First computer I ever bought was a "Summer 2001" Indigo iMac G3.

But the first PC I had was a IBM NetVista tower, it looked like a A22P but was beige. I cannot remember for the life of me the model number, that one was a hand-me-down from my father.

The first IBM type PC I had was a custom build Multimedia computer back in 1993

CPU -486dx-33
Cache - 64kb
Motherboard - ISA ( Intel Chipset )
RAM - 4mb
Hard drive - Conner 120mb
CDROM - Sony 2x
Sound Blaster 16 compatible sound card
IDE controller.
14.4 modem
Win3.11 and DOS

I later upgraded it in 1995 to a 486dx-50 and a VLB motherboard with VLB controller and VLB video card and 8mb ram
It ran Win95 very slowly.

Home personal computers where very expensive back then. Costing about $3000 with monitor.

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2020-05-21, 08:22:

Hard drive - Conner 120mb

Conner hard drive --such nostalgia. Does the brand still exist now?

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote on 2020-05-22, 16:58:

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2020-05-21, 08:22:

Hard drive - Conner 120mb

Conner hard drive --such nostalgia. Does the brand still exist now?

They got acquired by Seagate in 1996.

VileR wrote on 2020-05-19, 20:54:

First one paid for with my own hard-earned cash? A generic Pentium II build which I honestly don't even remember much about, other than the Voodoo II.

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2020-05-18, 10:24:

Even Microsoft was using UNIX computers as there Backbone webservers and database servers. ( 🤣, it’s true and it was funny to see ).

Why funny? Given their long run with XENIX I'm sure they knew what UNIX was good for.

Excactly and they still use *nix that starts with L now. And I'm sure asBSD as well. NTs TCPIP stack was based on BSDs TCPIP stack.Windows is just really a commercial product to make money as well as have folk get payed to support it.

Here's a site bashing Linus and Linux. Funny as all hell really. http://www.softpanorama.org/People/Torvalds/F … with_unix.shtml

Caluser2000 wrote on 2020-05-22, 19:47:

VileR wrote on 2020-05-19, 20:54:

First one paid for with my own hard-earned cash? A generic Pentium II build which I honestly don't even remember much about, other than the Voodoo II.

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2020-05-18, 10:24:

Even Microsoft was using UNIX computers as there Backbone webservers and database servers. ( 🤣, it’s true and it was funny to see ).

Why funny? Given their long run with XENIX I'm sure they knew what UNIX was good for.

Excactly and they still use *nix that starts with L now. And I'm sure asBSD as well. NTs TCPIP stack was based on BSDs TCPIP stack.Windows is just really a commercial product to make money as well as have folk get payed to support it.

Here's a site bashing Linus and Linux. Funny as all hell really. http://www.softpanorama.org/People/Torvalds/F … with_unix.shtml

If you want to know the "thinking" in Silicon Valley. Microsoft has always been a joke.

_Rob wrote on 2020-05-22, 19:15:

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote on 2020-05-22, 16:58:

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2020-05-21, 08:22:

Hard drive - Conner 120mb

Conner hard drive --such nostalgia. Does the brand still exist now?

They got acquired by Seagate in 1996.

Yes, Conner drives still exist as I have a few and they still work. Unlike old IBM, Matrox , Seagate , Quantum, and WD drives, The Conner drives don't make a "WHINNING" noise.
though some may have bad sectors. But mine don't.

The Conner drives are not fast some running at 3400rpms and some at 5400rpms but what I really like about them is the Nostalgic Clicking noise they make when reading and writing.

This one was "made in Italy"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWoqtu_2ic0

My first computer was a Tandy Color Computer 3 , 128K RAM, MS Color Basic, a cassette deck, and a B&W TV. I got it when I was 7 for Christmas when Radio Shack was heavily discounting some of its older products. I remember my dad gave me a choice between the CoCo and a Tandy 1000EX. I picked the Color Computer because it had "color" in the name, which never really worked that well for me since I only had a B&W TV. I still have it, but I wish I'd picked the 1000EX.

The first computer I purchased with my own money for "work" purposes was probably the computer I took to college in 2001: Thunderbird 1.4 with a VIA Chipset, 512MB DDR RAM, 40GB HDD, SBLive! 5.1, GeForce 256 DDR, and a PCI NIC. I upgraded to a GF4 Ti4200 the next spring. Especially with the GF4, it was great, and I played the hell out of Ghost Recon and GTAIII with that thing. However, not long after I installed the GF4, it started developing some serious problems that no one could figure out. In retrospect, I think it was bad caps on the mobo and/or PSU. I wound up going through several iterations of that system, including a Palomino 1600+ and a T-bred 2700+ and a GeForce 6800, and I used it until March 2008 when I replaced it with a Socket AM2 system running an Athlon 64 X2 5200+. I still have the GF4 in my Win98 system.

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2020-05-22, 21:28:

Yes, Conner drives still exist as I have a few and they still work. Unlike old IBM, Matrox , Seagate , Quantum, and WD drives, T […]
Show full quote

_Rob wrote on 2020-05-22, 19:15:

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote on 2020-05-22, 16:58:

Conner hard drive --such nostalgia. Does the brand still exist now?

They got acquired by Seagate in 1996.

Yes, Conner drives still exist as I have a few and they still work. Unlike old IBM, Matrox , Seagate , Quantum, and WD drives, The Conner drives don't make a "WHINNING" noise.
though some may have bad sectors. But mine don't.

The Conner drives are not fast some running at 3400rpms and some at 5400rpms but what I really like about them is the Nostalgic ticking noise they make when reading and writing.

This one was "made in Italy"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWoqtu_2ic0

IMHO, it sounds like the fruit of an unholy union between a vacuum cleaner and a typewriter . 😀 But who am I to judge somebody's nostalgia ?

EDIT : maybe the hellspawn of an FX 5800 and a geiger counter 😀

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2020-05-22, 21:28:

_Rob wrote on 2020-05-22, 19:15:

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote on 2020-05-22, 16:58:

Conner hard drive --such nostalgia. Does the brand still exist now?

They got acquired by Seagate in 1996.

Yes, Conner drives still exist as I have a few and they still work.

Kreshna asked "does the brand still exist", not if anyone has working drives that still exist. The brand, as in the manufacturer, the company. So... no, Intel386dx33, you are wrong.

_Rob's answer is correct. Conner no longer exists as they were acquired by Seagate nearly 25 years ago, and the brand was quickly killed off after acquisition.

First computer we had at home was the Commodore VIC 20 with datasette and programmes on tape & cartridge. some great games and I still have it working today!
Had various other home computers , Acorn Electron, Oric Atmos, ZX Spectrum+ 128K
First Computer I bought myself was Commodore Amiga 500 when it first came out(I was working full time by 1987) but I only really played games on it with the RF modulator on a TV(also still owned and working, but a few keys are dead, it still loads and plays games like it always did!).
Around that same time I also bought the Amstrad PCW 9512 for work, this was great, a Z80 CP/M machine with massive 512K RAM, it came in one box with built in hi-res paper white monitor, 3" disk drive, daisy wheel printer, CPM OS, Locoscript word-processor(brilliant bit of software) and a really good manual, everything you needed to get working quickly all in one purchase, it cost about the same as the base Amiga 500 did(about £400 as I remember) too. The BASIC it came with was also brilliant, Mallard I think it was called. I really liked the keyboard on it too, used that machine for well over 5 years.
My first PC compatible was a Mitac 386sx, 2mb ram, 80mb conner HD with a colour VGA monitor, bought from Tandy shop in the high street.

I was already running cast off relics as my primary back then.

First computer I ever bought for myself for day to day use was a pair of Twinhead Slimnote 486 laptops circa 2002-2003 to build one.good working one for my first portable computer. 486 DX-33, 8MB of RAM, 80MB HDD, DTSN color screen, and a 14.4K mod built in. The other was gutted and turned into a charger for the NiMH battery pack using an HP LaserJet 36v PSU. It ran DOS 6 and Windows 3.1, and was used for wen surfing, website creation, documents, and other stuff when away from my desk.

It had no power supply so it used the battery which involved putting it in the homebrew charger 35-40 minutes, getting some oven mitts, and pulling it out. That battery ran for as long as 4.5 hours crazy enough. I even once laid in bed playing Wolfenstein on it, put it to sleep, came back 4 days later, resumes from where I left off for almost 20 minutes. That thing was magical. Sadly the cat killed it.

So my first computer was a handmedown TRS CoCo from my brother, which I managed to trade for an Atari 800 with 48kb ram at a swap meet in the bay area (remember those back in the day?) and I wound up picking up a used TEAC 5 1/4 to go along with it, wound up selling it to a friends family (wish I didn't). Between that and my first purchase were a number of years and that was a Pentium 233mmx with 16 mb of ram, 4 meg video card , 33.6 modem and sb16. that with the 17' monitor was 2 grand through a friend who worked on pc's for a living. Oh the hours and hours of Diablo with friends after work... Well, I still have the old wd 4.3GB hdd that it had, otherwise it was recycled many moons ago. It did serve as my NetWare 3.x file server for some time after building my first PC.

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2020-05-22, 21:28:

Yes, Conner drives still exist as I have a few and they still work. Unlike old IBM, Matrox , Seagate , Quantum, and WD drives, The Conner drives don't make a "WHINNING" noise.

Bull shit. I have over a dozen Conner drives in variuos systems from Acorn A4000-RiscPCs and x86 systems. Some are noisy.
The Conner brand died decades ago.

My first PC was also a custom build computer that I bought in late 1993:

CPU: Cyrix 486DLC-40 with its math co-processor
Motherboard: I initially got it with some unknown 386 motherboard, but that one died within a year and the seller swopped it out for me (luckily still under warranty) for a hybrid 3/486 motherboard with an OPTI 495XLC chipset (it was as Jetway J-402B)
RAM: 4 MB (RAM was expensive back then)
Hard drive: Conner 170 MB
I/O: 16-bit I/O controller with onboard floppy, IDE, serial, parallel and game port.
Graphics: Tseng Labs ET4000 16-bit VGA with 512 KB of RAM.
Disk drives: 1.2 MB & 1.44 MB floppy disk drives
Monitor: Generic SVGA 14" monitor.
Input: Keyboard & mouse.

It mostly just ran DOS 6.22 & later on Windows 3.1.
Initially, I had no sound card and CD-ROM drives were way too expensive back then. I bought a Sound Galaxy Basic 16 sound card a year later.
I still have the entire computer. Only the hard drive has started to give me trouble, but I managed to acquire an exact model as a replacement - my plan is to rebuild the computer again and keep it as a "show piece".
Back then, I was just starting my studies and I had to make do with that computer for about 4 years until I could afford to upgrade again.

First computer that I bought, was a low price one, that I got in 1993.

- Something-bigcat-name or something motherboard with soldered on CPU. (It had red resistor packs)
- Cyrix 486slc2-50
- 4mb 30pin 60ns Ram (4 modules)
- Tseng ET4000 ISA Card
- Sound Galaxy NX Pro
- 1.44mb Floppy
- 80 or 120mb Connor Harddrive. (I can not remember the size)

I had this computer until first quarter 1995, when I upgraded to a 486dx2-66

Caluser2000 wrote on 2020-05-29, 22:25:

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2020-05-22, 21:28:

Yes, Conner drives still exist as I have a few and they still work. Unlike old IBM, Matrox , Seagate , Quantum, and WD drives, The Conner drives don't make a "WHINNING" noise.

Bull shit. I have over a dozen Conner drives in variuos systems from Acorn A4000-RiscPCs and x86 systems. Some are noisy.
The Conner brand died decades ago.

It all depends on how fast the platter is spinning. I have a 40mb 3200 rpm Conner SCSI drive, and it is pretty silent. The 80 or 120 mb that I had in the early 90's, was a faster 4500 drive, and that was way noisier. However..... They are not as loud as 10k rpm IBM SCSI drives.

I’m not sure I’d classify any PC that I’ve ever bought as “For Work”. They have all been monster gaming machines that occasionally are used for work.

brostenen wrote on 2020-05-30, 21:40:

It all depends on how fast the platter is spinning. I have a 40mb 3200 rpm Conner SCSI drive, and it is pretty silent. The 80 or 120 mb that I had in the early 90's, was a faster 4500 drive, and that was way noisier. However..... They are not as loud as 10k rpm IBM SCSI drives.

Yes, the IDE Conner drives 540mb or less in the black case make the unique Clicking noise.

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2020-05-31, 06:36:

brostenen wrote on 2020-05-30, 21:40:

It all depends on how fast the platter is spinning. I have a 40mb 3200 rpm Conner SCSI drive, and it is pretty silent. The 80 or 120 mb that I had in the early 90's, was a faster 4500 drive, and that was way noisier. However..... They are not as loud as 10k rpm IBM SCSI drives.

Yes, the IDE Conner drives 540mb or less in the black case make the unique Clicking noise.

When that happens you may as well throw it away.