What was your first PC spec?

Associate
Joined
17 Mar 2009
Posts
443
My first PC would have been a Sinclair Spectrum 16K, back then it was a "home micro" what happened to that term , it was great :)

In the modern sense it would have been...

Pentium 166MMX
32MB EDO RAM
1.6GB quantum Fireball HDD
1mb Diamond Stealth graphics card
ISA sound card
Windows 95

I got given a Voodoo Rush a few days after getting it which let me play Quake properly, couldn't play online with my 14.4K US Robotics modem though...
 
Associate
Joined
16 Feb 2021
Posts
44
ZX81, Spectrum 48k, CBM64, Atari ST... then a huge gap for years of having nothing. And straight back into it with a dual-celeron Abit BP6 (128mb!), running Win95 and NT4.
 
Caporegime
Joined
26 Dec 2003
Posts
25,666
486 DX2-66
Tseng Labs ET4000

I remember often playing games without sound because it had quite a big impact on performance. Kids today are so spoiled. :p

I also later endured a few years of Cyrix.
 
Last edited:
Soldato
Joined
16 Jul 2010
Posts
5,894
My PC progression is
  • ZX81
  • C64
  • Amiga 1000
  • Pentium 90 (Later with 3DFX Voodoo1)
  • AMD K6 200 (Later overclocked to 233)
  • AMD K6-2 350
  • Intel Q6600 (What a stonking processor that was, competitive for years)
  • Intel i5 760
  • Intel i7 4790k (Another stonking processor that was competitive for years)
  • AMD 3900x
Along the way I've also had a ZX Spectrum+, Acorn Electron, Atari 800, and an Atari ST, but these were either collectibles or used for some work before sellng on.

This doesn't count the Q8400 running my Mame cabinet (using Windows XP!)
 
Soldato
Joined
22 Nov 2018
Posts
2,715
Spectrum +2
Sega Master System
Super Nintendo
Amiga 1200
PlayStation

Then my first PC:

AMD K6-2 333 MHz
PC Chips M577 Motherboard
64Mb PC100 SDRAM
16Mb Nvidia TNT2
SoundBlaster PCI 64
2.1Gb HDD
24x CD ROM
Windows 98

I built it myself. I'd never even seen inside a pc before. Never even used a pc before.
 
Last edited:
Associate
Joined
28 May 2021
Posts
1,310
Location
St Albans
Self build 386/40 (AMD) and pretty much forgot the rest.. very cream coloured. Probably an S3 PCI card... 4Mb Ram? SOOOO many years ago
 
Associate
Joined
3 Oct 2017
Posts
114
Pentium 90
8mb
???MB Hard drive
CD Rom & SB Soundcard (I think the CD drive connected through the soundcard)
S3 Graphics
Win 3.11 (with about a dozen installation floppy disks)

Just under £2k, bought through an ad in a magazine, & had to send payment cheque through the post.

As a kid i had Atari ST. Then while at college seeing CPUs listed (486 etc) in electronics catalog perked my interest into being able to build my own, I didnt have knowledge or confidence (there wasnt youtube guides back then) so bought a pre-built Pentium 90 as my 1st proper pc, as soon as warranty expired i opened the case to get a better idea, after which I've always built my own down the years with Cyrix/AmD/Intel Cpus & AMD/Ati, Matrox, 3dfx, Nvidia GPUs
 
Associate
Joined
15 Jun 2021
Posts
50
Location
Chesterfield
Had a 128k spectrum very early one, but my real PC was

Cyrix mmx 333mhz
onboard gpu shared memory
32mb ram
win 98
???MB Hard drive

Used for mainly playing AvP & XCOM UFO Enemy Unknown. I did not have internet at the time.
 

Deleted member 66701

D

Deleted member 66701

AMD XP2400, ECS K7S5a mobo, ATI 9700, 512mb ram, 80gb Maxtor HDD, 19" Dell flatscreen CRT.

I was late to the PC scene - stuck with an Amiga (and PS1/PS2 for modern games) up until then.
 
Soldato
Joined
26 Apr 2003
Posts
5,744
Location
West Midlands
It was a Tiny PC, bought in 1997.

Pentium II MMX 266MHz
64MB RAM
6.4 GB HDD
4MB ATi Rage IIc
Windows 95

The following Christmas the ATi card was swapped for a 16MB Voodoo Banshee PCI which was probably the biggest upgrade I've ever done in terms of a performance jump.
 
Associate
Joined
30 Jan 2019
Posts
881
My very first PC was an apricot but never worked I paid 1.50p for it back in 1998 from a car boot sale I was only a kid and I loved it always thinking about how amazing it would be just to see something on the screen. The apricot monitor worked OK. I can't remember if it was a full color display tho it might have been black and white only. That was the computer that got me into computers. I then got an Apple II with a bunch of games and other software with Apple twin disk drives and apple green screen monitor. Then I got an Acorn A3000 with Acorn color monitor so those were my 3 computers until I later got a proper desktop PC, although the apricot was a desktop PC it just didn't work.
 
Associate
Joined
28 May 2008
Posts
1,630
Location
Crewe aka Crewhan
486DX2, P233MMX then onto k6-2 450 and sometime in 99/00 a little computer shop at 48 imex business park in Fenton did overclocked AMD Slot-A Athlons @ 800Mhz.

Do any of you remember the plastic tupaware full tower they sold? I had one and it came with 2x PSU slots and had plenty of room for your sandwiches :D

JunoP6FullTower_image_B3sIc.jpg
 
Back
Top Bottom