(I think) My first was an Apple. I don't know which one, but I remember it booting up and saying...
"Welcome to Macintosh, home of the Johnsons."
I thought the computer was so smart because it knew we lived on Macintosh Rd. Silly me...
I remember the most awesome thing was this art program on the computer, and you could erase your work in a number of ways. Like exploding the pictures, or something, I don't even know.
Anzekay on
Voice actor for hire. My time is free if your project is!
My first was an Macintosh Classic II with a 40MB hard drive (which I kept) and System 6, which we upgraded to System 7. I believe we won it. I spent hours at a time playing clones of older Apple II games on it - I'd still have it if I'd been able to reinstall the OS.
After that we got an ancient Compaq Presario with a 133MHz Pentium and probably 8 or 16MB of RAM, but my mom upgraded the memory to the hilt. It took EDO SDRAM, which I kept because my aunt still has an old Packard Bell that could use it.
Ah, Apple IIe. My uncle was able to find a bunch of poorly made game rip-offs packed onto about five floppies and gave them to us. I was playing Mario Bros. in glorious black and white. Also, there was some platformer called Montezuma's Revenge as well on there. Plus we had plenty of actual legitimate games, like King's Quest II and Arkanoid.
Amiga 500+. Had about a zillion games for it, all warez'd, though I didn't know it at the time.
I still own one, though not my original. Lovely computer with a great OS.
Same here, those were really nice.
Ditto.. Learned programming on it with Amigabasic and then AMOSPro.. I've still got my manual for AMOS, and flipping through it makes me all teary eyed. I even had a game in a magazine under the readers section (though it was a bit shit).
It has just occured to me that I threw the magazine out when I disposed of my ridiculous Amiga Format collection about a year ago.
The first computer I had in my house was a Macintosh Plus in 1989. It lasted us until 1995, when we finally got a PC, which was a Packard Bell 486/66 with Windows 3.11 for Workgroups on it.
The Mac had a 60 MB hard drive, and was kept underneath the Mac itself. To this day, my brother and I can imitate the sounds of it starting up: "Whiirrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr....HUMMM HUMMM, CHUKCHUKCHUKCHUKCHUKCHUKCHUK"
Seeing that PCJr. brings back memories. I used those in elementary school.
Nova_CI have the needThe need for speedRegistered Userregular
edited April 12
First computer I ever had was a 286. I dunno how much RAM it had, or HDD size as I was eleven and didn't know computers back then. But it ran at 6 or 8 MHZ and I played Galactix on it all the freakin' time.
Then came the 486SX 25MHz that my dad got grifted on. First computer I ever bought for myself was an Athlon 1700+ as it was a while before I could afford my own computer (It replaced a P133 that my mom had bought me in high school).
Pentium 200MHz, 32MB ram, and a 4GB HDD. Pretty much the high end of the high end when my parents purchased it. It had a PCI video card, 2MB ATI RAGE card(dont' remember exactly which RAGE model), and was one of the last high end computers before AGP hit the market(much to my dissapointment when I found that I coudln't updgrade the video card on it a few years later when I started learning computers).
We had an old TI-99 that was shelved that I never got to use but was replaced with the Commodore64. The main computer I started using was the "Compaq Portable." The term "portable" is used loosely, meaning it merely had a handle on it. It actually weighed about 30 pounds.
Basically the keyboard flipped up onto the screen section and locked in with clips. The other side had a huge leather handle bolted onto it. You could use Procomm Plus to dial into the metro library service (to access the card catalog) where I lived, which was just a glorified unix shell. You could actually back out of the program and run a Lynx browser and run telnet from inside of that. It took them about 3 or 4 years before they realised people were using the system for free internet access for basically a free local call. Even then so few people actually used the service that they probably didn't even change it purposefully since they were upgrading all of the systems.
I got a lot of solid hours of free MUDding courtesy of the local library.
The Mac had a 60 MB hard drive, and was kept underneath the Mac itself. To this day, my brother and I can imitate the sounds of it starting up: "Whiirrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr....HUMMM HUMMM, CHUKCHUKCHUKCHUKCHUKCHUKCHUK"
Ah, just like every old printer I ever had. So distinctive.
I happen to have my dad's first computer, which was a Tandy Color Computer...the model number escapes me at the moment. There are emulators for it all over the place, so I'll feel like a moron when someone points the name out to me. 32K of RAM and an external 5.25" floppy drive. Plugged into the TV. I've also still got some floppies that go with it - paint programs and such.
My dad had two computers when I was growing up, and one was "mine". I never knew the actual specs, but it had a dot-matrix printer that was too old to buy ink for. I think it had some variant of AOL on it for internet access, but I don't know what version - all I remember was that the interface had all these multi-colored spheres on it.
Played Wolfenstein on that thing so much, good times.
My first computer was a Commodore 64. At first I just had the computer with the cartridge slot and a copy of a drawing program and Popeye for it. Later, I got a cassette deck (with Frogger and Aztec Challenge). Finally, we got the 5 1/4" floppy drive and it was amazing.
My first PC was a 386-25SX IIRC. I think it had a 43 meg harddrive.
Looks like it. That's one nice setup on the Wiki page there.
I still have many of the old DOS games I played. Dangerous Dave, Castle of the Winds, Lode Runner, then never ones like Rayman, Interstate '76 with Nitro Pack, Logic Quest, Myst, and Riddle of the Sphinx.
My family's first computer was a 486 laptop that my Dad got from work because they were going to throw it away. The screen was broken so you had to plug it into a CRT monitor.
It had a whopping 108 mb hard drive space and 4mb RAM. I proceeded to teach myself how to use DOS (having learned quickly that Windows 3.1 was too resource intensive to run reliably and quickly), and ended up making a bunch of QBasic programs and games while tooling around. Thus began my descent into nerddom.
Looks like it. That's one nice setup on the Wiki page there.
I still have many of the old DOS games I played. Dangerous Dave, Castle of the Winds, Lode Runner, then never ones like Rayman, Interstate '76 with Nitro Pack, Logic Quest, Myst, and Riddle of the Sphinx.
Castle of the Winds is a Windows game. In fact, it was created by its author for the express purpose of learning Windows' API. :P
Castle of the Winds is a Windows game. In fact, it was created by its author for the express purpose of learning Windows' API. :P
Oh, right. It was included on this CD titled "250 Best Arcade Games" which consisted of mostly DOS games and a few Windows-only.
On a different note, I did at one point come into possession of a Poqet PC. Like, the first palmtop ever. It ran DOS and it had one memory/SD-whatever card for storage. The other was conspicuously missing. I loved that thing even though I had no idea how to use it. Its mysterious loss still dogs me.
My first PC was a Commodore something-or-other that I bought at a garage sale in 1994. Came with like 50 games, including various strip games (strip poker, strip blackjack, etc.). I'm fairly certain that the little old lady who sold it to me didn't know what any of it was, or at least I hope she didn'tO_o.
A Dell. I think it was a 386? Maybe 486? At the time I knew jack all about computers, since I was like 8, but I found a few of the specs a few years ago, and apparently it had all of about 8 megs of a ram and a 300 MB HDD. I played original Civ, SimCity, Tie Fighter, and Serf City all to hell on that thing. Oh, and all the Commander Keen games. Good times.
I kind of hosed it though, because I was an inquisitive fellow, and I wondered what would happen if I copied the system files from the computer my friend loaned me when he went to New Zealand for a year, which had DOS 5 on it, to ours, which had DOS 4 I believe.
Bad things is what. Fortunately it still booted off the Tie Fighter boot disk. I was so proud of myself at the time for making batch files allowing me to input 1 letter to start any of my games.
My first machine was an Emerson. 8086, 640k base memory, 2 5.25" floppy drives. Had tons of games - 3 color golf, 3 color pool, 3 color maze, 3 color Zaxxon, etc etc etc.
When connected to our Okidata dot-matrix printer I would make hella banners for school.
Also VESA conflicts when installing or running just about anything on early VGA systems. Loved that one.
Dear lord the nightmares...
If anyone nowadays thinks that they have trouble installing anything in their computers, try installing one of these. They sometimes took enough force that was likely to snap the board (alot of times due to shitty PCB fabbing). Couple that with some of the worst-designed, standards-less, sharp-cornered cases. I'm lucky to still have fingers now that I think about it.
Also VESA conflicts when installing or running just about anything on early VGA systems. Loved that one.
Dear lord the nightmares...
If anyone nowadays thinks that they have trouble installing anything in their computers, try installing one of these. They sometimes took enough force that was likely to snap the board (alot of times due to shitty PCB fabbing). Couple that with some of the worst-designed, standards-less, sharp-cornered cases. I'm lucky to still have fingers now that I think about it.
Ah yes, I remember it well. Oh, the horrible old days. I think I still have a couple VESA cards sitting in a box somewhere.
EDIT: No, wait, they were ISA. I think VESA was before my time. ISA was pretty aweful too though.
EDIT: VESA wasn't a physical card standard. It was the standard "driver"-type-thingy used for interfacing with your video cards. It was basically the standard that governed things like resolution, bit depth, and refresh rates. Or at least, I'm pretty sure that's what it was. Still in use in some capacity today, I believe...I know that because Linux (at least open-source drivers) doesn't like my video card, I end up having to use the VESA driver for "standard" SVGA output.
EDIT: And yes, ISA could be horrible. Especially 16-bit ISA, which is what I believe the card pictured is (8-bit only had the front (back?) two segments of connectors).
Ah, so I wasn't completely on drugs then. When I saw the card, I thought "hey, I had a card with that form factor!" I got confused with VESA, and thought maybe it was a different form factor than the cards I had.
Aye, and I remember having a 16-bit ISA sound card. I think it was an old Soundblaster. I can't remember what kind though. I want to say Soundblaster Pro 16, but I can't remember for the life of me now.
And the first family computer was a used 386SX 25MHz with 4MB RAM and I think a 120MB HDD. It had a bunch of games in the HD, including Wing Commander... And that made me the gamer I am today.
Then my dad bought my older sister's 486DX2 66MHz. So awesome. It had 8MB ram and I can't remember how much HD. It had a VLB video card, a 14.400 USR Fax/modem and we added a MULTIMEDIA KIT to it. Creative Labs Sound Blaster 16 ISA (not pnp), 4x CD-ROM drive (that plugged into the sound card), two speakers. It had a game bundle that included Wing Commander 2 (woot!!!), Ultima VIII, Syndicate Plus and Strike Commander. So much gold. I even bought Wing Commander III to play on it, 4 fucking disks!
Then I bought my Pentium 233MMX, with 16MB RAM (or was it 64? I think it was 64), and later a Voodoo3 3000.
Later I had an Athlon 1.3, another Athlon 2.8 (that's my wife's now) and now I have an A64 3000+ with 2GB RAM and a 7800GS.
Ooh, storm, you had the dual-clocked 486 didn't you? Excellent I remember those were the beasts of their day.
I think my dad's work computer was dc'd to 55mhz if I remember correctly. And indeed, the math coprocessor that came with the DX made for an awesome system. Well, at least way back then.
Ahh... so VESA is a card format too? Hmm, now I'm confused. I'm going to have to see if I can dig up that card and figure out if it's a VESA or an ISA. I'm still pretty sure it's an ISA, but it was a 16 bit one. I remember it was wide enough that it almost didn't fit in the first tower computer case I owned. (that tower was a Pentium 166 (Not MMX, we bought it about 6 months before MMX came out... bummer)
I got one for Christmas when I was 13, and I never looked back. It was a whole world of wonder to me, even though I only had a 17" black and white tv to play it on. And then, when I got the disc drive, it really flew...
Anzekay on
...and I thought of how all those people died, and what a good death that is. That nobody can blame you for it, because everyone else died along with you, and it is the fault of none, save those who did the killing.
Nothing's forgotten, nothing is ever forgotten
0
Moe FwackyRight Here, Right NowDrives a BuickModeratorMod Emeritus
Also VESA conflicts when installing or running just about anything on early VGA systems. Loved that one.
Dear lord the nightmares...
If anyone nowadays thinks that they have trouble installing anything in their computers, try installing one of these. They sometimes took enough force that was likely to snap the board (alot of times due to shitty PCB fabbing). Couple that with some of the worst-designed, standards-less, sharp-cornered cases. I'm lucky to still have fingers now that I think about it.
Ah yes, I remember it well. Oh, the horrible old days. I think I still have a couple VESA cards sitting in a box somewhere.
EDIT: No, wait, they were ISA. I think VESA was before my time. ISA was pretty aweful too though.
Yeah I still have ISA cards lying around. Some machines at my last job actually still required them, that was a bitch to install. Now everything today is plug n play this, USB that, I tell you what you kids got it easy these days.
VESA was a video standards committee that basically fucked up everything they touched. This was back when Win3.1 was just becoming mainstream and programs had to be written to meet their (crappy) standards.
Ooh, storm, you had the dual-clocked 486 didn't you? Excellent I remember those were the beasts of their day.
Indeed they were. I briefly got my hands on one of the DX4/100's, which was a fucking monster. The guy that ran the local BBS had come across it and was selling it, but because the heat sink said it was a DX/33 he assumed that's what it was (rather than checking).
Yeah, no.
The problem is that the heat sink on it was made for a DX/33 (obviously)...so it didn't dissipate nearly enough heat to keep that DX4/100 happy. It would run for like 10 minutes then crash from overheating. Then I had a brilliant idea. Left the case open, and I set a shot glass with an ice cube on top of it...just sitting right on top of the heat sink. I'd have to swap out the shot glass every hour or so, but it made Tie Fighter my bitch.
Then I ended up giving it back to the guy because I was an honest person. But damn, that was a fun week.
I basically skipped straight from that DX/33 (which I eventually got a "real" one) to a Duron 733. And from the Duron to a Athlon X2 4000...though I had a PowerBook (G4, not an Intel) for the last year or so before the upgrade.
I scoff at the upgrade treadmill. I have consoles to keep me warm. Though this Athlon is still serving me well at the moment.
EDIT: Also, it was probably double-clocked to 50, as I think most of the 486's were either at 25MHz or 33MHz or multiples thereof. Though I think towards the end there were also straight 50's (rather than DX2/50's).
I think the 386/486 era was where I was most intimately familiar with the range of hardware, though it's been so long I have largely forgotten about most of it (like forgetting about VLB).
lol, that's awesome! Oh, and mentioning BBS' reminds me of some good times. That broken 486 laptop I had spent many a day playing Legend of the Red Dragon on its 9600 baud modem (which apparently was the God of modems at the time ). Maybe it was 4800... I can't remember. But I think it was 9600.
Also, that laptop I had? Epson. Back when Epson used to make laptops... I had forgotten about that. I remember years later I wanted to see if I could resurrect it, and the Epson website had removed all evidence that they'd ever made laptops. There was some parts on E-Bay, but I've yet to see a working one ever again.
EDIT: WHOA! Last time I searched was years ago... but this time I searched I hit money... apparently either I didn't search the net well when I was a kid, or Epson found their old information and re-posted it:
I'm 90% sure that's the one. One thing I didn't realize though (which may mean it's actually a different model), is that it was actually an SX and not a DX processor inside... unless my memory was mistaken (as it's been several times in this thread ), and it was SX. No math coprocessor for me.
I'm even more sure it's my old model now... the manual has a picture of the annoying trackball you could connect to the side of the machine. I hated that thing.
Yeah, the DX2 66 was awesome. At least until those god damned pentiums showed up. Hummm.... Pentium 90's...
And yeah, there was a card standard called VESA Local Bus. It was like AGP, graphics only, and was an extension of the ISA bus. I had a VLB card, and it was required by some games in order to enable the highest graphic configs. They were long. I still have my ISA SB16, and it probably still works. I also still have my old 486 on my living room, waiting to be taken to a place the refurbishes old machines and use give them to poor communities. I remember when the little fan broke on the heat sink, and I just pointed a normal, 30cm fan at the open case. I had a lot of fun with that 486, played lots of Wing Commander and Ultima games on it.
IBM Personal System/2
I played such games such as the one where the babies would jump out of the window and the fireman had to bounce them to safety and Hardball. All in EGA baby!. I was a whiz back in the day with Lotus123.
Posts
"Welcome to Macintosh, home of the Johnsons."
I thought the computer was so smart because it knew we lived on Macintosh Rd. Silly me...
I remember the most awesome thing was this art program on the computer, and you could erase your work in a number of ways. Like exploding the pictures, or something, I don't even know.
After that we got an ancient Compaq Presario with a 133MHz Pentium and probably 8 or 16MB of RAM, but my mom upgraded the memory to the hilt. It took EDO SDRAM, which I kept because my aunt still has an old Packard Bell that could use it.
Ditto.. Learned programming on it with Amigabasic and then AMOSPro.. I've still got my manual for AMOS, and flipping through it makes me all teary eyed. I even had a game in a magazine under the readers section (though it was a bit shit).
It has just occured to me that I threw the magazine out when I disposed of my ridiculous Amiga Format collection about a year ago.
The Mac had a 60 MB hard drive, and was kept underneath the Mac itself. To this day, my brother and I can imitate the sounds of it starting up: "Whiirrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr....HUMMM HUMMM, CHUKCHUKCHUKCHUKCHUKCHUKCHUK"
Seeing that PCJr. brings back memories. I used those in elementary school.
My Backloggery
Then came the 486SX 25MHz that my dad got grifted on. First computer I ever bought for myself was an Athlon 1700+ as it was a while before I could afford my own computer (It replaced a P133 that my mom had bought me in high school).
Basically the keyboard flipped up onto the screen section and locked in with clips. The other side had a huge leather handle bolted onto it. You could use Procomm Plus to dial into the metro library service (to access the card catalog) where I lived, which was just a glorified unix shell. You could actually back out of the program and run a Lynx browser and run telnet from inside of that. It took them about 3 or 4 years before they realised people were using the system for free internet access for basically a free local call. Even then so few people actually used the service that they probably didn't even change it purposefully since they were upgrading all of the systems.
I got a lot of solid hours of free MUDding courtesy of the local library.
Ah, just like every old printer I ever had. So distinctive.
I happen to have my dad's first computer, which was a Tandy Color Computer...the model number escapes me at the moment. There are emulators for it all over the place, so I'll feel like a moron when someone points the name out to me. 32K of RAM and an external 5.25" floppy drive. Plugged into the TV. I've also still got some floppies that go with it - paint programs and such.
Played Wolfenstein on that thing so much, good times.
My first PC was a 386-25SX IIRC. I think it had a 43 meg harddrive.
Fun times were had with this machine.
Looks like it. That's one nice setup on the Wiki page there.
I still have many of the old DOS games I played. Dangerous Dave, Castle of the Winds, Lode Runner, then never ones like Rayman, Interstate '76 with Nitro Pack, Logic Quest, Myst, and Riddle of the Sphinx.
It had a whopping 108 mb hard drive space and 4mb RAM. I proceeded to teach myself how to use DOS (having learned quickly that Windows 3.1 was too resource intensive to run reliably and quickly), and ended up making a bunch of QBasic programs and games while tooling around. Thus began my descent into nerddom.
Castle of the Winds is a Windows game. In fact, it was created by its author for the express purpose of learning Windows' API. :P
Oh, right. It was included on this CD titled "250 Best Arcade Games" which consisted of mostly DOS games and a few Windows-only.
On a different note, I did at one point come into possession of a Poqet PC. Like, the first palmtop ever. It ran DOS and it had one memory/SD-whatever card for storage. The other was conspicuously missing. I loved that thing even though I had no idea how to use it. Its mysterious loss still dogs me.
I kind of hosed it though, because I was an inquisitive fellow, and I wondered what would happen if I copied the system files from the computer my friend loaned me when he went to New Zealand for a year, which had DOS 5 on it, to ours, which had DOS 4 I believe.
Bad things is what. Fortunately it still booted off the Tie Fighter boot disk. I was so proud of myself at the time for making batch files allowing me to input 1 letter to start any of my games.
When connected to our Okidata dot-matrix printer I would make hella banners for school.
Really quite a poor Computer, even for 1983, but it did at least let me learn BASIC and more importantly, play Elite.
I was so jealous of you C64 owning bitches.:P
Also VESA conflicts when installing or running just about anything on early VGA systems. Loved that one.
Dear lord the nightmares...
If anyone nowadays thinks that they have trouble installing anything in their computers, try installing one of these. They sometimes took enough force that was likely to snap the board (alot of times due to shitty PCB fabbing). Couple that with some of the worst-designed, standards-less, sharp-cornered cases. I'm lucky to still have fingers now that I think about it.
Ah yes, I remember it well. Oh, the horrible old days.
EDIT: No, wait, they were ISA. I think VESA was before my time. ISA was pretty aweful too though.
Ah, so I wasn't completely on drugs then.
Aye, and I remember having a 16-bit ISA sound card. I think it was an old Soundblaster. I can't remember what kind though. I want to say Soundblaster Pro 16, but I can't remember for the life of me now.
And the first family computer was a used 386SX 25MHz with 4MB RAM and I think a 120MB HDD. It had a bunch of games in the HD, including Wing Commander... And that made me the gamer I am today.
Then my dad bought my older sister's 486DX2 66MHz. So awesome. It had 8MB ram and I can't remember how much HD. It had a VLB video card, a 14.400 USR Fax/modem and we added a MULTIMEDIA KIT to it. Creative Labs Sound Blaster 16 ISA (not pnp), 4x CD-ROM drive (that plugged into the sound card), two speakers. It had a game bundle that included Wing Commander 2 (woot!!!), Ultima VIII, Syndicate Plus and Strike Commander. So much gold. I even bought Wing Commander III to play on it, 4 fucking disks!
Then I bought my Pentium 233MMX, with 16MB RAM (or was it 64? I think it was 64), and later a Voodoo3 3000.
Later I had an Athlon 1.3, another Athlon 2.8 (that's my wife's now) and now I have an A64 3000+ with 2GB RAM and a 7800GS.
I think my dad's work computer was dc'd to 55mhz if I remember correctly. And indeed, the math coprocessor that came with the DX made for an awesome system. Well, at least way back then.
Ahh... so VESA is a card format too? Hmm, now I'm confused. I'm going to have to see if I can dig up that card and figure out if it's a VESA or an ISA. I'm still pretty sure it's an ISA, but it was a 16 bit one. I remember it was wide enough that it almost didn't fit in the first tower computer case I owned. (that tower was a Pentium 166 (Not MMX, we bought it about 6 months before MMX came out... bummer)
I got one for Christmas when I was 13, and I never looked back. It was a whole world of wonder to me, even though I only had a 17" black and white tv to play it on. And then, when I got the disc drive, it really flew...
Nothing's forgotten, nothing is ever forgotten
They still do that, although I'm not sure why they bother anymore.
Yeah I still have ISA cards lying around. Some machines at my last job actually still required them, that was a bitch to install. Now everything today is plug n play this, USB that, I tell you what you kids got it easy these days.
VESA was a video standards committee that basically fucked up everything they touched. This was back when Win3.1 was just becoming mainstream and programs had to be written to meet their (crappy) standards.
lol, that's awesome!
Also, that laptop I had? Epson. Back when Epson used to make laptops... I had forgotten about that. I remember years later I wanted to see if I could resurrect it, and the Epson website had removed all evidence that they'd ever made laptops. There was some parts on E-Bay, but I've yet to see a working one ever again.
EDIT: WHOA! Last time I searched was years ago... but this time I searched I hit money... apparently either I didn't search the net well when I was a kid, or Epson found their old information and re-posted it:
This was my very old laptop
I'm 90% sure that's the one. One thing I didn't realize though (which may mean it's actually a different model), is that it was actually an SX and not a DX processor inside... unless my memory was mistaken (as it's been several times in this thread
I'm even more sure it's my old model now... the manual has a picture of the annoying trackball you could connect to the side of the machine. I hated that thing.
(Picture for those that don't feel like messing with a PDF)
And yeah, there was a card standard called VESA Local Bus. It was like AGP, graphics only, and was an extension of the ISA bus. I had a VLB card, and it was required by some games in order to enable the highest graphic configs. They were long. I still have my ISA SB16, and it probably still works. I also still have my old 486 on my living room, waiting to be taken to a place the refurbishes old machines and use give them to poor communities. I remember when the little fan broke on the heat sink, and I just pointed a normal, 30cm fan at the open case. I had a lot of fun with that 486, played lots of Wing Commander and Ultima games on it.
This was my first. 8K of RAM, full keyboard, productivity software, the ability to write to tape via a proprietary SIO... it was glorious.
I played such games such as the one where the babies would jump out of the window and the fireman had to bounce them to safety and Hardball. All in EGA baby!. I was a whiz back in the day with Lotus123.