I'll read all this thread's pages out of interest about the diversity/availability/what was considered "mainstream" in different parts of the world.
As for me, until Christmas of 1992 (so for the most part of that year) I still used a Hyundai XT. Then as a Christmas present (so almost 1993) I got a locally assembled 386DX/40, 1MB RAM, slow-as-fuck Trident VGA, 80MB HDD.

Hmmm.. We got our first PC for Christmas of 1992.
Specs:
386SX 25Mhz
4MB RAM
120MB HDD
Trident video card
5.25" 1.2MB and 3.5" 1.44MB floppy drives
no sound card
DOS 5.0 and Windows 3.0

Might have added a PC Symphony (Adlib clone) sometime in 1993.

Amiga 500 with extra 512K slow RAM. The family computer at the time was an XT clone with Hercules geaphics.

Whitebox minitower, 14" bubble CRT display
386 DX 33 MHz
Number 9 GXE
4 MB RAM
120 MB Maxtor IDE HDD
5.25" & 3.5" TEAC Floppy drives
Sound Blaster 1.5
2400 Hayes internal modem

It was built buy a guy named Mike who ran a thriving PC clone/repair shop in the Denver downtown core near where my Dad worked. He would walk by the PC shop during his lunches and eventually bought one. Later my dad introduced me to Mike, a middle aged friendly guy who's shop was packed with parts and cigarette smoke. He let me hang around the shop and play with all the running machines. Fun times.

Later that summer I upgraded the modem to an Intel 14.4kbit/s Satisfaxtion Modem/400e, after saving $600 USD cutting grass. The BBS scene was thriving then and Denver had some great boards.

In early 1992 in our house was this PC:

Mini Desktop of brand "Innovator"
386DX/25MHz
2MB RAM
40MB HDD
256kB VGA Graphics
1.2MB 5.1/4" and 1.44MB 3.1/2" Floppy drives
14" VGA color monitor, max 1024x768
Mouse+Keyboard
Seikosha 24-Needle Printer
MS-DOS (Either 4 or 5?)
PC-Shell for file management

Later I bought a Sound Blaster 2.0 compatible soundcard for it. Then even later it was upgraded to a 486DX2/66.
I was a kid and did not know too much about it, so it is funny I now have these specifications on an old receipt. The first time I got a taste of bits and bytes was when the 40MB Harddisk was full and Doom required 4MB of RAM when this system had just 2.

Interesting to see an old thread getting fresh answers. I guess I'll toss in too.

in 1992 I was using an Amiga 500, the family PC was an ibm clone 286 w/ EGA, I really don't know any specs beyond the 8mhz 286.

A calculator with 8 digits.

Jo22 wrote:

A calculator with 8 digits.

I have my first scientific one in 1985 (Casio FX-3600, having one was an unwritten rule for the highschool that I'm starting), it was still working and in use in 1992 (mid years of university). Considering I got my fişrst PC in May 1992, this Casio was the only computing device that I have during the (almost) first half of 1992. 🤣

Oh yes, calculators. I loved my FX-7000G. Half a KB of memory! You could even write simple computer games on it. Later I got a FX-7700GE with 4 KB. I wrote so many programs for it, all lost now.*

* I actually wrote them out by hand in a notebook, but this got lost at some time. I know the FX-7700GE had an optional data link which enabled you to transfer programs to computer, but I never had that.

Used my dads 286 with 2MB ram and 40MB hdd when needed to write something on Word Perfect. Didnt care much about computers then.

i wasn't even born yet, i was born in 93.

My first scientific calculator was a Casio fx6300g. Still have it, but the screen is half dead and the membrane has partially failed.. Not sure if replacement parts for these things are easy to come by?

An Amiga 500 with a 512k memory expansion card and a second floppy drive. I spent countless nights playing Monkey Island on it 😀

appiah4 wrote:

My first scientific calculator was a Casio fx6300g. Still have it, but the screen is half dead and the membrane has partially failed.. Not sure if replacement parts for these things are easy to come by?

I really don't think so. 6300G was on the market in early 90s. But I see second hand ones in sahibinden.com with a 100-150TL price range, from time to time.

https://www.sahibinden.com/ilan/ikinci-el-ve- … 622465746/detay

My all itme favorite is 5500 by the way. 😊

I upgraded my 12Mhz 286 in 1991 so in 1992 and I upgraded from 40Mb to 100Mb hard drive 1992, so I would have had 386dx 33Mhz, 4Mb ram, 100Mb hard drive, SB 1.5 sound card and I would have still had 256Kb trident vga card, 15" VGA monitor, 1.44Mb 3.5" floppy drive, 1.2Mb 5.25" floppy drive, keytronic keyboard and a case from my old 286 pc. I don't remember brands and models all the parts I had in my pc back then.

Atari 800XL w/1050 floppy drive, 1020 plotter, some random cassette drive and a buttload of games
Atari 520ST w/color monitor and a buttload of games

Life was good back then

I think that's about when I got my Deskpro 386/20e - an SX 20 MHz Compaq with 1Mb RAM and a 42Mb hard disk and VGA. No sound or other add ons besides a joystick port (Quickshot). A wretched machine to be sure, but it was a computer!

That mess was connected to an NEC PinWriter P3, a HUGE printer that was very noisy and yellow. I also had a Hayes (or compatible) 2400 BPS modem that I used to connect to BBSes - Later on I seem to recall buying a 9600 modem from a flea market for $5, 1993 or so. Maybe that was a 2400? $5 seems a bit low in 1993... or maybe it was 1995? 😦

In 1995 I got an old NCR 386DX 16 with 4Mb RAM, 512k video card, and a 40Mb hard drive (that quickly became 210Mb). I got this one from my middle school because I fixed up about 30+ machines for them, so I was allowed to build myself something from the leftovers. I was going to use a DX 40 MHz but there was no SIMMS for it, so I decided that the 4Mb on a 16MHz system would be better than buying RAM (I had no money at the time because 12) so that's the reasoning there. I recall the ISA expansion cards were huge and held 2Mb each! Unfortunately, none of the computers had a CDROM or a soundcard, but I added an original soundblaster 8 bit in 1996. I really liked this machine. It eventually became a 486 DX4/100 in 1997.

HighTreason wrote:

At least we have an inventory system. All Quake ever did was undo a lot of progress and move like you were on the damn moon.

Quake WAS the progress. iD were the pioneers and trendsetters, the vast majority of all FPS games after that used iD tech in some form even to this day. Wolfenstein started it, Doom brought it into the mainstream and Quake refined it.

Now we have Ion Maiden of course, with the same restrictions the Build engine had years ago. Won't slam Duke Nukem 3D, it was fun at the time, but after you'd struggled through the sluggish 2D/3D hybrid engine of the game once I didn't feel the need to return to it and deathmatch without full 360 control isn't deathmatch after 1996.

I know there was always an elite scene in Quake, but it was the highest skillcap FPS scene in the world for many years, so it's not surprising. Not everyone was like that though, for every Quake Naz* there were hundreds of guys just "having fun".

Deathmatch doesn't need an inventory system though. There isn't enough time! 😀

Iris030380 wrote:

Quake WAS the progress. iD were the pioneers and trendsetters, the vast majority of all FPS games after that used iD tech in some form even to this day. Wolfenstein started it, Doom brought it into the mainstream and Quake refined it.

I'd say they've been surpassed now. They were certainly at the forefront between Wolf3d and Quake3 and their licensing in the Quake era reflected that.

Had my first x86 system then. Specs:

286/16 cpu
1meg ram
42meg ide hdd
Oak 256k vga card
14" 28 dot pitch vga monitor
9 pin dot matrix Panasonic printer.
3.5" and 5.25" fdds
101 key keyboard
Genius 2 button serial mouse
Housed in a flip top small footprint desktop case branded "PC General," who were quite popular in the early-mid 90s here in New Zealand.
No OS
Total cost $NZ 2499 (a 386DX25/mobo with 2megs of ram was around $NZ 800 costlier at the time)

Updates over the period I had it as a 286:
DR Dos 6.0
Trident 9000 512k vga card with the ability to upgrade to 1meg iirc.
Media-Vision Thunderboard sound card
4meg Sipp ram
Maths Co-pro
240meg hdd
33.6k modem

Learnt quite a bit using that system being my first real computer. Kids had C64s but I wasn't really interested until I started to use them at work. I initially ran a pirated copy of Compaq MSDos 3.31 from work because it supported the 40meg hdd without partitioning it. Later picked up a copy GeoWorks Pro 1.2 which work nicely with DR Dos 6.0. It was quite a bit cheaper than Windows 3.x at the time and I liked the concept of a GUI. Liked the Mac and Acorn Archimedes set up. Had a feeling Windows would become prominent as all the Computer mags at the time were all pushing it. Hadn't heard of GeoWorks until I was in a shopping plaza and came across a small computer shop and the box caught my eye. Did a bit of research on it and got it. Over time the mobo was replaced with a second hand 486 one from a friend who'd upgraded his system to a Pentium. De-soldered the pins of the Sipps and fitted them to that as well as transferring the other hardware. Eventually ended up as a 486DX2/66 system running MSDos 6.* and win3.1 with a lot of customization.