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Old computers, huh?

My dad was somewhat a computer pioneer...he had a Commodore VIC-20 in the early 1980s. The VIC-20 had 5 KB of RAM (expandable to 21 KB officially), no hard drive, and a 1 MHz CPU. Floppy drives were so expensive that a lot of software for it was on cartridge or audio cassette tape (there was a less expensive tape drive for it).

It didn't survive to my day AFAIK, but he did upgrade to a Commodore 64, which I eventually taught myself programming on.

Sheesh, as long as we're talking really old computers.... *grin*

My first computer was a Commodore 64, which I used to teach myself touch-typing and how to program in BASIC. *dodges the odd thrown egg* Yes, yes, I know - programming in BASIC. Go ahead and jeer. I was only something like 7 or 8 at the time and didn't even know any English yet.

Anyway, it didn't have floppy drives. The only thing it did have as external backup was a tape player, which I used to play those old treasured games like "One on One: Larry Bird vs. Magic Johnson", a tennis game, a soccer game, a very early Olympics game, "Karateka" (I think), and so on... ah, they were good times when you're a prepubescent.

Hey! Don't worry - first computer I used (not mine, but my friends) was the same layout - but it only supported text games (like "You are in a temple with a door to the (W)est, (E)ast and a toch on the floor" type things... and I remember hitting CONTROL+BREAK and it let us look at the code. And that's how I first learned BASIC.

The first computer I ever used was an AppleII and had a green monochrome monitor (which was more plastic casing than actual screen area). Eventually, I upgraded to a color monitor, since it was hard to make out geographical features in games like King's Quest when everything was a shade of green.

my first computer was a Tandy Color Computer 2. i remember using it with a 300baud modem to dial into Sierra's BBS! I don't remember Sierra games on the Coco, we got a Tandy 1000 SX shortly afterwards and I played all the originals on that (SQ,KQ,LSL,PQ).

(to add the topic back in) - i remember too when my dad upgraded to VGA, I was so disappointed to still be using that old 15" (or was it 13") CGA monitor on my 1000SX. Now its nostaglic to think about ... while still wanting to get that 24" widescreen to replace my 19" 4:3 flatscreen.

So you had the same first PC I did that was my own.

Tandy 1000SX... no hard drive... didn't support high density drives... and on turbo ran at if I remember correctly 1.6MHz!

Tawmis wrote:So you had the same first PC I did that was my own.

Tandy 1000SX... no hard drive... didn't support high density drives... and on turbo ran at if I remember correctly 1.6MHz!

Wow... I completely forgot about the "turbo button." I haven't seen that since I used a 386.

We had a turbo button on our 80486DX2, from "Concept Computers" (my parents bought a few weird off-brand computers). It didn't seem to work though...there was a game series (Kroz) that relied on the timing of a slow PC and would run really fast and maybe kill your character even on a Pentium I. I did better in that game on the old 386 than on the 486.

One weird thing about that 486 was that it was 80 MHz, when most processor speeds higher than 25 (or 50?) would end in 00, 33, or 66.

I got halfway through Beyond Good and Evil on my previous computer and was unable to continue on my new one because of the monitor (22" Samsung Widescreen) stretching the picture. The worst part is, the game actually looks like it should fit on a wide screen because it has the black above and below the picture, but there is no provision to adjust it. to fit Probably because it's too old and a console port to boot.

That was a great game, but, alas, it shall have to wait until I get a regularly proportioned monitor. Well, not to mention that I don't think I backed up the save games correctly. They didn't seem to work on the new install.

On the other hand, Guild Wars looks absolutely gorgeous compared to how it looked on my old computer (even if it's not a new game, they have done a great job with graphics). So I can't complain too much. I love having a computer capable of running games how they should be run for a change.

Taryn wrote:We had a turbo button on our 80486DX2, from "Concept Computers" (my parents bought a few weird off-brand computers). It didn't seem to work though...there was a game series (Kroz) that relied on the timing of a slow PC and would run really fast and maybe kill your character even on a Pentium I. I did better in that game on the old 386 than on the 486.

One weird thing about that 486 was that it was 80 MHz, when most processor speeds higher than 25 (or 50?) would end in 00, 33, or 66.

Quite a few years ago, I owned a Pentium III from Micron. The interesting thing about this machine was that it's processor was clocked at "667 MHz." The truth of the matter is that the processor speed was really "666 MHz" but that was changed, considering the negative associations with that three-digit number.

DeadPoolX wrote:The interesting thing about this machine was that it's processor was clocked at "667 MHz." The truth of the matter is that the processor speed was really "666 MHz" but that was changed, considering the negative associations with that three-digit number.

that was very very common. 667 was used everywhere to prevent that, and it even carried the extra digit forward for a different reason. Who in their right mind would buy a 999Mhz machine when the competitor has the MUCH faster 1.0Ghz.