I am proud that in my x86 computer history I had the opportunity to use Dos back in time correct period with all the well known games from early 90's but also some late 80's (like Alley Cat, oh man..).
The first x86 pc I've tried was a quiet new expensive Compaq 486SX (I think 33Mhz) friend pc with 4MB of ram and 107MB of disk back in '93/94 I think. It's funny that I used for long this faster machine before we got our first x86 and cheap pc that was a 386SX 16/20Mhz plastic cpu based,1MB of ram and a slow Oak isa vga card and something like ~40MB of heavy and big disk. I have great memories of Stunts,Jill in the jungle, Prehistorik,Another World,Motogp,Indy 500,Zool,Wolf3D (not full screen) and others... I used this (only upgraded to 4x1MB 30pin expensive simm) until the 1998 for a just released K62-350 pc.

Of the missed things are both the biggest games names like Doom 1 and 2 and Quake in the time correct moment cause it was not possible to run it on my pc. I remember seeing Doom 2 on another 486 (probably SX2 50Mhz) in SVGA/high detail. It was incredible. I totally missed the first Quake until I had the Voodoo3 on the K6-2.

My very first computer was PMD 85 (8-bit personal computer produced from 1985 by Tesla in the former Czechoslovakia) with these specs : CPU = MHB8080A 2.048MHz /48 KiB RWM and 4 KiB ROM .
And from the 088 era it was 386 sx20 (Compaq desktop Series 3021).
ooh those days...

Multitech/Acer 710 XT clone, late 1987. 2 flops, no HDD. Samsung MD-1252G 12" amber monochrome display, Okidata dot matrix printer. Kept unit in billiards room. Had ATI small wonder integrated into board. DOS 3.2, used MS Works & Typing Tutor for school. Played Test Drive, Space Quest I/II, various small games like monopoly and blackjack. Was disappointed with unit as lack of color display and no hard drive. Had to go to father's office in downtown Buffalo to play games in color on weekends.

My first x86 was bought new in '90 was mini AT 286/16 based system with 1megs of ram,OAK vga video card, 40meg hard drive and 14" vga monitor. Learnt fairly early on that the hard drive wasn't going to cut and bought a 240meg HDD some time later, then got 4x1meg SIPPs for use with Geoworks Ensemble Pro 1.2(it ran fine with 1meg) and later Windows 3.1. I had a lot of fun with that system.

Had it a number of years in that configuration before swapping out the for a 486DX based mobo I got second hand when a work college who updated his system to a pentium. I repurpesed the SIPPs by removing pins bring it up to 8megs.

My first PC was a Commodore P10-III 8088XT if I remember correctly. Had no HD, Hercules monochrome and 2x 3,5" floppy drive. Upgraded it later with a VGA card and monitor. Don't remember correctly if I bought a SB 1,5 or 2.0 for this one or my next one, a 386DX-33.
Hoping to rebuy 'my first PC' one day......

maverick85 wrote on 2015-07-31, 11:42:

First used (early 90's) - BBC Micro at school First owned (1992) - Amstrad CPC 464 w/ colour monitor First proper family PC (199 […]
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First used (early 90's) - BBC Micro at school
First owned (1992) - Amstrad CPC 464 w/ colour monitor
First proper family PC (1999) - Time AMD k6-2 500MHz ATi Rage 128 integrated 128MB ram
First own uni 'built to order' PC (2003) - AMD XP 2600+(?) MX440 ASRock pile of junk
First self built PC - cant remember sckt 939 a couple of times sckt 775 > fast forward AM3 Phenom II 550 Radeon 4830 > lots of cheaps builds again (kept buying and selling in between) > Sandybridge GTX 960

Finally able to source the motherboard for the time pc (MS-5191) and restore cd. WlP...

We had a VIC-20 when I was really young (probably around 5 or 6). Even though I don't think I got to use it very much (my dad used to say that it was a rainy day thing), I still have a few memories from it. I remember really liking the box art. We also had a program that you could make faces with and I think it stuck it's tongue out at you. When I was in elementary school we got an IBM PS/2 386 machine. That one was a lot of fun for gaming even though it only had PC speaker sound. I fooled around in Basic with it too. I remember my cousin sending me a bunch of floppy disks for Windows 3.1. I got it installed, but it filled up most of the hard drive. In high school we traded it in and upgraded to a Pentium beige box. I can't tell you what was in it, but it felt like a huge upgrade at the time. Nonetheless, I still wish we had held on to that PS/2.

Since then, I've built a few PCs, which were the first that I paid for myself. The first one would have been an XP era machine that I got rid of years ago. I can't remember what I put in it.

My neighbor had TRS-80 model 1 in 1978 when I was 10. We used to get the books of basic programs from the library and enter them with one boy reading and the other typing. Had some cassettes with games like Haunted house. Learned how to do graphics by randomly poking memory until something happened. Good times.

https://www.figmentfly.com/hauntedhouse/hauntedhouse.html

His dad was a pilot and used a phone coupling modem for filing flight plans via CompuServe. We had a lot of fun on line playing the super star trek game on line one night. Didn't know it cost $1 a minute. And we wasted a roll of thermal paper printing out maps too

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek ... ideo_game)

My first computer must have been during 1988 or 1989

We went on a trip to Miami florida and during that era Flager street was like the place to buy electronics. I remember, pieces since i was very young. But the streets were full of stores, many people walking and buying.
I even remember guys selling hot dogs on each block. Sadly , I returned to miami some years ago and flager street is just a ghost town. Pretty much amazon or the big malls killed it.

The computer store im 100% sure was where this perfume shop was

i think they owned the second flor too because i remember buying Mortal kombat1 for DOS and a Media Vision Fusion CD kit there during half of the 90s .

The first machine was something i was never able to find info online, nor a picture of it, because during that era there were lots of Japanese Ibm clones. So my machine was PANASONIC , an 8086 with i think it had 4mhz and my dad installed it by himself without even knowing anything about computers. But for the OS he did need help i think from someone that worked on IT were he worked at. (either that or the machine came with a saved floppy disc to boot).

We had few games, SADLY THE MACHINE HAD A CGA MONITOR, so it was not so nice , games i had were mostly shared with another person that happened to have a PC at home, not everybody had one. But the ones i remember the most were: Blockout, Sokoban, digger, prince of persia, the amazing spiderman, california games, test drive, larry 1 (in black and white), Alley cat, paratrooper.

After many years, i think 1994 i upgraded to a VGA monitor and a 486 Dx2-66 from cyrix, and i was able to enjoy DOS games finally.

First touched a PET I think in '79, had one brief go of a word game, think everyone in the school got a 15 min go on it, and that was that, maybe they didn't get much UK educational software for it, or service was a problem, then a year or so later they had a BBC B with a turtle drawing program that also was kind of a 30 min session per kid and never seen again, just the one in the whole school. Not sure if before or after the BBC but around the same time got a 48K Spectrum at home. Then there were BBC Bs and Masters in high school and Link 380Z and 480Z which had the odd subject related program that once a term you got on, one machine per class now at least. Meanwhile mid 80s managed to get secondhand Spectrum + and zx81 to screw round with for pocket money... early 90s got first PC a PC-1512 and 1640 twofer deal both messed up needed some sorting out and got the 1512 going first.

It was around 1986 - some 8 bit Pravetz (Apple II clone) with CM630 and ROM BASIC and 5.25" FDD. It wasn't my own machine, but one at the children's after-school education center. My first own personal computer in mid of '90s was with AMD 386SX-40 soldered to PCChips mobo with 2 MB of EDO RAM (later upgraded to 4 MB), 270 MB HDD, 5.25" + 3.5" FDDs. I still have it and it works just fine after minor battery leak damage repair.

I completely forgot about school computers. We had some really old Apples with monochrome monitors when I was in elementary school. I assume that they were Apple IIs. One thing I remember is that the keyboards had little lights on them that would get really hot. It was like touching a sore that you couldn't leave alone. We would have a class of kids who kept burning their fingers on the keyboard. Lol.

Does anyone know which computers would have those keyboards that got really hot?

I cant remember much about my first PC.

It was 1989. I had a 286 from a brazilian brand called "CCE". Sears was still around. I think we ran Windows 3.0 and DOS 5.0 at some point.

All I can remember, as a 7 year old kid, is that I was always playing Accolade's Grand Prix and Italy 90.

Man I feel a lot younger than most of the people here 😆
It was probably the family PC we had circa starting from 1998 to 2001 ish.
Annoyingly for the life of me I cant find out what brand or model it was or even what mobo it had.
All I know was that it was some kinda generic clone with a generic 15 inch curved not flat screen monitor and it was all beige aesthetic wise.

It had a Matrox Mystique as the graphics card and ran Windows 95 , later got upgraded to 98 and my dad installed a 5.25 floppy into it so he could go though his storage bin of old 5.25 floppies he used for work in the late 80s.
I tried looking through family photos but couldn't find any pictures of me using it , which sucks.
It would be fun to know what machine I used because it was the system I cut my teeth on windows with and computers in general.
I also caught some glimpses of DOS related software which got me interested in DOS later on.

There was a boatload of great games I played on it : MechWarrior 2 , MechWarrior 2 Mercenaries , Tomb Raider 2 , Croc 2 ,Worms 2 , Destruction Derby 2 ,(damn that's alot of 2s), GTA 1 , Worms World Party , Scorched Planet , TOCA , Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine , Wipeout 2097 , PowerChess 98 , Scooters Magic Castle , EA Kids : Peter Pan , Jumpstart Kindergarten , Lego Racers , Age of Empires , Age of Empires 2 Gold.

And some not so amazing games like Chronicles of the Sword and The Original Spec Ops Rangers Lead the Way , most games were pretty good though.

Just remembered in high school we used to goof off on Acorn Archimedes A3010/3020's. I remember the os was pretty easy to use and there was a great Flipart piece of software were we made stupid clips frame by frame.

The firsts were various computers of my friends'.
The very first was a Videoton XT form factor PC with a 286 CPU manufactured by AMD. Similar to this one: WIP: Videoton VT160 286/EGA rig
The second probably a very small baby AT at another friend's. The third is yet another friend's, probably a 486, what I remeber of it, it could have been a Siemens Nixdorf. It had a similar sliding door in front of the floppy drives those have. The next one the 386 I had, then school computers, those were various Mendocino 400-433MHz based builds as well as Pentium I and II class PCs of my own and my friends'. I don't remember the exact specs for most of these. The only one I mostly remember is my best friend's PC, a Celeron 333A with 64MB SD-RAM, S3 Trio64V+ (which I inherited and still have), a 4.3GB HDD, 8x speed CD drive (which I inherited and still have, though I think it no longer reads).

My first real computer was a 386 SX 16 mhz, with 1 mb ram, onboard vga (dont remember what memory or brand), 40 mb hdd, branded Apricot computer.
https://apricot-archive.co.uk/qi-300
It was very limited, but I played a lot of games, shareware mostly. They dont make interesting cases like those.

286

Interesting thread. Let me add to that 😀 Unfortunately without photos. Okay, maybe two ...

The first Computer I have used was somewhere at the end of the 80. And it was a GDR Computer. Namely the KC-85/3 that someone my father knew brought with him when he visited. We played some weird game that I cannot remember anymore but it was on a monochrome green screen. But that was just the first Computer I have used.

Apart from owning an Atari 2600 and regularly playing on a C-64 from a friend. The first PC that was gifted to me by my parents was:

Siemens Nixdorf PCD-4H/sx in 1992 (i486-SX25, 4MB Ram, 120-ish MB HDD, 4x CD-Rom 1 or 2 years later) - I had that one until 1997 and I played anything I could possibly get to run on there. I fondly remember all the Lucas Arts adventures, DN1 & 2, LHX, some Star Wars games, etc . I even remember having Descent 1 run on there without sound and the lowest detail ... Yeah desperate times made me the master of boot floppies 😉
I was always sad that I never kept that PC. But back then the moment you bought that thing was the moment it was obsolete. But by a big coincidence I found the exact model two weeks back and now its in my possession again and I am sosososo happy 😁

It's of course the one in the middle. I only had to print me this white plate because the one in there was ugly and didn't match anything.

In 1997 I bought the first PC from my own hard earned money:

Vobis Highscreen tower PII 233MHz, 32MB RAM, some ATI graphics and other stuff I cannot remember sadly. This was the first PC where I explored the internet with a modem and had the most awesome gaming sessions with friends. Ever played Worms with 10 people gathering around 1 pc on a cold winter evening with all the windows fogged up 😁 such fun. And I learned to love linux and BSD during that time. At some point I got an Elsa Eraser 3 Pro with the shutter glasses. This P2 was barely fast enough to run any games with those glasses but it was just awesome to have real 3D.

Like a year later my first notebook came into existence. It was a Siemens Nixdorf Scenic Mobile 700 (Pentium 133MHz, 32MB Ram, 8GB HDD, Floppy and CD drives) that I bought for cheap from the store I was working for at the time. It looked something like this

I used this one mostly to play games over Null-Modem or LTP-Network cables (like Z or Descent 2) and later I got a 10BaseT-PCMCIA card and brought it to smaller gaming events.

I kept the P2 until like 2001 where (on the sad day we can all remember) I got me some Athlon CPU, some MB, RAM, etc. The only thing I can remember here is that I was sitting in front of the TV seeing those images while putting together this PC. The first one I build from scratch. Unfortunately then I gets really blurry because I used to upgrade yearly or bi-yearly.

Nowadays I have my Macbooks for work and leisure, my K6-2+, AM5x86 and SX25 for fiddling and gaming the old Sh*t.

One Computer that is dear to my heart and that goes strong is my home server:
Core i5 7xxx, 64GB Ram, 12TB zfs raid, FreeBSD hosting all my media and a Minecraft server
So if you ask nicely and can behave I might whitelist you. But only if you are a nice and decent person

Zenith 8088
512K of RAM
2 x 360K flop
No hdd
CGA graphic with a green phosphor CRT plugged in that composite