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Hardware Happy 30th Birthday, PC

Discussion in 'Article Discussion' started by Lizard, 12 Aug 2011.

  1. Lizard

    Lizard @ Scan R&D

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  2. outlawaol

    outlawaol Geeked since 1982

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    Computing is older than me by about 5 months.... I know why I was born 5 months later now... :D

    Ironically there is a tshirt floating around at my parents house that has me printed on it, picture taken with one of the 'first' digital cameras (I was a baby). Apparently at some fair or something (a booth type thing). Geek on IBM... :D
     
  3. Jack_Pepsi

    Jack_Pepsi Clan BeeR Founder

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    It'll be interesting to see what the next 30 years entails, that'll make for an interesting article ay?

    ;)
     
  4. VeNoM JaCKaL

    VeNoM JaCKaL L4D2 nom nom time!

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    *sigh* floppy disk's those where the days ^_____^'
     
  5. tonyd223

    tonyd223 king of nothing

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    Yeah,and I remember CP/M
     
  6. Parge

    Parge the worst Super Moderator

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    Absolutely great article guys, really loved it!

    Just to contribute: My first PC - A Pentium 75, 8mb of RAM and 545mb HD drive - and wait for it -a 4x CD-ROM.
     
  7. alf-

    alf- Minimodder

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    i miss beige.
     
  8. phinix

    phinix RIP Waynio...

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    My first PC was 386SX 40MHz. Only one of my friends had PC too, 286, 1MB of RAM. I had 2MB, then after a year upgraded to 4MB of RAM!:) I remember I had 5.25 and 3.5 FDDs and HUGE 80MB HDD! :D
    Good times...
     
  9. mr.sh

    mr.sh FEAR

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    My first PC was Tesla PP-06. =D
     
  10. RedFlames

    RedFlames ...is not a Belgian football team

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    first pc:

    100MHz Pentium
    8 MB RAM
    1GB Hard Drive
    4x CD-ROM
    and [the newly launched] Windows 95

    EDIT: it wasn't beige... it was grey... [the monitor was beige... and the size of a postage stamp]

    first upgrade:

    an extra 32MB RAM [taking it up to a whopping 40], a 4GB Hard drive and Windows 98


    i did have a couple of older PCs that i acquired [an old 386 with windows 3.1, and some amstrad pile of junk with windows 2], ZX Spectrum and a ZX81 [i still have those]... but the pentium was my first PC
     
  11. Xir

    Xir Modder

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    My first PCA Commodore PC1...a 8086 clone, 4.something Hz, floppy, no harddrive, but the special Comodore "AGA" graphics card that did Hercules monochrome...more or less EGA black-and-white.
    I still have it, it still runs, even reads it's MS-DOS-Floppy (well, it did last year) :D
    My first MOD:
    built a speaker for it (didn't come with one) :D
    My first Overclock:
    Swapped the 8086 for a clone, a V20 (or was it a V30) NEC chip, woohoo!

    And we're going back to it...no, not cloud computing. A company serious about it's data doesn't store in the cloud (yet?). The cloud is for Joe Average putting his snapshots to facebook ;)

    Mainframe and Terminal, now called Server and Thin Client.
    Now the thin client could run on it's own, but usually runs some virtualisation like citrix. Saves you the maintainance of local PC's which have become a serious cost driver.
     
  12. GuilleAcoustic

    GuilleAcoustic Ook ? Ook !

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    My first PC was an Amiga 2000 in 1989 (I was 9). Awesome machine, I ketp it from 1989 to 1996.

    Motorola 68000 @ 7.19MHz
    1MB onboard RAM (expended it to 3MB, costed an arm :hehe:)
    2 double density floppy drives (880KB)
    no HDD

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    Bought a IBM 486 DX50 - 16MB of RAM in 1994 for my school homework (Autocad for the Mecanics courses and DMT for Electronics course)

    486DX50 @ 50MHz
    16MB EDO RAM (8x 2MB sticks)
    200MB HDD
    TsengLabs ET4000 1MB GPU (love these card)
    SoundBlaster AWE32

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    I can remember setting the IRQs directed on each card via jumpers, FSB and multi was also set via jumpers on the Mobo ... overclocking by shortcutting some tracks with a carbon pencil .... unsoldering the dead battery (the blue capacitor on the bottom right corner) and soldering a new one (no removable battery for bios back on those time).
     
    Last edited: 12 Aug 2011
  13. kenco_uk

    kenco_uk I unsuccessfully then tried again

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    Like Clive, my first PC was an AMD K6-2/450 from Novatech. Unlike Clive, I only shelled out £99 for a Voodoo 3 gfx card that made Midtown Madness look like the end of a rainbow.

    The only reason I shelled out the £400-odd for my first PC was because the hard drive on my A1200 had died. As well as 3.5" hdd, it had a Blizzard 1230-IV card with a 68030@50Mhz on it, together with an 8MB simm. Workbench loaded in about 30 seconds with all the startup-sequence stuff running, like Antivirus, pretty gui etc. It's still in my loft.

    After the graphics card, I then upgraded to an Intel 440bx motherboard bought from a computer fair (an Asus I think) and plonked a P3-450 in there, which promptly got overclocked to 519mhz iirc. It was on this PC that I played Half Life into the small hours. Damn that was such a good game.

    I also have (somewhere) one of those Intel/AMD 8086 cpus from a PC5150.
     
    Last edited: 12 Aug 2011
  14. SMIFFYDUDE

    SMIFFYDUDE Supermodders on my D

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    First proper PC
    Manufacturer - TINY
    Operating System - Windows 98
    Processor - Intel Pentium II 266
    Motherboard - Micro Star International MS6132
    Graphics - ATI 3D Rage Pro (intergrated)
    Memory - 32 MB SDRAM
    Hard Drive - Fujitsu 4 GB
    Floppy Drive
    32x CD-ROM
    56k modem

    Later added 256MB RAM and 3dfx Voodoo 3 3000 PCI

    Still have it!

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    Commodore 64 before that
     
    Last edited: 12 Aug 2011
  15. Hereisphilly

    Hereisphilly What's a Dremel?

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    Nice! It shares my birthday too!!
     
  16. ev1lm1nd666

    ev1lm1nd666 What's a Dremel?

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    First computer was an old Sinclair ZX Spectrum, the old cassette tape one with the rubber keys, We then moved up to the next version which had the hard plastic keys (don't know any specs -I were 8 or 9 at the time). We had an Atari ST for games, still have fond memories of BattleTank, centipide, Space invaders etc
     
  17. zjkhyccom

    zjkhyccom What's a Dremel?

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    happy birthday!!
     
  18. tonyd223

    tonyd223 king of nothing

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    ZX81, without the 16k memory pack - you have to learn elegant programming when you've only 1k of memory. Yes, 1k!
     
  19. Draksis

    Draksis What's a Dremel?

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    My first PC was a IBM 5160 XT with a 8088 CPU. Can't remember how much memory, but I recall it being counted in KB.

    On a side note: also the first pc I took apart, put back together, broke and binned :D
     
  20. Kasvain

    Kasvain What's a Dremel?

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    It was 1994, my dad got a new pc and he wanted to get rid of the old one. It was a Xerox PC with 8086 8MHz processor, 512kb of RAM, 30MB IDE HDD, 2 5,25" floppy drives, CGA monitor and a keyboard. I think the best thing is that it had a serial port connected Xerox Star optical mouse with a special mouse mat.

    If no-one believes that optical mouse story, here's a link about that mouse: http://www.oldmouse.com/mouse/xerox/star8010.shtml.

    So, happy birthday, PC.
     
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