My First Computer

[paulcs]

Does anyone remember "the Wang?" I did all my word processing on that, because learning Wordstar looked far too boring. Multimate came about, and it look like crap as well.

The Wang was one of the great disasters in computing history. Half the publishing houses in New York, a lot of the Fortune 500, and the federal government invested in Wang systems. What a disaster. I think Wang single-handedly invented the systems admistrator position.

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[Jorden]

More linky links...

Quake 2

Jord.

[DuRaNgO]

Here it is in all it's glory!

jim

[KvHagedorn]

Who remembers the TI99/4A? All of 16k of RAM! I remember writing fun little proggies on that thing to display on a 13" color TV. OOOOHHHH..AAAHHHH! COLOR!! I also played with a little computer my father had.. one of those little Epson PX8 portable machines which he has used religiously for years. He even had the little laptop-battery size-and-weight RAM pack which took it up to 128k from 64k! Wow! It's still working and he still uses the thing.

Messed with various 8088, 80286, and 80386 machines in college.. After that it was awhile before I got a Mac SE/30 and upgraded the hell out of it (from 16MHz 68030 to 50MHz 68030 with built in cache and seperate FPU, got up to 20 MB of RAM and a 525MB Hard drive on it.. still a nice little machine). I finally built my own wintel home PC in 1997. A Pentium Pro 150 overclocked to 166, with a Matrox Millenium I 4MB video card and 64MB of RAM. Upgraded the hell out of that one too (now has a PPro200/1MB running at 233, a Millennium II with 8MB and 96MB RAM), and I'm still using it.

------------------
Kind Regards,

KvH

[This message has been edited by KvHagedorn (edited 26 November 2000).]

[KvHagedorn]

Here's a neat little link to help you all stroll down memory lane..
http://www.obsoletecomputermuseum.org/

------------------
Kind Regards,

KvH

[DentyCracker]

I'd been using XTs ATs 286s 386s and occasional 486s at work in 1991-92. In 1995 my little brother bought a 486 DX/2 66 with 8 MB RAM (4x2MB 30 pin SIMM), no CD-ROM or Sound Card, Cirrus Logic 2MB VLB videocard, 500 MB HD LOL, win3.1-->win95.
First computer I built for home was 233 MHz Pentium MMX, 128 MB RAM (4x72 pin 32 MB RAM) 3.2 GB WD, M571 PCCHIPS mobo, win95. Still running today, see sig.

------------------
1° System
Inwin Q500 Case
Abit KT7 Motherboard
AMD Duron 700@850 MHz.
384MB PC100 Cas 2 PC100 SDRAM.
Maxtor 20 GB 5400 RPM UATA 66 HD
Quantum Fireball 4.3 GB UATA 33 HD
Plextor PX-W8432 burner
Toshiba SD-M1402 DVD ROM drive
Creative Labs SoundBlaster Live! X-Gamer 5.1
Matrox G400 DH 32MB
Mag Innovision DX17T
Klipsch ProMedia v2.400 Speakers
ATI TV Wonder*sigh*
Realtek 8039AS based 10Mbps NIC
Running WinME, Win2K SP1, BeOS 5.03

2° System
Generic Finger Slicer AT Case
FIC VA503+
IBM Cyrix PR 266 *brrr* (long story)
128 MB Generic PC100 SDRAM
Maxtor 10 GB 7200 PRM UDMA33 HD
Creative Labs Ensonic AudioPCI64 (es1371)
Matrox Millennium G200 AGP
Realtek 8019 ISA NIC
Win98 2222A
Win2k Pro SP1

3° System

PCChips M571
Intel Pentium MMX 233
128 MB EDO DRAM (SIMMS)
IBM 10 GB HD
Diamond Stealth S3 trio 64
Realtek 8019 ISA NIC

[Greebe]

Thx for the linkage Chuck!

Here's mine from '79
http://www.obsoletecomputermuseum.org/pet.html

[alessandro]

I bought my first computer in 1986 an Amstrad 1512 color:



YEAR 1986
COUNTRY Great Britain
CPU Intel 8086
SPEED 8 MHz
COPROCESSORS N/A
ROM 16 KB
RAM 512 KB (up to 640 KB)
VRAM N/A
TEXT Modes 40 x 25 / 80 x 25
GRAPHIC Modes CGA graphic modes : 320 x 200 / 640 x 200 + Amstrad specific mode : 640 x 200 / 16 colors
COLORS 4 (CGA colors) / 16 (Amstrad Mode)
SOUND bipper
I/O Ports Centronics, RGB, RS232, Mouse, Joystick, 8 bit ISA slots (3)
Media one or two 5.25" floppy disk unit (360 KB) and/or Hard disk
Operating System MS DOS - DR DOS

My second was a Amiga 500Plus in 1990:



Country: US
Year: 1989
Comment: very much the same as the Amiga 500 but it has 1MB of Chip RAM and AmigaOS 2.04
CPU: Motorola MC 68000
RAM / ROM: 1024 kB / 256 kB
Colors: up to 4096

My third one was 3 years later a Amiga 4000/040:



YEAR 1993
COUNTRY U.S.A.
CPU Motorola MC68030 or MC68040
SPEED 25 mHz
COPROCESSORS 3 : Daphne (video); Agnus (Memory Manager, Blitter & Copper), Paula (Sound, I/O)
ROM 512 KB
RAM 6 MB (up to 16 MB, and theorically to 4 GB)
VRAM N/A
TEXT Modes 60 x 32 / 80 x 32
GRAPHIC Modes from 320 x 240 to 1280 x 512 / 640 x 1024
COLORS 262.144 from a 24 bit palette
SOUND Four 8 bits PCM voices
I/O Ports VGA, Centronics, RS232 C, Disk Unit, IDE, stereo sound, Joystick (2), RGB
Media one 3.5" Floppy Drive (1.92 Mo) and one IDE hard disk (120 MB)
Operating System AMIGA WorKBench 3.x

In between 1986~1995 i also bought some consoles... a Sega Master System , a Amiga CD32 and a PSX.

In 1998 i bought my fourth PC :

Pentium II 450,Asus P2B,Matrox G200..etc

4 weeks ago i bought my 5th computer ..the one in my signature




------------------
Athlon Thunderbird 1.1Ghz@1.2~1.3+GHz Socket A 256Kb,Asus A7V dipswitches,GlobalWin FOP32-1 heatsink,GlobalWin 802 Advance ATX Case, 17" Sony Multiscan 200PST,128MB PC100 ram,Matrox Millenium G400 MAX 32MB 5ns SGRAM,IBM Deskstar 75GXP 15Gb UltraATA/100, Quantum Firebal EL 10.2Gb,Epson Stylus Color 740,Sound blaster Live!,Cambridge Soundworks 5.1,Creative PC-DVD 5X,CDR-RW Ricoh MP7040S@MP7060S(Tweaked from 4x--->6x with no problem),Adaptec SCSI 2920C,Diamond SupraExpress 56e PRO,Iomega Zip Drive.

[This message has been edited by alessandro (edited 26 November 2000).]

[This message has been edited by alessandro (edited 26 November 2000).]

[Pace]

Well here's my rundown, I joined the race a little later than you guys though!

My sisters had an early Sinclair 16/48k possibly, the one with squishy keys anyway. Then came the 128k, before I finally got my own machines...
Amiga A500 (later upgraded to 1Mb)
Amiga A1200 (added a 1.2Gb hard drive - worst waste of money!)
P120, FX, 16Mb, 1Gb (yes, smaller than my Amiga at the time!), Trio64, blah...I added a 4.3Gb Quantum to this, and a Monster Voodoo 4Mb as well - ah the sheer joy of showing off that to the new PS owners - Q2 railgun? mmmm!
Current system is a P2-350, though major changes under progress! I'm completely fed up of building PCs for other people which are faster

Paul.

[cerb]

aaroncgi: My 15" LG Studioworks 56i did 1280x1024 at 60Hz. Too small, though. 1024x768 was fine back in those days. I passed it on to my parents when I got my CTX VL950T, otherwise it'd be good as a second head.

paulcs: What's that about your Wang? (hehe... Penny Arcade rocks! )

Cerb

[Kaj]

My first computer of my very own (paid out of my allowance and some birthdaymoney) was a MSX-2.
My first full-blown PC was a second-hand 486 Compaq Deskpro.
Loved the MSX, but boy, did that Compaq suck! I've had a hell of a time getting a non-compaq modem to work...

[Jammrock]

I have a few grips about that video:

1) Whoever made this was a poor, poor example of how to build a computer in a low ESD environment. I'm suprised that thing worked. Building it on his lap, on carpet, wearing socks. Gee, that won't generate any charge in his body. Poor example of how to do it.

2) This guy obviously doesn't know how to build a gamer machine. How depressing.

3) The whole fasination with Bill Gates needs to be cut. After the screen morphed to Billy and back it should have ended there.

Jammrock

[Technoid]

Every damn computer case we recive (new)at work.
Has to be grounded before we touch them or otherwise the unlucky person who do it recievs a jolt strong enough to awaken frankenstein.

[Johnny Ray]

The first PC I purchased with my own money was a compaq portable (8088 processor, no harddrive, etc) in 1984. The reason I went with the Compaq was because it had 256K memory, instead of the 64K offered by the IBM portable. I used this thing for 6 years without a single problem. Upgraded to 640K, added a 20 MB harddrive, etc.

Next picked up a 33 MHz IBM (no VESA bus for me!) with OS/2 pre-installed. Hah! Hey, but as I type this, I'm using the IBM buckling spring keyboard that came with that system. Talk about bullet-proof. This baby's survived a home-fire, projectile vomit onto it by my cat (I took it and washed it off in the kitchen sink), and prevents my desk from floating away.

Paulcs...I remember the Wang word-processor well. The secretary (engineer?) that used that thing was VERY unpleasant, but now in hindsight I know why. It certainly didn't have anything to do with the fact that after she left for the day we'd spend hours trying to figure out how to use it, and no doubt continually dorked it up .

John