 266 with MMX and 32mb of RAM. That machine still acts as a fileserver today.
 
trungma said:
Check sig
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Very similar to one of my earliest. But, uhm, if it's in your signature like that, does that mean you're still using it??? :eek:

lol. Even I wouldn't go back to pre pentium ever again. I want no less than a P1-166 for my oldie gaming needs. I sure would love to have one of those great sound devices. If not something like a gravis ultrasound, maybe some of those like the Roland MT32 or whatever. You know, just for the fun of it. ^_^
 
1st real computer

386 25mhz with 4mb ram 80mb hdd 5/'14floppy and a 3.5 floppy disk drive

dos games and win 3.1 was all the rave then......

I had a 286 given to me around that same time too.
 
what, no macs?

my first computer was a mac performa 475/

25mhz motorolla processor. 4mb ram. 120mb hd. 2600 baud [2.6kbps]serial modem. some intergrated video.

it was a great computer. got it 11 years ago and it still will work today.
 
200 MHz Pentium MMX with 64 megs of RAM and a whopping 2 GB harddrive. And to top it off, a 1 MB S3 Trio Video Card. It was bought in 1997, and, due to lack of funds, lasted me until 2001, when I finally got a better one in college.
 
My first computer was a Commodore Amiga 500 1MB ram and RGB monitor with rca connectors for video and audio....(IT HAD STEREO OUTPUTS) and an extra 3.5 floppy drive.
 
Commodore Amiga? Was Amiga made by Commodore all along? I know that many people kind of obsess over "the amiga" but it the one all the emulators do seems to be roughly the equivalent of a 386 from what little I could tell. Lol, then again, I only played games after all. And not many of those since I tended to prefer the PC equivalent, or, in a few cases, they actually had a SNES equivalent.
 
314.jpg


I think this helps bring back some memories!
 
Family's first comp: 486 w/ Turbo button... Then a P3 667mhz Some crappy Sound and video cards, 14GB HDD... Then an AMD 2200+ Onboard sound and video, and 14GB HDD.

MY first comp: In the sig.
 
towert7 said:
314.jpg


I think this helps bring back some memories!
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The funniest part about that, is the fact that 8500$ back when that was made, could buy you a nice BMW right now :p .
 
Porphyria said:
The funniest part about that, is the fact that 8500$ back when that was made, could buy you a nice BMW right now :p .
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The real funny thing is you couldnt give someone 8500 to get it out of your house
 
Cold Dark Shadow said:
The real funny thing is you couldnt give someone 8500 to get it out of your house
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Oh come now, its a "collectors item".

I just love how funny the ad sounds. I wonder how old our best computers will sound in about 15 years :)
 
This is an interesting thread... Kinda cool to see what everyone else has had.

Here is my "computer" history:

1: Commodore 64 (had the whole package, floppy drive, fast load cartridge, tape drive, modem, GEOS, and a ton of games)

2: 386 DX(I think 12mhz, not sure). I didn't have it long, but I remember the 14" CRT was expensive as hell and took all of my allowance at the time to get just the monitor, my parents paid for the rest. My favorite game at this time... Deathtrack Racing... Damn I loved that game, nothing like a good racing game with missiles, mines, guns, and battering rams. LOL I remember when I loaded it on a friends 8088 with a Orange/Black monochrome monitor and watched the slide show.

3: 486 DX-33 with a turbo button to drop down to 16mhz.15" CRT. I had this computer for a LONG time. I even remember trying to play Quake with a friend over my 14.4 modem. I played a bunch of games on it. Warcraft 2, Quake, Doom/Doom2, Wolfenstien, Descent/DescentII, Wing Commander I and II, Ultima Underworld I and II. A bunch more too. I remember when my parents purchased this computer for me(I was 12 at the time) I argued with the guy at the Datel store to put 16megs of ram in instead of 8. He kept saying "You'll never need more than 8". LOL I eventually upgraded to 32 so that guy was a dip. This was the last computer I had prebuilt

4: Pentium 90, 64mb ram. I remember when Windows 95 came out I adamently refused to upgrade from DOS/Win3.11. Eventually in early 1997 I gave in because all of the newgames required Win95. This computer was my first that I researched parts and built.

5: Pentium Pro 200, was my next rig. Was a pretty interesting computer. I remember the fun my and my friends had Win-Nuking each other and creating funny batch scripts and other general fun being malicious to eachother. LOL I think my friends and I had to reformat our computers every other week or so!

6: Celeron 300-A... My first overclocking rig. Was great fun trying to beat the highest overclocks I found onlne. This was my first AGP video carded system and I was running a 3dFx Voodoo Banshee.

7: Celeron 433.. Inherited and used it as a spare parts rig, and then a local file server.

8: Duron 900... I had this one for a bit, it performed decently for what it was. I remembe rwanting an Athlon but not finding one I could afford so I bought a Duron and overclocked it a bit. My Grandmother now has it.

9: Athlon 1ghz. Built for what was my girlfriend at the time (now fiance, and in three weeks wife). Then I got it back when we got her laptop and I use it as my main computer at work. Now I have it running the Voodoo Banshee from my Celeron, the SoundBlaster 16 from my 486, a fresh Maxtor 40gb hdd and overclocked to 1.2ghz.

10: Athlon 1700 XP. My current system. Found out the lockup I've been having from day was one a partially failed stick of memory which is being RMA'ed now. Started with a Geforce 2. I sold the GF2 to a friend for 75 bucks and then bought a GF4 for 70. Going to go to my fiance's brother after I build myself a new system for xmas.

11: Compaq 2100 laptop 1.8ghz Celeron. Kept it for about 4 months, and then sold it on ebay for more than I paid for it.

12: Compaq 2500 laptop. P4 2.8ghz, 1024mb DDR-266, 80gb HD, CD-RW/DVD-ROM, 802.11g wireless, IR, 15" SXGA screen. I got it for $500 bucks when HP's HPshopping website was messed up and allowed people to place orders on CTO system for $500. All add ons were free. Got a scanner, a printer, all-in-one, and a digital camera with it al.

13: HP 5300 laptop, same as the compaq, and same story. Purchased for my fiance.
 
Nazo said:
Commodore Amiga? Was Amiga made by Commodore all along? I know that many people kind of obsess over "the amiga" but it the one all the emulators do seems to be roughly the equivalent of a 386 from what little I could tell. Lol, then again, I only played games after all. And not many of those since I tended to prefer the PC equivalent, or, in a few cases, they actually had a SNES equivalent.
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Yes and it also supported thousands of colors compared to the IBM clones which the most powerful of could only display 256. was great to watch movies on that monitor although I can't recal what resolution it ran, it also wad a well designed window driven interface and supported long filename extensions long before IBM.
 
Commodore Amiga? Was Amiga made by Commodore all along?
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The "Lorraine" (Amiga prototype) was built by a company called Hi-Toro, later renamed Amiga. After showing off their advanced "game machine", Amiga was approached by Atari, who supplied them with some capital in hopes of a profitable future together. The deal never materialized, and Commodore stepped in, bought the Amiga technology, and reworked it into the original Amiga 1000 computer, complete with an operating system and a GUI.
 
mine was a 286 8 mhz I believe with a 40 MB harddrive, it had been upgraded to vga(LOLZ) and served as a great machine to play some edutainment/lemmings (I was like 7 or something)
 
I find it kind of ironic actually...My first computer was a Commodore 64C (which a TI-92 pocket calculator could blow away) so I don't really count that anymore. It's kinda strange really, the clock speed would quintuple every 4 years exactly...could this be some kind of new Moore's Law? Hehe...My first REAL computer was a NEC Powermate 386SX-20 (which still lives today). 4 years later, in 1995, I got a Gateway P5-100XL which ended up being $4,500 when all was said and done, and it was the fastest available at the time. Another 4 years passed, and in 1999 I swapped out the board with one of the last 440BX boards with ISA slots, a dual AT/ATX from Tyan with a PIII-500MHz, then the fastest processor around. I think you can guess what's coming next...Yet ANOTHER 4 years pass, and after extensive modifications to the original Gateway case involving tunneling out part of the back with a hand nibbler and a new internal power switch from radio shack, it was converted to ATX and I put in probably the last ISA board that will ever be made, the Soyo I845PE-ISA. While the last upgrades had been almost 4 years exactly, I had waited a few extra months this time, so instead of 2500MHz P4, I got the newer 2.66GHz (still figuring out how to overclock it since there's no Soyo combo feature in BIOS). So I wonder what this means....in 2007 I'll be putting in a 12,500MHz CPU?

*marks calendar for 50GHz in August 2011*
 
My first comp was a present given to me as a little kid. It was a Apple II-C big old five inch disks only, no HD :) Think I got it in 1984 or1985. I remember thinking, man... computers will never be as good as my nintendo =)
 
My 1st: Compaq 1447 - Socket 7 133mhz proc, 32mbs of ram, 2gig hard drive, 16x cd reader, Floppy, 2mb graphics. ( I just upgraded its: 32mbs of ram to 46mbs?? and 8gig 5400RPM hard drive ) [Still RUNNING!]

My 2nd: Some gateway - Slot 233mhz proc - 32mbs of ram, 2gig hard drive... [All i can say was it was junk.]

My 3rd: Emachine - Socket 370 700mhz celly - 64mbs of ram - 20gig 5400rpm hard drive, 40x CD reader, 2x CD writer, Floppy, 16mb graphics. (I upgraded the 64mbs of ram too 128mbs and i sold the motherboard and proc.)

My 4rd: SOYO barebone- Socket 370 1.3ghz t-bird - 128mbs of ram - 20gig 5400rpm hard drive, 20ggig 7200rpm hard drive, 40x CD burner, Floppy, Geforce4 64 MX. (upgraded the proc to 2000 AMD athlon poli and Sold the whole thing..)

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Theres more but I didn't want you guys to be bored.
 
Synful Serenity said:
so instead of 2500MHz P4, I got the newer 2.66GHz (still figuring out how to overclock it since there's no Soyo combo feature in BIOS). So I wonder what this means....in 2007 I'll be putting in a 12,500MHz CPU?

*marks calendar for 50GHz in August 2011*
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Unfortunately, this means you probably broke the cycle, so now you are stuck down here with the rest of us with a mere 15GHz in 2011 d-:

Come to think of it, you just messed up the whole timeline! You changed the future irrepairably so that we will no longer have such fast cpus in the near future! Aaah
 
Funny thing is, IBM already made a 110GHz (GIGA, not MEGA) processor ^_^. Prototype, mind you.... not for the general public yet.

I wonder how Far Cry plays on a 110GHz processor.
 
mine was a 486 compaq deskpro; like 1.5 gig hd; windows 3.1 (loved that); cd rom and floppy; played solitare and had encarta :)

then we made a jumpm to a p3 600 which costed 4000 back in nov 1999
bought dvd rom and cd burner (they werent typical at all) had a 64 mb grapfics card :)

now i have my amd 1900 which i love :)
 
towert7 said:
Funny thing is, IBM already made a 110GHz (GIGA, not MEGA) processor ^_^. Prototype, mind you.... not for the general public yet.

I wonder how Far Cry plays on a 110GHz processor.
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Link to source?

I would like to know more about this processor. :eek: 110GHz :D
 
Hrm. I'm willing to bet though that this is another example of clock speed not really automatically defining processing speed. I wonder what the actual MIPS of that thing is. It may be surprisingly close to what we currently have. Of course, higher clock still means data can pass back and forth more quickly I think, so it should still go a bit faster than our best. My suspicion, you see, is that they have basically just made a system where it runs at higher clock speeds to do some of the same stuff. I could be wrong, but, still, 110GHz? Don't you suspect something when you hear something like that? They'd throw in billions if necessary to get into the market NOW with such a thing if it truly were as good as the implication. I'm talking about multiple teams taking turns pulling all nighters with lots and lots of jolt.

Also, I'm willing to be it's not even close to x86 compatible. Not even as "close" as the 64-bits like Itanium are.


BTW, anyone else notice the mistake in that picture? 256,000 colors? Lol, I don't think so. They meant 256, clearly. VGA = 256 colors at 320x200. Oh, and, is Xenix kind of an early predecessor of unix or something? Or maybe an early attempt to clone it's abilities kind of like linux did (apparently much better) in the future? I have no idea when Unix was made exactly, just that it's pretty old.

BTW, I just remembered with that whole description of cache. I once had a computer which had a GIGANTIC ISA card that was used somehow or other as processor cache or something really weird like that.
 
acetic said:
Link to source?

I would like to know more about this processor. :eek: 110GHz :D
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Hehe, i know what you mean. :D

Its called SiGe or silicon-germanium processor.
http://www-306.ibm.com/chips/news/2002/0521_sige.html
http://arstechnica.com/news/posts/1014737770.html
http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/2002feb/chi20020226010425.htm

those are just a few............... doing a google search for "ibm 110ghz" will bring up alot

I also think someone made an 80ghz processor... i *think* it was intel... but could be wrong

As with what the other person said......... you can bet your next door neighbor's cat its no where near x86 compadible. Still cool though. I wonder what the heat disipation and electirc requirements are ^_^...... if a prescott at 2.8ghz makes that much heat.... LOL

Yea, i wish we could get some gigaflop specs and the such... i would love to see how it compares to our "super computers"
 
I can't remember what my first PC was, best I can remember is my first Intel Pentium based PC:

Intel Pentium 133MHz
32MB Ram
1.2GB Hard Drive
Cirrus Logic 1MB PCI Graphics Card
8X CD ROM
14" goldfish bowl CRT

Far cry from what I use today....
 
towert7 said:
<snip>
As with what the other person said......... you can bet your next door neighbor's cat its no where near x86 compadible. Still cool though. I wonder what the heat disipation and electirc requirements are ^_^...... if a prescott at 2.8ghz makes that much heat.... LOL

Yea, i wish we could get some gigaflop specs and the such... i would love to see how it compares to our "super computers"
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From http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/2002feb/chi20020226010425.htm,
Besides being used in routers and switches connecting optical networks, it is thought that these chips can be used in other high performance settings, such as certain military applications. Still other uses for the technology include RF components in cellular handsets, Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) chipsets, high speed test and measurement equipment, and chipsets for optical data transmission systems. IBM reckons that the layers of germanium included in these chips will be better for high-end telecom equipment due to the fact that germanium allows the creation of faster switching, better performing transistors.
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Looks like they're only used in routers, and other things like that, not computers :( :mad:
 
Commodore Vic20 was the first computer I ever owned, though it wasn't much.

1. Delta Gold IBM XT compatable. A blazing fast 8088 CPU, 512KB RAM and duel 51/4 floppies. Dos 1.25

2. Laser 286, 2MB ram, 20MB hard drive. had Geoworks, a cool little gui.

3. The first real PC I bought for myself was a TriGEM 486 SX/33, 4MB ram, 4MB WD video, 540MB hard drive. dos 6 and win 3.1 I've been upgrading ever since :)
 
My first computer was an Atari 400xl. I mostly played games and drew pictures with the touch tablet. I got it when I was 4 (or so my dad is telling me). A few years later I stepped up to my dad's old 600xl (he got an 800xl) with a 1050 floppy drive. I still mostly played games and started messing around with basic. At this time I got a book on BASIC and wowed the other kids at school with my vast knowledge (ha!) of basic using the Apple IIs. My dad was in a Atari computer club and was a huge pirate back in the 80s, so I literally had hundreds of games, most of them I never even played.

I didn't get my (my very own) first "modern" PC until late 1998:

Celeron 300A @ 504mhz
64mb Viking PC100 CAS2
Diamond Viper V550
Diamond MX300
Enlight Case (still using this today for my main rig)
CTX 17" (still using this for my main rig too)
8.4 Gig Maxtor

That thing was blazing fast at the time. I was blowing away my friends $3000 Gateway, and I bought the entire setup with the money I earned from detassaling that summer.

Between the Ataris and the Celeron, I shared a few computers with my sisters, an 8088, 386DX 40, 486DX2 50, and then a K6-166.
 
p120
1.2gig hdd
onboard video, later upgraded to a monster 3d (voodoo 1)
sb 16
monitor was a 15in, which actually died a few weeks ago. Thanks packard bell.
 
isn't it amazing just how many of us used these old and expensive first computers for games? Even then gaming was a hard driving force in computer growth! Always has --and my guess is that it always will be...
 
Like many of you, my first was a Commodore 64 when I was 7 years old. Then, my folks concinved me not to upgrade to an Amiga, and split the cost of a Packard Bell 386SX-20 with me when I was in 8th grade.

I did everything possible to keep the 386 up-to-date well beyond its normal lifespan. I upgraded the 1mb of RAM to 8.5mb. When CD-ROMs became big, I added a 4x CD-ROM. My dorm-mates wanted to know why the CPU didn't blow up with data coming in that fast! Since I had an early Sound Blaster 1.5, which didn't have an audio input for a CD-ROM, I wired the audio cable of the CD-ROM and the wires from the PC speaker into the amplifier circuit of the sound card. I later added a huge 210mb hard drive in addition to the existing 40mb unit. Since there weren't any free bays, I had to velcro the damn thing to the power supply. Oh yeah, Packard Bells didn't offer a "soft" way to swap the floppy drives, so the 5.25" drive was always A:. That was fixed by using a longer floppy cable and changing the drives' positions on it.

I ran a very early version of Linux on there for a short time. I would start compiling the kernel on Saturday morning before I left campus and it would just be finishing up as I rolled back into town late Sunday night.

That 386 lasted me from 1991 to 1996, then my parents used it until 1998 or so. I was sad to see it go, but it was no longer worth upgrading. It just couldn't run the kind of software they wanted, nor handle the high-resolution scans they wanted to do.

I sold my original C64 setup to pay for that 386. But I rediscovered the joy of such a simple machine in 1995, and have been a Commodore junkie ever since. My 1.4GHz Athlon system shares a desk with one of the most tricked-out Commodore 128 systems on the planet.
 
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