what was your first computer?

[rtil]

mine was a family computer, probably much like anyone else's, there was only 1 computer in the house and everyone shared it. it was in my parents bedroom and i probably used it way more than anyone else.

it had a 1gb hard drive, and we started on windows 3.1 but upgraded to 95 shortly after. i remember that our copy of windows 95 came on at least two dozen floppy discs. office 95 was on at least a dozen, and a powerpoint add-on an extra two. i crashed the computer several times deleting system files that i thought were broken because the "open with..." dialogue came up, so i thought they were broken/not games.

it started with 8mb of ram, and we upgraded to 16 at one point. the video card was 4mb of video memory, i don't remember the brand though.

most of my first games were on DOS, a lot of those text-type adventure games, commander keen, some puzzle game where you moved boulders around to try and find a key to get out ( i wish i could remember the name of this game) and some learning games like number munchers.

we also had 28.8k internet with some crappy christian isp. we had that for about a year and then upgraded to 56k, and i had that for another 6 years. i remember a 20mb file taking 6 hours to download ( a demo of starcraft actually)

i also remember this computer being a huge money pit for the family. i believe the computer, monitor and printer together cost around $5,000. really puts into perspective how cheaper technology has become

[Crabarms]

Got a used computer that my mom bought from my stepdad (before they married) for Christmas. I only saw my brother play starcraft on it and I wasn't allowed to use the computer so it was really boring to watch anyone do anything on it. Probably had windows 95 on it and I never payed attention to the specs. On my cousins computer I was introduced to jezball and some typing driving game.

[rtil]

i had an apple IIgs a computer that was good for its time. i cant remember the specs of it but it was really bad compared to today obviously. i remember i played a TON of weird games on it you can find here now: http://www.virtualapple.org/ it also had some art apps i used to use with my mouse. one in particular was a early vector animating program called phantavision, which some people here might actually remember. i have a lot of nostalgia for this machine even when waiting 10+ minutes to load certain apps.

i remember you showing me this on irc a while ago. it's really hard to figure out some of the games control-wise, it's really more of a guessing game in that respect but that's half the fun imo haha

[CVG]

Our first computer was a "family" computer but that actually meant it was mine since nobody over turned it on except for me...maybe my mom once or twice to type a letter on Word haha but they didn't GET computers or anything I did on it...They figured it was like an elaborate toy or video game system. It was a 75 MHz computer with Win 3.1 and then got win95 soon after.

It had 256mb of ram, 750mb hard drive, a floppy and a CD DRIVE which was (THE FUTURE OOOOHHH) so I could play the 7th Guest and Encarta Encyclopedia with it...and later the Neverhood. I also had my first animation program installed on this...a Dos program called DAS-(The Disney Animation Studio used this in the early days to create mock 3D which was printed out and then traced by hand onto cells). T

The worst part about this program was that it was locked with a security key and you had to select a Mickey corresponding to a Mickey on the correct page of the unique Manual...and each copy was assigned to its own manual, so if you lost the manual you were screwed and couldn't open the program.
And my first drawing program was a DOS program  which was steps above MS paint and had this crazy purple man and all the buttons had goofy sound effects (paint bucket went *sploosh when you selected it.) The best part was that it had a feature to make 3-4 panel comic strips and I drew my first comics with this thing...printing a page took like 1/4the the ink in the machine and it was so slow it would be about 5mins for all the data to send over and print.

My uncle was the one who set up our internet and it was so new/rare in our city we used an isp which was literally some Chinese man in his garage selling "INTERNET" for $5 dollars a month like some kind of black market bootleg service haha....and I recall the first thing I did with it was send an email to my uncle (he was the only one I knew with an email) and it was something like "Hi! I'm sending an email. Please respond if you get this." and then the response was "I got it! This is great." lmao I also recall the search website at the time was called WebCrawler and it had a spider mascot and I would find clips of the lion king cartoon BEFORE it was on VHS and the video window was like the size of a matchbox and took 2 hours for like 2mins of video.

[Pants, the terrible]

it was a windows 512kb... i forget the model and the build, but it only took floppy discs, and it had 32kb of ram.

it was something...

[trent bortknob]

i don't remember the very first computer of my whole family, which was a shared one while my dad had a big ol' laptop. i remember it running on windows 95 but that's it.

however, the computer that replaced the family computer was eventually turned into my computer when everyone else in my family was given their own computers (funny that i was the only one of my brothers who never actually got his own computer so when everyone else had one i just wound up with the family one). and i still have it today! my computer right now is an HP Pavilion a1230n. as far as computers go, this is probably really outdated. it's from 2005.

i'd like to get a new computer but i'm afraid of getting vista or windows 7.

[logen]

Commodore 64. My father bought it in Austria. I remember finding it totally weird, that it read data from cassettes. Used to abuse my father to type in the lines for me for a game to start. Which i would usually play only for a few minutes, and ask him to put on something else. Don't really remember anything else, just practicing with logo for school. If anyone remembers that thing, it's a programming language on multiple platforms, primary focused on drawing with a "turtle" on screen. I think it's windows version was either comlogo or comenius logo.

[emanhattan]

a family compaq presario. maaaan so many shitty sprite cartoons were made in that piece o beauty :}

[Casey Pixmintro]

My first computer was one given to my older brother by the government for some reason. At the time, like 1996 I think, a bunch of classes at random schools throughout the country were given computers with Windows 95, and my brother just so happened to be in one of those classes. I don't know or remember how much memory it had or even what type of computer it was, I just remember playing a lot of Super Solvers: Treasure Mathstorm if anybody remembers that. We had it for at least 4 or 5 years, then it died and we got a shit Dell computer.

[Sinitron]

my first personal computer was some piece of shit with win3.1 which i got when my dad got a win95 computer it was awful and couldn't run anything then i got my dad's win95 computer when he got a win98 computer and it could BARELY run the starcraft demo (which i got on a demo cd in a magazine, i still have the cd RIGHT HERE due 2 precious memories...) i think my sister got it later and i don't know what happened to the win3.1 computer after that

[lenko]

a family compaq presario. maaaan so many shitty sprite cartoons were made in that piece o beauty :}

i had one of those as well - looking at this topic i was actually pretty late getting a computer compared to you guys (christmas 2000 i think, and we didn't get internet until a year later). my first one was a family compaq with a jacked up version of windows 98 (called windows ME or something) and like 3 gigs storage space. finally got rid of it in 2006 for my current one

[Shida]

I can't remember what brand of PC we first got. I just know it ran Windows 98, and had Lotus Office Suite installed (which I spent too many hours doing useless things in). I bought Petz and Barbie Riding Club to play because I was a massive girl. I think we had Theme Hospital too.

I have a bad memory, so I can't really remember much about my first computer.

[cipher]

Yeah I don't remember details... it was a really old mac, a few models before the ones with the gem cases in the back. Of course it was a family computer, so I didn't use it much really

[Gladius]

some puzzle game where you moved boulders around to try and find a key to get out ( i wish i could remember the name of this game)

sokoban

[psi43]

mine was a family computer, probably much like anyone else's, there was only 1 computer in the house and everyone shared it. it was in my parents bedroom and i probably used it way more than anyone else.

it had a 1gb hard drive, and we started on windows 3.1 but upgraded to 95 shortly after. i remember that our copy of windows 95 came on at least two dozen floppy discs. office 95 was on at least a dozen, and a powerpoint add-on an extra two. i crashed the computer several times deleting system files that i thought were broken because the "open with..." dialogue came up, so i thought they were broken/not games.

it started with 8mb of ram, and we upgraded to 16 at one point. the video card was 4mb of video memory, i don't remember the brand though.

most of my first games were on DOS, a lot of those text-type adventure games, commander keen, some puzzle game where you moved boulders around to try and find a key to get out ( i wish i could remember the name of this game) and some learning games like number munchers.

we also had 28.8k internet with some crappy christian isp. we had that for about a year and then upgraded to 56k, and i had that for another 6 years. i remember a 20mb file taking 6 hours to download ( a demo of starcraft actually)

i also remember this computer being a huge money pit for the family. i believe the computer, monitor and printer together cost around $5,000. really puts into perspective how cheaper technology has become

wow, how old were you when you got that computer? Cause it's by far better than mine and I'm 3 years (?) younger than you are.

Anyways, my first computer was a really really old obviously. We bought it as used I think, not 100% sure, must've been though. I think I was about 3 or 4 at the time, cause we were using DOS for at least 2 years before upgrading to Windows 95 straight. I remember having to write down all those DOS command lines to type them in and stuff, it was annoying.

As far as specs go, your computer seems to be a beast compared to what we had. we had 256MB of disk space, 2MB of ram I think and it was probably something like a 60Mhz processor, can't remember the processor though so that's just a super wild guess.
As far as the video card goes, I don't remember anything. I just remember that at some point, we upgraded to an incredible 16mb voodoo videocard, and voodoo was the SHIT back then, best you could get.

We eventually started getting 28.8k internet as well, dial-up stuff cause there was no flat-rate available. Our plan was based on the time spent on the internet, not on the content downloaded. We also had 200mins for free, each month and seeing as my parents didn't use the internet, I got 100mins a month and my brother got 100mins a month to surf the internet. Funny if you think about that nowadays, I spend about 2 to 2.5 times as much on the internet on a DAILY base now.

Downloading shit was impossible, cause (as rtil said) it took just way too long, so me and my brother went to some lycos chatroom.


The most memorable moment for me, concerning the early stages of my computer knowledge, was when me and my brother received a new computer for christmas. It was a pretty good one for its time, running the just newly released windows 98 and my father got us Age of Empires for that. We played it and, since it was the first RTS game me and my brother ever played, we sucked really bad at it and my father would freak out and yell at us at christmas night cause we didn't play the game right. That evening ended nicely though!

I like how back then, my dad and my mom would explain to me and my brother how the computer works and how to do stuff with it. Nowadays it's the other way around hah.


On a somewhat related note, my first gaming console was a sega master system.

[rtil]

wow, how old were you when you got that computer? Cause it's by far better than mine and I'm 3 years (?) younger than you are.

i have no clue. all i know is that i was in elementary school. because the only very time specific memory i have related to computers is looking forward to break during 3rd grade class so i could play simcity 2000 on one of the class computers.

[SHADOWFOX2]

The first computer I ever got on was some IBM brand grandpa had that ran Windows 3.1
I basically did nothing but play Solitaire, Minesweeper and MS Paint
The cards...they fell so slowly...it was actually enjoyable
The only thing I remember out of MS Paint on that thing was drawing stuff from C&C Red Alert

[naturally]

my first one was a family one too, and i was pretty much the only one that ever used it. i don't really remember anything about it except that it was a windows xp and i only really played games on it.

[put]

also a family computer with windows 98, was pretty good for the time
remember playing fuckloads of age of empires 2 and rock raiders and rollercoaster tycoon
Then i think it was 2003 when we got some crappy 64 kbps internet and a computer for me and my brother
that was a really good computer now that I think about it, it lasted for 5 years just replacing one or two parts here and there

[BluPhoenix]

1998-1st compy we used was an old 233mhz compaq presario win98. It was dumb and slow and couldn't run anything that wasn't jumpstart typing or those disney interactive storybooks and i kept complaining about it and then

2002-2nd compy was a good ol 1.99ghz dell inspiron with integrated graphics which was also dumb and slow for every year that wasn't 2003 and could run a plethora of games on extremely low settings it was awful i wanted to die