An off the shelf PC from "Comet" - not sure on the CPU it had, quite possible a 286, 386 or 486 variant. It didn't come with Windows though. It had something which I remember being like a file-a-fax type file explorer where the apps were located inside.
Then a guy we found in the paper upgraded it to Win95 for us and we had Encarta 95, which I remember taking up 1/4 of the available space
- A quick google suggests approximately 3.5-5mb of space required to install. So it sounds like roughly a 20mb hard drive! phwoar!
After that parents bought another "off the shelf" from "Tiny" - god that thing was awful. Never met the spec requirements for anything I wanted to install game wise, it also had a 19" CRT monitor which at the time was ENORMOUS. The motherboard died 3 times, twice under warranty, the 3rd time it was binned.
Around that time I started getting into custom hardware and a close family friend introduced me to you 'orrible lot
- he still browses here!
My first PC which was mine and I built had:
P4 3.0 with hyper threading and 800FSB yo!
Abit IC7 Max-3 Motherboard
512mb OCZ RAM
Radeon 128mb 9800pro
Audigy 2 Soundcard
Dual 17" monitors
External watercooling - cannot remember the name. EXOS something.
Was a beast of a machine
Ah I got goosebumps retyping that spec out. Many an hour lost on these forums discussion that build!