What were the specs of your first computer?

[whm1974]

Crazy thinking that there were only 4 types back then: Apple, Apple Clone, IBM, IBM Clone

The 80's? Well you also had Atari and Commodore. Come to think of Commodore sold most of the home computers back then. Both Companies would still be in business with their own platforms still around if they had better management.

 

[TurtleCrusher]

First I used? Pong, Atari, Intellivison if they count. If not, first used was probably a gigantic punch card fortran computer as a kid.

First used as an adult an 286/386 computers in a design office. First purchased was a Pentium Pro 200 for $3000+ when they first came out (1995?). $3000 was a ton of cash back then, a months salary. It was a mail order and it came broken. Technician walked me through fixing it over the phone. After that I knew just enough to be dangerous. Other than for a business venture, never purchased a prebuilt again.

I feel like when CPUs ventured past 100mhz they became "modern." My brother had a Pentium MMX 166mhz bought the same day from the same people who my parents bought my Pentium 90mhz from. The extra 76mhz made it seem like that system could do it all. We used it's 19.2K modem to download things to copy via floppy to my desktop. The "3d" games it ran blew my mind.

The Pentium Pro 200 was relatively a torch for it's time. ~50w if I remember.

 

[Crono]

Gateway brand
Pentium II 300MHz
32MB SDRAM
4GB Quantum Fireball SE Hard Drive
3.5" Diskette drive
56k modem
CD-ROM drive
Windows 98

I still use the Boston Acoustics speakers that came with it.

 

[bbhaag]

Some one off Packard Bell my dad bought from a sales guy at Best Buy. Basic specs were a 386SX with 4mb of ram and a small hdd. It was slow and sucked considering how much they paid for it back in the early 90's. $2800 got us the desktop, a crappy 13" monitor, keyboard, mouse, a printer and the all new Microsoft DOS 5.0 operating system.
It blows my mind how much computers used to cost in the 80's and 90's. I bet dollars to donuts manufacturers and retailers would love to get those margins back.

 

[shortylickens]

I had one of those ugly little machines with the monochrome display built into the end of the unit and a clip on keyboard.

Similar to this: https://images.flatworldknowledge.com/ketchen/ketchen-fig03_x007.jpg
except the display was blue or white I think, and it was definitely smaller and on the far left side of the device. And also did not have 5.25" drives.



Later on we got an empac word processor, big green screen. it was useful for a while.

 

[shortylickens]

Gateway brand
Pentium II 300MHz
32MB SDRAM
4GB Quantum Fireball SE Hard Drive
3.5" Diskette drive
56k modem
CD-ROM drive
Windows 98

I still use the Boston Acoustics speakers that came with it.

Good speakers last decades.

 

[TurtleCrusher]

I had one of those ugly little machines with the monochrome display built into the end of the unit and a clip on keyboard.

Similar to this: https://images.flatworldknowledge.com/ketchen/ketchen-fig03_x007.jpg
except the display was blue or white I think, and it was definitely smaller and on the far left side of the device. And also did not have 5.25" drives.



Later on we got an empac word processor, big green screen. it was useful for a while.

Very dated. Hell, looks even more so with an extremely dated phone next to it for comparison.

 

[JackMDS]

The Radio Shack Color Computer was not my first. However it is the Most Break through computer that I had.

To day there is Software available for everything. In the early 80 there was almost nothing.

The Color Computer had the Most elaborate Basic complier embedded in the ROM (much better than Apple II and the more expensive Radio Shack TRS line).

That enabled me (as an example) to start writing functional Programs and also save a lot of time on running to the mainframe to punch Data Cards and do transient programing. It was for me the real Scientific revolution.

Few years after came the IBM PC 8086. Since than we go through Better and Faster every year or two but No more Real Revolution. The Majority of the "current revolutions" are mainly Fake Marketing Ploys.

 

[Chaotic42]

Commodore 64:
CPU MOS Technology 6510/8500
@ 1.023 MHz (NTSC version)
@ 0.985 MHz (PAL version)
Memory 64 KB RAM + 20 KB ROM
Graphics VIC-II (320 × 200, 16 colors, sprites, raster interrupt)
Sound SID 6581/8580 (3× osc, 4× wave, filter, ADSR, ring)

 

[bruceb]

Northstar Horizon with a Z80 at 4Mhz ... 64KB of RAM / 2 5 1/4" Floppy Drives / Serial Port / Parallel Port / Naked Terminal Video Card (you used a seperate keyboard and video monitor) .. It used to run NS-DOS as the operatingg system. I still have that antique, if anyone in North Carolina is interested, let me know. It can use a good home.

 

[Modelworks]

The awful Timex Sinclair
2KB ram
Membrane keyboard - I cringe at the memory of using it.

Introduced:July 1982
Price:US $99.95
How many?500,000 in first 6 months
Weight:12 ounces
CPU:Zilog Z80A, 3.25MHz
RAM:2K, 64K max
Display:22 X 32 texthooks to TV
Ports:memory, cassette
Peripherals:Cassette recorderT/S printer
OS:ROM BASIC

 

[Ancalagon44]

And, for me it was twenty years later.
In 1993 I was delivering a paper at a symposium in Italy and as this would be published, the paper was required to be submitted in Word. I had planned to buy a computer for business use. I was shocked at the cost of Apple systems that colleagues used- some had spent more than $8,000, so I looked at PC's. Eventually I settled on an IBM 486 DX2-50, that's a CPU running at 25MHz but that is doubled by the addition of a math coprocessor to 50MHz. For economy I did not jump to the fastest CPU then made, the 486 DX2-66.

Just a note that it was not the addition of a math coprocessor that doubled your processor speed. It was the fact that the CPU ran two execution cycles for every bus cycle.
See more information here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_80486DX2

Also unlike the 386, which had the FPU being a separate chip, the 486 had the FPU integrated on die. Some 486s had the included FPU disabled though.

 

[Charlie22911]

Pentium 100 (non MMX), 32MB ram, S3 2d graphics card. Put many hours into Descent 1 and 2 on that thing...

 

[QuietDad]

http://oldcomputers.net/coco.html

 

[SMOGZINN]

Mine was the IBM PCjr The 'Peanut'.
I loved that computer. I learned so much from it. I had a copy of IBM PC DOS 2.11 and the BASIC cartridge.

 

[Markfw]

It was a 4.77 mhz "Leading Edge" 8088, with a monochrome display, and 2 5 1/4 inch floppies. I later added a 5 MEG hard drive for $250. It was $1500 in 1985 without the hard drive.

 

[KentState]

The first one we owned was a Gateway 2000 386DX 33Mhz, 4MB Ram, 35MB HD, Sound Blaster, 3.5 and 5.25 floppy drives, 14" CRT running DOS 5.0 and Windows 3.0 I believe.

 

[JackMDS]

I later added a 5 MEG hard drive for $250. It was $1500 in 1985 without the hard drive.

Lol, this give us some perspective of the Drama Queens/Kings of current days.

As for myself the most expensive single hardware part that I ever bought was 60MB Hard Drive in 1988 for $550.

Good New Decent 15" Laptops cost less today.

 

[nikto]

IBM XT
It was upgraded a few times but the specs when retired were:
8088 @ 4.77 MHz
640 KB ram
20 MB hard disk
300 baud modem
Mouse!

 

[UglyDuckling]

Pentium D 930
Foxconn 45CM-SA
4GB DDR2 800mhz
Radeon X1300..

Was slow as hell.. struggled to run any games, well modern ones.

Upgraded to Phenom II and a HD 4670, which then went to a 9800 GTX+ then a 4870 etc etc...

 

[Dee67]

Commodore 64, then 128 then Amiga500

 

[rchunter]

Toshiba T100 was the first one but before that I used to dial into the mainframe at my dads office with a dumb terminal he brought home. It had a list of games I could play. I remember Zork 1 was one of them (I think it was listed as "Adventure" but it was really zork 1, exact same thing).

 

[cellarnoise]

For the first round of keyboard (not solder your own) pc's the ziglog processors rocked. And since Radio Shack was close by all the Tandy series are close to my heart. The RS managers let us kids play on the demo models for so long! I think it sold many computers in the end and word of mouth spread. The early Apples were expensive even at the beginning of the home computer revolution.

I don't consider anything that did not a keyboard, long term storage, and an actual text monitor to be of much real use for the home user.

My friends dad had a model I can't remember the model that had toggle switches and blinking lights that we played around with. We could program it through basic math and a few commands and make the lights put on a light show. It took many hours and was not really that entertaining, plus beyond the 256 bytes?, turn it off and you would start over. But it was fun enough to make me want more.

My first home computer I sold my "trials" bike motorcycle for when I was a pre-teen. I made a few bucks off that and waited until the 16K COCO came out. My friend group all bought COCOs and we eventually participated in a local COCO older man computer group...

I still have my original COCO. I would bet $100 it would still work out of storage today - Think I paid $399 for it without power off storage. Not so sure about the single sided 35 track single sided 5 1/4 disk drives or any of the disks.... I had this computer for two weeks before I could afford the 1500 baud (bits per second) cassette tape storage - high end modems at the time were just starting to become affordable at 300 baud (double 150!!!! yah!!!) . I did not have disk based storage for another two years. I got really good at using the built in cassette tape spinning counter to find the gaps to determine data or the next program.

I am a horder and still have probably 4 CoCos, ver 1,2,3.... My COCO 1 was the best overclock-able CPU I have ever had. It was stable at 2 times the original 0.79 hgz.... Loved its 8k basic and the additional 8 k extended basic and the additional 8k Disk extended basic and one of the original easter eggs in I think the COCO 3? with a black and white microsoft build team image burned into the ROM....

I also had close neighborhood friends with the Commodore vic-20 and the 64. So powerful with their graphic capabilities, but they could not program them as well as the COCO....

I also had an "Amber" screen 8086. The green screens were too common.... It worked but was too business like and was late to the game with color and decent games. Plus the 8088 and the 8086 where actually slow. Low IPC.

I loved my Amigas that I felt continued the true computer pioneering spirit (that I struggled to afford) that I loved. The 800, 1000, and Falcon where so powerful. I sold all these for some reason... Too many 3 1/2" disks... The Falcon was sooo cool and had such an audio following at the time. A lot of video was done in the pro market during this time on Amigas, toasters, and higher end machines.

I'll end sadly with business machines (IBMs?) will probably always dominate the dollars and numbers.... And in my opinion the lessor technologies win if you can make the better business case and dominate the market. I think "Business" often means less flash, simpler, reliable, boring, and flashy glossy fliers, and in the past probably golf... Maybe more Gates and less Woznack. Jobs was probably more Gates / Allen than a true computer geek!

I do love how UNIX is still the basis for much of the current computer world!

 

[cellarnoise]

For the first round of keyboard (not solder your own) pc's the ziglog processors rocked. And since Radio Shack was close by all the Tandy series are close to my heart. The RS managers let us kids play on the demo models for so long! I think it sold many computers in the end and word of mouth spread. The early Apples were expensive even at the beginning of the home computer revolution."]

Sorry, I'll try and be more post length respectful. This is what happens when you get nostalgic and after a few good ipas..... I should not post on a skinny window in 4K either. I lose track of post length.

 

[Despoiler]

Tandy 1000. The big deal with these is that it could display 16 colors. It was amazing in the time of CGA and monochrome. My first computer mod was increasing the conventional memory from 256k to the full 640k.

Model: Tandy 1000
CPU: Intel 8088
Conventional Memory: 256K (Expandable to 640K)
Ports: Edge Card Tandy Printer, DB9 Serial, Tandy Joystick x2 & Light Pen
Display: TCGA 16 Colors & CGA 4 Colors
Storage: Two 5.25" 360K Floppies
Operating System: MS-DOS