Do you remember your first ever PC?
- Thread starter Grall
- Start date
You started with the 64 in 1992? By that time everybody had moved to AGA Amigas
There's still people making demos for the C64, though.
Anyone else angry that Xwing vs. TIE wouldn't run on a 486 without crashing?
No because it was by far the worst of the "series" (X-Wing + expansions, TIE Fighter + expansions, X-Wing vs TIE Fighter +expansion(s?), X-Wing Alliance)
My first pc was also the pc I built, around 1989. It was a 286-12Mhz, with 1mb of ram. The video was an 8 bit isa vga card9oak I believe) with 256kb of ram. It also did not have a hard drive, only two 5 1/4 floppy drives. I ordered everything but the vga monitor from some vendors in Computer Shopper.
I bought xwing and couldnt beat the third mission
so that was it for me stuck with only being able to play 3 missions
Silent_Buddha
Legend
I bought xwing and couldnt beat the third mission
so that was it for me stuck with only being able to play 3 missions
Ouchies. X-wing was definitely one of the absolute best space sims released with realistic space flight. As well engine, shield, weapon energy management was awesome.
Tie Fighter I didn't like nearly as much.
Regards,
SB
My first PC was an IBM PC/XT clone built by Acer, I think it's in 1988. It has a 10MHz 8088 (which can be adjusted to 4.77MHz with ctrl-alt-plus, weird eh?), with a Hercules compatible MGA clone (MGA was very popular back then because the need for those "Chinese system" which needed relatively high resolution for displaying Chinese characters), and 768KB main memory. It's basically an all-in-one computer. I think it has some ISA slots but I didn't use any of them. I also added a 20MB HDD.
My first own PC came in Jan 1996:
* AMD 486-DX2 80MHz;
* ASUS PVI-486SP3 board, with 128KB of L2 cache;
* 4MB SIMM EDO-DRAM;
* Trident 9000i ISA VGA, 512KB video memory;
* 540MB Conner IDE HDD;
* 14" KFC CRT monitor;
* A single 3.5" FFD;
. . . no sound, no CD-ROM, no modem, but those were quick to follow.
And I still keep the warranty of the machine, somewhere.
From there many, many upgrade parts were to come -- here is just the video card history log:
*S3 Virge 2MB -- two, first one died;
*Tseng ET6000 2,25MB;
*S3 Virge/DX 4MB;
*Asus 3DP-V264GT2/TV 4МВ -- an АТi Rage II+ SKU;
*Asus 3DP-V3000 (RiVA 128) 4MB PCI;
*Asus 3DP-V3000 (RiVA 128) 4MB AGP;
*Matrox Millennium G200 8MB;
*Acorp 3Dfx Voodoo Banshee 16MB;
*Acorp RiVA-TNT 16MB;
*S3 Savage4 Pro 32MB;
*GeForce2 MX400 64MB;
*Acorp GeForce 2 Pro 32 MB;
*Xpert GeForce 4 MX440-SE 64MB -- DOA;
*Xpert GeForce 4 MX440 64MB;
*GeForce 4 Ti4200 64MB;
*Sapphire Radeon 9600XT 128MB;
*Asus Radeon 9600XT 128MB;
*PoV GeForce 6600GT 128MB;
*PoV GeForce 6600GT 128MB PCI-E;
*MSI NX-6800GS 256MB;
*Sapphire x1900XT 256MB;
*Sapphire HD 2900XT 512MB;
*Sapphire HD 3870 512МВ -- two, in CF config;
*Sapphire HD 4870 512MB;
*GigaByte HD 4870 1GB -- what a waste, artifacting even at stock settings in some games;
*Sapphire HD 4890 1GB;
*Sapphire HD 5870 1GB;
* AMD 486-DX2 80MHz;
* ASUS PVI-486SP3 board, with 128KB of L2 cache;
* 4MB SIMM EDO-DRAM;
* Trident 9000i ISA VGA, 512KB video memory;
* 540MB Conner IDE HDD;
* 14" KFC CRT monitor;
* A single 3.5" FFD;
. . . no sound, no CD-ROM, no modem, but those were quick to follow.
And I still keep the warranty of the machine, somewhere.
From there many, many upgrade parts were to come -- here is just the video card history log:
*S3 Virge 2MB -- two, first one died;
*Tseng ET6000 2,25MB;
*S3 Virge/DX 4MB;
*Asus 3DP-V264GT2/TV 4МВ -- an АТi Rage II+ SKU;
*Asus 3DP-V3000 (RiVA 128) 4MB PCI;
*Asus 3DP-V3000 (RiVA 128) 4MB AGP;
*Matrox Millennium G200 8MB;
*Acorp 3Dfx Voodoo Banshee 16MB;
*Acorp RiVA-TNT 16MB;
*S3 Savage4 Pro 32MB;
*GeForce2 MX400 64MB;
*Acorp GeForce 2 Pro 32 MB;
*Xpert GeForce 4 MX440-SE 64MB -- DOA;
*Xpert GeForce 4 MX440 64MB;
*GeForce 4 Ti4200 64MB;
*Sapphire Radeon 9600XT 128MB;
*Asus Radeon 9600XT 128MB;
*PoV GeForce 6600GT 128MB;
*PoV GeForce 6600GT 128MB PCI-E;
*MSI NX-6800GS 256MB;
*Sapphire x1900XT 256MB;
*Sapphire HD 2900XT 512MB;
*Sapphire HD 3870 512МВ -- two, in CF config;
*Sapphire HD 4870 512MB;
*GigaByte HD 4870 1GB -- what a waste, artifacting even at stock settings in some games;
*Sapphire HD 4890 1GB;
*Sapphire HD 5870 1GB;
I went from that 486DX266 mentioned earlier to Pentium 3 450MHz with Voodoo3 3000, then with part-by-part upgrades
Celeron 800MHz
GF2 Pro 64MB DDR
P4 NW 2.4GHz
R8500 LE
R9800 Pro
R9550 as temp card due R9800 Pro hassles with Hercules (Bankrupt shop so dealed straight with them, eventually got full retail price of over 400€ as money even though cards actual value was around 100-150€ at that point)
A64 X2 3800+
GF6800 "GE" (ASUS special model, some sort of mix between 6800 and 6800GT)
GF6800 LE (got good price for the GE + unlocked the pipes on this)
X1800 XL
Core2Quad Q6600
HD3850 512MB OC
HD3870 512MB (from friend for loan since my HD3850 started giving me headaches, apparently 1 mem chip fried a bit or something)
Celeron 800MHz
GF2 Pro 64MB DDR
P4 NW 2.4GHz
R8500 LE
R9800 Pro
R9550 as temp card due R9800 Pro hassles with Hercules (Bankrupt shop so dealed straight with them, eventually got full retail price of over 400€ as money even though cards actual value was around 100-150€ at that point)
A64 X2 3800+
GF6800 "GE" (ASUS special model, some sort of mix between 6800 and 6800GT)
GF6800 LE (got good price for the GE + unlocked the pipes on this)
X1800 XL
Core2Quad Q6600
HD3850 512MB OC
HD3870 512MB (from friend for loan since my HD3850 started giving me headaches, apparently 1 mem chip fried a bit or something)
These are a combination of my own, my brother's and my dad's computers. We all shared use of them:
ZX81 - Later upgraded memory to 16K I think, along with a cartridge that allowed for 'user defined graphics). The keys on this thing were great - huge blocks of clear plastic with a bit of paper stuck underneath. Remember playing Maziacs on it. I had my first taste of programming when I was 4. I got it to repeat my name over and over with a "Scroll?" appearing at the bottom. I think it was 3 lines, used a GOTO statement and was an infinite loop!
ZX Spectrum 48K - Ahh my nails! Typing on this was painful. - My dad reprogrammed this one to say (c)$$my dads name$$ 198* $$ instead of the usual Sinclair Spectrum copyright. Earliest game memories were Oligopoly and Knot in 3D.
ZX Spectrum 48K+ ( I got this one christmas along with a microdrive, which was awesome as I'd only used tapes before that and it was very fast - although quite unreliable)
ZX Spectrum 128K
ZX Spectrum 128K +3 Had a built in tape deck!
C64
C128D - Built in disk drive. This thing was a beast. Looked like a proper business PC but I used it solely for gaming. Had a big hole underneath for the wired keyboard to be stored - never really got the point of that.
Atari STFM - 512K later upgraded to 8 megs - used to raytrace on this thing. took ages but was blown away by the graphics.
Amiga 500 The games were great. Didn't have that many of them though.
... long break from computers for a few years ... then bought these ...
AMD K6-2 533,with Voodoo 2, Soundblaster Live (expensive one with front panel for bedroom musicians) - used it for making music and my first online FPS gaming - Quake 2. Was absolutely blown away by running round in 3D environments chatting to and shooting real people.
Had that one for ages.. Since then it's been a long upgrade procession including these chips and GPUs -
Celeron with 512MB and onboard graphics. I remember so little of this machine, not even the clockspeed - it underwhelmed me at every step. I think I've blotted it from my mind.
.... started building my own now ....
Winchester with 512MB and 5700LE (which OC'd like a monster - literally doubled the GPU clock - still slow as hell though)
Venice with 1.5Gigs and 5900XT, later 6600GT. Got some eDimensional shutter glasses to use with my CRT. Was magic playing Painkiller in 3D. Had to get rid of the CRT eventually though and replace it with an LCD so no more 3D gaming for me.
San Diego with 2 Gigs of really nice RAM - cost me over £200 as it was when RAM prices were being fixed. OCZ Platinum DDR500 eb. Those were the days of netburst and I used to love posting my RAM scores from programs like Everest and Sandra to the chagrin of Intel fanatics. I kept the 6600GT for a while but I swapped it out for a 7800GT when the 7 series arrived. That card kicked the pants out of BF2 which was my game of choice for so long. I really got into overclocking at this time (as you might have guessed by the choice of CPU and RAM) and first started to seriously consider power supplies (I had a great Hiper 580 Type R). The last upgrade I made to this machiine was the almighty X1900XT 512. My first ATI card and an absolute beast. I still get nostalgic about this build as I think it was the time I was most happy with my kit. Although it was a single core, there was so little need for duals at that time that I really felt I wasn't missing anything.
Kept the last system for ages. My dad still uses it as a server, which brings a small tear to my eye to think of it locked away in a virtual cupboard like that.
Intel Core2Duo E6600 with 4 gigs Corsair RAM and 8800GTX. From this point on things were so smooth for so long that I almost entirely forgot about the hardware in my case. I still have this build today. Eventually I upgraded to a 4870 1 gig but on the whole I was underwhelmed by the improvement in performance even in 19x12 res (at the time). It was no big jump like the previous iterations all had been. It's great to see the 8800GTX still knocking out playable framerates today even at high res. I still have that card - I haven't the heart to sell it. Now though, in newer games I certainly get the benefit of the 4870 - or at least I did until I replaced it with a GTX285 about a month ago.
I don't tend to go for smaller jumps in performance so the GTX purchase was quite out of character for me especially considering my initial reactions with the 4870. The reason I did it though was to get stereoscopic gaming back on the go and I have to say the magic and wonder I once had with PC gaming has returned thanks to this technology. I can't wait until ATI offer a solution too, and it really takes off.
ZX81 - Later upgraded memory to 16K I think, along with a cartridge that allowed for 'user defined graphics). The keys on this thing were great - huge blocks of clear plastic with a bit of paper stuck underneath. Remember playing Maziacs on it. I had my first taste of programming when I was 4. I got it to repeat my name over and over with a "Scroll?" appearing at the bottom. I think it was 3 lines, used a GOTO statement and was an infinite loop!
ZX Spectrum 48K - Ahh my nails! Typing on this was painful. - My dad reprogrammed this one to say (c)$$my dads name$$ 198* $$ instead of the usual Sinclair Spectrum copyright. Earliest game memories were Oligopoly and Knot in 3D.
ZX Spectrum 48K+ ( I got this one christmas along with a microdrive, which was awesome as I'd only used tapes before that and it was very fast - although quite unreliable)
ZX Spectrum 128K
ZX Spectrum 128K +3 Had a built in tape deck!
C64
C128D - Built in disk drive. This thing was a beast. Looked like a proper business PC but I used it solely for gaming. Had a big hole underneath for the wired keyboard to be stored - never really got the point of that.
Atari STFM - 512K later upgraded to 8 megs - used to raytrace on this thing. took ages but was blown away by the graphics.
Amiga 500 The games were great. Didn't have that many of them though.
... long break from computers for a few years ... then bought these ...
AMD K6-2 533,with Voodoo 2, Soundblaster Live (expensive one with front panel for bedroom musicians) - used it for making music and my first online FPS gaming - Quake 2. Was absolutely blown away by running round in 3D environments chatting to and shooting real people.
Had that one for ages.. Since then it's been a long upgrade procession including these chips and GPUs -
Celeron with 512MB and onboard graphics. I remember so little of this machine, not even the clockspeed - it underwhelmed me at every step. I think I've blotted it from my mind.
.... started building my own now ....
Winchester with 512MB and 5700LE (which OC'd like a monster - literally doubled the GPU clock - still slow as hell though)
Venice with 1.5Gigs and 5900XT, later 6600GT. Got some eDimensional shutter glasses to use with my CRT. Was magic playing Painkiller in 3D. Had to get rid of the CRT eventually though and replace it with an LCD so no more 3D gaming for me
.San Diego with 2 Gigs of really nice RAM - cost me over £200 as it was when RAM prices were being fixed. OCZ Platinum DDR500 eb. Those were the days of netburst and I used to love posting my RAM scores from programs like Everest and Sandra to the chagrin of Intel fanatics. I kept the 6600GT for a while but I swapped it out for a 7800GT when the 7 series arrived. That card kicked the pants out of BF2 which was my game of choice for so long. I really got into overclocking at this time (as you might have guessed by the choice of CPU and RAM) and first started to seriously consider power supplies (I had a great Hiper 580 Type R). The last upgrade I made to this machiine was the almighty X1900XT 512. My first ATI card and an absolute beast. I still get nostalgic about this build as I think it was the time I was most happy with my kit. Although it was a single core, there was so little need for duals at that time that I really felt I wasn't missing anything.
Kept the last system for ages. My dad still uses it as a server, which brings a small tear to my eye to think of it locked away in a virtual cupboard like that.
Intel Core2Duo E6600 with 4 gigs Corsair RAM and 8800GTX. From this point on things were so smooth for so long that I almost entirely forgot about the hardware in my case. I still have this build today. Eventually I upgraded to a 4870 1 gig but on the whole I was underwhelmed by the improvement in performance even in 19x12 res (at the time). It was no big jump like the previous iterations all had been. It's great to see the 8800GTX still knocking out playable framerates today even at high res. I still have that card - I haven't the heart to sell it. Now though, in newer games I certainly get the benefit of the 4870 - or at least I did until I replaced it with a GTX285 about a month ago.
I don't tend to go for smaller jumps in performance so the GTX purchase was quite out of character for me especially considering my initial reactions with the 4870. The reason I did it though was to get stereoscopic gaming back on the go and I have to say the magic and wonder I once had with PC gaming has returned thanks to this technology. I can't wait until ATI offer a solution too, and it really takes off.
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You started with the 64 in 1992? By that time everybody had moved to AGA Amigas
There's still people making demos for the C64, though.
Yes!
To be exact it was 24 December 1991 when we got it, but because no one told us how to adjust magnetic head in tape drive we couldn't load anything on it! Only after 2 weeks we found out what's wrong with that LOAD ERROR message
BTW coming from not so rich family in early capitalistic Poland was limiting our budget to C-64 which costed then 1.500.000zl. AMIGA 500 was 5.500.000zl back then! We as kids aged 9 and 11 worked all summer school brake to earn half of that sum and the other half our parents gave us as a Christmas Gift
Blazkowicz
Legend
It was a 386SX16 made by Olivetti, with 2MB ram, 40MB hdd and VGA.
It was a small, custom case which could stand either horizontally or vertically, like a grey playstation 2.
too weak for doom, and Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis took a quarter of disk space.
that was the era of silent adventure games. speaker tweets for wolfenstein 3D, 4d sports driving and other games ; too weak for doom (it was never upgraded anyway).
I had windows 3.0 at first. from there onwards, the PC was a glorified game console and windows was useful only for solitaire and drawing with paintbrush. Much later with windows 95, we in the family used to press F8 at boot-up to stay in DOS mode (the games were still there! duke 3D, need for speed, quake and all)
I remember typing programs in Qbasic from old magazines, trying to convert the graphics from Apple basic or Amstrad basic. not so easy! we got the Internet very late.
It was a small, custom case which could stand either horizontally or vertically, like a grey playstation 2.
too weak for doom, and Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis took a quarter of disk space.
that was the era of silent adventure games
. speaker tweets for wolfenstein 3D, 4d sports driving and other games ; too weak for doom (it was never upgraded anyway).I had windows 3.0 at first
. from there onwards, the PC was a glorified game console and windows was useful only for solitaire and drawing with paintbrush. Much later with windows 95, we in the family used to press F8 at boot-up to stay in DOS mode (the games were still there! duke 3D, need for speed, quake and all)I remember typing programs in Qbasic from old magazines, trying to convert the graphics from Apple basic or Amstrad basic. not so easy! we got the Internet very late.
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DigitalSoul
Regular
My first PC was a Pentium 120Mhz, 32MB of Ram, 1GB HDD and a ATI Video card with like 1MB of video memory. It was given to me buy my cousin actually, so it wasn't a brand new PC. He also include this NEC four disc slot loading optical drive, but the damn thing never worked properly. It got to a point where I basically had to gut it remove my CD's haha
I remember having just bought my Amiga 500 and carrying it home, it was june or july 1987, and passing one of those craphead kids you have to put up with while growing up on the street, asking me with big round eyes: "How much memory does that one have?"
Somewhat smugly - coz I just couldn't resist - I responded, "512 kB."
"Oooooh!", he went, clearly extremely impressed. Good times...
Goshdarn, today a friggin' MOUSE POINTER SKIN takes up more space than that!
Somewhat smugly - coz I just couldn't resist - I responded, "512 kB."
"Oooooh!", he went, clearly extremely impressed. Good times...
Goshdarn, today a friggin' MOUSE POINTER SKIN takes up more space than that!
October of 1992, bought a 385 SX/25 with a 15" CRT from a b&m store down in northern Cinci. Paid around $1000 if memory serves. Sported both 5.25 and 3.5 floppy drives, and I actually used the 5.25 for a very old game called Conquered Kingdoms.
hoom
Veteran
My first PC was my dads' new girlfriends' geek ex-boyfriends old 286. (they were still friends/she was manipulating him to retain access to his geek services)
Can't remember the year or amount of RAM but it had been upgraded/customised by him, I further upgraded with a gamecard for audio & joystick if I recall correctly.
First one that was really mine (bought by me with my money!) was Death the Grim Computer in '97.
K62 200 (233Mhz was top available then), 16MB SDRAM & 4GB HDD.
Upgraded with Voodoo 1, soundblaster, TV card, 2nd HDD (8GB I think), dialup modem, RAM to 32MB & then 64MB over the next couple of years.
Black painted over the beige, pulled the beige plastic front off it & wound up a skeletal bare frame to keep it from overheating.
First one I put together myself was Fred in 2000/1.
Budget Slot A Athlon 650 with AGP*4, GeForce 2MX & I think 64MB DDR (?) later 128 & 256MB. I think I had an 80GB then 100/120GB HDD with that one.
Can't remember the year or amount of RAM but it had been upgraded/customised by him, I further upgraded with a gamecard for audio & joystick if I recall correctly.
First one that was really mine (bought by me with my money!) was Death the Grim Computer in '97.
K62 200 (233Mhz was top available then), 16MB SDRAM & 4GB HDD.
Upgraded with Voodoo 1, soundblaster, TV card, 2nd HDD (8GB I think), dialup modem, RAM to 32MB & then 64MB over the next couple of years.
Black painted over the beige, pulled the beige plastic front off it & wound up a skeletal bare frame to keep it from overheating.
First one I put together myself was Fred in 2000/1.
Budget Slot A Athlon 650 with AGP*4, GeForce 2MX & I think 64MB DDR (?) later 128 & 256MB. I think I had an 80GB then 100/120GB HDD with that one.
The first PC I bought was a 486DX-33 with 2mb RAM, I think, a Targa video card with a Tseng ET4000 chip, IIRC. I think it had a 120mb HDD made by Conner (anyone remember them?). Before that I used an Amiga 500 and before that a Commodore C128 D. Oddly enough, the 486 I bought was Commodore branded. It even kinda looked like the C128 D but the case was twice as high.
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