Cost/spec of your first PC

[neoboy]

Medion from PC World it was.

AMD 2000+
256MB
40GB HD
Geforce 4 MX 400
19 inch CRT
and keyboard + Creative speakers that I'm using to this day

£800 in total which wasn't too bad of a deal for those monkeys there. Can't remember exactly when I got it but it was when GeForce 4 range was launched.

 

[Andric]

first mine was an amiga 2000 around '88 or so or so I think. cost about a grand with all the bits I think - had hard drive and extra memory moduel iirc.

first laptop was the most expensive - Gateway top of the range in '96/'97. cost around 6 grand (looked it up ya it was that expensive - thought was misremebering) - not sure entirely but was workign abroad and exchange rate was in my favour. Cant remember the spec though :/

 

[greencreeper]

Can barely remember. Probably the early 90s. I think it was a 486 DX2 66MHz. Olivetti. Everything broke on it within the first year, part by part. The engineer was a regular vistor. In the end, I took it back as legally it was not fit for purpose. I think the replacement had a Cyrix chip. Can't recall the manufacturer. Similar spec to the Olivetti though. I think the cost was somewhere between £750 and £1000.

 

[Peter-B]

BBC Model B £399 Xmas 1984 still got it.

1st PC
Elonex PC333 (386DX) 1MB Ram, 52MB Quantum HDD 5 1/4" Floppy. £1500.

Upgraded to 4Mb RAM £100

256MB HDD £405!

 

[NeilF]

Commodore ‘something’ circa 1984.

As best I can remember it was the first colour PC and displayed 32 rather large characters to the line and came with 3K of RAM.

Loved trying to write my own little programmes but couldn’t understand why I kept running out of memory !.

Then in Feb 1986 a BBC Master 128.
The cheaper model came with 16K of Ram.
I saved up and got the dearer one with 32K of Ram – I’d learned my lesson.
£433.91 but well worth it.
Loaded programmes from a simple cassette recorder.
Wrote lots of programmes most of which never worked.
Eventually bought a twin disk set up which I think took 200K 5.25 inch disks.
Remember running a game which I think was called Elite – a Space trading effort.
One of the more enjoyable games.
Simple pleasures – then it all got a bit more complicated.

Sold the PC for £325 and the drives for £125 in Oct 1987.

About 15 PC’s later……………..I’m about to embark on my first self build.

If we're talking Commodore's let's remember with the joy the awesome idea of a serial floppy drive! Where to do a directory of if you had to actually write a program!

 

[Meds]

I bought a 486 DX2 16 or 32, cant remember now, i think it had 16mb ram..

That all cost me around £1200, lol

 

[Rezident]

First was my dad's Olivetti with a 20Meg hardrive (allegedy cost 2-3 grand). Played digger and golf only.

Then a Dell (we don't talk about that anymore).

First one I built was Dec 2003:
P4C800-E deluxe
Pentium 4 3.0
Radeon 9800XT
1 Gig RAM
120Gig HD

Cost over 2 grand at the time (and still going strong).

 

[Brim]

Jeez, this cost me just over a grand....

Pentium 120 (overclocked to 133)
ATI Mach 64 2mb
4.3gb HDD
CD-Rom
14" CRT
Windows 95

 

[frying_pan_cat]

Dec 2004
£650 IIRC

MSI K8N
A64 3000+
512 Crucial Ballistix
Radeon 9550 256mb
120GB HDD
Sunbeam Samurai Case
17" CRT
Windows XP Pro

 

[Mint_Sauce]

IIRC

My first Personal Computer was probably an Amstrad or my BBCB

My first PC was a...

386 SX 25Mhz (think it was 25Mhz, might have been 33 or something)
2mb RAM (don't think it was 4mb)
Not sure on the graphics card
40mb hard drive possibly, could have been less.

Loved it though! Sold it for £50 in the end and bought a 486!!

My bad boy 486 specs were:

486 DX2 66Mhz
4mb Ram
100mb hard drive!
not sure on the gfx card again, Cirrus Logic I think..

Think I remember that nearing £2k...

 

[Munky1080]

My bad boy 486 specs were:

486 DX2 66Mhz
4mb Ram
100mb hard drive!
not sure on the gfx card again, Cirrus Logic I think..

Think I remember that nearing £2k...

Almost identical to mine...we only had the SX33Mhz though, 4MB ram, we upgraded to 8MB, at the whopping cost of $40/MB, again, like you we had the cirrus logic 512K ISA video card. I remember every spec about it except the motherboard. I broke the motherboard when I got a soundcard (Pro Audio Spectrum) for christmas the following year, as I plugged the 16bit card into an 8bit ISA slot. That was 3 days after the warrenty expired as well, I was gutted.

 

[Hyper]

I cant remember the year, it would have been around 1997.

Packard Bell
Intel Pentium 166mhz
32mb Ram
15" CRT Monitor
Windows 95

All I can remember is my dad changed the graphics card for a 3DFX one which made a funny clicking noise when you started a game, it ran Tomb Raider 2 and cost £100 at the time (used), The Pc itself cost £1000 from Pc World.

 

[dbmzk1]

Technically it was a IBM 286 something-or-other with a green monitor. My Grandma and Grandad gave it to me.

My Dad had many computers over the years, starting with a 386, then 486...

My first real PC that was actually MINE rather than being my Dads that I used was this. I don't know its actual cost as it was a gift.

Pentium MMX 200 MHz
Can't remember RAM or HDD
At first SIS 6326 8 MB AGP which was crap then ATI Rage IIC + DVD 4 MB PCI
14" CRT
14.4k external serial modem

The PC after that, the first that I built from scratch for myself and (partially) funded myself was this below. I still have the motherboard and CPU!

Gigabye GA-5AX Motherboard
AMD K6-2 400 MHz... with 3DNow! !!!! overclocked to 450 MHz
Something like 128 MB PC100 RAM to start with, more later
Same ATI Rage II, I had a Voodoo2 12mb as well, but it was incompatible with the chipset (Ali Aladdin V) so I eventually got a GeForce2 MX
17" CRT my Dad stole from work
8.4 GB HDD
US Robotics 56k external serial modem that was £50!
Windows 95, then 98, then 98SE!

After that I hard a Duron 800 MHz, then a AXP 2400+ and then my current A64 3200+.

 

[Curio]

Speccy 48k for around 200 quid in 1984-ish.

First "proper" PC was in late 1997. I have no idea how much it cost and it was from a competitor. It was a P166MMX, 32MB RAM, SB AWE64, 3.2GB hard drive and a 2GB ATi 3D Xpression video card.

 

[afraser2k]

Packard Bell p60
Intel p60 processor
8 Mb RAM
420 Mb hard disk
2x CD-ROM
1 Mb on-board graphics
Soundblaster-compatible sound card
14" CRT

Windows 3.1

My dad bought it for me for college and cost him about £1000. I was livid though as two weeks later the p75 model was released with changed motherboard voltage so the p60 couldn't be upgraded. It was funny watching Championship Manager process its database on it.

 

[York]

First PC was a 486 DX2 66Mhz with a whopping 16MB Ram, 500MB hard drive and a 21" Monitor!

Cost an absolute fortune but was used for presentations and things - just glad I didn't have to foot the bill for that back in 1992

Edit: Just remembered the Cirrus Logic graphics card and massive ISA sound card :O

 

[nade]

486/33Mhz/4Mb Ram -- complete with 'Turbo' button!

hehe, sounds similar to my first PC....

>> Intel 386SX 16Mhz
>> 2mb of RAM (the old 30 pin crap)
>> 256k Cirrus ISA card
>> 200mb HDD or so i think
>> Dos 6.0

Used to work in an old computer shop back in 1994, and I got that lot for about £325, it was all second hand. Problem with working in the shop was that the boss allowed me to buy at cost prices, which meant upgraded it more often then I had hot dinners!

Oh and I also had the turbo buttons hooked up, although to be honest I just jumpered the motherboard to save bothering with the switch on the case.

 

[Hitman_Leon]

First computer was an amstrad cpc 464 with a colour monitor,

first pc was 2nd hand in 1997, £300, cyrix p150+, 16mb ram upped to 64mb later, some virge dx/gx 4mb gfx helped out by a voodoo2 I bought some time later, 512mb hdd, cd, floppy, 14"crt, win95. Sold it for £300 a year later to my sister .

First new pc was £1200 in 1998, win98, p2 450, 15" crt, 64mb ram, ati 8mb agp card that was quickly helped out by a voodoo2 from the above machine and then replaced within a week by a 16 voodoo 3 3000 that cost me £175 just as they came out, dvd drive, sound blaster, 56k hardware modem none of soft modem nonsense. I remember playing action quake 2 online back whn the net cost and the phone call did , stupid phone bill that quater , crazy times.

Just a thought sooner or later sum1 will post and mention crt and sum1 will say whats a crt seems an extinction is in full flow.

 

[bliss]

Intel SX33
4mb RAM
250mb HDD
Matrox Mystique 4mb GFX
5 1/4" floppy
3 1/2" floppy
Case speaker for sound

 

[bliss]

Oh, and some of you people are showing my age up! Saying your first PC was dual core 'n' all.