6 ms·

Lucky you! I dreamt of owning a machine like this. I thought the dx2 cpus had appeared later though (92?). I was stuck with a 386/16Mhz/40 megs hd, and a whopp

Lucky you! I dreamt of owning a machine like this. I thought the dx2 cpus had appeared later though (92?). I was stuck with a 386/16Mhz/40 megs hd, and a whopping megabyte of ram. At least it taught me that it was sometimes worth optimizing my code...

downut 6y ago
The 8087 chip I added on to my 8086 system sits on my monitor pedestal, forever. Right now, it's next to my ()&(^&^%%$%^ Pixel 2 XL USB C audio connector. I was a grad student in numerical analysis and holy smokes! Hardware IEEE 754 floating point! Sometime aroundish 1988 I paid $600 for an 80MB hard drive, out of a $12K/yr stipend. Good times.
- nonamenoslogan 6y ago
  I still have my first CPU, a 12MHz AMD 80286--which I realize is pretty 'new' but I'm only 43.
da-x 6y ago
Every respectable hacker remembers the spec of their first computer. 286 + 1MB RAM + 40MB hard drive. This was 1992 and it was valued about 1000$.
- Firehawke 6y ago
  4KB TRS-80 Color Computer, which would have been $400 in 1980. Wasn't my own computer as it was my father's and I was a bit too young to get deep into programming until 1983 or so. First computer that was strictly mine was a CoCo 3 in 1986, and the first one I built entirely myself was a 486-66 back in 1993. Yep, we definitely remember those first machines.
  - slantyyz 6y ago
    I was basically the same, although I think we upgraded it somehow to 16K. I remember typing in source code from magazines (Rainbow, in particular). I thought MS Extended Basic on the CoCo was pretty cool. Ended up moving to Apple ][ a few years after that, but still have very fond memories of the CoCo, even though everyone else I knew had something else and liked to refer to my computer as a Trash 80.
    - ddingus 6y ago
      It had the better CPU by far. 6809 = 8 bit goodness!
- santoshalper 6y ago
  I too spent a lot of formative years on a 286, envying my friends who all had 386s and could run Windows and play cooler games.
  - Narishma 6y ago
    Windows ran fine on a 286. Even with just 1 MB of RAM. You just couldn't launch more than a couple of big applications at a time without severe swapping.
    - Firehawke 6y ago
      Yep, you could run 3.1 in "real mode" instead of "protected mode" but the 286 was kind of a dog of a CPU and it had some pretty nasty flaws that led to 286 machines not really being all that common compared to 80886 and 386 ones.
      - benttoothpaste 6y ago
        3.1 couldn’t run in real mode. It could run either in standard mode or in enhanced mode. The enhanced mode was 386-only. 3.0 on the other hand could run in real mode so it technically could be used with 8086.
        Firehawke 6y ago
        You're right, I had Real and Standard mixed up. You definitely didn't want to run 3.0, though. That was a complete mess, and the beginning point of where Microsoft started to make a turn-around in stability. 3.0 would crash every 15 minutes on average. 3.1 would crash every 45 minutes on average. 95 would go a day at a time, 98 would go several days, XP was stable a month at a time when there weren't major exploits or bad driver behavior. ...and so on. I may be overstating the impact SLIGHTLY, but 3.0 really was crash prone to the point magazines heavily pushed people to 3.1 when that came out, and 95 was definitely significantly improved over that, and so forth (skipping ME, of course) until XP.
- nonamenoslogan 6y ago
  Almost identical to mine--with a SuperVGA 12" CRT to boot!
- aidenn0 6y ago
  WYSE 286: 12.5 MHz 1MB ram 2x 5.25" floppy drives (one HD, one DD) 10MB hard drive HGC (640x200 monochrome) with amber monitor.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
qubex 6y ago
I also had a 386SX-16MHz with 2MB of RAM, a 40 Megabyte hard-drive, a VGA adapter and a 14” screen. That was in 1992 and it was an abysmally slow system.
- bombcar 6y ago
  Very close to my first "real" (well technically my dad's) computer - he had a custom workstation at home to do some work on but the 386 was the first PC we got. He went out of his way to get a DX and it had an 80 MB SCSI drive and 4 MB of RAM. I spent literally HOURS trying every single driver on the SimCity 2000 CD until I found one that worked - it was an OAK videocard with the bare minimum of RAM needed.

downut 6y ago

The 8087 chip I added on to my 8086 system sits on my monitor pedestal, forever. Right now, it's next to my ()&(^&^%%$%^ Pixel 2 XL USB C audio connector. I was a grad student in numerical analysis and holy smokes! Hardware IEEE 754 floating point! Sometime aroundish 1988 I paid $600 for an 80MB hard drive, out of a $12K/yr stipend. Good times.

nonamenoslogan 6y ago
I still have my first CPU, a 12MHz AMD 80286--which I realize is pretty 'new' but I'm only 43.

da-x 6y ago

Every respectable hacker remembers the spec of their first computer. 286 + 1MB RAM + 40MB hard drive. This was 1992 and it was valued about 1000$.

Firehawke 6y ago
4KB TRS-80 Color Computer, which would have been $400 in 1980. Wasn't my own computer as it was my father's and I was a bit too young to get deep into programming until 1983 or so. First computer that was strictly mine was a CoCo 3 in 1986, and the first one I built entirely myself was a 486-66 back in 1993. Yep, we definitely remember those first machines.
- slantyyz 6y ago
  I was basically the same, although I think we upgraded it somehow to 16K. I remember typing in source code from magazines (Rainbow, in particular). I thought MS Extended Basic on the CoCo was pretty cool. Ended up moving to Apple ][ a few years after that, but still have very fond memories of the CoCo, even though everyone else I knew had something else and liked to refer to my computer as a Trash 80.
  - ddingus 6y ago
    It had the better CPU by far. 6809 = 8 bit goodness!
santoshalper 6y ago
I too spent a lot of formative years on a 286, envying my friends who all had 386s and could run Windows and play cooler games.
- Narishma 6y ago
  Windows ran fine on a 286. Even with just 1 MB of RAM. You just couldn't launch more than a couple of big applications at a time without severe swapping.
  - Firehawke 6y ago
    Yep, you could run 3.1 in "real mode" instead of "protected mode" but the 286 was kind of a dog of a CPU and it had some pretty nasty flaws that led to 286 machines not really being all that common compared to 80886 and 386 ones.
    - benttoothpaste 6y ago
      3.1 couldn’t run in real mode. It could run either in standard mode or in enhanced mode. The enhanced mode was 386-only. 3.0 on the other hand could run in real mode so it technically could be used with 8086.
      - Firehawke 6y ago
        You're right, I had Real and Standard mixed up. You definitely didn't want to run 3.0, though. That was a complete mess, and the beginning point of where Microsoft started to make a turn-around in stability. 3.0 would crash every 15 minutes on average. 3.1 would crash every 45 minutes on average. 95 would go a day at a time, 98 would go several days, XP was stable a month at a time when there weren't major exploits or bad driver behavior. ...and so on. I may be overstating the impact SLIGHTLY, but 3.0 really was crash prone to the point magazines heavily pushed people to 3.1 when that came out, and 95 was definitely significantly improved over that, and so forth (skipping ME, of course) until XP.
nonamenoslogan 6y ago
Almost identical to mine--with a SuperVGA 12" CRT to boot!
aidenn0 6y ago
WYSE 286: 12.5 MHz 1MB ram 2x 5.25" floppy drives (one HD, one DD) 10MB hard drive HGC (640x200 monochrome) with amber monitor.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

qubex 6y ago

I also had a 386SX-16MHz with 2MB of RAM, a 40 Megabyte hard-drive, a VGA adapter and a 14” screen. That was in 1992 and it was an abysmally slow system.

bombcar 6y ago
Very close to my first "real" (well technically my dad's) computer - he had a custom workstation at home to do some work on but the 386 was the first PC we got. He went out of his way to get a DX and it had an 80 MB SCSI drive and 4 MB of RAM. I spent literally HOURS trying every single driver on the SimCity 2000 CD until I found one that worked - it was an OAK videocard with the bare minimum of RAM needed.