Are your Computers stuck in the past?

[Scavenger]

When I was young and nieve I thought,
The computer that my dad had bought,
Was indeed a piece of master art,
When in fact, it was a donkey cart.

It had two huge 5 inch drives,
And less than a mega of ram,
And when it turned on, the trouble arrives,
Half the time it would crash, flash, or even go BLAM!

My childish ignorance stopped me from saying,
That more advanced games it couldn't be playing.
My parents would had burnt me alive,
(If it hadn't had been 1995)

The next computer, we had slightly moved on,
From the clunky old disks and the monitor (wooden),
Win three one one, I was happy to see,
That olde dosse prompte did really bug me.

It didn't stop us from not having a soundcard,
But this time (obvious) we had a disk that was hard,
And a 14.4 old rickety modem,
Compuserve that Dad used to check on his E.M'.

Years later, we got it together,
Installed sound, Win95, as we prancéd in heather,
I remember me and Dad installing it now,
(If only because I dspaced it before, and it was so slow!)

Today, I have only one major qualm.
That stops me from being, uh, ever so calm.
Recogise that old two two three,
A pentium two measured in M H and z.

Remember when you complain of your tools,
Who's got to wait until he's old and he drools,
On his dialup modem to download files, and some finish in may...
Me, the unwilling AOLer, on a 56k.

Ha! Beat that for a poem! Anyway, this post is actually about those people WITHOUT flashy PCs. They can go away and play footsie with their precious machines. We're talking the people with old, old, and decrepit computers. Those who can't even run 640x400 on AGS =(.

Who has the slowest computer? What was your slowest computer? Do you still own it? And finally - did it fustrate you enough to want to do what I did and drivespace the harddrive so that they HAD to upgrade? Hehe =) Stories?

And the winner will get this beautiful ASCII art trophie, since it is of low filesize.

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WINNER OF THE "POOR OLD DEAR" AWARD

[DragonRose]

My oldest computer is a Texas Instrument.

It had no mouse, but instead had two joysticks. The actual sticks were extremly flimsy, and ended up being replaced with pencils.

It had no monitor. Instead, we hooked it up to an old black and white TV. The TV was so old channels and volume were changed via a pair of knobs on the front of the set.

It had no memory.  It didn't even have a way to save information to an external source, such as a disk or a tape.

It had no disk drive.  It used cartridges such as were used for NES games.  Regretfully, the cartridge slot was also just the right size to take in a piece of bread.  This was discovered when my next door neighbour attempted this, THINKING IT WAS A TOASTER.

We still have it, and it does work.  The only problem is the aforementioned broken joysticks.

[Domino]

oh boy, i've been around since the early Radio Shack Tandy days of computers. In fact we still use TRS-80 Model 3's and 4's at work. Talk about dinosaurs. (well we use them to run old engraving machines, which the software will only work on them).

The first computer i ever had the privilege to use was the TRS-80 Model I Computer. This was probably about the late 70's, if i can remember correctly. Then my dad moved up to the TRS-80 Model 3 and then 4, then we got a Color Computer, which was hooked up into a television instead of a monitor.

To make a long story short. (i could go on and on and on about every computer my dad purchased when i was a kid.) The first computer i ever bought for myself back in 1994 was an AST computer, with 4 MB of Ram, running Windows 3.1, a 400 MB Hard Drive, and it was a computer with the monitor and CPU built in together.

Well in 2000, i bought my current computer. An Emachines etower 500is, with a 500mhz Celeron Processor and 32 MB of Ram. (It currently has 96 MB, and i upgraded to a 37 GB Hard Drive.) But now i'm about to throw this thing at a wall because its start to act up all the time.

This topic has brought back alot of good memories.

Well, i'm off to beat this computer with a sledgehammer.



shawn  

[Ali]

BBC Micro Computer!

Cower before its 8 colours of fury!

Witness the Yellow, Cyan and Magenta of terror!

And plead for mercy before its two - count them, two - font sizes.


My other computer has windows 95.

[remixor]

IBM XT.  It served me well.

[Duzz]

I had an XT too, with a Herculese Monochrome screen 20Mb HD, doublesised to 40Mb if I remember correctly.  I remember playing space quest 1 on it.  I never got out of the ship you start in I always got scared of the sarians and just hid somewhere untill the ship blew up.

and I remember once I got the the third level of DigDug... that was cool.
dit doo dit doo dit doo dit, dit doo dit doo dit doo dit, dit doo dit doo dit doo dit doo dit doo dit doo dit doo dit...

Then we got a 386, with COLOR and a MOUSE and I had Captain Comic! and I thought I had to catch the birds at first, but actually I was meant to avoid them.....

dit doo dit doo dit doo dit

[Babar]

I still have my 486 with windows 95 and I still use it. It runs all those great old games that I never had the chance to sample and don't work on newer computers/OSes. Whats this about hating dos? I loved it. I had learnt all the commands and then some idiot came up with windows.
The first computer I used (we had few before that but I didn't use them) was a 286. It had some weird OS thats name I don't remember, with navigating directories using a menu. It had 3 games: Prince of Persia, SQ3 and some edutainment game "Ecosaurus". Still have all my floppy disks (both size ones) with old files on them that I haven't copied to my newer PC

[m0ds]

We have a Spectrum in the loft, ready for burning. It's not the oldest oldest PC, and not strictly a PC either - but it's still fun waiting for Oh Mummy's title screen to load line by line for 10 minutes!

PC wise the oldest one I own is a 386 with Win 3.1 and QBasic on it. I don't use it anymore, it just sits on a cupboard.

The PC I personally use is a 586, which is considered old these days, and I can only run 320x200 AGS games on it, nothing higher.

I'd love to get my hands on an old BBC Basic machine so I can play Lemons

m0ds

[AGA]

586? You mean a Pentium (1)?

[Ben]

I don't think that's a Pentium. I think only budget chipmakers like Cyrix made 586s and 686s..

My family doesn't keep any old computers.. Mostly because we hang on to our computers literally until the CPU burns out before we buy a new one. We squeeze all the juice from the nut, so to speak.

[Joelman]

I miss my colecovision :^(

btw 586 is an upgrade for a 486, equivelent to getting a P1, without changing motherboards. or so i've been told for years...

[Gilbert]

heh I think you mean 5x86 by those non-intel manufacturers (AMD, Cyrix, IBM and probably more), which were actually "enhanced" 486s to have some of the Pentium's features, so they're not Pentiums in any sense.

Actually the original Pentium (P1) was actually what's normally called 586, Intel changed that naming scheme as they found out that they couldn't register numbers like 286, 386, 486 as trademarks.

Correct me if I'm wrong...

[BerserkerTails]

First PC my family owned was a 386 (Firts computer was the AplleIIgs *cough*REPRESENT*cough*). I remember that thing taught me dos... Or more importantly:

cd sierra
cd sq4
sq4

And others. I swear, all I knew was how to change directories and open my favorite Sierra adventure for the LONGEST time.

We upgraded to a 486 for Shadows of Darkness (QFG4) because our 386 didn't run it. I remember that didn't stop my brother and I from trying... Ah, I never thought I'd be happier when I first played that game...

[remixor]

Man, I loved DOS.  I was very resistant to the big mainstream Windows shift.  It took me a while before I finally switched over.  The letters "cd" carry enormous nostalgic weight with me.  And I'm not talking about compact discs.

[PureGhostGR]

I second remixor on that statement..

I miss DOS.. and the 5.25 disks.. and the black & yellow monitor.. (well ok.. not the black and yellow monitor.. but anyway.)

everything was much simpler then.. nowdays you have a system that 80% remains a mystery on how it runs.. with huge problems, bug etc..

I remember back then the "pong" virus... lol.. these were the times..

Nowdays you get a virus, it fries your HD..

[TheYak]

Hell yah, DOS was great.  I never did have Win 3.1 on my PC.  It was only after software makers dragged me kicking and screaming into Win95 that I made the switch.  I really liked having complete control over my PC.  And once I'd figured out my ideal start-up, it worked everytime.  With Windows, occasionally stuff goes very wrong and I never see an error message or conflict notice until I've got to spend 2 hours debugging the thing and crawling through the registry.  Ah, the registry, that wonderful beast equivalent to using 3 Megs of MS-DOS memory to store path= statements, settings, etc.

[Ben]

DOS taught me how to spell. I think I'd be illeterate right now if I hadn't spent hours of my childhood trying to get to my favorite games. I always had Windows, but none of the cool games worked in it.

[TheYak]

Like when I first downloaded the Lemmings, Wolfenstein or Doom demos (The latter two right after they came out) from BBS's.  My dad was trying to show me how cool Solitaire & Minesweeper were while under Windows.  I just slapped Teh Wolfenstein in his face and said, "Eat that, Windows-Demon!"

[Inkoddi]

What IS a computer?

[AGA]

Actually the original Pentium (P1) was actually what's normally called 586, Intel changed that naming scheme as they found out that they couldn't register numbers like 286, 386, 486 as trademarks.

Yeah, that's what I always thought...