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

[Guest2]

1997
Intel Pentium 100
1mb onboard graphics
Sound blaster 16
8mb ram
1.2gb hdd
win 95

£1000

http://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2013/03/13-things-you-were-doing-on-the-computer-in-1997/quake-2

Damn right about this.
No way Quake 2 would run on my PC. Duke Nukem 3d only just ran! I remember being blown away at the quality of 640 x 480 but had to play in 320 x 240 because it was actually playable like that instead of it running at about 10fps (before i even knew what fps even was)
My friends dad luckily had a much better PC so would go around there to play most things

Why do they have a photo of a zip disk reader instead of a CD-RW?

http://www.complex.com/pop-culture/...were-doing-on-the-computer-in-1997/cd-burners

 

[Skunkworks]

P100
16mb RAM
1gb HDD
4mb Diamond Stealth graphics card 1024x768
Soundblaster 16 soundcard
6x CDROM
Iiyama Visionmaster Pro 17 monitor

Back in 96 this was considered a monster. Today, my phone ***** all over it!

 

[Guest2]

P100
16mb RAM
1gb HDD
4mb Diamond Stealth graphics card 1024x768
Soundblaster 16 soundcard
6x CDROM
Iiyama Visionmaster Pro 17 monitor

Back in 96 this was considered a monster. Today, my phone ***** all over it!

Wow, in 1997 I wanted a 4mb dedicated graphics card but had to wait over a year before I spent £150 on a Matrox Mystique 220 4mb card! The Diamond must have cost well over £300 even back then!
I also had to make do with a 4x CDROM and 15" monitor. The Iiyama Visionmaster Pro were things dreams were made of!

 

[Skunkworks]

IIRC the whole thing was 2.4k. The monitor was around £680 - the picture was stunning. I still have it in a cupboard at mum's place.

 

[TripleT]

Mine was a dx2 66 8meg 500meg HDD and a 2 speed cd drive.

Anyone remember the voodoo graphics cards? Remember saving up for one.

 

[Rroff]

No way Quake 2 would run on my PC.

We had Quake 2 running on the P100s at college - 320x240 and about 10fps with the software renderer. Was a pretty inferior experience to the other machines which were P1 166MHz IIRC.

The Diamond must have cost well over £300 even back then!

My dad had a 2MB Diamond card of some sort in a 286 as he used a high end digital microscope for work which at that time cost over 3 grand - used ISA port I believe.

 

[Fusion]

Did have a Spectrum 128k as a young kid.

First "proper" PC was PIII 450 MHz, 64mb RAM, 8.4GB HD, 17" Sony Trinitron.

Was pretty well specced at the time (1999), had onboard graphics though which were poor.

 

[ubersonic]

The early Voodoos were simply 3D accelerators and you had to chain in a 2D graphics card to get display output - IIRC some variants of the Voodoo 2 and the Banshee, etc. could drive a monitor directly though.

Indeed, the 2D card rendered everything but the effects leaving black boxes instead and the 3D card filled in the blanks. It was kinda funny because at that point if you had no 3D card you could just run DirectX accelerated games anyway and you would get black outlines instead of transparency (looked a bit like borderlands lol) it was still better than the software rendering option XD

We had Quake 2 running on the P100s at college - 320x240 and about 10fps with the software renderer.

Sounds just like the PS1 version of Quake II

 

[Skunkworks]

Anyone remember the voodoo graphics cards? Remember saving up for one.

I got a 12mb Voodoo 2 in 1998. I nearly fell off my chair when I saw Quake 2. It was like going from an animated gif to 1080p! To this day no single piece of kit has made such a difference.

 

[DrToffnar]

I honestly couldn't say. I'm probs a little younger then some on here so it's probably a more modern system that I'm remembering.

Twas a system my aunt and uncle gave my nan for me and my bro to play with. I don't remember it having a mouse in fact... It did however have a wicked version of Galaga and a game called Squabble on it. Spent hours and hours on that damn machine...

 

[dubs]

Custom built by a local shop, Cyrus MII processor

 

[Mik3]

I got a 12mb Voodoo 2 in 1998. I nearly fell off my chair when I saw Quake 2. It was like going from an animated gif to 1080p! To this day no single piece of kit has made such a difference.

Same here, 3DFX Glide I think the res was around 800x600 I was totally blown away, I have never experienced such incredible 3D graphics and smooth game play, thats why I kept my Voodoo 2 to this day. I keep meaning to build a old rig with a K62 500, Voodoo 3 and replay some of those old games, sure you could replay them on a modern system but it wont be the same experience

 

[TripleT]

I got a 12mb Voodoo 2 in 1998. I nearly fell off my chair when I saw Quake 2. It was like going from an animated gif to 1080p! To this day no single piece of kit has made such a difference.

Yer I had a voodoo3 2000 in the purple box with the eyes.

Think my most noticeable upgrade was getting a Diamond Supra External Modem from the Members Market.

Steady 150-200ping on TFC and CS ( I think). Then I got Telewest cable so had 30ping!

 

[Guest2]

The first time i was blown away by PC graphics was the Unreal intro on 3dfx. Just

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLBgaLOi7N4

Incredible for the time. First time seeing anything like it. I remember watching a tech demo for Unreal after it was released and still being blown away - first time things like mist, smoke, reflections and water had been used like that in a game

 

[hux]

First was some Apricot P66, felt ripped off as I soon realised there were far better pc's for cheaper.

Sold it to a friend, for far less than I paid so my first real pc was....

P2 266
Supermicro board, first to have agp
Matrox millennium with creative 3d blaster
Creative pc dvd board and all
Supermicro server case, it was mahoosive even by today's standard, 3ft tall with wheels.
19" flatscreen viewsonic crt monitor
Creative pc 350 speakers with sub

I remember being at a lan, some guy yelled to the others on hexen, don't use shadow eyes he can run vga!!!

Didn't know what it meant, just assumed it meant I had hell of a rig at the time.

 

[Lartyconshayo]

286 with a monitor that had burn in from the video store I got it from. Learned BASIC on it.

 

[Sone]

My old man gave me his old 486 around 96.
486sx 25mhz
4mb ram
200mb hdd
1mb cirus logic
SB Awe32
2x CD ROM

Upgraded it to 8mb and a DX33.

 

[timmothy]

1997
Intel Pentium 100
1mb onboard graphics
Sound blaster 16
8mb ram
1.2gb hdd
win 95

£1000

http://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2013/03/13-things-you-were-doing-on-the-computer-in-1997/quake-2

Damn right about this.
No way Quake 2 would run on my PC. Duke Nukem 3d only just ran! I remember being blown away at the quality of 640 x 480 but had to play in 320 x 240 because it was actually playable like that instead of it running at about 10fps (before i even knew what fps even was)
My friends dad luckily had a much better PC so would go around there to play most things

Why do they have a photo of a zip disk reader instead of a CD-RW?

http://www.complex.com/pop-culture/...were-doing-on-the-computer-in-1997/cd-burners

I had these exact same specs as my first proper pc

 

[CGrieves]

Was working in a PC/game shop in Guildford. Saved up a bunch of cash and bought a magnificent 486 dx2/66, 4Mb RAM, 360Mb HD, Matrix Millennium I think, and borrowed a very nice 17" CRT. It played Flight Sim 5 a treat, and I hardly used my Amiga 1200 again (sadly).

Lasted me a long while that PC, in various guises. Ended up with a 3DFX at some point, obligatory LAN card for multiplayer Doom, a 5 1/4" 1Gb hard drive the size of a shoebox from a mainframe (needed a custom BIOS to cope with the spinup time).

Can't remember what I did with it, I must have given it away around the Pentium era.

Happy days.

 

[lokiss]

Think my most noticeable upgrade was getting a Diamond Supra External Modem

A thing of legend/

I lucked out on getting one, my box at the time was fitted with a Diamond internal, so I bought on the name. The internal was the mirror opposite of the external, 100-150 pings were double on the same isp. There were times when the ping would drop to a steady 90 in q2 in the early hours.

Funny story though, I tried the same principle when I got isdn and went with the external BT terminal adapter, which was absolutely rubbish *100 pings compared to the BT int pinging 50.