The PC is 20 years old today!

Remove all ads!

Will to be exact the IBM PC is 20 years old today. That good old x86 machine. You know the one I mean. It weighted about 60 pounds and only a 5 1/4 drive. On hard drive, no mouse, only a little tinny speaker in the case, and no colors on the screen. How far we have come.

I actually had an apple first. I got it in 1980 before the IBM PC was even out. I had 16 shades of green instead of gold on my screen. At first I had a tape drive but soon I upgraded to a 51/4 floppy. 128K of memory! after I bought the expansion card. What a machine. It's still setting at my parents hours and still work fine.

What was your first system? And where do you think PCs will go in the next 20 years?

 

My first computer was a kickass amiga 500

 

Mine was the good ol' 486 I still have it here beside me and it even has Betrayal at Krondor installed *sniff* The memories...

 

Anyone want to buy some 5.25 floppy's?

It's amazing to imagine loading floppy's to play a game...Considering what's out there now!

 

I had a Apple IIe

I remember playing the original game ZORK. Anyone remember that? It was all text! No graffix at all! And, it was GREAT! LOL.

I also had the original Pools of Radiance by ssi when it came out. It was a great game, and I remember thinking how could it get any better than this? Just imagine what things will be like in another 20 years....I bet we'll be playing on our own personal "holo decks". When that time comes I'm never leaving the house!

 

I had an IBM XT at my house for a while BTW It was able tu use a mouse. All I can say is that IBM should of made the OS too. Then we wouldent have to put up with Bill's cruddy crash prone virus spredding garbage. Only problem is IBM probably would have been titled a manopaly.

 

I still remember playing with an old 286 ages ago. It had a gigantic harddisk of 20(+) MB, and the colors on the screen were either green or *very* green. I played pacman (with ascii-graphics) until my fingers were sore.

Years later I got my hands on a 486, and a copy of "UFO - Enemy Unknown" (The first X-COM game). I still play that game...

[This message has been edited by PowerPuff (edited August 13, 2001).]

 

C64...
I played Wizard of war and Blue Max with my cousin. Powerpuff: Ufo is a great game!

[This message has been edited by Alyr Arkhon (edited August 13, 2001).]

 

OH YEAH! It's all about the Commador 64! Warlok, Ghost Busters, and Bongo Bongo were my favorite games. And think... I was 4 years old at the time. I still have that thing along with my Atari. Man, did those things have great sound for the time, or what!?

 

Speccys rule! My first computer was a Spectrum +, and I used to spend hours playing Elite on it. Later we upgraded to a Spectrum 128, then (much) later got a 486 and were firmly on the PC road.

 

The ONE and ONLY C64
Loved that machine. Played The Last Ninja, IK+,Pacland, Blue Max,Bubble Bobble, Street Rod, Hot Rod, and a whole lot of other cool games.
Sold it sometime around '92 or '93 i think, regret it ever since. I want it back
BTW anyone want to sell one ?

Bought my Olivetti SX/2 50 in 94, I bought a few upgrades over the years.
Then i bought a PII 266
And now i have my PIII 700 running at 784

 

Before i got my own computer i used to play Nemesis the Warlock and Indiana Jones on my friend's C64.

 

My first was a Spectrum ZX81 (though I used a ZX80) at school. The wobbley ram pack (16kb) and trying to type in game code from magazines finally frustrated me enough to upgrade to a Commodore Vic 20. Now that was a great games machine at the time. The sound was far better than anything else and you could buy games on plug in catridges so no waiting for tapes to load (20 odd minutes as Tal pointed out). I had a great arcade quality version of Space Invaders and one called Omega Race (a bit like Astreoids). My favourites though were probably the Scott Adams adventures.

They were text only but still managed to create great atmosphere and even featured special effects. For example, climbing into a dark pit I lit a match. Some text appeared to describe what I could see, I started reading and then the text disapeared. I realised after a while that it was my match burning out You had to light a torch with the match before I could read the room's description fully. Who needs billions of colours and polygons

 

Hmm i dont know the name of the machina as i only were about 5 when we got it but it was a black tv look-alike box with a long joypad. You had cartridges with different games, pac-man, damn i dont even remember all of them but we had about 5 or 6 games. And it had asteroids built in to the machine. You had plastic screens you put on the screens to get colour. Can anyone tell me what kind of machine that was?

 

I had a Pet Pc keyboard and monitor in one with of course a tape drive (audio cassette tape for all the young ones ) or an i still dating my self the cassette came before the CD and after the 8 track

 

I loved th C64 I had used it untill it died. all of 4 or 5 years ago.

 

I managed to completely destroy two of my fathers computers(286 and 486), probably because I've always been the type of person that has to find out how something works... Then he got tired of replacing his computers so he bought me my own computer to destroy. That one I never did fuck up actually, if that's because it was my own or because I had learned something killing the two other machines, I don't know.

 

My Amiga 500 owned everything. Before that I remember I borrowed a Commodore 64. Things have evolved... The thing used casette tapes!

But wasn't the first computer made druing WW2 to calculate missile orbits?