Weekend Open Forum: Your very first computer

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Christmas 1996:

Pentium 133Mhz
16 MB of EDO RAM
Cirrus Logic 2 MB Video Card (PCI)
Creative SoundBlaster 16 Sound Card (ISA)
ATX Tower (no idea about PSU)
2 GB Seagate IDE Hard Drive
10x CD Rom Drive
14" CRT Monitor (1024x768)
"60W" Stereo Speakers
Genius Keyboard (DIN (5-pin) connection)
3-button Mouse (Serial connection)
HP DeskJet 695C printer
Windows 95 OSR2

Upgraded with Diamond SupraExpress 33.6e modem in late 1996 and then a Diamond Monster 3D graphics accelerator (Voodoo Graphics chipset) in Christmas 1997. Finally replaced the whole thing in 1999.
 
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C64 with a CPM/Z cartridge and a COBOL Compiler which allowed me to compile good old COBOL programs. Ah the good old days. :)
 
Back in the early 90´s my first machine was a PC-XT 4,5 mhz /640kb memory and a "huge" 32 MB hard drive :D
remember after that I put my hands in a 386 SX33 with 80 MB hard drive , 2 MB extended memory , was able to run windows for the very first time :)
 
Compaq Presario 4640 with a Pentium II 266 MHz CPU, 64 MB of RAM and a huge 4 GB hard drive. I still remember picking it out at Sears, the thing that won me over was the DVD-ROM drive. Watching movies on a computer? Amazing! I remember how exciting it was to unpack it and set it all up. It came with Windows 95 and the games Moto Racer and Incoming.

Over the years I was very disappointed to learn that almost nothing could upgraded on it and I sold it and used the money to build my own, which is what I have been doing ever since.
 
197x: An "Oric-1 48 KB" using 6502 CPU (1 MHz) learning BASIC and 6502-assembler !
1986: 8088 CPU PC-XT clone "Turbo" 8 MHz with 2 x 5 1/4" floppy, mono-screen, matrix-printer (approx USD 6,000 !!!)
Later 80386DX, 486SX, Pentium, etc...
 
NEC Powermate (286) - 1.2-4 Mhz (Variable)
10 MB HD - 5.25 Floppy
12" Amber Monitor
 
An Atari 65xe and then a Commadore 64 when my parents realized their was very little software available for the Atari.
 
I suppose it'd really be my 48K Speccy, but if you're talking more PC (and don't include my Tatung Einstein) then A Viglen Envy P90 with a 1GB HD and 512k graphics card (my first ever pc upgrade was to double that) a really rather good 15" monitor. CD-Rom only, SB16 (I upgraded to an AWE 64 I think) a pretty good PS2 MS Mouse (that I still have) and a solid DIN keyboard (that I did replace with a wonderful Cherry model). Subsequent dropped a 100MHz chip and clocked it to 133 if I recall - badass! Still have the receipt!
 
trgz said:
I suppose it'd really be my 48K Speccy, but if you're talking more PC (and don't include my Tatung Einstein) then A Viglen Envy P90 with a 1GB HD and 512k graphics card (my first ever pc upgrade was to double that) a really rather good 15" monitor. CD-Rom only, SB16 (I upgraded to an AWE 64 I think) a pretty good PS2 MS Mouse (that I still have) and a solid DIN keyboard (that I did replace with a wonderful Cherry model). Subsequent dropped a 100MHz chip and clocked it to 133 if I recall - badass! Still have the receipt!
Click to expand...
On reflection I think Envy might have been the monitor name and the mid-sized tower was a Genie(?) can't remember how much/little memory it had (more than me it seems)
 
First one I messed with was a TRS80. First one I helped build was a Vic20 (expansion board).
First one I bought used for my use was a Compaq portable, then built my own a whopping
386SX, a meg of ram, trident video, 14" monitor and bought a compaq dot matrix printer.
Late 80's.
 
IBM 1620 at K-College
IBM System/360 model 30,40,50, and 155. DOS, MFT, MVT.
IBM System 370 RACF
Tandem

computer security was never a problem until people started using their "PC" for business. it wasn't meant for that then and it is not acceptable for that now. The problem started with "Stoned", "Falling Letters", and the "Pakistani Brain". Then there was the Robert Morris worm. These were all attempts by goons to run their program on someone else' computer. improper on its face and illegal under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

to this day adequate control over software has not been generally implemented. until that happens HackerFest will continue. and continue to get worse.
 
1997
Compaq Presario 2000.
16 MB EDO RAM (Upgraded later to 32)
CPU Cyrix Media GX 133 Mhz
HDD Ide 2 GB
10x Cdrom drive
1 mb Gfx Cyrix Media GX
WIn 95
 
The first computer that I used, in 1988, as I was in the 8th grade, was a tim-s (a zx spectrum clone) but _my_ first computer was bought for $220 and brought to me by my uncl, from the US to Romania, in 1990. it was a PC XT, i8088 running at 8mhz, 640k of ram, 2 5.25" 360k floppies, hercules monochrome graphics card, zenith 12" amber-black monitor. later they added an 85 mb mfm hard drive to the machine, which made it so much better...

I ran dos 3.11, turbo pascal 2, wordstar, sidekick and some games...
 
Apple II with a floppy disk drive, a cassette drive and a B/W Crt Monitor. Bought because my children never wanted to read, best investment I ever made. My friend, a programmer at IBM, taught me how to write basic and I remember how awesome it felt to write a program that actually worked. In this case is was a graphic version on Hangman.
 
I also had a Sharp MZ80K. Came with 48K RAM and a built in cassette tape drive. I piggy backed an additional 4K of ram and used a couple of bits from one of the IO chips to enable it and allow it to change address space; copied the system ROM into this added memory so I could modify it and switch it into the ROM address space. Later added a couple of really old mini floppy drives on a homebrew controller and ran the whole thing on FORTH. Fun times!
 
It was a hand-me-down low profile Dell from my parent's office, from around 2003 or so. IIRC it had a 3.2 GHz Pentium 4 CPU, 2GB of RAM, and around 500GB of storage. I remember beating my head against the wall trying to get it to run games even at low settings or HD video over 720p properly, which is a big reason I started to learn more about PCs in the first place.
 
My first computer I built a 2600+ (barton) machine with GeForce FX5200, 2x512MB Kingmax RAM, and ASUS A7N8X mobo.
 
Pentium II mmx 250 Mhz
voodoo II 64 mb GPU
64 mb ram

Power turbo charged with dust....
 
We had at home a Pentium MMX 166 MHz back in 1997. 32 MB RAM, a 4 MB graphic card (I don't remember which one), and 1 GB HDD. But the first desktop that was actually mine was a Pentium III 866 MHz, 128 MB RAM, 40 GB HDD, and a truly wonderful Geforce 2 MX 400, paired with a 17" 1600x1200 CRT monitor, which was absolutely overkill back in 2001 (and in fact, not so usable above 1024x768 due to PPI-scaling Windows issues).
 
Commodore VIC -20 with a tape drive. Developed my own database application to keep track of the company's job schedules. I still have it.

Commodore 64 with a tape drive. Still have it.

IBM XT - it died

Toshiba T-1000 Laptop - Still have it.

Upgraded to almost every CPU step along the way. Currently running 15 PCs/laptops/tablets on Vista, Win7, Win8.1, & LinuxMint.

I think I need help...............
 
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