A New Poll, What Was Your First PC

[saturdaygig]

Following up the 'how long can win 98 run' poll, hows about this - 'What was your first PC and how did you get to where you are now?'

I got a 386DX40 in 1992 running DOS 5. Eventually I moved to win 3.1, fitted my first sound card and modem.
My first big upgrade was a P100 and at that time my first CD drive came in and Win 95 arrived.
Later I moved to P233 on the same motherboard, later still the current Duron 600 on an ATX board so finally had to get a new case, and moved to Win 98.
Of course there have been various sound and video card and modem upgrades, extra memory, the introduction of CDRW (I'm on my second one of those!)
The monitor and floppy drive still remain from the 386 - so I still regard it as an upgrade.

So what are your stories, people?

SatG

[kenlinzee]

my first PC was a Gateway 400C with a 400 MHz celeron and only 3 PCI card slots, NO AGP, i used it for about two years untill i out grew it, and my niece has a computer, and when she was moving, her computer was in the trunk of her car, she was in a traffic accident and it ruined her computer, so i take my old gateway to her house and remove her harddrive, CDrom drive & floppy drive, and install them in to my old Gateway and install Windoze98se and Linux Redhat7.1 dualbooting, all for FREE!!! and now she love Linux better than windoze...

another Windoze user won over to the OSS Linux camp, HOORAY!!!

got /root???

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MSI K7T266-RU Pro2
AMD Athlon 1600+
(the mother of all motherboards)

[wotz_it_2_ya]

Started off with a spectrum ZX80 or something back in the mid 80's. Then went 10 years or so without (except at work). Got current system 2 or 3 yrs ago and modified it a little since. Is a p3 500.

[Dickster]

A 486DX2/66. It came with no sound card or CD-ROM, so I added those (my first upgrade.) Later the machine developed problems, and IBM graciously replaced it with a Pentium 66.

That machine grew old quickly, so I gave it away and built an AMD K6-2 350 from a barebones kit. I learned a lot from that one (especially the importance of good motherboard and chipset!) After a couple of years my kids got old enough to be interested in computers and naturally wanted to play the latest games. So my dear old Dad now has the 350, and I built a new 1.4 Ghz T'bird system last summer and I hope it will last a couple more years at least!

WOO-HAH, 1000 POSTS!


Oh yeah, I had a Timex 1000 at one time, but that doesn't really count!
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"I'm not a real doctor, I just play one on VDr!"

[This message has been edited by Dickster (edited 04-17-2002).]

[RingoSaturn]

Well, my first COMPUTER was a Texas Instruments TI/99. Had an Apple IIgs for awhile, then a MacSE.

My first "PC" was the Celeron 500 I built for myself.

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...this one goes to 11...

[JWR]

First one was a Timex/Sinclair 1000 followed by an Apple 2C and 2e then PC clones 8088,286386,pentium pentium III.

[Boccaman]

My first was a nightmare.

My second is a nightmare.

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" To err is human, but to really foul things up you need a computer "

[Brily]

First computer I had was a Commodore 64...I still love that computer. It was the best. Second system was an Amiga 1024 which had some of the best graphics of its time. Then I took a long break from computers until I got a 400mhz Celeron a couple years back. And now I use a machine I built (about a year ago) which is a 1Ghz.

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G,

Brily

[saturdaygig]

Originally posted by Boccaman:
My first was a nightmare.

My second is a nightmare.

Yeah, but thats how we like it, huh?

[Cowboy622]

Spend $4,000 on an Apple II GS for the kids because in the late 80's, everyone said Apple was in and IBM (and its clones) were on the way out. The schools all had Apple computers so it seemed like a good idea at the time.
(Actually I had a Slide rule and there was one calculator on campus but you had to book time on it.)

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You miss 100% of the shots you never take !

[This message has been edited by Cowboy622 (edited 04-17-2002).]

[ucklak]

HP65. You could write up to 100 step programs on magnetic strips, feed the strip into the calculator/computer and have 5 function buttons.

Graduated to a Commodore VIC-20 and learned machine language.

Moved to Apple][ and wrote in basic for that.

Then to Commodore64, wrote basic and assembler.

Atari 520ST, onboard midi, WOW and alot cheaper than Apple.

Jumped into the Intel craze, currently have running systems ranging from AMD233 to P3 933 running flavors of Linux and Windows.

Previous computers in between the Atari and AMD 233 have been sold.

[K G G]

1.) mid 80's Commodore C64 with tape-recorder and later floppy drive (the size of a minitower) - did I love the games those days (a little BASIC programming included)

2.) early 90's - AMD K6 40 Mhz, no sound, no ROM, upgraded from 1MB to 4MB SIMM !!! and later the multimedia packet (CD, Sound and 2nd HD) - outrages cost, but lots of learning experience. Went from DOS 5.0 all the way to WIN 95 on this...
now my little sister plays around with it

3.) mid 90's - AMD K6/2 266 (later upgraded to 400Mhz), lot's of modifications and testing all them switches and settings available in WIN98 and the BIOS (lot's of reinstallations because of this too )

4.) these days - first completely build unit AMD XP 1.53 with all zip and zap one needs (or doesn't ), WIN98SE, and started modding it too (silver case, window, green light)

hahhhhhh, this thread brings back old memories....

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NEVER get beaten by a machine that can only add 1's and 0's...

[lazlowe]

My first time was with a Radio Shack Color Computer - Coco1 - 4k of RAM - 6068 processor - cartridge loaded software - taped backup and file saving. At the peak of popularity there were 8 magazines devoted to the Coco and I bought everyone of them. - How to expand your RAM - piggybacking 8k chips for a whopping 16k of RAM!!! - the power... the rush...Envying the guy who could afford $300+ for the disk drive... may he burn in hell...
Once hooked, of course I could only feed my habit with bigger and bigger doses... a Coco 2 - real keyboard, no more chiclets...more RAM, Ugh,Ugh...then a Coco 3... 256K of RAM - could it get any better than this?
Alas, the Coco faded into obscurity... and I had to join the herd and bought an 8086, then a 486... a Pentium I 75Mhz...and currently an Athlon 750, 512Mb, 90Gig HD space DVD and CD-RW, Rage Fury Maxx video and SB Live Gamer.
But down in the basement... in a dark corner... I still have that old Coco1 (s/n 00024)tucked away and every once in a while I pull it out and remember simpler times... times before Bill and Windows...ahhhh!

[Prophet]

1)TRS-80

2)IBM PC Jr.

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PROPHET of the POD, c.1998
www.NUTBURGER.com

[Prophet]

With a Z-80 CPU and 4K-16K of RAM the Model I sold for around $600 dollars in the late 70s. Software was mainly cassette based like many of the micros of the time, but later disk drives and disk based software became common. The Model I was discontinued in 1981 due to its failure to meet the FCC's Radio Frequency Interference rules.


I have been trying to find this computer for a long time and am now able to add it to my collection. There doesn’t really seem to be that many Model I computers available out there. I think the main reason for this is that the Model I is almost a computer cult icon- many of the original owners just refuse to part with them.


This is a Model I level II computer meaning that the BASIC in ROM has been upgraded and a numeric keypad to the right has been added. I also have a TRS-80 monitor for it, which is really just a repackaged B&W TV set and a Radio Shack cassette player for mass storage. In addition to some general software & manuals I have the T-Bug assembly language software and a number of circuit diagrams for the computer. The person who I got the TRS-80 from used to use it for Z-80 microprocessor development.



The IBM PC Jr. was first released in 1983 for $1300 and featured an 8088 CPU, 64K of RAM, and one 360K 5.25” floppy drive. The PC Jr. was marketed as the home version of the IBM 5150. While it did have a number of interesting innovations such as a wireless infrared keyboard, sound output built into the monitor, and two ROM cartridge slots, the PC Jr. was a total flop and was discontinued in 1985. Computer expansion was done through the use of snap on modules know as “side-cars”. My PC Jr. has the RAM brought up to 128K through the use of one of these sidecars.

edit: vintage ads.

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PROPHET of the POD, c.1998
www.NUTBURGER.com

[This message has been edited by Prophet (edited 04-17-2002).]