tayyare wrote:

8 of 41256 chips was only 256KB, so you need to have a complete 32 of them for the huge 1MB... 😈

Excactly. I said probably 36, because I have another 286/12 board right now which needs 36 in order to work (32 like you said for a total of 1MB plus 4 parity chips). And Imagine having just one of them being faulty and needing to locate that...

I think I had some wide-rule notebooks and No. 2 pencils. Might have had a mechanical 0.7mm pencil. Might have had a basic TI calculator.

My preference was 0.5mm and Casio 3600p... 😁

1992 I graduated from High School. I used my graduation funds and other savings to buy my kick butt (at the time):

Gateway 2000 486/sx 25MHZ
8MB RAM
210MB HDD
ATI Graphics Ultra ISA 1meg DRAM
Sound Blaster Pro Deluxe
Crystal Scan 14 inch color VGA monitor (interlaced .39 dot pitch)

At the time, the system cost me about $2K. It was worth it, I got a ton of mileage out of that system. Gateway was a really cool company back then. I miss the old Cow Spotted boxes and the funny ads they would put in PC Computing (my favorite mag at the time).

edit: added image

I'm pretty sure the Macintosh II was what my family was using still in 1992. I "fondly" remember not having the Internet until as late as 1995, and getting Doom II running as a slide show even with the maximum amount of RAM and all pagefile tweaks I could find.

http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_ii/ … ecs/mac_ii.html
Introduction Date: March 2, 1987 Discontinued Date: January 15, 1990
Processor Speed: 16 MHz Processor Type: 68020
Details: This model has a 32-bit processor and a 32-bit data path.
Processor Upgrade: Third-Party* FPU: 68881
System Bus Speed: 16 MHz Cache Bus Speed: N/A
ROM/Firmware Type: Macintosh ROM ROM/Firmware Size: 256k*
L1 Cache: 0.25k L2 Cache: N/A
RAM Type: 30-pin SIMM* Min. RAM Speed: 120 ns
Details: *PAL SIMMs required for 4 MB and larger capacities.
Standard RAM: 1 MB, 4 MB Maximum RAM: 128 MB*
Details: *The ROM Is "32-bit dirty" and by default, the Macintosh II with its original ROM only supports 8 MB of RAM (1 MB SIMMs in each of eight slots). With the FDHD upgrade kit, the system is capable of supporting 68 MB of RAM (1 MB SIMMs in bank A and 16 MB SIMMs in bank B). Finally, with 32-bit addressing and the MODE32 system extension this model is capable of supporting 128 MB of RAM (16 MB SIMMs in all eight slots).
Motherboard RAM: None RAM Slots: 8*
Video Card: Video Card* VRAM Type: Video Card*
Details: *The standard video card options for the Macintosh II had either 256k or 512k of VRAM and supported multiple resolutions.

In 1992 I was still crawling along with a venerable Amstrad PC1512, like this one:

8086 @ 8MHz, 512K RAM, monochrome monitor, no HDD 🤣 (just two 5.25 floppy drives), no fans, no fear 😀 .

I spent countless hours with this old dinosaur shooting down Stukas in Their Finest Hour and wreaking havoc amongst the soviet fleet in Red Storm Rising (an amazingly realistic submarine tactical combat simulator).

Didn't own a PC untill very late 1993 when my grandmother got an old discontinued computer from her work for free.

IBM PS/2 Model 30-286
Specs:
CPU: Intel 80286 10 MHz
RAM: 1 MB, max 4 MB (4 x 1 MB)
Graphics: Integrated 16-bit VGA display adapter (256 Kb, max. 320x200, 256 colours or 640x480, 16 colours)
Harddrive: 30 MB ST-506 3,5"
1.44 MB 3.5" Floppy

I had alot of fun with this computer with DOS and Windows 3.1. Unfortunately since it was outdated in 1994 all the games my friends played didn't work on this one. I was stuck with the few games I managed to acquire; Mechwarrior 1, Stunts, Simcity and A-train. Good times.

I was just starting high school in 92, and my family was using a 486DX-33 clone we had bought the previous year from my friend's father, who ran a computer business. It came with 4MB of RAM (later upgraded to 8MB for AutoCAD renderings), a Trident video card hooked up to a 14" NEC MultiSync 3D monitor, and was housed in a huge generic full tower case. Ran MS-DOS 6 and Windows 3.1.

My father used it for architectural work. I used it mostly for games and word processing. My favorites were Wolf 3D / Spear of Destiny, Chuck Yeager's Air Combat, Sim City 2000, and X-Wing. We bought an HP DeskJet 500C for printing and eventually got online with AOL and a 14.4 modem. Those were the days - I fondly remember playing CYAC with a cheapo QuickShot joystick, pissing people off in AOL chat rooms, and learning how to build basic 3D models in AutoCAD, which eventually led to 3D Studio for DOS, then 3D Studio MAX, then a career doing 3D animation for games and movies.

Back in high school I would have traded a kidney for a Silicon Graphics computer with Softimage; now I own eight of them and every major 3D animation package ever released. Hopefully in another ten years I'll own all those sports cars I wanted as a teenager 😀

...I used it mostly for games and word processing. My favorites were Wolf 3D / Spear of Destiny, Chuck Yeager's Air Combat, Sim City 2000, and X-Wing. We bought an HP DeskJet 500C for printing and eventually got online with AOL and a 14.4 modem. Those were the days - I fondly remember playing CYAC with a cheapo QuickShot joystick, pissing people off in AOL chat rooms, ....

Holly X-wing series!... I needed to wait (about two years) till I upgrade my own PC into a cheapo Cyrix 486-33 before even attempting to play that. And it forced me to buy my first joystick, which was a Quickshot 5. Me and my home mate, both trying to play it with a mouse before the joystick was something to watch though... 🤣 We frustratingly became aware that there is really something that might be called as "running out of the table space while using a mouse".. 😁

TIE Fighter, still one of my most favorite games of all times, and its latest collectors edition's insistence of not running on anything but Windows95 was the thing that started me on retro building. 😈

I was still running my Amiga 500 back then, just got around to purchasing an A2000 with a 25MHz accelerator card + memory + SCSI interface.

Had it connected to an old Marantz Tube Amp + Pioneer Reveb unit, the kind if the coiled spring inside and a knob to adjust the attenuation 😉

Tandy 1000 TX

At the end of 1992 I upgraded though:
486 DX2/50 (all ISA)
8MB
210MB HDD
Trident 8900C
Sound Blaster Pro 2.0

I used the Commodore 64, but my dad had an IBM 5150.

We got the 486 in 94.
In 92, i was playing on a friend's ATARI 520 STA 😀

IBM PS/1

386 at 25MHz
2MB RAM
20MB Hard disk
1.44MB diskette drive
1MB SVGA onboard
PC speaker
14'' CRT

A bit out of topic... Well, my turk neighbour... I destroyed a mouse playing X-Wing. The next one died in Tie Fighter.
But this was some years later, when I put the romanian ZX Spectrum clone to rest and got a 486 DX4/100. With 4 Mb RAM, a 850 Mb WD Caviar and S3 Trio 32 video card.
A year later I got 4 more Mb and an ESS 688 soundcard.
Well... What can I say... I live in a backward country. In 92-95 I played games other people from more civilised countries played 7-8 years before. On an 8bit machine with bad keyboard. What the hell, I had fun playing those ZX games. And lost a lot of saliva when I visited my friends with PC's or game consoles.

And lost a lot of saliva when I visited my friends with PC's or game consoles.

Not much different here, my friend.

Until having my first PC in 1992, at an age of 22 no less, my saliva was all around just like you, over all the C64s and Atari game boxes... 😁 I remember how much I desried a Spectrum ZX when I was in secondary school, but parents just did not have the funds for it... 😢

By the way, I really appreciate you managed to play them with a mouse. I clearly remember myself and homemate laughing our asses off, watching the other desperately trying to stay at the tail of that damn TIE fighter just with a mouse... 🤣

It's interesting how everyone in here who bought a 486 in 1992 had a 210mb HDD. That must have been the sweet spot.

I remember my computer starting out as very high end in 1992, and with each passing year becoming increasingly obsolete. I got the CD-ROM upgrade in 1994, but by that time my 486 was becoming so slow it barely played the CD-ROM software.

Strangely, all these classic machines seem more interesting to read about and immensely pleasurable (though occasionally marred by some frustrating conventional RAM, TSRs, sound drivers, etc. moments) to use them. They still feel....special.. to be used even now. Or maybe it's just me.

My uncle purchased the very first computer I used at home in 1991, a Packard Bell 486dx/33 with 4MB of ram, 60MB Seagate hard drive, 5.25 & 3.5 floppy drives, integrated 512K Oak video chip, 1200 baud modem, and 14in. monitor. Was later upgraded with a Media Vision Multimedia Kit, 120MB Western Digital hard drive, and 16MB of ram (for a total of 20MB). Doing these upgrades with him is what started my computer hobby - a hobby which I still have a strong interest today.

I wasn't even alive in 1992. Shows how young I am. 🤣 Even then my family didn't get its first PC until 1996.

I don't quite remember. I think I was still mainly using my C64 for gaming and an old 8086 for some programming.

Upgraded to a 486 in 93...that was an incredible boost in performance 😀