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[Diatribe1974]

Commodore 64. I can still remember that loud as fuck disc drive reading my Zork disc to this day.

 

[Kabuki Quantum Lover]

First computer experience was on a Commodore 64, but my first personal computer was an IBM PS/1 Imagination System.

 

[Moundir&Tony>you]

I can't remember what the first computers I used were running , all I know is that there were some 5 1/4" floppy disks and some early windows version (this was in the early 90s) .

First computer I bought , in 2002 :
Intel Celeron 1.2 ghz
128MB RAM
Geforce 2 MX440
DVD driver and cd burner , windows xp


Still working to this day , although I had to add another 512MB of ram 3 years ago .

 

[-KRS-]

I don't remember the specifics but the first computer our family got had some old version of DOS and used 5.25" floppy disks. It might have been a 286 but I'm just guessing.

The first computer that was my own had a Pentium 75Mhz with 32MB ram that my father had previously owned. I believe it had windows 95 on it.

And the first computer that I got new had an AMD Duron 800mhz with 256MB ram. Later I got a Geforce 2 Ti for it. Played counter strike on that thing until the CPU broke because i tinkered with it, trying to unlock the multiplier for some reason...

 

[operon]

First computer was an IBM aptiva

Pentium 120, with 1.2gig hard drive ( that I used to patition every now agin to try freebsd etc) 16 megs of ram with 1-2 robbed for a integrated sis graphics drive. The mwave isa sound/modem thing was the worst device ever. and came with windows 95.

 

[stldave2]

There was an original Macintosh (then current model) in the same room as my crib. I'm an OG Apple fanboy. The first computer that was entirely mine was a brand spanking new launch day 233mhz Bondi Blue iMac. Still have almost every computer I've ever owned, too!

 

[suikodan]

My first PC was a

386 DX 40 (The DX was a big thing at the time)
4Mb of RAM
512K SVGA graphics
100Mb hard drive

At the time, a sound card was a luxury. I remember playing Wolfenstein 3D (wow, mode 7 on my PC!) and my dad told me I could fit lots of games in a 720K floppy disk until a friend owned me (I knew nothing at the time). My first PC game was Out of this World.

Then came a sound card. Wow, Joe Montana had a clear voice and Hardball 3 was too awesome. I bought Strike Commander and all the speech packs and it took more than 50Mb and hours to install. I installed it a few times until I got tired and finished it in one shot so I'd make sure I wouldn't have to clean the fridge again because of this game.

 

[2San]

Forgot what it had in it, but this was the case. :O

 

[Doc Holliday]

A lot of old farts in here. It's amazing how much easier things are these days. I do miss the days however when I felt like I was doing something nobody else was able to do. BBS's were pretty cool back in the day!

I remember trying to dial up my school computer after watching wargames lol

 

[jett]

A Commodore 128, that was never used with C128 software, lolz. C64 mode ftw.

My first PC was an IBM Aptiva almost the same as the OP's:

486DX2@88mhz(I think?), 4MB of RAM and a 500MB HD.

 

[Art Teitlebaum]

Worst keyboard ever.

Learned to program in BASIC by copying programs out of Byte Magazine. Had a ton of awesome games for it too.

Yeah, that was my first device, too. The keyboard really was a complete disaster.

Of course, I also hacked in the progs from the tech magazines.
I painfully remember a moment, when my dad came in my room, where I've been typing in a really huge listing and out of sheer curiosity he opened the prominent lid of the memory slot. Machine switched off and the work of many many hours was gone. Tears in my eyes, my father laughing like a madman. Will never forget.

 

[Kilgore Trout]

Commodore 64. I can still remember that loud as fuck disc drive reading my Zork disc to this day.

I had a Commodore as well and all I learned to do on it was load games. Man, Archon was the shit.

 

[LordAlu]

You're not hardcore

Spoiler

an old fart

if your first computer's RAM isn't in kilobytes.

*brofist*

 

[JGS]

Atari Computer where I learned BASIC and played millions of hours of Joust.

Next was a souped up PCjr that Dad personally modded (He was on the design team at IBM)

First computer I personally bought was an Aptiva 166mhz. Blazing fast on MechWarrior and rocking a 28.8k modem on IBM's internet service. Good times.

 

[olore]

Sinclair ZX Spectrum 128k

 

[Fernando Rocker]

Man... this thread has been a nostalgic trip!

I still remember my own first computer... I can't believe I found pics of the exact same model, thanks to Google Images.

It was an Alaska computer, Pentium II at 250Mhz, 24MB RAM and 8GB of HDD, with a 15" monitor, running Windows 98.

Good times... good times.

 

[Jay Sosa]

(not my pic)

Amiga 600, best computer ever.

 

[PhatSaqs]

AST 486 DX2 66mhz all in one unit in 95 from Circuit City.

 

[lordmrw]

My first PC was a Pentium 166 with 32mb of Ram I got at a flea market for 100 dollars or so. Was happy as hell when I got it cause it meant I wouldn't have to go to my buddy's house and commandeer his PC to play Diablo anymore. THe following year, 2000 if I'm not mistaken, I bought a Celeron 633 with 96mb of Ram with my refund check from financial aid. God what a drastic upgrade that was.

 

[chuckx]

Packard Bell, 486SX 20 Mhz

The system was dubbed a "Multimedia PC" and even had a (huge) TV capture card. My little brother and I would record episodes of the X-Men cartoon, hook up the video camera to the computer and print out images from the show for use as a coloring book.

 

[RebornYeti]

Dang, I really can't remember the name, but I know it had Windows 98 and like a 8GB HDD or something like that.

But my first self-bought computer is actually what I'm using right now. It's a Sony VAIO VGN-NS325J. I bought it back in 2009.

It's pretty good for browsing the web.. nothing more. It can barely run Minecraft.

 

[Vestal]

Tandy 1000sx WOOT.

With a woping 384k ram!!!

Man when I went and upgraded to 640k RAM so i could play Police Quest 2 LOL(cost me 400 bucks, well cost my mom that). Ram back then was soldered to the Motherboard hahaha.


I laugh at todays computer users.. You have it easy.. Try spending hours upon hours tweaking your autoexec.bat so you can get the mouse, joystick, sound card and video working for a game...

FLOOPY DISKS FTW!.. Oh and none of this GUI crap... Command line only!

 

[flyover]

Apple II. Lemonade Stand like a boss.

The Apple IIc was the shit. Looked good, excellent keyboard, a goddamn carrying handle, and lowercase letters.

 

[R2D4]

Dang, I really can't remember the name, but I know it had Windows 8 and like a 8GB HDD or something like that.

Amazing that a PC from the future has such a small HD. Must be an SSD.

 

[Pimpbaa]

A Commodore 64. I remember giving blank disks to friends and them taking forever to give me a copy of something. I did buy some games tho, mostly budget games. The first real full priced game I bought was Test Drive 1. One of the sides of the disks went bad and couldn't play it anymore. I remember my dad getting a PC soon after (a 286). First game I played on that was Space Quest 1.

 

[Fernando Rocker]

Dang, I really can't remember the name, but I know it had Windows 8 and like a 8GB HDD or something like that.

But my first self-bought computer is actually what I'm using right now. It's a Sony VAIO VGN-NS325J. I bought it back in 2009.

It's pretty good for browsing the web.. nothing more. It can barely run Minecraft.

Windows 8?

I'm still using the old school Windows 7... =(

 

[RebornYeti]

Amazing that a PC from the future has such a small HD. Must be an SSD.

Oh shit, I meant to say Windows 98.

 

[enduranceJUNKY]

A C-64. A couple cartridges, then a handful of tapes with names and counter numbers written on them for the tape drive and, of course, far too many floppy disks (many that had a hole punch taken to them to double the capacity-HaHa) for the 1541. Who knows how many hours I spent keying in 'code' from COMPUTE! too . . .

 

[FlashFlooder]

Atari ST. Had so much fun with that thing... makes me want to track one down on eBay.

 

[BGBW]

Technically the Atari 520ST, but I sued it as a games system.

First proper computer was a Gateway with Win98 back in '99. Well we had a Win95 for a while before, but it crashed so quickly I don't really count it. Still have that ol' 98 hanging about. Took me until around 2006 to replace it.

 

[PetriP-TNT]

386 laptop running Windows 3.1

It was sweet

 

[Rich!]

BBC Micro. Used to love the games available for it.

edit - omg, I remember using these beasts too:

Can't believe we were perfectly capable of navigating and booting up programs using command lines in primary school. kids these days dont know how easy they get it

 

[Jade Knight 08]

Packard Bell (1997)

100 MHz
8MB Ram
1GB HDD
Windows '95


Favorite game: the car that navigate in the maze to get all the flags wins. (name escapes at the moment)

 

[pestul]

Vic 20 then
Commodore 64 then
Amstrad 8086 then
.
.
.
.
.
i7 920

 

[joeyjoejoeshabadoo]

Looked like the above.

I had the same one. I actually remember upgrading this thing to Windows 95. It took a shit ton of Floppy discs and a whole bunch of time but I got it up and running. I felt like such a badass. This thing ran for years and I think my mom actually may still have it in her house.

 

[SUPARSTARX]

My first computer cost me about a thousand something:

Pentium 100mhz
16 or 32mb ram I think,
1gb hard drive, ran windows 3.1, then I discovered AOL warez rooms and upgraded to windows 95.
I left my 28.8kbps modem active for like an entire week almost downloading stuff off aol.

those were the days.

 

[SUPARSTARX]

Oh yeah, and having to learn dos command at 13 wasn't too fun for me

 

[FormallyMegadrive]

it was bought in 2000. it was some crappy packard bell that was running on millenium edition.

IT FUCKING CRASHED TWICE WHILE INSTALLING. windows me scarred me for life.

To be fair ME was easily the worst version of Windows.

 

[Vestal]

Oh yeah, and having to learn dos command at 13 wasn't too fun for me

13.. bah thats old.. I was 8 when I got the Tandy 1000sx ..

 

[Patrick Bateman]

Commodore 64. With Zorro and Indiana Jones as my first games. :>

 

[senahorse]

An Atari ST, bought with savings I earned at McDonalds when I was 15.

This was closely followed by a 386sx25 (family computer) with 1MB of RAM (4 x 256 SIMMS) and a 20MB HDD, I remember upgrading it to 4MB of RAM which cost us $440. Also when the HDD died, the company replaced it with a 200MB HDD :O. So many memories with this computer:

• Wolfenstein 3D
• Doom 1 and 2
• Alone in the Dark
• Wing Commander 1 and 2
• Free DC
• F1 GP
• Lucasarts and Sierra games
• Super VGA
• Soundblaster 8bit (going from PC speaker to this was incredible)
• Stunts

The list goes on and on and on, great times

 

[Kung Fu Jedi]

Commodore Vic-20 here. Bought it when I was still in Junior High School way back in 1983.

 

[ascii42]

When I was 5
Apple Macintosh Performa 550.
33Mhz 68030
160MB internal hard drive (we bought a 650 MB external as well)
4MB of RAM (later upgraded to 20MB)
2X CD-ROM drive

When I started college in 2005, I split the cost of a Power Mac G5 with my dad, I am currently typing on it right now. It was the first modern computer that was fully mine. I say that because I have a collection of older Macs as well.

 

[BloodySinner]

Pentium III.
526mb RAM
10GB hard drive
Windows ME

This was around November of 2000. Custom built PC.

 

[swordfishtrombones]

My father bought a VIC-20 in the early eighties. My brother and I played River Rescue for months, nearly every day. We later upgraded to a C128, only used for C64 games. Still, I was fascinated by the simple ways that you could make "graphics" (drawing circles and lines directly from basic) in the C128 mode. Heavens, that "fill" command was slow... pixel by pixel, and no way of stopping it when you tried filling the wrong polygon.

Later we moved onto an Amiga - for the young ones: if you think the current console wars are bad, you haven't seen the Amiga - Atari days... We also upgraded it to a massive 1 Mb using the memory expansion unit. My brother became involved in the demo scene, and technically I think I was part of some groups, but I have to confess that I never actually contributed anything other than bringing snacks and drinks.

Next up were a range of XT, AT, 286, 386, 486, Pentium, Pentium with MMX... By that time I was in university and lost interest in tinkering with computers for fun - they slowly moved into something that were an actual means of achieving something, not something to play around with for the fun of it. The last 5-6 year's I've only bought notebooks. As my job offers me all the fancy computing stuff I can imagine, I don't feel the need to have an up to date box at home anymore.

 

[captmcblack]

The first computer my family and I ever had was a Gateway 2000 tower back in 1995/1996. It was a beast of a machine, with a Pentium processor @ 100MHz, 8MB of RAM, a 1.2 GB hard drive, a 15-inch monitor, STB Powergraph 64 video card (holy crap, 3D graphics!), a 6x CD-ROM drive, 28.8 modem and a ton of expansion bays. I played so much Doom/Doom 2/Quake, FIFA, Duke Nukem, Chip's Challenge, Hover!, Crusader: No Remorse, and other stuff on this machine it was ridiculous. Eventually, I bumped the RAM up to 40 MB and installed a Zip drive...and that machine kept on trucking for years.

We'd inherited older hardware, like my uncle's C64 before - but that was the first machine that was ours. Soon after that, I inherited a 486 DX4-100 Compaq laptop, and a NEC Versa laptop with the same specs as that desktop...but it wasn't until years later that we upgraded that desktop - a P2-400, just in time for the emulation boom in 1999/2000.

The first computer I ever built myself was an AMD computer - a Tbird rig @ 1.GHz I overclocked to 1.4GHz. It still lives today at my folks house, heh.

 

[GavinGT]

Mine was an Apple Macintosh 128k. It was 1990 and I was four years old when I convinced my mom to buy it for me at Goodwill. It cost her probably $20. The games were hardly replacements for my NES games, but all the control I now had at my fingertips astounded me. When I got tired of playing 8 hour marathon sessions of the included Breakout clone, I began to familiarize myself with using the launcher, copying files to disks, and basically just trying out every single thing I could find. Tweaking settings and learning all the finer points of the OS were instantly appealing to me. I remember accidentally deleting a crucial file for my favorite game once and being absolutely heartbroken.

I'm trying to recall my first experience with the internet. It almost definitely came at school, probably in '94-95. IIRC, we were in the computer room of the library, and the teacher was explaining to us how there was a "library" online: the newly released Encyclopedia Britannica online. Since they conveyed it to us as a learning tool, it seemed boring to me and I didn't grasp its potential. It was until 1996 when we got AOL that the internet blossomed into the boundless entertainment hub that it is today.

 

[Barberetti]

I bought my first computer in 1985, from a guy I worked with. It was a BBC model B:

He was good enough to throw in a couple of games with it. One of them was Elite, and it completely blew me away the first time I played it. So much so in fact, that I went and bought a BBC Master just to play the colour version of the game. Just over £1000 at the time, but damn was it worth it!

Also, having two BBC's gave me and a friend the opportunity to experience multiplayer gaming at home for the first time, with a game called Double Phantom. Two players, one on each computer, head-to-head flying Phantom jet fighters! The fighters were just a white triangle like the Asteroids space ship, and fired pretty much the same white dots as well, but this battle took place in a proper 3d environment, as opposed to the Asteroids top-down view. The horizon was just a white line .... and that was about it lol. Still great fun playing it at the time though, even if it did take about 10 minutes to load the game onto both computers. Fuck cassettes, they're one thing I don't miss from that era of computer gaming.

 

[iapetus]

BBC Micro. Used to love the games available for it.

Wow. Just discovered that a heap of PD stuff I wrote for the BBC Micro is still available online. Time to think about grabbing an emulator again and reliving it.

The company "Bazzasoft" produced a good few BBC/Electron Public Domain
titles in the late Eighties and early Nineties [It was behind the "Bazza-
soft Filing System 2.34" demo in EUG #45 - Ed] with one of its more noted
releases being the Bazzasoft Adventure Programming System (B.A.P.S.).

 

[tedtropy]

Oh yeah, and having to learn dos command at 13 wasn't too fun for me

I can vaguely recall taking "keyboard" classes in middle school, typing documents in the DOS version of MS Word and making some really simple QBasic programs and games.

Prior to that I can remember Mario Teaches Typing and playing Oregon Trail on Macs.