Good-Carbuyer 1st Gear June 10, 2011 Share June 10, 2011 I believe many years back all local computer manufacturers closed down for one reason or another. ↡ Advertisement Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sosaria Twincharged June 10, 2011 Share June 10, 2011 Sounds like my first computer too, except mine had 2 x 5.25" floppy drives. I still remember playing Karateka on that thing... Remember giving a low punch at the right moment when the bad guy's legs cross?? *Ouch* Or try punch/kick the princess?? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mazdaowner Moderator June 10, 2011 Share June 10, 2011 You must be around my 'vintage'. XT like your config was when I was still in primary school. 4MHz clock speed!!! Later on got this "Turbo" button to increase to 8MHz and 16MHz (x386 days, later). I always wondered why don't they just hardwire this Turbo function... everyone wants more speed, right? "Green" monitor, and I'm not talking energy-saving! Colour option was 4-colour CGA (white, cyan, magenta, black). When I first started, it was all monochrome, then VGS , SVGA. Bloody huge compared to now. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ender Hypersonic June 10, 2011 Share June 10, 2011 All here my generation... Nostalgia time. People's Park top floor, is where I get most of my games.. My 1st comp is a Zinclair ZX-81.. Cost me $100, took me many months of saving my recess money to buy it.. Whopping memory of 1kb and use cassette tape for unlimited storage.. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sosaria Twincharged June 10, 2011 Share June 10, 2011 All here my generation... Nostalgia time. ... Well, isn't it COOL, for a change. Here we are, communicating with our own "lingo", that the youth of today wouldn't understand!! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
1fast1 Supersonic June 10, 2011 Share June 10, 2011 (edited) my first pc was a ranger... AT286 with 1MB RAM (4 x 256K DRAM modules), 20MB HDD, 1x5.25" 1.2MB FDD, 1x3.5" 1.44MB FDD, 14" VGA Monitor, MS-DOS 5.0 OS. I paid $2,000 for it, scrimped and saved from my 1st job to pay for it. Later got Lotus 123 spreadsheet, Wordstar 5.0 wordprocessor. I became very good in writing autoexec.bat and config.sys to optimise the base 640K RAM to allow many games to be played, including the original Wing Commander game, because the games could not directly access the 384K of Extended memory (EMS). My first (circa 1983 or 1984) was an Apple IIE compatible with a monochromatic amber display. I think only 16K RAM. No HDD, 5.25" floppy. Used to love playing games like Karateka, Captain Goodnight, Short Circuit, Castle Wolfenstein and Ultima IV (much later) on it. I also became quite adept at programming in the firmware built-in BASIC, and later learnt some 6502 Assembly language also. By the time PCs became big, I was already hooked on home computing. First (IBM-compatible) PC was an 8088-processor based XT. That's the predecessor to your 286 (80286 processor). Edited June 10, 2011 by Turboflat4 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nephilim 1st Gear June 10, 2011 Share June 10, 2011 (edited) You must be around my 'vintage'. XT like your config was when I was still in primary school. 4MHz clock speed!!! 4.77 MHz to be exact Edited June 10, 2011 by Nephilim Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Parkingidiot 1st Gear June 10, 2011 Share June 10, 2011 My first (circa 1983 or 1984) was an Apple IIE compatible with a monochromatic amber display. I think only 16K RAM. No HDD, 5.25" floppy. Used to love playing games like Karateka, Captain Goodnight, Short Circuit, Castle Wolfenstein and Ultima IV (much later) on it. I also became quite adept at programming in the firmware built-in BASIC, and later learnt some 6502 Assembly language also. By the time PCs became big, I was already hooked on home computing. First (IBM-compatible) PC was an 8088-processor based XT. That's the predecessor to your 286 (80286 processor). yeah... the 8088.. soon after I got adept at disassembling and upgrading my AT286, I was given a junk 8088 by my rich uncle to play with. He bought for his son a spanking new 386sx PC. I read from a magazine somewhere how to do it, and disemboweled the 8088 monitor casing, chucked out all the innards, and sunk in a small fishtank into it. Fishtanks in old monitor casings became quite the rage then. It didn't last too long.. all the fish died, and I threw out the 8088. But the XT had a humongous 1MB harddisk. You needed to park the heads so that they wouldn't move and scratch the platter before shutting down. looked something like this: Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kelpie 2nd Gear June 10, 2011 Share June 10, 2011 All here my generation... Nostalgia time. People's Park top floor, is where I get most of my games.. My 1st comp is a Zinclair ZX-81.. Cost me $100, took me many months of saving my recess money to buy it.. Whopping memory of 1kb and use cassette tape for unlimited storage.. Yalor, program has to be "Played" using cassette tape. The computer convert the analogue (voice) signal into digital format. Hence, it takes ages to load a simple program. Those tapes sometimes kena soft error and you have to play the cassette after ages to realize that the tape is a gone case and the program can't be loaded. Regards, Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vega Turbocharged June 10, 2011 Share June 10, 2011 Then came the Internet era. I was using a US Robotics 14.4 Kbps modem. There were other brands like Hayes, Motorola, etc. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Itsec 2nd Gear June 10, 2011 Share June 10, 2011 u guys si bei old school... how old are u? i started off with 386... then pester my parents and finally got a 486 (digitek) 66Mhz... with turbo boost button... press liao.. change to 100 mhz.. i was like woor..... i fliddle around with the computer... and almost every month, the technician had to come down and change my hardware...dunno why also... so prompt to failure.. almost every single s--t of h/w need to replace.. that's where i learn my knowledge from scratch.. and not to forget to optimize the extended memory.... writing some simple batch programs...after that, pursue to build my own rig using my part time $$$ when win 95 is out... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Seaweed 1st Gear June 10, 2011 Share June 10, 2011 that was my first PC..the 80MB HD cost me more than $1000 !!! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Itsec 2nd Gear June 10, 2011 Share June 10, 2011 Then came the Internet era. I was using a US Robotics 14.4 Kbps modem. There were other brands like Hayes, Motorola, etc. yeah.... i was in NP..login to NPnet every night, park there...chit chat with gers, where phone line is 1 time charges every 3 months.....and not to forget bbs.. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Seaweed 1st Gear June 10, 2011 Share June 10, 2011 3.5" ?? not 5 1/4" meh ?? ha ha ha....still got single side...double side thing... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Seaweed 1st Gear June 10, 2011 Share June 10, 2011 i live in the East...Katong Shopping Center is where I got my duplicate stuff... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Porker Turbocharged June 10, 2011 Author Share June 10, 2011 same same bro..... You think Mr Prehistoric's first computer should be using Casio watch right? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vega Turbocharged June 10, 2011 Share June 10, 2011 3.5" ?? not 5 1/4" meh ?? ha ha ha....still got single side...double side thing... I think Verbatim is the popular brand for floppy. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Poper 2nd Gear June 10, 2011 Share June 10, 2011 I became very good in writing autoexec.bat and config.sys to optimise the base 640K RAM to allow many games to be played, including the original Wing Commander game, because the games could not directly access the 384K of Extended memory (EMS). Sample config.sys: [laugh] DEVICE=C:\Windows\HIMEM.SYS DOS=HIGH,UMB DEVICE=C:\Windows\EMM386.EXE NOEMS FILES=30 STACKS=0,0 BUFFERS=20 DEVICEHIGH=C:\Windows\COMMAND\ANSI.SYS DEVICEHIGH=C:\MTMCDAI.SYS /D:123 ↡ Advertisement Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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