First PC - What was yours

zman1

zman1

Active Member
What was the first real PC you bought?
I bought an IBM XT clone:
8088 processor
640k Ram
2 - 360k 5 1/4" floppy drives
Monocrome monitor - Hercules graphic emulator.
Upgraded to a 20 meg RLL hardrive and I think 2400 baud cardinal modem.
MSDOS
Wordprocessor -- IBM DisplayWrite V?
Procom communicatons.
It was smoking -LOL
The AT - 286 were the top of the line from IBM at the time with CGA color.
IBM missed the boat -- on hardware and operating system. They gave away the bank to Bill by letting him keep and sell MSDOS (which he brought all rights to - QDOS)while they released PCDOS and the thirdparty market for hardware.
Quick and Dirty Operating System. The D wasn't Disk orignally.
 
T

thomas712

Guest
I used to build 286's out of old 8088's, the the 386, 486 and 486dx2 and dx4's then I gave up building computers.
I miss DOS, can you believe that!
 
socal57che

socal57che

Active Member
Performa 5200, then powermac 7100 and thermal dye sub printers (wife was a graphic arts major) , then in the mid 90's it got hard to find mac software and dealers. Now I wish I hadn't gotten used to the IBM windows format, since mac has made a comeback lately. Currently using Dell Latitude 840c. Wife has one, too. 6 yr old daughter has a compaq armada. (still have the Macs in storage. Does anyone remember IBM being on the verge of bankruptcy due to Macintosh school/corporate sales?? I think that's what brought about the whole selling to third parties by microsoft.
 
carshark

carshark

Active Member
first computer i got was a mac. then i got compaq, and then my mother remarried to a computer genius and i couldnt tell you what the computers were from that point. they were all custom built.. i have currently a dell latitude D600 laptop (for work) and a toshiba satellite laptop for personal use. by far the toshiba has been my favorite along the way. outstanding computer.
 
ophiura

ophiura

Active Member
Originally Posted by FISHY7
Commador 64
Now this was a fast machine
Had to do all the programming myself...

I'm with ya! Used the TV as a monitor.
But surely, that boost up to the 128 was big time...agreed?
I had a brother word processor in college and burst onto the scene with a $2000 state of the art 486 in grad school.
 
mudplayerx

mudplayerx

Active Member
I have you all beat! I had a Texas Instruments where you had to enter like 2 hours worth of code just to play a pac-man like game that used ascii characters as graphics.
 
mudplayerx

mudplayerx

Active Member
Originally Posted by bigarn
My first PC had a crank on it. ***)
Hey, I like the new "popcorn guy"!
Oh yea!!! My pc ran by burning blocks of peat moss in it!
who selects the smilies? Is it you Beth? I have a few I could give ya hehe.
 
sweetdawn

sweetdawn

Active Member
***) this is so cute cant beleive i didnt notice him. our first computer was a pckard bell it is in my sons room kinda worthless cant even upgrade the windows 3.1
 
marvida

marvida

Member
The first one: a trash 80 that uses a tv for a monitor. I think it's got 8kb memory. Still have it in a box in the garage. First usable 'puter: trash 1000 286, CGA, 20meg hard card, 1 ea. 3.5" & 5.25. $2400 in 1984'ish dollars.
 
socal57che

socal57che

Active Member
Dude!....I so totally forgot about my Tandy TRS 80 until someone mentioned their commodore. Thermal printer and all. On hot days I hat to throw away a couple feet of paper to get down to the good stuff. I even had the cassette recorder to store data. What a HOOT!!! :hilarious
 
farmboy

farmboy

Active Member
We had a Commodore 64 at home-TRS 80 at school. Do you all remember the 8 inch floppy drives? WOW!
OK for you thirty somethings and up: DO you remember the first home video game? Someone brought an INTELLIVISION to our house (Mid '70s?). All it did was PONG!!
Big time entertainment-- ***)
I'm down with the new smiley as well.
 
key00west

key00west

Member
mine was a commodore 20, where it didnt have a hard drive so i had to buy a tape recorder as a hard drive and hook it up to a small black and white tv, the only thing you could do was run some cheezy command lines and make a little stick figure move, that was back in 1983 i think, now i've got an Intel 3.5 Gig 80 gig hard drive 256 meg video, 1.5 gigs of memory 19 in flat screen monitor, man! what did i ever do to past the time as a kid? LOL
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top