1992 I had a IBM 55SX 386SX-16 with 4 MB memory, 60MB HDD and a VGA screen, I did also have an Atari 1040, I still have the Atari 😀

Late 1993 I got an Olivetti 486 SX-33 with 8MB memory, a sound card, 80MB + 210MB HDD (an expensive extra option), a fast video card and a SVGA screen. It was a huge upgrade but it wasnt cheap 😀

Late 1994 I built my first custum PC, an AMD DX2-80 with 8MB memory, a Sound Blaster Pro 2, the 210MB HDD from the Olivetti, a Cirrus Logic VESA video card and a desktop case from a broken 386 computer. I sold the Olivetti for more or less same amount of money as I payed for the parts for the DX2 system so this upgrade diddnt cost me anything 😀

Scali wrote:

I had a Commodore 386SX-16, with Paradise SVGA, expanded to 512KB memory. Memory was 1 MB stock, expanded to 5 MB (with nifty EM […]
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I had a Commodore 386SX-16, with Paradise SVGA, expanded to 512KB memory.
Memory was 1 MB stock, expanded to 5 MB (with nifty EMS support through the chipset, rather than slow EMM386 emulation).
I had a Sound Blaster Pro 2.0 card, with PC speaker hooked up to it (I removed the piezo from the motherboard and replaced it with a header, so I could connect either a real speaker or the SB Pro easily. I could also route the SB Pro mixer output back to the speaker. I used that very same SBPro 2.0 and that very same cable in the IBM 5160 to capture 8088 MPH 😀).
I had a 170 MB Conner harddisk, which was an upgrade from the 40 MB Seagate it came with. For a while I had both drives in the 386SX-16, but since the Seagate was also XT-IDE compatible, I had moved it to my Commodore PC10-III.
I also had a Logitech Scanman installed.

So many similarities here 😎 :

1992: check!
386SX-16 check!
1MB stock expanded to 5MB: check!
512KB SVGA: check! (upgraded to 1MB later)
40MB Seagate: check! (added a 210 MB Maxtor later)
SB Pro 2.0: check! (later, though)

Oh yea, I forgot... that was just my main PC 😀
In 1992 I also had an Amiga 600HD, and my trusty C64 was still around as well of course (and the PC10-III I mentioned). And a homemade ZX81.
So the Commodore was not a coincidence 😀

In 1992 I'd just left school and had started attending college and working part-time. Almost every cent of that income went into PC hardware - the benefit for me being that I could buy 1 PC component every month with my paycheck and slowly build up a machine of my own. My family had an XT clone with mono herc/CGA graphics at the time, which was rapidly becoming useless and at first I would "borrow" components from that PC to complete my own machine - often reassembling that XT whenever the family needed to use it.

My first piece was an old 80286 motherboard that my father got from a PC store that was trying to get rid of it in an old desktop-style AT case. To add to that I got a Trident 8900 ISA VGA card - borrowing the multi IO card and HD controller from the XT at first. Later I upgraded that with a 1.4MB floppy disk drive, a 16-bit IDE/Multi IO card to replace the one from the XT and then eventually a Connor 80MB IDE hard drive.

I remember the VGA monitor was a massive outlay for me at the time - basically three month's wages - so I made do with a mono-VGA monitor from a POS (point of sale) machine with some nasty burn-in.

One of the most spectacular upgrades was the SB Pro 2.0 I bought once I had a complete functional PC. I soon added the proprietary Creative Labs double-speed CD-ROM drive to that.

Once I completed college and eventually started earning an actual salary I went through a range of upgrades from 386DX40, to 486DX33, 486DX100, P1 233MMX and eventually a Celeron 300A Slot 1 machine, but soon after that I lost interest in constantly upgrading my PC - becoming more interested in Macs, console games and my full-time job.

Recently I've checked all the stuff I still have. Being dead-poor at the time I sold most of my older equipment to fund upgrades, but I do still have a few things that work. That 80286 motherboard still boots up and there were certain other things I held on to for sentimental reasons like my 2MB Matrox Mystique card and my SB16 with Yamaha DB50XG.

Only recently have I started playing around with Commodore stuff as the brand was pretty much dying out here by the time I had the cash to start playing around with computers.

In 1992 all I had was a Sinclair ZX Spectrum clone. It was a pretty tricked one though, it came with a 3.5"/700k FDD that allowed me to run CP/M on it. It also had a turbo mode that increased the CPU speed (Z80B) from 3.5 to 6MHz. Many programs would not run correctly at 6MHz though, especially those that wrote directly to the video memory.

Likely a 386 40.

Bought my own pc in 1993. Up till then, I relied on my family machine (read my parents) wich was a 1987 Unisys PW2 Series 300.
286, 640k, 1.44mb Floppy, 20mb HDD, Ega, PC speaker and the usual stuff like a Star LC10 Black/white DotMatrix-9pin printer.

HighTreason wrote:

Quake was really the start of consolitis for me, well into the downward ramp of iD's days. And it looked like regurgitated diarrhea.

Now, Duke 3D, there was a real DM game... And Blood probably offered by far the best experience yet, especially with well made custom maps and skilled players.

Quake sucks.

Hence why the worlds best and most skillful FPS gamers gravitated to Duke Nukem, and not Quake. Hence why Duke3D was taken as the premier FPS game in all the major eSports events of the late 90's and throughout the 2000's, even to this day. Instead of Quake and Quake III/Live.

I think the Quake engine and it's later incarnations have been used in more first person games than any other, and for good reason. Although none of those games which made use of iD's engines have come close to competing with the Quake series in terms of pure deathmatch gameplay.

I am trying desperately to think of the name of a single Blood player who won ... anything ... at any competition, global or national.

Still thinking...

Nope. I got nothing! 🤣

Back in 1992 I was still in high school and couldn't afford my own PC.
For the largest part of 1992 our family computer was still an Olivetti M19 (XT based) PC with the following specs:
- 8088 8 MHz CPU.
- 640k RAM
- CGA green screen
- 1 360k floppy disk drive & 1 20 MB HDD.
- 86 key keyboard.

In late 1992 we upgraded to:

- AMD 80386DX 40 MHz CPU (Chicony based motherboard)
- 4 MB RAM
- 120 MB HDD
- 1 360k floppy disk drive (carried over from the Olivetti)
- 1 1.44 MB floppy disk drive
- keyboard and mouse
- 14" VGA monitor
- Tseng Labs ET4000 16-bit graphics card with 512k RAM.
- 16-bit Winbond IDE controller.

No sound card (that came a bit later) and no CD-ROM drive (too expensive back then).
I practically still have all the parts of the 386 PC.

1992 was maybe the last time I had a machine close to the cutting edge (been content to be one or two generations behind since). Bought a 486DX-50 (not DX2) in 1991. Added a Diamond VLB video card that tolerated the 50MHz bus well. Great machine. Not sure what happened to the motherboard and CPU, but I still have the videocard and the Promise Tech I/O VLB card.

They're running in a 486DX2-50 system, breathing a little easier in their old age.

In -92 I had an C64 with floppy-reader. Mostly played games

Remember now that I also had a 286 that my dad brought from his work. Played Wolfenstein 3D and Stunts, but didn't do much else.

Also had a 386 at my moms, but can't remember if that was -92 or -93. Played alot of doom around that time. Bought my first own computer -95

As far as I can remember most likely an Amiga500(1 Mbyte) and a RGB monitor(1085 I think). The Amiga was hooked up to a stereo with self built speakers so that the awesome tune of "NewYorkWarriors" would frighten any adults entering the room.
We always used to laugh about the PC people with their expensive and boring setups which seemed pretty stupid to us.
Although in 1992 the PC(given a fast CPU and a VGA card) was way more powerful/flexible than the little 500 but it would take another year and a certain game to cause a "paradigm shift".

1992 - Commodore C16, Datasette, 2pcs Joystick
1993 - IBM PC Clone:
AMD 386DX 40MHz,
4MB RAM,
256KB Realtek VGA card (16bit ISA)
some kind of IDE controller card (16bit ISA)
170MB IDE Conner HDD,
1.2MB and 1.44MB FDD,
Baby AT Case,
3 button parallel Mouse,
101 HUN Keyboard,
14" Provitek SVGA Monitor,
3M Monitor filter.

Amstrad PCW9512 Z80 CP/M machine with Locoscript and the daisy wheel printer for writing(work), they were great machines, lovely crisp paper white screen. Amiga 500 with 1meg ram for entertainment & games. first PC was a 386 SX 40 from Tandys probably in 1993, but the other two stayed around, I still used the PCW & Locoscript till 1995 if not later.

My very first PC bought at a budget of 2k!
It was a present from my parents for graduating to 7th grade.

Cost of PC -$1500
Cost of dot matrix daisy wheel Panasonic printer - $500 (foolish decision on retrospect)

AMD 386 40Mhz
4MB 30pins Ram
1MB isa MX-VGA gfx card
No sound card. (I survived only on PC speaker till isa TB Montecarlo 3 yrs later)
80MB HDD
3.5"/5.25" disk drives
14" VGA Colour CRT monitor
Keyboard and Mouse

Which have all since been discarded.

ZX Spectrum, tape recorder, small TV
Then in 1993 the sun have rised:
AMD 386DX 40 MHz, FPU, RAM 4 Mb, HDD 120 Mb, SVGA, 14"; soon later+: SB Pro, CD-ROM

Iris030380 wrote:

To think we went from Wolf 3D and Blake Stone, to Doom and then to Quake in just 4 years ... while today, we seem to step backwards with 30fps locked console ports where you basically watch a game on rails filled with bloom and cut scenes and Kevin Spacey... What happened?

George Bush, marketing, greed and monopolization. Since Xbox 360 seems like time have stopped. Games stay same but requirements magically rise, despite these games look similar on old consoles.

HighTreason wrote:

Quake was really the start of consolitis for me, well into the downward ramp of iD's days. And it looked like regurgitated diarrhea.

Now, Duke 3D, there was a real DM game... And Blood probably offered by far the best experience yet, especially with well made custom maps and skilled players.

Quake sucks.

Perhaps. I still like Doom, Quake and Duke3D for what they are. I just have to remember not to expect what those other two delivers in fun, when playing one of those three games. All good in their own way. It all depends on what mood i am in.

By 1992 I'd had my first PC for a year. My father agreed to buy it for me and I took months poring over magazines and the newspaper deciding on the specs, so I remember this one pretty well. Ended up with the following in Sept '91:

* 386SX-20 - pretty sure this was an AMD-based board, not Intel. Soldered on CPU, socket for co-pro (never used)
* 4MB RAM
* Tseng Labs 1MB ET4000 video
* WD Caviar 80MB IDE & controller card
* Teac 5.25" & Panasonic 3.5"
* Generic 101 key keyboard (later replaced by a Honeywell)
* Z-Nix Super Mouse (came bundled with Windows 3.0)
* MS Office 1.6

This is a near identical case (from eBay, my one had a push button for power, and a flat cover for the 3.5" bay, not the faux drive face)

Also hooked up an Epson MX80 printer to it, later superseded by a Canon BJ-300.

Later added some multimedia parts to it - a $700 4x Toshiba SCSI CD-ROM which was hooked up to a Pro Audio Spectrum Pro 3D in about 1994. Of all that setup I still have the Pro 3D (I worked hard to buy that with my own money).

As this was my personal machine I held on to it for ages, as it was fairly useable - booted fast, no major slowdown launching basic Office apps, and I could do most of my uni programming C assignments on it - that was about 7 years, until I bought a PII300 in 1998. Good times, even if the machine wasn't face-tearingly fast.

1992 I had just bought an Atari Falcon 030 and I still have it.

286/16 c/w co-pro with 4megs of ram, 3.5" and 5.25" HD floppy drives, VGA card and monitor, 210meg and original 40meg IDE hdds, 9-pin dot matrix printer, DRDos 6, GeoWorks Ensemble 1.2 Pro, Win3x and a hoste of other stuff, as well as a Thunderboard sound card, mouse, joystick and hand held scanner.

Still have the Thunderboard card and the vga card was donated to a work 286 system still in use for some instrument testing software. Also still have most of my old software apart from stuff I loaned out and never got returned.