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#4453292 - 12/14/18 11:07 PM Re: Your first PC? [Re: PanzerMeyer]  
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Actually I got a lot of turn based strategy games from SSI. Lousy graphics, but lots of fun.


Good people sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.

Someday your life will flash in front of your eyes. Make sure it is worth watching.
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#4453293 - 12/14/18 11:13 PM Re: Your first PC? [Re: PanzerMeyer]  
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Advance, NC
1992

Packard Bell 486sx 25MHz, 4MB RAM, 170MB hard drive, and a CD drive. That CD drive ran the hell out of Rebel Assault before I graduated to X-Wing and Falcon 3.


Jared
-----
FalconNW MachV, Obutto R3volution

DEFENSOR FORTIS

#4453294 - 12/14/18 11:21 PM Re: Your first PC? [Re: ArgonV]  
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Originally Posted by ArgonV
Megabyte Computer (local shop in town at the time) circa 1993:
486DX2-66Mhz (with the Turbo button!)
8mb RAM (upgraded to 16mb later)


Looking back at my receipts, I think I may have done something similar...

Looks like mine came with 8 x 1MB simms, and then my next receipt shows 4 x 4MB ($624.00). I don't remember how RAM could be matched back then, if I replaced 4 of the 1MB simms with 4MB simms for a total of 20 MB? I'll go with that for now.



The rusty wire that holds the cork that keeps the anger in
Gives way and suddenly it’s day again
The sun is in the east
Even though the day is done
Two suns in the sunset, hmph
Could be the human race is run
#4453296 - 12/14/18 11:42 PM Re: Your first PC? [Re: PanzerMeyer]  
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My first was a C64, some time in the 80's. Including monitor, disk drive, tape drive, and an interface so I could connect an Epson dot matrix printer. I do recall spending a large amount of money for a word processor and a spreadsheet program for it. I will have to find the paperwork to properly identify the first real PC that I bought in 1994 but it was around $4k.


ASUS ROG Maximus VIII Hero, i7-6700K, Noctua NH-D14 Cooler, Crucial 32GB DDR4 2133, Samsung 950 Pro NVMe 256GB, Samsung EVO 250GB & 500GB SSD, 2TB Caviar Black, Zotac GTX 1080 AMP! Extreme 8GB, Corsair HX1000i, Phillips BDM4065UC 40" 4k monitor, VX2258 TouchScreen, TIR 5 w/ProClip, TM Warthog, VKB Gladiator Pro, Saitek X56, et. al., MFG Crosswind Pedals #1199, VolairSim Pit, Rift CV1
#4453297 - 12/14/18 11:53 PM Re: Your first PC? [Re: PanzerMeyer]  
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8088 5" floppy. It is still in the basement. it had no hard drive only Ram, some absurd low number like 760mbs. It has a 12" monochromatic monitor. I upgraded it with more memory through a pci slot and a 2.5" floppy. It would probably still boot up if I plugged it in. Of course DOS was the OS. winkngrin

S!Blade<>< CT

#4453303 - 12/15/18 12:22 AM Re: Your first PC? [Re: PanzerMeyer]  
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Woodbridge, VA, USA
It was an AST 486/66, 16 MB (the extra 8MB cost almost 10% of the total price), 5.25 and 3.5 floppy, 340MB HD, CD (that was an extra $445), 15 inch color monitor. Total with tax was $4240 in March of 1994. I ate grilled cheese and ramen noodles for a very long time.

EDIT: In retrospect, that might have been my most expensive computer even compared to my top end rigs in recent years.

Last edited by cichlidfan; 12/15/18 12:25 AM.

ASUS ROG Maximus VIII Hero, i7-6700K, Noctua NH-D14 Cooler, Crucial 32GB DDR4 2133, Samsung 950 Pro NVMe 256GB, Samsung EVO 250GB & 500GB SSD, 2TB Caviar Black, Zotac GTX 1080 AMP! Extreme 8GB, Corsair HX1000i, Phillips BDM4065UC 40" 4k monitor, VX2258 TouchScreen, TIR 5 w/ProClip, TM Warthog, VKB Gladiator Pro, Saitek X56, et. al., MFG Crosswind Pedals #1199, VolairSim Pit, Rift CV1
#4453305 - 12/15/18 12:31 AM Re: Your first PC? [Re: Blade_Meister]  
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Nixer Offline
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Living with the Trees
Originally Posted by Blade_Meister
8088 5" floppy. It is still in the basement. it had no hard drive only Ram, some absurd low number like 760mbs. It has a 12" monochromatic monitor. I upgraded it with more memory through a pci slot and a 2.5" floppy. It would probably still boot up if I plugged it in. Of course DOS was the OS. winkngrin

S!Blade<>< CT


More like 760 KB????

Last edited by Nixer; 12/15/18 12:35 AM. Reason: Fortune Cookie...I mean information cake

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I am not there, never have been or ever will be, but the fruitless search may be more gratifying then the "content" you might otherwise be exposed to.

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#4453310 - 12/15/18 01:32 AM Re: Your first PC? [Re: Nixer]  
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Blade_Meister Offline
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Originally Posted by Nixer
Originally Posted by Blade_Meister
8088 5" floppy. It is still in the basement. it had no hard drive only Ram, some absurd low number like 760mbs. It has a 12" monochromatic monitor. I upgraded it with more memory through a pci slot and a 2.5" floppy. It would probably still boot up if I plugged it in. Of course DOS was the OS. winkngrin

S!Blade<>< CT


More like 760 KB????



Ok LOL, it has been 20+years. hahaha

S!Blade<>< CT

#4453311 - 12/15/18 01:35 AM Re: Your first PC? [Re: Blade_Meister]  
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cichlidfan Offline
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Woodbridge, VA, USA
Originally Posted by Blade_Meister
Originally Posted by Nixer
Originally Posted by Blade_Meister
8088 5" floppy. It is still in the basement. it had no hard drive only Ram, some absurd low number like 760mbs. It has a 12" monochromatic monitor. I upgraded it with more memory through a pci slot and a 2.5" floppy. It would probably still boot up if I plugged it in. Of course DOS was the OS. winkngrin

S!Blade<>< CT


More like 760 KB????



Ok LOL, it has been 20+years. hahaha

S!Blade<>< CT


Closer to almost 40 years. smile


ASUS ROG Maximus VIII Hero, i7-6700K, Noctua NH-D14 Cooler, Crucial 32GB DDR4 2133, Samsung 950 Pro NVMe 256GB, Samsung EVO 250GB & 500GB SSD, 2TB Caviar Black, Zotac GTX 1080 AMP! Extreme 8GB, Corsair HX1000i, Phillips BDM4065UC 40" 4k monitor, VX2258 TouchScreen, TIR 5 w/ProClip, TM Warthog, VKB Gladiator Pro, Saitek X56, et. al., MFG Crosswind Pedals #1199, VolairSim Pit, Rift CV1
#4453316 - 12/15/18 02:03 AM Re: Your first PC? [Re: cichlidfan]  
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Originally Posted by cichlidfan
Closer to almost 40 years. smile


Yea, I was just stating the first computer I had. My brother gave it to me 20 or 30 years ago as something he pieced together for me to begin learning programming on. It was slow and painful, with Pascal torturing me through it. hahaha
Now, I am curious to try to boot it, but I don't really know if I would have a clue as to how to do it anymore. I think it used a boot floppy if I remember correctly. Man, that makes me feel old. nope
I will have to go dig it out and post a picture. hahaha

S!Blade<>< CT

Last edited by Blade_Meister; 12/15/18 02:04 AM.
#4453327 - 12/15/18 03:59 AM Re: Your first PC? [Re: PanzerMeyer]  
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Tandy Color Computer 2, got it in 1985.

Taught myself BASIC and had to write almost every piece of software I ran on it (aside from handful of the cartridge based games I had). All simple programs, of course, but the lessons (and typing skills) were useful in later years.

I still have the Color Computer 2, and it still works!


WARNING: This post contains opinions produced in a facility which also occasionally processes fact products.
#4453329 - 12/15/18 04:12 AM Re: Your first PC? [Re: PanzerMeyer]  
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My first was an Olivetti 1100 about 1987 ?

Used to play Hack on it, a text based D and D game. I think the next was a 286 that played "Lounge Suit Larry" and Civ1.


"You'll never take me alive" said he,
And his ghost may be heard if you pass by that billabong
"Who'll come a Waltzing Matilda with me?"



#4453336 - 12/15/18 04:58 AM Re: Your first PC? [Re: PanzerMeyer]  
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Corona, California
Packard Bell Pentium 75 1995 $3000 Shortly after, got Fleet Defender Gold and Suncom HOTAS. Pretty excited :mycomputer

Marc..:


HP-Compaq-8100-Elite-SFF-Intel-Core-i5-660-3-33GHz-8GB-250GB-Windows7, GTX1050 -X45+Rudder Pedals, Playseat Challenge
#4453342 - 12/15/18 06:35 AM Re: Your first PC? [Re: PanzerMeyer]  
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1982 ZX81. Returned unused as incorrectly ordered product, replaced by:
1982/83 ZX Spectrum release 1 48K (light grey keys) was still in regular use when I bought "Lightning Sim" for the princely sum of £1.99 in 1988 (still a game I play in emulator for the nostalgia hit, and to play with analogue flight controls in a keyboard control system... not seen better even to this day - the dogfights were fun, but the 'mission' - to intercept two nuclear armed backfires escorted by MiG23 was brutally hard, with limited time, fuel and armament - never did succeed and RTB). Also Gunship and M1TP

1987 (ish) Atari ST520. The main title I played was Falcon ST

1991 Speccy still in use, but bought a 386/387 with 4MB to run the newly released Falcon 3, amongst others. System board 'exploded' while in warranty, but a replacement was unavailable... so it was returned as a 486DX33, later upgraded with a DX(2)66 and 16MB of RAM for an obscene price for modest gains.

1999 Major update to K6-2 333 and a AGP graphics card, used with Flanker 2 and IL2.

2004 ish Whole system replacement, P4 2400 based.

2010 current system built - Core i5, GF 420, 8GB - since upgraded with GTX970 and i7 3770K, 16GB. Currently okay, but a whole system replacement is likely to be necessary to get more performance if needed.

#4453343 - 12/15/18 07:09 AM Re: Your first PC? [Re: F4UDash4]  
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Dart Offline
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Lifer

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Alabaster, AL USA
Originally Posted by F4UDash4
1989-90

Tandy 1000TX 286 8 mhz
640kb RAM
3.5 and 5.25 floppys
no hard drive

Good enough to play "Jetfighter" and "Chuck Yeager's Air Combat" which was all I cared about.


I had that system - a hundred bucks down and a fifty bucks a month!

But before that I had an Amstrad. It was billed as a word processor more than a PC, but it ran BASIC.


The opinions of this poster are largely based on facts and portray a possible version of the actual events.

More dumb stuff at http://www.darts-page.com

From Laser:
"The forum is the place where combat (real time) flight simulator fans come to play turn based strategy combat."
#4453345 - 12/15/18 07:28 AM Re: Your first PC? [Re: PanzerMeyer]  
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Mr_Blastman Online content
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Mr_Blastman  Online Content
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Atlanta, GA
1987 Tandy 1000 TX
8 Mhz
TGA graphics
640 kb RAM
CM-5 RGB color monitor

Eventually upgraded to 768 kb RAM and added a 5.25 drive, Adlib sound card and a Paradise VGA card, which allowed me to play Ultima 6, which was a chore, because it required me splitting the 3.5 inch disks on multiple 5.25's so I could swap stuff in and out. Basically the game was never intended to be played on a floppy, but... I found a way. smile

I didn't buy it--my parents gave it to me in middle school. I've never bought a computer for myself, actually. Ever. I've been building my own since the 90s.

Last edited by Mr_Blastman; 12/15/18 07:32 AM.
#4453348 - 12/15/18 09:23 AM Re: Your first PC? [Re: PanzerMeyer]  
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HeinKill Offline
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Cloud based
[Linked Image]

1984: AMSTRAD 464

Why did I buy it? Word processing and games and price ($Same price as a Commodore but it came with its own green screen monitor, colour was avail but cost more of course)
Most played games? Lords of Midnight (turn based strategy), Zork (duh). Cassette tapes took about ten minutes to load a game up.
First ever flight sim? Dambusters (plan your ingress, instrument panel, letterbox style views, dodge the flak, balloons and fighters (you could man pilot, bombadier, gunner positions), get altitude, airspeed, attitude, timing right, blow up the dam)


[Linked Image]

The Amstrad CPC 464 was one of the most successful computers in Europe. More than two million computers were sold. Despite its ordinary characteristics (like those of the Sinclair Spectrum and often less interesting than those of the others like the Commodore 64 or Atari XL/Xe series) or odd features (like video memory or strange floppy disk format), it was very popular because of its really low price and its interesting commercial concept : all peripherals were sold together (like the Commodore PET that was sold years earlier): CPU/keyboard, tape recorder, monitor (monochrome green or colour).

A huge number of programs and peripherals were developed for this machine. It ran AmsDos (Amstrad's Operating System). AmsDos was completely embedded in the Basic using so-called RSX commands starting with |, but it could not format disks, you needed a special application for that. The 464 also could use CP/M 2.2 or 3.0 when used with an external Floppy disk unit (3" Hitachi, 180 KB / face). A lot of great CP/M software was adapted for the Amstrad CPC.

About 42 KB RAM was available for the user, the video memory and the ROM were mapped on the same addresses with a dedicated chip to switch the memory banks automatically.

I stayed loyal to Amstrad for about ten years - two or three longer than I should have...

My first ever portable/notebook was this little 64K RAM 256K ROM wonder, the NC100. Only for word processing. Showed about ten lines of text as you were typing. You hooked it up to a monitor and disc drive back at your desk.

I was however the envy of other journalists who were still lugging around Compaq 'portables' the size of a briefcase all the way into the early 90s. (They did have an inbuilt modem though so that you could phone through your stories, which made me jealous! You physically put the phone handset into two cups on the side of the machine so it could pick up the audio analogue of the modem screeching and beeping.)

[Linked Image]

Internet says it came out in 1992, but I remember using it at a place I lived in in 1991, so someone's memory is faulty!



[Linked Image]
#4453351 - 12/15/18 10:04 AM Re: Your first PC? [Re: PanzerMeyer]  
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Mine was a Pentium 100 with an 800 megabyte hard drive. 1998. I think it had 16 megs of ram. I can't remember anything else about it now. Bought it from a friend who built it from spare parts for me. Actually I physically built it under his instruction. I'd had plenty of time on way older computers (Atari 400 and 800, various Commodores, Apple IIe, oh and plenty of 386 and 486, can't remember the others), but that was the first one I actually owned.

I actually "gamed on the internet" in 1983 at my mother's workplace with some text/turn based game called "Adventure" on a green screen monitor. Can't remember the connection speed, but it was in baud, not kbps.

There'd sometimes be lag just on the next text. Probably take many minutes to download even 5 kilobyte jpeg file back then (if you even could have).

#4453358 - 12/15/18 11:36 AM Re: Your first PC? [Re: PanzerMeyer]  
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IBM PC in 1983. It was the second version of the motherboard, that could go up to 256K of RAM on the mb. Bought it bare bones, and added two half-height floppy drives, and an AST six pack card. That got it to 640K of RAM, and added a real time clock, serial port, parallel port and game port. Ran it with a green monochrome monitor for handling word processing and spreadsheets, plus a CGA color monitor for MS Flight Simulator and games. Had both PC DOS 1.1 and CPM-86 1.0 for Operating Systems. The two OS's were very similar, with CPM-86 being more verbose (which made it easier to use), but PC DOS (MS DOS) won out with IBM behind it.

With a whopping 640K of RAM, I would typically allocate some to a printer buffer and some to a RAM disk! smile

There was an add-on board to allow Apple programs to run, but it turned out not to be compatible with the floppy drives I had installed. Later on, I added a 20 Megabyte Hard Drive after the prices had gotten more reasonable.

I skipped the 286 (IBM AT and compatibles), and waited for the 386's for the next machines.

#4453389 - 12/15/18 08:28 PM Re: Your first PC? [Re: PanzerMeyer]  
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Arthonon Online content
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Arthonon  Online Content
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California
1982 Atari 800
48K RAM
1.7MHz 65C02 processor
Antic, CTIA and Pokey graphics and sound chips
TV for monitor

Later bought a floppy drive that stored 88K per disc, a modem and a daisy wheel printer.

And the saddest part of all that? I still have it all in my garage biggrin


Ken Cartwright

No single drop of rain feels it is responsible for the flood.

http://www.techflyer.net

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