How far have Personal Computers Really Came?

First 'puter: Sharp PC-1211 pocket computer. External storage was a cassette deck using 1/8" mini plug to connect. 8KB internal memory. 80 character display. BASIC programming only.

Up to Commodore VIC-20, then C-64.

First PC: custom made 386 DX-40 with a math co-processor. 1MB RAM. 130MB HDD. 1MB Trident 8900 SVGA video card. 1024x768 15" monitor. 5-1/4" floppy. DOS 5.0 and Windows 3.1. It was a screamer! :)
 
Pretty much owned every mainstream version of 'home pc' from the mighty zx80 onwards. They certainly have come along way. I guess if I had to choose a favourite it would be the Commodore64 which for me gave the biggest leap forward in terms of graphical and audio capabilities at a reasonable cost.
 
Sometime in the 1980's a ICL 286 pc.

I remember the awesome games...
- Xennon
- Leisure Suit Larry
- Outrun

Good times.
 
To be fair I think the pace of change is slowing hugely.

My computing experience changed beyond recognition between 1995 and 2000. It changed quite a lot between 2000 and 2005.

But in the last 5 years its barely changed at all. Heck I'm still running a 3 year old CPU and mobo thats running every modern game maxed out - that never used to be possible.
 
Amstrad CPC64, with a tape drive :D

First "PC" was a Cyrix 100, 4mb ram, 800mb HDD. Hours wasted playing Simcity2000 and Theme park.

I upgraded the ram to 32mb (may have been 16, i cant remember), just so i could play GP2 and Indycar racing 2. Ah i miss those days.
 
[TW]Fox;18017006 said:
But in the last 5 years its barely changed at all. Heck I'm still running a 3 year old CPU and mobo thats running every modern game maxed out - that never used to be possible.
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Most are console ports tbh.
 
Nanoman said:
Most are console ports tbh.
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The reason doesnt matter, does it?

The fact is a few years back I had a new graphics card every year and a new motherboard and CPU every 18 months.

Whereas I'm still here with a 3Ghz Core2Quad and a GTX285 thinking 'Is there really any point, everything runs perfectly'.
 
[TW]Fox;18017098 said:
The reason doesnt matter, does it?

The fact is a few years back I had a new graphics card every year and a new motherboard and CPU every 18 months.

Whereas I'm still here with a 3Ghz Core2Quad and a GTX285 thinking 'Is there really any point, everything runs perfectly'.
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Hell, i still have a pentium 4, single core, hyper threading running windows 7!

I don't play games on it, it does fine as something i use to surf now and again.
 
Khaaan! said:
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
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I couldn't even play online with AOL till the early hours of the morning, the rest of the time I used to get that dreaded "CL_Flush_Entity_Packet" error!

First comp was a ZX81 & then the ZX Spectrum +2 128k. Moved onto some Olivetti comp running some kind of Windows think it was 3.1?

Then a ASTcomputers 500mhz Celeron, 8mb graphics onboard intel, 8gb HDD.
 
inside-gr.jpg


Tried to switch mine on just the other day and the PSU went up in smoke. Pretty sure the 'pute is still fine though.

The NewBrain was a Sinclair project that was destined to be the BBC computer until Acorn got in the act!
 
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[TW]Fox;18017006 said:
But in the last 5 years its barely changed at all. Heck I'm still running a 3 year old CPU and mobo thats running every modern game maxed out - that never used to be possible.
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doesnt mean the hardware isnt moving on though. eg SSDs , i7 , ddr3 , usb3.0 , more effiecient power usage

just means that pc gaming is nearly dead and that before it dies they are trying to save it by making sure its more accesible than ever.
 
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