Upgraded from a 66MHz DX2 in 1997, I think, to a K6-233, which lasted to around 1999, where motherboard and cpu were upgraded to Celeron 300A@450

Actually, the K6 rig had a PMMX233, at first when I got it, since the K6's was not on stock ..

my father bought me a 386dx40 back in 93/94 which was around ~$1000 the first pentiums were just showing up and were like ~$3000 486 were also still expensive

I still have that 386 board and use it, but different case and other parts

the 386 was all we could afford/willing to spend on a.... toy

in 95 I upgraded the motherboard to a dx266 then somwhere 96/97 upgraded the board the amd586 133 then from there I don't think upgraded until after 2000

I ran a 486DX2/66 well into the late 90s. Originally a 286/16 I got in 1990-91. Not as gamer so no issue. Then got a second hand Celeron 450 which ran win98FE and used that up until about 2014. Both those systems still run without issue. For fun and amusement I picked up an HP slimeline system in about 2001. It was basicly gutted apart from the mobo and had a 200MMX cpu. Fitted 32megs of ram a 4gig hdd from the parts I had aquired over the years and ran win95 for a bit then decided to learn a bit about Linux. Experimented with Red Hat 7.3. To my surprise it picked up all hardware including sound but usb support wasn't that flash so it ended up with Xandros 2.0 Bussiness Edition. Ram went to 256megs, added another meg of vram from a scrapped pci video card. Used it to test out OS/2 and a few other odd ball OSs. Still fires up reliably. Later P1s are good systems for early to mid 90s hardware and software as generally they can auto detect hdds and have 2 or more ISA slots. I use a P1 166 mobo for this task.

Not many folk got the original P1s. It wasn't until they reached around 133Mhz they started to take off iirc. I've got a Compaq All-in-one 75mhz P1 with all the original CDs and disks. A steal at $NZ50.

In 1994, I was rocking a 486sx-33. I was also a Senior in High School transitioning to Freshman in College. Funds were the tightest they had ever been at this point in my life.

There have been times in my life when I could afford the latest tech and hugged technology curve very closely. In 2014, when I knew I was about to move in with my then girlfriend and start a family, I bought the best, at the time a 5960x which I overclocked to 4.3ghz but I haven’t upgraded for nearly 5 years now. Partially I think CPU development has slowed in this period, typically 10% improvement between generations but also I developed my recent obsession with Retro computing during this period which isn’t helping either. I’m way off the curve now, but my system doesn’t feel slow yet either.

Coming from a former communist country, that only gained its independence in 1991, the hardware market here in early '90s was in its infancy, prices were high and wages were low. So I only got my first PC in 1993, a humble 386 SX-25 with 2 MB of RAM and 512k Trident graphics. Which then, due to motherboard problems causing lock-ups, got upgraded free of charge under warranty, first to SX-33 and then to DX-40.

I only upgraded to a Pentium 100 in '95, after spending the summer after my first year of high-school working my butt off in my uncles' construction business. That P-100 was the last time I would buy a complete pre-built computer. From then on I would always just upgrade bits of it at a time. Being a high-school then uni student from mid '90s to early '00s, money was tight, so I mostly made due with lower range parts, but upgrading them relatively regularly and overclocking them to get some extra performance.

That Pentium 100, later overclocked to 120, lasted me about three years, until '98, when it got upgraded to a K6-2 333. Few months later I also upgraded the graphics from some 2 MB S3 or Trident PCI card to a Riva TNT, my very first 3D card. In those years I would in turn upgrade either the CPU (and motherboard if necessary) or graphics, as finances allowed. Occasionally mixing in some other upgrade, as needed (RAM, HDD, sound, etc.). I really liked the K6-2, but after about a year it got swapped out for an Abit BX-6 v2 and a Celeron 366, which swiftly got overclocked to 550. Then after a while the CPU got upgraded to a Celeron 633@950, then graphics to a GeForce 2 MX, but all that's already well into year 2000.

486DX2/486DX4 were pretty common "gaming" systems all the way up to 1997. And low-end Pentiums/Cyrix 686/AMD K5 just started to be affordable in 1996.

Until 97 I was still running a 486SLC2 66MHz. Upgraded to a Cyrix 686-200 on a shitty no brand 430TX board with 32MB RAM - Cost me AU$300+ at the time.

Got first computer into my home at 1998, when we got 12MHz 286 for free from downstairs neighbours.
About 1999, i found out that the seller in one computer shop has 20MHz 386 laying around. Sold me that for... 6€ in current money. (It was a big money back then and i was just ~9 years old then)
Around 2000, my father found out that their workplace is auctioning off old computers for the starting price of 0.06€ (converted currency) and we got the first Pentium into our house for around 6-7€ once again.

Everything after that went very quick. Up to around 2005, we bought many computers from those auctions, latest ones were some Pentium 3, and then started to buy used and new computers from public - had some celeron D machines, my own built first machine was celeron 800MHz, later built a sempron 2800+ based machine etc.

So this is the history of computers, when you pretty much have 0€ budget for those machines. 😜

But i'm super thankful for that experience - even though i was born in 1990, my "computer history" covers everything from early 80s until today. 😀

My early PCs were something like (give or take a year here and there, not entirely sure):
1988: 8088 at 9.57 MHz, 640kb, Hercules (no HDD). Upgraded with 20 MB HDD and VGA over the years.
1991: 386SX-16, VGA, 1 MB, 40 MB HDD. Upgraded to 5 MB, 170 MB HDD and Sound Blaster Pro 2 over the years.
1994: 486DX2-66, VLB, 4 MB, 520 MB HDD. Upgraded to 8 MB over the years. Initially just used the SBPro2, later added a GUS MAX.
1996: Pentium 133, PCI, 16 MB, 1.6 GB HDD (no 3D accelerator). Inherited the SBPro2/GUS MAX config.

After that it gets hazy, as I went to university and mainly worked with hand-me-downs and systems cobbled together from parts. Not very representative either, I suppose.
By 2006 I bought my first 'new/complete' PC again, which was a Core2 Duo E6600. But that's probably too new for this topic (it can and does run Windows 10, and is still used, mainly for recording purposes with CuBase).

It's very subjective and discretionary. For me 1993 period correct build will be 286 or 386SX/DX. 1995 period correct build will be anything from 286 to Pentium. Why? Because I live in Poland and we were using such configs back then on regular basis. In fact it changed in the begining of 21st century when our PC builds started to be on par with the rest of the world.

For example some would say that Sound Blaster 16 in 286 or 386SX is not period correct. For me it is, and if software supports it correctly - then why not to use it?

Just go with what you have on hand and can afford,
“Function over appearance”.

I won’t build anything less than a 486dx50mhz PC.
Why?
Answer: used parts are un-reliable and expensive.

So i mainly use my AMD K6-3+500mhz and Athlon 800mhz computers for DOS games.
A 486dx-50 for really old games.

Nothing older than that.

Video cards :
S3
ex4000
Ex6000
Trident
Cirrus logic
Nvidia
Voodoo

Sound cards:
Sound blaster pro 2.0
AWE64
Live 5.1
Audugy 2zs

Network cards
3com 3c509
Intel
AMD
Netgear

Hard-drives
IDE 7200rpm
CF cards

The Serpent Rider wrote:

486DX2/486DX4 were pretty common "gaming" systems all the way up to 1997. And low-end Pentiums/Cyrix 686/AMD K5 just started to be affordable in 1996.

Yeah, it's like building a P75 would be period correct for 1994, but period *affordable* correct would have been a P75 in 1996/97. I was a teenager in the 90's so it's only now I've learned how un-affordabe the early Pentiums were, until like you said around 1996+. I never realized how few people actually had Pentium systems and still ran 486 systems until the mid/late 90's.

dave343 wrote:

Yeah, it's like building a P75 would be period correct for 1994, but period *affordable* correct would have been a P75 in 1996/97. I was a teenager in the 90's so it's only now I've learned how un-affordabe the early Pentiums were, until like you said around 1996+. I never realized how few people actually had Pentium systems and still ran 486 systems until the mid/late 90's.

Yes, in those days, new CPU families were very expensive. 386, 486 and Pentium were first introduced in the server/workstation market, and were way out of the pricerange of regular office machines, let alone consumers.
This started to change when the Pentium was not really superceded by the Pentium Pro, but the Pentium Pro was more like the predecessor of the Xeon line, aimed only at workstations/servers.
Then the Pentium Pro was reworked into a more affordable Pentium II for consumers, and the first real Xeons were introduced as replacement for the original Pentium Pro, for servers/workstations.
From then on, there were actual consumer and high-end product lines within a single product family/generation. Rather than consumers buying systems from one or two generations ago.
This was further extended by having a low-end product line in the form of the Celeron.

When my family got our first PC (Compaq Presario 9232 in January 1996) it came as a bundle with a 15" Compaq CRT, keyboard, mouse. Total cost was about $3200 at the time. Inflation adjusted, that is the equivalent of spending $5,223.04 today. This computer was used as a primary desktop until around 1999, when we got an Emachines Emonster 550 Pentium III, for under $1100. But, I still have the Presario and it looks brand new and works great for retro gaming.

We were fairly well-off Western Europeans, but still kept using our 1987 IBM PS/2 386-16 (DX before the term 'DX' had been invented) until 1995. In January I got my first own PC, a Pentium 60, and near the end of the year my mother upgraded to an IBM Aptiva with Pentium 100 (IBM again because she worked for them and could get both employee discounts and tax deductions for it). As a poor student, I kept using that P60 until mid 1999 when I upgraded to a Celeron 366. My mother kept using that P100 for quite a bit longer, unless I'm mistaken we went straight from that to an Athlon64...

Between ~2000 and 2010 I was pretty much up to speed with current hardware, having an income to afford it and the (perceived) need for it, and it was much, much cheaper than a decade earlier anyway, but after that last Core i7 I bought new, it became less and less relevant to upgrade as I didn't play new games and so long as you upgrade to SSD and ensure enough RAM any Core i5 or i7 is still more than enough for general purposes. I only upgraded once since, to an i7 2600 I got for free, as I wanted to downsize into mITX so needed a new motherboard anyway and my daughter needed a better PC, so she got the old i7 860. Still running that i7 2600 as of 2019, and my main interest now is replacing air cooling with water cooling as even with big slow fans and a Fractal Design case it's still too loud for my tastes.

The first computer that was mine (or well, the family's anyhow) was a dell PC with a pentium IV northwood 2.66ghz. This was 2004 or 2005. I think it had 128mb of RAM with no dedicated graphics. Probably a 40gb hard drive. I think my parent's paid maybe 500$ for it and the monitor.

My mother had a friend with a computer that ran windows 95. I couldn't tell you what was in it, only that it was dog slow and it took more than an hour to do something as simple as check your email. This was maybe 2002 or 2003, so it was ancient even at the time.

Computers up until the mid 2000's usually started at 1000$ or more. It wasn't until emachines and dell starting pushing out mass produced, minimally configured machines and monitors that it finally became affordable. I used that dell pentium IV until 2008, when I got my first job and high school and built a PC with my own money

A core2duo E8400 with an HD 4850 and 4gb of RAM. Still windows XP because vista was garbage and windows 7 was still rumors. The best GPU at the time was a GTX 260, which with the performance to match a 9800gx2 in a single GPU was a monster few could afford (crysis 1080p high at 30fps! Insanity!). The best CPU at the time was the QX9650, with a price point of $999, all for the privilege of that sweat unlocked multiplier. The debate at the time was whether or not to get a fast dual core like the E8 series, or a quad core like the still capable Q6600 or one of the more expensive woldfale quad cores. In retrospect, I think I made the right choice there. Not much long after the first nehalem i7s came out and blew everything out of the water. I upgraded to the much more affordable phenom ii x6 1090t instead. It was a decent CPU, but the the real pull on it was the price and the sex appeal of having 6 cores.

dionb wrote:

We were fairly well-off Western Europeans, but still kept using our 1987 IBM PS/2 386-16 (DX before the term 'DX' had been invented) until 1995. In January I got my first own PC, a Pentium 60, and near the end of the year my mother upgraded to an IBM Aptiva with Pentium 100 (IBM again because she worked for them and could get both employee discounts and tax deductions for it). As a poor student, I kept using that P60 until mid 1999 when I upgraded to a Celeron 366. My mother kept using that P100 for quite a bit longer, unless I'm mistaken we went straight from that to an Athlon64...

Between ~2000 and 2010 I was pretty much up to speed with current hardware, having an income to afford it and the (perceived) need for it, and it was much, much cheaper than a decade earlier anyway, but after that last Core i7 I bought new, it became less and less relevant to upgrade as I didn't play new games and so long as you upgrade to SSD and ensure enough RAM any Core i5 or i7 is still more than enough for general purposes. I only upgraded once since, to an i7 2600 I got for free, as I wanted to downsize into mITX so needed a new motherboard anyway and my daughter needed a better PC, so she got the old i7 860. Still running that i7 2600 as of 2019, and my main interest now is replacing air cooling with water cooling as even with big slow fans and a Fractal Design case it's still too loud for my tastes.

That was probably the realistic norm back then too... because as mentioned many of my friends ran their P1 systems up until 2000+. As for today's tech, CPU's haven't really advanced much. I still run a i7 2600.

My mid 90's PC was an "upgrade" from an Amiga, it was like trading in a Vespa for a big heavy truck. Sure I could do more with it but it felt less nimble, slower to do the same tasks. Up until relatively recently I was never satisfied with the performance of consumer PC hardware.

dave343 wrote:

So I know we all build period correct PC's on here, and limit builds to what was available in a given month/year...

Well, you can count at least one person on here out of that tribe. I'm nostalgic for the software mostly. I looked to see how good I can make a system with no compatibility issues; taking into consideration heat and noise, meaning a modern case with large fans running at low RPM and wonderful Noctua coolers I would have killed for back when the software was current.
Sony CRTs, IBM PS/2 keyboards and early optical Microsoft mice get the thumbs up for compatibility and standing the test of time. Crappy gameport gamepads are unavoidable for some DOS games but running a SATA SSD on DOS/98/NT is bliss and I have no desire to re-create the exact PC experience of the 90s when it's just an arbitrary choice for something worse.
When I found out about Asrock's 775i65 board I was stoked, supporting 45nm CPUs, SATA, DDR400 and 8x AGP while running the Intel 865 chipset with all the compatibility which comes with it. Nvidia's GPU's from 2000-2003 stomp on period correct; delivering the perfect minimum frame times that mean I'm enjoying the experience rather than recalling what was considered acceptable back in the day. The only real compromise was having to use a Soundblaster Live but that has its upsides too.
There's no need to go overboard, stick to sensible limits for what can actually run reliably; like 512MB RAM and 16GB partitions for Win98, Nvidia GPUs which run the 45.23 drivers, 800mhz bus CPUs for the 865 chipset (1066mhz actually runs slower). This wasn't meant to be a long post and I've always shied away from anything that could be seen as showing off but I just wanted to illustrate just how far period correct is from what's possible. I understand everyone has nostalgia for different things but personally I'm happy to not have to use most 90s PC hardware. Just a shame that Theme Park only wants to run on a 386, that's where there's an actual need for period correct.