What was your first computer?

briscoe

New Member
Cyrix MII 233MHz
32MB RAM
S3 video 2MB
1GB HDD
15" CRT

I remember the games I loved playing were The 11th Hour, Deer Hunter Avenger, Doom, and Quake 3. I remember when I upgraded to a Voodoo 3 3000 I would never have to worry about touching it again.
 

tremmor

Well-Known Member
Built a IMSAI 8008 and 8080 computer in the beginning.
Had 8" disc drive only and think 4k of mem. Was no Internet
and only dial up bulletin boards off the phone line during the day. then built a TRS80 from
radio shack kit and 4k of mem. All had only black/white or green letter
monitors. then bought first color computer Commodore Amiga.
 

strollin

Well-Known Member
IBM PC - 1984
4.77Mhz 8088 cpu
CGA video card with 16KB
2 360K 5.25" floppy drives
DOS 2.1
 

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Calin

Well-Known Member
My first PC was actually purchased by my parents before I was even born.
It was a Windows 95 PC with 16MB of Ram and a Pentium 150Mhz. It did have a dedicated GPU but I don't remember exactly which one. I still have it somewhere in my house, maybe I'll find it one day and take some nice photos :)
 

_Kyle_

Well-Known Member
My first PC was actually purchased by my parents before I was even born.
It was a Windows 95 PC with 16MB of Ram and a Pentium 150Mhz. It did have a dedicated GPU but I don't remember exactly which one. I still have it somewhere in my house, maybe I'll find it one day and take some nice photos :)

You sure it wasn't a decomissioned NASA supercomputer or something? :p

Anyways, my first PC was a Dell Dimension with a Pentium 4 and about 1GB of RAM. My grandma gave it to me a few years back and it still sits in my room.
 
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strollin

Well-Known Member
I'm curious - At what age did you get your first PC? I was 31 when I got my first PC in 1984.
 

Shlouski

VIP Member
Built my first pc when I was 12, would have been much easier to do if I had the internet instead of only a couple of manuals. I built the pc in 1997 and I just remember that it was a P200 MMX, and that I chose a terrible case with a hinged motherboard side panel and having to connect or disconnect cables with one hand every time I opened or closed the damn thing :D.
 

Darren

Moderator
Staff member
I'm curious - At what age did you get your first PC? I was 31 when I got my first PC in 1984.
4. I learned to read from an educational game that came in 50+ floppies.

Some Compaq Presario my dad brought home from work running Windows 95, had a variety of cast off work machines growing up usually Dell Dimensions.
 

strollin

Well-Known Member
Built my first pc when I was 12, would have been much easier to do if I had the internet instead of only a couple of manuals. I built the pc in 1997 and I just remember that it was a P200 MMX, and that I chose a terrible case with a hinged motherboard side panel and having to connect or disconnect cables with one hand every time I opened or closed the damn thing :D.
I did my first build in 1985. The internet might have existed in it's infancy then but I certainly didn't have access to it. No manuals or books, I just went to a computer show, bought all the parts and took them home and assembled them. My first build was a 4.77/8 Mhz 8088 cpu, 640K Ram, CGA video with 16K, a single 360 fdd and a 20 MB hdd. The mobo I bought came with a really early Taiwanese BIOS that wasn't very good so I actually copied the BIOS ROM chips from an IBM XT and put them in my home-built.
 

Shane

Super Moderator
Staff member
I believe mine was a Cyrix 6x86 CPU based system,cant actually remember what happened to that system,I just remember i didn't have internet back then so word & paint it was :D
 

novicegeek

Member
I think I had a Tandy 1000; it was definitely a Tandy. I remember it had the big 5 1/4" floppy drive and NO hard drive. You had to load the program onto RAM, then pull that disk out and load your storage media in the slot. Really, all I got done on that computer was play hangman, which is pretty much why I'm a novice geek today. I didn't take it too seriously back then. I mean who needed a computer when you had an electric typewriter! Sorry, I lost some of you guys at 5 1/4", didn't I?
 

Shlouski

VIP Member
I think I had a Tandy 1000; it was definitely a Tandy. I remember it had the big 5 1/4" floppy drive and NO hard drive. You had to load the program onto RAM, then pull that disk out and load your storage media in the slot. Really, all I got done on that computer was play hangman, which is pretty much why I'm a novice geek today. I didn't take it too seriously back then. I mean who needed a computer when you had an electric typewriter! Sorry, I lost some of you guys at 5 1/4", didn't I?

Damn you old, I think I saw one of those in a museum :D. I'm not so far behind, I remember using zip and floppy drives.
 

C4C

Well-Known Member
When I was younger I used a Dell OptiPlex with a GeForce 8400GS.. Was the family computer.

Built my first PC in late 2014 after coming to this forum for some help. Athlon X4 860K and a Sapphire R9 270X Toxic.

Funny enough, bought back that same PC in 2017 to keep as a backup... and now I'm typing on it because my Z170 board took a dump :p
 

beers

Moderator
Staff member
Some old Acer Aspire was my first 'my' rig. I had to upgrade the RAM in order to play NASCAR 2 :p

P1 120 MHz
4 MB RAM
800 MB HDD
4x CDROM
Winders nernderferve
 

jevery

Active Member
Remember the 2400 baud modem. Took like five minutes to download a low res gif line by line. Then I thought I'd reached the pinnacle with the 14,400 modem. We've come quite a way with data transmission.
 

johnb35

Administrator
Staff member
The Laser 128 released in 1984. First windows computer was a Packard Bell 75 mhz cpu with 8mb of ram and 540mb hard drive. Slow as hell.
 

strollin

Well-Known Member
Remember the 2400 baud modem. Took like five minutes to download a low res gif line by line. Then I thought I'd reached the pinnacle with the 14,400 modem. We've come quite a way with data transmission.
My first modem was 1200 baud, it was a screamer compared to the 300 baud modem that came with my sister's computer.

In my recollection, downloading text on these modems was like this: 300 baud - One word at a time would appear on the screen. 1200 baud - One line would appear at a time. 2400 baud - 1/2 page would appear at a time.
 
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