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

[occupant]

This isn't me in this post, but my dad's history of computers.

Compaq luggable with 20MB hard drive and two 5.25 floppys. This ran DOS 2.0 I believe, and he used it with Lotus 1-2-3 primarily but also had a floppy with WordPerfect on it.

Epson Equity I (XT-compatible) with 20MB hard drive and one 5.25 floppy. This was our home computer from 1986 to 1995. My favorite game on it was a floppy disk from a Buick dealer where you could test drive or print out window stickers or brochures from different 1988 model Buicks. Had detailed specs on Riviera and Reatta models and was a sales tool but I loved it. We had another one from Ford, I want to say 1990 models, and it wasn't as detailed but did have a "test drive" function with a cool "digital" display for models that had such as an option. The most often used app on this was Lotus, again.

In 1995 my parents got the moronic idea to get a computer that could handle the internet and picked up a Packard Bell from Montgomery Ward's. I don't remember the specs but I do remember it was a 90MHz Pentium I and it couldn't get out of its own way even back then. I moved out shortly thereafter.

Just now, in 2009, they replaced the old Packard Bell with an HP laptop from Wal-Mart. I think it's spec'd similar to mine, Pentium dual core T4300, 3GB of RAM, Windows 7 and all, and I think it cost them $600. By comparison, the Epson was damn near $3000 new and the Packard Bell was about $1200. And it's plenty fast just like my Acer. Can't touch my wife's i7-920 box but then again not many can.

 

[hmlee]

after the 4004 and 8008 processors then came the brilliant 6502 .. may not be in proper order..

1. kim1, sym1 (great little 6502 (single board) machines ..initially wrote code by hand then used assembler to write code to operate lots of automated processes on assembly lines .. lots of multitasking.. actually placed computer inside feedback loop of large PC motors (printed circuit amatures) .. controlled acel, decel, speed and distance .. precise control and stock monitoring with several mechanical process stages plus elaborate gas displays.. all run by that little sym1 1mhz processor with 1 to 4 mb of memory .. modified audio tape storage ..lots of I/O
2. radio shack trs80 mod 1, 3 pc100 and color computer .. never liked the z80 much
3. commodor 64 ..lots of those .. again 6502 .. very nice.. wrote lots of programs for that
4. TI 100 .. never got much out of that but nice computer good ideas. nice graphics
5. built our own state of the art computers as an explorer scout project (project advisor) made early touch screen using photocell and screen scan
6. a very EARLY Lap Top that had MAGNETIC BUBBLE MEMORY also a PLASMA DISPLAY (still have that machine)
7. lots of 386 , 486, AMDs and pentiums .. also some early processors no longer made (cant remember names but probably still have some)
8. present.AMD Phenom quad core and a few laptops including a tiny Linux web computer, love it

long ago i started assembling computers .. i would modify mother boards until they had greatly increased reliability and margins .. then make a bunch of computer systems using them .. but by the time you got a mother board perfected then it was obsolete . so you could never recoup the effort except for high end systems where reliability was more important than cost .. seems as though not much has changed ..

 

[macintoshci]

The first computer that i ever used was an Apple Power Macintosh 7100/80AV, it had a PowerPC 601 @ 80 MHz w/ a 700MB scsi HD & some sort of internal CD-ROM.

The 1st computer i bought was a Apple Macintosh IIci with 20MB's of ram & a 120MB HD, with system 7.5.5. If anyone ever's remember Ram Doubler 1,2,8,& 9 From Connectix. I used #1 on my mac iici get 40MB's of ram. That mac ci was the best computer i ever had.

The 2nd computer i bought was a Digital PC 3000 "Model 3500" with a P2 running @ 300 MHz, with 64mb's of ram to start with & slowly max out at 384 MB's of ram. It had a Matrox Mystique 220 onboard with 2MB's of SGram upgradeable to 8 MB's, but i never upgrade the memory, but i did buy a ATI Radeon 7000 PCI card back in the day. It had a 4.3GB Western digital HD that over the years it gave out. As for this computer.... I was cleaning the motherboard & i dropped it on accident into the case & bust a capacitor. It was running Windows 98 through ME through its life. R.I.P PC.

The 3rd & 4th Computer was a Power Macintosh 5500/225 w/ 32mb's ram upgraded to 128mb's than ram double to 240mb's. It had ATI Rage II +DVD, & had a 2gb HD upgraded to a 30GB HD. The original proc for this was a PowerPC 603ev running @ 225 MHz. I got sick of the slow speed so i bought a Sonnet Cresondo/L2 G3 500 for it, when it was new i was playing with the big boys. It was also running MAC OS 9.1 to 9.2.2. I know that Mac-OS 9.2-9.2.2 was not supported on this mac officially, but a program called OS9 Helper allowed the Mac OS 9 updates to run on my unsupported hardware.
This is where the 4th computer come into play. This power mac 5500 also had a OrangePC 620 PC PCI compatibility card installed on it. It had an AMD K6-3 running @ 380 MHz with 128 MB's of ram, with 4mb's of ram shared with onboard video. With Hard drive space shared with the 30 GB HD. It ran Win 98 SE. For games that i bought for the 2nd computer, this one was average compared it.

That power mac 5500... I still have it with all the hardware, i never used it anymore so its in storage.


The 5th computer was my custom built "White BOX" that i built. original specs was: ECS PT800 motherboard, Intel Celeron @ 2.7 GHz OC to between 2.8-3 GHz with a generic heat sink, 768 MB's of ddr 400 RAM, ATI Radeon 9600 SE 128MB video Card; "GPU OC to 9600 Pro levels which is 400 MHz, Ram OC to 240-270 MHz"; an 120GB ATA 100 HD, with 2 DVD burners, & Windows XP.

For the processor upgrades for the 5th computer. It went through 2 of them. I upgraded that awful Celeron to a Pentium 4 HT 2.4 GHz C proc; with that processor it like night & day, than after that i upgraded to a Intel Pentium 4 Extreme Edition Running @ 3.4 GHz. With the P4 EE, I had to buy A Tuniq Tower 120 to even cool it down.

Ram upgrades: went from 768 MB's to 1.5GB's than to 2GB's with A-Data RAM.

Video Card upgrades: from a "ATI 9600se 128MB's" to a "ATI X850Pro VIVO 256 MB's" to a "ATI X1950 GT 256MB's" clock's Flash to a X1950PRO speeds, to the final card an "AGP ATI Radeon X3850 512MB's"

Sound Card upgrades: From inter-grated sound to "Sounblaster live 24-bit" to "Sound Blaster X-Fi Extreme Gamer".


I have had other computers before, but these 6 computers i remember the most...

 

[NoCanDo]

My first ever computer was an AMD 64 with 512mb or ram, back in the day it cost a lot, I had a flat screen 17 inch moniter with it, back in the day that was pretty good.
I was amazed when I upgraded to dual core, the speed increased dramatically, admittedly I had a lot more RAM in the dual core rig.

 

[Mousemonkey]

This thread was amusing two years ago when it was started but it's more than just a little aged now.