What was your first PC spec?

Oz!asM!dwinter · 7 Dec 2021 at 15:01

First PC I had was a Packard Bell corner PC with 1 Gb Hard drive (summer/autumn 1996). First PC I built was an Abit BH-6 mobo with an intel Celeron 300a Oc'ed to 450MHz (still got the motherboard and it still works, although the Celeron 300a has gone to the Currys in the sky.)

Uhtred · 24 Feb 2022 at 15:08

My dad found the spec sheet from the shop we bought it from with loads of info but, frustratingly no date. However the sales phone number for the shop started 01 so it must have been after PhONEday (April 1995) which is close to the Windows 95 release.

Anyway it was a 486 DX 33, 200mb HDD, 14 CRT, 4MB Ram with windows 3.11 and DOS 6.22. We also had Amipro and other lotus bits installed.

This PC was for my parents to be able to do music publishing and so they bought a Soundblaster AWE 32 (huge card!) and the Finale suite. MIDI then connected the sound card to an electric keyboard

It was long until we bought 4mb more RAM and a CD ROM (quad speed) and that was how it remained for years.

Timber · 26 Feb 2022 at 14:51

My first PC was Escom PC purchased in early, want to say March 1996.

Pentium 166Mhz
16MB RAM - I do remember upgrading & the figure of 40MB sticks - so maybe I kept 8MB and added 2x16MB, or something
1.2GB HDD
Windows 95
Built-in soundcard
CD-ROM Drive - want to say 16x but this could be well off
ATI Mach 64 1MB - upgraded this for £25 by slotting in a 1MB memory chip to take it to 2MB - which I wanted to try and eliminate that turtle icon on some custom Quake maps

And then purchased a Videologic PowerVR 4MB either very late '96 or early '97 which really transformed the PC in certain games; R@ce Pro, Rage, Quake etc. That said I probably just should have bought a 3dfx Voodoo but none the less really enjoyed this add-on.

Overall nothing but happy memories with this PC. Got me through insane amounts of gaming and college work. This particular PC never was connected to the internet either so new content was usually through mountains of PC Magazine demo disks/CDs. What happy days.

Drizmod · 27 Feb 2022 at 15:52

Intel Pentium 133Mhz
16MB ram
1GB HD
ATI 2MB GPU

Was a Medion PC I bought from Aldi for like £500 if I remember correctly

Later I added the Voodoo 3 PCI 16MB card just in time for Tomb Raider 2 and the graphics difference was insane. Don't think I have ever seen the same difference again

Guest2 · 28 Feb 2022 at 15:14

Uhtred said:
My dad found the spec sheet from the shop we bought it from with loads of info but, frustratingly no date. However the sales phone number for the shop started 01 so it must have been after PhONEday (April 1995) which is close to the Windows 95 release.

Anyway it was a 486 DX 33, 200mb HDD, 14 CRT, 4MB Ram with windows 3.11 and DOS 6.22. We also had Amipro and other lotus bits installed.

This PC was for my parents to be able to do music publishing and so they bought a Soundblaster AWE 32 (huge card!) and the Finale suite. MIDI then connected the sound card to an electric keyboard

It was long until we bought 4mb more RAM and a CD ROM (quad speed) and that was how it remained for years.

Strangely underpowered PC to use as a music production / publishing machine.
The AWE 32 released in 1994 so that seems about right, however the 486 DX33 was around 1990.
By 1996 the mid range (£1000) PCs were generally Pentium 133s with 8MB RAM and 1.2GB+ HDD albeit not with an AWE32 or any dedicated GPU. My midrange PC in 1996 came with a Soundblaster 16
Maybe the jump with CPU/RAM/HDD hardware was just huge in 1994 - 1996

Uhtred · 28 Feb 2022 at 15:33

Guest2 said:
Strangely underpowered PC to use as a music production / publishing machine.
The AWE 32 released in 1994 so that seems about right, however the 486 DX33 was around 1990.
By 1996 the mid range (£1000) PCs were generally Pentium 133s with 8MB RAM and 1.2GB+ HDD albeit not with an AWE32 or any dedicated GPU. My midrange PC in 1996 came with a Soundblaster 16
Maybe the jump with CPU/RAM/HDD hardware was just huge in 1994 - 1996

Yeah it's weird how the mind plays tricks on you, I didn't realise it was so close to win95 and pentiums. Finale is really just type setting so the 486 was absolutely fine for that task (the AWE was overkill tbh) but there is a note on the piece of paper to get a DX and NOT SX

Guest2 · 28 Feb 2022 at 15:56

Uhtred said:
Yeah it's weird how the mind plays tricks on you, I didn't realise it was so close to win95 and pentiums. Finale is really just type setting so the 486 was absolutely fine for that task (the AWE was overkill tbh) but there is a note on the piece of paper to get a DX and NOT SX

It would be interesting to know how much that machine was, still £500-£800 I expect. There were many small computer repair shops branching out to sales in the mid 90s when home computing really took off.
Luckily my aunty was friends with someone who owned a shop so my machine was about on the mark (1k for P133, 8MB RAM, 1.2GB HDD, 15" monitor, SB16, mouse, keybaord and Win95 'oem' plus a few other demo cds)
The scrotes still charged us £50 for Windows 95 that came pre installed as I remember reading the receipt. I never remember seeing an OEM sticker anywhere or key or anything so it was probably all off one retail copy/key, installed on machines for people for £50 a pop

Cyber-Mav · 28 Feb 2022 at 16:54

486 sx 25
4mb ram
512k cirrus logic gfx card
Cant remember hdd size may have been 40 or 80meg

Purchased from dixons!!!

tonys · 1 Mar 2022 at 20:15

Commodore Vic 20

tenofspades · 8 Mar 2022 at 12:10

Riva tnt 2 graphics card

Luna · 18 Mar 2022 at 10:51

I don't remember my old family pc specs, the first one that was mine was a Dell Inspiron 5100, Intel Pentium 4 2.4 GHZ, 256mb ram, ATI Radeon 7500 16mb, 30GB HDD

dave28 · 18 Mar 2022 at 10:53

it was back in the mid to late 80`s and had no idea of spec.

first desktop i built myself had 16gb ram, i5-2500k

alexakasloth · 18 Mar 2022 at 12:44

IIRC my first PC was:

AMD K6-2 400mhz
64MB RAM
2MB graphics card
20(?) GB HDD

It was a cheap buy from the back of the MicroMart selling pages, upgraded it shortly after with a Voodoo 3, Pentium CPU 500mhz and a Maxtor 80GB HDD. This was around 2001/2002.

Ragnahex · 27 Mar 2022 at 11:15

was a p75 if memory serves
16mb ram i think?
1.01gb hdd. More space than you'll need!

Bubo · 29 Mar 2022 at 10:54

First PC was a Dell P75 in a chonking metal desktop case, with a 2x CD drive and I think 8MB of RAM, with a Number 9 GXE64 Trio graphics card and Sound Blaster 16.

I think my first upgrades were to change the CPU to a Cyrix P150+ and to a Matrox Millennium GPU.

Before that went from an Acorn Electron>BBC B>Atari STFM>Amiga 500>A500+>A4000>PC as above

Fluffybob · 29 Mar 2022 at 11:20

P166 MMX
16MB RAM
4.3GB HDD
Matrox Mystique GFX (I think).

mikemod · 29 Mar 2022 at 13:12

Just found this quote I had made in '94, what a bargain :eek:

barkingboy · 11 May 2022 at 10:50

After C64, Amiga in Jan 1997

P200
16MB RAM
1.2GB Quantum Bigfoot (5.25")
1.44MB 3.5" floppy drive
Creative labs 4x CDROM
Creative labs Sound Blaster 16
Creative labs Graphics Blaster (1MB, not sure of exact model)
Creative labs Speakers
Samsung 14" Monitor
Generic Mouse / Keyboard
Windows 95b

Uhtred · 11 May 2022 at 11:22

Uhtred said:
the sales phone number for the shop started 01 so it must have been after PhONEday (April 1995) which is close to the Windows 95 release.

Thinking about this again the new numbers were active 8 months before the switch so it might have been earlier than April

SexyGreyFox · 11 May 2022 at 12:34

First PC was a 386SX20 with 4 meg of RAM.
Before that I had most major computers starting with the Spectrum and just before the PC I had an Amiga 500 and Atari ST.