5 ms·
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$.
by da-x 6y ago
Every respectable hacker remembers the spec of their first computer.
286 + 1MB RAM + 40MB hard drive.
This was 1992 and it was valued about 1000$.
- Firehawke 6y ago4KB 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 agoI 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 agoIt had the better CPU by far. 6809 = 8 bit goodness!
- santoshalper 6y agoI 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 agoWindows 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 agoYep, 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 ago3.1 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 agoYou'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.
- vardump 6y agoIn my experience, Windows 98 crashed more often, mostly due to running out of "resources". Windows 98 GUI was more complex, thus wasting more of these "resources", running out and crashing. XP, on the other hand, practically never crashed, unless you had bad drivers. Just like Windows NT4 & 2000 before it.
- nonamenoslogan 6y agoAlmost identical to mine--with a SuperVGA 12" CRT to boot!
- aidenn0 6y agoWYSE 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]