In Poland the Commodore 64 was the most popular 8-bit machine. I also think Amigas were mostly popular in Europe while Macs in the US.

True but these aren't particularly obscure, while the Sharp MZ-800 failed so much in the rest of the world that a big number of them was actually supposedly exchanged for kitchenware from Czechoslovakia, and that was the reason why it was much cheaper here than most equivalent 8-bitters (I know that it was cheaper than the weaker ZX Spectrum at least).

The only ones that I can think of are the Elektronika BK for the USSR and the Bulgarian Apple II clones, but those were really a local product. The Sharp MZ-800 is notable for becoming very popular in a country 10 000 km away from its home.

I've witnessed the Gateway2000 P75 a damn lot in the US, particularly with it coming without cache leading to a slowashell PC not even capable of Quake at more than 8fps. It's mostly the 1995 refresh (with Action!, Windows Entertainment Packs 1-4) i've seen rather than the 1994 launch

None, just an endless mountain of Netburst.

I think Netburst is all over the place because of enterprise applications. At work probably 80+ percent of our machines are Pentium D, and a few Pentium 4HT. I salvage every C2D I can to upgrade those machines when they start feeling slow.

I'm from Oregon, you're from Washington. Intel's backyard. Maybe it's the Northwest buying local? 😀

haha most likely, heck I have a step relative who's uncle works for intel. His old gaming computer had a Intel Confidential 3.06 HT prescott 775 chip in it. Unlocked multiplier, OC'd ati 9550 and a Zalmann HSF made for a SICK LAN rig back in the day 😀 for some reason all the 775 p4 systems around where I live seem to be Dells that were hit hard by the Capacitor Plague. So everything here is 478 netburst or 775 Core2.

Optiplex GX260, 270, and 280? Those have BAD capacitors. The later 520, 620, 745, 755 are QUITE good by comparison. And they have that amazingly cool Dell BTX form factor with the huge 120mm front case exhaust.

Yep! After a quick image search those model numbers match up to what I see around here a lot. Sorry for the minor derail OP 😜

AidanExamineer wrote:

Optiplex GX260, 270, and 280? Those have BAD capacitors. The later 520, 620, 745, 755 are QUITE good by comparison. And they have that amazingly cool Dell BTX form factor with the huge 120mm front case exhaust.

The 520s and on are not necessarily better. They've also got capacitor problems. I've already re-capped one 620 and one 745, and I've got a 520 motherboard here that needs re-capping.

Yeah speaking of which I just took a glance at my first computer I personally ever purchased and it's got some bulging caps too. I may have to save it.

It's an IBM 8183 so nothing special but still...

From what I've heard PCjr's are a bit obscure outside of the USA, not sure about that for sure though so don't quote me on that. 😜

Amiga in Europe in general , and the UK in particular. Its not just the hardware, but the software too , Amiga versions of games like Monkey Island or the Sierra Adventure games are everywhere, but the PC versions are harder to get.

King_Corduroy wrote:

From what I've heard PCjr's are a bit obscure outside of the USA, not sure about that for sure though so don't quote me on that. 😜

Indeed I've never seen a PCjr or a Tandy in Germany, don't know if they even tried to sell them here. Of course lots of C64, Amiga, Atari ST but those are hardly obscure.
Of course early Acorn machines (BBC computer?) probably never sold outside the UK, I saw one there (IIRC about 1992? Later RISC PCs were sold here, though probably not many). Also ZX Spectrum, I never saw one here. Most 8bit computer which were not C64/C128 were Schneider (Amstrad) CPC.

The PCjr was not sold outside the US/CA (except in AU on a limited basis). It was a total failure as a product. Tandy 1000 was a huge success but only US/CA based.

MSX was huge in JP and very popular in NL.

NEC PC88/98 was huge but only in JP.

PeterLI wrote:

MSX was huge in JP and very popular in NL.

...But very obscure here in the US. I actually have, in storage, one of the few MSX models that was actually released here in the US, a Yamaha CX5M music computer. Used to belong to my dad. It's actually a bit unique in that it has an FM synth module installed, and it also has some software to go along with it, like the FM voicing program. Last I checked, it did still work. Maybe someday I'll get a couple games for it. 😜

Here in Finland Commodore 64 was coolest gagdet in mid-80's, then there was battle between Atari ST and Amiga which Amiga won. Spectravideo was most popular in MSX area I think. But my cousin got Commodore 16 for christmas....what the h... were they thinking.... PC's were stricky for business, they were so expensive that I think nobody bought them just for fun.

I have C64, Amiga 500 and Sharp MZ-821 in basement. Never gonna get rid of those marvelous things 😀

PCs were not gaming orientated at all in the 1980s. Extremely expensive, very limited MDA/Hercules/CGA/Tandy graphics, PC speaker and so on. The PC only really became a big thing in gaming in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Until then Commodore / Atari and consoles ruled supreme.

The peculiarly British - BBC Micro and the Acorn Archimedes - and the Amstrads, mind you, the fan on the Amstrad 2386 was a disgrace!

The Sinclair ZX Spectrum computer was very popular in Britain and then cloned like mad behind the Iron Curtain. It was sold elsewhere, but never sold in the numbers like they did in the UK and Eastern Europe.

Matth79 wrote:

The peculiarly British - BBC Micro and the Acorn Archimedes - and the Amstrads, mind you, the fan on the Amstrad 2386 was a disgrace!

I read somewhere that the BBC Micro actually had the most powerful Basic language of any 8-bit computer in the world. You could write machine language subroutines from a built in compiler and then access them from your Basic program with special commands added just for that purpose. Good for when you needed more speed or low level access to the hardware to do things that Basic alone couldn't. You could do these things with other Basic variants but not without putting a lot more work into it. BBC Basic made it so much simpler.

mockingbird wrote:

AidanExamineer wrote:

Optiplex GX260, 270, and 280? Those have BAD capacitors. The later 520, 620, 745, 755 are QUITE good by comparison. And they have that amazingly cool Dell BTX form factor with the huge 120mm front case exhaust.

The 520s and on are not necessarily better. They've also got capacitor problems. I've already re-capped one 620 and one 745, and I've got a 520 motherboard here that needs re-capping.

I don't see nearly as many bad caps on the 520 and newer series. They're not perfect but they're alright by comparison. And especially by comparison to the Lenovo/IBM desktops of the same time. The M55s and M57s need new boards about once a year.