BTW, a couple years later (1994) I acquired my first 'real' computer, in the most unusual way: I won it as a contestant in a TV show, the spanish version of Wheel of Fortune 😁 .

It was an IBM Aptiva 2144, like this one:

I wasn't very hardware savvy in those times and don't remember the exact specs, but must have been something like 486DX4 75 or 100, ~8MB RAM, ~1GB HDD (my first hard disk 😀 ), a CD-ROM (another first) and color monitor (another). It was a very well built computer and I remember it with great affection.

It also had a sort of hybernation called 'rapid resume' with its own peculiar history 🤣 .

Amiga500, I was a kid back den, barely 5, so can't tell you the specs, but can tell you the games 😁 Anyways besides the A500 (w\ FDD & w\o HDD) and its generic monitor I had many joysticks, because I was lead to believe that playing games is to be done with these accessories, and of course they tended to jam throughout the time. And I had a mouse of course 😀. That's it.

My first PC was a generic AT Tower containing a 286/12MHz based board maxed out at 1MB, Hercules Mono Graphics and Screen (Green), a Genius branded mouse, a French AZERTY keyboard, a 1.44MB Floppy drive and NO HDD!
I remember playing a lot with Dr. Genius, GW-Basic and running Sierra games from floppy.

In 1993 it was upgraded to 2MB RAM (through a motherboard swap), a T8900 1MB ISA graphics card, a 120MB Seagate Hard Disk and a 14" SVGA monitor, which gave me access to games like X-Wing and LucasArts adventure games (As some previous posters, I also had a lot of fun playing X-Wing with the mouse 😀).

The system eventually became a 386 DX/33 with 4MB ram in 1995 and was sold in early 1996.

TELVM wrote:

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 😀 .

Prior to 92, this is the computer my step-father had. Ours was CGA with a 20MB Hard Card installed. We spent countless hours on that playing Leisure Suit Larry, Ultima VI, and more. I have not even seen a pic of one like it in years, thanks for that. Fond memories of terrible CGA graphics!

Guess the good 'ol Amstrad PC1512 must be little known on the other side of the pond, but here in Europe it was a classic, one of the first affordable PCs 😀 .

I remember you left the MS-DOS floppy always inserted in the left 5.25 drive for autoload. It had a volume control for the internal beeper 😁 . And it came with an ancient GUI, Digital Research GEM 😀 .

I also remember if you lifted the monitor there were four disposable AA batteries for system clock back-up 😁 .

They were rock-solid and many still work OK after 25+ years, there are lots of PC1512 videos in youtube.

The mouse I lost playing X-Wing was a Genius EasyMouse. Horrible uncomfortable little beast, with metal rollers and a 2/3 buttons switch.
The one lost during Tie Fighter was Artec 820. Better than EasyMouse, plastic rollers, more ergonomic shape.
Third mouse, same shape'n size but labeled Target.

Some years later I realised what was wrong with them (several wires in the cable were interrupted), cut 5 cm of cable at the mouse end, re-soldered the wires et voila! functional mice.
By then I already had an Epson branded Logitech M-S34 and an A4Tech OK-720 which were way better, so I gave away the old mice.

I had an Atari 520STE with 2MB ram and a 2nd floppy drive. Ah, memories of constantly swapping floppies for the bigger games.

My dad had an 8MHz XT at the time, 640K memory, 20MB HDD, amber Hercules monitor. The Sierra quests actually looked not too bad on that system if you used the Hercules driver.

TELVM wrote:

Guess the good 'ol Amstrad PC1512 must be little known on the other side of the pond, but here in Europe it was a classic, one o […]
Show full quote

Guess the good 'ol Amstrad PC1512 must be little known on the other side of the pond, but here in Europe it was a classic, one of the first affordable PCs 😀 .

I remember you left the MS-DOS floppy always inserted in the left 5.25 drive for autoload. It had a volume control for the internal beeper 😁 . And it came with an ancient GUI, Digital Research GEM 😀 .

I also remember if you lifted the monitor there were four disposable AA batteries for system clock back-up 😁 .

They were rock-solid and many still work OK after 25+ years, there are lots of PC1512 videos in youtube.

The first time I played Warlords was on one of these 😀 but something prevented our community from exchanging shareware with who had Amstrad/Schneider, most of us with 286 and 386 or Amigas.

NONAME PC:

AT 286-16MHz (later added 287 'couse of AutoCAD use in school)
Some Octek motherboard
1MB RAM (later upgraded to 2MB)
256KB TI VGA
40MB Conner HDD
5.25" floppy
13" Color VGA monitor

No soundcard until 1994 🙁 - didn't play much games

😎

Packard Bell LEGEND 386SX-16
13" Packard Bell Monitor
2MB RAM
130MB Hard Drive
5.25 Floppy

This was the first computer my parents bought when I was in grade school. It came with Windows 3.1 (not 3.11) and I remember being angry because it couldn't run DOOM due to the lack of memory. Back then, of course, I didn't realize the memory could be expanded, but it probably wouldn't have run it well anyway.

I was stuck with Stunts, Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D and other oldie moldy games.

That and of course BBS access via a 2400 baud modem!! Woot!

I recently picked one up off of Amibay!

[img][img]http://imageshack.us/a/img405/4513/dscf6719z.jpg[/img]
[/img]

I was only 3 years old so I didn't know what a computer was, but I know what was in my family's possession.

Let's see, the easy one is the IBM PS/2. We had that for a while, it was kept in my grandmother's house and neglected due to it being a piece of defective junk. The monitor and drives had to be repaired or something like that.

In 2002 or so I foolishly neglected to keep the Model M keyboard that went with it, it was unfortunatly disposed of with the rest of the machine. All I know about it is that it had a 20MB hard drive, and had a game called Freddie's rescue roundup on it which was a clone of lode runner involving chickens. Recently I found the box for it in my grandmother's basement...the box is there, yet the machine is long gone....the irony...anyway, it was too big to lug back home so I took the box that once contained the keyboard in the hope that I could one day sell it to a collector who could use it.

The next machine we have, still functions, though my dad doesn't let me clean it, and since he hasn't openned it up in well over 15 years I'm kind of worried about dust and the hard drives, he still uses the thing as a psuedo-database. Since I can't open it all I can report is what is on the outside.

CPU=Pentium 100MHz, no idea what kind, assuming socket 5
GPU=?
Sound=? probably a sound blaster
CD drive=8x, Creative (hence why it prabably has a sound blaster)
Modem of some sort, I remember a large external modem, but I think my dad replaced it with a card
I think it has multiple hard drives, no idea what kind of configuration it is.
Has both types of floppy drives and even a Tape drive capable of storind 2GB (according to box)

Runs DOS 6.22 and Win 3.1(1)?

My dad has no interest in vintage computing, he just has a habit of using things until they break, currently my family is deprived of HD television because of this trend.

In '92, I played with Atari 2600 at my neighbour's.

In '93, I got my NES.

Between '93 and '96, aside from Nintendo love and unforgettable memories, I was keen on the C=64 and on a 80286 with CGA (later on 80386 + EGA, after that DX2-66 + VGA and later on, the uber-powerful P75 + SVGA) graphics at my friend's house.

On Christmas of '95, I finally got my first own PC. It was a second-hand model in a big computer store. I was so professional during the check-out that I only typed

1cd nc

then

1nc

into DOS prompt and after NC loaded, asseverated that everything is in order so the machine is fine. : )

The hardware specs were the following:

AMD 386 DX-40 (w/o coprocessor of course)
4 MB SIMM RAM (later upgraded to 8 MB to play Ecstatica)
Trident 8900C 512 KB (later upgraded to 1 MB)
3.5" Floppy Drive
80 MB Conner (or WD, not exactly sure) HDD
PC Speaker
Genius Mouse GM-6 (It was so bad, that I actually used keyboard only for playing through Dune 2, up until the last mission. Buying a better one never occured to me at the time.)
14" analog Supercom SVGA (beautiful colors, still have it, but it's dead for about 12 years now)
DOS 5.0, 6.22, NC and Win 3.1(1).

Had so much fun with it.
My first >own< game of my >own< PC was Prince of Persia under pure DOS.
Some other titles I remember and quite fond of: Indianapolis 500, Dune 2, Wolfeinstein 3D, Doom, Catacomb Abyss, Prehistorik 1-2, Ugh!, Alone in the Dark, Golden Axe, Warcraft, Lotus 3, Street Rod 1-2, Another World, Mortal Kombat, Bumpy, Stunts, F-15 Strike Eagle II, Raptor, Ironman and many-many more.

In early spring of '97, I upgraded to a 486 DX-40 computer, which had a Sony 2x CD-ROM and SB 16 (or just some SB-compatible card). I was fascinated by the CD-ROM drive and the Sound Blaster - and the enormous 540 MB Caviar HDD. It was a huge step forward compared to the 386.

I was nearly ecstatic when the Duke Nukem 3D shareware launched successfully. I remember the exact moment crystal clear, even after 15 years - I just finished bathing and as I was standing in the bathtub wiping myself dry, my mother called for me because "something happened on the screen" and immediately after this, I heard some music and I just rushed into the living room in total awe.

If my memory is not failing on me, the comp had 8 MB RAM, which I upgraded to 16 MB later on and a Cyrix 5x86-100 hopped into the socket of the old 486 too, giving the rig a solid boost.
DOSNav and Win 95 Plus! took the place of NC and Win 3.x.

This was the second gold era for me (the first was NES); Quake, Tomb Raider, Need for Speed, Warcraft 2, Destruction Derby, Mortal Kombat 3, Carmageddon, Blood, Toshinden 2, etc. etc.

Those days will never come back and I'm on the edge of bittersweet nostalgy and melancholic burial when I think about it; I bury my ignorant and blissful youth and the glorious age, when computers and softwares had a soul and the term "user friendly" had a different meaning.

I could write another 1000 lines at least, so let's say that the rest is history. : )

QlShdR wrote:

I could write another 1000 lines at least, so let's say that the rest is history. : )

Please do. I identify myself very much with your story.

Artex wrote:

Packard Bell LEGEND 386SX-16 13" Packard Bell Monitor 2MB RAM 130MB Hard Drive 5.25 Floppy […]
Show full quote

Packard Bell LEGEND 386SX-16
13" Packard Bell Monitor
2MB RAM
130MB Hard Drive
5.25 Floppy

This was the first computer my parents bought when I was in grade school. It came with Windows 3.1 (not 3.11) and I remember being angry because it couldn't run DOOM due to the lack of memory. Back then, of course, I didn't realize the memory could be expanded, but it probably wouldn't have run it well anyway.

I was stuck with Stunts, Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D and other oldie moldy games.

That and of course BBS access via a 2400 baud modem!! Woot!

I recently picked one up off of Amibay!

I just bought this motherboard. I've had a 486 legend with a damaged board for a while and this one fits great. I'm pretty sure it won't run Doom. I haven't tried yet. Back in the day I couldn't run doom very well on my 386sx 20. I had to use my dad's 486 laptop. Good times.

QlShdR wrote:

.......Prince of Persia under pure DOS. Dune 2, Wolfeinstein 3D, Doom, Alone in the Dark, Golden Axe, Another World, Raptor....

Oh man!...how much I played with Prince and Wolf3D!...Till the mornings I'd say. My Prince was a cracked version with game save disabled. Can you believe I finished it without any option to save?... 😁

And that Golden Axe, my first multiplayer game! Me and my homemate played it like kindergarten kids for hours and hours at a time, only we were university seniors at that time. 🤣

Doom? Me and my homemate learned all about networking, both hardware and sofware, just to play it together!.. My first job was as a network admin in a very small company, just because of the training(!) I got from Doom playing.. 😁

Filosofia wrote:

Please do. I identify myself very much with your story.

: )

Back in my 486 / 5x86 days, there was a program, which made it possible to (almost) double up HDD space in exchange for a little performance drop.
I remember using it on my 540 MB Conner to make it 900 MB and it worked just fine.

This was my first PC with CD-ROM, and I remember clicking on the eject button in Windows and amazed by the opening tray. : )

This was the period when I fell in love with Quake (I'm a true quaker since then) and Need for Speed. Also the first Tomb Raider; I played it with my friend - we swapped the controls of Lara (one map is his, one map is mine), but we solved the puzzles and decided on how to progress onwards together.

These days went on until '99 when I got my Pentium II. It was a HUGE step forward again. The machine was a Slot 1 Celeron 333A with 64 MB RAM and integrated 8 MB SiS graphic card. Had a CD-ROM and an enormous 6.4 GB Quantum Fireball HDD, packed into an AT case and for a little bonus, the trustworthy and surprisingly good Maxxtro SPK-316 stereo speakers.
The Win 98 days emerged from the ashes of Win 95. Also, my *.mp3 epoch started to shine.

I remember calling my friend on the phone when the Quake 2 crusher started to benchmark in windowed software mode. I was thrilled...I mean Q U A K E 2 is running on my comp, holy shit.

After this, I came to a conclusion; I have to update my gaming library a bit. : )
My first own written CD disc was Starcraft on Philips media. The second one was Diablo on a Fujifilm disc (still have both). Played both to exhaustion.

Not much later, I was in the need of a new VGA, because the integrated GPU just wasn't enough. I received some money from my parents in advance for Christmas and I went to my favourite local computer store.
I bought a Diamond Stealth III S540. I saw its box in several advertisements in magazines before and I was sooo happy to actually feel it in my hands...till the point when I arrived home, opened the case and realized that there is no AGP on the motherboard. : D
So card back to store, money returned and started the search again.

A few days later, I found out that one of my acquaintances wanted to sell his Voodoo card. All right then, let's check it out.

It was a VulcanG Voodoo 2 12 MB PCI board. As its name suggests, it was really HOT during operation (around something 80-85 C average) but it worked just flawlessly. I love(d) Glide. Not to mention that the used 3dfx was half the price compared to the brand new Diamond Stealth, so I had a little money left which I invested in for an extra +64 MB RAM.

The experience of 3D gaming changed in an instant; Quake III Arena runned at 45-50 fps on 800 x 600 with medium geometric detail and textures (I wasn't a *.cfg-whore back in the days - unlike now : ) ). I was stunned. And played a TON with it of course. : ) And I'm still not bored with it, until this very day.

There were other games as well: with the Voodoo 2, Need for Speed: High Stakes was flying. I LOVE(D) it so much; it was able to produce a somehow completely unique atmospehere the time you launched it.
The menu, the soundtracks, the showcase and the photos and various other informations of the cars made it possible to enter into a different world - the world of dreams and miracles.
Not to mention that the actual GFX was beautiful and moody - and you could play it with just a keyboard quite fine. And I still think this way.
I played so much with it - hell, I was on pro-level. : ) We exchanged ghost cars on floppy with my classmate regularily and tried to beat each other's record times.

Later on, Porsche Unleashed was the last REAL Need for Speed. I hold it dear in my heart.

This was the era, when my RPG "career" started to evolve. FALLOUT <333333, Fallout 2, Baldur's Gate...omg, hundreds of hours spent in front of the screen.

And one day, on a demo CD of a tarnished gaming magazine, I found the CG trailer of Final Fantasy VIII. I was speechless. Completely mesermized.
OH. MY. GOD. I. NEED. THIS. NOW.
2 months later I was able to buy the original box version. I went to a shop and with a fake (my classmate's) club card, I managed to get it ~5$ cheaper than the stock price. >:] Another 2-300 hours of pure entertainment was secured on that day.
I still got the game and the 5 CDs are STILL scratchless, even after 13 years.

Meanwhile, my first-ever monitor from my 386 DX rig, an analog 14" Supercom SVGA (with awesome colors I must add) died on me during Diablo II. Well, I was expecting this sooner or later, because its power switch died a year earlier, so if I wanted to turn off the device, I had to unplug the cable from the wall - same, when I wanted to turn it on, just instead of unplug, I had to plug it in. : ) I still have it on the top of my cupboard - an eternal memento of my precious youth.
I needed a new display ASAP so I went to my favourite local shop again and bought a used 15" multimedia Packard Bell for ~120 $.

A bit later, I sold the Voodoo 2 and bought a Riva TNT2 16 MB Vanta. It was even faster (well, not in Q3A - The Vulcan with Glide was faster), but the feeling wasn't the same.

In the year 2000, we went to a LAN club with my friends very-very often. We were regulars within a short period of time. Quake 2, CS 5.0 Beta, Starcraft, Rainbow Six: Rouge Spear...so many hours, so many good memories...

Another funny story about my P II-era is when I first installed Warcraft III: Regin of Chaos. I didn't want to believe that the installer actually launched : D, not to mention the game was WORKING. Well, it has fps-issues even in minimum graphics but I was overjoyed.
At the end of Frozen Throne, I restarted the final mission 52 (!) times. Not because it was so hard but because it was lagging so hardcore, that you couldn't select units properly when a bit cramped action was going on on the screen - even the minimap jumped across the whole map randomly when you tried to click on a unit in the middle of the battle. 1-5 fps FTW.
But I finished the last map for the 53th try. Talk about determination. : D

I had this PC until late 2003 I believe, when I got my Athlon XP 1700+ with 128 MB SD and a 32 BM GeForce 2 MX - the first thing I tried was Warcraft III: TFT in 1024 x 768 with full graphics - and Hitman: Codename 47. After the Celeron 333, these games were astonishing on the new machine.

I'm sure I left out quite much.
And the continuation of the story is not so retro. : )

tayyare wrote:

and Wolf3D!...

I remember asking my mother if I can play with it (I didn't want any trouble and you know Wolf3D; swastikas and such everywhere : D).
I wasn't so modest with Duke3D and its striptease girls a bit later on. : D

tayyare wrote:

My Prince was a cracked version with game save disabled. Can you believe I finished it without any option to save?

Why not? : )

My favourite pleasance with Prince was to duel with Jaffar the longest time possible. : P

Well, why not really.. We managed to finish that at the end. but without the savegame option, you need to play all 11 levels from the beginning for each fail in the 12th and last level. No internet, no cheats, no walkthroughs, nothing. Just brute force.

The result was quite creepy. Do you remember some key combinations was doing weird things to the game, like ctrl+L, ctrl+K, etc. One of the combinations was making everything but the prince invisible. I mean a balck screen with only the prince himself ovisible n it. After finishing the game and being forcefully memorized the first levels, we found that we can play the first 4 levels in this balck screen condition without loosing any lives... 😁

The computers that I played Prince (my first ever PC game addiction) was not mine (I did not have any at that time). I was living with two computer sciences students, and we had two computers at home: A 386SX16 with Hercules mono graphics, 1MB RAM, no HDD, definatly no sound card; and a Commodor PC-10(?), 8088 with 640KB RAM, 20MB HDD, hercules mono (green) and of course no sound card. Prince, LS Larry, Deathtrack, GrandPrix, Tetris were the hip games.

Then I bought my first PC, 386SX16 with 1MB RAM, a 40MB HDD and specifically with a VGA graphics card. A 512KB Oak attached to a mono monitor but who cares, I was finally able to play Wing Commander II and Wolf3D!... 😁

The HDD doubler software was Stacker, by the way. I used it too, considering I was stuck with a 40MB HDD... 😏 (it was a Seagate ST157A by the way)

In two years time, that computer first got a 4MB RAM upgrade (mobo could only support 5MB RAM), then a 240MB HDD upgrade, then a Sounblaster Pro. Mono VGA stayed though. By the end of this two years, I finally put my hands on a Cyrix 486-33 mobo. RAM goes back to 4MB (1MB from the old board was 44256 DIP RAM) and nothing else changed. But who cares, I was finally able to play Doom!... 😁

And man, yes we played Doom. We learned networking just to play it together, and then the first LAN parties started, especially after Doom II released. We played thru the night, we played till the morning...we played and we played... 😁 Doom II, and Duke 3D, and Dark Forces and X-wing, and TIE Fighter, all around the clock.

I never get caught with Quake though. When it first cames out, my machine was not really adequate, and when I finally upgraded to a Cyrix 5x86 with a PCI board and some S3 graphic card, university and even MSc. was finished and consequently time for my military service came, and I said good by the my PC (and games) for 16 months.

And the story goes like this.... 😊

I didn't like quake either. For me it was all about Doom. I don't care what anyone says, quake sucks.

Quake was OK but it was more about "wow real 3d!". But DOOM knocked my socks off and hasn't ever really been surpassed IMO. Duke 3d was great and I played it a lot, but all of the extra gadgets and movement options took the clones further from DOOM's action packed and addictive gameplay, and thus made them a little less cool. It just never gets old.