How old were you when you got into computers, what system was it and what os?

[Yukikaze]

The first machine "owned" by me (as in, bought by my parents but placed in my room, back in 1993-4 I think) was a 66Mhz 486 running some version of DOS. However, I did have access to my dad's 286 and a friend's 386 a few years earlier, but I really didn't know how to do much with computers back then. That 486 hooked me onto the BBS culture, and later this transitioned to the Internet. I only really caught the computer hardware bug after my military service (2006-ish), and here the addiction really started when I bought my first Q6600-based rig. I haven't looked back since. When I started working in the industry about three years ago, the upgrade pace went exponential. lol.

 

[entropy13]

An IBM I think? Windows 3.0 I guess? My games were from floppy disks (the big ones). lol

 

[Shou Miko]

i was about 13 i think if i remember correct that was about that age it got my own pc, with a Intel Pentium 3 overclocked to around 900mhz and my dad's little sisters husband borred it for a couple of weeks and he downclocked it bcs he said it wasn't stable that bitch

but either way when it was at 900mhz it ran like a dream, but after i got it back my Windows ME was crap bcs of that, but well u can't win and i learned to reinstall it and XP bcs the man u usually was doing that got tired of reinstalling it about every mouth bcs it fucked it up, and i couldn't wait 14days to get it fixed so i learned to install Windows on my own and after that, everytime my dad was to learn a new program i needed to be there and watch so i could help my dad with it

this is pretty much all i can remember everything else is lost in a cloud of fog

 

[micropage7]

i was on high school when first using a pc, yeah kinda late and my first os is windows 98 se that run on pentium 1 with 64mb ram and 10gb hdd

 

[Eric_On_Web]

10 gigs..damn that was big for that time !

 

[middydj]

1983 - 1984 was the first years I recall being taken by computing. Used to play Oregon Trail at Elementary school. Then around 84 I would hang out at the IBM store and play King's Quest till they asked me to leave. Remember when IBM had retail stores?

was 12-13 back then

Not until 1995 was I reintroduced to pc's again and AOL 1.0

I then found out about the WWW around the same year. Not until 1998 did I purchase my first store bought pc .. A CTX brand name with a AMD k-6 300 cpu (added a Voodoo 3 3000 to it later). That started me into wanting to know more about them and upgrading mine which led me to build my own in 2000 fall.

Such a great time.

 

[Kreij]

Here's a picture of me that my mom took right after I realized I was missing one of the punch cards that I had used to save the new OS I had written in machine code on my abacus.

 

[lilhasselhoffer]

I'm a bit of a young pup compared to most of the people here. I started in the early early 90's with, if I remember correctly, as a dell. I do remember that huge pentium sticker.

I remember the fun of dos, but mostly the games. Good old commander keen and a shooter that had a rabbit as the main character. Buster, Buck, Willey; I can't exactly remember his name.

That computer died of natural causes during a move (crushed by grandfather clock). After that it was a couple of years until windows 98 and the next one.

 

[MLG The Canadian]

I was about 8 or 9 when I got my first computer from my Grandmother. It was an old HP.. I think... I can't really remember. It had Windows 98, and I played Rayman 2: The Great Escape, and some educational-ish games.. can't really remember the name.. something like Grandma's Attic, and Mazlow or something? Jeesh.. way to make my brain hurt xD

 

[avatar_raq]

1990 as I remember, I was 8 when I started to play the original Prince of Persia on an IBM with a 386 CPU, OS was DOS and I had to memorize the letters of the path of the game in order to run it, as I didn't know a thing about English then

 

[microtrash]

I was young when my father bring at home a Macintosh Plus running Mac OS 5.0 (At that time, most PC computer were running DOS)

The Mac Plus had 1MB (read, 1024KB !) of memory and no hard drive, just a 800KB floppy and a 68000 processor at 8mhz. I was so happy when my father upgraded the computer with $1200 worth of memory (4MB) and a blazing fast 20MB hard drive. (Hey, the HD was able to read and write at more than 100KB per second! Way faster that floppy!)

At that time, a complete game took only 50KB, and a very big game (like Dark Castle or fly simulator), 400KB... Yes, I played on Microsoft Flight Simulator 1.0 !

 

[microtrash]

forget the name of the magazine..
it would include code for games and some apps..

star.trek ... was my favorite game...
i recall... taking about 2.weeks to type in the code..
and about 1.weeks to find my syntax errors..

ascii graphics...

Star Trek BASIQ !!!!! That was a game ! And a lot of code...

You made my day for remembering that !

 

[esberelias]

in 1998 i was 10 years old bought my own NEC Pentium one 233MHz processor with 32 GB ram and 10 gig HDD running windows ME with money that i had saved from allowance lol

 

[microtrash]

in 1998 i was 10 years old bought my own NEC Pentium one 233MHz processor with 32 GB ram and 10 gig HDD running windows ME with money that i had saved from allowance lol

32 GB ?

Buying your own computer at 10 is... impressive

 

[VulkanBros]

1984 - Sinclair ZX81 (Spectrum) 3 MHz, Vic-20, Commodore 64, 80286 "clone" 2 mb mem, 8" floppy drive, 10 mb hdd.....

The wildest pc to date is still the AMD K6 233 MHz, ASUS mobo, Matrox Mystique gfx and a Voodoo 2 card ...... mannn - that where times....

 

[TotalChaos]

my first was a Packard Bell 486SX25 with 4Mb ram and 340MB harddrive Came with Win 3.11 but was replaced with Win 95 beta

 

[digibucc]

9 (in 1999) with a 486/66 with i think 1 or 2 mb of ram. a 100 mb hd, an external cd reader - window 3/dos ... you still had to type "win" at the command line to boot windows

I played that gorilla banana throwing game all the time in dos. like the worms games, you would choose an angle and amount of power, to hit the other gorilla. can't for the life of me remember the name...

obviously a family computer. the first computer i bought myself was a 600mhz athlon xp, with 128mb ram and a couple gb hdd. that was 14 or so.

 

[arnoo1]

commondore 64, black and green os thingie? lol
to old, throwed it away last year.
after that a 500mhz 128mb 10gb hdd, one of the first agp nvidia cards no nvidia branding

that pc still works with xp, upgraded the mem to 384mb and oc the cpu to 666mhz

 

[Jflynn0]

Emachine

My first computer that i got to play around with was a broken Emachine that my mom had. I was 25 and decided to see if i could fix it. Bam new motherboard ram and i was still running a piece of crap. But i got it to work. A few years later Im now building own rigs. Only the top notch stuff now $ 2000+ computers for me.

 

[Kreij]

9 (in 1999)

When I was 9 there were no PCs. The internet did not exists and browsing was something you did at department stores
No such thing as a cell phone, and you still "dialed" the regular phone.
Color TVs were rare (but available if you could afford one).
Kids went outside and played (I know it's a foriegn concept to some of you).
There was no such thing as "inline" skates (rollerblades).
We got hurt all the time at the parks on the playground equipment and no one got sued as our parents knew we were the stupid ones and the reason we got hurt.
We used to build model ships and set them on fire with gasoline in mock naval battles.
We could have killed you from 30 yards with a slingshot and stones from practicing since we were old enough to hold one.

Okay ... I'll stop rambling. lol

 

[meran]

hmmm i used to use the family computer we got it in 2000 i was 10, it was pentium 2 733 and something built in video card i cant remember 128mb ram after some time we chaged it for celeron 1.1ghz ,256mb ram gf2 40gb hdd

 

[digibucc]

When I was 9 there were no PCs. The internet did not exists and

Okay ... I'll stop rambling. lol

lol yeah... i already notice the change in my short years, i can only imagine.

that was a bit of a typo though, i meant 1994... still, bit of a difference.

hmmm i used to use the family computer we got it in 2000 i was 10, it was pentium 2 733 and something built in video card i cant remember 128mb ram after some time we chaged it for celeron 1.1ghz ,256mb ram gf2 40gb hdd

i think p3? i don't believe p2 had a 733... still , lol pentiums! it has been awhile :0

 

[HammerON]

Took a class at my high school in the mid-80's working with an Apple II (I think I was 13). Cannot remember any specs or much else for that matter...

It wasn't until I was in college in the early 90's that I got my first computer. It was a "white box" from some store in Eugene, OR and I think it was a 486 MHz. All I know is I played the hell out of a game called F117 Stealth Fighter (I think that was what it was called).
Actually didn't start building my own computers until 2003 as I wanted to build a system that could play DOOM 3
That rig I had a Athlon 64 3200+, 512MB of ram, and a ATI 9600XT (really wanted the 9800XT), a cheap case and I don't remember the other specs...

 

[meran]

i think p3? i don't believe p2 had a 733... still , lol pentiums! it has been awhile :0

well my bad it was copper mine celeron 733mhz changed later for 1.1ghz celeron i was using windows 98se i still remember how suck windows me was<<

 

[digibucc]

well my bad it was copper mine celeron 733mhz changed later for 1.1ghz celeron i was using windows 98se i still remember how suck was windows me was<<

lol yeah - i tried it for the novelty, but never seriously. 98se was the best for years, until xp sp2 came out imo - even the first sp didn't fix enough of the bugs

it always takes them multiple iterations, windows 7 was the smoothest for me so far, but even that many people had problems with.

k, sry for thread-jack , i'm gone