Who remembers their first computer?

[FileTrekker]

Always fun to have a trip down memory lane!

WARNING: This thread will show your age...

Anyway, my first PC I always will remember fondly, it was an Intel Pentium Processor (Ran at 133mhz if I recall!) with the very fancy sounding MMX Technology. It started life with 16mb of RAM, later upgraded to 32MB, and a 4GB hard drive.

It was from an popular PC retailer in the UK at the time, Tiny PC, here's a photo of a PC that looks pretty much exactly like it;

Fond memories of playing Dungeon Keeper, POD, Theme Hospital, Flight Simulator 98, Monster Truck Madness, Fury 3.....

And some weird games too, like David Bellamy's Endangered Wildlife. Oh, and Encarta 97, that old Quiz Maze game. I guess my parents wanted me to learn something....

...didn't work.

Anyway, Nostalgia: GO!

 

[Albino Boo]

Well you think you're old, I see your PI and raise you a BBC B

A whole 32k of ram with 1 mhz clock speed (I think). I played the hell out of Elite and I can still remember the key combinations to fly more decades later than I can to remember.

 

[Barbas]

My first computer was an outdated spare that my parents didn't need any more. Almost anything you put in the disk drive worked![footnote]Provided there was enough hard drive space.[/footnote] It was a bulky black IBM computer that I remember fondly, thanks in no small part to my time with Bullfrog's sterling catalogue of gaming achievements.

As this was China, electronic components didn't last long in the heat - stacking your VCRs and DVD players might halve their life, and the great dust menace was made even more menacing. One lazy Saturday morning, whilst a-gaming away, I idly stood up from my chair after forgetting that I hadn't closed the disk tray; turning, I hit it with my knee and the thing went skittering across the floor. Luckily, when IBM builds a computer, they build it to last - [footnote]They also build their cases to induce tears and comprehensive swearing whenever someone attempts to open them.[/footnote] my dad and brother managed to prise the side open and refit the disk tray for me, as nothing had actually snapped off and fragmented. I think only a rubber band and a little cogwheel needed replacing in the end.

That was a...Windows 98, I believe. Before that, there was a Windows 95 PC that my parents used - that one had some great 3D Realms games on it, along with Rise Of The Triad, Corridor 7 and Tank Wars. At primary school, I'd been let loose on the Acorn PCs a few times and experienced some funny little gaming experiments - mostly text adventures with limited movement - that have a place in my chest next to Tamiya cars and parquet floors.

 

[Vendor-Lazarus]

Anyway, my first PC I always will remember fondly, it was an Intel Pentium Processor (Ran at 133mhz if I recall!) with the very fancy sounding MMX Technology. It started life with 16mb of RAM, later upgraded to 32MB, and a 4GB hard drive.

That's quite the coincidence! That was my first computer too!
(Except that mine had a turbo button)
I still have it. As well as the 486 I bought from a friend just a year after that.
In fact, I still have all my previous computers, So I can use whichever windows I want from 3.1 through 95,98 and Win XP.
Hmm, I guess I am a bit of a hoarder..

 

[FileTrekker]

Well you think you're old, I see your PI and raise you a BBC B

A whole 32k of ram with 1 mhz clock speed (I think). I played the hell out of Elite and I can still remember the key combinations to fly more decades later than I can to remember.

Oh Boy, you know, I never owned one of those, but we DID have them in my primary school...

...Geordie Racer.

If you know what that game is: enough said, lol.

That's quite the coincidence! That was my first computer too!
(Except that mine had a turbo button)
I still have it. As well as the 486 I bought from a friend just a year after that.
In fact, I still have all my previous computers, So I can use whichever windows I want from 3.1 through 95,98 and Win XP.
Hmm, I guess I am a bit of a hoarder..

Oh wow, the Turbo button!

I seem to remember having a button like that, but I never understood what it was for?

I was like, 8 at the time though so, y'know.

 

[Vendor-Lazarus]

That's quite the coincidence! That was my first computer too!
(Except that mine had a turbo button)
I still have it. As well as the 486 I bought from a friend just a year after that.
In fact, I still have all my previous computers, So I can use whichever windows I want from 3.1 through 95,98 and Win XP.
Hmm, I guess I am a bit of a hoarder..

Oh wow, the Turbo button!

I seem to remember having a button like that, but I never understood what it was for?

I was like, 8 at the time though so, y'know.

I confess to not knowing either. Despite being 12 at the time. ,)

As an aside, that computer is where I got my name from.
I saw the boot up sequence so many times that Vendor stuck in my unconscious mind and I knew the word long before I understood what it meant.
Lazarus is of course tied to my craving for immortality. ^^

 

[Albino Boo]

Well you think you're old, I see your PI and raise you a BBC B

A whole 32k of ram with 1 mhz clock speed (I think). I played the hell out of Elite and I can still remember the key combinations to fly more decades later than I can to remember.

Oh Boy, you know, I never owned one of those, but we DID have them in my primary school...

...Geordie Racer.

If you know what that game is: enough said, lol.

That's quite the coincidence! That was my first computer too!
(Except that mine had a turbo button)
I still have it. As well as the 486 I bought from a friend just a year after that.
In fact, I still have all my previous computers, So I can use whichever windows I want from 3.1 through 95,98 and Win XP.
Hmm, I guess I am a bit of a hoarder..

Oh wow, the Turbo button!

I seem to remember having a button like that, but I never understood what it was for?

I was like, 8 at the time though so, y'know.

I just looked up Georide Racer, I had left school when it was 1st broadcast. You know you are old when the mods start looking young.



The Turbo button slowed the internal clock down so that games and applications that used the slower 8088 CPU frequency for timing where workable on the fast 4mhz chips.

 

[cathou]

Well you think you're old, I see your PI and raise you a BBC B

A whole 32k of ram with 1 mhz clock speed (I think). I played the hell out of Elite and I can still remember the key combinations to fly more decades later than I can to remember.

i had a similar computer but a little more powerfull, the Tandy CoCo3

128k of ram and a processor a little bit under 1 mhz, with a tape deck to save data.

Anyway, my first PC I always will remember fondly, it was an Intel Pentium Processor (Ran at 133mhz if I recall!) with the very fancy sounding MMX Technology. It started life with 16mb of RAM, later upgraded to 32MB, and a 4GB hard drive.

That's quite the coincidence! That was my first computer too!
(Except that mine had a turbo button)
I still have it. As well as the 486 I bought from a friend just a year after that.
In fact, I still have all my previous computers, So I can use whichever windows I want from 3.1 through 95,98 and Win XP.
Hmm, I guess I am a bit of a hoarder..

it's actually the first computer i bought myself with my own money when i was 17, well i had a loan for it because it was 3000$. mine was 166 mhz.

 

[FileTrekker]

I just looked up Georide Racer, I had left school when it was 1st broadcast. You know you are old when the mods start looking young.

The Turbo button slowed the internal clock down so that games and applications that used the slower 8088 CPU frequency for timing where workable on the fast 4mhz chips.

Heh, yeah, well the BBC Micro seemed to be supported quite some time, for educational purposes and the suchlike, I figure that they didn't find hardware obsolete quite so fast in those days.

The use of the turbo button does make a lot of sense now, thanks for the explanation.

 

[Kyrian007]

Mine would be the Apple 2e

Spoiler

Mostly anyway. Technically it was my parent's though. The first I bought would be a 486DX 66mhz. DOS 6.2/Win 3.1. Its model name was "Lazer" and it was made by a company that only a few years later only made toys and wireless phones. Yup, a Vtech Lazer.

 

[rgrekejin]

My first computer was an Apple Powermac 6100 my parents bought when I was 7.

I don't remember how much RAM it had or the processor speed, but I clearly remember being excited when my parents bought a 1.2 GB external hard drive for it. I mostly played shareware games, Star Wars Dark Forces, Star Trek: 25th Anniversary, and Chex Quest on it. I also remember trying (and failing) to get Star Trek: Borg to work properly on it.

 

[BodomBeachChild]

We got a Gateway in '96. Right when all that stuff was really taking off. I remember it came with Dilbert's Desktop Games, G-Police (holy underrated game), a Criterion racing game, and some other stuff. Oh yeah and it was my first intro into flight sims. Flight Simulator 98 maybe? I dunno i was in 4th grade. It was sweet though.

I remember my moms friend and uncle showing us how to hook it up and setting up the internet for the first time.

 

[Kotaro]

My first PC was a Dell running Windows 95. I was like three at the time, and I used to play point-and-click adventure games and some edutainment games on it all the time. I have no idea what its specs were, since I was a little kid, and we upgraded to a Windows 98 machine a couple years later.

 

[Grouchy Imp_v1legacy]

BEHOLD THE MAGNIFICENCE!!!

First game I had for it was Operation Wolf, damn thing took 20+ mins to load and you only got three lives.

It did come with a light-gun though. Which, back in the 80s, blew my tiny mind.

 

[Freyr]

I started with a Tatung Einstien. No HDD's, and in those days software was a bit hit and miss. I vaugely recall having to type programs in from printed examples in enthusiast magazines for games.

The next step up from this was an intel 8086 with a floppy drive. (no hard drive, those were too expensive back in the day)

 

[Pyrian]

Apple ][+, all you young'uns. =D Do I win something?

 

[Wiggum Esquilax]

i had a similar computer but a little more powerfull, the Tandy CoCo3

128k of ram and a processor a little bit under 1 mhz, with a tape deck to save data.

Hey, the CoCo3! My first computer too, got it for Christmas. Great fun.

Was able to keep it for a few years, at least until my parents threw it out while I was at school. Said something about how my Castle of Tharoggad cartridge should work just fine in the NES.

Spoiler

It did not.

 

[FirstNameLastName]

My first computer was Commodore 64.
http://653fb62b3a129d296422-3019ba142970aa3e5db9c4ca20cb2da4.r64.cf1.rackcdn.com/images/LRrmaF_hsBwn.878x0.Z-Z96KYq.jpg
No, I'm not actually that old, settle down. It was found at the bottom of some cupboard full of stuff, and already hilariously old at the time.

 

[Wuvlycuddles]

I learned to type on this glorious bastard:

The Amstrad CPC 464, I still remember the god awful noise it made when the tapes loaded.