What was your first computer?

[Avayel]

The first PC I used was my Mom's work PC, don't remember the brand, I do remember it had Windows 3.1 and a HUGE 400MB HDD, never need to upgrade again!! LOL

 

I remember it had a audio recorder and I was amazed by it.

[HelplmChoking]

Probably my dad's old Windows 95 laptop, back before we had a home computer. He worked in IT, so actually had one. That would have been like '97 maybe? (I would have been 2-3). Then after that we got some beige-wonder of a Windows 95 desktop, with a nice curvy CRT monitor.

MY first PC, like the first PC that was ever actually mine was an XP system, with a Pentium4 630, and some sort of tacky, gaudy GPU that I will never know the name of, since we eventually pulled it out and chucked it, since it never worked. Months later, I figured out the PCIe was turned off.. I would have got that when I was maybe 11/12? Had it for a few years, somehow gaming off the iGPU.... 

[kaiju_wars]

Whatever the hell my dad had in his office back in like... '97, '98.  He's a programmer so he always has had a computer.  

[JoeCoke]

Some old presario, it was an AMD K6 266 with 16MB of RAM. I used to mspaint on it.

[Ertman]

Playing games on an Atari 400.

[Beef Boss]

Not pc but console. I started playing games when I was about 4. Ps2 Nintendo 32 Xbox 360. I grew up playing video games. (still am growing up playing video games lol) 

[Inferia]

I hope laptops count because I've been using laptops all my life... But my first ever laptop was.. Uh... An ASUS of some kind but I have absolutely no idea what model. And my current laptop is a Toshiba Satellite C50-B-15Z. And yes, I did just flip my computer upside down just to read the sticker that has the model name on it

[crzyces]

5 minutes ago, Inferia said:

"I hope laptops count because I've been using laptops all my life..." Oh gheesh, I'm sorry . You should have a friend build you a custom gaming laptop (Too expensive to buy pre-made with interchangeable parts). You can build a nice one with a 17" 1080p 75hz screen for about $900 usd if you use mix new and used parts).

 

[Inferia]

14 minutes ago, crzyces said:

"Oh gheesh, I'm sorry  ."

Haha, I like your humour. But after a while, you get used to the experience of a laptop. Whenever I use a PC I think," Okay, time to try not to get annoyed by the keyboard.." Also, at an early stage in life, I was kind of put off PCs because when my grandparents had one, the mouse was overly sensitive and the PC itself was extremely slow. But if I ever consider a PC, I'll keep your advice in mind.

[crzyces]

21 minutes ago, Inferia said:

Haha, I like your humour. But after a while, you get used to the experience of a laptop. Whenever I use a PC I think," Okay, time to try not to get annoyed by the keyboard.." Also, at an early stage in life, I was kind of put off PCs because when my grandparents had one, the mouse was overly sensitive and the PC itself was extremely slow. But if I ever consider a PC, I'll keep your advice in mind.

I was suggesting having someone build you a custom laptop, not desktop silly goose.

[WindirBear]

My mom got a computer when I was 14/15 I think. I was envious of everyone that had one at an earlier age.

[KWelz]

TI-99.  Hunt the Wumpus for the win!

[Silentprototipe]

While I had one computer before that in the house I wasn't allowed in that room. My first actual encounter with a PC is with my current PC. HP P7 1234, Glorious PC, AMD A6 3650, HD 6530D IGPU, 8 GB of RAM, 1 TB HDD and built in Wifi with a DVD burner that came bundled with a 23" IPS 1080p display with a 5 ms response time. Its a great machine honestly, Though I have upgraded the GPU to a GT 730 ever since 

[Jito463]

My first computer experience was a TRS-80 that my sister got as a graduation gift.  I played Canyon Climber on that so much, I can't count the number of joysticks I broke.  My first personal computer was the Commodore Amiga 2000.  It had 1MB of RAM, 2 x 3.5" floppy drives and a 5.25" floppy drive on an IBM emulator card (though, I never did get that working).  As for my first IBM compatible, it was an Apex system with an AMD 486 DX/2 66MHz, 640KB of RAM (yes, you read that right, less than 1MB) and a 520MB HDD.  I got it as parts, which I then assembled.  I've been building nothing but AMD based systems ever since.

[straight_stewie]

On 4/10/2017 at 11:05 PM, v0nn_toaster said:

So, what was the first ever PC you used?

I can't remember quite what the specs where, but it was old enough that it had not the last generation of Radeon cards that where labelled under ATI and it ran Windows XP.

I remember how I got to start using it "unsupervised" very clearly. My father and I were walking through some store (a Sams Club maybe?) when I was about 9 years old and I saw those tin 4 CD box sets of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004. I mentioned to my dad how that was really cool and I wished I could fly an airplane. He said that he would get it, but we didn't have a joystick and we would have to have one. Well, we turned into another aisle and it was full of joysticks and throttles, this would have been in 2004, so HOTAS stuff was probably just hitting the market. I remember him commenting on the HOTAS stuff, saying something about how that's really nice because it's closer to what's in actual aircraft, and how he'd never seen a setup like that before. We didn't buy anything that day.

3 days later, on my 10^th birthday, I only had 3 presents. Normally I had received more than that. The first one I opened, which I thought was a book, was the tin box set of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004, the largest box was a HOTAS setup. The third present, a birthday card, had a password to my own account on his computer, which he had moved out of his room and into the living room so I could use it whenever I wanted.

[Ithanul]

A old beige Packard Bell (This before Hewlett bought them) that had Windows 3.1.  (I was like 5 or 6 years old at that time)

 

You had to use small floppy discs to load programs on it and be comfortable with MS-DOS commands.  (And yes, I came close to wiping drive C) 

[crzyces]

38 minutes ago, Ithanul said:

A old beige Packard Bell (This before Hewlett bought them) that had Windows 3.1.  (I was like 5 or 6 years old at that time)

 

You had to use small floppy discs to load programs on it and be comfortable with MS-DOS commands.  (And yes, I came close to wiping drive C) 

Have to love that Windows shell they stole from Apple! And the mouse patent they bought from Xerox for $5000 usd. Have to not love accidentally fdisking your parents pc! Those things were big money back then.

 

I talked ubout my C65 too a C128 upgrade earlier in the thread (I am still proud of that), but my first real PC was my mother's $3250 usd Gateway with Windows 95 or 98, I forget. It came loaded with a Pentium 2 or 3, 128 MB of sdram, some kind of pci sound card, a 12 Gigabyte hard Drive (This was borderline overkill then, like a gamer getting 25 terabytes), a 4x read cd drive!!! again, THIS WAS HUGE. Not a read write, as they were about $300 extra at the time, whereas external usb ones were only about $150, 3 usb ports, a floppy drive (when floppy disks were no longer actually bendable and you could not use a paper hole puncher to make it double sided), and the crown jewel of my gaming rig? (Which I played Baldur's Gate 1 on, Woo7!) was the Voodoo 3 3500 AGP slot version. What a beast card for 1999. Memory and core clock were both 183 MHz, 1 pixel lane, and 16 Megabits of ram, oh how it kicked ass in Quake 3. Oh, and a 15" crt, keyboard and a mouse of course. All that for just over $3250. What a bargain  . 

[B-17rocks]

an old dell laptop from the early 2000's Hah that thing was great. my mom had windows XP loaded on it and was darn near indestructible

[Jito463]

44 minutes ago, crzyces said:

Have to love that Windows shell they stole from Apple!

Which Apple had previously stolen from Xerox.  What's your point?  Neither one had clean hands in that deal, though to be fair, Xerox was rather stupid about the whole issue.

[crzyces]

Apple bought the patent for the mouse, not the windows concept.

[Beef Boss]

18 hours ago, Ithanul said:

A old beige Packard Bell (This before Hewlett bought them) that had Windows 3.1.  (I was like 5 or 6 years old at that time)

 

You had to use small floppy discs to load programs on it and be comfortable with MS-DOS commands.  (And yes, I came close to wiping drive C) 

I'm so glad I was born in the 2000nds computers sounded like a pain back then

[crzyces]

1 minute ago, BadluckBrian said:

I'm so glad I was born in the 2000nds computers sounded like a pain back then

It actually comes in handy to know how to use the command prompt without having to look everything up. In my area they start teaching kids BASIC and Windows in kindergarten and 1rst grade, simple dos in 1rst grade, and progress from there. I think it is fantastic.

 

The floppy disks were a pain. Heh, and flipping disks over after an hour of gaming for more content... 2 minute load times for a 4 bit pixel image... Baud modem speeds. Oh goodness that was awful. $20 usd per megabit sent that took 10 hours to download.

[Beef Boss]

2 minutes ago, crzyces said:

It actually comes in handy to know how to use the command prompt without having to look everything up. In my area they start teaching kids BASIC and Windows in kindergarten and 1rst grade, simple dos in 1rst grade, and progress from there. I think it is fantastic.

 

The floppy disks were a pain. Heh, and flipping disks over after an hour of gaming for more content... 2 minute load times for a 4 bit pixel image... Baud modem speeds. Oh goodness that was awful. $20 usd per megabit sent that took 10 hours to download.

Y-you had to pay for each megabit?!? Bro I go through around 100gigabytes a week just from my Xbox. I have two other laptops and phones I'd be poor before I even knew it! 

[Jito463]

1 hour ago, crzyces said:

It actually comes in handy to know how to use the command prompt without having to look everything up.

Indeed, I still use CLI for many purposes, even today.  I often find it quicker than using the GUI.

[crzyces]

8 minutes ago, Jito463 said:

Indeed, I still use CLI for many purposes, even today.  I often find it quicker than using the GUI.

I wonder what the ratio of Linux users compared to Windows GUI users is in Asia as opposed to the US? CLI's are immensely faster, that's for sure.