Support NeoGAF

[Dee Dah Dave]

C64 then Amiga 500

But if we are talking about a 'proper PC', then I swapped those two for a 486 loaded with Doom 1 + 2 and several other games. I don't remember the exact specs.

Then the first one I bought brand new was a Pentium 120. After that I built my own from scratch.

 

[diamount]

I can't remember the specifics, but it was a crappy computer donated by my school due to me being in a low income family. Next was an off-the-shelf packard bell, think I upgraded 2gb ram to play WoW. Next was in 2008 was a gtx 260, e8500 which was made by a company online. That croaked in 2014 but couldn't afford to replace it for another year, which was replaced with a 970 4790K system. Upgraded to a 980 Ti which I will likely haev until the 1080 Ti.

 

[mhayes86]

My family's first computer was a gift from my uncle for Christmas 1999 (perfect timing for the Y2K craze).

I don't remember the exact specs, but I know it was an eMachine with Windows 98, an Intel Celeron proc, and a 4GB hard drive. I remember that at one point we upgraded the hard drive to 8GB. I think the computer lasted until mid-2003 when it fried during a storm.

 

[sonycowboy]

Bunch of youngsters...

Back in 1978, TRS-80

 

[PassiveObserver]

What I consider my first PC:

Wanted a tangerine iMac, but got that instead.

Rocked this with the JBLs hanging off the side of the monitor.

 

[CMojicaAce]

Got it in the early 2000's. Didn't get a new one until like 2011..

 

[Rival]

My first was a 486dx2 50mhz beast with I believe 1 MB of ram or something. I remember my brother added more to it so I could play the 7th guest.

 

[Zimbardo]

i had a Vic-20 and then Commodore 64 when i was a kid.

around 1994 was my first real PC. it was an Intel 486 DX2/66, with 4 meg ram, 256 meg hard drive, a Trident video card, floppy drive, SoundBlaster 16 compatible knock off sound card, 2400 baud modem, and a double speed CD-Rom. i think the monitor was a 14 inch ...KFC model. hehe ...my Kentucky Fried Chicken monitor, i used to call it.

i upgraded the modem to a 14.4k US Robotics fairly quick, as well as added another 4 meg ram (8 total), and got a better video card, which was an ATI Graphics Xpression.

i grew to love DOS, and i remember hating having to move forward, when it came time, with Windows 95.

 

[Sobriquet]

My first personal computer was Commodore 64

Same.

 

[DJ_Lae]

A Commodore Vic 20, although I confess I didn't dabble much with computers until we got a Mac Plus.

Still have it lying around somewhere, although it died years ago. I replaced it with a Mac Classic that I found at a thrift store - screen flickers a tiny bit occasionally but it's not terrible.

 

[THE:MILKMAN]

Vic-20 here too. For modern PC I was late to the party.

It was the only pre-built I've had a MESH branded Athlon Thunderbird 800Mhz, 128MB RAM, 30GB HDD, Geforce 2MX 3D Prophet, 17" Mitsubishi Diamond Pro monitor.

 

[Theanine3D]

The iMac G3 was my first home computer. I'd used much older computers before this at school but this was the first one I actually owned at home. I had one of the same color as in this pic.

 

[chuckddd]

Oh my sweet summer child.

Fancy.

 

[Lombax]

IBM XT:

 

[Glass Shark]

My family's first computer was an IBM Aptiva. Don't know the exact model, but it looked like this:

 

[PetriP-TNT]

It was a Compaq 386 laptop running Windows 3.11 but can't find a picture of it.

 

[Clockwork]

I don't know if it counts but...

Coleco Adam.

The first pc I built (circa 1998) was the following:

AMD K6-2 400mhz
Diamond Micronics C200 motherboard (Ali Aladdin V chipset, ugh)
64mb pc100 SDRAM
16mb Creative Labs Banshee AGP (3dfx/Voodoo Banshee)
Sound Blaster Live! value
13gb Maxtor hard drive

 

[Pilgrimzero]

It ran Command and Conquer, and that's all it needed to do.

 

[eddie4]

Packard Bell C115

 

[jett]

It was an IBM Aptiva very similar to this one, back in 95. I I think it was already dated back when I got it, but it was a gift so I really can't complain.

486 DX2
4MB of RAM
500MB HDD
Sound Blaster 16
Windows 3.1
And I believe it had a 4X CD-ROM drive

Good times trying to figure out how to use it. I screwed it up several times just messing around with it.

First thing I upgraded was the RAM, to a whole 8MB. Then I put in some shitty Trident 3D card, and then I made the move to a Pentium CPU. I was more interested in getting emulators to run well than actual PC games back then hah.

 

[Stinkles]

Fancy.

Your zx81 is way more powerful.

 

[BIGWORM]

Some Intel P2 with 123mb ram and integrated graphics my mom built me in 98. I enjoyed Dilbert's Desktop Games on it. =)

 

[Lagamorph]

Well, I had an Atari ST, but my first actual PC....I can't recall the processor, but I remember it had 4MB of RAM and a 200MB HDD. Ran and booted to DOS, then typing "Win" got you into Windows 3.1

 

[Goldenroad]

This seems familiar. I believe it was this, but it did not have a color monitor. It was just that old green look. Maybe I had one before this one, but I definitely had this one.

 

[345triangle]

Packard Bell C115

ooh i think this is what i was talking about here:

packard bell something or other. came with 120mhz pentium, 8MB RAM (later updated to 40 so it could run FIFA 97 (yes)), 15-inch monitor, and a horrific default "navigator" UI that was like myst set in a house where all the programs were on bookshelves.

no GPU, but i added a voodoo banshee in it later and shit flew. though only in glide; for some reason anything in open GL crashed instantly. but it could max half-life!!

were your specs the same/similar?

 

[pdog128]

First was an early 90's Tandy. Don't remember the model, but it ran the Tandy Deskmate OS. I was so mad, I bought an IBM compatible version of some Mega Man game, it never ran it very well. Our next one was a mid 90's IBM Aptiva. So many hours of Starcraft on that thing.

First one of my own was a Dell XPS around 2000. I was finally able to play EverQuest!

 

[XiaNaphryz]

I think we had a TRS-80 when they came out? We didn't keep it for very long. Then a Commodore model I can't remember (small and black colored I believe, pre-C64), then a Commodore 128. First actual Intel x86 PC would be a Tandy 1000 (one of the models with the 8086 CPU).

 

[MisterNoisy]

The first PC we had was an IBM PCjr. 8088 @4.77 MHz and 128KB of RAM. I spent most of my time on it playing shareware stuff or fucking around in BASIC loaded from a cartridge.

Good times.

 

[Cipherr]

Man I loved it, but it was a mess. I believe it had... ISA cards in it? I believe that's what they were called. A long gone ancient form of peripheral cards.

I was a young kid, and I didnt take good care of it. I remember opening it and it being dusty as hell.

 

[tearsofash]

The first one I remember our family owning was an Amiga. After that, I don't really remember. The first computer I ever owned was a crappy AMD K6 in like 2003

 

[biggersmaller]

Apple IIc. We got the mouse a year later.

Me too! My great grandma got it as an incentive from some promotion at the bank and gave it to our family when I was 9.

I hated it. I couldn't find any software on a 3.5" floppy and my parents cared too little to find a 5.25" drive for it.

Correction: mine was a Apple IIc+. The worst and last of the Apple II line.

 

[Oracle Dragon]

Lots of family computers over the years. I would say the first PC (read: Wintel) that was really mine was when my dad brought home a NEC 486DX 33Mhz from work. I don't recall the year, but that was when the DX2 66Mhz was top of the line. Man, that thing ran Doom (and any other game) like stink. So many memories... Doom, Wing Commander series, Rebel Assault...

In 1996/7 my girlfriends parents still were using their XT! Not as a backup/kids computer, as their only computer for their family, Amber mono screen, dual 5.25 floppies, the works.

Not counting Wintel, the first computer of my own was a ViC20 I got when my Dad got a C128. Of course there was no monitor, so I got a little 12 inch TV in my room to use to learn how to "program basic". Of course I was nine or ten so when I wasn't playing Cosmic Cruncher and Omega Race, I used it to watch Dallas

 

[jstripes]

Fancy.

That was my first too.

As someone not living in England, I honestly did not know what to do with it.

 

[RedSwirl]

Can't quite remember. I wanna say we had it around 1990 or 1991 or something. Only thing I remember about it was some kind of paint program with clip art. Most of the screen was tinted blue.

If my dad didn't in fact own that computer, then it was a Windows 95 system we got probably around Win95's launch.

 

[Piggus]

Apple II when I was REALLY young. I remember the first time I was able to spell "CAT" using some educational spelling game.

But the first computer I did any real gaming on was a sweet Power Mac running Mac OS7. I believe it was a 4400 or similar. I used to play the shit out of Sim City 2000, Lemmings, Power Pete, Syndicate, Mac Brickout, and tons of other games on it. Somewhere I still have most of those games. My mom was the only one in our family who completed all of the Mac Brickout levels though. She was super addicted to it.

 

[Mufc1427]

My first PC was a Compaq laptop running Windows Vista. It was a piece of shit.

 

[marcrochip2]

http://cdn.overclock.net/8/84/8451190b_Dsc00547.jpeg
Learned MS-DOS just to play games on it.

 

[Wedge7]

First computer was a Compaq Presario. Believe it was in 1997 or 1998. Went with my parents and bought it from Futureshop, remember being so damn excited as we were driving home. It came with a demo of MotoRacer, some motorcyle game that had what I thought were incredible graphics. I recall being so happy when they let me put it in my room, as I initially had a fear that they would listen to those News Reports from back in the 90's urging parents to leave computers in a family area, to prevent kids from accessing porn or scary chat rooms.

My Grandparents were the first people I knew who had a PC, a IBM computer back in 1994(?) perhaps, definitely a few years before us. Then my cousins bought one as well in around 96, and started my obsession with the Warcraft 2 Demo, which I played for countless hours every time I went to his house.

In my life, I've had 7 computers in total. Typically buy a new one every 3 years. Have actually never upgraded one ever, always just purchase one completely brand new. Either give away my old PC's to family or relatives, or just keep it as a backup.

 

[Thaedolus]

Packard Bell 386 something or other. I can't remember details, but my parents wrote out the command prompts in order to run the games I wanted. Also, I got a Prodigy account and my password was 123456, because I was 6.

...yep.

 

[NOLA_Gaffer]

This likely isn't the exact model, but the casing looked identical to this.

25mhz 486SX
4MB of RAM (Which I later upgraded to 8MB)
200MB HDD
2x CD-ROM Drive

 

[Noema]

Acer 386SX 33MHz.
2MB of RAM and a 40MB HDD.

My dad bought it for me in 1991. I wanted to play computer games and I pestered him for months, under the false pretense that I needed it for school.

The computer was already pretty outdated by 1991. I was able to play some older games, namely Lucasarts and Sierra graphic adventures, but newer stuff like Doom and SimCity 2000 wouldn't run on it. The HDD was so small that after installing DOS and Windows 3.1 there was barely any space left for games.

I upgraded the shit out of that computer. I got a 500MB HDD, then a SoundBlaster 16 which I used for almost a decade, a VESA graphics card so I could play SimCity 2000 and most importantly, an extra 4MB of RAM so I could play Doom and X-Com. Sometimes the Aliens turn in X-Com would take like 10 minutes because the CPU was so slow. Doom ran at like 10fps unless I reduced the screen to the size of a postcard. I even got a 256 shades of gray handheld scanner because why the fuck not. I had no use for it (I was 12) but I was stunned by the fact that I could translate pictures from the real world into my computer. Of course the scanner required its own ISA card because this was in a pre-USB world.

That PC instilled in me a love for computers that endures to this day. I tinkered the shit out of it and I learned a ton in the process. I salute you, you old clunker.

This piece of shit. Many many many hours of StarCraft on this machine.

I owned that. Pentium CPU at 200MHz with 16MB of RAM. I played so much StarCraft on it. I could never manage to upgrade the RAM on it. It was super finicky as to what sort of DIMMs it took, even if they had all the right specs. I wanted to play SimCity 3000 and the Sims so bad, but I never had enough RAM.

 

[Wag]

Apple ][+ with cassette (then added floppy drive when they came out).

 

[Bleepey]

All I remember is 133mhz and no soundcard or graphics card. it could run Quake and MDK 1. MDK 2 and Quake 3 however were way too much for it.

 

[GoldenEye 007]

Some sort of mid 1990s Packard Bell. Don't remember anything specific other than that.

I remember this badass flight sim game on it, though. F117 Nighthawk something.

 

[The Albatross]

Intel 386, but I don't think it was branded with any other companies. Edit, it was an IBM.
It's still at my parents.

Then we got an Intel IBM Aptiva

The next computer was a Gateway sometime in the 1990s and this lasted a while. I think this was the computer I took to college with me, but I replaced most of the parts in it over the years. My parents got a Dell after that.

 

[Nibiru]

IBM PS/1

30mb of storage and 1mb of ram. It was a beast haha!

 

[CreepingFear]

This thread made me look into buying my old PC to restore it. Then, I came to my senses.

 

[Deleted member 17706]

We had received some old computers for free from family members. I think one might have been an Apple II, but I don't know what the others were. The first computer I remember my father buying for the family was back in early 1993. It might have been a Compaq? I remember it had a 386 processor and a CD-ROM drive. We later got a copy of King's Quest VI on CD and I was pretty much hooked on PC gaming ever since.

 

[Netherscourge]

Commodore Vic 20

I played Text-based "Choose your own adventure" type of games on it.

 

[mm04]

Atari 400. First one I purchased with my own money? 486DX2 66! As a college student I financed it for $90 a month for 24 months. Good times.