A New Poll, What Was Your First PC

Ooooh. It would have been a RISC OS system (which cost an ARM and a leg - hahahahaha!) way back in 1988.

If only Acorn had had a decent marketing strategy ... :(

My first was a Ventek Datapoint programmed in a close-to-assembler language called Databus. (1976). Storage on audio tapes. Time required to alter 1 byte - 45 minutes.

Then a Intertec Superbrain 2 x 360K floppies, 64K RAM, CP/M (1980).

These were my employer's, not mine!

Let's see...

First we had a TRS-80 (I still miss playing RoboCop), bought a CoCo 2 or 3 from a neighbor (one had dual disk drives, EAT THAT! :D )

Then a 486 SX 33mhz, we got a bargain - the box said 170 meg HD, the machine had 210 :)

Then a P166 from Best Buy (last Packard Bell I ever touched)

Then a Compaq 600mhz Athlon, custom designed (funny, the salesman couldn't run their configuration computer)

Now, a home-built Athlon XP1700 monster. RAID speed striping, 512MB DDR RAM, surround sound, DVD+CDRW, 56k modem, cable Internet, TV tuner, MS Sidewinder wheel, Gravis Gamepad, webcam, digital cam, printer, scanner, etc. etc. etc.

Boy after reading what some started with certainly over shadows what I started with. It was a IBM Sub-mini notebook, 80 mb hdd, 12 mb ram,
and 9 inch B&W lcd. It ran Win 3.x and MS Office?. The damn thing traveled with me to England several times(used a lot of floppies was required by work, and it allowed me to send and recieve email) Eventually the case developed several failures, after packing it in my suitcase, but it still lived.

I believe it was a IBM Thinkpad 100.

At work we were still using dumb terminals with what ever software the MIS boys decided, don't remember the make of the DT's but they did work after a fashion.

I then got a used, reconditioned exSAS Dell 386, again running the familliar Win3.x and office?(blank when I recieved it. 300 MB HDD and 32 MB RAM. I upgraded it to win 95 when it came out and used Office 97? and gave the delapidated TP100 to the daughter(still running today) This went for a few years with the Dell in various configurations Including Linus Red Hat.

Bought a TravelPro Laptop with a 2 gig HDD, and maxed the memory at 80 Mb. It was a real screamer P-ll MMX and It ran 98SE and Office 97, later Office 2000. Tried to flash the bios due to Y2K things and it died.

Bought the current laptop IBM Series i Lapper - 4.6 gig HDD and 160+ Ram and a Desktop E-Machine 400 tower. Both running now. The Thinkpad specs are posted in the signature, the E-Machine is 400 mhz with 160+ Ram running 98SE and Office 2000 - The wifes machine, I just fix it and maintain it and boy have I learned some things.

The Dell now resides with another daughter and runs 95 like a trooper.

I found someone with a new bios chip for the Travelpro 100 so it now lives with 98SE and Office 2000 but serves the function as a back up only, as it is slow compared to the present Thinkpad.

This was a neat poll, brought back some memories of things that others experienced as well as my experiences.:)

My first computer was a commodore c64, then Atari 520 st, then Amiga 500 shortly followed by the 1/2 meg upgrade, and a 20 mb external hd with 2 mb ram installed ( great computer ), then it was the Amiga 1200 upgraded later with 80 meg hd and 14.4k modem and Amiga cd32 ( remember them ) that connected to my 1200. Then in 1999 I got a cyrix 233 with 3gig hd and 32 meg ram, 56k modem, that got upgraded to amd 350 then 500 cpu and 128 of ram and voodoo banshee 16 mb, now I have an xp1800 with 256 ddr ram, 40 gig hd, geforce 4 mx440 64 mb, dvd, cdrw and adsl modem.

My first is a Compaq7478... 533mhz K6-2,,, 8X DVD,,,, 4X CD-RW... 30g 5400 hard drive... It ran Win98 and had to have it reinstalled dern near every week... Part my fault part the machine...
My then boss had a Win2k upgrade that he was going to use until someone told hime it had "16 million bugs in it"... So I bought the upgrade installed and that combined with changing the Compaq memory made it bullet proof...

It's now my server running every server application I can throw at it from eDonkey to e-mail...
It's at 550mhz,,, uses a K7 cooler,,, has 512megs (the maximum),,, 1 30g 7200 and 2 40g 7200 drives,,, a 300w PS,,, and runs Win2K Advance Server...

It's like a child,,, I love it and am proud of what it's become...
Jeez,,, I spend to much time with my computers...

My brain and flash cards to do the math.

electronically? the first commercial palm calculator.

pc? hp 86B statistical with math coprosessor. like 16hz

go figure. my calculator ran faster than that!

Now I kinda laugh at all the xsystems @ 1600x+ gigs? LOL..

I know we've heard it before mach..

Go tell it to the engineers!!

mach :D

MY first computer was a commodore 64, then a 128. Then a couple of years later got a mac LC, the nice little one. Still have it but it's in storage.

Then went to a 386 and learned how to really mess up a computer.Finally learned enough to build my first machine using old parts for the most part. Didn't get on the net until about 3 years ago when I got a machine that would actually work.

I now have a 1.3 gig Tbird running XP Pro and for the most part it's running great. Still have a couple of minor problems but working on them.

Ain't it great how you learn what not to do faster then what you should do???

cheers mac :cool:

my first pc was a gateway 450 mhz. Jumped in with both feet in 99 . Just opened the box on my new alienware area 51 custom yesterday 2.81 GBz pentium 4 on a ASUS mother board and 1 GBz memory :D running windows xp pro.

sandman

1. SlideRule

2. Calculator -WOW

3. ATARI, ATARI,ATARI - ASC and saving programs to a Tape Recorder, and playing that ping pong game...

4. Zenith Z248 don't remember the specs.

5. Wal Mart Special 386SX/16Mhz - a whopping 2MB RAM, 40MB HDD - it zoomed along.. Added a 14.4 Modem all by myself, geez it was quick.

6. Local computer shop put in a 486DX2/66Mhz motherboard and 8 MB RAM I think about $199. Now I had a fast burner - it was fast.... after this I figured out hey I can do these upgrades myself, why pay the computer nerd to do it....

7. Bought my 1st Tower case and moved everything from the 486 into the Tower - hey it worked too...

8. Upgrade's: Added to that 486: 32MB RAM; 4MB Video Card; A whopping 520MB HDD and a Math Co-Processor - now that thing was like a dragster...

9. Ah my first Pentium -built with these hands, using same tower: CyrizPR233 - 64MB Ram, 8MB Vid Card and a HUGE 1.2MB HDD - I was screaming.

10, Between the Cyrix PR233 and my current system, several motherboard's, Cyrix PR 333, then went to AMD K6-2, 350, 400, 450, 500, about 3 different mobo, several Vid Card's gradually going from 8MB to 16MB to 32MB to current 64MB...

Finally, many years later sitting her with this 800Mhx celeron, 64MB Vid, 20GIG HDD, 256MB RAM blah blah blah. Next to the T-Bird then it will fly...

Of all the systems I have built and owned the best was the ATARI - WHY- it was simple, cheap (at that time) and not very upgradeable - look at the $$ I saved....

IBM Model 30 286. (cost=2900.00 bucks) Upgraded it to Windows 3.1. Had to have some moe ram to get it to run well(another trip to the bank) As it turned out, I liked DOSSHELL better than Win 3.1. It had a 20.8 MB harddrive, one floppy drive and around 1 MB of ram.

After running Windows 3.1, I said: "This Windows operating system will never replace DOS"

After awhile I kinda got tired of it, though my wife used it for word processing. Then along came the thing we now know as the INTERNET, and we went out and bought a Compaq to surf the net. We now have two computers that I've built, plus high speed internet connections.

l. Fingers
2. 10key adder
3. ti 55
4. This one and only Max Tech 3000 IBM clone (aren't they all) Pent 2, 366mghts (that for some reason runs at 400, I did nothing after the first format and reinstall has been running at 400 since?) with a rebuilt 50 dollar monitor that only had a 30 day warranty. Started with 32mb ram, then went up to 192 although 4 are for the built in video card. And if it wasn't for all the help at these tech boards i probably would have died two years ago. It keeps working for what I do so unless I win the lotto which I probably wont, I will keep going with this one as long as I can, or as long as I can keep win98 fe up and running. What can I say it only cost me 500 plus tax. Oh yea don't forget the 50 dollar monitor. Knock on wood ......

Oh yea I forgot I did use IBM computers at work but they weren't mine and all I did with them was wordprocessing and statistical analysis. Never messed with setting, registrys, or anything like that.

My grandfathers used to (Might still) have the IBM PCjr.
I used to mess around with that when I was at my grandparents house, I learned BASIC on that thing.

My first Pc at home though, was a 33Mhz Packard Bell
It had no sound or CD-ROM, I later installed those myself.
It came with Win 3.1 but that somehow died on me, so I was runnning in DOS for about a year...Then I got Win95 and a a video card SVGA 1mb card.....hmmm oh yeah and there was only 1 SIMM Slot on this thing, I upgraded it from 4mb of RAM to 12mb.

My next computer was a compaq 5190 Which is still used as a family computer. It is 400Mhz, DVD drive, upgraded to 256 Ram, CD-Burner, Zip Drive, and 12 Gb hard drive.

And my current Pc I built in May is listed in my quote.