Your first PC?

[Harrison]

In 1998 I purchased my first new PC. Before this I had been devoted to the Amiga for years and refused to buy one. I had owned PCs before but they were always old second hand ones. I spent the whole summer saving up for the PC working full time for job agencies as I needed a PC for my university work. I also took ages pooring over specs and reading PC magazines to learn as much as I could about current PC hardware and what I should buy.

The PC I eventually purchased was a (state of the art at the time) Pentium 2 400MHz with 256MB ram, 8MB G460 AGP graphics card, Voodoo II 12MB additional graphics card, ISA Soundblaster sound card, Buz SCSI and video capture card, external 56K modem and a huge 12GB HD!!! I remember also purchasing a SCSI A4 flatbed scanner with it, and upgrading the monitor it came with from a 17" one to a 21" one!

That computer with the extra hardware and monitor cost me over £2600!!! The monitor alone added £600 to the price to upgrade it! I remember at the time thinking what an amazing spec it was. Until this point my main computer had been an A4000 with a 1.3GB HD and just 18MB of Ram. The graphics cards in the new PC had more combined ram than the whole of the Amiga!

And I still remember getting it all home, connecting it up and switching it on. And then installing and running the original Unreal. That game's graphics blew me away!

And now... I've just got rid of that 21" monitor by giving it away for free on freecycle! Mad!

As for the computer. It was used for a few years as my main PC until about 2002 and over that time was upgraded a lot to 512MB ram, G400 Max graphics card, 60GB HD, firewire card, USB2 card, network card etc... And the OS went from Windows 98 to 2000 Pro. And after that it became a testing and download server. And what is it doing now? It's sitting in a cupboard stripped of useful hardware and then all my old obsolete hardware was put into it and it was turned back into a Windows 98 machine with the original 12GB HD, a 32MB TNT2 graphics card, PCI Soundblaster live sound card and network card. The intention was to run old DOS and Win9x games on it, but it has only really been fired up a few times in the last year. For old games I tend to just use DosBox or a virtual machine. Not actually sure what to do with it now. It's taking up space so needs to go, but it works perfectly so I don't want to throw it away.

So what was your first new PC? The first one you personally purchased? What was the spec, price etc? And what is it doing now?

[Sharingan]

My first PC was a Celeron 433 MHz with a whopping 64 MB SDRAM, and a 32 MB ATi Rage videocard that ran games like shit. I remember being wholly disappointed with its performance, thinking ... 'Eh? Is THIS the best what a PC has to offer?'

[Harrison]

It is never good when your first experience of a platform is bad. Luckily that first PC of mine was up to date so managed to run the latest games well at the time.

Any idea what that Celeron cost you back then?

[Sharingan]

Can't quite remember, but we couldn't afford a Pentium III so went for the more cost-effective Celeron. Still cost quite a bit for the awful performance it gave. The next PC I got had a Pentium III @ 1 GHz, then to a P4 Northwood @ 2.66 GHz, and finally a P4 HT @ 3 GHz which I still use nowadays.

I'll probably be shelling out for a Core 2 Quad one of these days, just to see what PC gaming really has to offer!

[Buleste]

My first PC was a Gatway with PIII 500Mhz, 512MB RAM, 64MB graphics card, Soundblaster 128, Internal 56k Modem, 9GB hard drive, DVD, ZIP drive, printer, scanner and 17 inch monitor running Windoze 98SE. I then upgraded to a P4 3 GHZ, 256MB graphics card 1GB RAM, 9GB hard drive, 250 GB hard drive, DVDRW, ZIP drive, windoze XP 14inch TFT monitor which i'm looking to upgrade the RAM to 2GB to give it a bit longer lifespan.

[Stephen Coates]

The first PC which I 'personally purchased' was a Dell OptiPlex, which I got second hand for about £25 a few years ago. I did have a few ideas for use and it has been quite useful for testing servers and just being a spare PC. I always thought I could sell it after I had finished making use of it but I kept it as it has been. Havn't used it much recently though. Has a 400MHz Celeron and came with about 128 or 256MB RAM.

Other than a slightly rubbish Compaq Presario laptop which I got to replace an identicle one which I made a complete mess of, I have never bought a PC.

I still like the speakers and keyboard on that Presario. The passive matrix screen is crap though.

[JLPedro]

My first PC was a Pentium 133Mhz with 8mb ram, 1GB ide HD and a Samsung 14'' monitor! paid 1500€ (1185£), didn't even had a cdrom or sound card !! this was about 1993.

[Demon Cleaner]

I had a 486 DX2/66 with 16MB RAM, a Diamond Stealth GPU 1MB, Creative Soundblaster 16 and a 540MB HDD.

[Harrison]

My first graphics card was a Diamond Stealth too. A G460 8MB one. Was OK for desktop work, and could handle OpenGL sort of OK, but was really crap for DirectX games.

[StuKeith]

1st PC I brought was £1700 a Time Machine! It failed in the 1st month and I then spent 6months trying to get my extended warrenty money back! Spec was

AMD K6-2 366mhz
Win98
128mb PC133
8mb ATI Rage 128
10GB HDD
DVD Rom
15" CRT
Epson 640 printer (I think)

I even had to pay £20 for the printer cable. It cam with Lord of the Dance DVD which took a month longer to come after getting the DVD, and loadsa software including lotus suite, games, norton, dragon and a host of other options.

Now, well I got rid of it years ago. I brought it in 1998 and kept it for about 2 or 3 years, and got rid of it just when XP came out. I brought an Evesham Pc with ME after that, as was told to hold off from XP then.

I brought the original Half Life for it. Spent ages playing it, wondering why it looked rubbish, compared to the box images. Wasn't till almost completing it I found out you could change the graphics modes! DOH!

I had been playing it in 640x480 software mode for ages.