1992? Why couldn't you ask about 1993? 😀

'92 was still an Amstrad 2286 (286 12MHz) with a massive 1MB RAM, if I remember correctly. It did support Hercules as well as CGA/EGA/MCGA/VGA/VGA 256 colour (at 640x400). DOS 4.01 - how I hated trying to optimise that. Monitor was probably 12". Soundcard was a Soundblaster Pro

'93 I took an order of magnitude upgrade to a 486DX33 8MB RAM, 200MB hard drive, VLB to run OS/2 and other osses. Still have it, it's about to become my slow DOS retro gaming PC.. Can't remember when I added my first CDROM, but it was connected to the Pro.

ynari wrote:

1992? Why couldn't you ask about 1993? 😀

Due to the simple fact that I had my first PC ever in 1992. 😈

tayyare wrote:

ynari wrote:

1992? Why couldn't you ask about 1993? 😀

Due to the simple fact that I had my first PC ever in 1992. 😈

Lucky you. I could only afford my own PC in 1997. In the early 90s I was too poor and could only use borrowed time on other people's PCs.

386 SX 20
SVGA CRT 14"
Cirrus logic 512k
20 MO HDD
5"1/4 + 3"1/2 floppy disc
no sound card

stamasd wrote:

tayyare wrote:

ynari wrote:

1992? Why couldn't you ask about 1993? 😀

Due to the simple fact that I had my first PC ever in 1992. 😈

Lucky you. I could only afford my own PC in 1997. In the early 90s I was too poor and could only use borrowed time on other people's PCs.

We were not doing any good during that times either. University courses that I was taking at that time pushing the need for a computer hard (numerical analysis, computational fluid dynamics, advanced heat transfer, etc.) but my parents were not capable of affording it. Actually my grand mother supplied the money for it, using almost all of her long time savings for her dreamed visit to Mecca, god bless her.

Technically my parents first PC. It was 486SX 33MHZ Built custom by some local shop. 4MB ram. 170MB hard drive 3 1/4 and 5 /12 inch floppy. We didn't have much money but my dad bought it with some money he got as compensation when he was in a not his fault minor accident. I was in 3rd or 4th grade I think.

Didn't have a modem or a sound card. Didn't get either till several years later. My father was self employed and spent his nights cleaning off buildings. When I would help him I would dumpster dive for old computers and components. My 486 was fairly current at the time but Within a couple years I had a whole basement full of 8088=386 computers which I played with mixed and matched hardware etc.

It was that computer which sparked my interest in computers in general and set me on a collision course with both my free time passion and my career.

When I got my first job at 16. I built my first PC that I owned personally. Which was a P2-233 with 32MB of ram. I only worked that job (at a Quizno's) before I got a job at a mom and pop computer shop that was within walking distance of my house. Bought my first car and the whole nine yards working for that couple.

I ended up being the computer repair kid among my friends and family which allowed me to amass junk parts as well. I wish I could go back and not gotten rid of half the stuff I had stockpiled. But, such is life.

I think back in 1992 it was quite interesting to be involved with PC repairs and/or sales.
PC's were then still very expensive so, it was quite nice to build up your own PC from older parts.
Back then, new hardware was coming out practically every month.

Whitebox 486 dx40
4mb RAM
80mb Conner HDD
LMSI 1x CDRom
Advanced Gravis Wavetable Sound Card
Intel SatisFAXtion external modem
Epson 14 inch VGA moniter
Diamond Viper VLB Video 1mb
Ketronics Keyboard
IBM Proprinter

Videoton TVC 64k+ (an Eastern Bloc home computer, made right in my home city):

Z80@3.125MHz
64kiB main RAM
64kiB video RAM
5.25" QD (720k) + 3.5" DD FDD
DOS cartridge
Videoton RGB monitor

It could run the Z80 variant of Turbo Pascal 3.0 😜

It took me until late 1993 to collect the parts for my first PC.

1992...

Personally I owned a ZX81 (with 16k RAM pack) and two Spectums, my own old 48k and my brother's +2 (which he hated, his ADHD meant that he didn't have the patience for cassette loading and his dyslexia didn't help with commands either - he moved on to a NES and Game Boy). I think I had the 48k setup pretty much maxed out at the time, with an Interface 1 + microdrive and some or other 9-pin dot matrix printer I could connect to the serial port, and an interface 2 - oh, and a LO-Profile 'real' keyboard. I also had a Romantic Robot Multiface 128, which would work on either system and I attached to whichever was needed. Basically I defaulted to the 48k unless I wanted to run a specific 128k title.

However by this time I was spending at least as much time on the family computer, an IBM PS/2 Model 70, bought in 1988 with a Dutch government tax break and extra discount because my mother worked at IBM. Still cost thousands of Euros in todays money....

i386-16
4MB RAM
VGA adapter (mercifully not MCGA)
3.5" 1.44MB floppy drive
60MB EDSI HDD split into two partitions:
- one running OS/2 1.1, which was beautiful but quite useless unless you wanted to use DisplayWrite for word processing. I wasn't allowed to do anything more with this than change the colour scheme as my mother was convinced she needed to keep it pristine for work (turns out they didn't give a hoot, but she was a typical IBM employee, so when she thought there was a rule for something, it was followed religiously 😉 )
- one I could play around with for DOS. I think around this time I'd settled on MS-DOS 4.01. I had also discovered Ultima 6 and Civilization. The rest, as they say, was history.

In 1992 I was still using a Commodore 64, as were a lot of my friends. I always wanted to do more with the system than just playing games, but I only really had 1 program - a painting/drawing program called Saracen Paint. I did use simple BASIC commands to create & store lists and simple documents to display on screen. All loading and saving from cassette of course.

But generally for most of the time the Commodore 64 was just used for playing games, of which I had hundreds. Plus there was also the Boulder Dash Construction Kit, which I spent hours on creating my own mini-adventures.

I didn't get my first IBM compatible PC until 1995, an older 8088 10MHz 640KB RAM. But proper PC gaming didn't really happen for me until 1998.

Even at school, I didn't use PCs until 1995 either as most schools here in the UK were still using a variety of BBC Micro and/or Acorn systems. In the early 90s pretty much nobody in my social circles ever seemed aware of or cared about the PC. I know I didn't even consider getting a PC at the time myself, I always wanted an Acorn system instead after seeing them advertised regularly on TV.

Amstrad PC/XT clone with faulty EGA and faulty 32 MB hard drive. It was junk and I hated it because all my friends had Amigas or Ataris ST.

If were are not counting the Amiga 500 and other non-PC systems - for me it would be a 286-12 with 1MB RAM, 40MB HDD and EGA built from scavenged parts. I played some Sierra games, the first duke nukem and catacomb 3D on it, but still played more Amiga games than PC games. It was a little later when I upgraded to a 486SLC with VGA and a SB16 that I started played more PC games than Amiga games...

I do remember playing Wolf 3D on that 286 with the VGA card and monitor I had just aqcuired because somehow I ended up with a VGA card that didn't work in my 486SLC - so I way stuck running EGA on that until I could get another VGA card.

1.79MHz Ricoh 2A03, 2KB of RAM, variable ROM sizes.

Didn't have a computer until I had my own apartment, and bought it with my own money in 1998. CD drive and video card failed almost immediately afterward.

8088 10 MHz
512kb ram
Dual 1.2mb 5.25” floppy drives
CGA graphics

In another year my family upgraded to a 486sx-33, but that definitely didn’t happen in 1992.

In the 92 the hardware specs was a Z80 3.5mhz, 8K of RAM, 16K of VRAM of a VDP custom video chip that had inside the SN76489 sound chip too. The specs of the Master System game console. No computer until they bought me a 386SX-20/1MB/Oak vga/50MB disk/cheap pc in the 1994/95. 😀

Zip.

Interesting to see that very few people had anything more than a 386sx, as did I:

IBM PS/2 386sx/16 (MCA)
4 Mb RAM
40 Mb HDD
DOS 3.11 (later 5.0/6.22).
Win 3.1

I was super envious of my friend who got a 486dx/33 with a Thunder Board that autumn as I couldn't (for obvious reasons) get myself a decent sound card at all. He could play all the Dynamix sims maxed out with no problem. I didn't get my 486dx until summer of '93, but it came with a SB Pro 2 which was, and still is, a nice card (only thing I saved from it). The music and sound effects weren't that great though, I always felt they were bit lacking and didn't realize how much until recently when I tried those sims with a Roland card. If I only had had one of those back then... 😢

Atari VCS 2600, clone. 😊
I got my first PC in 1995, a Compaq Deskpro 286 with a CGA graphics.

In 1992 I was 6 years old. I think we had:

Tandy 1000HX
Commodore VIC20
Intellivision
Colecovision
Atari 2600
NES
Sega Master System

... and that was probably it. They were almost all second hand, and the Tandy was won in some kind of contest. We were poor. 😵

My favorite system of the time however was the Atari 130xe I played with at my aunt and uncle's house. I'd really like to get my hands on one of those again to play some Tree Surgeon. 🤣