A trip down "CPU memory" lane

[Bert]

I was cleaning out my garage last night and I came across the hollow shell of my old Packard Bell, the first computer I ever purchased for myself. I just found it funny looking at the specs on this old dinosaur. It was 1994 I think, I was 15 and working at Montgomery Ward (you know back when you could work when you were 15) Ofcourse I had other computers before this, but they were my parents, going all the way back to my dads old 'Briefcase Computer' the Compaq Portable SX-64 and the first family computer the Commodore 64.

So anyways, the first PC I ever owned was this Packard Bell Multimedia, I remember being totally psyched because all the components were right at the TOP OF THE LINE!

Here's my old premium PC's specs compared to my current PC (in red)

THEN: an ULTRA SUPER FAST Intel Pentium 166MHZ processor. lol
NOW: Intel Core i7 (3.4GHZ)

THEN: 32 MB RAM
NOW: 12 GB RAM


THEN: 1.6 GB Hard Drive (OMG who could ever have that much data to store? Impossible!!!)
NOW: 2x 2TB WD Hard drives, 1x 256 GB SSHD

THEN: 56k Voice/Fax modem (you know for those super high speed downloads, none of that 28.8 crap!)
NOW: 100MBPS Broadband (actually clocked around 35mbps DL and 10mbps UL)


THEN: 1 MB Video Card
NOW: 2 GB Video Card


THEN: Floppy Disk Port
NOW: 7in1 Multi Memory Card reader

THEN: And lets not forget the add-on CD burner which everyone pretty much thought was the coolest thing ever ("OMG it MAKES Cd's! AMAZING!)

NOW: CD/DVD/BlueRay R/W




How far we've come and IMO we're still in the infant stages of processor speeds and storage capacity.

 

[LVG]

First computer ever used:

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First computer in my house that I grew up using:

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And I could only dream of a 9600 baud modem. Was stuck with a 3200 or something like that.

And Prodigy was the BOMB!

 

[ozzfloyd]

My first PC (family system) was a TRS-80 (Trash-80) by Tandy. No hard drives, no disc drives. OS and and applications ran off of one of those mini-tape drives.

First PC that was mine...Dell, 386sx 25mhz, 1mb of ram, 85mb hard drive. Bought it so I could play the Star Trek 25th Anniversary game. (I was 14).

 

[Bert]

And Prodigy was the BOMB!

LOL I remember getting on Prodigy in like 1992 and setting up an "electronic mail" account for each of my parents and them laughing and saying; 'that's dumb nobody's gonna use this.'

Then I think they went in a chat room and I was permanently grounded from Prodigy.

 

[ozzfloyd]

I was banned from AOL on several occasions. lol.

 

[MigratingOsprey]

we had to have our own computers for college - we sprung for a really nice compaq presario ..... can't remember the specs (although I think it's still setup at my grandmas house), but I know it's fractional compared to what I bought last summer .... things done changed since '97

 

[MrYeahBut]

Back in the day, I had the only 'real job' of my life. I was an RPG II/Cobol programmer first on an IBM Sys 3 and then an IBM 360. Couldn't give you specs but at the time it could...can you believe it, run 2 programs at a time. Tape and disk drives took up room of a small house and the Telex printers, which had a chain printer(like a chain saw) were the size of a washing machine. Punched card input.

First 'mini computers' I worked on were Wang and IBM Sys 32. Back then most everyone hated IBM for the corporate weasels that they were.

 

[LVG]

LOL I remember getting on Prodigy in like 1992 and setting up an "electronic mail" account for each of my parents and them laughing and saying; 'that's dumb nobody's gonna use this.'

Then I think they went in a chat room and I was permanently grounded from Prodigy.

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Those chat rooms were the wild wild west!

 

[DeAnna]

I was watching the other day an old episode of 'Married w/Children' where the Bundys bought a new computer at the bargain price of $2,100.

That baby had 40 MB of ram memory - wow!

 

[ozzfloyd]

Just for fun I'm currently building a circa 1995 PC from scavenged old parts. I'm going to run Dos 6.22 and Windows 3.11 and try to find as many early to mid 90s games as possible. Should be fun. I was going to do the Virtual Machine thing, but I really want to real old school gear. And I just HAVE to run an old CRT as well...

 

[az240zz]

I remember working for my uncle in Binghamton, NY, Making electric coils that went into the IBM computers. This was in the winter of 1964.