|
|
Post by dominalien on Sept 13, 2021 15:34:23 GMT
Not Amiga, Atari or Speccy, an actual IBM-PC compatible. Reposts from the other thread are fine?
Mine was a 486 DX4 80 MHz with a whopping 16 MB of RAM and a 540 MB drive. It came in an amazing Colani case, I’ll post a link to a picture if I can find one. AT, too, none for that ATX nonsense we have today. Many years later I sold it to a friend for pennies (the case, not the computer).
The monitor was a 17” Iiyama I still have in the attic, in fact I carried it from one place to another today.
It was the most amazing piece of kit I’ve ever owned. The wow factor was just immense, DOS gaming at its peak. Maybe getting the first Voodoo card comes close.
Edit: it wasn’t hard to find: Yeah, fuck that, I can’t figure out how to link the img properly from the phone. Search for Colani tower if your interested, it look like sth out of Alien.
Fuck, I really wish I still had it.
Edit 2: whoa, this place makes a need of links. I have no idea how to fix that.
Edit 3: mess, it makes a mess not need.
|
|
|
|
Post by Phattso on Sept 13, 2021 15:37:49 GMT
Mine was a pre-build Evesham Vale PC that looked basically like this:  486 DX2/66 with a whopping 8MB of RAM and something like 240MB of storage. 2x CDROM though, making me a king among men for about five minutes. |
|
malek86
Junior Member
Pomegranate Deseeder
Posts: 3,247
|
Post by malek86 on Sept 13, 2021 15:40:47 GMT
I remember it was a Compaq Presario. Came with a Pentium 100, 8MB of memory, no 3D accelerator, and 1GB hard drive. I also remember it was bundled with Magic Carpet and Thinkin' Things 2.
About a year later, I think it was, we upgraded it with a Matrox Mystique. Guess it wasn't much of an upgrade, but we did eventually couple it with a M3D. I even remember we bought Turok to go with it. Good times.
|
|
mrpon
Junior Member
Posts: 3,737
|
Post by mrpon on Sept 13, 2021 15:49:51 GMT
This dom?  |
|
|
|
Post by jimnastics on Sept 13, 2021 15:49:54 GMT
Our first real proper PC was also a 486 DX2 66 like Phattso, ours was a Gateway 2000 like below in 1995 (it looked exactly like this, speakers and monitor and all, except the one in the photo looks to be a 33mhz). Pentiums were on the scene and I remember my Dad having a real dillema whether to go for a 486 or spend more on a Pentium, but he went 486 in the send. The 486 was awesome, my first real experience of PC gaming with the likes of Alone in the Dark, Theme Park / Hospital, Little Big Adventure 1 & 2, Champ Man 96/97, Simon the Sorceror all stand out memories for me. It came with Encarta '96 which I have serious nostalgia vibes for, that was my first genuine experience of a computer as a tool for learning, and Compuserve was our first experience of the internet 
|
|
|
|
Post by paulyboy81 on Sept 13, 2021 15:50:40 GMT
Our first PC was from about 1997 if memory serves, my dad bought it from a system builder called Actinet out of the Computer Shopper ads.
Specs if memory serves were:
Pentium 200Mhz MMX
32MB RAM
2GB HDD
S3 Trio Graphics
We stuck a Power VR Apocalypse 3DX card in it a few months later.
I played Quake, Half-Life, Jedi Knight II and a whole host of other awesome stuff on that machine. Fond memories.
|
|
crashV👀d👀
Junior Member
not just a game anymore...
Posts: 3,857
|
Post by crashV👀d👀 on Sept 13, 2021 15:51:33 GMT
rich bastards it was (iirc) a 286 with no HDD and a monochrome monitor. It booted and run entirely from floppies and ran ms-dos 3.3(?) I got it for word processing so I 'engaged' more with school work. It worked too cos I loved the little box. I'm sure i had a text adventure on it but i can't remember what it was. I then replaced this with an amstrad 486 sx25 - cost me nearly £3k cos i was going to use it for college computing course. spent loads of time playing rebel assault and DOTT. I jumped through hoops getting things like little big adventure running on it but it coudn't handle syndicate wars. Built my own from then onwards and bought me a fancy Cyrix 6x86. Ran syndicate wars like a dream  |
|
|
|
Post by dominalien on Sept 13, 2021 15:53:25 GMT
This dom? Yes, please, thank you. |
|
|
|
Post by dfunked on Sept 13, 2021 15:59:40 GMT
A very similar Compaq Presario to Malek's one, even down to the bundled games (think it came with PGA tour and Encarta too)
P120 - upgraded at some point to a P133
8MB of onboard memory, which was eventually upgraded to 40MB IIRC allowing me to play games like Blood.
1.27GB (?) HDD - was a bloody huge thing too (5.25") Think I added a 10GB drive too which wasn't properly recognised.
I kept that thing going until well into the millennium too. Finally replaced it with a DIY build (Athlon XP 2600+) in 2003.
|
|
|
|
Post by Nitrous on Sept 13, 2021 16:02:01 GMT
Amstrad Mega PC with windows 3.1 but it was mostly used in Megadrive mode. The next PC we got was a Packard Bell machine with Windows 98 and a 3GB HDD. I remembering searching for things on Encarta 1998 and I think we went from Orange internet to AOL and then later Cable and Wireless before it later became known as NTL.
|
|
|
|
Post by 😎 on Sept 13, 2021 16:08:34 GMT
Olivetti 486SX, think it was either 33 or 50mhz. 2x CD drive, Win 3.1, came with Return to Zork and Animals of San Diego Zoo on CD. It was the beginning of the end of my life as an outdoor child.
|
|
KD
Junior Member
RIP EG
Posts: 1,331
|
Post by KD on Sept 13, 2021 16:32:25 GMT
Intel® Celeron® Processor 366 MHz is all I can remember from mine.
|
|
|
|
Post by quadfather on Sept 13, 2021 17:06:31 GMT
486dx 33. Just couldn't afford the 66. The 33 was £1640 as it was! Chuntek 15" monitor. Might have been 14" thinking about it. Can't remember the rest of the spec, but put it this way, it ran doom fine in low Res mode, and I can remember stopping in the game, put it in hi Res mode, marvel at the resolution for a minute, and then put it back in low Res mode so I could actually play it without it chopping.
Christ. I can run it in high Res on my fucking phone now.
|
|
|
|
Post by stuz359 on Sept 13, 2021 17:12:12 GMT
386sx with 4mb Ram and a 40mb hard drive. Used mainly for Monkey Island.
|
|
|
|
Post by Phattso on Sept 13, 2021 17:19:27 GMT
Was there a "hi res" mode for Doom? I thought it just had a rendering window that you could shrink. So it either filled your screen, or went all the way down to a postage stamp? |
|
mrharvest
New Member
Registered 18 years ago Posts 5,718
Posts: 373
|
Post by mrharvest on Sept 13, 2021 17:19:49 GMT
I think it was an Amstrad PC1512 but it only had a single floppy drive and I think an 8MB HDD.
|
|
zagibu
Junior Member
Posts: 1,946
|
Post by zagibu on Sept 13, 2021 17:23:24 GMT
IBM PS/1, which was an Intel 10 MHz 80286 chip with 512kB RAM and a 30MB harddisk. I still remember when I had to delete games to make room for a new one. Nowadays I have almost 40 games installed and still only play like 2 of them.
At some point, my dad got a "game kit" for the machine, which consisted of a soundcard, a joystick and a game called Silpheed. Boy that was exciting.
|
|
Rich
Junior Member
Posts: 1,988 
Member is Online
|
Post by Rich on Sept 13, 2021 17:27:05 GMT
I think it was a Packard Bell P90 which we got in 1995. Probably around 8mb ram and I think it was an 850mb hdd. It came with Descent which was brilliant and I think I mainly used Microsoft Works for my homework. Good times.
|
|
crashV👀d👀
Junior Member
not just a game anymore...
Posts: 3,857
|
Post by crashV👀d👀 on Sept 13, 2021 17:34:01 GMT
I remember pc upgrades back then cost an arm and a fucking leg. I paid upwards of £140 for an extra 4meg of ram to take me to 8mb. Microsoft word used to pop open as I no longer had to thrash to the swap file.
I bought an 8gb Maxtor hard drive from pc world when they were new. Cost me £400. To amount of shit I could install was nuts and I had it partitioned into about 6 different drives.
|
|
|
|
Post by RadicalRex on Sept 13, 2021 17:37:28 GMT
386 (SX? DX? Can't recall), 33 MHz, 4 MB RAM, 105 MB HDD, Dos 5.0, Win 3.1
|
|
|
|
Post by atomix on Sept 13, 2021 17:44:53 GMT
Another 486 SX25 here. Pretty sure it was from Time, via an advert in Computer Shopper. Can’t remember the original specs but i do know i spent a ton of money upgrading it later on by adding extra 1Mb RAM sticks to bring it up to 12Mb and getting my friend round to install a Soundblaster card as i was too scared to force it into the slot.
|
|
|
|
Post by quadfather on Sept 13, 2021 17:45:44 GMT
Was there a "hi res" mode for Doom? I thought it just had a rendering window that you could shrink. So it either filled your screen, or went all the way down to a postage stamp? Yeah you had the plus and minus keys to reduce it by 'squares', and then there was an F-key to go into hi Res mode. You could toggle it on the fly without menu's |
|
|
|
Post by RadicalRex on Sept 13, 2021 17:49:07 GMT
Was there a "hi res" mode for Doom? I thought it just had a rendering window that you could shrink. So it either filled your screen, or went all the way down to a postage stamp? It had that but also a low-detail mode (F5). That effectively halved horizontal resolution (of the 3D graphics window), so basically it was now rendered using 2x1 pixel blocks, similar to what many C64 games did. |
|
|
|
Post by stuz359 on Sept 13, 2021 17:50:53 GMT
If I remember correctly, and I'm not going to google it, in the late eighties there was a massive fire at a plant in Japan that was the biggest supplier of Ram chips at the time, hence that was why Ram was so expensive in those days. It may have been an urban myth.
|
|
|
|
Post by One_Vurfed_Gwrx on Sept 13, 2021 19:01:28 GMT
Mentioned in the other thread but my first IBM PC compatible was a gutted hand me down Intertan 386SX 25 which I think I paid fifty quid for (486s were out at the time). Had to get my own RAM (4MB), HDD (320MB), soundcard, speakers, monitor (14" SVGA) and KB/M. Was great for Doom, Ultima Underworld, Wing Commander 2, X Wing (once I bought a stick) and X-com Terror From the Deep. Replaced my Amiga 1200.
Got replaced by a similarly hand me down 486 DX2 66 before finally joining 'current gen' with my foolish purchase of a Cyrix 200 (the following Intel Pentium 233 MMX felt like a massive jump as Cyrix was so bad). Dallied with a Power VR bit the Cyrix couldn't handle it so swapped it for a Voodoo 1. I think for P2 gen I got a Celeron(400?) before dallying with AMD for a few generations. Currently way behind CPUwise with a 4790K and slightly GPUwise with an RTX 2070 bit as I only use 2560x1080 monitor I can run most stuff at Ultra at full speed anyway (for now)
|
|
gamecat
New Member
Alone Again with the Dawn Coming Up
Posts: 618
|
Post by gamecat on Sept 13, 2021 19:02:22 GMT
Dell pemtium 2 thing, which came with an nVidia Riva 128, which was barely 3d capable, changed it for 2 x Voodoo2s later. Also I had a 21" CRT monitor, was an absolute tank, needed two people to lift it.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Sept 13, 2021 19:08:59 GMT
286SX 16MHz which I built myself, while apprenticing (rather grand way of putting it, to be honest) for a local PC business start-up.
|
|
|
|
Post by jimnastics on Sept 13, 2021 19:16:00 GMT
It's interesting to hear people recall what they moved on to after first PC, I built my first machine in '99 to replace my 486 but I couldn't for the life of me tell you exactly what I put in it. Athlon rings a bell though that might have been a later build, Riva TNT2 as well though again may have been later... I definitely had a Terratec soundcard in my first self-build though, as I thought I was going to be in a succesful band and planned to record loads. Think I recorded about 2 songs.
|
|
|
|
Post by 😎 on Sept 13, 2021 19:37:10 GMT
I'm somewhat sad I only ever experienced SB16 during those halcyon days, and it wasn't until the DOSBox era I discovered the wonders of Gravis Ultrasound and MT32. At the time they were just weird options I didn't know about, but knowing what I know now I'd have flat out murdered someone to get some synthesized goodness.
|
|
malek86
Junior Member
Pomegranate Deseeder
Posts: 3,247
|
Post by malek86 on Sept 13, 2021 20:22:37 GMT
Our first PC was from about 1997 if memory serves, my dad bought it from a system builder called Actinet out of the Computer Shopper ads. Specs if memory serves were: Pentium 200Mhz MMX 32MB RAM 2GB HDD S3 Trio Graphics We stuck a Power VR Apocalypse 3DX card in it a few months later. I played Quake, Half-Life, Jedi Knight II and a whole host of other awesome stuff on that machine. Fond memories. Oh wow, do you still have that Apocalypse? Those things can be sold for a fortune nowadays, I saw one going for like half a grand just some time ago. |
|
