Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Varche]

Been talking today about first home PC .

Memory isnt so good about the dates but think it was the 1990s . I do remember ours was about £500, desktop, small CRT. Had a hard drive of 540 meg. BIL had our friend build his on our diningtable with a massive 800 something hard drive. How I envied the extra hard drive size.

We had Pentiums at work that were so fast they reduced the time telephone exchange data was assembled for new digital exchanges from days to maybe 10 hours. Reduced overtime too as no need for people to drive to somewhere remote to kick off the next run. I suspect the same routines now on any desktop would take minutes.

That first pc had dial up access . Us robotics were the bees knees then of modems. I remember getting a 600k cable modem a few years later.

Now most houses have half a dozen indispensible  computers with Wifi access to fast unlimited internet.

Anyway anyone remember their early PC(s) home or work? Any stories?

[iansoutham]

Amstrad PC 1640 with twin 5.25” Single-sides floppy drives. 40mb hdd.

New in 1987 and I was only 8 😄

Still got it as well

[Jimbob]

Amstrad PCW8256, 3" floppy, no hdd. Green screen monitor built in.
Was given an 8086 pc after that with a 10mb hdd on a full length ISA card!
Next one I bought myself was a 386 DX 40, 5mb ram, 40mb hdd, svga graphics the works, was high end at the time

[Gaffers]

I used to get my Dad's hand me downs so back in '89 I got a custom 286 with 4mb RAM and a whopping 200mb hdd running DR DOS 6.  While it was his I wasn't supposed to use it but had been for years after he showed me how to hack the password on such computers after he got it from somewhere else.  Him being away all week helped too    I had to say that we learnt DOS in school (big fat lie) to avoid getting in to trouble   I was still using it in '93 when I finally was upgraded to a 386 before winning a 486 DX2 in the first year at uni which remained my PC until I graduated where, working and living in france, I treated myself to a Pentium 2 with the obligatory froggy keyboard.  Took me longer to unlearn that keyboard and switch back to QWERTY than it did to learn it in the first place.

[Mister Rog]

The title says "home", so I suppose that would be a sInclair Spectrum. But I had my own small company, so my first real one that was actually used productively would have been a Sharp something or other, looked like the MZ 700 on the link below. For me it was amazing. I used to type out price lists, and calculate prices with a calculator and pen and paper. Using even a very rudimentary spreadsheet was amazing !

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharp_MZ

I moved on to an Amstrad 1512, and then so on . . I always though that the GEM o/s used by Amstrad was ahead of it's time, sort of Windows before there was Windows, but it wasn't multi-tasking.

 

[dave the builder]

 I had all sorts of computers back in the 80s first I owned was ZX81 with 16k ram pack 
others included Vic 20, BBC b, comadore 64,spectrum 128 ,amstrad something or other with a green screen .
At school ,wwe used RML 480z (O level computer science)
First what i consider PC (IBM Based computer) was a 486 dx2  mmx ,32mb of ram ,half a gig HDD
after a few weeks ,promptly opened it and started upgrading 
I then started building PCs from the mother board up
dabbled with apple products but soon learned they where not for me .

[pscocoa]

Commodore Pet 1978. Used as business machine.

[BazaJT]

First one I bought was a Dell-don't know model-it had a portable telly type monitor,tower,keyboard and mouse and cost me £40 from a car boot sale back in 1999 when we first got internet.This lasted us until 2008[when I sold it on for £25]and was replaced by the Lenovo laptop[second hand]I'm still using now.

[TheBoy]

If its Home PC as in IBM compatibles, mine was, like so many others, an Amstrad 8086, 640k RAM, no hard disk (until I bought a 30Mb "Hardcard" for nearly £300).

But again like many others, I started out with Sinclair.  I've still got ZX81s, Spectrums, QLs upstairs. I think I still has my Amiga A500 in the loft.


I remember the excitement of my first 1Gb hard drive. For the first time, I wasn't constantly battling for space.


We were discussing similar at work the other day, as we were fitting computers with 768Gb RAM.

[Migv6 le Frog Fan]

A Dan Pentium 90, sometime in the mid 90,s. Iirc the cost was around £1500 ! 

[Varche]

First one I bought was a Dell-don't know model-it had a portable telly type monitor,tower,keyboard and mouse and cost me £40 from a car boot sale back in 1999 when we first got internet.This lasted us until 2008[when I sold it on for £25]and was replaced by the Lenovo laptop[second hand]I'm still using now.

Crikey that must be the most economic spengd on computers ever.

[aaronjb]

But again like many others, I started out with Sinclair.  I've still got ZX81s, Spectrums, QLs upstairs. I think I still has my Amiga A500 in the loft.

Still jealous of your QL. I have an A500 w/ GVP Impact II (4Mb FAST RAM) sitting on my "other" desk right now, and an A1200 w/ accelerator card on the shelf behind me. Every time an A3000 or A4000 pops up on eBay I get all excited until I see they go for well over £1000 now.. (don't get excited about your A500 - they still go for ~£50 unless pristine)

My first PC was a Tandy 386SX25, a step above my Dad's 286 at the time.. some time in the early 90s, and it replaced my Amiga A500+. The PC spent some time churning out things like Kernighan & Richie's "The C Programming Langauge" on it's dot matrix printer, and I never looked back. It spent a while with two modems hooked up to it running a BBS, too.. multi-tasking for two lines under DESQview and then OS/2 Warp. Fun times!

[TheBoy]

But again like many others, I started out with Sinclair.  I've still got ZX81s, Spectrums, QLs upstairs. I think I still has my Amiga A500 in the loft.

Still jealous of your QL. I have an A500 w/ GVP Impact II (4Mb FAST RAM) sitting on my "other" desk right now, and an A1200 w/ accelerator card on the shelf behind me. Every time an A3000 or A4000 pops up on eBay I get all excited until I see they go for well over £1000 now.. (don't get excited about your A500 - they still go for ~£50 unless pristine)

My first PC was a Tandy 386SX25, a step above my Dad's 286 at the time.. some time in the early 90s, and it replaced my Amiga A500+. The PC spent some time churning out things like Kernighan & Richie's "The C Programming Langauge" on it's dot matrix printer, and I never looked back. It spent a while with two modems hooked up to it running a BBS, too.. multi-tasking for two lines under DESQview and then OS/2 Warp. Fun times!

Aye, my old BBS (running Wildcat!, what else) was on a DOS laptop initially, a Tosh Portege IIRC in later life.  I kept in running well into the Internet era, then under OS/2 Warp, with a telnet capability.  It was still running up under I went fully virtualised about a dozen years ago - ESX couldn't handle OS/2 VMs.

I've still got the last Wildcat! box I upgraded to on the shelf, no idea why

[aaronjb]

I've still got the last Wildcat! box I upgraded to on the shelf, no idea why

Boxed software! You always were a good TheBoy, eh The rest of us had to make do with, erm.. un-official non-retail distribution mechanisms.

[TheBoy]

I've still got the last Wildcat! box I upgraded to on the shelf, no idea why

Boxed software! You always were a good TheBoy, eh The rest of us had to make do with, erm.. un-official non-retail distribution mechanisms.

I started out with the Shareware version of Wildcat! 2, but when I outgrew it, bought the legit full version.  Was about £90 at the time, IIRC.


As for pirating stuff and what not, I've always been a believer in paying for it if I'm going to get my money's worth from it...  ...and if I'm not, either writing it myself (in the old days when things were simpler) or finding a low/no cost alternative, or more often now, open source freebies.

[TheBoy]

Although some of the "educational videos" that were rife before the internet was invented, that we used to have a "library" of at work were clearly 3rd or 4th generation copies....

[aaronjb]

"educational" you say..

But yes, open source software has a lot going for it and, outside of work, it's basically all I use. Heck, as you know, our corporate product has Linux underpinnings for the management plane.. but back then I wasn't even a poor student - I was a poor school-kid who swept the streets for money (no, really .. though that may have been necessitated by the £200 phone bill and £200 CompuServe bill that I needed to pay back! ), so spending money on PCBoard was out of the question 

Ah, golden days.

[TheBoy]

I only ever used CompuServe once, on a month's free trial.  Phone bill was £80 just for that (I used to get free itemised bills back then).

I remember thinking during my one man campaign to get ADSL to Brakkers, £50 a month of internet might seem expensive, but my phone bill would drop dramatically.

[TheBoy]

Heck, as you know, our corporate product has Linux underpinnings for the management plane..

As I think I told you (might have even PM'd the photo), the most use I've had from your product thus far is to use as a step ladder to fit some RAM in the top of a rack .  I doubt I'll get more use, as they appear to have gone missing from that site .  Never even got to open the boxes.


(We use them extensively elsewhere, as you know, and they are great pieces of kit...   ...both for their intended use, and as boxes to stand on )

[aaronjb]

They are sturdily made! And lovely red balls..

CompuServe was great - but so damned expensive. Then again, so was AOL at the time, I imagine. It introduced me to things like IRC-like chat, before I had access to IRC, forums etc etc. Kids these days - don't know they're born, the Internet is practically free now in comparison..

[TheBoy]

They are sturdily made! And lovely red balls..

I often stroke your red balls

CompuServe was great - but so damned expensive. Then again, so was AOL at the time, I imagine. It introduced me to things like IRC-like chat, before I had access to IRC, forums etc etc. Kids these days - don't know they're born, the Internet is practically free now in comparison..

I guess in reality, once direct Internet (ie, likes of Demon, BT Openworld etc dial up services) became available for £15 per month (plus phone bill - pre Freeserve days, and pre the 0800 dialup days), the Internet was "cheap".  Broadband made it more usable by always on/available, but the monthly price rocketed to around £40 plus phone line when ADSL first came out.

So I think the Internet was always "expensive", only now its almost a necessity.

[aaronjb]

They are sturdily made! And lovely red balls..

I often stroke your red balls

I thought I could feel something..

CompuServe was great - but so damned expensive. Then again, so was AOL at the time, I imagine. It introduced me to things like IRC-like chat, before I had access to IRC, forums etc etc. Kids these days - don't know they're born, the Internet is practically free now in comparison..

I guess in reality, once direct Internet (ie, likes of Demon, BT Openworld etc dial up services) became available for £15 per month (plus phone bill - pre Freeserve days, and pre the 0800 dialup days), the Internet was "cheap".  Broadband made it more usable by always on/available, but the monthly price rocketed to around £40 plus phone line when ADSL first came out.

So I think the Internet was always "expensive", only now its almost a necessity.

Maybe that's true .. it "feels" a lot cheaper now, but that's probably subjective and largely due to my salary having increased somewhat from £100/mo I spent years stuck on ISDN ("Home Highway"), mind, before I could get ADSL .. it felt expensive again, then, when I was paying significantly more than someone a mile down the road

[Mr Skrunts]

Amstad 1640, Twin 5.25 drives, B&W Monitor, DMP 4000 printer and all for the bargain price of £999 

[aaronjb]

BTW, anyone getting nostalgic should go here: http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/

[Doctor Gollum]

Dad was into computers and programming, (although he was a physics teacher by trade...)

Unfortunately he didn't consider that it was worth spending the time to teach my brother and I anything about them...