Great system
Reminds me of our first family PC bought from the now dead 'Tiny' manufacturer. It was a 486 if I member correctly and that was slow enough, can't imagine what a 286 must've been like!
286's were damn fast processors... Remember they were not bogged down by windows most of the time, and even when they were, it was such a light weight OS back then compared to what we have now.
My first "PC" was an Amstrad 1512, upgraded with an EGA card & Monitor. Technically it was dual screen as it was impossible to disable the internal CGA card, and the monitor contained the powersupply for the entire PC, so the old amstrad screen was tucked away under the desk!.
Oh yeah, system spec... 8mhz 8086 CPU (true 16 bit processor), 640Kb ram, and 40Mb hard disk
I used to play Sierra adventure games like Kings Quest, Space Quest and Leisure Suit Larry, and one of my favorite games was Elite.
Some of those second generation IBM's (PS/2's rather than XT/AT's) were odd systems. A full height (what we call a 5.25inch bay now is technically a half height bay) 20meg disk in 1993!!!! My 1986 Amstrad had 3.5inch 40Mb hard drive. I think I even have that disk in the attic somewhere.
Funny to remember that a ram upgrade back then envolved inserting individual ram chips! Orientation "check", Pins aligned "Check", push firmly.. Wee it works an extra 128K of ram. (Yep I upgraded from 512Kb to 640Kb)
By the time I could afford to get a 286 computer, I was playing Wing Commander, and that had seriously great graphics, sound (Thanks to Creative Sound Blaster), and only just ran smoothly on my 10mhz 286.. But it was playable to the end on that spec.
BTW. Amiga 500, while a fairly decent machine, its main CPU was considerably somewhere between the performance of an 8086, and an 80286, but it seemed faster because it had hardware acellerated sound and graphics. However a 386 with a decent VGA card was more than a match for the Amiga in my opinion, no need to have waited for Pentiums, which quite frankly kick the ass of the basic Amiga 500. I had an Amiga as well as my PC, and where possible I bought the games for the PC, as long as they supported Soundblaster or even better Roland LAPC-1 , otherwise I would go for the Amiga version for better sound.
My, that sends me back... PC Games with Roland support had the best sound of any platform of its day, stunning music quality, and even though you needed both a Roland and a Soundblaster if you wanted both music and speech, the combined result was stunning. Modern games tend to be much less cool when it comes to music, as they are often just embedded MP3's. With the midi based Roland, the composers could design the music to flow smoothly from one area to another and they were much more dynamic when an unexpected event happend in game.
Still - such fond memories of Sim City 2000, Indycar Racing, Monkey Island 2, X-wing, TFX, Worms... aaaaaahhhhhhh