I had a bit of nostalgic flashback today when I found my/our first computer in a closet while helping my mother clean out her house. It was an Ambra 486 DX33 mhz with 8mb RAM, 100mb HDD, 15" color display, mouse and keyboard and floppy drive. Man, that keyboard was like a typing machine. It was all mechanical and must've weighted at least 3kg. We later put in a CD-rom and a sound card.

Now, we did have a old Tulip computer, but I didn't play much with that. I had a NES, so playing anything in monochrome wasn't that appealing. But when we bought that Ambra, it was like stepping into a whole other dimension. Using a mouse to paint things in different colors in MS Paint? Mind. Blown. Games on discs with FMV and (almost) CD quality sound. There's people inside my game and they're talking!

I remember playing Death Race, Sim City 2000, Civilization, adventure games, Dune 2, Doom. The last game I managed to get properly running on the Ambra, was Command and Conquer. After that, we bought 75mhz Pentium P54C and the Ambra was thrown in the closet, never to be used again.

So, what was your first PC? Do you remember the specs?

I think I got my first PC in 1993 (or 1994) from Ultimate Electronics. I'm pretty sure it was a 486 and it had 4MB of RAM. I remember buying Star Wars Chess with it. However it was Doom 2 that kick off my love of gaming. I so remember having to upgrade to 8MB of RAM to play the game and it cost me $180.

Mine was a TI-99/4A. It was pretty boss. We had the speech synthesizer module for it.

I can't remember anything other than it was a Packard Bell 486 DX2 that I decided to get a week or two after putting a hard drive in an Amiga 1200; for some strange reason.

The other main memory is continually messing about and having to reinstall windows off floppy every other week, and if I didn't remember what order to load the sound card and graphics in, It wouldn't work and I'd have to start again. I also remember that the first copy of MS Office that I 'borrowed' from work was on approx. 40 floppies, which was a joy to reload!

The earliest games I remember playing a lot of was; as you; Civilization, C & C and Dune 2.

First computer that I'm willing to call that (had an Odyssey2 but that was really just a console with a keyboard) was a ZX Spectrum+...

First PC?

• AMD P75
• 16MB RAM
• 1.2GB HDD
• 24x CD-ROM
• Cirrus 1MB PCI graphics
• Yamaha ISA sound

Later sold my PS1 and a bunch of games to fund an upgrade, meaning I was able to double the hard drive and RAM, get an Intel P166MMX (and the all-important little metal sticker), a 4MB Sierra graphics card, a 8MB 3dfx Voodoo accelerator, and a Creative Labs PCI sound card.

I played a lot of Jedi Knight on it. Later on, after buying another PS1, I was mainly using it to run emulators.

Olivetti M300-05

• Intel 386sx-16 MHz
• 5 MB RAM
• 40 MB HDD
• Standard VGA-adapter and monitor (640x480, 16 colours or 320x200, 256 colours max)
• Sound Blaster 2.0

I miss it.

My first computer, however, was an Amstrad CPC 464 with a monochrome monitor (greenscreen) and later a 3" disc drive. All hail Arnold! I still have that somewhere.

This was my first PC

I had the 386-Version, my Dad got it for me and upgraded the RAM and damn, if it wasn't the hottest thing I ever laid my eyes on. The idea of combining a PC and a Genesis, it does not get better than this.

Loved it with all my heart and am still bothering my dad to get it back from his school, where that abomination had its second life.

NES

IBM Aptiva Pentium 166mhz, 16 MB of RAM, Windows 3.1

I don't remember the specifics of my first computer. In this case, I mean the first family computer; I didn't own my own computer until 2006. What I do remember is we got it in 1996 when my dad bought it from a buddy of his who was letting it go really cheap because it was fairly old even then. It ran some version of DOS and I remember having to type "win" or something at the command prompt to boot into Windows 3.1. It had no sound card because all the games that were on it played through the PC speaker. It also had 5.25" and 3.5" floppy drives.

The only games I remember on that thing were a Spear of Destiny shareware, Hugo III: Jungle of Doom shareware, Stunts, CD-Man (version 1.0 with the fake Pac-Man), Tetris Classic, and Ski Free. Good times. I had this PC until 1999 or 2000 when we got an HP Pavilion 6736 or something similar. Games on that thing seemed like I skipped a console generation.

Acer something with an intel x286 and 512k ram, played Prince of Persia from a floppy disk. Changed my life forever.

We had a family computer that we used from 2001 to 2008, at which point my grandparents bought us a new one. That old family computer became mine and I used it until the summer of 2010. It had 512MB RAM, a 1.8GHz processor, and an onboard chip with 8MB of video memory. It was good enough to play Sim City 4 decently. At least I remember it being decent.

The first computer I could claim as mine was a Toshiba Satellite A75 laptop. It was decent, although it certainly had problems overheating while playing games, and it eventually died when the power connector severed from the motherboard. I had it for about 5 years, which is enough time for a laptop, I believe.

Didn't play too many games on it, as it couldn't run many of them. (Strangely, it ran SimCity 4 better than the modern beast I own today.) I was a console guy back then.

Err... I was 3 when I used my first computer (my dad gave it to me for a while so it was technically mine) so I have no idea what it was. It was from the 80s and had an amber monochrome monitor. I played games on it via 5.25" floppies. I miss that computer so much. My dad recycled it without telling me a while backed. I was not enthused at all about that.

The first "modern" computer we had ran Windows 95, had a 4GB HDD, and 32MB of RAM (I somehow figured all this out when I was 8. The only reason I figured out what that stuff was was because I wanted to know if it ran AoE2. I remember that computer chugged when I tried to play Rollercoaster Tycoon after I got over 1000 visitors).

Apple IIe with an 80 Column Text Card. I didn't realize it at the time but my parents spent a ton of money on it.

My first PC was a '96 Packard Bell.

• Intel Pentium 144 mhz
• 16 MB Ram
• 1.2 GB HDD
• 800x600 CRT
• Some Soundblaster knock-off (Damn IRQ conflicting sumbitch)

Let's just say that PC taught me a lot about troubleshooting both hardware and software, but man did I have a blast playing Doom, DN3D, C&C, and countless other great games of that era.

It was a black IBM Aptiva with a Pentium in it. Ran Windows 95. That was our first family computer, must have cost over 2 grand at the time. Now my cellphone packs more of a punch.

My first PC that I could call my own was a clone my dad bought back in 2003 or so. Had an awesome processor, a Pentium 4 at 2.6 Ghz. Unfortunately it also had 256mb ram and integrated graphics, so I brought that up to 512MB and bought an ATI X850 Pro around 2006 or so which let me play Battlefield 2 and Oblivion and shit. It was awesome. Still, it ran Morrowind well even on the default specs so it was totally more than enough for me. And I must have put uncountable hours into BF1942, Unreal Tournament, Quake III and CS over the years.

Compaq Presario circa 95ish. I still have nightmare flashbacks of screwing around in Windows, messing everything up, and then my dad throwing a fit because I broke the new computer and being forced to sit there and re install Windows. All 40 disks and 3 hours later and I could finally get Descent to work. Worth it.

Some kind of 386, I really can't remember exactly off the top of my head.

A sick 386 that I played lots of Pool of Radiance on.

all i can remember about my first computer was that it had a pentium 4 processor ati radeon 6600gs 1gig of ram 160gb hard drive and a 14 inch monitor. i mostly played cod 2 and moh online and a bit of battlefield 2

My first computer was an Amiga 500. I wish it never got tossed out.

I called him Frank (Frankenstein)

• P133 (later upgraded to a 166mmx but the mmx wasnt recognized by the mobo)
• 8meg ram later upped to 16meg
• 100meg hd later bigger ones added
• 8meg Diamond Stealth 2 video card (i loved that thing)

Good reason I called him Frank, he rarely stayed the same from month to month lol

486dx2 4mb or 8mb can't remember, cheap VGA card, some sort of sound card. I built it from parts from this tiny shop in my hometown. I came to the PC stuff late because, well, up until Doom who cared about the PC.

My first PC was some terrible HP computer that broke down constantly.

I know it had a 300mhz processor and a 10gb hard drive, which I keep in a box under my computer desk with all my other old hard drives. NO ONE GETS MY HARD DRIVES! CONSPIRACY THEORIES AND CRAZINESS!

I think I got it around the time Diablo came out... and payed way to much for it.

You old timer you

I don't remember the specs of our first PC, all I remember is that it was an IBM, the computer case was used as a base for the monitor instead of being a respectable ground part, and the computer ran Commander Keen, Doom 2, Titus the Fox, Dangerous Dave and Prehistorik.

Then 1998 came and with the new Windows release and the release of Fifa World Cup 1998, we had to get a new PC. I couldn't have enjoyed watching the 98 world cup like a fanatic without playing the video game as well!

Back in '98 me and my brother got a pretty decent for that time machine - GeForce 3, 128MB RAM, 700MHz CPU. Boy it was times...

@jouseldelka:

Yeah i remember we had a family computer that was had the same kind of model.

I could play Half - Life with it but the loading times were like 1 minute or something silly like that.

My first PC was a 386 SX, had 256MB harddrive and everything, and I really mean, EVERYTHING used a floppy disc. Dont even remember how much RAM it had in it.. I can remember buying a dedicated graphics card with the 486 though, which was a Diamond graphics card and thats almost all i can remember. The OS was Windows 3.11 and more then half of the stuff used DOS and in order to get things working properly in DOS, you had to create a boot floppy disc which would cause DOS to use hi-mem otherwise things like games wouldn't work, back then, I believe there wasn't a single game that worked inside windows, cept minesweeper and solitaire. My first gaming experiece was with Atari and playing Pong before I my dad brought home an ATARI ST which came with mousetrap and OIDS!!!!! :D

Don't remember the name of our first family computer, all I remember was it used only 5 ¹⁄₄-inch floppys and ran DOS...it had a golf game, spider-man, and I believe Prince of Persia (it was either on this computer or my next one).

My parents first PC was a 95 Packard Bell.

• Intel Pentium 133 mhz
• Win 95
• 16 MB Ram
• 1.97 GB HDD
• 1280 x 1024 CRT
• Cant remember the soundcard name

I had used a BBC micro model b and an Apple Imac G3.

My first PC was a Gateway 2000 E-3110, PII 233 MHz. Dad got it through work. I still remember playing trespasser on that thing and it looked nothing like the screenshots i had seen of it. Those were some bullshots i tell ya. Also those physics! Looked like all the dinos ran on trampolines.

My first PC was apparently built by a family friend and it was a Pentium 3, 256MB of RAM, 10GB HDD and Windows 98SE.

The tragic thing about my first PC is that the first thing I did with it was play Sonic R...

I can't remember the specifics but it was an old Windows 3.1, it had Duke Nukem 1&2 shareware, Commander Keen shareware, and a bunch of games that came with windows including the fucking ski slope with the monster game, fuck that monster.

The first one I remember was a TRS-80. I never played games on it or anything, but it was the first time I ever screwed around with programming of any kind.

I still have some of the parts sitting around because I'm an idiot, and from those it had:

• GeForce FX5500 256 v.
• Crucial 512MB DDR
• A 462 AMD processor that I forget what it specifically is (Sempron I think)
• 60 GB HDD
• 1280x1024 CRT

I had this from around 2001-2005. It played WC3 and a bunch of old RPG's just fine, so I didn't give a shit. My dad built it for me around 2001 but I dunno how many of these parts are from that time period specifically. This was my first PC but I dunno what my parents had before that I might have fucked around with.

I used an Apple 2 a lot in school but my first personal computer was a Gateway with Windows XP, a celeron processor at 500 MHz, a 15 GB hard drive, and 64 Mb of ram.

286 laptop. DOS only. It had a really basic art program that I used for fun. It looked very similar to this:

The very first computer my family had was a rainbow computer i remember hardly anything about. The first computer in my house that got any real use however was a Power Macintosh circa 1995 or '96. I was only like 4 or 5 at the time, but we had it for a while and it was a good computer with some pretty solid games. The first computer that was MINE was a mac powerbook but it was already ancient by the time i got it.

I was just thinking about this the other day.

I had a PC when I was a kid but didn't know what was in it. I remember that I tried to put in a modem into it but fried the hard drive somehow, magnetic screwdriver? So we went to the Microcenter to buy a new PC. What I remember is that it had a 700 Mhz Intel Celeron with 64 Mb of RAM and a 10 GB HDD. Windows ME. Man.

IBM PC (B revision motherboard that could hold 256k RAM) with an MDA, an AST Six Pack Plus (384k RAM, Serial, Parallel, Game, Clock and Calendar) and dual full height 5.25" floppy drives (which sounded like you were strangling a duck when you used them)...

It was remarkably expensive.

Something very similar to this, I don't remember the specs since I was 6 at the time. It was very expensive compared to today, or at least that is what my father told me.

My first PC was a P1 PC :)

Amstrad CPC6128

First PC I remember seeing bought was some old 75mhz beater that, now that I think about it, was kept for a surprisingly long time. Damn thing cost close to a grand. D:

I was late out to get my own computer, so it's nothing special in the grand scheme. Might even have been as late as an early dualcore... Or P4, I can't remember.

Either way, I used dad's line of computers before that for years and years, and fuck if I was computer savvy to know anything about specs back then. I could probably tell you what they looked like on sight though. :D

I was late out to get my own computer, so it's nothing special in the grand scheme. Might even have been as late as an early dualcore... Or P4, I can't remember.

Either way, I used dad's line of computers before that for years and years, and fuck if I was computer savvy to know anything about specs back then. I could probably tell you what they looked like on sight though. :D

The first computer that was mine rather than a family computer was a Pentium 133mhz, 16mb of RAM, and a 1 gig hard drive and I don't remember the other specifics. I used that thing, mostly for gaming, for ages until something finally gave out and I couldn't be arsed to fix it and got a new computer instead. Playing hundreds of hours of Sim City 3000 on the thing along with StarCraft and Mechwarrior. I remember trying to get Unreal Tournment to work but I kept falling through the level as soon as the game started though it could run it when that didn't happen.