smeezekitty wrote:

Maybe insufficient RAM? Even now a fast 486 (100MHz or more) is still somewhat usable for the web[/quote]

Video proof please 🤣

In progress. Keep in mind that "usable" is highly subjective.

I have always had underpowered machines so my threshold for usable is quite low.

smeezekitty wrote:

Maybe insufficient RAM?

Insufficient /everything/. It was a nasty cheap pizzabox 486. Upgrading that thing to fighting weight would have cost more than replacement with a decent clearance sale Pentium.

My first PC was a Pentium 133 with 24MB of RAM, an unidentified 2D video card, a SoundBlaster 16, and a 1GB hard drive. My dad originally got it back in 1996, and when he first bought it, it came with a Pentium 75 and only 8MB of RAM, as well as a different motherboard. It became my machine around 1999 when he got himself a Seanix Celeron 300 with 64MB of RAM and a 2GB hard drive. Not too long afterwards, around 2000, THAT machine became mine when my dad switched up to a Pentium 3 700 from Avado Systems. I don't remember what its specs were originally, other than that it had a TNT2, but by the time I got it in 2002-2003, when my dad upgraded to an Athlon XP box, it had 384MB of RAM, and the video card was swapped for a crappy ATI Rage card of some kind, likely a Rage 128 or Rage 128 Pro.

My first one was also the only PC that I bought as a complete machine. It was mid 1992 (May?) and the configuration was:

- Intel 386SX-16 CPU on a Hedeka brand board
- Oak 067 VGA card with 512 KB RAM
- 40 MB Seagate ST-157A HDD
- 1MB RAM (8 x 44256 chips on board)
- 3.5" 1.44MB and 5.25" 1.2MB (TEAC - I still have it and it still works) floppy drives
- No-name multi IO card (floppy, IDE, parallel port, game port, and two serial ports)
- 12" monochrome VGA monitor
- No name 3-button serial mouse
- Focus 2001 keyboard (only luxury thing in the package - man, how I loved those clicky thingies!.. 😢)

Then with the upgrades below, it served me until I went and change the board and CPU (Cyrix 486-33) by the end of 1994:

- RAM from 1MB to 5MB (maximum allowed by the board)
- Intel 387SX-16 FPU (good old days of crunching numbers with FORTRAN)
- A Matrox 7210 AT 210MB as second HDD
- Trident 8900 or 9000 1MB VGA card
- An OEM Hercules display adapter just for the second parallel port (LPT1 was connected to a dot matrix printer, I needed the second one for data exchange - hint: Laplink)

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Video proof please 🤣

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQGJgz0CHE8

We didn't even have a mouse on our PC until dad got me a 486 😀

smeezekitty wrote:

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQGJgz0CHE8

It wouldn't kill you to upload a better quality video. Watching this made my eyes hurt but you made your point.

I was into console games (sega). Then i bought a 286 pc which was nice but a little outdated for the games i wanted.

So i bought a 486 dx-2 66. Much better but the first pentium became affordable, so i upgraded the case to a p60. First overclock for me, man was i scared to boot the thing at 66mhz the very first time! 😎
It didn`t blow up 🤣

By then i had the upgrade itch and i finally stopped with my current i5 2500k and i7 920 system. Computers are so fast right now that upgrading can still wait. Never had computers this long!

Best upgrades ever: going from a s3 trio 2mb to a voodoo graphics. BIG BIG jump in gaming performance at the time.
going from a normal harddisk to a ssd. Still amazing how fast that is.

Through the years i had almost every generation of cpu`s and graphics cards. Pretty expensive at times but still a nice hobby.....

Always had the retro itch along the way and build several times a pentium 1 system again with a voodoo so i could play the old games, just to ditch them again later to make some space.
I really started collecting the old stuff 3 years ago as some parts became rare and i want to be able to play with the old stuff for a very long time (as a hobby,i like it way more than the new stuff).

Half-Saint wrote:

It wouldn't kill you to upload a better quality video. Watching this made my eyes hurt but you made your point.

Actually it iss because my camera is junk. I can record HD on my tablet but I didn't feel like trying to hold it steady for 8min

Texas Instruments TI-99/4A, followed by an outrageously uncommon Franklin CX. There was a Toshiba T1100, but only for Dad. Then the Franklin died (I think) and it was replaced with a VTech Laser 128EX/2. Finally after that, we went to 386 clone.

smeezekitty wrote:

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQGJgz0CHE8

Thanks for that!

Pretty cool to see it in action. I just wouldn't have the patience however 🤣 How does it do for more media rich pages?

Half-Saint wrote:

We didn't even have a mouse on our PC until dad got me a 486 😀

smeezekitty wrote:

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQGJgz0CHE8

It wouldn't kill you to upload a better quality video. Watching this made my eyes hurt but you made your point.

I didn't even have a hard drive on my first 486. I used Syquest removable cartridges as my hard drive.

Atari 130XE - I did not learn about it's hardware, only use it for games. Around 1998 my parents finally bought x86 machine. DX4-120, 16MB RAM, 120MB HDD, Tseng Labs PCI graphics. Without any money or knowledge I had to learn how to improve and upgrade cheaply, bigger hdd and ESS688 sound card were first. When computer technician look inside my case he was horrified by all the possible shorts. Everything was new to me but eventually I became proper PC geek.

First computer of the family bought in the late 97 or early 98 :
AMD K6 233
32 MB RAM
2 GB HDD
AWE 64 Value
S3 Virge DX 😵
Win 95 OSR2

Played all my dos games with it but 3D games were just too much 🤣 (software render FTW 😎 )

My first computer (1987)
AMSTRAD PC 1512
Intel 8086 8 MHz
14" monitor CGA
512ko RAM
MS-DOS 3.2
CGA graphic card
2 x 5"1/4 floppy disk
no hard drive

My two first game: Hard drivin' and ikari warriors.

How does it do for more media rich pages?

Depends on how you define "media-rich"

Some sites cause the RAM to get depleted which leads to heavy swapping and that is or almost is unusable.
I am contemplating installing 512K cache and 128M RAM

My first computer was some sort of Packard Bell. There are no pictures of this computer though even though we used it like crazy and it was only finally tossed in 2008ish. It was one of the Designer Tower computers and looked almost identical to the one I now own, however I'm fairly certain is was a LOT less powerful than my current computer and also came with less options out of the box. My father upgraded it with some form of Aopen board and put an AMD CPU in it but what exactly I have no idea. I know though that he had an impossible time finding a board that would fit the Packard's case though since they used odd sized boards at that time.
It ran Windows 95 and had a 1GB HDD (upgraded of course also), it sported some sort of 3dfx board (Just so my father could play SODA Off Road Racing) and a Sound Blaster PCI 128 sound card.

Here is a picture of the designer tower Packard I now own:

Since technology was changing so rapidly in the 90's my father was bringing home computers and monitors picked out of the garbage every day. This means not much later we had another Pentium 1 Compaq tower and a desktop Pentium 2 Compaq.

Most of my computing was done on family computers, which is like trying to vacation at a timeshare.

My first computer was scratch built by my grandpa for my older sister and me. It was an old Duron based machine with a RIVA TNT or TNT2. My dad had a similarly built Win 95 machine, and I kept one of them (can't remember which, they had similar hardware anyway) and now have my Pentium II machine built into the old case.

I'm sure I've got a picture of me playing Half Life on it somewhere...

My first PC was bought by me in 1997. It was a Gateway 2000 Pentium 200MMX beast. I told them on the phone to just max out every option.

It had a 3.2GB Quantum Fireball Hard Drive, 32MB RAM, STB Velocity 3D graphics card with 8MB RAM, 512k Cache in the socket, 17” monitor, 56kbps Modem (software upgraded from 33.6kbps) and an Ensoniq Vivo 90 soundcard.

Over time I replaced the sound card with a Sound Blaster 16 after hearing they were all the rage, I took it back out almost immediately and put the Vivo back in. I bought a Rendition Verite V1000 video card and thought that was awesome until I got a Monster 3D Voodoo 1. I maxed out the RAM to 64MB, I replaced the CD-ROM with a SCSI Hi-Val 2X CD Burner (rebranded Sony cartridge loader) I found on sale at Sam's Club for probably about $300. It was sooooo much fun. I am sure I am leaving a lot out, I haven't thought about that in years. The Internet was still young, 16-bit was still king, games were still DOS and Windows 98 was right around the corner.

The first computer I played with was in the late 1970's (small green screen and two upright 8" floppy drives) and in the 80's we had a computer lab in school. We never had one at home growing up and this was the first one I had full access to.

Aha! I have a 3.2GB Quantum Fireball! Haven't needed to use it yet, so I'm not sure it still works. Looks insanely cool though.