What was your first PC spec?

Our first was an Evesham Vale (later became Evesham Micros, think they went bust after that) with the following specs:

486sx 25Mhz
4MB RAM
105MB HDD
1MB Video Card
Adlib2 Soundcard
DOS 5 and Windows 3.1

Long since went to the tip on my mother's insistence as she is the opposite of a hoarder. It did keep coming up with a memory error however, though had been since dad put an extra 16MB in, so was probably once of those chips.

Our 2nd one was a Dell

Pentium 200 MMX
32MB RAM (Later 64MB)
4.3GB HDD (Later 15GB)
4MB Video (Later S3 Savege4 16MB)
Soundblaster AWE32 Soundcard
Windows 95 (Later Windows 98SE)

Still have it in it's upgraded configuration. I booted it up when I visited my parents last Christmas, and still worked, not bad for an 11 year old PC.
 
Not really much to go off but it was a Time Computer... I'm unsure though whether it was a 40mb or 40gb hard drive, it was pretty pathetic and could barely play Command and Conquer. It also used to crash ALL the time!
 
Just got rid of my last laptop - was a 486DX2-50 with an 800x600 green screen and a massive 300MB hard drive!

First was a 8086 at 4.66MHz with 8MB RAM and a Hercules mono graphics card. Good old IBM keyboard on it too - would still be working/using if motherboards came with the 5-pin connector!

First real one was aZilog Z80 at 1.7MHz and 1KB or RAM (Tandy TRS-80 Model I) - ah the fun of 64x16 screens (128x32 blocks for "graphics")
 
My first PC was a beast - I built it myself in Jan 1997 using most of the top spec 'recommended' components from the PC Pro Magazine Awards issue a few months previous.

Pentium 166
Gigabyte MB (Can't remember which model. It had Pipeline Burst cache) :p
32MB EDO RAM
Creative Labs AWE32 soundcard
Matrox Mystique Graphics Card 2D/3D (4MB). Running 3D games at 1024x768 was a big deal back then :)
2.1 GB Hard Drive. [At the time I thought this was massive and I would never fill it :p]
US Robotics 33.6k modem [I was signed to AOL from Jan 97 and was one of the first users of the online Wireplay system ran by BT - this was very costly. A monthly subscription to both plus the phone call cost for the time spent online. Some of my phone bills were £400+)
17" Sony Trinitron monitor
HP 820 printer

It cost me £3k which was approx 10 months hard work at Sainsbury's (part time)

In hindsight I should have spent less and upgraded it 2-3 years later, instead, I had for around 6 years where it was then dog slow and couldn't run anything :(
 
Last edited:
First custom build wasn't actually that long ago:

i3 3220
Asrock H77 something or other
I think I went with 4GB of DDR3 to begin with
HD 7850 - overclocked like a monster.
Cheapest decent PSU

Did me well, and played lots of games at very decent settings.
 
First PC in our house was a BBC Master ... duuuuuuhhh-beep!

Then it was IBM computer as my dad worked there .... I think the first one home was a 286. Then latterly a 386sx ( couldn't run doom when it came out ) ... but I ran OS/2 Warp on it. I miss that ... all 27 floppy disks worth on a 128Mb hard drive ... I think there was about 20Mb free by the end of the install of all features.

My first custom build would have been an early pentium, but I cant remember the specs.

I also remember having a pentium II (?) which was originally clocked at a lower speed, but on reading an article about an odd batch which were mis-labelled or something, I was able to jump its speed right up to something much higher cause my CPU was in that batch.
 
I Built a 486 SX 33 with a Gravis ultrasound sound card. I liked flight sims back then and the Amiga wasn't great for that type of game. I played Dawn patrol, Aces over the Pacific and Aces over Europe most of the time.
 
SDK^ said:
My first PC was a beast - I built it myself in Jan 1997 using most of the top spec 'recommended' components from the PC Pro Magazine Awards issue a few months previous.

Pentium 166
Gigabyte MB (Can't remember which model. It had Pipeline Burst cache) :p
32MB EDO RAM
Creative Labs AWE32 soundcard
Matrox Mystique Graphics Card 2D/3D (4MB). Running 3D games at 1024x768 was a big deal back then :)
2.1 GB Hard Drive. [At the time I thought this was massive and I would never fill it :p]
US Robotics 33.6k modem [I was signed to AOL from Jan 97 and was one of the first users of the online Wireplay system ran by BT - this was very costly. A monthly subscription to both plus the phone call cost for the time spent online. Some of my phone bills were £400+)
17" Sony Trinitron monitor
HP 820 printer

It cost me £3k which was approx 10 months hard work at Sainsbury's (part time)

In hindsight I should have spent less and upgraded it 2-3 years later, instead, I had for around 6 years where it was then dog slow and couldn't run anything :(
Click to expand...


2.1 GB HDD :O i think my first PC had a 1 GB drive, Pentium III, cant remember the GFX card but it ran everything at the time. my mate had a 500gb hdd and i remember thinking id never fill mine up!
 
486 (25MHz using the turbo button)
4mb RAM
180mb hard drive
no usb
sound blaster sound card
ms-dos 6
windows 3.1

(Was actually my older brother's but I used it a lot). Ran Commander Keen just fine
 
Acer Pentium 100
8MB RAM
810MB hard disk
1MB SVGA graphics card

Didn't get a Matrox card for 'proper' 3D until quite a bit later.
 
I remember a PC built myself back in the early 2000's . I specifically wanted a motherboard that supported jumper setting and the clock and multiplier. The shop owner asked why. When I explained I wanted to overclock the CPU, he gave me a right old lecture. He said "over running" the CPU was something that was coming from America and it was not recommended. He told me not to do it in case Intel 'found out' LOL.
 
pitkin said:
I remember a PC built myself back in the early 2000's . I specifically wanted a motherboard that supported jumper setting and the clock and multiplier. The shop owner asked why. When I explained I wanted to overclock the CPU, he gave me a right old lecture. He said "over running" the CPU was something that was coming from America and it was not recommended. He told me not to do it in case Intel 'found out' LOL.
Click to expand...
Sounds like most PC people back then. Without out the internet everyone just trusted whatever their guy was telling them so it was easy for random crap to be believed
 
The first PC in our household was a ~£3000 top of the line multimedia beast:

486 DX 33 MHz
16 MB RAM I think
500 MB HDD
2x (2 speed) CD-ROM drive
Audio galaxy sound card IIRC (sound blaster compatible)

Played games like Sim City 2000, talkie CD versions of LucasArts games (Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis being a favourite), the original C&C, and The 7th Guest, as well as games like Doom / Wolfenstein 3D of course.

A few years later my Dad's work were throwing out PCs so I got my own 486 DX2 66 MHz, but the day of the 486 was ending already by this time. I remember being thrilled at getting a demo of Grim Fandango to load on it and being in awe of the graphics/ambience, even though it was probably running at 1 fps and was so demanding the audio kept chopping out.

The next family upgrade was a massive jump to a PII-450 MHz, 128 MB RAM, 16 MB Voodoo Banshee, DVD drive, 10 GB HDD, 19" CRT etc, in the Half Life era.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom