My original P133 purchase receipt from 1996!

[Idontcare]

ROFL...

i remember when my dad brought home a OG 8086.

He had a big smile on his face... saying its a computer..

Remember it costed more then anything i am running now including my LC systems.

LOL, same here, I remember he was super super paranoid that we kids would "crash" the 10MB hard-drive if we walked to close to the computer.

So he set it up on some weighted table to dampen the high-frequency vibrations and when we wanted to use it we had to walk very softly to the desk chair.

I loved playing M1A1 Abrams Tank on that thing, it ran slow as hell, which actually made the manual targeting as well as dodging the incomings all the easier because you had much more time to respond.

 

[Avalon]

Around that time, maybe several months later, my mother had purchased a similar P166 Sony desktop system for around $2500. Played Diablo and Starcraft on that beast after school all day.

 

[Phynaz]

Here's one...

 

[tweakboy]

I cant remember I think back then I used Cyrix I believe....

 

[Dizon]

haha 2.8k back then is like 5k now.

 

[SZLiao214]

I hope you don't mind me asking you this question. At the time you bought that computer, how much were you making a month?

It blows my mind how much computers were less then 2 decades ago.

 

[kashwashwa]

My family owned a computer shop through a lot of my youth, I should dig out some of the ridiculous receipts (like a CD-ROM drive multimedia kit for only $499!).

 

[TurtleCrusher]

Buying a PC back then it is pretty much the same as buying an LCD monitor 5-10 years ago.

My 27" 720P LCD HDTV from 2001 originally cost $3499. I bought it for $60 used off Craigslist :thumbsup:

I has VGA, DVI, component among others. No digital tuner though! I have a Princeton 15" LCD monitor that cost my step-brother almost $900. It's 1024x768.

 

[MustISO]

My family owned a computer shop through a lot of my youth, I should dig out some of the ridiculous receipts (like a CD-ROM drive multimedia kit for only $499!).

Pretty sure my first CD burner was around $599 which was absolutely insane. Luckily I had a GF who offered to buy it for me.

 

[aegisofrime]

My first PC was an Acer Pentium 133. It costed $4888 Singapore dollars, which is probably around $3000ish US Dollars. Not sure what that amount would be worth today.

It's amazing not just how much prices have gone down over the years, but also how much more powerful things are now, relative to our power requirements. That Pentium 133 of mine above was pretty much cutting edge (for that time), but it still felt really slow playing games and such.

Hopefully, 10 years down the road when I'm surfing Anandtech on my Quantum Computer we can all think back and comment how on slow and expensive our Core i7-990Xs of today were

 

[aegisofrime]

Singapore dollars, which is probably around $3000ish US Dollars. Not sure what that amount would be worth today.

It's amazing not just how much prices have gone down over the years, but also how much more powerful things are now, relative to our power requirements. That Pentium 133 of mine above was pretty much cutting edge (for that time), but it still felt really slow playing games and such.

Hopefully, 10 years down the road when we're surfing Anandtech on our Quantum Computers we can all think back and comment how on slow and expensive our Core i7-990Xs of today were

 

[Dark Shroud]

Somewhere I still have the ad for my old IBM Aptiva PII 400mhz system. It boasted a new faster 100mhz system bus with a 2x AGP ATI Rage Pro 2 with 4mb of onboard memory and either 56k or 64k duel pipelines. 128mb of system ram (2 x 64mb), a massive 13gig HD, a brand new state of the art DVD-ROM and a 17 CRT.

I still have that system tucked away in my basement near my copy of OS/2 warp. Only I upgraded it to 512mb of system ram, a Gigabit ethernet card, 120GB HD, & PCI EVGA FX5400 128mb graphics card.

I even have a monochrome monitor tucked away in the attic. My old 15" Greyscale monitor burned out in 2001. We couldn't afford a Color monitor back then despite my father working for IBM. The P133 system my dad somehow got from work was amazing but slow, still better than the old DOS system we had before. I remember the day he came home with a kit that had a Sound Blaster card (it was MIDI capable!), 4x CD-Rom, & desktop speakers, no more internal speaker for us. He never would tell me how much that stuff cost us. I was allowed to use it and install software after I got his permission. I just wasn't allowed to open it without him present.

 

[BTA]

Those were the best times to be into PC's. It's too easy today.

The prices were indeed ridiculous though!

 

[qwertyaas]

Packard Bell
Pentium 60 Mhz
8 MB Ram
420MB HDD
14.4 Modem
13" Monitor
Printer
Useless stuff

Close to $3,000 - This was back in 1995

 

[CKTurbo128]

Packard Bell
Pentium 60 Mhz
8 MB Ram
420MB HDD
14.4 Modem
13" Monitor
Printer
Useless stuff

Close to $3,000 - This was back in 1995

I bought a Packard Bell with the same specs and similar price at Worst Buy around the same time. It's mind boggling to think how fast and how far computer prices have come down in the last 15 years.

 

[zuffy]

I used to work for them from '95-96.

 

[bryanW1995]

If anyone who has ever bought computer parts....

Rule # 1 - Never bring out old receipts to look at besides needing for warranty
Rule # 2 - Never bring out old receipts to compare vs current technology and prices

Break any of those rules, you are asking for pain.

yes it was a champ at the time, there wasn't any choice really it's either Intel P133 or P166. I don't recall there's any compatibles that could come close to Intel at that time. I also vaguely remember the P166 would have been something like $3300-3400/system. I just had to drew the line somewhere.

sorry about the pic, I scan it very high rez to keep for posterity ;]

But seeing this receipt really brought a smile and a little pain to me, remembering just how silly I was paying so much for something. With 3k I could probably upgrade several cycles now. that just goes to show a little skill and time can be worth a whole lot of money!

haha, too true. I bought an HP p166 system in june 1996 with laser printer, monitor, etc etc and spent around $4500. last purchase I ever made on mom's credit card, though I guess this doesn't count since she made me pay her back.

 

[bryanW1995]

Around that time, maybe several months later, my mother had purchased a similar P166 Sony desktop system for around $2500. Played Diablo and Starcraft on that beast after school all day.

are you sure it wasn't a faster rig? I couldn't play diablo worth a crap, I bought a new video card about a year later when a buddy showed me how much fun diablo was, but it still ran very poorly on my rig. Buddy had a pentium 200 mmx that ran it geat, however. maybe you had a pentium 166 mmx?

 

[PascalT]

I took a student loan for my first computer.. school was basically an excuse to get one so I could play Diablo 1 and such.

It was a $3k Pentium 3 450mhz system with a voodoo 3 card (!!!!). I got it the week the P3 came out.

 

[Dark Shroud]

I took out a student loan to get my P4 system. I couldn't do any of my work on the old PII system.

 

[Drsignguy]

Yup, love those days back then. Its when I purchased my first 33mhz system with good ol windows 3.1. monitor, mouse, cd rom, keyboard, computer and even a dot matrix printer that I thought was the bomb! Cost me a fortune too. Wow, have PC's come a very long way!

 

[Drsignguy]

Oh, I didnt even know how to run it either. Had to have a friend come over to help me. He knew dos pretty well. God rest his soul! He was a good friend.

 

[vshah]

i remember our dell dimension xps p90 was something like $4k...with a 19" trinitron monitor. that thing was a beast. actually still using the enclosure today (has a 1.2ghz thunderbird fileserver in it)

 

[yhelothar]

I remember back in 97' I got a brand new cyrix system for $1200.
It was PR200 and I thought it was 200MHz.
32MB SDRAM
1MB ISA VGA card
2GB hard drive

 

[sgrinavi]

First IBM PC XT we bought was a cool $8000 - 10 MB Hard drive, 640 kb RAM, CGA color display... Intel 8088 @ 4.77

Couldn't talk the boss into 8087 co-processor, but he did get us an epson lq 1500 dot matrix printer for $400

The extra memory was on a full length card, filled both sides. It must have weighed 5 lbs.