Jump to content

1st and 2nd computer


wimc

Recommended Posts

My first computer was the Commodore Vic 20 back in the 80's, still have this and in working order, except 2 broken keys.

Second was a early 90's $4000 one, that ran Windows 3.11, 486SX, 33 MHz to 66 MHz, 1 MB to 4 MB ram, cannot recall if it was 40 MB or 120 MB hard drive, dialup modem, do not recall video. Sadly got rid of it many many years ago.

Edited by wimc
Added ram, added 120 MB
Link to comment
Share on other sites


There were a couple before these ones, but I don't count them due to various technicalities.

In 2010 I received an IBM PC 300GL type 6564-S8U. a PIII-500 with 256 MB PC100, 8.4 GB HDD and a Diamond Stealth S520 (S3 Savage4). It was running XP SP3 with realtime AVG, so it was unbearable. I downgraded to a Windows 95 OSR 2.1 + Windows 2000 dual boot. I must say it felt like a breath of fresh air as I was getting bored with Windows XP after several years of 9x/2K withdrawal. It's presently running NT 4 and now has a DVD-RW drive and a GeForce FX5700 LE; since I installed the latter, I was finally able to install the USB supplement for Windows 95!

The next year I was gifted an IBM ThinkPad T41 running a spartan Windows XP Professional, with a Pentium M-1.6, 512 MB DDR, 40 GB HDD and an ATI Mobility Radeon 7500. I ran a few games here and there and wasn't very computer literate then so it was the best-performing XP config I ever had. And SimCity 4 + mods + cities > 100 000 ran far better than on my Kaby Lake disaster. I still use it, trying out everything from 9x to NT4 to Warp 4.51. The sweet spot is win2k/XP of course.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My first that I really owned was a Compaq Presario 1065. I got it in maybe 2011 or so. (For the curious: Win95A, 16MB RAM, 1-ish GB hard drive.) The second, a couple years later, was a V2 Premier system (P4 3.4GHz, 512mb ram, 180GB hard drive, XP Home) The Presario lives on but the V2 Premier POSTed more and more intermittently until it outright refused to. Pretty sure it was the CPU that died, but the motherboard got damaged in storage so i couldn't verify that.

These systems were both hand-me-downs from where  my parents work.
 

Edited by i430VX
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Windows 3.11 screenshots - https://guidebookgallery.org/screenshots/win311fw

Really enjoy seeing whats been posted, everyone of course will have nearly the same or different eras. In my lifetime alone, seen technology grow from pretty much nothing to what it is today.

Edited by wimc
added better link
Link to comment
Share on other sites

My first PC I bought second hand from my sister in the early 1990s.  It was a clone 80286 12 MHz CPU, a 40 MB IDE drive, 1 MB of RAM and a Trident 256 KB ISA video adapter.

She originally had MS-DOS 4.01 on it, but I replaced it with MS-DOS 5.00 and used DOS Shell on it.

Now my second PC was an 80486 DX/2 66 MHz machine with 8 MB of 72 pin RAM, a 540 MB SCSI drive and an Adaptec ISA adapter.  I eventually added a 2 GB SCSI disk to it.  I had a Trident VESA 512 KB adapter, and a VESA controller.  I also added a Mitsumi 2x CD-ROM drive, and a 14.4 modem.  I never added a sound card to that machine, until I switched the motherboard.

On one primary partition i had MS-DOS 6.2 and Windows 3.1 installed.  On the second primary partition, I had OS/2 Warp 3.0, which was my primary OS for three years.

I did add a Vibra 16 sound card after I switched the motherboard to a PCI capable one with a Cyrix 5x86/100 MHz and a Cirrus Logic 1 MB PCI video adapter.  I also went with 16 MB of RAM.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 hours ago, jaclaz said:

Kids today ...

Receive full setup. I got my Athlon 4 tweaked to 1,4 GHz with 256 MB of ram, Winfast GeforceMx/Max 400 with 64 mb Ram on AGP bus, K7S5A Maiboard, 300W power supply, FDD drive, CD/DVD-ROM, 40 GB Seagate ATA HDD and 56K modem. system was a dual-booting win 98 and win 2000 Professional. Peripherlials? encore speakers, A4 tech  ball mouse with scrolling wheel, Chicony Keyboard and Samsung syncmaster 755 17" CRT screen. If you need any more details, most of this hardware is still in my house, even if not working.

PC is still operational, now with windows XP and Modem replaced with 100 Mbit network card, although rarely used. I needed to replace HDD (now 80 GB), and power supply. DVD-ROM is nearly dead, but I have additional CD-R. Keyboard is used to this day in other PC, and I bet you, will I find more of this model anywhere, I'm buying a full supply. I had an opportunity to check multiple Dell/Microsoft/Logitech 'office' keyboards at work and this one beats 'em all, more pleasant to write, more responsive, more reliable.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

13 hours ago, jaclaz said:

Why, in my day ...

https://tinyapps.org/blog/200702250700_why_in_my_day.html

My first computer was a Sinclair ZX 80 ( yes the one before the ZX 81)  and I soldered components to build it

... and we liked it !

(and it was replaced in a few months time by an actual ZX81)

Kids today ...

jaclaz

 

Wow!  I was 10 when that came out.  I had to look it up.

:boring:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 hours ago, Jody Thornton said:

Wow!  I was 10 when that came out.  I had to look it up.

:boring:

And - you know - when some time later I bought a RAM expansion kit ( a so-called RAM-Pack) for the ZX81:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAM_pack

taking the memory from 1 KB to 16 KB, thus  I could run "very complex" programs, and I had to make a wooden support for the computer and pack to avoid the "wobble" problem, there were already rumours of (at an extremely steep price) an expansion up to 64 KB!

You may now understand, how nowadays that Mega/Giga/Tera bytes are considered peanuts I still have preferences for small, tiny programs.

jaclaz

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...