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Does anyone else remember the 286s or is it just me?

sybaris

sybaris

sybaris

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Does anyone else remember the 286s or is it just me?
I was thinking the other day how far my q9550 has come since my first CPU. a 286 something.

The first rig I built was a 486 DX 33. For those of you too young to remember, we are talking about 20 years back when it was considered a luxury to own a CPU with a maths co-processor. Back in the day running at 33Mhz was lightening.

Correct me if I am wrong but a 3.3Ghz processor would be what ? a hundred times faster?

Hey does anyone remember the Pentium 2 CPU fixings? oh my how time moves on.
 
The first "PC" we had was a 12MHz 286 with 40MB HDD (winchester), 4MB RAM and 2MB graphics card*


*Software my dad used with his microscope (which was connected to it) required a "lot" of video memory.
 
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4MB ram ... I had that for a while then for my birthday I spent £150 upgrading to 8mb.
Oh I had a 1Mb cache controller for the hard drive too.
Come to think of it, my GPU ran on a Vesa Local Bus.
And my config.sys and autoexec.bat used to cause me loads of headached
 
My first PC was a 8088, it was a Amstrad PC 1640 that I got from college, it ran at 8mhz and had an EGA display.

My first game back then was Commander Keen :)
 
First PC (not including C64) was an AST Advantage!

486DX2 50MHz
4MB RAM (which I upgraded to 8MB for Doom!)
270MB HDD
1MB Cirus Logic
2x CD-ROM
Sound Blaster 16
14" CRT


Was a beast :D

I'd played with 286 and 386's, but the Advantage was my first.
 
Mt first real pc was a 286 with 2mb of ram... used it to play eye of the beholder as i remember :p
 
sybaris said:
4MB ram ... I had that for a while then for my birthday I spent £150 upgrading to 8mb.
Oh I had a 1Mb cache controller for the hard drive too.
Come to think of it, my GPU ran on a Vesa Local Bus.
And my config.sys and autoexec.bat used to cause me loads of headached
Click to expand...

haha, Technogeek speek in its truest form, I remember when i had to fix a machine and in explaining I often said I need to edit the config.sys and autoexec.bat, The blank look in response to this was universal.

And lol, £150 for 4mb of RAM. Oh how the world has changed :o

As for a 286, Never had one. but my friend did, We played Civilization on it.
 
first x86 machine was 386DX40mhz here! (Had an Atari and an Amstrad CPC6128 before that - still do)

I also remember friends with 8086 and 8088 at 4mhz. 5.25'' floppys and 1200kbps modems ringing up BBS's after midnight so as not to hold the line for long.

I also remember IRC when it actually became available in Europe (at least I think so, in the very early 90s) and Netscape browser. Oh the times pre-www!

Fighting with getting autoexec and config to free up to 626kb of ram (EMS anyone?) to run some games (best one back then were the Ultima underworld I&II and the Lands of Lore, the first pseudo-3d game and probably the only game I ever got around finishing during a hot gaming summer).

I oddly enough had DRDOS instead of MSDOS, but all the same, pretty much all the same commands.

EDIT: I remember my 386 had a "turbo" button to take it from 20mhz to 40mhz..:)
 
Yeah, I ran a BBS at my house, I spent about £150 on a 28.8k modem.

I used to multitask DOS with DESQview, so i could run the BBS in one window and play games in the other. Back then, that was an amazing concept!
 
I remember the RM nimbus 286 my school had.

I think my first desktop style pc was an Amstrad cpc 464 with a green screen.
 
My first PC had a pentium cpu. This made everyone in my uni house very envious. I remember how everyone thought I'd gone overboard with my 1GB HDD and 4MB memory.
 
What's a 286? :P

When I started modding and gaming, it was with a Pentium 4 2.4ghz HT 478 with 1gb of RAM, and it was rubbish.

Now I have the build in my sig. Not had much experience really. :(
 
I'm reminded everyday by my wall :)

mobos.jpg


My first "pc" a 486 is still in a cupboard somewhere. Slowest thing on the wall is a socket 7 mobo with old isa and edo memory slots!
 
Just remembered, when I got my 386DX40 I took it with me during summer holidays at the countryhouse. A nearby neighbour was heavily involved into computers (that's where I got the bug actually) and I would go and play on his 486 133mhz system. His father worked was a uni professor and in charge of the IT labs and he would occasionally take some hardware to do tests etc and write his journal articles (for publication) there during the summer time. That first summer I was introduced to a SG Indigo which was an amazingly slick, small machine (with a command ejectable floppy, no button!!!) which was running Solaris I think. That thing was unbelievably powerful for its time. Nice times.
 
First PC for me was a Pentium 60 when they were first released. It had the bug and got replaced by Intel. Prior to that it was Amiga all the way, 500 to 600 to 1200.
 
Love the wall Vipernet.
Lanz, my old boss had an Amstrad 1640 for stock control.

Wow those were the days. (CGA, EGA and VGA).

I think kids today are spoilt. A true techie should have to under go editing old dos startup files.
 
My first PC (well my dads really) was a 486 with a 100MB hard drive and it was great that we actually had our own pc.

I do remember walking past a primary school one day and they had filled a skip with a load of RM 286's and 386's and with permission from the school I nabbed the lot :)
 
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