What computers did you own in the old days? Share your story!

Page 2 - Seeking answers? Join the Tom's Hardware community: where nearly two million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.
Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
Status
Not open for further replies.


When you spend so much time building and tweeking your machines their specks can get burned into your memory. Heck I even know the specs of some of the machines I've slapped together and given away on freecycle, a few that I've built for customers, and of course whatever spare machines are currently running in my garage.
 
Oh man where to start.

Apple 2gs, my parents bought it when i was 5 and I played with my fire engine on the box's it came in. But I quickly found it was a lot more fun then that. I played Load Runner, Ultima 5, and many more games on my first pc.

486 DX4 100, was my second PC, I convinced my parents to buy this computer when I was 12, the pentium was just coming outaroudn thistime, and we where a little behind on the times, but a local guy who built computers said this was a good deal, we had it for a while, and I had AOL 2.0 3.0 and 4.0 on this, and maybe higher, but it was a good machine, I got in trouble looking up porn on this in the early days of the internet.

Pentium 133, my next computer, I got this when i was 14 I had it for 6 months, and eventually ran away from home, and my parents sold it to my older brother for his first pc, it was a packard bell I beleive.

Next when I was 15 or 16, I bought a AMD k6 -2 400 with my younger brother. I put a VooDoo 3 200 in this, and played eq with it. Loved the computer, but this is where I fell in love with computers truely and was the ultimate downfall of my relationship with my gf of 8 years. I dunno if it was the computer or that I wasnt ready for a relationship.

Next i built a athlon XP dont remember the mhz, but i had a G-force 3 TI-200, and played really nothing, but sold it to get back together with my gf.

the next PC I bought, was when I was about 18, 19, it was a Pentium 4 1.7 northwood. I played Aoe 2 on this system, and played it for about 2 years, the game was a little old by the time i started playing it so i know the timing doesn't match up with my system, I believe I had the 5900xt in this system

The next system was my gf's still the 8 year one, and I put a 9600xt in this, and played eq2, Loved the game, but relationship got in the way, and this game ultimately was the end of the relationship, so I had to buy my own system after I broke up with her lol

Bought my friends pc and built it up a bit with some old ram I had laying around I believe it was an old athlon xp by this time, and a **** gfx card, eventually i sold it back to him, and he gave it to his sister.

Next I bought his next old system, which was a athlon x2 3800+ played more eq2 with this system, and I had a Geforce 6800 in this system. It didnt perform to my standards so I upgraded a bit to the system I have now...

which is a athlon x2 5000, the first card i had in this beast was a 8800 GTS 320, and next upgrader to the 4850. I currently play C&C3, WoW, and CoD4, but I did some EQ2 gaming with it.
 
To far back,,, to many computers to remember,except one it was a Hyperion with 2x5in floppy drives running Dos 2.1,when that thing got done with me what I did not know about Dos you could put on the head of a pin,,of course before that we had to build our own computers from a kit that cost mucho dinero and usually took 3 or more "nerdz" a month or two,whew!!!:)
 
1. 1986 Amstrad 1640 5.25" floppy, ega graphics, 20MB(!) HDD
2. 1990(ish) Compaq 386sx25

The next are all home builds

3. 1994 Cyrix 6x86 133+, 128mb RAM 7GB HDD Matrox Millenium II 12MB and 2x Vodoo II's, creative dvd with decoder and phillips SCSI 2x CD-rw (apart from the processor it was a beast)
4. 1995 AMD K6II-3D 350
5. 1996 Pentium III-500
6. AMD athlon XP 1800+
7. AMD Athlon MP 2200+ clocked to 3Ghz - my only ever overclock :)
8. My current E6600 4GB RAM 2TB HDD 7950GT
 
My first compute was an Apple II - I learned AppleSoft Basic on it and played the first version of Star Trek the Game ... that was about 1977 ish from memory ... I had 8Kb of ram I think ... something like that.

I also had an Atari 400 and later a Vic 20.

My first PC was a Sperry XT with dual 5.25 Floppies. I expanded the ram to 512Kb using an expansion card and inserting the 120nS ram by hand. I also bout a 20Mb HDD (MFM) and a controller card and painstakingly set the beast up. This PC got me through Uni until 3rd year - had a 2200 Pinwriter (NEC) printer on it.

Then I bought a 386SX 25 and put 4Mb of Ram in it and a 40Mb HDD ... it was kickass at the time with a 256Kb colour VGA card and an NEC monitor.

NEC Monitors back then were the best ...

Then I had an AMD 386DX40 ... which I swear was 4 times faster ... really moved along ... ended up with an 850Mb HDD in that one.

After that I pretty much got addicted ... some of the thers I have had include:

AMD 5X86133 (quad clocked to 160Mhz)
Intel 486166MMX (to 183)
K6
P2/ P3 Slot 1 - 350. 500. 600. 850
Duron 1100
P3 Tualatin 1.4 - dual CPU server
P4 1600
P4 2.4 Northy / 3.06 Prescott / D805
AthlonXP 2400+ (X4)
AthlonXP 3200+ (X2)
A64 3500+
A64 X23800+ (X2 939 / X2 AM2) Brisbane
A64 X2 4400+ Toledo
A64 X2 6000+ AM2
A64 Sempi Lappy HP
Q6600 @3.0 Ghz

Too many graphics cards and other peripherals to even mention.

I have also built a few 100 for other people over the years.
 
1. Colecovision Adam. (Dad bought for Family)
2. Atari 800XL
3. Apple ][c
4 Atari ST 520 and 1024
4. Hewitt Rand 486 DX33 for around $4000! this was when 386's were still king. This is the Computer I took to College a few years later. Goes to show that spendin money now, future proofs a bit :) Although I don't have this siystem, I did find the same mobo and kept it... don't know why... it's a pack rat thing lol
5. upgraded above system to Shuttle Hot 433 and AMD AM5x86-133 and started readin Tomshardware about Overclocking... for me, this is when the ball started really rolling and now have a house full of computers
6,7,8 etc... Media Center in Bedroom, Living Room, 2 Gaming Systems (for Wife and I). My Son (Who's almost 5), and thinkin' of a pink one for Daughter (Almost 2), and oh yeah... laptops... Cell Phones PDA (personal Disorganizers), etc... 😛
1 Server running MS Server 2003, and possible another MS "Home" Server

Gawd... Colecovision Adam! I miss the Daisy Wheel Printer **sigh**

BTW, I is one of those people that actually like Vista x64. it's purdy... :)
 
In college in the early 1970's we programmed on a Control Data mainframe, using punch cards. In graduate school we used CRT terminals connected to another Control Data mainframe.

I got a job with an engineering company and they had an IBM 1130, with 8k of core memory and a 1Mb removable disk pack. It was very slow but it was in our office and we could use it anytime we wanted. It used punch cards and had a massive line printer.

Somewhere around 1980 I had a Commodore 64, connected to a cassette tape drive and a color TV.

Early 1980's I bought one of the early IBM PC's from Compushop. It was a special deal, including monochrome monitor and a dot matrix printer, for just over $4000. It had 256k of memory, 4.77MHz 8088 processor, 2 360k floppy drives. One day I was in Austin and visited a store that later became a national chain and then went away (can't remember the name), and they had a kit for a 10Mb or 20Mb hard drive. The 10Mb was $400, the 20Mb was $450, so I bought that one. I bought some other accessories for the computer from a very small store in Dallas called CompUSA. I later upped the memory in the computer to 640k, and added another 20Mb hard drive. Then I pulled both drives out and put in a 60Mb RLL hard drive. I sold that machine in about 1990 for $700.

I bought a used homebuilt 386DX25, with 100MB IDE hard drive. That machine got upgraded a lot, and I kept it in one form or another until 2001. The processor went to a 486DX2-66, then somekind of Cyrix, then the Cyrix got seriously OC'd due to an article in the old tomshardware.com. Seems like there was another step of CPU that I don't remember right now. The hard drive system went from100Mb IDE to 383Mb ESDI to twin 383Mb ESDI, to 2Gb ATA, to 20Gb ATA, to twin 250Gb ATA. The case got changed a time or 2 also. Eventually all of the components were changed out so that no single piece of the original computer remained, but since only a few parts were changed at any time I still consider it to be the same computer. The machine started with DOS 4, then DOS 6, then DOS 7, then Windows 95, then Windows 98 and now Windows XP.

In 2001 I bought a new case, processor, RAM and video. The CPU was an AMD Athlon about 1.5GHz or so, and I'm still running it today. When I upgraded from Windows98 to Windows XP I had to up the RAM a little too. I put my old drives in this box, and as I recall this box cost about $1200.

I'm ready to build a whole new box right now, replace everything. After reading this site for awhile I think I know what I want to get and that is a core2 with a mild OC to about 3.6GHz.
 
Helped a friend (he REALLY liked Forth) build an RCA 1802 micro back in about '75. Wire wrapped. Did most of the hardware.

My first computer - 1978, TRS-80 Model I, OC'd by piggy backing chips and cutting PCB traces.

Then Z80, 80286, 80386, 80486, MMX-233 OC'd to 300 MHz, PII 400 MHz Celeron, 1 GHz AMD, 2.5 GHz AMD, E6600 OC'd to 3.3 GHz, Q6600 OC'd to 3.6 GHz, E8500 OC'd to 4 GHz. Built about 10 others for friends.
 
1. Started with a C64 with dual disk drives, commodore monitor and more software then I could ever use.

some in between TRS80 atari etc...

2. 486 dx2 with 15 inch vga, 1xCD (one of the very early ones), 8mb of ram (this was huge)... no sound card. $2k

3. Next one PII350 ABS with 19inch monitor and 128MB of ram and an old TNT. $679

4. BP6 with dual cellys oc'd

4. Many many many computers in between.

5. DV6AA with dual 1ghz p3's

6. Many more...

7. Dual xeon 3.2's on a PC-DL with 2GB ram

8. Now Q6600 WHS with 4GB ram and 5 TB's storage.
E8400 Vista64 with 6GB ram ATI 4850 Gamer
E7300 Vista32 with 4GB ram ATI 3850 Gamer
E2140 Vista32 with 2GB RAM Nvidia 7600GT HTPC
Shuttle SB51G P4 3.4GHZ 2GB ram 2600XT and a Raptor 36GB HTPC

And ton of parts and uneeded Older comps
 
I had a Tandy Color Computer with 4 kb of RAM and a cassette recorder. This was a big deal because my family had little money and poured what to us was a huge sum of money, but it was totally useless, too little RAM to run anything and the cassette tapes immediately stretched so that you had a program name with no data and a block of data with no name, neither of which was of any use. There was also no way to print anything.

Then in college I had a Tandy dumb terminal to allow me to work from home (I lived an hour from the college.)

Then in '85 I built a PC with an 80186-2 CPU, a full 640 kb of the fast 120ms RAM, two of the good 360K Teac floppy drives, and the big 14" monitor in sixteen glorious shades of amber. (It played Rogue, my first video game, beautifully.) It cost over $700 to build and was quite an experience as there was no Internet (except for colleges and government entities) and almost no resources. Everything was set by jumpers (which I still love), even floppy drive addresses - this is before floppy cables came with the twist. A year or two later I added a 20 MB MFM hard drive and a very expensive RLL controller card, which allowed me to format the drive in RLL at 30 MB! I also had to reformat the drive several times a year, as the drive and the controller would get out of sync. Later I added an AMD 80187-2 (I think) math co-processor chip as well.

A couple years later I built a fast 16 MHz AMD 80286, again with an 80287 co-processor. The 80386 at that time was limited to IBM and Compaq, neither of which I could come close to affording. This time my hard drive was a whopping 80 MB! A year or so later I went color - I skipped CGA and went straight to EGA! Yeah! That 14" Princeton Graphics multi-scanning lasted years and years at an incredible 800x600.

After that came an AMD 386, then an AMD 486, then an AMD 586, then an AMD K6, then a bleeding edge AMD Athlon 500 MHz Slot A! What a beast! That's the first time I actually had the fastest computer I could find, not merely what I could afford.

Then it was an AMD Athlon 2800. That morphed into an AMD Athlon 3500+. Now I own an Intel Q6600 (my first Intel since the 80186-2). Life is good.

I've also had a DEC mini computer, but I can't really count that because I never actually fired it up.
 
I had a Pentium 100Mhz with 16MB of RAM, 2MB video memory, 4x CD-ROM, 14.4kbps modem, and Windows 95. It would play Diablo and that game was fun to play multiplayer.

Then I got an AMD K6-2 533Mhz with 192 RAM and 8MB of video memory, 26GB hard drive, Windows 98 SE. I only could play games like Delta Force, Command & Conquer, Diablo II, Age of Empires 2, etc.

Then I received my first AGP system, a Dell Dimension with 40GB hard drive, Pentium III 933Mhz, Geforce 2 MX 32MB video card, and upgraded to 512MB RAM and a Geforce 5500FX. It had Windows XP

Then I had another AGP Dell Dimension 1.6Ghz Pentium 4, Geforce 2 64MB. I upgraded to 2.8Ghz Pentium 4 and a Radeon x1650 PRO then upgraded the video card in that rig to a Radeon X1950XT 512MB. This was around the time of Crysis demo and I decided that it wouldn't cut it and I would figure out how to build my own computer. It too had Windows XP

My first build was an Athlon X2 5600+ but I don't remember what video card I used initially. Anyways upgraded the processor on that to AMD 6400+ and then upgraded from whatever video card to 8800GT SLI.

Then I decided to switch to Intel because AMD's performance was just not cutting it for my gaming needs. So I would have to rebuild and I wanted to get the best there was that was affordable. I decided to do a DDR3 rig so I wanted a quad core and got it.
 
The first computer that I ever owned was a C-64.

The second one was an old slow Packard Bell, back in the Win95 days.

After that was a hand-me-down system with a P-2 CPU, running Win98.

Number four was a Compaq 5000 seies with an 800MHz Celeron and Windows Mistake Edition.

My current system:

Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3L Motherboard
Intel E8400 C2D CPU
4Gb DDR2 1066 RAM
ZeroTherm BTF-90 CPU Heatsink/Fan
Hitachi 175Gb SATA HDD
Seagate 500Gb SATA HDD
Maxtor 200Gb HDD, (in an external encloser)
ATI HD4870 Video card
Antec 1000watt PSU
48X DVD burner
52X CD-RW
Cooler Master Centurion 5 case
Dual-boots with Windows XP and Ubuntu 8.10

 
first comp i had i hated. a comadore 64 with a tape drive and color printer. i got a few games for it, one was like pack man but you had a gun and could blow bubbles the other was an adventure game that was like a choose your own adventure book. you had to type in stuff like go in room, look around..... it sucked. i ended up getting a NES and never ran that thing again.

after that my folks got a pc at with orange monitor. that thing was even worse.

my first real computer i got out of that huge bible computer shopper and was about the price of a used Honda, like 5k. it was a tough choice between the two because i was in college and didn't have a car.

P2 300
128mb ram, 4 sticks of 32
12 Gb HD quantum big foot. still works today but sounds like a vacuum cleaner
ati all in wonder pro 8Mb 2x agp. has a tv tuner built in :) and tv output :0 and it still works today
56k modem
sound card
web cam with mike
optiquest v115 monitor 21". i am still using it right now 10 years later
2x dvd drive and it worked to play movies :) and still works
win 95 🙁 worst os i ever used. should have waited a few months for 98 to come out.

i remember thinking i was the coolest because i had some friends over to watch the super bowl and i had a continuous instant replay with zoom on my computer while watching the game on my 25" tv. a bit later i got windows 98 and a cd burner which allowed me to copy vhs movies to cd using the tv card. that thing was great. i could play games like pro boarder and sports car gt with great graphics compared to the PlayStation. probably the best investment i ever made.

oh ya, it did run pro-e student version better than the computers at school.

that thing ended up getting fried playing sports car gt and i had my dad's friend help me fix it. he didn't know if the mb or cpu was toast so i got a new mb and p2 450 cpu. i think the cpu was like $300 at the time and this guy was so envious. the computer was much better cuz the fsb went up to 100 from 66 and my old ram worked fine but the new board only had 3 slots so i ended up with 96mb ram. i think i could still put that system together, if i wanted.

after that i got a celleron 1ghz and put all the stuff on that. then upgraded to an ati aiw 7500 with remote and a sound blaster audio card with the digital optical daughter card :) then a new system.

amd athalon 2500+
thermaltake volcano cooler with adjustable fan speed
fic au 13 mb with nforce 2
80gb hd
512mb dual channel ram, geil
nvidia 5900 agp upgraded to
ati aiw 9800, hate that thing cuz it is like an iron. super hot for no reason.
finaly upgraded to nvidia 7800gs and getting 2.5gb ram and 500gb maxtore hd

that is what i am using right now and i love it. it is nice an quiet. i have other computers i use for games but this is the one i like. i have been trying to get rid of it for a few years now but it works well and does what i want, when i want.

the ones i don't use
amd 64 x2 5600 and a phenom 9600, gigabite 8800 gt card. probably upgrade to an ati 4870 in a few weeks.
i hope i use it.
 
As far as I can remember...

1983: Thomson TO7 (8Kb RAM, tape loader and the fantastic optic pen... ehm...) I was 11.
1985: Apple IIc
1988: Amiga 1000 with RAM expansion to 512Kb
1990: Amiga 2000 (3MB, 42MB HD)
1992: 68040/28Mhz for my A2000, and 2 more MB for a total 5MB (1MB chip RAM and 4MB fast RAM)
1994: My first x86: DX2-66, 8MB RAM, 420MB HD, 512KB video
1995: Pentium 100, 16MB RAM, 2MB video
1996: Apple PowerMac 7500 (PowerPC 601/100Mhz, 16MBRAM, 1GB HD)
1998: Pentium 2 266Mhz
1998: Apple PowerMac G4
1999: Silicon Graphics Octane MXE (MIPS R12000/300Mhz)
2000: Celeron 400Mhz
2001: Silicon Graphics 320 2xP3, HP Visualize 2xP3, Silicon Graphics Indigo2 R10000 (MIPS R10000/195Mhz)

2002-2009: Various PC upgrades.
Actual home PC: AMD X2 4400@2.8Ghz, 4GB RAM, 8800 GTS 320

Many of my old hardware is still in my possession and working flawlessly...
 
Without going into to much detail

1980s I think it was AMSTRAD 64 with built in tape deck, they were not using floppy drives then.

1991 Amiga 6000 this had a floppy drive.

1994 to 2005 I was in a coma

2005 AMD single core 2500+/Nvidia 9600 128mb/512mb ram/120GB HD. all on a abit motherboard.

Now I have AMD Dual core 6000+/8800GTX 768mb/2x150GB raptors/3 GB ram/ on a Asus Crosshair 590i mob.

And Im thinking of upgrading !
 
Good to see some fellow old schoolers.

Here's my list

1988: Amiga 500 (had the 1mb upgrade and extra disk drive so it was swoit!)

1990: 286 1mb ram soldered to the mainboard, 256k xga vid card, 120mb hdd

1993: 386DX 1mb ram 512k vid card, 200mb hdd (upgraded to 8mb later and then blew the mainboard up)

1994: 486SX 16mb ram 4mb s3 virge, 2x cd rom and sb16 320mb over 2 hdds(*shudders* dark days after the dx's mainboard blew)

1995: Upgraded prev to 486DX2 66, 1.2gb hdd (looking a bit better)

1996: Cyrix PR200+ 32mb ram, awe64, 1.2gb hdd (still with the Virge but got a voodoo2 to give it a supercharge)

1999: AMD K6-2 400, 32mb ram, 5gb hdd, voodoo2, virge, cd burner (overclocked this one to 500mhz with no issues)

2000: Prev but with a k6-2 450 oc to 550, dvd burner

2001: Duron 800, 768mb ram, geforce 3 ti200, 10gb hdd (oc to ti500 spec), kept the voodoo 2 for glide compatibility (loved this box and got a lot of priceless reactions when i fitted a 5.25" floppy drive, also ran at 80C with no cpu fan and completely stable)

2003: Same but went to AthlonXP 1600+

2004: Same but went Athlon 3200+, replaced the gf3 and voodoo2 with a 9800XT, 250GB hdd

2006: Athlon X2 3800+, 1gb corsair ddr2 800, X1800GTO, 2x250GB hdd

2007: Upgraded the X2 a bit

2008-9: Phenom X4 9750 (got the oem low power version), 8800GTS 320, 8gb corsair ddr2, 2x 500gb hdds, 450w Zalman PSU, Asus M3A32 M/B (yeah blech 790FX)

Planning for a 4870 1gb or gtx 260+ and a couple of 1tb hdds in the next month or 2.

 
*Really, this has to qualify) The HP-65 mag-card programmable calculator: 1974 - I was 18 and hit up the credit union for an $800 loan,

HP-67 a few years later,

Then an Apple II in 1978,

Apple /// in 82 or so,

Macintosh 128 in 1984, upgraded several ways, until...

Mac SE-30,

Mac IIc,

PC Time! Packard Bell Pentium 100 ($3000!!!) around 1995, followed by...

Pentium 233(or so) built from TigerDirect barebones,

Pentium 2 450,

Pentium 2 650,

Pentium 3 933's (My first dually!),

Athlon MP 2600's (2nd dually),

Athlon 64 3500,

Athlon 64 X2 4400 (multicore time!),

Athlon 64 X2 6000

I think the next will be a midrange i7 within the next few months.

There's a lotta cash sunk into all the above. I could have had a nice little Porsche by now. If I actually cared about cars!
 
1. A little known Eastern European clone of ZX Spectrum
2. 1995 - Jumped to a 486/100, 4 Mb RAM, 850 Mb WD, 1 Mb S3 Trio32 video card, 14" colour DAEWOO, then in '96 added an extra 4 Mb SIMM and my first soundcard, SB Pro compatible.
3. 1997 - Pentium 133, some VIA VPX mobo, 16 then 32 Mb SDRAM, 1.7 Gb IBM, another S3 (this time a 2 Mb Trio64V+)
4. 1998-99 - sold the P133, got another 486/100
5. 2000 - Compaq Prosignia 300, P90, 16 then 48 Mb RAM, 2 Gb SCSI, my first CD-ROM (ACER 56x), my first 3d card (nVidia RIVA 128).... This was sweet... It beat the crap out of a K6/200 with a Matrox Millenium, in a certain 3d videogame.
6. 2001 - ECS Intel 430 TX mobo, various CPU's (133-233), 32-96 Mb RAM, 4-20-40 Gb HDD's, that RIVA 128, and a combo of soundcards (Yamaha SW20 PC, 2 Mb ROM, General Midi compatible and a Gravis Ultrasound ACE, 1 Mb RAM).
7. ?2002? - ECS mobo fried, so I used a spare 486/66 :sweat: ; worse than my first 486...
8. 2002 - Pentium III 450, on some cheepoo PCChips mobo, 96 Mb SDRAM, 40 Gb Maxtor, still with the RIVA 128 (PCI), onboard SoundPro aka CMI 8330, later a 4ch Sb Live!, 52x ASUS CD-ROM.
9. 2003 - Celeron 600 FCPGA, Gigabyte sk370, then ASUS sk370 mobos (both with VIA 694x chipset), upto 192 Mb SDRAM, 40 Gb Maxtor, AGP graphic cards: 8 Mb ATI RageIIc, 16 Mb ATI Rage 128, 32 Mb Leadtek S325 TNT2 M64; kept the SB Live! and the ASUS CD-ROM.
Man, that Celeron could overclock... Most of the time it was running at 750 or 900 MHz; maxed at 945, but for stability reasons I kept it at 900.
10. 2004 - Celeron 1200, MSI Intel 815 mobo, 256 Mb SDRAM, 40 Gb Maxtor, Gigabyte ATI Radeon 9250 128 Mb, SB Live!, BENQ DVD-Writer - got this one for playing Star Wars KotOR and Gothic, my previuos rig was not up to it.
11. 2005 - sk754 Sempron 2600+, ASUS VIA K8T800 mobo, 256 then 2x256 Mb DDRAM400, GeForce 6200 128 Mb, 80 Gb WD then 250 Gb Maxtor SATA II, NEC DVD-Writer.
12. 2007 - My actual rig, Athlon x2 4200+, ASRock nVidia 630a+GF7050 mobo, 2 Gb DDR II Kingston, 250 Gb Seagate, ASUS case; a year ago I got an ASUS ATI HD3650, and this year a 750 Mb Seagate and a 22" wide monitor. Kept the NEC writer; even it is old, it works perfectly; maybe I'll get a brand new ASUS SATA.
13? - dunno... plans for the future include a 5.1 sound system instead of my 12yrs old stereo speakers; did not changed them because they sound good and have more than an oomph when it comes to raw power; some faster videocard that will go along nicely with my 1680x1050 monitor; maybe 2 more Gb of RAM. If I look for a brand new CPU+mobo combo, the LPT port is a must; AFAIK few new mobos still have it.
 
1979?

How about a Xerox 820-II? Featured the bus roasting Z-80 running at a blistering 4.7 Mhz with (hold on to your hats) 64 kB RAM. DOS 3.2 (I think). It had two serial ports, parallel port and was strictly text only with it's characteristic mono "green screen". The 820 supported cutting edge storage sophistication using Shugart drives on 8-inch floppy media! Later we were able to pick up el-cheapo Fujitzu half-highs for next to nothing - these turned out to be double sided as well as DD. The drives had NO enclosure! Looked really nerdy and really cool. We figured out how to run two drives, then bumped those up to double density. This was heaven for less than $60!

The excess equip stream was crammed full of these once the Apple came to power and once Xerox floated out it's Xerox 860 Star System which was primarily a word processor only, the buzzards (that's me) had a field day. I had about 6 of these all up and running at one time.

Little or no documentation. No support center. Just hacking around. This was the most fun you could have legally...

:wahoo:
 
My first real job was fighting the Klingon Menace ...

Star_Trek_text_game.png



On this bad boy ...

image22.png



Prior to that it was Punch Card Dot Matrix Porn on JT's mainframe - :lol:
 
1: Commodore 16, with tape drive

2: Commodore Amiga 1000

3: Commodore Amiga 2000 (originally stock, then '030 and '040)

4: first PC- AMD K5 75 mhz, 32 mb RAM, i built it too...

5: Dual PPro 200

6: Dual Celeron, which was late in its life a dual P3 850

7: Athlon 1.2 Ghz (game system at same time as the P3 850 was my work machine)

8: Single P4 Xeon 3.0 Ghz dell, later upgraded to dual

9: "Pentium Dual Core" 1.8 GHz.

I could add in graphics card data but then we'd go into pages and pages.
 
1. Commodore 64 (Oh YEA!)

2. Acer 486 SX with 1mb 16bit ISA Graphics & 16MB RAM, 400mb HD

3. Pentium II 450Mhz, 16mb AGP RIVA TNT & 128mb SDR, 12GB HD

4. Pentium IV Prescott (Later Pentium D 950) 3.0Ghz, 128mb Geforce 7600GT, 1.0 GB DDR2 RAM, 80Gb HD

5. Phenom II 940 3.4Ghz, Geforce GTX 275, (8800GTX for Physics), 6gb DDR2, 2x 320GB HD's (No RAID)
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom