1980s / early 90s kids - what computer did you have?

[Feek]

I had an Acorn Atom.

And here it is.

Here's the inside, showing the multi-ROM board I fitted and the 24k memory board that I built from scratch. No custom PCB, just the board and a lot of wires between the sockets.

I dug it out of the loft last year and sold it on eBay but before I did that, I connected it up!

 

[Narj]

But 1 game that has always stuck with me is Turbo Esprit. The amount of freedom you had in that game, a whole map to explore.
It was the Grand Theft Auto of it's time

Chase HQ stuck with me as well but damn it was difficult!

I used to love Repton 2, Frak, Granny's Garden and Chuckie Egg ont he BBC Micros at school.

 

[Retromatic]

Zx Spectrum 48k in about `83
Amiga 500 in `89

 

[androo]

We had the following:

Commodore Vic 20 - Omega Race is still brilliant fun.
Commodore 64
Amiga 500
Amiga 600HD - The 20Mb Hard drive was massive!
Amiga 1200

I loved all of the Sierra Quest games which were the stand out titles on the Amiga for me and I think I played them all - Kings Quests, Police Quests, Hero Quest, Gold Rush, Space Quest....

 

[lurkio]

Commodore Vic 20
Commodore 64
Amiga 500 with 20MB HD expansion

 

[HangTime]

ZX81
Amstrad CPC6128

The 6128 was a bit annoying in that it had a disk drive (!!!) but:

-Hardly any shops stocked games on disk so I had to get an external tape deck to attach
-Those they did were usually priced at £9.99+ compared to tape where there were budget ranges priced at £1.99-£3.99
-The disks were this weird 3" (not 3.5") format thus more expensive and lower capacity
-Got hold of this software to copy games from tape to disk but it wouldn't work on a lot of commercial titles (although the Dizzy games did, which was great).

As an aside, it was Amstrad games that made me understand the concept of VAT; I remember when it went up from 15% to 17.5%, WH Smith changed the price of games from £1.99 to £2.04 and from £2.99 to £3.05

 

[DoneADougalOnSofa]

ZX81 (with wobbly 16K ram expansion brick!)

Atari 520STFM (with hand-soldered 1meg ram upgrade)

486SX-2 @50MHz (OC to 66MHz!) with 8meg of ram. Upgraded to P60, then P90, then Pentium2-233, then P3-450. I really miss DOS...

Couple of AMD PCs since then, finally leading to rig in me sig...

 

[OpenToSuggestions]

In around 1997 my family got a PC for the first time.

Specs:
14" inch crt screen - 800x600 afaik
Pentium 100mhz
8mb ram - Later upgraded to 16mb I watched my dad do it in around 2000 .
1GB hard drive
1mb graphics card

Not early 90s I know, but I was born in the late 1980s.

 

[mmj_uk]

I went from Atari 2600 to Amiga 500.

 

[DoneADougalOnSofa]

Vic20
C64
Amiga 1000
Amiga 1200
PC

I remember spending hours/days typing in code from a magazine for a game that in the end didnt work.

And I remember watching The Games Mistress (Jet) giving game hints iirc. Think she was dressed in rubber.

Ahh... Games Master... great concept for a show, rendered totally unwatchable thanks to Dominik Diamond. Was Jet (presume you mean the one from Gladiators?) on it too? Might have watched it more often!

 

[stigggeh]

I had a Commadore C16 (thats right C16), I would love another just to play Rockman.

I also had an Amiga 600 but that was much later.

 

[Malk101]

Ah i forgot about the schools BBC computers, there was one game i played and loved it at the time, but cannot remember its name.

Involved digging for gold, had dragons and things anyone know what it could be for the BBC?

 

[Surfer]

C64 ftw \o/

Elite, Spy Hunter, LCP Super Pipeline 2, Commando, Rambo

(cassette - though i wanted the C128 disc version to play Defender of the Crown)



then legendary Amiga A500 (which i upgraded the hdd and memory on) so had that for a while

then the piddly tiny A600

finally the mahoosive awesomeness that is the A1200 AGA ohhh yea

Liberation, SWOS, Legends of Valour, frontier, syndicate, monkey island, pirates, Moonstone, black crypt, player manager, championship manager, anything by team 17, cinemaware Wings, dune 2 the list is ennndddleessss.

among many great games.

Deuteros probably my favourite...enjoy

http://amr.abime.net/amr_search.php?search=deuteros&mag_id=0



First pc i played on was my parents a 486 with the 5.25 floppy discs...this was when i first got into MUDS as well through COMPUSERVE woo!

first pc game was Keef the Thief & Pools of Radiance in glorious CGA

First pc that i owned was the new Pentium 60mhz

 

[Bubo]

1980 Some B&W Tandy pong console
1981 Atari 2600
1984 Acorn Electron
1986 BBC Model B
1987 Atari 520 STFM
1988 Amiga A500 - Did my university thesis on this.
1991 Amiga A500+
1992 Amiga A4000
1995 Dell Pentium PC

Anyone remember the TV prog Whizz Kids?

 

[Cosimo]

Atari 2600
ZX80
BBC B
Atari ST
Atari TT
Various PCs

 

[xxalxx]

Vic-20, spectrum, Atari st, Amiga, pc

 

[Yamahahahahaha]

ZX81 with Monochrome portable TV (14")
Amstrad... something. Had a green screen with a dot matrix printer.
ZX Spectrum
NES
Megadrive
SNES

First proper PC from a now defunct retailer in 1997 with a Pentium 120, 16MB of RAM, 1.2GB hard drive, ISA soundcard, 33.6k PCI modem...
I have the invoice around here somewhere.

 

[Mr^B]

ZX81 with 16k RAM dongle
ZX Spectrum 48k
ZX Spectrum +2
(I really wanted a QL at this time)
Amstrad PC1512
Atari ST
Amiga 500
Amiga 1500 (awesome machine, had that up until 2nd year of Uni, using Wordsworth for writing up assignments)

Learned to code BASIC on the ZX81, learned z80 assembly on the ZX Spectrum, which was pretty straightforward at the start, but seeing what some of the developers were doing at the time, especially guys like Ultimate was amazing.

 

[Cyclone]

Ahh... Games Master... great concept for a show, rendered totally unwatchable thanks to Dominik Diamond. Was Jet (presume you mean the one from Gladiators?) on it too? Might have watched it more often!

The one and only. Although she helped boys with other things, not just games.

 

[Pawnless Endgame]

Feek, how did you connect your Acorn Atom to a PC monitor? I'm interested because if it's anything like the BBC Micro, I could do with doing the same with my Beeb as my old CRT recently went bang.