Post your old computers here!

[Newbie2]

Hello guys,

Here you can post your older computers. They can be the computer you had before your current one, a computer you had in the 1990s, your first computer, or whatever old computer you have.

To start this thread off, I'll post a computer I had back in the year 2000:
Processor: Intel Celeron 466MHz processor (Mendocino Celeron, Socket 370)
RAM: 256MB PC133 168-pin SDRAM (2x128MB)
Motherboard: ASUS MEB-VM i440ZX Socket 370 motherboard
Video card: Generic NVIDIA GeForce2 GTS 32MB AGP 2X/4X video card
Hard drive: Seagate Medalist 10232 10GB ATA/66 hard drive
Optical drives: Hitachi GD-2500 DVD-ROM optical drive and Mitsumi CR-4802TE CD-RW optical drive
Power supply: L&C LC-B450 E 450W power supply (recapped and P4 +12V removed, original power supply in this computer was an AOpen power supply)
Case: AOpen beige mid-tower case
Operating system: Microsoft Windows XP Professional SP3 (original operating system was Microsoft Windows ME)

I bought all the other parts for my computer in November of 2000, and my cousin gave me her old Celeron 466MHz processor and ASUS MEB-VM motherboard when she upgraded to a Pentium III 650MHz computer. The GeForce2 GTS video card was one of the best back then when I built it, so it was playing games without any problems back then. I still have it as a spare computer.

Here are four pictures of my old ancient computer (800x600 JPEG images):





Okay Badcaps.net forum members, if you have an older computer then post it here!

[Topcat]

Re: Post your old computers here!

The oldest system I have that's still in operation is a VP6 with dual 1GHz CPU's, 1gb RAM, no optical, and an 18gb SCSI160 HDD on an aha29160. It's a web server for an e-commerce site, been plugging along for years, running FC4.

[Newbie2]

Re: Post your old computers here!

The oldest system I have that's still in operation is a VP6 with dual 1GHz CPU's, 1gb RAM, no optical, and an 18gb SCSI160 HDD on an aha29160. It's a web server for an e-commerce site, been plugging along for years, running FC4.

Nice computer Topcat!

Also, I forgot to list that my older computer has a Creative Sound Blaster 16 sound card, it's very long but I forgot what type it is. I transferred it over from my Pentium 133MHz computer when I built my Celeron 466MHz computer. It's an old sound card, but it still works and audio output is still good.

[kc8adu]

Re: Post your old computers here!

my oldest is an imsai 8080.
looks like the replica's are ready.
http://www.imsai.net/
still have my timex/sinclair too.

[willawake]

Re: Post your old computers here!

fuck i dunno got an abacus somewhere

[Topcat]

Re: Post your old computers here!

fuck i dunno got an abacus somewhere

...but you have to know how to count to use that...

[Newbie2]

Re: Post your old computers here!

fuck i dunno got an abacus somewhere

Also, an abacus is not technically considered a computer.

[pfrcom]

Re: Post your old computers here!

My first Personal Computer was a Toshiba T1500 with Toshiba CGA monitor - still have it, boxed up and stored away

This was an IBM XT clone - Toshiba did make desktops before they got into notebooks

However the first computer I bought was an IBM Series/1 - in 1979 it cost $32,500 for a 4952 system unit with 96kb of memory (that's kilo not mega, its maximum was 128kb), 4963 combo 9.3mb hard disk & 8" floppy drive, 4974 dot matrix printer and 2 of 4979 green screen terminals

The Series/1 was IBM's first "open" system, for which third party peripherals were encouraged, and could be regarded as the ancestor of the IBM PC

That was in the days when IBM was a dominant, arrogant company, similar to what Microsoft is now

[willawake]

Re: Post your old computers here!

Also, an abacus is not technically considered a computer.

who says......fuck off

[Topcat]

Re: Post your old computers here!

who says......fuck off

LOL Will, have you been playing with that home lobotomy kit again?

[pentium]

Re: Post your old computers here!

My first actual (as in I paid for it) computer was an old Packard Bell system I bought in 2001. It was only a 233Mhz system with a mere 64Mb ram and a 4Mb video card but I did almost everything with before finally retiring it and building my first system in 2004. I still got it stored away someplace.

If you include a computer that my parents bought me, then my first computer was some XT clone system back when I was only seven. It came with a bunch of software (half of which I didn't understand how it worked), 640K ram, no hard drive and an EGA monitor as well as two 1.2Mb floppy drives.
Sadly I got rid of it a long time ago.

[stevo1210]

Re: Post your old computers here!

The oldest PC I have here is in bits and pieces at the moment. It is a Pentium II 350MHz with an Intel SE-440BX-2 motherboard, 64MB RAM and an 8MB S3 368 AGP graphics card.
Before that one I had an older one which blew up because some idiot (not me) decided to insert RAM while the PC was still running. That one was a Cyrix MII PR233 with 64MB RAM and a Hsing tech M550 motherboard.

And a long long time ago (1998) we bought a 486DX/66 that was resold about 2 months later because we had no use for it.

[i4004]

Re: Post your old computers here!

>Will, have you been playing with that home lobotomy kit again?

aka beer?
lol!

[Sudum Gumudu]

Re: Post your old computers here!

My oldest computer still in service is a Micronics 486 DX2-66 with 16MB memory, one optical, 3GB HD, an AWE32 and a genuine Roland LAPC-1 running DOS 6.22 and QEMM 7.5, used for retro gaming.

[gdement]

Re: Post your old computers here!

The first computer I built from parts was based on this piece of trash:

(bad picture, sorry)
My brother and I called around and basically found the cheapest shop with a 486DX2/66 combo that could use our existing 30-pin memory. We were too ignorant to think about what quality of motherboard we were getting. I stumbled on a web site years later that showed me this is one of the most notorious PC-Chips motherboards ever made. The layouts are identical, the only difference with mine is socketed cache and BIOS chips. Nowhere in the documentation does it actually reveal who made the thing - they're totally anonymous.

As can be read in that article, the chipset is an unknown make with a peel off sticker covering it. Mine says "8DY" or something like that. At the time I actually thought "PC Chips" was a chipset company, because that's what the sticker said.

Shop owner demoed the board going into the BIOS... sure it could do that. But it was unstable doing anything stressful. It would crash frequently in about half the DOS computer games I tried to run on it. It seemed to crash most with games that were pushing the most memory traffic, and most obviously with video animation. As an example I had a racing game that worked fine in the cockpit view but the full screen view would crash within seconds.

I wish I still had the motherboard and CPU intact; I'd love to revisit that thing knowing what I know today and try to make it more stable. For starters it would probably run better at 75/25 instead of the 66/33 setting. It's crap, but after all the frustration I went through I'd love to defeat it.

The bad experience with that 486 almost put me off ever building my own system again. Fortunately when we upgraded I looked up a recommended M-Tech board on Cyrix's web site, which gave me some confidence and that system ran beautifully.

[yanz]

Re: Post your old computers here!

i love this thread. i'll post mine later..

[berniedd]

Re: Post your old computers here!

I still own (and rarely use) my first computer I bought in 1994: a 386 IBM clone with 4 MB RAM, 20 MB HDD, uses Windows 3.11 with MS Office 1994.

[Topcat]

Re: Post your old computers here!

FWIW, I still have my first ever computer, a Commodore 64 with dual 1541 5.25 drives, used on a 19" color television. I was the envy of my neighborhood with that! It's in my mother's basement somewhere. Doubtful it still works, but I had the time of my life with that thing back in the mid 80's, I was about 11 when I got that, taught myself BASIC on it.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: Post your old computers here!

First was a Commodore 128. Didn't have it long. Got sent over-seas and it couldn't go.
-
Next was a Zenith 286 with a passive backplane. Got it used - Gov't surplus.
A huge Alps tractor feed wide format printer came with.
(The neighbors knew when I was printing.)
-
First bought new was a Packard Bell DX2-66 (PB 450 motherboard as I recall.)
The first monitor lived 3 seconds then a loud pop and a curl of smoke from the vents.
I had no other VGA monitors at the time. Took 3 weeks to get it replaced under warranty and I hadn't even used the PC yet.
-
Next someone in the 'good ole boy' network gave me 2 pick-up loads of mixed PC's and another truck load of monitors to go with. These were old office machines retired in favor of P1 units. They were mostly old IBM XT's but a few 286/386 mixed in. I got 44 of them working and discovered eBay. (They didn't bring much. Already out dated.)
-
First self build (with new parts that is) was a 486 based on a FIC PIO-3 board.
- Used an AMD X5-133 CPU [486->586 upgrade CPU]
This was also the first board I ever soldered on. After it was retired in favor of an Asus/P233/TX-97 board I let my son build a PC with it as a learning experience. [It turned out to be quite an 'experience'.] He picked a bad PSU that literally exploded a VR chip in a flash of light (think flash bulb) and tripped the main power breaker to the house. Managed to get the board working again. It's still around here somewhere.

After the TX-97 came an Epox K7XA+ Athlon board with a 750 classic that was my main PC for 2-3 years. Still here. Still works even with the Tayeh craps.

.

[arneson]

Re: Post your old computers here!

My first was in this order:
Timex Sinclair.
RS pocket computer 2,3,4.
Commador 64.
Compaq PC Allinone.
Now, mostly Gateways.
The only IBM's I've had were the Thinkpad Transnotes.
They were tablets and I had a lot of them, all dead now.