What Computers Have You Owned?

[txa1265]

OK, an offshoot of the console thread ... the purpose here is to see what stuff you have *owned* through the years. Owned - in other words, using a unix system in a university lab doesn't count.

I'm doing 'multi-select' for this one, since it is the only thing that makes sense.

[dteowner]

A bit Apple-centric...

Would have been nice to break down PCs into 8086, 286, 386, 486, pentiums and so forth.

[txa1265]

A bit Apple-centric...

Would have been nice to break down PCs into 8086, 286, 386, 486, pentiums and so forth.

I thought about that but my head started spinning ;) Perhaps I could have done x86 separately, though. The difference is that Apple has had to deal with backwards compatibility issues 3 times in their history because of processor architecture shifts ... PC's have just made their way along .. .

[narpet]

I had to choose Yoda as one of my choices due to the fact that many "classic" computers were left out. How about the old Atari computers, Commodore, and others.

I myselft have had: Commodore Vic-20, Commodore 64, Commodore Amiga 500, Amiga 4000, and then on to the ever changing myriad of pc iterations.

narpet

[Jaz]

My 'Yoda' vote = Amstrad PCW. Others were several hundred thousand types of PCs using several hundred thousand types of Windows (I guess that 's what you meant by PC?) and pure Linux machines (which were also PCs, however). My current main system is a dual boot Win XP/Debian Linux machine, and last night I actually succeeded to run Win98 on a virtual machine under Linux. Once my new Win98 VM decides to accept my DVD drive, I will finally be able to finish some DOS games which ran perfectly under Win98 but absolutely not under DOSBox.

[xSamhainx]

Like a 200 mhz HP pavillion with like I think an under 3 gig HD , that's all I remember. Maybe it was a 2 gig, not sure. I could play Starcraft and Diablo, that's all I cared about!

Then stepped up to a 450 mhz NEC, then a 1.something Dell. Then my current rigs are a 3.4 ghz Dell about as souped up as a Dell can get, and a Dell XPS laptop.

so like 5 pcs total. I dont plan on getting another one for a very long time. Screw Vista, they can have it

...except for maybe a little mini small laptop for taking notes with in class and for DM'ing (when i get experienced enough to do so). That XPS is just a friggen tank to haul around

[Arma]

Years ago we picked up a 16-bit computer, can't really tell what it was exactly since it was one of those locally manufactured (we used to have 8bit comps built using Apple technology and many of these can still be found around and working, like in high school it was pretty fun to "program" things of BASIC, but I am not really sure on what technology it was build around) second hand. With my luck some chip burned out with the first time we switched the power on.

Later, when I got in high school, my Dad bought a shiny new Celeron 333 MHz powered PC. While probably far from the top line in its time, it served for some good 4 years with minor upgrades and a few monitor switches.

Right now the latest is an Athlon 1700+ I believe we use since 2003. Still serves good, with the recent addition of some RAM and a second hand hard drive. The latest upgrade is a replacement video card, an ASUS Radeon 9550 after we threw out the old timer, a Geforce MX.

[txa1265]

Yeah ... I blew this one pretty bad ... no Amiga, TRS-80, VIC-20 ...

[dteowner]

Let's hear it for the TI-99!

[Corwin]

Yep, all the oldies are missing. How about the Intellivision Computer; it was an add on to the Intellivision gaming console!! I learnt to program BASIC on one centuries ago!! :)

[Danicek]

Shouldn't this go bit into the history with Sinclair, Comodore, Amiga and the like? Probably good idea for another vote thread.

[bjon045]

c64, c128, 8086(gray scale monitor), 80286(Amstrad 286), 486dx2-66, Pentium 75, Pentium(2?)-133, Pentium3-300(?), AMD K7 1600, AMD Althlon 2800+, AMD X2-4200.

c64 is without a doubt the most fondly remembered of all. Still remember playing monkey island 1 on the 8086 and being unable to finish the game mostly because there was no colour so you could see crap all.

[Alrik Fassbauer]

I came relatively late into gaming and PCs in general.

My first PC was an 486SX25 machine (1994 I think), which was later upgraded with an unused 486DX44 motherboard of an uncle.

My next machine was the one I'm still using to write these lines : An AMd Athlon Thunderbird-class PC with 800 MHz, and a GeForce 2 GTS card ... which was a top machine when I bought it. I upgraded parts of it through the years (harddisks, CD burner, newest addition an DVD drive), but I have to stuck with it for now because I cannot afford a newer one, still.

I'm kind of sad I never had an Amiga or an C64 for playing, and maybe I should get myself both on a flea market one day. Everybody talks so good about these machines so that I really have the feeling that I've missed something.

I once had indeed BeOS installed on this machine here (there's a version of this OS out there, for free if I'm not mistaken), and it was quite funny, reminded me a lot of Linux.

For a short time I also had OS/2 installed on my older PC. (Until a harddisk crash.) I'm still waiting for the day I can afford its successor, the eComStation.

Currently I have Ubuntu installed on a different partition on my PC.

Once in my whole life I have seen a working NeXT PC. It was in an technical museum in Berlin. One could actually work a bit with it. This was one of my most memorable moments in computing history. ;)

Oh, by the way, years ago I bought an old 386 on a flea market - simply because it was an Microchannel machine. I think the historian come through. ;)

[txa1265]

Once in my whole life I have seen a working NeXT PC. It was in an technical museum in Berlin. One could actually work a bit with it. This was one of my most memorable moments in computing history. ;)

I actually worked on a NeXT box for a while ... it really was sweet! All I had to deal with was a single physics app, but the rest of the system was really nice ... but not really able to keep pace after a bit.

So as soon as they did NeXT OS on Intel PC's, I got a new laptop specifically for running that. Again, sweet. Now the app has been ported to WinXP running Apple's WebObjects (part of the NeXT buyout, of course)

Another system I keep up and running is my HP Omnibook 800CT - I got into the Omnibooks early on, but the only one I still have it the last. The cool mouse and rock solid design is just wonderful. And I keep it as pure DOS fur running older DOS stuff.

http://images.ciao.com/iuk/images/products/normal/393/HP_OmniBook_800CT__5377393.jpg

[JDR13]

Um.....what's a Yoda?

My first PC was a custom built 486. 133mhz, 8mb RAM, 1 GB HD, and some generic video card with 1 mb of video memory. Also had one of those combination 14.4k modem\soundcards.

[Lucky Day]

I assume Yoda is anything old/bizarre. I had to vote for that.

Also the Coleco Adam. Don't Forget it. And the Commodore Pet. And the Altair and Sphere, The Apple I? (not likely). The Lisa? (who could afford one when the y worked?)

Anyone work on a Heathkit? My brother did. A tandy-100? The first laptop.
Some Heathkits and early Compaq's were designed to be carried like portable sewing machine. Hence the name "Compact Quality" = CompaQ. (Compaq was one of the first company's to reverse engineer IBM's Bios and why they were one of the first legal IBM clones.)
Speaking of which my old school had a number of Circle 2000 computers. Back in the day there were a lot of Apple clones before they hit them with all those lawsuits. So IBM was the only machine out there that could be legally cloned.

txa, how about you redo this poll?

If not then I had (for real computers) TI-99/4a and an Apple //c. On the //c I had a chip where I could switch it to 4mhz and run CP/M. The CP/M came with an old version of Turbo Pascal and I was able to upload my homework to the College's VAC with it.

When I was in Canada 7 years ago I bought an Atari-ST and an Amiga 500 at the the thrift store for $20 apiece. They are still sitting collecting dust at my buddy Ryan's.

[Moriendor]

txa, how about you redo this poll?

Agree. With all due respect, Mike, but you fuXX0red this one up pretty bad by mixing operating systems and computer systems :biggrin: .

[Alrik Fassbauer]

I assume Yoda is anything old/bizarre. I had to vote for that.

On the Larian board, we use "potato" for that, sometimes even spelled "potatoe". ;)

[JemyM]

Neither c64 or Amiga in the list? What a blasphemy! You must now whip yourself.

[Peter Stauffenberg]

The first PC I (my family) owned was a Commodore Pet. It had a massive 2k RAM. I think we got it at the end of the 1970's.

The second PC was an Apple II. This time the computer had as much as 64k RAM.

The first PC I bought myself was a Pentium 200 MHz with 128 MB RAM. I think I got it in the mid 1990's. Before that I had been using my different work PC's starting from a 80286 via 80386 to 80486 to the earliest Pentiums. I was very proud when I plugged in my first PC at home (the Pentium 200 MHz) and logged into the internet via 64kb ISDN. At that time I played games like Civ 2, Grand Prix 2, BG1, BG2, IWD, IWD2, Planescape Torment, Ultima 8, Fallout & Fallout 2 etc. It was a great time.

A few years later we got an option at work to purchase IBM 400 MHz P2 computers. It was a major step forward and even bought a Voodoo 2 graphics card to enjoy the best games around.

But soon it was too slow so I spent a lot of money buying a P4 2.4 GHz computer with 512 MB RAM. This was maybe in 2003. It was a great computer and I sold it after a year to my father because we got a new offer at work to get a new computer.

I got a P4 3GHz in 2004 and upgraded it to 1GHz RAM and later a GeForce 7800GS so I could play NWN2. I still have this computer, but I know it will be too slow soon for the big new games. So I expect to get a new computer within a year that will be as good as it gets. So far I have stayed away from Windows Vista, but the new computer will get Vista installed. I don't want to get Vista now when the graphics drivers etc. are so poor. Give Vista a year and get it after the first service pack is my motto. ;) Windows XP is doing great at the moment so I see no reason to get Vista soon.

[Alrik Fassbauer]

Shouldn't it read "what computers have you pwned" ? ;)

[Lucky Day]

The second PC was an Apple II. This time the computer had as much as 64k RAM.


this must have been an Apple IIe. The II+ was an upgrade to 48k of RAM if I remember. The //c had its 128k built in which put it in the category of their brand new Macintosh computers which replaced the Lisa.

Incidently, did you know the TI-99/4 and 4a computers were 16bit? Everything else was an 8bit machine.

The TI-99/8 would have been a 10mhz machine had TI not dropped their home computer line before release. The fastest machine at the time was IBM's PC at a whopping 1.7mhz in order to compensate for their brilliant choice of using Intel processors.

[Zaleukos]

A tad Mac-centric, and severely lacking in historical options..

I've had a C-64, Amiga 500, Amiga 1200, 486 DX2-66, Pentium 90, Pentium 2-233, Athlon XP 2400+, which together with my P4 still is in service. I still have the C-64 in my TV periphernalia drawer, but havent played anyting on it for a few years (I used Buggy Boy to convince my gf that gameplay trumps graphics).

My milestones were the switch to PC around xmas -94. The P2 had the longest continuous service life as I used it for more than seven years, and kept it after getting the Athlon (playing low spec multiplayer games with my gf). It feels reasonable to upgrade every two years and keep the second latest machine for network gaming and office work. Provided I stick to my "always go for 4 times Dells recommended RAM" rule of thumb and avoid graphics heavy games a PC easily remains usable for 3-4 years...

[txa1265]

A tad Mac-centric, and severely lacking in historical options..

Of course, if you are a PC user, having Apple history there is relevant, as the recently released Vista "innovations" remind us ;)

[Kendrik]

Amiga - greatest computer ever made

I remember upgrading my memory to 1 MB from 512K - OMG I PWNED!

Seriously some of my favourite gaming memories come from the Amiga. I experienced games like Populous, Syndicate, Flashback and the SSI Goldbox RPG's for the first time and I loved them. Thats the problem with emulation - they always seem to be lacking something now (except Rainbow Islands that will always be a classic)

Who remembers the biggest selling Amiga 500 pack with Batman the Movie, New Zealand Story, F-18 Interceptor and Deluxe Paint 2. Classic pack. God I missed the good old days!

[Alrik Fassbauer]

http://www.homecomputer.de/

In the far most upper left side there are two tiny flags acting as buttons for switching the language.

[enodenroH]

I owned a Commodore Vic-20 in 1983.

Does - load 'name of the game'
then press play on tape - mean anything to any of you?
Then, after 15 minutes of loading, you'd see a message saying :
Error in 220!

When that happened, I'd throw the tape in the garbage because I didn't have the script to correct the error.

Then, in 1994 I bought myself an 486 DX-4 100 Mhz pre-pentium rig.

Now I have an P4 2.5 Ghz 1 G RAM with an 120 G HD and a G-Force 5500.

It's just enough to play Gothic 3 (it lags a lot).

[Shagnak]

In order, I owned:

ZX81
VIC-20
Commodore 64
Amiga 500
and then jumped straight up to a 400Mhz Celeron PC
(yep, I was using that Amiga way past its use-by date!!)

[JemyM]

Our first was a videogame capable of playing four versions of PONG. I do not remember the name of the system though.

After that:
Apple II (monochrome)
IBM PC (do not remember name, just that it had color screen, 10mb harddrive and a whupping +512kB ram)
Commodore 64
Macintosh LCII
Amiga 500
Amiga 1200
Amiga 4000
Pentium 90mhz
Pentium II 350mhz
AMD Athlon 1000, and then upgraded several times, now I have a 4800+

Also:
iPAQ 5550
Dell Axim x51v (my current Pocket PC)
Dell Inspiron 5100 (my current laptop)
GameCube
Playstation 2
A 2ghz win xp "server" on the floor, running apache, serv-u and eMule.
Finally my girlfriend inherit my hardware for her computer every time I upgrade.

[woges]

Can only say PC & Linux on this one.

I had a few others like speccy, c64, Atari ST, Amiga.

[Sir Markus]

I was lucky to be decked out with an Atari 800 with a 5 1/4 inch drive the size of a concrete block, and I was most certainly 'styling' with my cassette tape drive as well. And don't get me started on my sweet dot matrix printer.

My first two computer games I got that Christmas were Frogger and Sir Galahad and the Holy Grail from the Atari Program Exchange. The first true CRPG I ever played was on that system, Ultima 3. I also enjoyed the heck out of the Infocom games and Sierra adventures (Wizard and Princess, Ulysses and the Golden Fleece, etc.) The Shamus games were nice as well.

Next was the Amiga 500. At this point adventure games were huge, especially Lucasarts Maniac Mansion, Monkey island, etc so I played those mainly. The one CRPG for the Amiga that was extremely good was a game called Black Crypt, I think Raven Software's first game. Populous was another Amiga title. The Gold Box games, Betrayal at Krondor, Psygnosis games, and another one named 'Empire' wasted a lot of my time.

Next came the 486 DX. I remember RAM was ridiculously expensive back then for some reason, and then came the 3d video cards you had to buy. My first was a Voodoo something or other.

Then came a Celeron, and since I've had 2 or three Pentium computers since. It's pretty astounding to think that a game used to come out on 4 or 5 floppy disks, now they come out on DVD's. The whole technology side of computer gaming has changed so much in the last 20 years it's almost freaky. Oh well just sounding off.

Next came the 486 DX.

[dteowner]

I remember Populous and Empire. Good games that burned a lot of time back in college.

[Khass]

Owned only three computers - all PCs.

A 486, a 400 mHz Pentium II (my golden age gaming system *cough*) , and now a 2.4 gHz Pentium IV.

On a side note, Pentium II lasted from 200 mHz to 700, Pentium III to 1.1 gHz, and Pentium IV has been going for 2-3 gHz (well, all of numbers are approximations). Have they renounced the naming scheme or is there some component/function that delimites them, and has been on the IV ever since 1.1 gHz? I've heard Pentium V was going to be launched, but that was like, a year ago.

[txa1265]

Have they renounced the naming scheme or is there some component/function that delimites them, and has been on the IV ever since 1.1 gHz? I've heard Pentium V was going to be launched, but that was like, a year ago.
The relation between current microprocessors and the original P4's is not too close at this point ...

[Moriendor]

The naming scheme has changed indeed. There is not going to be a Pentium V. The "Pentium V" is the "Core" dual core processor (the current desktop models are called "Core 2 Duo") based on an all new architecture that is derived from Intel's mobile CPUs. The Pentium IV is now considered as the budget/entry/value segment. All new future CPUs -until the next naming scheme change that is- will be referred to as "Core" processors. The code name of the current generation is Conroe and the next generation that is based on a 45nm process will be code-named Penryn. Penryn should be available in Q3/Q4 of 2007. It remains to be seen whether the Penryn will be called "Core 3 Duo" or still "Core 2 Duo" or something else. I believe they wanted to stick with "Core 2 Duo" though since Penryn is "only" a die-shrink from a 65nm manufacturing process to a 45nm process plus some minor tuning changes (e.g. a higher FSB support of 1333MHz vs 1066MHz, optimized cache/prefetch etc).

Well, and then there's quad core CPUs but those are still a bit pricey and they are not really overly interesting for the consumer market yet due to a lack of apps that support multiple cores. At least the price issue should be resolved when the quad core versions of Penryn are released and, of course, when AMD's Barcelona/Agena/Kuma dual/quad core CPUs (these are the code names... they will retail on the desktop as "Phenom" which is the successor of the "Athlon") comes out later this year.

[HiddenX]

C64
Amiga 2000
Pentium P60
Pentium P133
Pentium P200
AMD 900
...

[Squeek]

I got experience using a few different platforms at work, including mainframes and time-share services, but I didn't own my own till I got a x386 with an 80 meg HD and a whopping 2 megs of RAM in 1989 or thereabouts.

My favorite comp was my next one. I had a kid build me a "dream system" with a bleeding-edge new Pentium 90, 16 megs of RAM (everyone assurred me I would never use all that memory!) and an unbelieveably-huge hard drive -- 1 whole gig (again, I was told I'd never fill it up in a million years!).

[Khass]

@ Moriendor - thanks a lot for all the information! I seriously lost track of pretty much everything regarding new hardware when I cancelled my subscriptions to computer magazines. Can't say I knew much back then, either, but eh ...

My favorite comp was my next one. I had a kid build me a "dream system" with a bleeding-edge new Pentium 90, 16 megs of RAM (everyone assurred me I would never use all that memory!) and an unbelieveably-huge hard drive -- 1 whole gig (again, I was told I'd never fill it up in a million years!).

I lol'd. :D

[Bartacus]

Damn, I need to change my vote now. I'm working with debian, gentoo, Ubuntu, Red Hat, Mandrake and HPUNIX. But I don't really own them, just bare some responsability for them.

[Malk]

My first computer was old Intel 486. Couple pf years later I've bought Pentium 1, then Celeron 133MHz, then Athlon 1700+, then Athlon 2400+, then Athlon 3000+, and I've finally bought Intel again - E4300.
So, that means I've had Windows 95, 98 and XP (I don't own Vista, yet).
Actually I've still own all of this computers, except 2400+ and Pentium 1.
Oh, and I've also had PS1 and Sega Mega Drive.