What was your first (PC) computer, 286,386?

[Joebob]

One of my first jobs was as 'The' Computer Operator for my Dad's business, of about 30 odd employees, when I was 17 - used a 386 running DOS and remember how exciting it was when he got a 10MB HDD installed as an upgrade

My first PC was a few years later and it was an i486 DX 33, but by this time my Dad's business had about half a dozen PC's and I swapped my CPU for a DX 66 without anyone ever knowing (could have been a DX2, I can't remember - I do remember it was the same cpu slot socket though, which was lucky as I didn't have a clue what I was doing really!) I remember upgrading the RAM myself from 4MB to 8MB and after that I was hooked.

After that I was given a motherboard by someone and built myself a new system from that with a Pentium 100Mhz CPU - can't remember the other specs though.

 

[#Chri5#]

He bought his computer down and all I had to do was change the sound card IRQ from 3 to 5 and everything worked without these batch files. I took the PC back to a place called PC Drive-In and made them give him his money back for the batch files.

PCDI - there's a name I've heard for years. I have a memory of them moving to the bottom end of Festival Park (past Waterworld) but can't remember where they were before that?

First computer place I remember in Stoke was Castle Computers - used to go in every week to look at Spectrum games There was a branch on Hope Street and one in Burslem.

 

[RaohNS]

466MHz Pentium
8Gb HDD
128MB RAM
8Mb Graphics

Cost £700+ custom built by a guy called Adrian.

At the time I was posh because I had lots of RAM. My Gf says I still do

 

[SexyGreyFox]

PCDI - there's a name I've heard for years. I have a memory of them moving to the bottom end of Festival Park (past Waterworld) but can't remember where they were before that?

First computer place I remember in Stoke was Castle Computers - used to go in every week to look at Spectrum games There was a branch on Hope Street and one in Burslem.

They were first in a Unit just to the right side of Lichfield Street (not far from Oggys Bar).
I had another spectacular incident with them.
My mates computer graphics were all hieroglyphics in DOS and I knew 100% it was a faulty motherboard not graphics.
I told them what the fault was and we were invited to sit down while they looked. My mate then said he had left a CD in the drive which was San Diego Zoo and I called him a fool because they would blame that CD.
On cue out they came saying the fault was because of the CD in the drive
I lost my temper and got ejected but 1 hour later they were out saying they had 15 faulty graphic cards so they had put a another cheaper one in so I asked if I could have a look.
I said they had also changed the motherboard, they denied it but I pointed out the other mobo had a little scratch where I'd marked it
I told them we'd wait until they put the dearer graphics card back in.

The very first computer shop in Stoke was just up from the Rigger on the right hand side before the roundabout, maybe it was Castle Computers! The owner knew zero about computers, he just got the parts you wanted.

 

[DampCat]

Pentium P75! My mum bought it out of a redundancy settlement. My friends were wel jel. I played so much Leisure Suite Larry (demo).

A couple years down the line we got a PIII 650, and that really knocked them out.

 

[L0new0lf]

An Acorn Electron which was a budget version of the BBC Micro.

 

[lokiss]

Dragon 32.

Operating system‎: ‎Microsoft Extended BASIC‎
Release date‎: ‎August 1982; 34 years ago‎
CPU‎: ‎Motorola 6809E @ 0.89 MHz‎
Memory‎: ‎32 KB/64 KB‎

Father Christmas delivered me one the following Christmas. I got lucky with the dragon, I lived in a village with a population of one small boy of the age, that being me of course.

I got to enjoy the dragon for a whole year before we moved a village over. New village, new mates, they had spectrums and comodores.... Naturally that was the end of the Dragon. Sadly I went round a lads house that had a 48k first

Pc.. 486 dx4.

 

[Andre]

First PC was an IBM PC with a monochrome graphics card

First computer was a Tandy TRS-80 model I

But the first computer I had access to, we had to submit hand-written "punched" cards (blacked out the "hole" with pencil) - which took a week to turn around, followed by corrections where spulling mistooks had been made - then a ream of paper returned as the output

 

[richb83]

Can't remember its spec, but was a custom build back in 2005 - Intel CPU and SLi. However, I can't forget the cost - £2k

 

[beachBOYken]

Cant remember my specs of first pc but it did run flight sim 95 which was my first game I played on pc. Was my favourite time for pc gaming.

Delta Force!

 

[tom_nieto]

My first computer was a Compaq Presario 1610 with a mighty Pentium 150 MMX chip and 16mg RAM. Played the original GTA, Carmageddon, Red Alert and Quake 2 just fine! The screen and battery were terrible even for the time!

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Com...1610-Windows-95-150MHz-80MB-RAM-/182245690085

First Desktop was a Gateway 2000 machine with a Pentium 3 500 Mhz, 128Mb RAM, DVD Drive, and a 32Mb Riva TNT2 - This beast of a machine was capable of playing Half Life, Counterstrike and Fifa 99 on 1024 x 768 of 17" curved CRT goodness!

 

[zoomee]

Olivetti 8086 with a CGA screen
then a Fujitsu 386SX (EVGA I think) with a whopping 33mhz cpu speed - phwoar!!!

 

[Wyrdo]

286 12mhz with a 20mb HDD - I forget how much RAM it had. I think that was around 1988/89? I forget, it was so long ago

 

[Akagi]

I cant remember specifically, but when I was little our first family computer ran DOS and I used to play a cannon game with my Dad where you fire a cannon and try and catch the cannonball with the other cannon.

First PC I owned was a Packard Bell with a Pentium 1, it was as old as I was and ran Windows 95. I used to play SWIV 3D, Oils Well, Professor Tims The Incredible Machine, and a couple of other things.

 

[sk3lph]

First PC was a 486 DX2 66 with 4Mb of RAM and 105Mb HDD, which I bought for my Engineering Degree course. Spent £200 upgrading the RAM to 8Mb and added a dual speed CDROM drive to it for £175.

Tried to convince my parents that I needed to upgrade the PC to a Pentium to do coursework in the last year of my degree, when in fact I really wanted to upgrade it to play Quake.

Those were the days when you had to load your PC into your car and drive round to a mates house if you wanted a bit of multi-player Death match action.

 

[MookJong]

Those were the days when you had to load your PC into your car and drive round to a mates house if you wanted a bit of multi-player Death match action.

This...

Luckily one of my mates lived in my street and we used to play coop DooM2 over 9pin serial link. I would be seen regularly walking down the street with a CRT during the summer holidays in 1995 / 96

Unbelievable times, I really cannot explain how good DooM2 coop was at the time, especially with custom maps. Loads of people played DooM in the 90s but I can't tell you how unbelievable it was to clear rooms with a friend working with you at the time.

A gaming high that I have chased and cannot reach again.

 

[A.N.Other]

An Amstrad CPC 264 back in 89/90 - only had the green monitor, though, no colour for me. Ah, the days of Harrier Attack.

Amstrad > Fujitsu > TIME > Custom > Custom > Self-built > upgrades ... re-builds ... upgrades ... re-builds

 

[tom_nieto]

This...

Luckily one of my mates lived in my street and we used to play coop DooM2 over 9pin serial link. I would be seen regularly walking down the street with a CRT during the summer holidays in 1995 / 96

Unbelievable times, I really cannot explain how good DooM2 coop was at the time, especially with custom maps. Loads of people played DooM in the 90s but I can't tell you how unbelievable it was to clear rooms with a friend working with you at the time.

A gaming high that I have chased and cannot reach again.

Ahh! The joys of GTA over a serial link soon overtaken by slinging Cat5 cables out of dormitory windows and running them secretly under carpets to play red alert 2 and counterstrike!

 

[sk3lph]

Unbelievable times, I really cannot explain how good DooM2 coop was at the time, especially with custom maps. Loads of people played DooM in the 90s but I can't tell you how unbelievable it was to clear rooms with a friend working with you at the time.

A gaming high that I have chased and cannot reach again.

Fully agree, I was one of those people, the games nowadays are amazing but I remember DOOM being so much fun and spent a lot of time laughing whilst playing, possibly due to the Doomguy animation and the speed that he went at when running.

 

[silversurfer]

Null modem cable for doom was genius for that, only did a proper network years after doom. Years before internet was ever as good and I made my own Doom level with dark rooms filled with those shotgun guys and the hell pigs flickering lights and spring loaded walls, exploding barrels. The first FPS was the best

Durell managed to get the executable size down to just under 9 kilobytes

lol imagine what they could do now in machine code if they stopped churning out the massive scaled up graphics based epics and just went back to fast engine basics