I remember Computer Shopper! We used it to find parts for our 486DX4-120. Good times.

1991 a 286 clone, no sound card, amber monochrome monitor, 40mb seagate harddisk

Yeah I really liked those Computer Shoppers from the olden times. I had a subscription for a while.

I also bought stuff from TC Computers once. AMD 486DX4 120 and MTI mobo, I believe.

In 1990 I didn't have my own PC. If I remember correctly at work there was one IBM AT286 (the genuine article!) that had been there for a few years. This was a 512KB model with a 30MB MFM hard disk, Princeton graphics and IBM PC-Dos 3.2 and was used for CAD work and little else. I think it was at that time, or possibly a year later, the company started buying 12MHz Dell 286 PCs with EGA graphics, 40MB hard drives and a whole 640k memory running MS-DOS 3.3, again for CAD. This was my first work PC and served me for many years until it was replaced with a 486 when we started using Windows 3.11.

At home it was around 1992 that I got my first PC, a Tandon 386SX25 with 1MB RAM, VGA graphics anda 40MB hard disk. Not long after I upgraded it to the maximum 4MB RAM, deciding that 1MB simply wasn't enough to run Windows 3.0 and Excel 4! The big game I was playing at the time was Lemmings. In 1994 I upgraded it with a massive 340MB SCSI hard drive in an external enclosure, having filled the onboard 40MB drive, but the drive never worked properly so I ended up building my own PC based on an AMD 486DX40 based system. Also later that year I added a SCSI ZIP drive, Sound Galaxy sound card and Sony double speed CD-Rom. Since then I have been slowly upgrading the PC replacing some bits and keeping others. Things stalled a little around 2002 when I did the last upgrade to an Athlon XP2000+ based system, but I am now just finishing a new upgrade to an AMD PhenomII X4 955 based system. What might be surprising is that I have only just removed the 320MB SCSI drive from the system (for some reason there is a clash between the SATA and SCSI system that makes SCSI hard drives and CDs unusable in the new system), but the ZIP drive is still in there going strong. The 320MB SCSI drive is not being retired either as it will be going into a new server I am building using the old Athlon board which will contain backups of the main PC, provide access to older hardware, provide printer sharing and, more importantly, allow me to run Windows 98 natively so that I can play some of the old copy protected games I still love.

QBiN wrote:

Anonymous Coward wrote:

You had a 486/33 with 8mb in 1990? You must have paid a bloody fortune for it.

It wasn't cheap. My parents are immigrants and they sacrificed a lot for us.

If I recall correctly, that 486/33 cost more than $3000 new at the time and was purchased from TC ("Treasure Chest") Computers in Louisiana. We found them through Computer Shopper magazine which used to be nearly as fat as the phone book back then. I think TC was eventually bought up by Insight computers.

I think I bought a motherboard from TC - I wonder if they're still in business? I used to love looking at their ads in Computer Shopper.

I realize I'm posting to a hella old thread here, but I thought I would add my system from 1990:

My "Frankenclone" -
16mhz 286 with 1mb RAM
CGA graphics, Tandy color monitor
multi I/O board
30MB MFM HD
DOS 5.0?

I remember playing Wing Commander, Wolfenstein, SSI goldbox games, and Dragonstrike on this thing.

A few years later before leaving for college I upgraded to a 486sx-33 with 2 or maybe 4mb of RAM, can't remember for sure. Wish I could have gotten the DX for the FPU but couldn't afford it. The difference was like $300 at that time. I also picked up a 120MB IDE HD. Later on I would get into computer graphics in a big way and would really wish I had the DX-33 🙁

In 1990, I didn't have my own computer. My dad had a 286 contained in a massive tower. I played some games on it; none of which I remember. At the time, I was more occupied playing with Legos and stealing pudding and cake out of the fridge and watching Pee Wee's Playhouse. Two years later, when I started elementary school, all the classrooms had Apple IIe Platinums on which I played MathBlaster and other games.

I didnt had a own system, it was more a family computer.. My dad bought one in 1987-1988. In 1990 we had still this computer:

Headstart explorer XT without the harddisk upgrade
Monocolor monochroom screen
XT-8088 processor at 4.7 Mhz..
720KB floppy drive only
Headstart bus mouse..

But we didnt had the color screen option, that was to expensive in that time.

When it was 1993 my dad bought a faster 386/DX 33 from Highschreen
512KB Trident VGA card
80MB off harddisk
1.44MB floppy drive.
4MB of memory
5.25 inch floppy drive
I/O interface and harddisk floppy controller.

NO CD-ROM or any soundcard!

Like this one:

I hadnt no money to buy one for my own.. When it was in the pentium II time then i got going working and earned some money and could buy an Pentium 1 233MMX stuff to build my own computer. So this was my owned first system.

Then i sold the pentium 233Mhz stuff to my dad, and i upgraded to a pentium III 600 or 900mhz (didnt knowing that anymore)

Then i had problems with the processor. He always got to hot so my system still keeps freezing. I bought that processor from a really bad company.. They said that the processor was good and dont wanted to give me a new one under garantee.. After that i hadnt a working system. I trowed the Pentium III anyway because of the problems (because i was very angry on the shop they could help.).. Then i bought a AMD Athlon system with a athlon thunderbird SLOT A 700Mhz processor.. Then the board i bought gave me problems.. Often bleu screens and hanging system.. That motherboard was a ABIT KA7-100..

Then i got going to a computer shop, and asked if they could has a solution for it.. They couldnt help me for a solution, because didnt know whats was wrong.. After that a red about the north bridge could be the problem.. So throwed that away and looked for a cheap option.
Then i choosed to buy a gigabyte - 7IXE.. That was a very good and stable board for its time!! I had this system about 5 YEARS. (Some thow there system away after 1-2 YEARS) So i enjoyed that system very much. But was very slow then, so then i got go with the AMD ATHLON 64 3200+ S939..Then a few rebuild s775 rigs..

I didn't have a PC in 1990. I was playing on my cousin's Amiga 500 back then 😀 We didn't get a PC until 93/94.

1990... I was in pre-school.

Too young for my own PC, but my dad had a PC/AT clone with a Maths Co-Processor, because he used AutoCAD.

In 1990 I was in elementary school. I didn't have a PC of my own yet. But we had a computer class at school. There was a room with 10 Amstrad 1512 pcs, and we used to form groups of 3-4 persons that would sit in front of each pc. We were learning the Logo language and design stuff, which when we completed, were going to print on an Amstrad dot matrix printer. The happiest day was the one that school was going to close for summer or vacation. Our teacher would let us play games. There were some disks with Zaxxon and Digger, but we could also bring our own, if we had any.

Tandon 286 with hercules gfx, green monochrome screen, 20 MB HDD, 5.25 inch and an added (1337) 3.5 inch floppy and 1 MB of RAM.

besides that Commodore Amiga 500 and Commodore C64.

The old 286 lasted pretty long, but when i bought my first own 486 (DLC-33 with a whooping TWO 62 MB HDDs that were doublespaced. And SVGA, yeah baby!) in 1993 (Used of course) i barely cared about anything else any more.

Wow! you guys have great memories... I was 14 then, still using my family's old IBM XT clone with a CGA monitor, 5.25" floppy drive and Sidewinder joystick. Played countless hours of Phantasie, Xenon 2, Thexder, Taipan, Mines of Titan, 1942. Good times..good times.

Atari 130XE

Non-branded "chinaish" XT 8086, EGA, 10MB HDD, 5.25 Floppy.
In Golden Axe loading time after select player screen...

took more than 10 min 😀

I was five then, my Texas Instruments Little Professor was all I had.

1990 my family bought a 386sx 20 MHz with 2 MB of RAM, EGA graphics and no sound card except the speaker to replace the 286 that broke earlier that year. Until its retirement in 1994 we upgraded it with a new harddrive, a math co-processor, 4 more Megs of RAM, a Soundblaster 16 and SVGA graphics.

I also didn't own a computer back then. We didn't have a computer in the home (except for consoles) till 1999 or so.

Robin4 wrote:

When it was 1993 my dad bought a faster 386/DX 33 from Highschreen 512KB Trident VGA card 80MB off harddisk 1.44MB floppy drive. […]
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When it was 1993 my dad bought a faster 386/DX 33 from Highschreen
512KB Trident VGA card
80MB off harddisk
1.44MB floppy drive.
4MB of memory
5.25 inch floppy drive
I/O interface and harddisk floppy controller.

NO CD-ROM or any soundcard!

That's exactly the one I got just before going into high school!

I LOVED that PC. So many memories. That summer leading up to highschool was magical. I worked 4 weeks and got enough money for a Sound Blaster (4 weeks, can you believe it) and hearing Monkey Island 2 and Fate of Atlantis with this card was just so special...

This one:

I saw this Highscreen Highlights magazine one eBay Germany and purchased it right away. And I couldn't believe my luck when it had a PC ad of exactly the PC I had as a kid!

My family did not own a PC in 1990, it was not until about 1993/94 we got a Gateway 2000 486DX2 66.