A trip down memory lane: your console/computer history

[Nostromo]

I'll start first.

- Pong



- Texas Instruments Ti-99 4A. I bet some polytubbies are too young to have known cassette tapes. lol:



- Atari 520 ST. Musicians loved the Atari, since it came with MIDI built-in. So I could plug my Synthesizers in it.



- Next I bought a PC, a DX4/100. Its the first computer I bought, with a student loan. As a matter of fact, I still owe the bank 3000$.

- An IBM Thinkpad, don't remember the model

- A Toshiba 2100 CDT laptop (I still use it, after 6 years)

- Xbox (I still have it)

- My current desktop PC.

[Q Classic]

This was my first computer:


This is the one I use now. It's a work computer, but still.

[reds4ever]

Commodore Vic 20
Sinclair Spectrum
Atari 600XL
Atari 520ST
Amiga 1200
PS1
XBox

PCs.........

[Spiffor]

- Amstrad CPC, with cassette drive

- Atari 520 ST. I still have fond memories of Out Run there.

- Commodore Amiga 500. My best gaming memories to this day

- 486 DX2/66, with 8 Mb RAM. Then updated to a DX4/100 with 16 Mb RAM. I mostly bought it to play with amazing 256-colours graphics, and to games as breathtaking as Wing Commander

- A Pentium II 300 (128 Mb RAM). Used it to play Moto Racer, and to crush my LAN friends, who couldn't be as good as me because of their inferior computers (in that game, the better the computer, the better the player)

- A Pentium II 400 laptop (128 Mb RAM). With only 2.5 Mb graphical RAM (in a day and age where 8 Mb was the low standard on desktops). As a result, I couldn't play anything serious with the graphics, except Unreal Tournament, which made much use of the CPU and RAM in its graphical engine. That comp has been my mate for most of my studies, and we shol had a blast together

- A Pentium III laptop, with 1024 Mb RAM, and a GeForce4MX card. My current laptop. It was excellent to play Civ3, EU, or X2.

- A Pentium IV desktop. My parent's comp, so I forgot about most of its specs. Pretty good however: it's my current gaming rig, and the comp from where I'm typing right now.

[Lorizael]

The first computer in my house was a Tandy of some sort. I think it was a Tandy 1000. It had no internal harddrive so you had to boot from a floppy every time. Ran some primitive version of Windows.

Next came the Mac LC II, because my dad was always a fan of Apple. I never really liked the machine, and was glad when we finally moved on.

We moved on to what I affectionately called the Cardboard Box, because that's a pretty good summation of it's computational power. Command & Conquer: Red Alert took five minutes to load. That is, I would double click the icon to run the game and the screen would then be black for five minutes straight, at which point a jittery intro screen would come up.

After that was a crappy Compaq with moderate specs. Then another Compaq with slightly better specs. Then my laptop, a Dell Inspiron 650M, which I liked very much at first but have now cooled on. And finally a nearly top of the line custom built desktop used for one purpose and one purpose only - playing Civ 4.

Consoles? Um. Atari. NES. Genesis. Playstation. I haven't bought a new console in years.

[Ming]

Vic 20
Commodore 64
IBM PC
IBM XT
IBM AT
And many many more after those...

[loinburger]

Commodore 64 -> x386 -> Pentium with MMX -> P2 with 128 mb RAM (upgraded to 384, but downgraded to 128 when one of the DIMMs died) -> P4 with a gig of RAM.

[Dis]

I didn't have any personal stuff for a while. Essentually everything was my brother's. But you could argue it was for the whole family. I played it whenever he wasn't playing it. Or we played games together.

Atari 2600
Should I mention those little electronic football and soccer game- those were small electronic units with only 1 game
Commodore 64 and later a Commodore 128. Both my brothers.
I finally got my own Commodore 64C when I was about 16.

I then joined the navy and went without a computer for a while. But when I was around 20 I got a:

Sega Genesis.
And I finally got a PC when I was about 22. A Packard Bell 66 mhz computer.
a couple years later I got a Sony 300 mghz computer.
A couple years after that I upgraded it.
a couple years after that I bought a Compaq refurbished computer- which I immediately slapped a new sound card and video card into.
A couple years after that (2006) I upgraded this computer to 2 gigs of ram, and a new video card.

[Dis]

I think we used those Texas Instrument computers in my 6 grade center computer class. Our computers in our public schools were woefully out of date. 6th grade centers are probably a local feature where I live. It was an attempt to bus white kids to the schools in black neighborhoods. And their schools were very out of date.

In my jr. high school we had commodore 64's.

In high school we had Apple 2e's (I think this was the apple model, I can't remember), and IBM PC's for my Pascal class.

[CrONoS]

hoow....
Console:

Coleco Vision: This consoles had many different controllers: here is one for the 3D racing game called Turbo:



One remote for the baseball games:


Nintendo Original: I was too jealous of my friends who had one. I received this consoles with the Power Pad, a carpet where you was able to run on it.

Super Nintendo: Wow! I played too much of it.

Nintendo 64: Didn't play too much, In that time I was discovering woman, drugs, alchool and bad things like that.

Gameboy Advance: I bought this since I was tired of 3D games... I wanted to play Mario/Zelda and Advanced Wars. In that times when I bought this consoles, I was travelling a lot.

I've bought an used Gamecube last winter. Another good move, since the console was cheap and games are cheap too. With some really great games.

Computer:
Vic-20(Around 1983)!!!!

IBm 386SX/25mhz(1993), 8 megs of ram, and 80mb of hd!
I was able to play: Doom, Links386, Syndicate, Dune2, Civilization I. My first games, who took 30 disks. Police Quest 4!

NEC 486 DX4/100(1995) (my first computer that I bought with my own money)
I dont remember how much ram memory I had on this computer(maybe 16mb) with a 540MB of harddisk! Great souvenirs on Duke Nukem 3D, Command % Conquer, Civilization 1 and 2.

PenthiumII with a Matrox Mystique 200(1997),(I added a 3D MONSTER II) 64mb of ram and 8gb of hard disk.
Didn't play too much with this computer; since like my nintendo 64; only girls are able to disconnect you from your computer. But I played a lot of Red Alert, Civilization II.

My last bought desktop(2000): Athlon 1.1ghz with 256(upgraded to 768) ram with a ATI Radeon 64meg.
oufff. this computer cost me 4000$, but even at this price it`s one of the best buy i've made in my life. My only regret; On this computer I had a music card (that I`ve never used) who was priced at 450$. But even to this day the monitor is really really good(viewsonic professionnal 19'') who was priced at 750$,in 2000.

My last bought computer (2005):
Laptop Centrino chipset with 512mb(now upgraded to 768), Pentium M 715/80 gb of hard-disk and IntelGMA900.
Along my previous computer(desktop), this is one of the best buy I've made.
This desktop plays CIV4 without any problems(i'm able to overclock the cpu from 1.5ghz to 1.8ghz), and it doesn't produce much heat, dont make noise at all!!! WOW!!!

My best consoles:
Super Nintendo

[Jon Miller]

My dad was big into computers from before I was born. However, I didn't really play on computers until we got an 8088 (or 8086?) AT&T. I also played on other computers of my dads which I don't remember as well. I played a lot of digger and other games on this (I remember playing a bit of flight simulator 4.0 also)

Later we got a 486DX33, I personally helped upgrading this, spending allowances horded for years to buy a 4x CD-ROM drive when that was the fastest CD-ROM drive on the market (I think I wanted to be able to play Civ2, which I also purchased). It started out with a ~200 MB harddrive and 8 MB of ram.. I think it was over $3k when we got it. (We also added another ~300 MB harddrive, and a 14.4k modem back before AOL existed)

Arround the time we got it, my dad had a car accident and when didn't buy any new computer as a family ever again (my parents each bought themselves a laptop after their divorce). I got a PS1 about the time FFVII was due to come out (purchased once more with my own money, got by mowing lawns and stuff). (This was before my parents divorce)

A bit after this, my brother got a Sega, then a SNES, and my mom got a NES.

When I graduated highschool (shortly after my parents divorce), my dad purchased a laptop for me (Pentium M 266, 64 MB of ram, it was a Quantex H-1331 or something like that). This was summer of 1998.

When FFX came out, I purchased a PS2.

In the summer of 2001 I purchased a new desktop (built myself). It was an Athlon 1GHz. I think it currently has 768 MB of Ram and a 9800 Radeon graphics card (or a 9600??). I think I upgraded the graphics card 3 times. (started out with an ATI 8500 or 7500)

~Two years ago (I forget?) I built another new desktop for myself. This is an AMD 64bit 3400 (could have the number wrong) with an ATI x800 graphics card, 1 GB of ram, and a Raptor Harddrive. (I have almost unlimited ammounts of normal speed Harddrive space)

Less then a month ago, I bought my newest machine. A Toshiba M-405. This is a Tablet Laptop with a Core Duo (I think 1.83 GHz), 1 GB of ram and 100 GB harddrive.

Jon Miller
(I also bought a PSP when it came out, but haven't used it as much as I thought I would)

[Nostromo]

Nintendo Original: I was too jealous of my friends who had one. I received this consoles with the Power Pad, a carpet where you was able to run on it.

Is that you in the video?

http://www.killsometime.com/video/video.asp?ID=471

Man, the Colecovision brings good memories. My friend had one. Zaxxon! Donkey Kong! I had forgotten that funky baseball controller.

[Asher]

PCs:
NEC 386
NEC 486
Gateway2000 Pentium 100 (STB ViRGE video chip...then Voodoo2 (12MB)!)
Dell Pentium III 800 (GeForce, then GeForce 3)
Custom-built Athlon 64 3200+: Radeon 9800 XT & 1GB RAM, and more recently a GeForce 7800 GS OC Superclock & 2GB RAM)

Laptops:
IBM ThinkPad T40 (1.5GHz Pentium M, 768MB RAM)

Consoles:
NES
Gameboy
SNES
Sega Genesis
Nintendo 64 (second worst console, ever)
Playstation
Playstation 2
GBA
Xbox
Gamecube (worst console, ever)
Xbox 360

[CrONoS]

I am sure that I acted like him the day I received my first Nintendo...

Originally posted by nostromo


Is that you in the video?

http://www.killsometime.com/video/video.asp?ID=471

Man, the Colecovision brings good memories. My friend had one. Zaxxon! Donkey Kong! I had forgotten that funky baseball controller.

[Mercator]

Before we had any computer at home I only occasionally used various computers/consoles at friends' houses or something. The computers I have no idea what they were, they had these little casette tapes, though. Consoles were the Gameboy, and one friend had the totally cool Lynx. It had a colour screen!

After that...
IBM 8088 (With a whopping 20MB harddrive... First played Civ on this one)
Pentium 133MHz (And first played Civ2 on this one)

And then I bought my own:
Pentium II 350MHz 64MB RAM 7.6GB HD

I've been upgrading parts on that one the past few years, so now I have:
Athlon XP 1800+ (1.5GHz) 512MB RAM (Well, 496, since it's got shared video memory)... but still with the 7.6GB HD and Windows 98.