Today in history: First Pentium chips released

[WT]

March 22, 1993 marked the debut of Intel's first Pentium line of processors, checking in at a speedy 60mhz, and effectively doubling the speed of Intel's fastest 486/66 chips.
:thumbsup:

Smart Computing article

Ahhhh, these were heady days indeed !! With the Pentium nearing retirement, post your fondest Pentium memories from days long since gone by.

 

[SexyK]

I remember upgrading from my 486SX 33 to a Pentium 90 (was really a second gen Pentium, but close enough). That thing ran Mechwarrior II like a dream.

 

[WT]

I bought a Gateway PC in the winter of '93 .. I got it via UPS on December 24, 1993 and proceeded to spend eight hours on Christmas Day tweaking and setting up Windows 3.11 just the way I wanted it !! I paid $2,440 for the following hardware:

Pentium 486DX2/50
Western Digital 420mb hard drive
Tseng Labs ET4000/W32 1mb video card
8mb EDO RAM
2x CD-Rom drive
combo 3.5/5.25" floppy drive (!!)
15" Gateway monitor

This, to this day, is still the most innovative piece of machinery that I have had. The CD drive, laughable by todays standards, was very new .. and no technology has yet replaced its medium (optical drives) in the 15+ years since its introduction. Amazing indeed.

 

[Furen]

Originally posted by: WT
I bought a Gateway PC in the winter of '93 .. I got it via UPS on December 24, 1993 and proceeded to spend eight hours on Christmas Day tweaking and setting up Windows 3.11 just the way I wanted it !! I paid $2,440 for the following hardware:

Pentium 486DX2/50
Western Digital 420mb hard drive
Tseng Labs ET4000/W32 1mb video card
8mb EDO RAM
2x CD-Rom drive
combo 3.5/5.25" floppy drive (!!)
15" Gateway monitor

This, to this day, is still the most innovative piece of machinery that I have had. The CD drive, laughable by todays standards, was very new .. and no technology has yet replaced its medium (optical drives) in the 15+ years since its introduction. Amazing indeed.

Hate to break it to you but the 486 is not a Pentium


Lovely video card, by the way, but the system was a bit lacking on the RAM side.

 

[StopSign]

My family got a P2 233 MHz in the winter of 1997. I was 9 at the time and I spent hours and hours playing with the new machine (exploring Win95). Everything about it was magical. I had friends come over sometimes and we'd play games like Dark Forces and Final Fantasy 7(!!!).

We then went from that system to a P4 1.8 GHz at the beginning of 2002. It was an unbelievable jump in performance.

We gave that P2 system to a friend in the summer of 2002 because they were new immigrants and were still settling in.

 

[swtethan]

Pentium 200mhz MMX machine for $2000

my first pentium

 

[Lonyo]

Pentium isn't nearing retirement! They're prepping new Core 2 based Pentiums in the near future AFAIK.

 

[Matt1970]

My first "TRUE" Pentium was a 166MMX (chip cost me $175 Dealer Cost) that I upgraded from my 100 AMD in the same board. Then learned about Overclocking and ran it at 200MHZ. WooHoo !!! Those were the days.

 

[Thor86]

Originally posted by: SexyK
I remember upgrading from my 486SX 33 to a Pentium 90 (was really a second gen Pentium, but close enough). That thing ran Mechwarrior II like a dream.

LOL, beat me to it. P100, Mech2 ran like a dream. Lots of late nights with that one.

 

[nyker96]

oh yeah I remember now ... I paid like 3k for a complete setup and that was when I went for a budget setup too ... ain't never paying over 100 bucks for a CPU ever since then, AMD ... you the price savior ... discount enforcer ... intel down boy down !

 

[Agentbolt]

My friend's parents bought some crazy powerful Sony Vaio computer back in like 1994 or 1995, it had a Pentium 133 on it. It came with some special version of Mechwarrior that had "cutting edge 3D graphics" I remember killing hours upon hours on that game.

I think I was too young to care much about the first pentiums when they came out, I do recall people complaining a LOT about their heat output though. People used to talk about toasting marshmallows on their Pentium 60's. How hot did they get compared to, say, a Netburst chip?

edit: Awesome, lots of Mechwarrior people here

 

[PCTC2]

My first Pentium: Gateway 2000 w/ Pentium 133, 16MB of SDRAM, a CD-ROM, and USB! (even though the OSes didn't support USB yet).
Windows 95. Dial-up. Those were the days of patience...

 

[CurseTheSky]

My family has had a decent history with computers. I think we upgrade too often.

1. Tandy - that's all I know. I was way too young to know what the hardware specs were. We had it for about a year before it died.

1. IBM Pentium - First generation Pentium processor. That's all I really remember. Windows 3.1

1. Pentium II 266MHz - Hewlett Packard. Not sure about the other hardware specs. Windows 95

1. Pentium II 450MHz - Hewlett Packard. Something like 32MB (64?) of RAM, 8 (16?) MB graphics card. Windows 98

1. Pentium III 1.0GHz - Hewlett Packard. One GIGAHERTZ. It really felt like a step into the future. I think it had 128MB of RAM, and a 32MB graphics card. Upgraded to a 64MB Geforce 4 MX420. Windows ME

1. Pentium 4 2.0GHz - Hewlett Packard. Double the speed of the last computer. Came with 256MB of RAM, and onboard graphics. Upgraded to 512MB of RAM, and a 128MB Geforce FX5200. Windows Xp

1. Pentium 4 3.0GHz - Dell. First step away from HP - thank God. 512MB of RAM, 128MB Geforce FX5200. Upgraded to 1.25GB of RAM. Windows Xp

1. Pentium 4 3.0GHz - Dell. This one was for me, and would be the last pre-built computer we purchased. 512MB of RAM, 128MB Geforce FX5200. Upgraded to 1.5GB of RAM, and a Geforce FX5900SE. Windows Xp

1. Athlon X2 4200+ - Self Built. My very first self-built computer. Had a 6800GT, 1GB of DDR400, Audigy 2 ZS, and overclocked to 2.6-2.7GHz. Windows Xp

Since then I've built a bunch for myself, and for others. Kind of an odd timeline. Sometimes we upgraded too much, sometimes we waited forever. Kind of sad to think of all the money that was wasted on hardware.

Edit: I think I started playing Mechwarrior II with the Pentium II 266, or 450. Can't remember which. Great game though.

 

[MikeyJ79]

It was either in 1995 or 1996 when my mom got a P100 in order to work from home. I was frustrated trying to somehow play Warcraft II on our 486SX/25 and decided to sneak the game onto her computer and play it in the middle of the night. I don't play much of any games nowadays, but this represents one of my first Pentium memories.

I can also remember being jealous of friends who owned Pentiums at the time, which led me to build my first computer in 1997 which contained an AMD 5x86/133-P75 which I mistakenly believed to be a Pentium clone thanks to the P rating. Thankfully, my computer knowledge has come a long ways since then.

 

[DrMrLordX]

I got a P5-100 with 16 megs of RAM, a one gig harddrive, and an ATI Mach 64 video card back in 1995 from Midwest Micro. I popped in my old PAS-16 at first, but later on I got an Ensoniq Soundscape Elite for it. That board was cool.

It ran Descent II great, and I enjoyed spamming Phoenix Cannon shots all over the campus LAN games to lag 486 losers to death. Mua ha ha.

To date, Descent II is still my favorite deathmatch game. Too bad Descent III was a disappointment.

 

[y2kse]

I remember playing MegaRace on my Packard Bell Pentium 60 with 8 MB RAM, 420GB HDD, 4x CDROM and combined 14.4k baud modem/sound card.

 

[StopSign]

Originally posted by: Agentbolt
I think I was too young to care much about the first pentiums when they came out, I do recall people complaining a LOT about their heat output though. People used to talk about toasting marshmallows on their Pentium 60's. How hot did they get compared to, say, a Netburst chip?

I don't know how hot they ran but it couldn't have been hotter than NetBurst or Thunderbirds. They felt hot because cooling back then was not like what it is today, or back in the days of Thunderbirds or original NetBursts. IIRC, most chips were passively cooled back then with big fat aluminum heatsinks.

 

[Geomagick]

My First Pentium was a Pentium 150 which I got in 1996. By going for the 150 instead of the 166 allowed me to get a 2GB Hard Drive and an extra 16MB of ram!
This was infact my first PC, and within a day or so I had overclocked the CPU and RAM, something that I continue to do to this day.

My latter day Pentiums have been.
P2 333 - still used to this day albeit with another 333 sitting alongside.
P3 500 - my last chip to use SDR ram.
P4 2.4C - this chip got me away from AMD for a while
P4 2.8E - this I ran at 3.85GHz on a Vapochill.

These have been interspersed with some of AMD's creations.
And now I chug along with a Core 2 E6600.

 

[MBrown]

Originally posted by: Lonyo
Pentium isn't nearing retirement! They're prepping new Core 2 based Pentiums in the near future AFAIK.

link?

 

[gamephile]

My uncle had a pentium 90 based system with these huge tower altec lansing speakers. My cousin Melanie and I would stay up forever playing Mechwarrior 2 with her first generation sidewinder. God damn I love that game. We also put a fair bit of time into SimCity classic. She had the CD-Rom edition where your advisors were actual live action video clips.

My first pentium was a Pentium II 333Mhz Dell Dimension XPS. At the time our last computer was a 25Mhz 386 that my parents purchased in 1990, so I was dying to get my hands on a functional computer. I remember after months of talks at the dinner table pouring over specs my Dad and I decided on the Dell. When we placed the order over the phone he let me read the specs to the CS rep. I distinctly recall being so excited that my voice trembled. That in addition to my squeky 12 year old voice must've sounded pretty hilarious to the guy on the phone.

 

[StopSign]

Originally posted by: MBrown

Originally posted by: Lonyo
Pentium isn't nearing retirement! They're prepping new Core 2 based Pentiums in the near future AFAIK.

link?

It's on the Intel roadmap. Just look for those.

 

[avi85]

Originally posted by: MBrown

Originally posted by: Lonyo
Pentium isn't nearing retirement! They're prepping new Core 2 based Pentiums in the near future AFAIK.

link?

Here you go.

 

[Noema]

Ah, it was hard for me to be an early adopter back in 1993...I didn't have much spare cash for hardware back then, as I was just 13

That means I had to stick with my old 486DX2-66 MHz for a long time: 1993 to 1997, until I got my first Pentium, a MMX P200MHz with 16MB of RAM. I used to play hours upon hours of Starcraft on it. In fact that was my parent's home computer for almost 8 years...hard to believe they were still using it 2 years ago...the thing hardly booted by then. Heck, I remember temporarily pulling the 2GB (!) HDD out circa late 2004 and plugging it into my rig to recover all my papers from college which where still there (as well as my pr0n :evil: )

 

[Noema]

By the way: does anyone remember the Pentium Overdrive? I remember wanting one of those so bad, ca. 1995...I used to believe it was the best thing after sliced bread, after reading a preview in CGW. I didn't have the money for a real Pentium rig, and my Mechwarrior 2 performance was solely lacking on my 486 (I used to play at, like, 320x240).

Never did get one, though.

 

[pm]

It's not my fondest memory, but it's one that I'll never forget.

In 1995, I started with Intel. I joined working on the Pentium (P54CS) B0 stepping. I remember after spending several late nights working with a team on a bunch of circuit issues to release the 200MHz Pentium (P54CS C0), we figured out a bunch of "fixes" for the circuitry we were having issues with, and we had a custom part "FIB'd" (rewired using a electron beam) overnight. The next morning, we picked up the newly rewired prototype and put it on a tester and it showed we'd nailed all of the "fixes" and the part looked awesome. There was a lot of cheering and high-5's from the team. Our manager requested we take it to the systems lab to have it run through a stress test, so two of us grabbed the part - the only one in the whole world - and walked down the hallway with it. My co-worker wanted to get a cup of coffee so he reached over to hand the part to me and said he'd meet me there.

He handed the prototype to me, and I reached for it and there was this audible "SNAP!" of static electricity from the pins of the chip to my finger and we both stopped in our tracks and swore out loud. I think we both knew right away it was dead. I just had a feeling in my gut and I remember feeling the euphoria drain out of me leaving me feeling almost sick in my stomach. He skipped the coffee and we walked back to the tester lab, had them re-test and, as we suspected, it was dead.

We called up our manager and said that the prototype had stopped working - and didn't go into details - and started the process of making a new one... only this time, we queued up three instead of just one.

It all worked out, but I'll never forget that moment when the static arc'd over. Since then I've always been really paranoid about static electricity and solid-state components.