I was in the UK . Got my first PC from Amstrad 640k 20Mb hard drive (and was an 8086). I had to choose between a hard drive and colour - parents could only afford one. Man booting DOS off of a hard drive as opposed to floppy - magic!!!
Used it for my final year project programming in Modula 2. On 25 May 2012 11:29, David Richards <ausdot...@davidsuniverse.com> wrote: > I got my first PC around that time. Maybe '91 or '92. Prior to that > was C64 and A500. 4MB RAM, 128MB HD. Those were the days of the turbo > button, industrial deafness from printers and an audible click > whenever you changed screen resolution. What I find interesting is > when you look at your phone compared to these old PCs. It's just > astounding. Assuming the trend continues, it wont be long before > we're all carrying "super computers" to tell everyone what we had for > breakfast. > > David > > "If we can hit that bullseye, the rest of the dominoes > will fall like a house of cards... checkmate!" > -Zapp Brannigan, Futurama > > > On 25 May 2012 09:12, Greg Keogh <g...@mira.net> wrote: > > Folks, it’s a Friday in late May 2012 and I just realised that this week > is > > the 20th anniversary of buying my first PC. It cost $5000 from Microway > and > > it had (I think) a 486-DX2 processor, 16MB of RAM a 240MB HD, two floppy > > drives and a 14" monitor, nothing else. It came with floppy discs to > install > > DOS 5 and Windows 3.1, both of which had only just been released. > > > > > > > > Several weeks later I had my first encounter with the knuckle-whitening > > frustration that would be a part of my life with PCs for the next 20 > years: > > I bought a Sound blaster card which was faulty. It randomly worked and > then > > didn’t, and it would popup "Error 2". After days of suffering I guessed > that > > it was a hardware fault and asked the Dick Smith store to let me try > another > > card, and it worked immediately. This was the first piece of hardware I > ever > > added, and it was cactus, what luck! Also, luckily a friend showed me > how to > > install video drivers and I managed to get the 640x480 display up to the > > maximum of 1024x768 with high colour. > > > > > > > > I build a new PC for my wife last night and compared to my original PC it > > has 500 times more RAM, 5000 times the disc space and the CPU is so much > > faster and different that I’m not sure a comparison would be meaningful. > > With SSD, memory sticks, LCD screens, disc burners, networking, Internet > > etc, we’ve come a long way, thank heavens. > > > > > > > > Greg > -- regards, Preet, Overlooking the Ocean, Auckland
