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#11
First own Computer - sinclair ZX80 - first supported computers Sinclair QL and BBC Micros
Cant remember the name of the vendor for my 'first pc'.. but it was a 33Mhz SX box and 4MB of memory.
I soon returned it and popped for the extra few hundred bux to get the DX version with the co-processor.
The box was a bit over $2K as I recall.
My 'first COMPUTER'..was a Commodore VIC 20.
After running out of memory while writing a PAC MAN knock off (When a ghost was eaten I got OUT OF MEMORY errors), I upgraded to a screaming C64.
September 1998 running 98 on a 2.1GB hard drive, 32MB RAM and I think it was a 233Mhz processor. It cost us about £1,000 and had Lotus SmartSuite with it and onboard dial up modem.
I think we also got a printer with the system
Custom Built by my brother, 200mmx Intel processor, W98SE, I wish I still had it :- (
That was back when you could build a PC for less than you could buy one from Dell, HP ect.
It was all it could do to play an MP3, used most of the processor cycles to do it. Soon after I started using it was when the mp3 rage started on the college campuses, then came bittorrent. I miss those days of the wild west.
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6 years ago and you were still running DOS?
My Dad and his friend got in to PCs together and they started building their own. All I remember was the first one my Dad built had an Intel 486 processor with however much RAM. Then I remember pretty soon after that he upgraded to a Pentium and a Voodoo card etc.
First was a 286, custom built in a "chop shop" in Sunnyvale, CA. I left blood in that case, and the next three, while putting in memory, modem, or a HD - cases were pressed metal, and had sharp edges, real sharp.
lets see, if you want to count a cassette tape driven Vic20 then up to the C64 which played all my excellent Bards Tale and Ultima games with the 5 1/2 inch floppy..~
My first real box was probably back in 93 with a packard bell 486DX2-66 which if I remember correctly (don't quote me on this) had a rather large hard drive (750meg) at the time. I think I used that drive over for my first 2 real builds after that..
Something like a 2x cd drive some 28.8 modem.. don't believe it had over 32 megs of memory and something like an 8 or 16 meg video chip..
Windows 3.11 for workgroups and dos...
Hell, it didn't even come with a monitor which I believe I bought something like a 14 inch for 400.00
Later that year after I bought this the early pentiums arrived on the scene...
Got my first one from my (at the time) woman's mother. It was a Christmas present to us after we moved in together.
It was good at the time, not great.
Pentium 100
like a 4mb vid card
Weighed a friggin ton. It had a 2 GB hard drive, and came with Windows 3.1.
Dial-Up, some crappy sound card, and a Win95 upgrade disk(which I still have for some stupid reason).
April 12th, 1983. A commodore 64 with a cassette tape drive for loading the programs. First game I had was Monopoly. Then my favorite later on was " The Sword of Fargoal " I was addicted to that game. First IBM AT clone PC in 1987, AMD 12mhz processor, 8mg Ram, 20mb HD, Monochrome Green Screen monitor
Your answer doesn't answer your own question.
Maybe you meant to ask, "When did you get your first computer?", since that is what you answered.
I got my first computer by going to the Amiga store in October of 1992 driving my Dads 1988 Dodge Caravan 4cyl 5 Speed, and giving the people at the store $2500 for an Amiga 3000 and a Commodore 1950 14" Multisync Monitor.
Specs: 25mhz 68030 Processor, 6MB ram, 120MB SCSI Hard Drive, 880KB Floppy.
Added the following upgrades the next year:
14MB of ram (upping it to 20MB) $350
Video Toaster 4000 card ($2500 video card, the most expensive single add-on I have ever bought since)
345MB SCSI hard drive ($345) (required for the Toaster since the software was almost 100MB)
I ended up trading the Video Toaster card a couple of years later for a complete PC system so I bought a Picasso IV display card.
Picasso IV 24bit Display Card ($500)
The Picasso is not the same thing as the Video Toaster, the Toaster was an NTSC Video switcher, 4 Input, 2 output, and had a Digital Still Store.
I bought the Toaster only for Lightwave 3D, since that was the only way you could get that program.
When Lightwave was released by itself, I traded the Toaster card.
The Picasso card allowed for a higher color bitrate on the main desktop of the Amiga.
In 1996 I went completely PC and have been Windows only since, but, less than a week ago I put OSX on my Dell Mini 9 and have been impressed with it.