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What was the config of your first computer?

Ravi Ojha on June 07, 2019

Mine was a Compaq PC with Celeron D processor, 256 MB Ram, 80 GB HDD accompanied with a Floppy and CD drive. And the only programming activity I did on that machine was writing C code to print one of them * patterns.

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Ryan • Edited

It was a Compaq Portable! Yes, this beast from the 80s. No, my family wasn't rich, I got it second hand some time in the 90s.

I didn't really learn to program on it however, just use DOS and write notes. Still, it helped get me interested in computers, and it was cool! Wish I had held on to it.

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Thomas Brok

Seeing the specs, price and design of this PC, I am absolutely baffled once again about how much and how fast technology has grown since your first PC was available in the market.

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Jack Williams

AST Advantage 6075P, 75ish MHz, 4mb ram, 40mb hdd. I have no idea how I remember that, but damn you just brought back memories.

The year I found QBasic.

That poor RadioShack guy. I musta called him a million times.

Twist: The first time I royally messed it up was when I realized I needed HD space. This mysterious "Windows" folder was taking up most of my precious mbs. But I couldn't delete it while in Windows (go figure).

So I figured out how to get to the DOS prompt, and that let me ....

OPERATING SYSTEM NOT FOUND.

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Jeremy Forsythe

Amstrad 16MHz PC, 2 5.25" floppy drives, no hard drive (they were prohibitively expensive at the time). I still remember when we finally got to go to the local computer store and buy a 100MB hard drive! It was so big!

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David Dal Busco • Edited

I had an x286 with an extra coprocessor and an hard drive of 20mb. I think it was an "Hitachi" computer.

I was able to install Monkey Island on it but somehow even by tweaking the boot, I always had to wait a bit for the computer to warm up in order to be able to start the game. So every time I went back from home, I rushed to start the computer, waited like 20min, and then finally I was able to play my favorite game 😂

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Florian Rand

Oh Monkey Island, Maniac mansion and the day of the tentacle, the best graphic adventures of my childhood!

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Vincent Grovestine

The first computer in my house was a ZX81 (followed by a Timex Sinclair 1000).

The first computer that was truly mine; however, was a generic PC clone: 486SX-33, 4 Meg RAM, 120 Meg HD, 14.4 kbps modem, 14" CRT, and a Panasonic dot matrix printer. It ran MS-DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.1.

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Stephen Rhodes

Spectrum ZX+!

...but my first real PC was one that have 8mb of RAM. It's the only thing I remember about it because I had be pestering my parents for months to get me this game I had been playing a demo of (back when we'd get demos on CD's from magazines), and when I finally got the complete game for my birthday, it failed to run because it needed 16mb of RAM! 😢 ... took me a few months to save up to get that 8mb of RAM.

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Adam Romig 🇵🇭

I built my first computer from some spare parts my dad had. It was a 486dx2/50 with maybe a 20MB hard drive, 4MB of memory (I think, might have been 1MB), 3.5" floppy drive, and a monochrome monitor. Ran 4DOS but I did install Slackware Linux on it from like 27 floppies. I mostly wrote papers for school on it and played with C a bit.

We had other computers (C128, 286, 386) before but that was the first one that was my own.

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Alexis Benamar

The first one I used was an old HP desktop PC running on Windows 98, but I used it only to draw stuff on MS Paint.

The actual first one that I really used completely and that got me into computers was a HP Compaq with an Intel Pentium 4 @ 2.93 GHz with a whopping 2GB DDR2 RAM.

It handled Counter Strike: Source like a champ.

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Florian Rand

Sony HB-75p MSX 🤓

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David Dal Busco

Its keyboard was and is still probably more effective than the last MacBook Pro keyboard 😉

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Florian Rand

It works perfectly, no ghost keys or any signal of use wearing.

When I have my cousins at home (or friends kids) I take it out instead of the PS4 for a retro gaming session.

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Marcelo Gonçalves

Mine was an 8MHz Intel 8088, 768KB RAM, 10MB HDD, 360KB floppy drive.

Yes, you read it right. 10 megabytes HDD. And it was a loooot of space. And money. I spent 2k dollars on this computer!

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arhuman

zx81 1K RAM no HDD, storage was external (audio tape). Could barely do anything useful besides learn BASIC with it.

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Marco Carrozzo

It was a 286 with a monochromatic monitor and no mouse, and honestly don't remember the specs 😂

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Ben Overmyer

Amiga 2000.

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Demian Sims

Commodore64. I banged out so much Basic that when I woke up from hibernation 30 years later, I was disappointed to discover Basic is no longer used.

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C.S. Rhymes

I’m pretty sure it booted dos from a floppy disk and had a black and white monitor. I could play Prince of Persia and some random golf game. I think it was an Olivetti but can be sure.

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Tomas Forsman

Vic 20,but my first own was amiga 500.