in 1990 the "family computer" was a "turbo" XT clone which we'd had since '87 or so. Pretty generic, I was 10 then and didn't know much about hardware, but I remember the case label had "MINTA" on it (or was it the monitor?):

- 8088 @ 4.77 MHz, or 7.16 MHz (I think) with Turbo on
- 640KB RAM
- dual-mode CGA/MDA card (had to run this .COM file to switch modes)
- monochrome green monitor
- 2x 5.25" 360KB floppy drives
- 20 MB HDD (newly-added)
- 1200 bps modem (same)
- glorious pure PC Speaker-only sound
- some kind of multi-I/O card, at least the realtime clock was on it(!)
- MS-DOS 3.2

I think it was the same year that my dad upgraded it with an EGA card (Paradise?) and monitor.
A couple of years later the whole setup was trashed in favor of a 386-DX/33 with a SB16, CD-ROM, Trident SVGA, the works...

Packard Bell 286 12mhz IIRC 16mhz with turbo mode or mabye it was 8mhz to 12mhz.
VGA Monitor
No Mouse
1mb of ram
40mb HD.
1 3.5" floppy
1 5.25" floppy
Came with MS-DOS 4.0

My Dad recently found this receipt for our first computer. 386/40 with a 120mb HD and what looks to be a pretty decent video card for the time.

I was not very informed of the PC tech those days but all I remember is this :

1.

- It was a IBM PC Clone.

- 8088 XT 6/10MHz System -
I remember the numbers 10 in the LED when Turbo was ON and 6 otherwise. Now I know they're 10MHz and 6MHz respectively.

- I'm quite sure it had 512kb RAM.

- Had a CGA monitor.

- 10MB Seagate HDD

- Dual 5.25" 360kb FDD

- MS-DOS 3.3

I remembered playing Test Drive II (or I) in this system, along with Zaxxon and Alleycats.

Most of the time using Wordstar 4.0, though and printing out using a Dot-Matrix printer, the sound of which may have woken up my neighbours if I printed at late nights.

....and...... I was lucky enough to have an upgrade in that same year :

2.

- IBC PC Clone

- 80286 16MHz with Turbo On, 12MHz Otherwise

- 2MB RAM - (640k+Ext.384k + 1MB Expanded Memory Board)

- EGA Card upgraded to VGA Card (Both cards unknown make - was still not well versed in computer components those days! )

- EGA Monitor upgraded to VGA Monitor

- 40MB Seagate HDD

- Dual 5.25" 1.2MB HD FDDs, later upgraded to Combo 5.25"+3.5" HD FDD.

- And later, was extremely overjoyed when I got my first Sound Blaster 1.5!!!!

- MS-DOS 4 later upgraded to MS-DOS 5

And then came Secret of Monkey Island, Wing Commander I, Ultima VI, King's Quest V, - and after using these with the VGA graphics and the Sound Blaster sounds, my life has never been the same! 😁

I was looking at these specs again and suddenly realised how much things have changed. Its amazing to think most of these 1990 are less powerful than even the most basic modern mobile phone, and the graphics were much poorer too. I'm not even talking about smart phones, I'm talking basic ones like the Nokia C2. What's also amazing is the software we used to run on these old systems. Lemmings, Commander Keen, Test Drive and the like. The graphics were basic and the sounds even more so, but they were, and still are, addictive to play in a way many modern games can't match. I know its been said before, but modern games seem to be all about graphics and effects and gameplay comes second. In 1990 the only thing that could make a game sell was gameplay. That's why games like Wolfenstein and Lemmings were such a success, and that's why we still like to get them out and play them now.

I was just wondering, did anyone have a modem in 1990, and did you use it to play multiplayer games? They probably weren't the sort of thing we would think of now due to the very low speeds the modems could manage (had they managed 14.4K by then?), but Im pretty sure games where players took turns did exist and could be played over modem links. I'd be interested to know as its something I never did.

The marvel of progress and miniaturization. After all, the calculator I keep at my desk, a Ti81 circa 1991, has a Z80 cpu; the same thing that powered desktop CPM machines of ten years before.

In 1990 the only multiplayer gaming I did was using BBS Door games. Those were turn based tho. (LORD, Tradewars, food fight, etc)
The 2400 baud modem in my 286 and the fact that I didn't really have any multiplayer DOS games meant I didn't play any of those on my 286.

When I got m 486DX4/100 in late 1995\1996 with a 28.8 baud modem I then started to play around with multiplayer Doom, Falcon 3, Mechwarrior etc....and that's really the only multiplayer I ever bothered with even up to today ....except for LAN gaming every couple of years.

I actually was introduced to multiplayer with the first PC that was actually mine. PS/ValuePoint with a 486DX (33mhz? 25mhz?) and my dad decided to install and introduce me to this game called Descent.

My first PC was an IBM PC 5150, complete with the original keyboard, green monitor and dot-matrix printer. I got it as a birthday present from my uncle. But that was not in 1990, more like 1994 or so.
Not much later I got a HP Vectra with a 486, I think 66MHz, and 16MB RAM. That was my first 'real' gaming system. I still have the original 14" monitor that came with it, which I still use with my PII system. so for me that is the ultimate retro experience 😀

markoldgamer wrote:

I was looking at these specs again and suddenly realised how much things have changed. Its amazing to think most of these 1990 are less powerful than even the most basic modern mobile phone, and the graphics were much poorer too. I'm not even talking about smart phones, I'm talking basic ones like the Nokia C2.

mobile phones these days are hundreds of times more powerful than your average desktop computer from 25 years ago. Yet 95% of that power is squandered on stupid things like scrolling and zooming a fuckload of eye-candy UI widgets - and these freaking things still lag and stutter doing just that.

an old machine usually gave you all it could, because the limits were there to be pushed. Watching an old 16-bit system (with 1% the power of a modern-day glorified earpiece) giving you a real-time, fast-paced action game with sound and meticulous artwork in 4-bit color - that's a rewarding experience. Much more than watching all these powerful modern computers and devices struggling just to keep up with the latest bloat.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

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

Yeah that the right one!! Only the screen could be different.. And the harddisk was build in that 5,25 inch slot..

For the time it was a good computer, but dont liked it really much because the parts they where used where cheapass..

The motherboard had only 6 expension slots.
VGA card was cheap (Trident was almost the cheapest you could get)
And the cpu couldnt be replaced.. It was welded on the board..

Our highscreen, never getting a upgrade.. But after that my bought just a new one.. That was a Highscreen 80486 DX4 50mhz or so (didnt know the speed of the processor)

Yea the HDD was removable. Quite the feature back in those days 😀

I did upgrade the video card later. The original one died so we took it back for warranty. When I got it all games ran slower. They installed an OAK card 🙁

The ET4000 certainly improved things and IMO for an ISA video card is as good as it gets.

Robin4 wrote:

The motherboard had only 6 expension slots.
VGA card was cheap (Trident was almost the cheapest you could get)
And the cpu couldnt be replaced.. It was welded on the board..

Well, I think you ask too much for a 1993 386 😵 . In 1993 if you were lucky you would have a sound card. So that's 3 cards it total(in addition to vga+multi i/o). Why have more than 6 slots? Also trident was very common those days. I believe there were cheaper and worse cards than that... And if your cpu was running at 33MHz and was soldered, probably it was a 386SX.

In my machine there was a 40MHz AMD. Who knows if it would have been possible to change the FSB on that machine 😀

I thought I'd add my experience too. My uncle bought me a computer back in 1989.
Acer 500 PC/XT. 8088, 4.77/8mhz turbo selectable, 2 x 360kb drives, 256kb ram and a Hercules green monitor. I actually saw one of these on ebay a few years ago 🙁 🙁 Missed out 🙁

Didn't really get to play many games as most of them were CGA games provided to me by my uncle. Didn't really understand the concept of RAM and a lot of games required 384KB or more! Had to head over to my friends place who had a Amstrad PC1640, 20MB HDD and EGA graphics! Ended up buying one of these about 8 years ago.. then threw it away because I didn't think I'd ever use it again 🙁

First upgrade was a few years later to a 386SX20 with 1MB ram, but it was built by a dodgey computer shop and most of the time I had to run it at 8mhz (I think) because the RAM chips weren't fast enough. In between those two I had built many computers for friends including IBM PC5160's and a few 286's.

First sound card was an Adlib which I bought for $99 AU which I thought was a steal, until Sound Blasters dropped their price literally a week later to $99!

I was an avid fan of all Sierra games, so the only one's I could really play were the early AGI based ones. 😢

Only computer I owned in 1990 would have been an Amstrad cpc464,if I still had it.

At work we were using Apricot pc's, I think Xen-i's, and we had just moved our main forecasting system to them from a massive ICL we had in the corner. It was the size of a big desk, and apparently contained a Z80 processor, ran some form of BASIC and had two 8-inch disk drives.

Later that year I think I moved on and got a Toshiba T3200sx, lovely but heavy laptop with the orange plasma screen.

Packard Bell Legend II 16MHz
4MB RAM
20MB HDD
-DOS 5.0
-PCTools something.something
-EGA, later VGA graphics
-Adlib, later SoundBlaster sound
-First fun game on PC was Battlehawks 1942. That was the game that blew me away and made me realize how awesome PCs were for gaming. Later I got Their Finest Hour: The Battle of Britain, and that was an improvement over BH1942. I never cared for Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe.

BTW I had a Color Computer, and an earlier poster had disparaged his CoCo2 as a gaming platform. I should remind him that, although officially licensed games were scarce, the CoCo had plenty of people writing clones, some of which were much better even than the officially licensed versions on other platforms! Donkey Kong, for example, was made into a clone called Donkey King, and it was the *only* version which had all 4 levels! Someone apparently later did a complete port of the arcade Donkey Kong to a CoCo3 w/ 512kB and it worked flawlessly! With the exception of its sound capabilities, I would have to say that the CoCo, for gaming, was SUPERIOR to the Commodore/Apple II/Atari computers popular back then.

In 1990 I was 10 years old, and was still using my Amstrad CPC 464 which I got for Christmas in 1987. Later in the year or possibly 1991 I got a Sega Mastersystem. But in 1993 I persuaded my Parents to buy a 486 - shame they came home with an SLC-33 with 2MB ram (couldn't even run Doom). In 1995 I spent my own £1300 on a Pentium.

In 1990 I was still using a BBC Micro. The first PC didn't come until Christmas 1993 (486SX/25).

The only computers I owned (actually my family did) was first an IBM 5150 with 5151 screen, CoCo III with tons of joysticks, games, and assorted other stuff, a CoCo II, and lastly a Tandy HX1000. All were given to us for free. Mid 90s we got 286s, 386s, 486s and a pentium 75 (I think).