how old were you when you first got your pc?

CyberGhost

i was 16 when i first got my first PC it was Athlon 600MHz
128MB of SDRAM
14.2GB HDD
32 Nvidia video

i payed(well my dad did), 740$ for it, it was a very memorable day!


and how much time do you usually spend infront of your computer and how much of it is actually productive(by productive i mean creating something like coding, Animating in 3dsmax or some other app, webdesigning, studing, erm... what else? ||| downloading - apps,games,movies,mp3s,maps and utils for UT2K3, going through pamela's pics collection, playing, scrolling through different forums - doesn't count in productive)? are you like me, spending as much as possible time with it?

sorry for asking so many questions, i'm not a post w ore, but if i wouldn't ask this question now i'd forget it later

Redshift

I didn't get my first PC untill I was about 20 belive it or not I bought it myself in Compustore (I know but I was a newbie at the time) It was a Compaq P.O.S with a 300mhz Celeron a whopping 32 MB or ram a spacious 3.2 gig hard disk and a 4mb on board Graphics card. it done me for a couple of years untill I gave it to my brother and built my own HOG he has since chucked it and built his own as well so we got good mileage out of it.

dazberry

I was 17 and it appeared in the house 3 weeks before my Leaving Cert. - oops. Don't know how much it was.

It was a 286-10mhz, 640kb RAM (+1MB Extended), 40MB HDD, EGA and had a 5 1/4" 1.2MB FDD - well it was 1989 Still have the FDD in this machine as I type - you never know when it might come in handy.

and how much time do you usually spend infront of your computer and how much of it is actually productive

Outside work (programming) I spend most of my spare time in front of the PC though I'm normally pretty productive, but the current project has been mentally de-motiviating (top down procedural programming whereby I'm an OOP guy :ninja: ), so I haven't done any serious (home) coding in the last 3 months. Looking forward to getting back to it when I finish up the job. I've been a bit of a gaming monkey over the last few months too, so that hasn't really helped - probably bought more games in that time than I did in the 2 years prior, and the addition of Wolf/ET and ADSL doesn't help matters either

D.

j0e9o

iwas about 14 or 15 my dad got this gateway pc it was a 750mhz amd 128mb sdram and a 14.4 hdd with a 32mb tnt2! yeap that bad boy guided me through CS but now i got me a 3000+, 1024mb ddr ram, 9800 pro and a 120gig hdd. Now the old computer it in my little brothers room and i like to laugh at him now and then and all i hear is" i need a new pc"

jesus_thats_gre

I was about 12 when I got one. It was a 486 DX2 66Mhz with 8MB of ram, 504MB hard drive and a 2X Speed cdrom drive.... Dont have any idea how much if was but I dount it was cheap.

elexes

hmm think i was 8 . it was a bbc micro . what a classic computer .

then when i was 13 i tink i was given the all powerfull mitac p75 with a 1 gig hdd a 14.4kbs modem that only connected at 9600 ( stupid eircom phone lines ) 16mb ram .i rember the first day and i couldnt install the mouse . o those were the scary days . i had so many probloms with that computer it was unreal and thats how i learnt to build my own from then on .

ive had a few since then
at 17 i built my first p2 450 and even overclocked it 50 mhz to 500 . i thought i was gr8
then 19 a amd k7 700
20 amd k7 axia 1 gig
after that i cant rember but ive gone through a good few in the last 3 years usualy just doing small upgrades to each . then replacing the mobo's whe i get the full milage from them

hamster

An interesting question - strictly PCs...

Well, I was 19 in 1993 with a:
Generic 486 DX2 66Mhz (240Mb HD, 8Mbs Ram, Tseng 1Mb video card)
Came with: Windows 3.1, MSDOS 6.0
Cost: IR £2000 (in from England)
Game of the Time: Ultima Underworld II / Strike Commander

.. 2 years later.. 1995

Dell Pentium 120Mhz, 16Mb, Matrox Millennium 4Mb WRam, x4 CDROM, 1Gb HD
Came with: Windows 3.11, MSDOS 6.1 /
Cost: IR £2800
Later: Upgraded later to '95 '98 (mem-> 32/48Mb, modem 28.8->56kbps, 2Gb HD)
Game of the Time: C&C, EF-2000

.. 3 years... 1998

Homebuilt PII-266Mhz, 64Mb, Voodoo2 w/Matrox, x2 CDRW, 4Gb Drive
Installed: Win98 2nd Ed.
Cost: IR £700
Game of the Time: Half Life

.. 2 years.. 2000
Homebuilt PIII-850Mhz, 128Mb, 32Mb GeForce2, x6 CDRW/DVD combo, 10Gb Drive
Cost: IR £1200 (well it was dot com time...)

Upgrades since: 80Gb HD, 512Mb Ram, ISDN, NIC, 22" monitor...

... still have this 3 years later.. 2003... and will be at least for another year! I think I want to reduce the spending rate and invest in other things... besides ADOM works on a 486 and I can emulate most of the last 10 years and mp3s work fine... work is fine...

.... maybe would like to try Deus Ex2, Half life2 and Thief3... they need to achieve "killer app" status for me to upgrade for awhile.

Col_Loki

I was 12 and i got an IBM PS1 286 processor, 1mb Ram, think it was 40mb harddisk, EGA, Floppy drive, internal beeping (that was all the sound it had - beeps)...........

I used DOS mainly and spent ages trying to get newer games to work on it, Himem etc. Then got win 3.1 and try'd loading win95 - no supprise that didnt work eh?

I used that computer for everything i possibly could, even had a copy of the school's report printing program ......... ahh those were the days.

Stephen

I was about 14. The parents bought a piece of junk AST 486. Had an Amiga 600 before that. The next machine I had was a P200 (with MMX, WOW!), then a P3-866, then I built myself an AMD XP1800+ based system. This summer i built an XP2800+ based one, using most of the bits from the 1800 system I am now 21 btw.

sunbeam

I was 29

Never had the cash to buy one and used college/work pcs/a borrowed laptop before that. Then I started a fulltime job with a draconian Internet access policy (i.e. none) and no access to even a wordprocessor for personal use so I had to buy a laptop for working on my thesis.

So being completely green I toddled off to Dixons and after a bit of a saga ended up with a Packard Bell Easy One Silver 2800 laptop, 10GB, 800 mhz Celeron, 128mb RAM which lasted 17 months.

In the meantime I found Boards.ie and started to lurk and learn...:)

Stark

I was 11, got an old pc that the college had thrown out. Was and 8086 with 1MB of RAM (i think), no hard drive, no mouse, monochrome screen. Piece of ****, but at least I could program, and I learnt the joys of Commander Keen. (to this day the images I have of commander keen in my head are still amber and black).

Then a year or two later, we got a 486DX-25MHz, with 4MB of RAM, Windows 3.1, colour screen (ooh), 120MB hard drive. Felt like a supercomputer at the time.

Winters

Ive been using PCs since i was about 7 or 8. I can remember using the very advanced Intel 386 33mhz. Piece of beauty it was. My favourite program was MS Paint . Windows 3.1 was the best too....

Then it was upgraded to 8mb of Ram [from 4mb]. And a couple of years later a CD drive was added. Then the PSU burnt out. Opened her up and you could see the burn marks in the PSU. Great HP build. 1992 or earlier, Cant quite remember. But the 180mb hard drive was the biggest thing yet!

irishguy

i was 15 when i first got a pc. it was a 100mhz, P1 32mb ram,1.5gig harddrive and it was purchased for £450 in 1998.still have it using it as a wireless router at the moment. i spend about 25-40 hours a week infront of a pc [between collage and home] 20 of those hours are productive [13 productive hours in collage] the rest of the time is emailing,browsing,gaming,chatting.

Lukin Black

Age 21 in 2000, the folks were never gonna get one, so I had to wait until then til I could afford it.

IR£1850 Dell PIII 733, 30Gb HD, DVD, CD-RW, 128Mb RAM, 17" Monitor, Creative SB Live Soundcard, nVidia RIVA TNT 2 32Mb video card..

Still have it, but upgraded to PIII 933, got a 250mb zip drive and now on 256 Mb RAM, all of it free Must get a bigger hd drive, otherwise I'm still pretty happy with it. But then I'm not a gamer!

ArphaRima

I was 12 in 1982.

Had an Amstrad 2086.

8mhz in turbo mode
32mb Hard drive (had to be parked before turning it off!)
3.5 and 5.25 inch disk drive
state of the art VGA monitor (about 10 minutes to render a photo)
windows 2 i think.

The joys of flight simulator 3 and 4, barbarian, north and south, and golden axe on it.
Man was i pissed when the new wing commander wanted a 286 and a soundcard....

MiCr0

First PC:
Olivetti 386sx 3mb ram (later upgraded to 5)
80mb harddrive
no cdrom
no sound card
win 3.1

my current pc sounds like stuff most of you had about 3/4 years ago
ath700
438mb ram
150gb harddrive

Jaden

In 1986 I got a Radio Shack TRS-80.

Z-80 8 bit microprocessor.
4K of memory (futher 12K expansion pack added later).
Monochrome green screen.
Level III BASIC.
300 Baud Wire wrapped modem.

I still have it.

blorg

Heh. First actual PC was an original IBM XT (8086, 512k, 10mb HDD, green monochrome monitor). Great machine. I think I was around 14, I later sold it but still have an original AT keyboard, works fine with a PS2 converter and is the best keyboard I have ever used (it's as heavy as my laptop!).

In college, after I sold this, I was using a dual-floppy (1x3.5, 1x5.25) 8086 with a daisywheel printer; I couldn't justify hanging on to such an expensive machine with an actual hard disk! It ran WordPerfect great, 1 program disk, 1 document disk - and I had to swap a disk out to do the spell check. Daisywheel output was unbelievably noisy but very good quality, much better than dot matrix.

First computer full stop was a Commodore 64 (age 7), first 'seperate box' computer an Amiga 2000.

I work with computers (programmer/internet/databases) so am in front of one, hopefully productive, most of the day... erm - back to work now

Praetorian

First pc was a 286 4mb ram, 40 gig h/d. EGA screen, Pc speaker etc! I was about 11. Parents got me it for 500 quid second hand.

Next was a 486 sx 25mhz, 8 meg ram. About 6 months later, I got a vga screen. Wolfenstein 3D was amazing...!

Next pc was my uncles 486 dx2 66, 500 meg hard drive (Doom was amazing)... He was one of the first people in the country to get a Pentium (phwaor)...lucky git with his Intel contacts . I then got a creative sound blaster for my birthday. That xmas, I got a lovely 4 speed cd drive

Now my memory becomes a little clouded. I think my next pc, was a 200mhz Cyrix, with 64 meg of ram, gig hard drive etc etc. It promptly broke down, and the **** in the UK would not exchange the parts. I had spent all of my wages that I had earned during that whole summer on that pc

My next pc was a 350 K6-2, and a voodoo 2. All my friends were jealous :rollyeyes: ...followed promptly by a 400mhz k6-2, and then a 400mhz k6-3.

Then I got my first Athlon 850mhz slot loaded power house, and a Voodoo 3, 128 meg of ram etc etc. Next was a 900mhz Athlon, and a Geforce 1 (bye bye 3DFX )

Since then I've done regular upgrades, 1200mhz Athlon, 1333mhz, 1400mhz, 1800+ athlon.

My current main rig is a 2533mhz P4, 512mb ram RDRAM (too expensive to upgrade), 360 gig storage, Radeon 9800pro 22inch Cornerstone monitor etc etc.

My next pc will be a Athlon 64 ~3400-3800 ‘San Diego’. 1 Gig of 466mhz ddr (or faster). Dual 74 gig raptors in raid.

Gerry

I was 9 years old, in 1990 when I got my first pc. I had asked for a megadrive, but the parents had a low opinion of video games, so they bought something that they thought couldn't play games. Needless to say I spent most of my time obtaining games for it.
It was a philips 286 with a 40mb drive, 1mb of ram and I think a 256k graphics card. Great thing about it was the vga monitor, while most people still had crappy cga and ega.
I avoided windows for a long time, eventually running 3.1.
Upgraded the ram to 4mb, and added a soundblaster pro. I think one of my cousins still has the machine, must hunt it down and install minix on it..

The final straw was when the machine wouldn't run doom, I went and built a 486. It had a crap motherboard with faulty cache, but it was an amd dx4/120, so it also managed to run quake. Because I just wanted a fast cpu, I had no money to spend on a hard drive, so I ended up going back in time and using a 20mb winchester, which makes an insane amount of noise and beeped every time it did anything.

Then I bought a p166 with a vx board. Clocked this to 225, the board went after a few months, and the new board only went to 200 stable. I think cirrus logic graphics cards were the order of the day.
I eventually picked up a powervr board, which was a bit of a disaster.
The first proper 3d card was a 3dfx banshee. I realised after a while that a p200 wasn't cutting it, so I upgraded to a p3 450 on a chaintech bx board. This was clocked to 504.
I then went and bought an abit be6, which had to be replaced several times before I got a working one.This ran the 450 at 550, after a lot of tweaking. Went a while later. Eventually they gave me a be6-2, much better

Bought a p3 600e, this ran at 1ghz for about 6 months till the board went, luckily peats replaced it again. New board would only run at 150fsb max.

Latest purchase was a p3 tualatin 1.4ghz chip, unfortunately this still refuses to work in my be6-2, so I'm using an ancient tekram board instead.

I've upgraded various bits and pieces over the years, so some of the machine is out of date, some of it not so bad.

Spec is:

p3 1.4ghz
512mb pc 133
120gb hd
dvd + cdrw
creative geforce2 gts
cheapo lidl 19" monitor.
creative 2.1 speakers

ixoy

First PC... I was 17, in 1997. Was a P120 with 16MB ram and a whole 2GB HD. I liked it lots.

First actual computer was the God of Computers: Spectrum 48K. I dunno when it arrived in the house but had it at least since I was 4 or 5. Speccies are undefeatable so I automatically win this thread :cool:

Tripkipke

I was 7, my first comp was an MSX2 after that I got me an 80888 atari and kept upgrading on a regural basis

red vex

around 88/89 it woz an amstrad cpc464
i woz round 6. it woz great makin the screen flash n stuff with basic 1.0 best game woz gary linekers superstar soccer