What computers did you own in the old days? Share your story! - Page 2

PC's Ive gone through... (Work PCs not included)


CPU O/S RAM HDD GFX Card MEDIA

intel 8086 IBM PCXT @4.1mhz DOS 3.1 640kb No HD CGA VC Floppy

intel 80286 @ 16mhz DOS 6.22 1MB 10MB CGA VC Floppy

intel 80386DX @ 40mhz DOS 6.22 with win 3.1 4MB 300MB Cirrus 512kb CDROM 2x

intel 80486DX2 @ 66mhz DOS 6.22 with Win 3.11 8MB 800MB Cirrus VESA 1MB CDROM 8x

AMD k5 PR133 @ 100mhz DOS 6.22 with Win 3.11 8MB 1GB S3 Trio 64 2MB CDROM 8X

Intel 80486 DX 100mhz Laptop Win95 8MB 800MB, i think ATI video Micro Floppy

Cyrix M2 PR233 @ 180mhz Windows 95 16MB 1.5GB S3 Trio 64 2MB CDROM 8x

Intel Celeron @ 266mhz Windows 95 64MB 2GB S3 AGP 8MB CDROM 16x

Intel Pentium II @ 350mhz Windows 98 64MB 20GB TNT2 32MB CDROM 32x

AMD Duron @ 750mhz Windows 98 128MB 20GB TNT2 32MB CDROM 32x

AMD Duron @ 800mhz Windows 98 256MB 40GB GF MX200 32MB CDRW 16x

AMD Athlon XP 1800+ Windows 98 SE 512MB 40GB GF 4 MX400 64MB CDRW 16x

AMD Athlon XP 2000+ Windows XP 1GB 40GB GF 4 Ti 4200 64MB DVD 16x CDRW 32x

AMD Athlon XP 2200+ Windows XP 1GB 60GB GF FX5900 128MB DVDRW 8x

Intel Celeron @ 1.8ghz Windows XP 1GB 40GB GF 3 Ti 500 64MB CDROM 40x

Intel Celeron 600mhz Laptop Windows XP 256MB 30GB ATI Video CDROM

Intel Pentium 4 @ 2.6ghz Windows XP SP1 1GB 40GB 60GB GF5900XT 128MB DVDRW 8x

AMD Athlon XP 2500+ Windows XP SP1 1GB 80GB GF5600 128MB DVD 16x

AMD Athlon XP 2800+ Windows XP SP1 1GB 160GB 160GB ATI AIW 9800pro DVDRW 16x DVD 16x

Intel Pentium 4 @ 1.8ghz Windows XP SP2 512MB 40GB GF FX 5500 256MB CDRW 48x

Intel Pentium D @ 2.8ghz Windows XP SP2 1GB 80GB 40GB GF 6800GT 256MB DVDRW 16x Multi

Intel Celeron M 1.3ghz Laptop Windows XP SP2 1GB 60GB S3 Chrome Video DVD/CDRW Combo

AMD Athlon 64 x2 3800+ Windows XP SP2 2GB 400GB 80GB GF 7900GS 256MB DVDRW 20x Multi

AMD Sempron 64 2800+ Windows XP SP2 1GB 80GB GF 6150 Built in DVD/CDRW Combo

Intel Celeron M 1.6ghz Laptop Windows XP SP3 1.5GB 80GB ATI Radeon X200M DVDRW Multi

AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ Windows XP SP3 4GB 400 & 2x160GB GF 9600GT 512MB DVDRW 20x Multi

I had a badass rig. It was a 250mhz CPU, 4mb RAM and a 5mb hard drive. It could do basic text editing great but it didn't last very long.

All the systems I owned (or built for myself) personally:

- Commodore PC-1 (1992)(8088-based, 640 K RAM, 360 K floppy, B&W Hercules-compatible display). Ran DOS 3.2, 3.3, then later on I managed to run parts of DOS 6.2 on it. I fiddled with Turbo Pascal on it.

- Amstrad PC 6386 (1994)(386DX-based, 4 Mb RAM, 64 Mb HD, VGA 16M capable, Sound Blaster 2 sound). Ran DOS 4.01 originally, but ended up running DOS 6.2+Win3.11; mainly, it ran Doom in DOS mode.

- homemade Socket 5 (1995)(Pentium 75-based, 8 Mb RAM, S3 Trio64 video, 1Gb HD Sound Blaster Pro); started with DOS 6.2+Win 3.11, but got Win95 in the end. Most used software was Duke Nukem 3D, although MDK came close. Was a dog, and I took it apart to build something else (it taught me a lot about legacy hardware).

- homemade Socket 7 (1996)(P75, then Cyrix P150+, then Pentium 133@166-based, 64 Mb SDRAM, 6.4 Gb HD, S3 Trio64+3dfx Voodoo, AWE32); ran Final Fantasy 7, Unreal and Street Fighter alpha mainly. Last version left Pentium 200 and other early MMXes in the dust, due to pipelined burst L2 cache running at half the processor's frequency (83 MHz FSB for teh win!).

- homemade Slot 1 (1998) (Celeron 300A@450-based, 384 Mb SDRAM, 8 Gb HD, RivaTnT); this machine did video compression (a Celeron 450 was, until P III came out, the kings of the hill; on a 440BX chipset with fast RAM, it was a killah! Played Max Payne reasonably well)

- IBM Thinkpad a20m (2000). Changed the hard disk drive and added RAM. Still works (test machine). Did everything on it.

- homemade K7 (2001)(Duron 950@1100-based, 512 Mb DDR-RAM, 8+20 Gb HD, Geforce4200-8x, Sound Blaster PCI128); I started tinkering with Linux on it. Thrown away because it was starting to get unreliable (tinkering made it perform correctly performance-wise until the end). Played Max Payne very well, and GTA3 was almost maxed out.

- homemade s939 (2006)(Athlon64 X2 3800+, 2 Gb RAM, 250 then 750 HD, Geforce 6600 then RadeonHD4850, integrated sound); Linux as default OS. I may upgrade it by next year or something, but I'm in no hurry because it does HD video, real time high quality high compression DVD conversion, and the games I play on it don't tax the CPU. It's only problem is that it runs a bit warm (so it's a bit noisy sometimes). Original version could play FEAR with rather high graphics settings (the 6600 was the bottleneck; I haven't tried with the 4850).

Mitch 74: getting the juice out of hardware down to the last drop.

Yeah I had several slide rules but drastically upgraded with a HP-67 programmable calculator I think in 1975.A friend of mine had the earlier HP-65 that he bought I think back in 1973.The HP-67 was fun to program and I loved the small magnetic strip reader which made loading in programs easy and convenient.I remember that there were a ton of games for it as well including space war and there was a complex star trek game as well which took about 8 or 10 magnetic strip cards.

In 1978, I worked at film company in London, England, and we had an Apple housing with IBM motherboard, don't remember the specs. No memory or HD to speak of, well, I guess it was 64MB. We had to solder chips on ourselves, and we bought it from two guys in balaclava masks (seriously!), in a parking lot off the motorway, with cash.

Got through college physics and chemistry with one back in '65 - '66.

This is the first computer I actually programmed back in 1972:



It was an 8K HP Minicomputer with an optical mark card reader, paper tape reader/punch, teletype, and a Basic interpreter. I fondly remember playing Lunar Lander on the teletype, anxiously waiting for the 10 char/sec head to type out my fate...


This is the first computer I actually owned:



A TRS-80 Pocket Computer with 2K of memory. Programs were stored and loaded from cassette tape (for those who bought the special adapter). I still have it, it still works perfectly, and it's still loaded with the Basic program shown in the picture (which is a scoring program for a card game).


This is the first computer I was paid to write programs for:



An IBM System/360 Model 40 with 384K of memory and about 200MB of disk space on a bank of 2319 storage units, programmed using punch cards.


And I think this is still my favourite computer:



A Digital Equipment Corp VAX-11/780, the prototypical "1 MIPS" processor. No other computer architecture I've ever worked with had such an elegant instruction set.

My personal 1st was a good ol' Commodore 64 with the great big 5.25" cinder block. Yay!


BUT

I do have my dad's old Osborne circa 1979 8k RAM, dual 360k floppies, 4" built in monochrome with 12" external, 24pin impact printer...man this thing was pimped. Weighs in at a slim 45 lbs too! Dunno if it still works