What was your first computer? - And why did you get it? (and more autistic details that almost no one would care about)

[laoyang]

I think the very first computer I had at home was a Macintosh from the 90's, it was meant to be shared by me and my older sister but I didn't care for computers back then (I was only like 7) so my sister ended up using it most of the time. I think the very first computer that I got that was meant for me and me alone was a Dell laptop from like 2001 which I mostly used to do schoolwork, browse NewGrounds and message boards, and look at porn.

When I got into PC Gaming I found it didn't work really well with the games I installed on it (Half-Life 1, Quake 2, etc) but the desktop PC my parents used for work incidentally had good specs for those games, so my parents and I traded, and ever since then I've never had a laptop as my main computer.

 

[DrJonesHat]

I am shocked, SHOCKED I say, to discover a bastion of fine upstanding people like all of you look at porn. Get me a tumbler of gin and a fainting couch post haste!

 

[LazarusOwenhart]

I had a C64, an Amstrad MegaPC and a massive windows 3.1 Amstrad beast. Both were scrapped as the c64 quit working and the Amstrad never got used. As a collector nowadays I kickyself every time I'm made to remember that I sacrificed those machines to the bin men. The MegaPC is a rare thing these days. Long story short it's a DOS PC with a Sega Mega Drive (Genesis) built in.

 

[Derped223]

An HP pavilion desktop desktop similar to this photo that my grandma gave me.

 

[KemChy]

not sure about the brand, i think it was something in german but i don't know german so it could be anything. it was bought in 1998 and had windows 98 on it. it had a 128mb graphics card and 256mb of ram. don't remember the processor. i used it until 2011. when it died i put it in the basement and it's standing there to this day. however i used the desktop (fat white desktop like in the picture above me) for a couple more months before it died too.

 

[OG 666]

Some shitty Gateway PC that I had to share with my siblings. We had many, many fights over whose turn it was to use the computer. I mainly remember that I really loved playing the Encarta Encyclopedia trivia game.

 

[KemChy]

i played a few small kids minigames but the first game i remember playing for real was max payne.

 

[AF 802]

First computer I used was a piece of shit Hewlett-Packard with Windows 3.1. Broke about a year after I started using it, went to a Windows 98 PC after that.

 

[LazarusOwenhart]

While we're all jizzing about how good computers were back in the day I'm just going to leave this picture of my desk as of 9.00AM this morning right here:

I realize my mouse pad is gross.

 

[Derp Potato]

First computer? Shit, son.

I'm not that old, but it was either a basic bitch P3 or very very early P4 that I used to play the first Call of Duty on the PC with. Literally did every little thing I could to ilk out the slightest bit of an improvement. I'd delete every single file and folder I could find that was empty or useless. I'd do my best to BIOS OC the CPU. I even would take the side panel off and have a desk fan blowing in to it.

Just to get some sort of an edge during multiplayer, I'd lower the graphics to barely something decent just for max FPS.

I was stuck with that PC for years. From the time I first started playing CoD to when I graduated. Always dreamt of building my own PC.

Didn't build it until maybe 6 years ago. FX-6300 and other crazy cheap shit, but I had no knowledge about the newest PC market. Only recently have I actually built a decent enough rig, but last gen Intel with the newest AMD GPU. I mainly did everything just for a black and white build with no LEDs.

 

[Monsieur Guillotine]

My first computer ever was a Compaq Presario CDS510 that we got from Radio Shack (remember Radio Shack?).

It had Windows 3.1 with a Compaq program called "TabWorks". I got the computer for the purpose of playing games, but I ended up poking through all the system files more often than not, which led to my interest in programming and IT.

The only games I really played in the actual Windows environment were Gizmos and Gadgets, The Incredible Machine, and SimTower. All of my other games were DOS games, and this computer had the benefit(?) of not needing a "turbo" button in order to play them. It was just that fast!

The only story I can really think of was when I got Sim City 2000. I was so excited to play it. I got it home, installed it, and... I didn't have enough RAM. I didn't know what RAM was at age 7 or 8, and ended up trying to delete files in order to "make more RAM". Finally we called a tech company and they gave us a RAM upgrade. 16 MB for like $106 or something. My grandpa spent over 100 dollars so I could play Sim City 2000.

It's still somewhere in my grandma's basement, probably collecting dust.

 

[The Captain]

Some no name POS that barely ran Windows 98, Pentium 1, 32mb RAM, 28.8k modem and 500mb HDD. My mother bought it severely overpriced from a family "friend" who told her it was state of the art despite me at 12 telling her it was a complete ripoff and if she was going to blow $500 on a computer I could find something much better.

I basically used it to play Command and Conquer Red Alert and go on AIM.

Kept it (barely) running until 2002 when a family member bought some IBM with a Celeron for me.

 

[Capsaicin Addict]

Here's one for you. This was my father's work computer, but it was really the first one I ever did regular work or play on:

http://oldcomputers.net/zenith-z-171.html

This thing came with an integrated 1200-baud modem, which was JUST enough to access local BBSes. I downloaded a number of games (no pr0n though) through them. Also played a lot of the old BBS 'door' games (including a couple pornographic ones; yeah, I'm just as degenerate as the rest of you lot).

God, so many memories of Starflight, Moria, or dialing up BBSes at night...

 

[cornucopia]

i think the first computer i went on was this clunky, slow laptop that my family shared, i'd sit on there and play cool math games and shit like that all day when i was little

 

[Webby's Boyfriend]

It was a notebook from the late 90s that I got in 2003 from my parents when I was eight years old.

 

[Ebonic Tutor]

A 60MHz Pentium 1 Packard Bell computer that could barely run Quake at the lowest resolution.

 

[Sir Auroras]

View attachment 498785
An HP pavilion desktop desktop similar to this photo that my grandma gave me.

Well fuck, I think I had the same one for my first too.

 

[Super Collie]

I financed a 386 Packard Bell desktop computer with the help of my parents when I was a senior in high school. It ran Windows 3.1 and I vaguely remember having a hard time getting dial-up internet to work with it. I paid for it with money I had made working summer jobs. Kept it until around 1996 or 1997 or something, I just remember the second computer I purchased was Windows 98. The 386 went into the garage for a few years and around the turn of the millennium I sold it off to someone. Sorta wish I didn't, but I wouldn't have had the room for it anyways. Not with all the moving around I did after college.