10TB HDD coming soon... so what was your first PC? and how much storage did it have?

MMM on 18/05/2015 - 23:13
Last edited 22/05/2015 - 15:08

****Edit: Summary of this post - past Applefanboy's (Scotty) + others. A nostalgic look and some fond memories of the beginning of the PC era. Some knowledgeable authority here at OZB based on history of users and I think an honourable mention needs to go to peteru with the Assemble yourself Russian Import PC https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/194672#comment-2759953 ***********

So what was your first PC? and what do you have now?
MY first computer was purchased in 1983 for $5500AU it had 8inch floppy disks….

Computing

Comments

      • Speckled Jim on 30/05/2015 - 18:09
        +1

        Apple II, IIe, IIc, IIgs, Macintosh 128k, Macintosh Classic, Mac SE, Performa, iMac, Mac Portable, Mac T.A.M. and I'm guessing II Plus is among the stack too.

        The ones I missed are also in the stack with extended keyboard…Apple III?

        • Bonsaichop on 30/05/2015 - 18:48

          Well done! //e Platinum is the one with the extended keyboard. Had an Apple /// too but it was packed away for this photo. There was also a //c Plus somewhere there, might have been behind the other machines. The iMac for what it's worth was a 'Flower Power' variant too.

  • aznkit on 20/05/2015 - 10:21
    +1

    486 with 2 x 5.25" disk drive
    100Mhz
    500Mb HDD
    4GB ram
    1MB VDO CARD

    now

    I7 4790
    32 GB ram
    4 x 120GB SSD Raid 0
    1 x 2TB HDD
    R9 280x vdo card

    • pull the lever on 22/05/2015 - 23:53

      Future

      i7 6000
      256 GB DDR 5 RAM
      4 x 1TB SSD Raid 0
      1 x 20TB HDD
      Nvidia Titan XX SLI

  • nikey2k27 on 20/05/2015 - 11:53

    back then 486 128mb of ram and 500mb hard drive windows 3.1

    I have 64tb server 40gb of ram i have few mac book 2014 one i mac and one mac mini.

  • b4ur2l8 on 20/05/2015 - 12:17
    +1

    mine was a Tandy TRS-80 clone made by Dick smiths ,the System-80 with built in cassette tape 16k memory and an old tv as the monitor via aerial socket
    I think it was about $900 in 1980

  • g12345567 on 20/05/2015 - 13:40

    First PC we had was the Otrona Attache. My dad had it at Work back in 1982. Used to bring it home on the weekends for us to use. After that the home computer was a Unitron u2200 Apple II clone. Then an IBM XT 8088 clone. 640k memory 20gb MFM hdd, 360k floppy, Logitech colour hand scanner and EGA 64 colour screen. Back in 1985

    MANUFACTURER Otrona
    TYPE: Transportable
    ORIGIN: U.S.A.
    YEAR: April 1982
    END OF PRODUCTION: 1984
    BUILT IN LANGUAGE: Unknown
    KEYBOARD: compact full-stroke keyboard (QWERTY)
    CPU: Zilog Z80A at 4 MHz + Intel i8086 at 8 MHz for the Model 8:16
    RAM: 64 KB
    8:16 model: 256 KB when running in MS-DOS mode
    ROM: 4 KB
    TEXT MODES: 80 x 24
    GRAPHIC MODES: 320 x 240
    COLOR: No (monochrome built-in 5.5'' CRT display)
    SIZE / WEIGHT 12 x 5.75 x 13.6 inches / 8kg
    I/O PORTS: expansion slot, keyboard connector, two RS-232c ports, video output (composite)
    BUILT IN MEDIA:5.25'' built-in floppy disk drive (360 KB)
    OS: CP/M + MS-DOS with 8:16 model

  • Nickels n Dimes on 20/05/2015 - 13:54

    I had an Amiga first (28yrs ago) with an expansion hard disk that cost ~$600 and stored 10 megabytes, or around 50 programs/games/demos. For that money today I could buy 10 TB storage, (10,485,760 MB) with substantially faster speed!

  • voldemart on 20/05/2015 - 14:16
    +2

    I am fairly sure OP wants to find out the age groups some of the most active Ozbargainers belong to.. and he's doing well :)

  • rover on 20/05/2015 - 14:18

    LOAD

    PRESS PLAY ON TAPE #1
    OK

    … about 100kB, more on a C90. But that all changed when I got my 1541… 165kB and then I got a disc puncher 330kB.

    Then there was the Casio PB-100 that had 512B, but then I got the memory expansion pack with boosted it to a staggering 1kB.

    • UFO on 22/05/2015 - 14:39

      Good times!

      Press play, wait 20min for Pitfall to load… game corrupts after 30seconds and you start all over again.

      I was king of the street when I picked up a C64 with the 1541 disc drive. "Instant" game play.

      And then an Amiga500 with an ACTION REPLAY cartridge… my god I was in heaven.

  • subywagon on 20/05/2015 - 14:24

    I remember being excited when dad brought home a TRS-80. I had to Google the specs…

    CPU: Zilog Z-80A, 1.77 MHz
    RAM: 4K, 16K max*
    Ports: Cassette I/O, video,
    Expansion connector*
    Display: 12-inch monochrome monitor
    64 X 16 text
    Expansion: External Expansion Interface
    Storage: Cassette storage
    OS: BASIC in ROM

    lol I remember pressing FFWD on the tape drive to try and make it load faster!

  • xuqi on 20/05/2015 - 14:54

    BBC Micro Model B

    • MCS6502A processor (2MHz, 8bit)
    • 32KB RAM
    • 8x 16KB ROM sockets used for storage
    • Single sided 5.25" floppy (rarely used as it was quite slow)

    Basically wrote my own programs, or typed in code created by others, then flashed it to EEPROM modules for use on the system.

  • Frank Murphy on 20/05/2015 - 15:15

    In 1999:
    Pentium II MMX 350MHz
    64MB RAM
    6Gb HDD
    Windows 98
    I was a nut about my visuals (still am)…and insisted on an Aperture Grille CRT monitor which was sharper and resolved finer detail rather than the crappier and blurrier Shadow Mask CRT monitors of the time. And they bloody cost twice as much!

  • shamid202 on 20/05/2015 - 16:27

    First Computer

    CPU: Intel i think it was Pentium 256Mhz or 128Mhz
    Ram: 32Mb (2x16mb)
    HDD: 8GB o
    Colour monitor
    with floppy and CD ROM

    Now its a laptop with
    i7 2630QM CPU
    8GB RAM
    512GB SSD SAMSUNG

  • battler on 20/05/2015 - 16:37
    +5

    dunno, but it had a 'Turbo' button !

    • subywagon on 21/05/2015 - 00:22

      lol I remember those Turbo buttons… hahaha

  • SupeNintendoChalmers on 20/05/2015 - 16:56
    +2

    Commo 64 baby. Are you keeping up with the Commodore?

    • Cluster on 21/05/2015 - 00:20
      +2

      Because the Commodore is keeping up with you!

      • ItsMeAgro on 21/05/2015 - 09:32

        My first fight at pre-school:

        I say my uncle's car is a Commodore

        Other kid says "you're stupid, commodore is a computer, not a car, everyone knows that, it's on TV"

        I punch him in the stomach

        he cries

        I get banned from The Block Corner

        :(

        • Cluster on 21/05/2015 - 10:14
          +1

          Ahhh, I remember the arguments over who had a better computer. So ridiculous :-)

          When it was time to part from the C64 and sell it through the classifieds section of a newspaper (ye olde days!) the newspaper's phone operator wanted to put the 'Commodore' ad under the cars section.

  • GOFYS on 20/05/2015 - 17:34

    Early 1980's, Business Data General Nova 4X for 6 users with 128K and 10MB on 10MB (Backup) hard disks about the same size as an old LP record.
    While we were waiting for it, about 2 months, they released a memory upgrade to 256K, Wow!

  • chiuy on 20/05/2015 - 17:35

    12MB RAM
    500MB Hard-drive
    Built in spread sheet capabilities
    and a 28k modem

    POW!

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFw-eb04zU4

  • Icy on 20/05/2015 - 19:15

    My first computer was ZX Spectrum around 86/87 with I believe 48kb of ram playing such cassette loaded hits as Jet Pac and Chequered Flag, though I never did like Pssst or Chess where I kept getting thrashed as a kid and I still have no clue about Backgammon.

    First PC did not eventuate until late 96, just prior to C&C Red Alert coming out and it had some IBM Cyrix 6x86 120MHz CPU, supposedly equivalent to a higher clocked Pentium at a lower price than Pentium 133. It turned out to have only been faster in integer performance but not floating point operations. It could not run Red Alert at all, they did not believe me and after much complaining and trying things, a guy from the shop came to my house (it was not far) to see the problems with the game installation hanging. So I had to return the case, add more money and switch to a Pentium 133. Not a pleasant start to my first PC experience, but very happy finally seeing it work without any problems.

    16MB EDO RAM, 15" monitor, 2GB IBM hard disk for which I had to argue with the salesman to include and the package price was around $3000. He did not believe I can use 2GB (hard disks were 500MB, 800MB with 1.1GB or 1.3GB being better than average options), but I did not want to change it and have to format for a long long time and was very happy I got it after a couple of years :P

    A device I didn't ask for came in the box and was branded Banksia, did not know what that was until next year, when it turned out it was the best dialup modem on the market and can do 33.6kbps that not many ISPs even supported yet. Soundblaster compatible soundcard, some S3 Trio graphics card that I believe had 1MB of RAM, which I upgraded to more years later and it didn't help much or I was just able to run higher resolutions than 800x600, forgot. They didn't yet make 3D cards if I recall and for motherboards you basically just got whatever or at least most people did.

    The PC came with a handful of MS pack CDs like Encarta96, MS Works, MS Money etc, though lucky I read in PC User to always ask about the Windows CD which I happened to remember just before walking out the shop and the guy said ou I am sure it is in here, looked through the box for 2 seconds and then said OU and quickly thrown one in he grabbed from under the counter. This turned out to be Win95 OSR2 OEM CD, the best version available.

    • terrys on 31/05/2015 - 13:13

      " just prior to C&C Red Alert coming out and it had some IBM Cyrix 6x86 120MHz CPU"

      Weird. I was building systems at the time, and the budget/bang at that time went Cyrix[IBM]/AMD/Pentium. For full on video processing or asseing the annual budgets for level 2 civilizations in the western spiral of the Andromeda galaxy, we'd recommend Pentuim [ once the multiplication table had been fixed]. I myself ran Cyrix up until the 233 Mhz period, when the AMD K6-2 took a leap over the other two , a lead which [IMO] they held until after the Athlon 64 X2.

      I had no problem running any of the C&C games and was running the cyrix happily up until that game of all games - Starcraft.

      • Icy on 03/06/2015 - 00:59
        +1

        Perhaps the shop did some other dodgy things which they also resolved when they put the P133 in. This ran Starcraft just fine a year and a half later :)

  • OzzyOzbourne on 20/05/2015 - 19:56

    First computer
    Sinclair zx spectrum, 48k ram, storage on cassette tape

    First proper pc
    25Mhz 486 processor, 1MB ram, 16 colour 640*480 video on 14" monitor, 500MB hdd, Windows 3.1

    Now
    4.6Ghz I7 8 threads, 16GB ram, 4GB vram, 3x1080p monitors, 3TB hdd, windows 8.

  • garetz on 20/05/2015 - 20:09

    My first pc was in late 92, i got an amstrad clone pc4386sx, 20 mHZ cpu, had 40 megs hdd, a 3.5" floppy disk inbuilt, 1 meg video and a 16 bit vga screen also 4 megs ram. I got the optional additional black and white dot matrix printer, all up was $3200 from harvey norman. The operating system was dos 3.1, which i used xtree gold with. The sound was just inbuilt speaker.

    I ended up spending 100s if not 1000s on floppy disks, 10 floppies cost like $40-60 bux, i would only get the best, like fujis/matrox which were less prone to bad sectors. Prices went down very quickly though, towards 486 era you could buy 20 floppies for $20-30.

    • scotty on 20/05/2015 - 22:25

      … 10 floppies cost like $40-60 bux, i would only get the best …

      I usually just spend 10 bux buying the standard density ones and hole-punch it to format them 1.44MB high density. Most don't last…

      • garetz on 20/05/2015 - 23:15

        I bought those as well, for non important data, i still have over 50% of the floppies i bought back then, and still works with no bad sectors. There was a huge difference in quality between the best floppies to the cheapies. Those ones you mention for 10 bux per 10 only lasted me 1-2 years.

  • Darron65 on 20/05/2015 - 20:30

    My little brother was the computer nerd of the family and he let me use his Apple IIc occasionally in the late 80's. It was pretty cool. At school it was all pc's not apples, same in my work world so that's what I bought in 89. I recall a 286 processor, 20MB hard drive, and monochrome monitor running MS-DOS 4. Then the next year I saw Windows 3.0 and had to have it… downward spiral ever since.

  • RJK on 20/05/2015 - 21:14

    Tandy 1000 (PC Jnr clone/IBM Compatible) with 256k RAM, 5 1/4" floppy, 16 colours.

    Dad upgraded it to 640k ram, 2 floppy drives. Just as with you, we got a 20mb HDD which the salesman said we'd never fill. He was completely right, we didn't come close to filling it with software from that era.

    We still have the computer. I think it stopped working after about 25 years.

  • [Deactivated] on 20/05/2015 - 21:46

    My first computer was a VZ200 from DSE, with the additional 24kb expansion, and tape drive. For my first computer with a hdd, I bought an IBM PS/2 with an 8086 cpu from Grays way before they were online. They were called gray eidsell and timms back then. I think it came with a 30Mb drive.

  • Blackpuddytat on 20/05/2015 - 21:55
    +1

    My first computer was a Commodore 64 with a 5¼ inch floppy drive, a cassette tape drive and one or two cartridges.

    All to play the 200 pirated games I had. Forgive me Ocean, Psygnoisis, Electronic Arts (Back when you actually made art), Microprose and all the others.

    Actually, F-U Electronic Arts.

  • iNeedMoreMoney on 20/05/2015 - 22:05

    286 16mhz 640kb ram 40mb hdd beeping speakers (added a 8-bit soundblaster to it) MSDOS 6.0 14" vga monitor 24-pin dot matrix printer

  • jeeg on 20/05/2015 - 22:41
    +1

    First PC - Clone IBM XT 8088 with 640K Ram and a gigant 20MB RLL drive and 5.25" drive. I am extremely pleased at that time.

    • McFly on 20/05/2015 - 23:31

      RLL - you must have been rich! :p

      • jeeg on 22/05/2015 - 21:08

        The other drivers are the MFM drives and I think those are known for sticky blades after a while :)

        That RLL drive did cost a fair bit in its days….

  • McFly on 21/05/2015 - 00:08

    Apple II clone Base64 with - you guessed it - 64KB of RAM and two - count 'em - full height 120KB floppy drives.
    Ahh, the serenity.
    My brother was importing them and I also remember the first hard drive he got - a 5MB external about the size of two loaves of bread stacked up and it when he turned it on it sounded like a jet engine starting up.

    That was about the time Apple were suing clone makers left, right, and centre (what, Apple suing people?!)
    Here's a story about that referencing the Wombat clone in an InfoWorld magazine from 1984. (The Base64 was 'legal' - at the time anyway.)
    Check it out kids - it's got it all: Logo, Apple III, XT, ads for Paradise graphics cards, dBase, Lotus, Hayes modems (wow 1200 baud!), Charlie Chaplin for IBM…

  • Cluster on 21/05/2015 - 00:24

    C64, then Amiga 500, before moving to PCs. I once dreamed of having a 20Mb hard drive on my Amiga. 80Mb was, whoah, massive!

    I remember buying a disk notcher for my C64 and getting DOUBLE the usual 168kb of storage. It was like magic.

  • SeroSero on 21/05/2015 - 09:18

    My old Amiga 500, didn't have a HDD at all.

    Playing Monkey island meant constantly swapping around 10 floppy disks. Good times

  • ItsMeAgro on 21/05/2015 - 09:28
    +1

    My first real PC was an IBM-compatible PC XT:

    8MHz CPU
    640k RAM (enough for anybody!)
    360k double-density 5.25" floppy drive (remember, just to make things easy: double density is less than high density!)
    CGA monitor (glorious 4 colours!)
    20MB hard disk drive
    $2000
    Circa 1990

    Played Alley cat, Double Dragon 1, Kings Quest 3, etc

  • kbear2002 on 21/05/2015 - 09:47

    started off with my brothers amiga 500 (including memory upgrade to 1MB and dot matrix printer, would love playing carrier command for hours on end trying to find the other carrier and destroy it !!!

  • Hikey on 21/05/2015 - 10:35

    Pentium 1, 133MHz and 2GB HDD. Remember the other kids asking me what I would need a 2GB hard disk for. No way I would ever fill that much disk space.

    • Evil-Elmo on 21/05/2015 - 14:05

      I can imagine! Our Pentium-1 100MHz had a 1.08gb HDD and that was pretty massive. This comp had 32mb RAM. Overkill was the word used to describe that! Many machines were still packing a massive 8mb RAM so 32mb just seemed insane.

  • hts on 21/05/2015 - 10:58

    Commodore 64! With the joy sticks, 5 1/4" floppy drive and BASIC! Still have it somewhere here. Off memory I don't think it had internal storage, just 64KM of RAM.
    From there went to a 386 (then upgraded to a 486), can't remember the RAM or storage, but it was not much at all! I remember paying about $700 for a 2x CD-ROM drive though!

  • worlds_most_wanted on 21/05/2015 - 11:17

    Amiga 500… It's collecting dust somewhere in the garage.

  • [Deactivated] on 21/05/2015 - 11:39

    Not sur about the PC, but I recall I used a 240Bps modem to check my email via dial up what back in the late 80s. The family had a Commodore 64 with a tape drive. I still have DOS 6 and WIndows 3 on a disk somewhere :)

  • [Deactivated] on 21/05/2015 - 11:40

    If anyone knows how to get the 'Castaway' screensaver running on Windows 8, I would LOVE to know how :)

    • Darron65 on 24/05/2015 - 15:33

      Let me google that for you… link
      That looks interesting.

  • blurrybird on 21/05/2015 - 12:20

    First computer had a 40GB HDD, funnily enough I don't actually remember the specifications otherwise.

    Now I've got storage coming out my ears, 768GB of SSD Storage + 18TB of HDDs in a server. :/ How times have changed!

  • neonlight on 21/05/2015 - 12:45

    500MB back in 1993, was consider large

  • rodinthink on 21/05/2015 - 14:40

    3TB seagate and WD have a high failure rate
    Hitachi 3TB Deskstar proven to be much more reliable

  • cashews on 21/05/2015 - 15:00

    Compaq 386 with a 20mb hard disk.

  • d3v147 on 21/05/2015 - 15:07

    I had some old ex-bank Microkey IBM compatible. It had no HDD, a green screen and two 5 1/4" floppy drives. I have no idea of the specs as I was about 7. After that came an Amiga 500 that had no HDD and took 880kb floppies! First computer with a hard drive was an Amiga 1200 with a whopping 40mb!

    Sometimes when I am downloading from the NBN at several megabytes a second, I think of all the old floppy disks flying at me!

    • MMM on 21/05/2015 - 15:52

      Bet you miss the good ol' days of the ping, beep of the 1440kb dial-up modem negotiating its way onto the internet and then as soon as you disconnect you then remember their was one more thing you had to do and got annoyed with yourself for having to waste another .10c to reconnect! Just jealous you have NBN! I'm still on 1440kb dial-up, well almost lucky to get 5000Mbit/s at my location.

      • Evil-Elmo on 21/05/2015 - 16:08
        +1

        I would have liked a 1440kb (1.44mb) dial-up back in the day! Mine was only 14.4kb :)

        Before our 14.4k modem we had a 2400… as a silly kid I left a message on a bulletin board telling him it was shit because it was so slow. He phoned up shortly after I disconnected (presumably using caller ID to get my number - freaked me out though) to tell me that it was actually my 2400 modem that was slow. Well that put me in my place!

        Edit: As a point of interest, this 2400 was an external modem. After that our modems went internal for a number of years (14.4k, 33.6k, 56k, even my first ADSL1 256k was internal) but more recently modems are external again!

        • MMM on 21/05/2015 - 16:36
          +1

          the extra "0" was for emphasis:)) ya can't get away with anything here on OZB

  • Reverse Snorkel on 21/05/2015 - 15:14

    IBM 286 XT @ 16mhz compatible - Had 2 X WD full-height 5 1/4 hard drives each with 20MB. total of 40MB storage.

    • McFly on 21/05/2015 - 16:44

      XT's didn't use 286's or run at 16MHz, and a 286-based PC would be very unlikely to come with a full-height HDD…

      • Reverse Snorkel on 25/05/2015 - 12:08

        The processor was a 80286 and it ran at 16mhz with a turbo button that pumped it up to 18mhz. It had 4 x 1mb EDOs and 2 full height 5 1/4 Western Digital hard drives. Was in a desktop case that sat under my EGA monitor.

  • fenrer on 21/05/2015 - 15:18
    +1

    Amstrad IBM clone(1990??), xt 8086 which had a 30mb hdd that costed 700 dollars (on the bill not that we paid) to replace when it failed under warranty.. and failed again 6 months after warranty ran out.

    holy found its speccs on wikkipedia:

    PC2086 (Intel 8086 CPU, 8 MHz, 640 KB RAM, VGA graphics) launched 1989

    we had the special one that had a HDD, less fortunate sods had to deal with double 5.25 fdd. Note these weren't the high density 1.2 mb fdd, these were actually 360k :)

    • ItsMeAgro on 21/05/2015 - 16:08

      VGA? Luxury…

      • fenrer on 21/05/2015 - 16:23
        +1

        actually not that luxurious… ours was ega… 16 colors!!!!! 4x the color of CGA

        • ItsMeAgro on 21/05/2015 - 20:28

          There was a time I'd have considered selling an organ for EGA. So many games didn't work with CGA…

    • seedy on 21/05/2015 - 20:03

      Oh the joy of the Amstrad i386. Similar life cycle of failure upon failure.

  • BargainCowboy on 21/05/2015 - 15:29

    This post made me nostalgic.

  • backpaqer on 21/05/2015 - 16:48

    I had the full set of manuals for this machine in my bookcase as a kid http://www.computermuseum.org.uk/fixed_pages/Elliott_903.htm…

    My dad used to work on them. He ended up hand-delivering them to a museum in the UK…all 30kg of them!

  • iFetch on 21/05/2015 - 18:16

    Early 90's:
    Intel 486
    500MB 3.5" IDE HDD
    4MB RAM, eventually upgraded to 8MB!
    Addon to Creative SoundBlaster package with CD-ROM and Sound Card. Whoa… we now have Encarta!

  • Cheap Steve on 21/05/2015 - 19:38

    You think your Commodore 64 is really neato?
    What kind of chip you got in there, a Dorito?

    • McFly on 21/05/2015 - 20:57
      +2

      You're about as useful as a JPEG to Helen Keller!

  • seedy on 21/05/2015 - 20:02

    Sinclair ZX81. Then A Tandy TRS-80, then some Sharp CPM thing with a dual floppy. Next a no-name PC Clone with a huge 20MB HDU

  • mattypoika on 21/05/2015 - 21:10

    Macintosh LC II
    16 MHz processor
    4MB RAM
    30MB HD

    I played Stunt Copter all the time.

  • BartholemewH on 21/05/2015 - 22:36

    First PC was a gold top Pentium 60 with 16MB RAM and Winchester 400MB HDD. Next machine was PPRO 200 with 32MB RAM and 1.2GB HDD.
    Then Celeron 300A o/c to 450 with 128MB RAM and 4GB HDD. Then AMD ThoroughbredB JIUHB overclocked to 2.2Ghz with 512MB RAM and 160GB HDD.

    Now we have effortless performance with 3rd/4th gen i5's and i7's with SSDs, but it's all boring as, the Celeron and the JIUHB were magical.

  • Diji1 on 22/05/2015 - 12:45
    -6

    "Amazed … Humbled … legends …"

    Really …?

    I know I'll probably be neg bombed to hell for saying this but these are words that I reserve for heros - people that have saved lives at risk to themselves, people that have overcome huge adversity in their life, people that have achieved outstanding things.

    What I don't find particuarly amazing is nerds sitting at home entertaining themselves with an enjoyable hobby much like I've done over the past 20 years. I am not humbled to be in the company of these people who didn't do anything amazing … and sure … legends. Wait what's legendary about sitting at a computer in the comfort of you're own home.

    Am I right? I don't see these people as amazing simply for using a computer 20 years ago rofl. I'd think it pretty bloody stupid we're you to be humbled in my presence because I did that. Awkward lel…

    • MMM on 22/05/2015 - 13:06

      First Neg coming right up… just doing what you asked.
      Man you need to get out more. Just fond memories of a bygone era not comparing it to solving world famine or a cure for cancer.
      My personal feeling of being humbled, may not have included you so don't be offended by my loose terminology.

    • rolypoly on 22/05/2015 - 18:16
      +1

      Fifth neg was mine

  • ozdesi on 22/05/2015 - 22:41

    8086 unbranded computer with 640kb RAM. No storage but had two floppy drives A: and B:
    I had 2400baud non-error correcting modem that used to display junk characters on screen due to phone line noise.

    Then upgraded to 386 but still had to tweak the damn AUTOEXEC batch file to run Extended memory module for 386 to be able to run games beyond 640kb. These were for mostly 3D games. Sometimes had to switch off Turbo button to be able to run older games. 386 machine had storage but I remember running on-the-fly compression program on seagate HDD to save space. Downside was free space left was never reported accurately.

    To avoid pirating MS DOS, I got PC-DOS from IBM as a freebie in one of the magazine CD.
    Next came IBM OS/2 Wrap but I never learned it enough to use it everyday and came back to pirated M$ stuff.

    Also used BBC microcomputer (iMac style one piece device with green monitor) to learn BASIC (GW-BASIC) and LOGO (Turtles!)

  • cannedhams on 23/05/2015 - 07:10

    We had a 20mb MFM hard drive connected to our Wang. It felt good asking the technician to come and connect the hard drive to our Wang.

    I remember you had to run some kind of head parking program before operating the hard drive, otherwise the heads would be in the wrong spot and you risked fummucking up the hard drive.

    When you fired it up, it sounded like a bug zapper encountering a swarm of moths. Extremely loud.

  • definitive on 23/05/2015 - 11:01

    IBM ThinkPad 390, 6.4GB HDD :) I still have the thing. It still runs pretty well, although I lost the battery for it, so it's pretty much a very tiny desktop now

  • aman00024 on 23/05/2015 - 19:11

    My first was PENTIUM lll wid 20 gb HD and 64 mb or 128 mb ram (not sure abt ram)

  • fantombloo on 23/05/2015 - 21:04

    Texas Instruments TI99/4A.

  • [Deactivated] on 27/05/2015 - 12:02

    XT 8086 of course with dos 3.3 i think, upgraded to 286.
    MFM Controller (or RLL?) with faulty 100mb harddrive. Replacing sticky motored 10mb x2 drives.
    Bought mono monitor from hockshop, which was cga, nice.
    Big investment was four 1 meg sticks (ram for newbies) for 60$ ea, normally $120 ea, 2nd hand.

    The real change was 486 dx with svga on Win95. We've maybe gone backwards since then, if you don't count memory management.

  • JoyVee on 31/05/2015 - 20:07

    An apple 2 E with double disc drive, and green screen monitor. Cost me $5000 in about 1982 , think I was earning about $18000 at that time. At school they had commodore 64, one between 15 classes and zealously treasured and guarded.

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