What was your first true computer -- Give specs!

A

aphexcoil

Limp Gawd
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This may or may not be Intel processor related, but what the hell -- let's have a little fun and remember the old days.

My first "computer" growing up was the TI-994A. I remember waking up one morning and my dad had bought the computer and programmed something in TI-Basic to say, "I love you son!" It was really awesome -- most of the games were either cartridge based on tape based.

I believe the computer had 16kb of ram, but I'm not sure exactly what the specs for the processor were.

The first computer that "I" bought with my own money was an Apple IIgs. I purchased one because, at the time, the graphics were amazing compared to the other Apple computers.

Also, who here remembers in the late 80's / early 90's walking into a computer store and seeing those awesome Amiga Demo programs?

When I think about it, it's amazing how far we've come from the very beginning.

Oh yeah, I remember in the very early 90's that BBS'es were all the rage. When I got the Apple IIgs, I found a list of a few BBS'es somewhere and started to join all the local ones. We even had a few BBS meet-ups in our city. It's just amazing to think that we would call into a BBS with a 2400 baud modem and share files and post discussions. Everything was more local at that time.

I can also remember the frustration of calling my favorite BBS'es and hearing a busy signal all the time. When you kept trying, eventually it would ring and you would be like, "awesome!!! I got through!"

Ahhhhh ... those were some golden times.

What are your memories?
 
Mine was the TSR-80, I originally got the 32k version and my uncle discovered that he could hack it to 64k so I later had that. I had the cassette tape reader and I eventually got a mouse that I never used. I think it ran at around 1Mhz or less



TSR-80


I remember writing basic programs and playing a few games but it started me off.



I'm not sure what this has to do with intel procs and I suspect it will get moved or locked so IBTL
 
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The first computer that was really mine was an Intel 386SX 16MHz with 2MB of RAM and a 512k ATi VGA graphics card. I had a Soundblaster SB16 and I think I only had a 120GB hard drive or something like that. Been a long time I don't remember any details beyond that. I'm fairly certain my first hard drive was a Connor drive.
 
Mine was a Pentium 2 450 with two Voodoo 2s in SLI. Had a Quantum Fireball 12gb HDD and 128 megs of RAM. It blew my mind the first time I played Half Life and Unreal on that PC.
 
FrostBite said:
I think it was a 386 @ 133mhz
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No it wasn't. 386's never clocked that high. There was the 486 DX4 133MHz, but that was an AMD part. Intel never clocked theirs that high as they had moved on to the Pentium by then.
 
//e with awesome green screen and dual 5 1/4 floppies. Still have it stowed away somewhere. Keeping it for when a museum wants one and can't find it. :D

First home build was a pII 333, Shuttle BX board (no idea on the name anymore), 98MB pc100 ram, 8.4GB maxtor, 33.6K modem (flashed to 56K a little while later), Permedia 2 8MB AGP vid card, ensoniq sound card, 17" CRT... I remember looking at those funky usb ports on it and wondering what the heck I was going to use those for. Ended up leaving the metal tabs overing them as I felt they were useless. :D

I paid WAY too much for that build, but loved it! Did the B21 pin trick to get the 333 to register as 400MHz, then picked up my first Abit BX board that allowed BIOS fsb setting and never looked back.
 
True computer?

No idea, but you could program it, so I guess the Commodore Vic 20.
 
First was a TI99/4A - but I don't really count that one as it had no storage medium and I had to retype programs each time

My real one was an original PC XT complete with 10 MB hard drive and green analogue monitor, got in 92 when I was 12. Total Win.
 
Fall 1986 - Epson 8086. Skipped the dual 5.25" floppy drive setup and splurged on a 20MB hard drive running DOS, 3.1 I think. Got a amber monochrome monitor and a 9 pin epson dot matrix printer. Total was around $2k US at the time. Big investment for me as that was almost two months take home pay. Played a lot of Microprose flight simulators on it. It got me through college and in the spring of '92 I sold it used for $800 - fairly sure I got the better end of that deal.

That was the first computer I bought, but that was not the first computer I used. The first was part of a bleeding-edge mobile air traffic control radar system that I did operational testing on during 1985-86 while in the USMC. Much more advanced than anything used in air traffic control at the time. The display was color (at least 8, could have been 16) and was touch sensitive, but not like the early commercial touch screens which were mushy. It was a digital display and digitized the radar return on the screen along with the touch menus. You could put your finger on the radar return of an aircraft, touch the "hook" button on the screen and the radar would begin actively tracking that aircraft, feeding you info on it. This system is what got me interested in computers, motivated me to get my BSEE and why I am a software developer now.
 
commodore vic20. I believe I got it in 1982. I remember the parents paying > $400 US for the 8K memory upgrade. Yes 8 kilobytes. I started programming on that years before I had any formal classes.
 
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First PC was a IBM P70 Luggable. I still have it, I'll take a pic when I get home.
 
JRS said:
Fall 1986 - Epson 8086. Skipped the dual 5.25" floppy drive setup and splurged on a 20MB hard drive running DOS, 3.1 I think. Got a amber monochrome monitor and a 9 pin epson dot matrix printer. Total was around $2k US at the time. Big investment for me as that was almost two months take home pay. Played a lot of Microprose flight simulators on it. It got me through college and in the spring of '92 I sold it used for $800 - fairly sure I got the better end of that deal.
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Wow, I had the exact same configuration (or maybe it was an 8088?) - and I played the same Microprose games. Good times.

First computer I had was a Apple IIe (played with the TRS-80 at Radio Shack, of course) but the first computer I bought myself was a 386SX-16 that was overclocked to 20 Mhz by replacing the clock generator. I think that one had a 30 MB RLL drive before I upgraded to a Teac 100MB IDE drive (which was a 3.5" form factor, I think).
 
A Compaq Presario 4712 with a P1 166, 32 megs of RAM, 2.4 gig hard drive and a 33.6 modem. Was in 1996 or 97.
 
My first computer was an IBM 8088 XT Turbo with 640k memory, a Hercules CGA graphics adapter, a 20MB HDD (I think it may have been a Seagate) single 5.25 floppy drive, and I think it came with DOS version 3.30. That thing ran for years and years, then one day he turned it on and all it would display in the upper left hand corner of the screen was "1701", well by that time we were doing better so my dad just chunked it.
 
I don't know really.

It wasn't mine but the first computer my family had was an IBM with a 286 my Mom used for remote access shortly after I was born. She had an early acoustic coupler and later ISDN service when she was upgraded to a 486. I used the 486 sparingly as I recall.

We bought a Pentium 90 with 8mb of EDO ram, a 512mb hard drive and win 3.11 for the family sometime later. I learned the most from that machine I think.
 
2ahdrbb.jpg

25sybsh.jpg


IBM P/70 Portable Personal Computer
386DX 20mhz Processor
387DX Math Co-Processor
60mb DBA ESDI Hard Disk Drive
8mb ram (4x2mb SIMMs)

I love thats its not a Laptop or anything ,they were available. This was a "Luggable". You could literally kill someone with this thing. Its also got a legit buckling spring keyboard. I just love the fact that it still works. Don't see many of them around anymore.
 
If I remember right, a Dell Dimension XPS Pro200N.

Pentium Pro 200MHz, 16MB RAM. 2 or 4 GB HDD, S3 Virge graphics (such a piece of junk), Soundblaster AWE32, CDROM. I eventually got a 40GB HDD and a Voodoo 3 3500 in it. Outlasted and outperformed many of my friends' later purchased Pentium II machines. The Pro was a beast.

That's not counting the Apple LCIIe. We don't talk about that dark time.
 
Not counting 3 Commodores, an Intel 486DX33 with 4mb RAM and a 170mb HDD, what my co-workers said I'd never use up. I did, but it took a couple of years. A Pentium 90 came next.
 
The first computer I ever used was a 486 but it was not really ours.

To be on the safe side we had waited till year 2000 to buy a computer "just in case" the Y2K stuff is actually going to be a problem.

We bought one for close to 3k with the following specs:

Pentium 3 450Mhz
128MB of ram
8MB AT video card if I recall, I don't remember the exact model
10GB hard drive.
56k modem... no nic.

Back then it was top of the line and people would be "woah" when I told them the specs.

Then a month later they came out with the 900Mhz version of that processor and 512MB of ram was the norm. A few years later 40GB drives were the norm. I remember buying one online for 200 bucks and that was a steal because the 10GB ones in town were that much.

Always funny to look back.
 
Commodore VIC-20 w/16K RAM upgrade and cassette drive. Upgraded to a C-64 w/1541 floppy drive before switching to Intel-based PCs.
 
My official first computer was an Amiga 1000 in 1986. 256KB RAM plus 256KB (external) expansion. No hard drive, two 3.5" 720k DDs. Amazing machines way ahead of their time. Shame about Commodore. I used my dad's 8088 a little bit and then got my first PC in 1990 - a 386SX-16, 2MB RAM, 85MB Connor drive then a 130MB Seagate IDE drive (still have that and it still works!), 14" SVGA Interlaced monitor (still have that, too... still have LOTS of my old stuff from over the years... kind of a museum in my basement). It is hard to believe some of this stuff is over 20 years old and still works - especially the hard drives.

It is fun to fire up the old stuff (WFW 3.11 for example) and make it talk to the new stuff.

Mike
 
486DX2 rv 1993 paired with 14 inch compaq interlaced screen rv 1989, i got it in 1999(I was 8 back then) and I sold in 2002, was 11 back then

specs: 16 MB RAM, 380MB Hard drive, I had to buy CD drive and sound card additionally
+14.400 bps modem!
 
486 DX/33
Pentium 200 mmx (this got me into PC gaming after I added a voodoo2 to it)
Athlon Thunderbird 1.33GHz
Athlon XP 2600+ (mobile barton core)
Athlon64 3700+
Athlon64 X2 4400+
Q6600
i7 3770k

That's my computer history break down. The first was a Dell, second a Compaq and the rest custom built. I've had several concurrent builds along side some of these, but the above are all the ones I've had as my 'main PC"
 
My first real computer was an Amiga 3000.
Had a 25Mhz 68030 CPU, 6MB Ram (2MB Chip & 4MB Fast), 120MB SCSI Hard drive, 14" Commodore Multisync Monitor. Paid $2500 in Oct of 1992 for it.

A year later I bought a Video Toaster 4000 card for the Amiga so that I could start doing Lightwave 3D animations. Card was $2400 and had to upgrade to more ram and added a second hard drive as the Toaster software was over 100MB and came on about 40 or so floppies.
It was about a $3500 upgrade for the card, 345MB SCSI drive and 12MB more ram..
So, I had a $6,000 computer and I didn't even own a car at the time.

I eventually bought a new car and got a job at a local TV station doing 3D animations and title graphics on their Amiga2000 toaster setup, so it was a worthwhile investment.
 
Really interesting stuff! Thanks guys for contributing. It blows my mind when I see ads for computers in old magazines circa 1985. It's just like .... "people paid $6,000 for a computer with 1 meg of memory?!"

I imagine a similar discussion taking place in 30 years about what we have now.

Anyway, really cool to read the answers in here. Thanks.

/mods -- thanks for the leeway for keeping this thread open.
 
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An Apple II computer that my parents bought second hand when I was still a kid back in 1994. My my real first PC was a custom built Pentium 233Mhz MMX with 32MB of RAM, 2MB S3 Virge video card, 3GB hard drive and had Windows 95 installed on it.
 
AST Advantage 623
Intel Pentium 100 mhz processor
16 mb ram,
ATI mach64 turbo 1mb dedicated video ram
2 gig harddrive (Not sure on that)
 
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Jorona said:
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Ah Word Perfect what a great program. From back when word processing had not yet turned into a bright white illogical nightmare of superfluous features.


Specs: 386 40MHz 40MB HD Tseng4000 VGA and very little RAM hehe and a $2000 HP laser Jet IIIP to go with that lol
 
C= 64 in 1982 (Christmas) - afforded the tape drive the following christmas..the 1541 drive the following Christmas ....etc.

I learned CBM Basic and 6510 Assembly Language.

Commodre 128 - 1985
Commodore Amiga 2000 w/IBM XT 8086 BridgeBoard - 1987 - 1994 <~ First Intel Processor

Specs?

Intel 8086 chip
Emulated 720k floppy (Amiga Drives)
CGA Graphics on an Amiga 1084S Monitor
 
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My first computer was a Packard Bell 286 which was replaced by a 386 the following Xmas sometime in the early 90's. I remember finding the 386 in a closet at my parents house in the late 90's and started messing around with it. I was able to load windows 95 on it but it took around 8-9 hours since the PC did not have a cd-rom drive and the version of windows I had to use came on around 10 3.5" floppies. At the time I was so amazed it would even in stall on the machine. If i remember it right that 386 ran at around 25 mhz.

The first PC I built was an AMD K6-2 450mhz around 1997-8. I bought a used 17" monitor that was almost two feet deep. I had that same monitor up until 2001 when I finally gave it up for a 19" viewsonic.

These were such good times when most people were afraid of computers.
 
Commodore 64 in 1982 with the Datasette drive. Got the 1571 disc drive 2 years later for Christmas. Commroder 128 in 1986 I think or whenever it came out. Used that thing for a while. Went over to the console side of the gaming universe thru the 90's then came back with a Intel Pentium 4, 80 GB WD hard drive, 512 Corsair RAM, Asus motherboard with IGPU and used that til 2008.
 
I was late in the game, but remember it well.

Pentium 100mhz
Trigem motherboard
6.4gb hard drive.
16mb ram
windows 95
14" monitor
 
Compaq : Pentium 100MHz, 8 MB ram, 1 GB HDD. It was like 2 grand! Friend in school had the 16MB version, but it was way too rich for our blood!

I did have a commodore 64 many years early, but maybe because I was so young, seemed more like a gaming toy. So when you said "true", before reading the thread, I figured it might be a fine line.
 
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