How far have Personal Computers Really Came?

aaah the memories :)


scary to think where we might be in ten years time.

thinking no way anyone will ever need a whole GIGABYTE of storage capacity :)
woaaah 8 MEG of ram

now those figures are laughable

10 years from now we'll probably look back laughing at our rubbish old quad cores and only running 4 gig of ram
 
My first computer was a Sinclair ZX81.

The 16K RAM pack that used to fall out when you had nearly finished coding :D

The Spectrum was an awesome machine, amazing how much gameplay you could get out of 48 Kilobytes. The only downside was the circa 5 minute load time (which often crashed if the tape player wasn't adjusted to the exact volume required.)

I went from that to a Cyrix 150 Mhz and then to a P2 400 which was stunningly quick!
 
Well I'm still doing the same kinds of things on computers I did 20 years ago. So they haven't come far enough.

WHERE IS MY HOLODECK!!!!!!!! :mad: :(
 
The 16K RAM pack that used to fall out when you had nearly finished coding :D

Yeah, I had the obligatory bit of cardboard wedged under mine. :)

My first overclocking experience was with a Pentium 200 MMX which I managed to clock to the uber heights of 225 which was all the motherboard would allow. I had more sucess with my Celeron 333 which hit dizzy heights and went to several of the early I series LANs.

My most expensive single upgrade in those days was a 3Gb hard disc which cost over £300 and was an upgrade to my 170mb disc. Back then folks I knew thought I was just throwing money away, after all how the heck are you ever going to fill a 3gb hard drive. I still have it and it still works.
 
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My first contact with a proper computer was with a Compukit UK101. My older brother built from a kit. 0.5k ram. Did have a reasonable version of Basic in 8k Rom though - Microsoft basic!

Compukit_UK101_MB.jpg
 
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ZX81 was my first computer. I had a Memotek 16K ram pack which velcroed to the back of the machine so no chance of RAM wobbles there. I sold it many years ago, but I picked up another ZX81 some years later which had the original Sinclair RAM pack and I can see why it's got its bad reputation.

I'd love to show my 1984 self a PSP. Essentially it can do in real time what supercomputers had to render over many days. I remember seeing 16 colour mandlebrot sets being generated over hours and hours on an Atari ST, wheras now my PC can generate them in real-time with millions of colours.

Amazing progress really.
 
The first CS game I ever played was on AOL dialup (was using Libertysurf back then too), I had just built my first ever PC from the £1000 I had saved, was probably 15-16 at the time, and it was an AMD Athlon 700MHz which I managed to overclock to 800MHz. People in the CS game were mightily impressed although it didn't help improve my skills in the game ¬_¬

Later I resorted to shooting flying animals on Flash based browser games :p
 
can remember the days of my first laptop which i had back when when i was about 7/8 (and before you say im spoilt it was for school - i'm dyslexic) so it was back in 2001 ish. must have been a p3 mobile at roughly 1ghz and 128 mb or ram. wow was the first thing i thought when using it! after that i had a cheap advent laptop with a 1.5ghz processor with 512mb of ram! now i have a sony vaio and a custom desktop. in only the past 10 years i am amazed at how far computers have come!!
 
The Spectrum was an awesome machine, amazing how much gameplay you could get out of 48 Kilobytes. The only downside was the circa 5 minute load time (which often crashed if the tape player wasn't adjusted to the exact volume required.)

I remember how :eek: i was when i loaded up ghostbuster and it had digitized audio with them shouting "GHOSTBUSTERS!!" and then later in the game "HE SLIMED ME!" Was one of my strongest memories in computer gaming.
 
Well, sometimes i feel like i am in star trek when i am using my iPhone. It does a lot more than my old pentium III could.
 
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