What was your first PC?

[ARF]

Whats funny about it? I think it is a good topic

The progress during all these years. From 2-4-coloured monitors to the Ultra HD 3840x2160 1.07 billion-coloured modern ones.

 

[xtreemchaos]

Commodore 64 followed by a A600HD which i still have now and it still works 100% i did a clock battery mod but its mosty stock.

 

[QuietBob]

I am not surprised with you lot of Retros. Being that i am a Retro HiFi person ,and a vinyl Junkie for many years.only getting in to Retro PC,s in the last couple of years I had to look *Pong *up as never heard of it before

sounds like one of thouse songs they played at thouse Raves Back in the 80,s

I love this song, what a banger! Definitely has a 90s vibe. Being a 90s kid myself, I can totally imagine raving to this!

 

[Jetster]

I love those old PC speakers when playing games. Beep, Beep, Braaap

 

[Corduroy2739]

My first family pc was a pentuim 100mhz with a 486 motherboard, but also learned on a Commodore 64

 

[onemanhitsquad]

continued..... this thing , used to use the hell out of it , mostly Avalon Hill text games that were written in Basic for Commodore Pet and Apple II . Written for a 44 column screen , I had to change the spacing and take out some words of the text to fit the Vic 20's 22 column screen. I used to travel around as a live sound engineer and this thing made it to a couple dozen states .

 

[Audioave10]

Avalon Hill games !

 

[Kapone33]

Tandy 1000 186 Radio Shack special for $1399 in 1983-1984. I have been around Computers since 1980 though. When 8 bit Games from Sierra's Celtics vs Lakers or Space Racer (Microprose) and Donkey Kong were purchased we were hooked. I finished Silpheed (Why do all Sci fi Anime have round boss ships?). My favourite was probably Zeliard. For me the first Action RPG I ever played.

 

[AusWolf]

1998 - a Celeron MMX 300 MHz. I thought it was a Pentium II back then, but it actually wasn't. It had 32 MB RAM (to think I have 32 GB now... oh my), which was later upgraded to 128 MB. It ran Windows 95, then 98 from a 2 GB hard drive, and I played games on the (arguably) worst graphics card in history, that was later dubbed "3D decelerator" by many, merely for the fact that games ran much faster in software render mode than in Direct3D: a 4 MB S3 ViRGE GX/DX. I rocked this PC up until 2004. Absolutely shocking. But I loved it.

 

[masterdeejay]

First was C64 with an old color television, one Quickshot 2 turbo joystick, one cartridge (GEOS, Terminator2, Soccer) and a tape drive with pirated copy games.
I still have 3 c64 and one color commodore monitor, few joysticks and a two 2MB (yes MB!!! average games was a few KB!) custom made cartidge with a lot of games like Wizzard of Wor, Simcity, Alcazar....

 

[Kapone33]

Wow, some amazing first PC's in this thread!!!!!!!!

First thing I used was an original Atari and I think it just had Pong on it?

First official "PC" was an 8088........Can't even remember the MHz or memory. I had to load the operating system from a floppy disk. Then I upgraded it and installed some huuuuuuuuge hard drive. I think it was a 4 megabyte drive. LOL

I then wrote a hard drive parking program to keep from damaging the hard drive when I would have to transport the system.

Of course the monitor was monochrome.

I actullay had a Pong unit and another one where you had 2 sets of tank controls and could do battles on the TV. My Dad got me an Atari from his friend at work. It came with Pitfall, Skiing, Olypmpics, Space Invaders, Centipede and a few other Games that I can't remember.

Commodore 64 followed by a A600HD which i still have now and it still works 100% i did a clock battery mod but its mosty stock.

The Commodore 64 was great for rainy days when you couldn't play baseball or Football outside.

First was C64 with an old color television, one Quickshot 2 turbo joystick, one cartridge (GEOS, Terminator2, Soccer) and a tape drive with pirated copy games.
I still have 3 c64 and one color commodore monitor, few joysticks and a two 2MB (yes MB!!! average games was a few KB!) custom made cartidge with a lot of games like Wizzard of Wor, Simcity, Alcazar....

There was a Racing Game for the C64 that had tire wear and pit stops. I can't remember the name. Between that and the Wrestling they were the best Games on the C64 for a while.

 

[John Naylor]

1st real PC (not a gaming thing) was Wang APC... had an 8088 processor ... had to load DOS using 5-1/4 inch floppies every morning ... cost me $6k

 

[Kapone33]

1st real PC (not a gaming thing) was Wang APC... had an 8088 processor ... had to load DOS using 5-1/4 inch floppies every morning ... cost me $6k

The had Games for Floppy too.

 

[Greenslade]

continued..... this thing , used to use the hell out of it , mostly Avalon Hill text games that were written in Basic for Commodore Pet and Apple II . Written for a 44 column screen , I had to change the spacing and take out some words of the text to fit the Vic 20's 22 column screen. I used to travel around as a live sound engineer and this thing made it to a couple dozen states .


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Sounds a good job sound engineer did you do music festivals ?

 

[R-T-B]

A 1992ish Packard Bell 486 abomination. I remember little of it other than it was 66mhz, but at least the DX variant. 4MBs of ram. Kept it WAY too long (like into 1996). Thing would not die, much to my displeasure. It's part of why I got into PC building. The thing never could properly run Tie Fighter...

I grew up playing TLC games like Treasure Cove and Gizmos And Gadgets on it though, so can't deny at least at first, some fun was had...

Here is the model I had:

Packard Bell 486 DX2 66mhz – MDW

 

[Splinterdog]

My first PC was a Zenith Data Systems with a mono monitor with green text which I used for spreadsheets and invoices when I started my first business back in 1989/90.
No idea what was in the box, except that it made a lot of whirring and chugging noises and I eventually sold it to my mechanic, lucky bloke
Something like this:

 

[dirtyferret]

Mattel Aquarius with the slogan "Aquarius—System for the Seventies"...my parents got it for me around 1984-85 so yeah

 

[Wirko]

I got a ZX Spectrum 48KB in 1984. Built a peripheral for it - an EPROM programmer. Replaced the original ROM with something that two decades later would be called "custom ROM". It had two modifications:
- built-in character shapes (each in an 8x8 bit matrix) were replaced by ones that I designed myself, something that several years later would become known as "font". A serif font it was. Alright, granted, Mac users must have known what fonts were back then, and PC users had like two fonts ... on their dot matrix printers.
- white on black screen instead of black on white. I probably had an encounter an IBM PC at the time and was impressed by those noble colours. Three decades later this got a name, "dark theme".

Computer graphics was a highly interesting topic to me back then, I remember writing a program that would render proportionally spaced text on screen, without even seeing anything like that before. It was written in assembly language (the complete list of opcodes for the Z80 microprocessor was included in the user manual, along with the execution time for each) and slow.

Years later, I made a simple interface that allowed me to connect that same EPROM programmer to the ISA bus slot of my first PC. This book taught me most of what I needed to know about hardware and software in order to do that.

 

[onemanhitsquad]

ya...clubs, theaters , outdoor venues ...pretty much anywhere you can make a buck...I worked mostly for individual bands , but sometimes for sound companies in the midwest , late 70's to mid 90's having fun.

 

[stinger608]

1992ish Packard Bell 486 abomination. I remember little of it other than it was 66mhz, but at least the DX variant. 4MBs of ram. Kept it WAY too long (like into 1996). Thing would not die, much to my displeasure. It's part of why I got into PC building. The thing never could properly run Tie Fighter...

Oh my God, I had almost that exact same system!!!! I remember paying $100 USD for a 4mb memory chip to up to an amazing 8mb of memory........Oh and then Doom was released!!!!! I ended up getting a 12mb Diamond Monster 3DFX card to play that in unbelievable video quality..........Bhahahaha

Wow, how times have changed!!!!

 

[R-T-B]

Oh my God, I had almost that exact same system!!!! I remember paying $100 USD for a 4mb memory chip to up to an amazing 8mb of memory........Oh and then Doom was released!!!!! I ended up getting a 12mb Diamond Monster 3DFX card to play that in unbelievable video quality..........Bhahahaha

Wow, how times have changed!!!!

Yeah I am pretty sure what was holding me back from Tie Fighter was just the awful stock video card lol... we did try upgrading to 8MBs of ram but that did nothing for that scenario, really... It was always sort of playable but barely. You couldn't really do the twitch moves that game required.

PS: btw I miss the old "horizontal" cases.

 

[Susquehannock]

Dell Dimension xps400. Still have it and all the related items. Also still have the exact same Maximum PC magazine that inspired me to buy.

400mhz P2, Windows 98, Turtle Beach Montego sound, 12gb IBM hard drive, 128mb RAM. Paid extra to get the STB nVidia TNT and whopping 21 inch Trinitron monitor.

 

[Sensates]

1998 - a Celeron MMX 300 MHz. I thought it was a Pentium II back then, but it actually wasn't. It had 32 MB RAM (to think I have 32 GB now... oh my), which was later upgraded to 128 MB. It ran Windows 95, then 98 from a 2 GB hard drive, and I played games on the (arguably) worst graphics card in history, that was later dubbed "3D decelerator" by many, merely for the fact that games ran much faster in software render mode than in Direct3D: a 4 MB S3 ViRGE GX/DX. I rocked this PC up until 2004. Absolutely shocking. But I loved it.

Wow, just about to post the same. Mines worse.. got it in 99, only with 8mb ram, same S3 Virge card, 4GB QuantumFireball and a Yamaha soundcard. Had no money nor any idea about PC parts, all I knew was that I want to play some PC games!! First game installed: Red Alert, I honestly thought it was an exciting time for pc games.

The good thing was at least it came with an AGP port, which I eventually upgraded to a RIVA TNT. Rollcage was bundled and it simply blew my mind! I squeeze every inch of life out of that thing..

 

[AusWolf]

Wow, just about to post the same. Mines worse.. got it in 99, only with 8mb ram, same S3 Virge card, 4GB QuantumFireball and a Yamaha soundcard. Had no money nor any idea about PC parts, all I knew was that I want to play some PC games!! First game installed: Red Alert, I honestly thought it was an exciting time for pc games.

The good thing was at least it came with an AGP port, which I eventually upgraded to a RIVA TNT. Rollcage was bundled and it simply blew my mind! I squeeze every inch of life out of that thing..

Nice! My first game was Need for Speed 2. Then came Age of Empires 2, Doom and Commandos. I had a couple more favourites, but I can't remember them so well.

As for video cards, I really wanted something to play Jedi Knight 2 (Jedi Outcast), but didn't have the money for it. I was drooling at magazine articles about the GeForce 2, though. In the end, I never got anything better before the whole PC was replaced.

 

[Hyderz]

had older pcs before but they were not mine
my first official pc has Amd Athlon XP 2200+ with 512Mb DDR
Geforce 4 Ti4600 128MB -

Got this machine in 2003