What was your FIRST COMPUTER and how much did it cost?...we've come a long way.

[Circlenaut]

IBM Aptiva 333 MHz AMD K6-2 64Meg of ram and 6 gig harddrive. Oh 56k modem 15" color monitor came to 900 bucks

 

[Xenon14]

Compaq - P90, Win 3.11, 526mb HD, 14.4 modem, 15 inch monitor, 1mb video card, 4mb ram (i think). $2000+

 

[Herbal92]

Pentium 200MMX + 16MB of ram + 2.1GB Hard drive + 24x CD-Rom + 2x VooDoo3 in SLI mode (kicks ass) + Asus TX97E mobo. Still have it. $2500 back then. now have 256MB of EDO ram.

 

[heartsurgeon]

data general supernova (serial number 1)
64 k memory
3 meg winchester drive
high speed paper tape reader
punch card reader
teletype

$50,000

all programming done in assembly

bet you kids never even heard of the supernova (was the 2 ghz athlon of its day! was up against the almighty pdp-8)

 

[ultimatebob]

A commodore 64 with a cassette drive and a game cartridge. It cost me $10, but I had to fix it to get it working. I also used a 12" B&W TV as a display, because I couldn't afford a real monitor.

 

[EagleKeeper]

data general supernova heartsurgeon

Finally some-one who remembers what a big iron computer was.
Kept you warm in winter and you froze in the summer due to the AC requirements.
Punch cards & mylar tape if lucky. Booted with toggle switches to set boot loader.

Seems like every-one else is thinking that a computer is a PC from 1980 time frame.

 

[Kenazo]

My family's first computer:
486sx 25 w/ 4 megs ram, 270meg hd, sb16, 2x cdrom, 14" monitor - $3000 cdn in 1993? it was about 2 months after the sx25 chip came out.
upgraded in 1995 to cyrix 6x86 100 w/ 16 megs ram. I'm still using it w/ the original 1993 monitor, case and soundcard. talk about long life computing.

 

[MrPG]

the year was 1994... i was a young lad... fire burning in my soul... a glint of passion in my eye...

packart bell Intel 66mhz, 380meg HD, 2x cdrom, 8megs of ram, 15inc monitor packaged with a bubblejet 600e ran me roughly $4000usd.

 

[CJZ]

Mac Classic
8mhz
2MB Ram
40MB HDD
Integrated monochrome monitor

I think it cost about 1700 with an inkjet printer.

It still runs very well.

 

[element2k5]

Apple IIe
the works.... 16color monitor 2 5.25 floppies, and 256k ram


i cant remember how much it was....

 

[dpk777]

Impressive how far we've come in that time...

 

[HappyFace]

P166, 32Mb, Trident 2Mb video, with a 15" monitor! Was only a little more then $2000.

 

[tm37]

My mom bought a C64 back in the day for like $800 Tape, Floppy, Monitor, Printer, Software, 1200 Baud modem (this was so fast compared to my buddies 300 baud.)

I remember going through the byte buyer getter the numbers for local bbs and chating online at like three in the morning!!

Then we got the big upgrade about 1990 (could be a year or two off)
486 33MHz
8 MB of ram
60 MB HD
No sound
no CD
16 color graphics
windows 3.1
It was a burner.
14 inch Shamrock Monitor (this thing Just died like 2 years ago)

After I left mom bought a HD 1.7 GB but it didn't work with the comp, so she bought a 200 right after Fry's opened in Mission Valley.

I bought an AMD 133
16MB EDO
2Mb Trident PCI video card
8X Mitsumi Cd Rom
Junk ISA Sound Sb Compatible (Yeah right)

Paid $700 was my wife and mine first big purchase, I bought Nascar 2 at the same time.

About two months later I added a 56K Rockwell chipset modem for $159 (on Sale)

then came the sound blaster 64 value $99
then Creative EXTREAM GRAPHICS 4MB PCI $99

That card died about 8 months later and I returned it to fry's (I had bought a returned card) and they gave me a Diamond Stealth II (rendition Chipset)

I sold the mem mother board and Cpu and bought a p166MMX w/32MB atrend MB(later upgraded to 64). My sister still has that system!! I think that upgrade cost me about $175 after I sold the stuff.

 

[Zepper]

Heathkit H-88 ca. 1980. 48k RAM, cassette tape data storage, Z-80 processor. OS was Heath Extended Basic!!! Yup, built my first from a kit and it worked from first power on ...
.bh.

 

[Thrlskr]

We bought a P100/16mg ram,1.2G HDD ,12Xcd rom and 17 inch monitor from gateway for $3,200 in 1997 I think. Upgraded to a P200 with 32mg and then gave it to sister-in-law.

 

[absolutiza]

i think i beat all of you. My first computer that I can remember was a box with this light orange/yellow lettering that ran on MS-DOS (3.1 or something). i could play a few games on it like frogger and tap. don't know how much we paid for it, but my dad ended up selling it for like $50. Damn.. I wish we would've kept it. it's a friggin relic.

 

[Perknose]

<< i think i beat all of you. My first computer that I can remember was a box with this light orange/yellow lettering that ran on MS-DOS (3.1 or something). i could play a few games on it like frogger and tap. don't know how much we paid for it, but my dad ended up selling it for like $50. Damn.. I wish we would've kept it. it's a friggin relic. >>



Wow, DOS 3.1, yep, you sure beat all of us! Dos 3.1 HAS to be older than assembly language or Fortran, not to mention DOS 2.0 and DOS 1.0. Yeah . . . you're a real old timer, alright!

 

[cricky]

A Vic-20 with a casette reader. I had the whopping 16k memory expansion cartridge, too, which brought the whole system to 24k of system memory. I had a 300 baud modem to hook up to the BBS' with, too. It was great having a modem that you could type faster than.

Then we got the C-64. And the C-128. And the SX-64 (anyone remember this monstrosity? The "portable" C-64 with a postage stamp sized TV screen and weighing in at somewhere around 60lbs). Then the Amiga 500. And the Amiga 2000. And the 386SX-16. (I got to PC's late). 386-40. 486-50. Pentium 120. Mac Performa-PPC166 (I tried to jump ship.) k6-2-300. k6-2-450. Athlon 700. Apple iBook (I tried again, but failed to grasp the allure.) Athlon-TB 1.4 (currently).

Don't get me started on video game systems in between there.

Thanks Mom and Dad for getting me hooked on this computer buying thing at such a young age...

--Christopher

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

Hmmmm I go back a ways

Sinclair, before Timex... 8k I think (still have the silly thing somewhere)

Vic-20

I had 2 Commodore 64's

Let me think...

An 8086
286

Had a Mac (and yeah it was better than any PC at the time)

A 386
486-25
486DX4 (Could play what I thought was a cool game "7th guest")
P-II 300
Currently a 1.4T-bird OC'd to 1.53 w/ 512 megs ddr ram Etc (well lots of etcs )

Every one was Da Bomb at the time. Wonder what I'll have in 10 years?

 

[Static911]

I think my father bought us a FULLY loaded Apple 2 GS! Man, that was the top of the lien comp back then....costed something like $4,500.

static911

 

[duke]

Our first machine was an IBM 486DX2 66MHz, 8MB RAM, 1MB Cirrus Logic on board video, 14.4K internal modem, and 15" IBM monitor. Total was $3000 plus tax.

 

[sciencetoy]

Right you are, sharp-eyed gbrux - the Atari 400/800 was 1979, not 1975. That was the year I got divorced, not the year I got married. Who can remember those pesky marital details, anyway?

 

[darkjester]

IBM XT
640K RAM
2 5.25" floppy drives (no 3.5" or hard drives)
old keyboard with F-keys on left (only up to F10)
monochrome display
no mouse
no modem (what is a moe-dum? )
no soundcard (the PC speaker isn't enough for you? )

I was 6 years old at the time. 16 years later, I still use it to post on AT.

j/k

 

[HeyYoEddie]

My first computer was a Commodore 64 that was a gift from my mom's uncle. Complete with external floppy drive and an Okidata dot matrix printer.

The first computer that my parents bought for me was a Packard Bell 286 with a VGA monitor. I believe it cost between $2500-3000 back in the '80s.

 

[busmaster11]

Magnavox Headstart 386sx/16mhz; 1 meg ram, 40 meg hard drive, 1x Sony CD-rom with caddy, 14in interlaced(?) VGA, MS DOS 4.01 and Geoworks (former parent company of AOL, I believe) graphical interface.

Can't believe I was able to sell it for 150$ 5 years ago...