I had messed with other people's computers, and with some at universities going way back, but this is the first machine I ever brought home for myself. I paid a princely sum for it.
It was 1996, and I had a computer store put it together for me. It lasted a very long time. It was a 120 MHz Pentium, 8 MB RAM, 28.8 dial-up modem, and a 1.5 GB hard drive. It came with Windows 95 pre-installed. A year or so later it would become a dual-boot with Red Hat Linux.
Over the years it got multiple memory upgrades, multiple larger hard drives, 56k modem, then an Ethernet card.
On the screen is the Netscape browser displaying some freaky scrolling chatroom where people posted a lot of good pics. 😀
Fuenteovejuna did it 
Nice! My first computer was an original IBM PC-XT running at a smokin' hot 4.77 Mhz. I'd kill for the monitor that it came with. It was a perfectly flat amber screen that had zero phosphor burn-in, and a very small footprint since it didn't have the bulky chassis of the color monitors.Man, the flood of memories…I don't wanna high-jack your post, so I'll stop now.
Originally posted by slackwrdave:
My first install of an OS was on a computer at work back in I guess 1994.Windows 3.11 from eleven 3.5 inch floppy discs. It took several hours but it worked. 😆
Originally posted by 0x29a:
I was just thinking about the last CRT monitor I bought. I think it was 19". It was SO heavy and required a ton of backside clearance. I'm quite pleased that the LCD ones are affordable now.
My dad bought our first home computer. It was a 486 dx2 66 MHz with 8MB Ram. One month later, Pentium arrived. My dad was not impressed with the price dump of our now "old" machine.
Those were the days. My first one at home was a brand new Compaq Pressario with Windows 98 second edition and it had a real DVD player. 64 MB with 8 GB hard drive and 56 dial-up modem. At that time I was still watching VHS video on the TV.Tears in my eyes when I said goodbye to that system in 2006 after 6 years, it was still working then. Had my first Opera 5 browser on it. But:Originally posted by 0x29a:
🙂 :up:
Originally posted by slackwrdave:
And now a new generation is here: the all in one with touchscreen.
btw Dave, your hair is pretty black and full then 😀
Originally posted by slackwrdave:
All right then… :p One of my favorite things to do on that old XT system was low-level formatting the Winchester hard drive using the BIOS routines. It was one of the few really useful things one could do with debug:
I had to enter the defect map by hand. Thankfully, it was a short list on that particular 20 MB Miniscribe.I found a third-party BIOS chip somewhere and replaced the original IBM chip. It actually ran faster and seemed to have more "features," although I can't recall them now.
Originally posted by EspenAO:
Ouch! That was back when you could easily drop a couple or three thousand (dollars) on anything.I ran that Pentium 120 so many years that towards the end, Opera was about the *only* browser it would run, and even that was shaky. That was back when a feature of Opera was it's install "portability" (it fit on a single 3.5 inch floppy).
Originally posted by JanndeSmit:
It's STILL full, but only slightly black. It is still "salt 'n' peppa", though more salt than ever.
Originally posted by 0x29a:
I think it's right on target. I like tech discussion and memories.I don't mind a blog hijack anyway. Things go where they go. Some people don't like it on their blog, but I find shifts in direction interesting.
Originally posted by JanndeSmit:
I haven't checked that old Win95 machine in a few years to see if it will still boot. I should. I probably left a few nice things on there.As for VHS, there's a rental store near me that still has all the tapes they ever stocked that are still working. I only rent their DVD's now, but they still do a good business off the tape crowd.
Originally posted by 0x29a:
My first was an XT too. 8088 processor and less RAM than my wrist watch. I had a 9600 baud modem and compuserve. No one I new had any idea of BBS or an email address. I finally replaced that with an Intel 386. It was huge. Got it smoking hot installing a Math Co-Processor and maxing out with 8 Mb RAM and a 512k graphics card. Windows 3.11 really rocked :headbang: Just before I jumped to a 486sx I installed a SCSI card and a 1Gb hard drive from a server I 'acquired'. It weighed about 2 kilo and took up both 5 1/4 bays and sounded like a jet engine when spinning up.I gotten all nostalgic for the old days now.
Originally posted by ptaylor404:
I still have an 8087 co-processor squirreled away in a drawer. I need to take a picture of it and post it.
…. You done it now! I'm dreaming of Sandra Bullock in The Net :love:
Before I got online at home and was still enrolled in university, it got around that the library catalog terminals could telnet to a school server that had the lynx browser on it. That had to eventually be blocked once it got around as nobody could get terminal access to look up books anymore. I remember about that same time some people had laptops that had noisy keyboards that sounded like popcorn popping. They caused a lot of complaints in the library.
My first computer was ZX Spectrum, ran on cassettes. My first PRACTICAL computer was Pentium II 266MHz, 64 MB RAM, 4 GB HD, 8 MB Videocard. I think that was back in 1999ish. Those were the days… 😀
My brother bought our first computer in 1999, a fast-as-light K6-2 3DNow! computer with 32 MB RAM, 4 GB HDD and a CD-ROM drive. I still remember our first 3d game: Banzai Bug…I also remember our first linux distro installed on that machine: SUSE Linux 5.1I loved that machine…
Is it old? 😀
My first computer (Already told ya'.)Compaq Presario 233mhz (If I remember correctly.)With 48mb of Ram (32mb Shared…I had very limited memory.)And Windows 95. Oh, and I had about 8 gigs?That was my first computer and also the first computer I installed Windows 98 SE on myself. (I was 10-11.)
Originally posted by EspenAO:
+1I don't quiet remember the config. it was when I was I think 7 years old … it was an IBM laptop, which ran windows 3.1 . I used it only to play prince of persia, minesweeper and some ski game.
First ever computer was a Commodore 64 – a couple of people I knew had PETs so we used to swap programs (on cassette). I also used to have a big book full of BASIC games – I had to transcribe all the code by hand if I wanted to play any of them.A few years later I got a DXII/66 with 4mb of RAM and (I think) something like a 10mb hard drive (whatever it was, it was tiny). It ran WFW 3.11. I soon upgraded the RAM to a whopping 8mb – I remember memory being very expensive back then.
It amuses me that I have a bigger memory card in my camera than the hard drive on our original computer,dial up internet as well and we never moaned about the speed or lack of it
Originally posted by CaptainPenguin:
:yes:
My first computer was a ITT 2020 ( a Apple clone built in Germany). Always had to fire it up with a cassette recorder, soon got tired of that so I bought 2 matching floppy disk drives.I still have it tucked away in the cupboard and I wonder if it still works. Does not understand the command "DIR", had to type "Catalog" instead. 😆
My first computer, :left: :right: y'all would probably NOT even consider it a computer. My first computer was the famous Atari 400. :yikes: 😮 I just read right now that it was designed primarily as a computer for children. :doh: So, I had a child computer! Ouch! Yeah, that "Child-proof – Wipe Clean Keyboard" was the Pits, but at least I learned BASIC Programming on it. AND played Pacman, Space Invaders, Breakout and Centipede on it. :headbang: 1.8MHz MOS 6502 Processor and 8 KBytes of RAMWooooooo! That's what I'm talking about!
My first computer was a commodore 64!!I learned basic and assembly language on it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_64
My dad brought home a Commodore VIC-20 one time. It had a cassette tape drive and the monitor was a television. I used to copy the text of programs out of computer magazines and run them.I sure wish I had that VIC-20 now. A "friend" of the family stole it and pawned it for booze money. :irked:
Originally posted by JoshuaPhelps:
I'd like to but it was too long ago. I never knew what happened to the VIC-20 until this person tried to recover years later and did that step from AA when they confess things to you. I was OK with it at that point. Later on I discovered all my silver dollars were gone. Bitch!
Originally posted by slackwrdave:
REVENGE.Steal his goods and pawn it for booze! 🙂
-hugs- Happens to me all the time. XD
😎
Philips P2000 back in 1982, MSX1 in 1984, MSX2 in 1986, 286 in 89, 486 in… and so on and so on 🙂
Mate …Do u have this pc now in ur home ? … 🙂
Initial net addiction:I was just thinking about how our net access has changed. Back when we got that computer seen in the pic at the top of the post, we also got our first home dialup net connection. We were both net addicts from the get-go, and a 5-hour session each was not that uncommon. Sometimes I'd even go for 7 hours if there was a big download. Between the 2 of us that live here, that phone line could be busy for as much as 14 hours a day, if not more! 😆 My mom complained one time that she'd been trying to call me for 3 months and could never get past the busy signal, so I called the phone company and ordered voicemail. No that I always called her back, but at least she could leave a message to be tended to when we released the line after the marathon sessions.I still can't believe how we almost constantly ran that phone line and never received a single threat from the phone company.Broadband rendered that issue moot, plus cell phones got more common. :up:
Originally posted by guharoysoumik86:
Me? Yes, I still have it. It's in a closet on the floor. One day I need to see if it still boots.
Originally posted by slackwrdave:
That's what finally forced me to get DSL. My relationship at the time was a complete chatterbox, and there would have been far too much discord had I remained on dial-up.
I can't stand it! All this nostalgia spurred me to install virtualbox on the sandbox: Netware and OS/2 are next!
Originally posted by slackwrdave:
😆 😆 your mom is a lucky and wise woman.
I always thought Windows 3.1 was pretty.I used to work somewhere that used OS/2. I remember it was very solid for the things we had to do. I liked the WARP startup screen.
OS/2 rocked. One of my favorite things was if you moved the location of a program somewhere else in the directory structure OS/2 automatically updated all the shadows — OS/2-speak for shortcuts. It always tickled me that OS/2 was rated for life-support applications, where if you read the EULA or other documentation for Windows, it states that it is NOT to be used for such applications.
Originally posted by 0x29a:
I've actually seen a fair amount of medical equipment that runs DOS. I guess the logic is one app / one task. Maybe it doesn't freeze up during the middle of an x-ray, for example. 😆
Wooow..Windows 1 …How is it ?..I really want to use it … 🙂
Originally posted by slackwrdave:
I remember that on one occasion, while watching TV, I saw them calibrating pacemakers with my ITT 2020. :eyes: I had a good laugh because I was using it as a burglary alarm that would dial my sisters phone while I was on vacation in California. 😆
Originally posted by pthhieubilly:
A blog hijack is when someone comments on another person's post in a way that steals the focus of the original post. Kind of like going on and on about something in a way that redirects the attention from the original poster to oneself.
Originally posted by 0x29a:
I seei used to think blog hijack is something about account stealing
I haven't had my second computer :DMy current computer is Pentium 4 2.4GHZ, 256MB of ram and 80GB of hard diskand what is blog hijack?
I like tacos. …blog hijacking!
Originally posted by JoshuaPhelps:
Tamales are good, too. …making the hijack a reality! 😆 Good one, Josh!Some hijackers will try to cloak the manoeuver by combining it with a token reference to the post, ie "my new AOC monitor looks great as I eat some very good burritos."On this blog, I don't care where things go. It's on computer help forums, for example, that it can get annoying.
I do what I can. :)Originally posted by slackwrdave:
LIKE THE DAMN UBUNTU FORUMS. And to those helpers on those forums, I use my mighty middle finger to justify the words I would like to say to them.Which is why I tend to fix things on my own.
Originally posted by JoshuaPhelps:
I hear ya.For me it's been a double-edged sword in the Ubuntu forums. On the positive side, they're very active, so answers do turn up there. I've frequently found Debian fixes over at Ubuntu.On the negative side, people seem to post just to be posting something. I think they want some big number beside their name. What a pathetic reward.The most frequent thing I see, aside from chit chat and hijacks, is just plain wrong answers and clueless guessing. I mean if you're going to dispense help and don't know the answer AT ALL, keep quiet!A hypothetical example: somebody will ask how to fix some keyboard issue. Some jackass with a number in the 1000's beside his name will say, "n00b, did you even try editing your /etc/screwedkeyboard.cfg file?", not even realizing that that config file disappeared 3 releases back and was replaced with something else. There he goes dispensing bogus information without even looking at his own system first.IRC is another help nightmare. It only took me a couple of times there to help me decide I'd never go back for tech help. For me, all IRC is good for is chat and serious porn trading. 😆 Like you, I usually fix things on my own or I live with the issue.