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Your first computer.

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IGotBillySoSpooked said:
I'm still "running" this thing. Dimension 7100 that I got in 2004 or so. Mine also had 512 MB of ram. I've thought about upgrading it to the max 1 GB, but I'm going to be getting a new machine in the fall.

I'm on my third hard drive, but it has been fine otherwise. Actually, I think the heat sink is broken, which has caused the past two hard drives to overheat. The fan runs loud as crap almost all of the time.

I'm not a PC gamer or anything, so it has been fine for my needs. I store everything on an external drive, too, so I didn't really get upset when this last hard drive went kaput.
Had to get a new desktop for the school year because the thing could barely handle Movie Maker anymore.
Picked up this one as my new machine for a little over 500 on sale. Will be replacing graphics card soon. It's perfect for video editing in full HD, but I'd love to run New Vegas and Crysis a little better, and eventually Battlefield 3 decently.
 
miked808 said:
Played games on audio tapes.
Commodore_64_Box.jpg

When I was born, my dad had one of these in the house. It made me a gamer.
 
My first "computer" (quoted due to it's limited functions) was a Tandy Color Computer III, and my first actual computer was an Epson "Action Tower"... A whopping 486DX-2 with 8MB of RAM, a blazing 4x CD drive, and a 420MB hard drive. RESPEKT!
 
We had some macs in elementary school (mid-90's), and the first computer my family owned was some HP pc running Windows 98. We put that into my room when we got a dell xps desktop a few years later. My first of my own (that I bought) was a dell xps laptop that I still use for work, and the first one that I built was (besides my media server) my i5/5850 desktop.
 
I had some 286 that ran DOS at first.

But our first Windows 95 PC was a Toshiba Infinia.
paejhaadd.jpg


Thing was actually pretty kick-ass. 200mhz Pentium MMX with 32mb Ram and a 3GB HD. And a TV tuner card. TV on your computer?! Futuristic!
 
I believe it was a Compaq. 33Mhz, 2 or 4 MB of RAM not really sure. 200MB HDD. Came with some awesome games though like King's Quest VI and Lode Runner: The Legend Returns
 
eWz8N.jpg


The image is crappy, but I had a Compaq Presario 5xxx.

  • Windows 98
  • 300MHz - AMD Athalon II
  • 128MB RAM. Later upgraded to a whopping 384 MB!
  • 4 GB HDD
  • 2 USB ports in the front
  • Floppy Disk
  • CD Drive
 
My family's first computer was a 486SX/33 with 2 megs of RAM and 120 meg hard drive and hell if I didn't upgrade that thing to within an inch of its life before it went.

My first computer that was truly my own was an old Kaypro 2 luggable that my grandfather gave me. It was nominally "portable." But all that meant was that it had a handle on it. The "E" key didn't work when I got it but I managed to yank the switch out of some less useful key and fix it. Must have had a short in it someplace, though, because if you touched the corner of the keyboard where the two aluminum panels came together, you could feel a tingle go all the way up your shoulder.

It was fun, though. I had a couple of discs with some really excellent ASCII-only reproductions of Space Invaders, Pac-Man, and Donkey Kong. For a nine-year old kid, it was pretty rad.

My first PC that I actually bought and built for myself was a K6-300 with 64 megs of RAM and an S3 ViRGE. I thought I was pretty hot shit at the time.
 
IBM 486. my dad bought it back in 95/96. our one was the first and only one that had 1 whole gig of hdd space among all the neighbors. few of my dads friends would come over to check out this ridiculous "GIGABYTE" technology.

dad used to write down all the dos command lines on a piece of paper and leave it under the mouse pad. so i could run doom and fifa94 when he was at work. it also had a turbo button. :')
 
This bad boy:
800px-Power_Mac_6100_60.jpg


First Mac to use the PowerPC processor. My dad used it for work, and I played my first games like the Freddi Fish and Pajama Sam edutainment, and of course Myst.
 
First one I personally owned was a custom AMD K6 I got for loading things in and out of storage for this guy who owned a computer shop. First one I ever used was probably my dad's Amiga.
 
Jill Sandwich said:
sinclair_zx-spectrum_3-4_2_hr.jpg


You're not hardcore
an old fart
if your first computer's RAM isn't in kilobytes.
I'm pretty sure my dad had a zx spectrum and I played a game on it... I think, but I barely remember anything.

slqv6u.jpg

The MSX (1) is the first computer I have clear memories of. Not sure if this is the exact model, though. There's a slot for cartridges at the top. It could also load programs from tapes, which took ages and often failed. :( I remember being very fond of a game where you play a guy running around the north/south pole chucking harpoons at all the wild life. I only got to play it once, though.
 
DeathNote said:
#1: Packerd Bell with windows 95.

I think it looked like this:
sTFwO.gif


These MAY have been the specs:
Intel Pentium 200 MHz, 4.3 GB hard disk, 32 MB EDO RAM,

#2: Dell with a Celeron and XP.
oooooh a Packard Bell. Sorry to hear that.
 
thoughthorizon said:
atari600xl.jpg


Atari 600XL... feel the wrath of my 48K of RAM.

Ah the joys of this machine: moon patrol, blue-max, mr-robot. Grabbing the ANTIC magazine and seeing what cool new things were in it...

Not to mention the fun of learning to code in Atari BASIC with it's awesome "player-missile graphics" system.

Sometimes I wish things were still that simple.

Hello brother! Had the same. My friend had the 800XL, man did I feel inferior.
 
An original Pentium. All I remember was that it was under 100Mhz and it took ages to boot up. We had that POS until my sister got a pentium 4 for college.
 
around 1996

radio shack IBM Aptiva E 40 and I think ti was around $3000 (man I cant believe people use the pc gaming is too much money excuse today still, you could build 5 decent gaming pcs with that cash today)


check out these blistering SPECS!!!


IBM Aptiva E40
Specifications Faxback Doc. # 40720

IBM Model #:.......................................................2136-E40
Design:...........................................................Minitower
CPU:.......................................................IBM 6x86 PR 166+
Std. RAM:..............................................................16MB
Max. RAM:.............................................................128MB
RAM Spec.:...........................................60ns tin lead EDO SIMM
Cache:........................................................256KB Onboard
Hard Drive:...........................................................2.1GB
Floppy Drive:........................................................1.44MB
CD-ROM:.................................................................16X
Expansion Slots
ISA:....................................................................3
PCI:....................................................................2
Shared:.................................................................1
Expansion Bays:..................................................7 (4 open)
Video
VRAM:..........................................................1 MB SGRAM
Open Sockets:...........................................................0
Max. Resolution:......................................1024x768x256 w/ 1MB
Max. Colors:..........................................................16M
Keyboard:.......................................................Rubber Dome
Mouse:..................................................2 button PS/2 style
Modem (Data/Fax):............................................33.6/14.4 Kbps
Audio:.............................................................3D sound
Speakers:................................................................3W
SW MPEG:................................................................Yes
Power Supply:..........................................................200W
Warranty:............................................................1 year

Played a mean game of Diablo 1, Fallout 1/2, and various other non 3d games, later I saved my allowance and bought I diamond monster card (4 megs I think) and it ran quake 1, decent. However this pc is the reason I never got passed act 2 in diablo 2, it just choked on the 2nd act when alot of enemies started swarming, and by the time I got a newer pc, I had lost interest.
 
My first computer was a 386 with windows 3.1.I bought it a thrift store and it was terribly old but it was all I could afford on my own. My best friend's uncle at the time was a Hoarder of mostly computers. He had asked me and my friend one time if we would come over and help him with yard work. We worked for like 2 hours and he handed me a K5 with like 64mb of ram and a god damn Voodoo card in it and a (I think)external 56K modem. I want to say it was like 800$ worth of stuff at the time.
 
First computer that I payed for was a Dell:

15" flat screen monitor
512 mb RAM
2.8 ghz
Pentium 4
20 GB HDD

My first computer was actually given to me by my middle school (inner city private school that donated PC's after graduating). We had to sign a paper that made us promise not to use the PC for anything other than homework, and told us specifically not to enter porn sites LOL. I honestly can't remember the name or the specs as I didn't know much about computers back then. It came with a cool 3D graphics demo that let you move around polygon shapes, rooms, and test your speakers. Also had demo's of Monster Truck Madness 2, Age of Empires, and Motocross Madness. I played the fuck out of those games.
 
I don't really remember my first computer at all in grave detail. All I remember is that I was around 4 and put in audio cassettes to do something so I guess it was a Commodore.
 
It was a piece of shit with only 133mhz, not sure if it shad a sound card and the only thing it could run was Quake and MDK. After a while it started to run that game like ass.
 
Long time ago, cant remember the specs, but I was so fucking pumped. I remember installing Redhat linux via floppy on one partition and windows on another. Linux came with free C compilers. Fuck man those were the days, sitting in my room after school, surrounded by a million library books on programming in C dreaming up games and programs far beyond my abilities, but giving it a shot anyway.
 
Atari 1040 STfm:
123rvxv.jpg

It came with the monochrome monitor (SM 124 or whatever).
What we did with it:
— Connected the box cables with a HiFi system
— Soldered some Commodore colour monitor on it
— Replaced chips and stuff
— Killed 6 mice in its lifetime (2 of them being original Atari mice)
— Eventually got a 40MB HDD
— Used it with a Roland MT-32 and a MIDI synthesizer
— Dabbled in the early demoscene in Northern Germany (some scrollers, some simple effects, nothing major)
— Programmed text adventures in Omikron BASIC
— Painted pics and animations (colour-cycling, pixelart and stuff)
— Played MIDI Maze to death in multiplayer (look it up!)
— Made music with software like TCB Tracker
— Eventually killed it; it burned out
— Anecdote: A really big house cricket came out of it one night, bit me in the hand

I loved this piece of plastic. It was quite the funbox.
 
My dad brought home something I can't recall initially growing up. However, he spent 4k on an IBM Aptiva with a blazing Pentium I processor that I used for for years.

That thing was the biggest POS I have ever had the joy of using to this day.
 
AbsoluteZero said:
s_p_33471_1.jpg


Looked like the above.

I don't remember the specific model number (I was like 7 at the time, cut me some slack.) but it was a 25mhz 486SX Packard Bell with 4MB of Ram (Which I later upgraded to 8MB), a 200MB Hard Drive and a 2x CD-Rom. Windows 3.11 and Packard Bell's awesome "Home" UI option.

I believe it was later 1992 because it was when CD-Roms were becoming a big deal and it came bundled with a bunch of multimedia software including King's Quest VI.

Wish I still had it.

That looked exactly like ours back in 1993. I don't even remember if it had a cd-rom drive though.
 
tccHs.jpg


Awesome 48K of RAM !
Amazing K7 softwares (yay for loading problems at the end of a side) !

Still got it along with all the games my dad bought or made for me. Should try to fire it up again someday.
 
Shaneus said:
jREqp.jpg

8086, 8MHz, 20MB HDD, enhanced EGA... $3000AU in 1987. Amstrad PC1640. Was fucking boss. The day my brother bought an AdLib card, I was in gaming heaven. So much awesome.

Fond memories of the old girl :')

Apologies for the massive image, can't stealth post shit at work whilst resizing pictures :/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC-1512
Hehe, another amstrad! This was my family's first computer, ran ghetto gem desktop gui and ms dos 6 I think. :) Remember my brother begging my dad to get a hercules graphics adapter for it :)
 
The first computer I remember using was my dad's IBM AT. I didn't really get into computers in a major way until we bought an AST computer with a Pentium 100 MHz CPU back in 1995 or so.
 
Like many others here...

vic20andtv.jpg

We had a memory expansion cartridge that increased th memory to a whopping 16kb!!!

Amazing times. Trader, Gorf and Radar Rat Race FTW!
 
Actually my first computer is the one that i'm using right now. It have three years and for me it's okay at all, i don't need anything over powered considering that I'm not a pc gamer.
 
Apple Mac G3. I was late.

I turned it on and stared at the monitor... didn't know what to do.
Installed Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop and bought a book to learn the software.

Now i make a living with that software as a grahic designer and an Illustrator :)

G3l.jpg

macg3bluemonitor.jpg
 
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