I got my first computer in 1988. I think my old man's work were throwing it out or something... *shrugs. Specs as follows.
8086 @ 8mhz 640k RAM 30Mb HDD (huge in those days - most of my mates didn't have HDD). 5.25 DS/DD floppy (held 360k?) EGA graphics card (16 colour). My mate had VGA (256 colour).. I was soooo jealous. 12" CRT. DOS 3.1 (from memory - which is getting old)
Favourite games at the time: Heroes Quest. Police Story. Xenon II: megablast. Curse of the Azure Bonds. Pool of Radiance. Kings Quest. Pirates! (my FAVOURITE!!)
'84. c64. every game was ****en awesome, one-on-one (dr j v. larry bird), gateway to apshei, sword of fargoal, save new york, crush crumble n' chomp, jumpman, wizball, elite, paradroid, ahhhhhhhhh
The first PC I ever actually bought myself was a Pentium 200. I had 64Mb of RAM with a 4Mb S3Verge and my friends swore it must have been the best spec'd PC in Darwin. I took holidays from work and spent pretty much my entire holiday pay on it and lived on baked beans for a month.
All these specs are bringing back memories. I think the DX4-100 was my third PC. I kept getting junk that was being thrown out. It was a beast at the time.
Another early memory from those days was the game Civilisation. My mate bought it and we hacked (not really... it was easy) it and changed the text for the intro. A few years later my mate goes 'hey... you want a copy of Civilisation... old school game'. I'm like 'yeah, I used to love that game!'. Guess what... the same copy had looped around Darwin and it was the one we'd modified the intro for years earlier! Hilarious.
First "PC" was an Atari ST2600. It wasn't bad, and Space Goose rocked! Second was a 6600/60 PowerPC (Good ol' Risc) (160mb HDD) -Should note, that at work we used 086, with a 160mb HDD. Third PC was a 386. Fourth a Pentium 75 with a sound card. Fifth PC was a Pentium 100 After that it wasn't really an issue for a while, and then in 1999 I bought a PII-450 with a TNT. ^_~ That was awesome. And then it just fades off into a multitude of upgrades. Nothing left from the original PC. ^_^
1st computer I owned Amiga 500 me thinks first computer I built AMD DX4-100 ^_^ (didn't realise it waz an amd until a couple of years ago when I found it @ a friends place. wasn't that game called Star Goose? Sierra Adventure Games Rocked! and Duke3D Will always be the greatest FPS ^_^
i had to get a personal load to get my first computer for $4000, Osbourne 486 DX66. 4mb ram and a huge 320mb HHD with printer etc... slighter bigger hhd than my friends at the time.
I still remember panicing when I deleted a shortcut tot he control panel, and the Osborne tech told me to bring int he computer, so I took the entire thing and he laughted saying he only needs the main box (noobie effort on my part) he then recreated the icon and I thought wow... he's good. from that I decided to be a computer tec
Quote from r00t|{it;347545: 1st computer I owned Amiga 500 me thinks first computer I built AMD DX4-100 ^_^ (didn't realise it waz an amd until a couple of years ago when I found it @ a friends place. wasn't that game called Star Goose? Sierra Adventure Games Rocked! and Duke3D Will always be the greatest FPS ^_^
I remember buying a K62-300 (300mhz AMD) and it was the worst single bit of hardware I've ever purchased. Bought a CD burner... didn't work. Bought a graphics card... didn't work. All because of these POS processors! I believe that was AMDs biggest mess up... That's pretty much why I've never touched one since. Probably a bit rough considering that was probably 10 years ago... meh!
Quote from grandinferno;347550: Wow. Awesome. 256 bytes of RAM. 3mhz. That's so cool. (No sarcasm... that's really cool!).
Unfortunately we had to write most of the games ourselves. Had a book with the programs in them and had to copy it to the TI. Very time consuming, especially when you make a mistake.
Quote from mepm;347551: i had a k6 amd, put in a cd burner and pci graphics card; worked fine?
Oh it wasn't that every bit of hardware didn't work! There was lots of problems with the chip though... Some people blamed the motherboards out at the time, I blamed the chip. I wasn't the only one with dramas either... I tried messing with drivers, etc. In the end it could have well been my CPU MB combo.
I ended up buying a PIII-500 (...or something like that) and my hardware worked fine after that!
Quote from Longtom;347552: Unfortunately we had to write most of the games ourselves. Had a book with the programs in them and had to copy it to the TI. Very time consuming, especially when you make a mistake.
I have to say I'm so glad I was around in the early days of home PCs. Just seeing the amazing growth of the technology is just awesome. For example, looking at the specs of your first PC to the specs of (what I assume) is your current PC (in your sig). That's so cool.
The one good thing about boarding school was being stuck in a dorm with rich kids that all had pentium-100s (i think it was at that stage, might've been the 90s still) playing Tie Fighter.. that game kicked the hell out of X-Wing howie ;P
Quote from Aegis;347556: The one good thing about boarding school was being stuck in a dorm with rich kids that all had pentium-100s (i think it was at that stage, might've been the 90s still) playing Tie Fighter.. that game kicked the hell out of X-Wing howie ;P
Yeah, I remember the first (and only) year I went to uni (1995) they had Pentium-75s... man I was excited... lol.
oh! i forgot! the Original Nascar over null modem cable! the very first racing game i was able to drive the wrong way round the track on (damned Pitstop on the C64 was such a disappointment in that regard!)
I've still got a reverse polish programmable number basher around here somewhere. God forgive me if I ever need to use it again in an as-intended manner.
I had a C64, but owned a NES during the same period so was mostly a "console gamer" around that time. My family's PC that I paid loving attention to was:
- Pentium 233MHz MMX - 32MB EDO RAM - I later upgrade to 96MB and then 128MB at huge costs. - 20GB HDD - 15" CRT - VGA onboard, but purchased a Voodoo 2 8MB soon after.
Some of my favourite games during the lifespan of that PC were QuakeWorld TeamFortress, Quake II CTF, StarCraft, Command & Conquer Red Alert, Thief and Kingpin.
I remember playing Quake on a 14.4k modem direct from my place in Leanyer to my mate's in Wanguri. It was hilarious... he was lagging like crazy! Ahhhh... memories. At least I'm 99% sure it was Quake. Man my memory is broken! :(
My first ever computer costed my Dad a fair bit, a Dell Pentium 266! Awesome times and memories of Total Annihilation. No game will ever top it, not even their wannabe remake "Supreme Failure Commander". Makes me miss playing CnC Renegade now too.
Quote from Aegis;347556: The one good thing about boarding school was being stuck in a dorm with rich kids that all had pentium-100s (i think it was at that stage, might've been the 90s still) playing Tie Fighter.. that game kicked the hell out of X-Wing howie ;P
Tie fighter was and still is the greatest flight sim ever imo.
i really dont remember what computers we had, 386, 486, i played C64 at some time not sure if we had one or if it was a friends. i have pretty bad memory.
the first computer i bought with my money was a Pentium 3 something.
Family never had a computer, and the first I really ever used was at school in like year 4 ('94). Didn't get one until I was in year 9 ('99) and I think that was a wonderful Celeron 300A.
Started late, so much catching up to do with older tech, does have its downsides working in IT at times but one can only learn. Networking is where its at for me anyways, none of this silly sys admin stuff :p
first computer in family (mid to late 80s) was at the top of the line at the time tandy desktop with 2 5 1/4" drives can't even remember how much ram it had now but it was under the 1meg limit at the time. First game I ever got into was castle follow by the orignal zork. Never did finish zork. Was replaced by osbourn 486 DX2 (dad did have a early P1 laptop about that time for work he progreme Databases for telecom) After that was an IBM Aptiva P200MMX which I know use as a bed side table, pretty sure it stills powers up but havn't tried in a while.
First computer I bought for myself was a Duron600 which I bought after having played Diablo at a friends place. Had a 60GB IBM deskstar HDD(which actually still worked last time I used that caddy).
Tandy Colour Computer 3, or CoCo 3 as it was affectionately known. We used to get magazines and books from the Tandy shop with the programs in them for games and we would enter them ourselves into the computer, then spend hours debugging when we had typed the wrong stuff in. It also had a really cool FPS, the first I ever played, Dungeons of Daggorath, which was on a cartridge that plugged in to the side. The disk drive, size of a small brick, also used that same plug in the side for connectivity. Ha found an emulator for that game, and now I play it on my current PC. That was in 85 or 86 i think.
Quote from Aegis;347572: Heretic, Freespace trashed Tie Fighter I thought - although it was really just Tie Fighter with better graphics :) Did get to play Heretic on IBMs VR headset in the mid90s would have thought they would be main stream by now but then I don't have my jetpack either.
lol morge, that was a post aimed at Heretic (Mark), the *game* Heretic I thought was arse - the Marathon series was in full swing at the time and happily crapping on all other FPS titles...
I remember in an early MS Flight Simulator (can't remember which version) you could design your own planes and fly them. It was always bad. The was much plummeting.
Quote from paladin;347533: '84. c64. every game was ****en awesome, one-on-one (dr j v. larry bird), gateway to apshei, sword of fargoal, save new york, crush crumble n' chomp, jumpman, wizball, elite, paradroid, ahhhhhhhhh
If you count the C64 as a computer then that would be my first. I always counted the C64 as a console.
why? it had storage media - both floppy and tape, was fully programmable and came with a full keyboard. it had word processing and spreadsheet applications, supported printers, modems & mice. it was in every sense a computer.
My family bought a Microbee with the brown screen. First computer I bought was a P60 with 8 megs of RAM and 1 meg video. Upgraded to 4Meg Matrox millennium video card and it would run better than my mates P100 with 1 meg video playing Quake! :D
I remember loading Test Drive on the C64 tape drive and god help anyone in the room that farted or breathed as that would almost surely screw the load and make u do it all over again.
Anyone remember the Amstrad? I had one for about six months, it had the tape drive and keyboard in one piece. Played a great game that I had later on the C64, like chess but the pieces duked it out as they moved against each other. Anyone remember the name?
Police Quest I Pursuit of the death angel is the most ultimate sierra game ever made and they made some awesome games ^_^ Play using Dosbox or MoSlow ^_^
Man, I was the biggest fan of Sierra when I was a kid. I remember I gathered all my birthday money together and spent $80 on Heroes Quest (I think they later changed the name to Quest for Glory) from Tandy. Actually, games really haven't gone up that much have they? lol... That was yeeeeeeears ago. When it first came out. Looooved Sierra. Wow. King's Quest, Police Quest, Space Quest... ahhhhh.... *pulls out pipe and puffs again...
My first computer was an Atari 800XL. I unpacked it, typed in some of the programs out of the books that came with it and hated it. I put it back in its box, back on the plane (I lived off the coast of Sth Aust) and back to Myers. They sent me a Commodore 64 instead, on the evening plane, which I liked much better. Ended up spending tons of money on peripherals and software over the years, and still have it since 1984 even tho the floppy is cast. I moved on to the Amiga 500, then the 2000, then the 4000. A PC snuck into the lurch between the 2000 and the 4000 tho, and those Amigas ended up sold.
Since about 1999 or 2000 I've gotten back into the Commodore scene and now have maybe 4 C64's, 4 A500's, 1 A2000, 2 A1200/030's, 1 A600 and 1 A4000/040 with Picasso IV, X-Surf and Subway USB. I also have the CD32 with SX-1 addon. I dont get into the gaming side of PCs unless it's MAME or other emulators, I've never really been interested in the newer PC games, and was too busy with Lemmings and Skidmarks and Pinball Dreams when the whole Wolf 3D/Doom/C&C thing kicked off.
The C64 is still the worlds biggest selling computer and started many nerds out on their chosen path to geekdom. These days you have LAN Parties with gigabit networking and dvd burners/SANs, those days you had copy and demo parties with 300baud modems and 360kb floppy disks. These days we have torrents, those days we had Australia Post, and re-using stamps over and over again.... I'd love to know how many 3.5 and 5.25 floppies I've copied over the years.
Quote from Aegis;347868: lol jabsy! awesome game.. that and karateka (sp?)
I was always a "Way Of The Exploding Fist" kind of guy.
Might have to fire that up next.
Unless of course you are coming over for a challenge match.... I have Star Cursor joysticks, Competition Pros, TAC2's, Epyx Speed Kings, plus a range of Wicos, come give it your best shot.
i remember my first PC, but i can't actually recall the specs, anyway, i think its P2, windows 98 lol, not that pimp with graphics but i can play some games like starcraft, red alert and diablo II :D
I prefered Branch myself, still used Xtgold to unzip stuff though.
And seeing as im posting here. My first was a 486SX 33mhz 4mb RAM 250mb HD. Think the first game I got with it was Halloween Harry (shareware, shareware was mainly all I bought).
I used to play the Commodore 64 at the Casuarina Library before that though. Loved Rambo 2 and Ghost n Goblins :D
Quote from paladin;347882: you weren't a hardcore dos user unless you had batch files to cover for common typos, eg:
dri.bat ird.bat idr.bat rid.bat rdi.bat
all executing 'dir'
Quote from OverDrive;347878: XtreeGold ftw.
Both you guys are f*cking flinging me down memory lane big time. Ahhhh... editing the autoexec.bat just so I could get over 600k to run a game... taking out one bit at a time... lol.