What was your first computer?

[orbitalbuzzsaw]

A WinXP Asus EEE Pc. My grandpa is actually still using it

[Salacious B Crum]

A radio shack Tandy TRS-80 my storage was an old school cassette tape deck the phone modem was a cradle that you placed the phone handset in, my 1st WYSIWYG was an apple macintosh and my color printer had a color ribbon that jumped all over the place based on the color required my 1st internet was CompuServe paid by the minute, yikes!

[xriqn]

First computer I USED:

• Intel Pentium M 740 @ 1.73GHz
• 512MB DDR2
• 60GB 5400RPM HDD
• Windows XP pro

Was my mum's laptop, I recently commandeered it so I could use it as a small linux box. Fun fact: I played my first ever video game on the same day I used a computer for the first time, 3D Space Cadet Pinball. Still a legend at it 13 years on (I was 3 when I first used a computer).

 

First computer I OWNED:

• Intel Celeron N2840 (Bay Trail) @ 2.13GHz
• 2GB DDR3
• 50GB eMMC chip
• Windows 8.1 Home
• Intel HD Graphics

Fun fact(s): took 10 years for me to get my very own computer, however in the mean time I did game on either the first computer I used, my snes or my ps1, all of which I still have to this day. The first computer I personally owned (the second computer in this post) was only used briefly, it's broken now and in its place I bought a Dell Inspiron 530 (the one in my sig) for £50, upgraded it from a core 2 duo e4400 to e8400, radeon hd 2400 pro to 5450, 2gb ddr2 to 4gb ddr2 and 320gb HDD to 1TB. Fast forward 4 years (present day now) and it's been upgraded once more to a Phenom X4 9650, 4GB DDR2, 250GB HDD (1TB is my current pc's backup boot medium), radeon hd 7470 and it now serves as my (trusty) secondary PC.

[Bramimond]

A KC85/3.

 

[PlayStation 2]

First one I ever used I believe was an eMac in pre-school. Thing had a DVD drive; Green Eggs and Ham is lit as fuck to this day.

First one my family owned was some semi-custom rig with a Pentium III 866MHz, some HP motherboard and an 80GB hard drive.

First one that was mine was an HP 2000-2d27dx from Best Buy; it had an AMD A6-5200, a 750GB hard drive and 4GB of DDR3 1600MHz RAM, the fastest the CPU could accept.

[Ebonsaber]

First home PC was a US Navy surplus 286 Zenith with a 20MB HDD, 1MB RAM and a CGA Graphics.  It still had the "Property of the US Navy" metal stamp on one side.  It was the most my parents could afford, and it was around the time Pentiums were about to come out.  First PC that I bought with my own money(saving up from my allowance) was the surplus Pentium III(RAM 512MB, HDD 2GB) which parts I showed in the retro parts thread.  First PC I bought with my salary from work was a surplus pre-built low-profile that had a Sempron 3000+, 1GB Ram and 80GB HDD.

[DrMacintosh]

PowerMac G3

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

7 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

PowerMac G3

I still remember the first Mac I've ever used. It was one of the earlier Sage iMacs running OS 9.2.

The computer labs we had at school were odd ball as we only have like 6 of these. The rest were a mixture of Macintosh LC 500s, PowerMac 5200LCs, and some forgettable PowerPCs. 

[Chronified]

First home PC (parents) was a generic beige Pentium III 800Mhz machine with 16MB of SDRAM, a generic 2MB display adapter, Western Digital 4GB 5200RPM IDE HDD and Windows 95 (later updated to WinME after XP was found to be WAY too slow).

I can still hear the dialup modem in the back of my mind. We had it as long as I could remember, keeping in mind I was born in 1996 (22 years old)

Countless hours of scorched earth were played on this PC. I was so excited to play new games when my mom finally gave into upgrading from Dialup to DSL around 2003-2004 (6-7 years old), only to realize that the system could play hardly anything that was out currently and the PC was way too underpowered for XP.

 

 

My first personal PC was given to me by a techy uncle around age 8-10 (2006-2008) and the crappy base specs are honestly the reason I'm into PC building today.

It was a compaq Evo D510 

It came with a Pentium 4 @ 2.4Ghz (sat at 1.8ghz due to bad thermals) , 1x256MB DDR, a 40GB IDE drive (although 1 Sata 1.0 port was available), 32MB IGP, a CD ROM drive and a beefy 450w PSU (later helpful for upgrades). 

 

It was given to me with Knoppix (children's linux distro) installed because "I was a kid who broke electronics" according to my parents. That was quickly swapped out for WinXP 32bit as soon as I found the DVD burner in the dumpster PC.

I quickly dove into the PC as it was easily disassembled and learned of the modular components.

Over the next couple years I collected parts cheaply as possible, seeing as I was a child who couldn't afford anything

2x1GB sticks of DDR ($9 on eBay)
a 120GB Sata HDD (smashed laptop w/o screen on side of road)

Pentium w/ HT @ 3.4ghz (dumpter PC that wouldn't turn on)

DVD Burner (also the dumpster PC)

AGP FX 4400 256MB, $12 on eBay

 

As the years went by, Windows 7 got released and the system felt aged, a friend taught me to build PCs with an Phenom x4 system on Am2 and my the compaq evo was put to rest. Ever since I've been slowly inching my way up the ladder.

 

**Funfact: my parents are still running the same modem we had with the beige box when we upgraded from dialup, Bell Canada won't upgrade their 2wire modem until they upgrade from DSL to Fibe.

[CarlBar]

We've all had that first PC and distressingly, (for me anyway), things have reached the point where people who had commodore 64's and other oddball old school weirdo's of a machine are a bit of a dying breed in the tech community. So i'm curious what your old clunker of a first system was.

 

Mine was an off the shelf E-Machines E-170, still using the keyboard believe it or not, think it's a mechanical, real brick of a thing.The rest of the spec is what you'd expect of a severely budget early 2000's PC. 

 

Intel Pentium 4 generation Celeron at 1.7Ghz with 128mb of ram and i think a 128GB HDD running on integrated graphics. The memory got pushed to 512mb with a new MB and a proper graphics card, (Ge force 4 Ti4200 8x), about a year later.

 

It's so funny to think about because these days there are hard drives with more on board cache than i had system RAM. Hell I suspect some of te real massive cored monsters out there might have more CPU cahce than i had system RAM, and their are certainly systems out there with more system RAM than i had HDD space.

 

What was your like?

[it_dont_work]

First at home was a packard bell 386 thing. We did have a commodore 128 but that was only ever used by my dad for CAD. I think my first system was a Pentium 100 can't really remember anymore since it got upgraded whenever parts were available and sort of changed fluidily over the years. 

[Helibert]

Weirdo here

Amiga A500

 

[Pico]

Had a MSX on late 80's early 90's, dont remember. But my first "IBM PC" was a 386 SX 33Mhz (don't remember the rest of the specs) on early 90's.

 

[Fredrikmikael]

Ah yes, i remember i begged my mom to get me a PC back in 2005 so that i could play counter strike 1.6 and world of warcraft with my friends. After finally convincing her, i got my older brother to pick out the parts and the only parts of the computer that i still remember is the CPU and GPU.

CPU: AMD Athlon 64 3200+

GPU: GeForce 7800 GT

The computer was a BEAST at the time.

But little did my mom know that i would turn into a degenerate that still sits inside all day and play world of warcaft to this day.

[Andreas Lilja]

Pentium II 133mhz.

16mb ram (?)

Cirrus Logic video card (?)

 

It ran Age of Empires 1 flawlessly so best build ever.

[Emanbaird]

My first machine was a PIII machine running 95, My dad set me up with SNES emulators and i had a hell of a time, this would've been back in 04, the first PC i really remember was my Athlon II X3, with an 8600GT, i got it for free because my dad built it for the church we went to at the time but it wouldn't boot vista, so they let him keep it.

 

The first PC i built was a Xeon W3530, and GTX 295 Build, I found the GTX 295 in a literal overstock pile at my dads friends house and he just let me have it. I had to get a MOBO, and i used a sacrificial laptop HDD as a boot drive, but all in all it ran BF3 at 80FPS just fine, and between the free parts and a $50 wal-mart giftcard that bought me 8GB of DDR3 i only spent around $100 getting it running, and then i ran it from 2011-2013 then gave it to my Ex in 2014.^{God i miss this PC} It was the singlehandedly most jank PC i ever built i literally had to reinstall chipset drivers everytime i booted in order to get my GTX 295 to work on both cards.

[Tristerin]

Dell OEM with a Pentium single core - the one before they introduced hyperthreading, was my first personal computer I owned.  Had no AGP slot and had to put a PCI slotted GPU in it to play games lol.  Of course went to Best Buy and bought an AGP card first lolol.  A few computers before that but they weren't "mine"

[Amazonsucks]

1989 or 90 Acer brand(i think) IBM PC clone with a 186 CPU

[Canada EH]

35 minutes ago, CarlBar said:

 

What was your like?

yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

[DataEmo]

Mine was a custom built PC with an Intel 486 DX2 66Mhz that has been upgraded from 8MB to 24MB RAM by my dad and an 400 MB harddisk

[RejZoR]

I've had Commodore C-128, but that probably doesn't count...

 

The first PC I actually bought myself was Celeron 333MHz, 128MB RAM, 4GB SCSI HDD, S3 Savage 3D 8MB and Diamond Monster soundcard with Aureal Vortex. That was back in 1998 I think. It was actually a pretty sweet system, especially because of the S3 Savage3D graphic card. It wasn't anything special as is, but in games running Unreal Engine, it was out of this world amazing when running on S3 Metal API which was supported in tons of games since tons of them used Unreal Engine back then. I was getting really sweet performance at 1024x768, all maxed out. Something only people with Voodoo 2/3 and TNT/TNT2 cards got back then. Not to mention games looked better thanks to S3TC and higher resolution textures that were not even supported on Voodoo cards...

[JoeCoke]

A socket 370 IBM PC running Windows ME with a celeron @ 500somethingmhz and 64mb of RAM. I actually really loved that computer and it lasted me years, and was reliable.

 

First computer I ever built though, was a Athlon 64 3000+ with a 9600 pro and 1GB of DDR. AbSOluTe uNIt

[GDRRiley]

some old HP or compact likely a P3

before we got the first system I actual remember a core 2 quad, 8gb of ram and a 1TB HDD. 

Then I got a laptop with a I-7 36-- and a GT 635M

Finally moved to NightHawk 1.0 Basically the system in my sig but no HDD, 2nd SSD and my 580 was swapped for a 970.

 

[SteveGrabowski0]

First one I used was a Ti99 4/A with a 3.0 MHz cpu. First one I paid for with my own money was a system I built around the AMD K6 200 MHz cpu. Both were pretty killer gaming systems at the time.

[pawn63295]

my first ever I don't remember the specs of. My parents bought one when I was 9 that was in 1992. But the first one I remember was an AMD 233 Mhz. Also, the first ever GPU I bought was a VooDoo 2. back when the internet was the wild west and we used Prodigy and AOL. Good times