My family got a low end 386SX-16MHz PC in ~1991 or early 92. It had 8 30pin sockets supporting 256KB or 1MB each, so the maximu […]
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My family got a low end 386SX-16MHz PC in ~1991 or early 92. It had 8 30pin sockets supporting 256KB or 1MB each, so the maximum was 8MB.
It came with 2MB consisting of two 1MB 30pin 70ns SIMMs. The manual said it only needed 80ns, but even at the time it was built they were already putting faster memory in it than it required. If there was any BIOS option or jumper to use the faster speed then I never saw it. I think it just used them at 80ns.
We doubled the RAM to 4MB sometime in 92 using another pair of 1MB 70ns SIMMs. This was when the local shop had put up a banner advertising $50 per megabyte. Those SIMMs were 70ns as well, they didn't even have 80ns so that must have been obsolete.
With 4MB, I was amazed how the machine could run multiple DOS games under DOS Shell or Windows 3.0. It could ALT-TAB between them and live to tell about it. It wasn't useful, but I thought it was cool.
I tried to make Ultima 7 run better by increasing the size of the SMARTDRV cache, but I don't think it did much. I can't think of any game I played back then that had any use for more than 2MB. U7 required nearly 2MB, and I think everything else was 1MB or less.
So in retrospect I'm not sure if the memory upgrade did much for that computer. I think Windows 3.0/1 did run better, but I'm not sure it mattered. I can't remember Windows being used for anything except a word processor or playing with Paint in 16 colors. Maybe I'm forgetting something.
I know the difference from 2MB to 4MB seemed amazing when it was pushed, but I'm having trouble thinking of a practical benefit it served. What that machine desperately needed was a faster CPU, but it was soldered.
Back in those days I thought multitasking was a cool concept but I don't think it was actually important, because it's just not how people used that computer. People just ran one thing at a time. We didn't have email clients and winamp and web browsers and all that noise, just whatever single thing we were doing and that was it.
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Our 486 was a debacle from beginning to end. It was assembled in 1994 with the 4MB inherited from the 386, and that was fine at first. It finally reached 8MB in 1995. I remember 8MB being minimal to play "NBA 95".
We put Win95 on that computer within a few days of release. It either stayed at 8MB or didn't get much further than that. This was when Windows started to get used a lot more and multitasking was becoming relevant. We were on AOL and didn't go online much more than 10hrs a month, or whatever the limit was.
Our Cyrix 6x86-133 was bought in I think 1996 with 16MB. It was a pair of 8MB EDO SIMMs purchased at the same time as the motherboard. It was a pretty common amount of RAM at that point. This was probably the first machine I ran WinAmp on and used the internet in a big way. Each multitasked application was a big hit on RAM. I'm sure it had upgrades but I don't remember them.
Around maybe 1997, the old 486 got rebuilt as a 2nd PC and was given a 32MB SIMM so it could run Netscape. That was well after obsolescence though.
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All through this time RAM always felt like a limited resource. The first time I ever felt I had a luxury of cheap RAM was when I upgraded my K6-3 to 320MB, which was I think in 2000 or so. It seemed nuts to have so much RAM, it was hardly being used. I think that was a turning point for me with running more background applications and not worrying much about it anymore. RAM in the 386/486/Pentium years was too expensive to have in excess.