Your first PC/Games Console?

BiscLimpkit · Post by **BiscLimpkit** » 26 Mar 2007, 18:42

What was your first ever PC or games console? I think we had a 386 with like 4 or 8MB RAM. It JUST managed to run Doom and no more. The first games I remember playing on it were Captain Comic and Tarom (sp).

My first (and only) console was a Sega Megadrive. First game I played for that was Sonic.

gasteropod · Post by **gasteropod** » 26 Mar 2007, 18:51

Commodore 64. I remember the games, which were on cassettes, often didn't even load and I was just left staring at a psychadelic loading screen with fucked up music.

Sega MegaDrive 2. Earthworm Jim was my favourite game for that.

romerojpg · Post by **romerojpg** » 26 Mar 2007, 18:57

Got the very first one available in the UK, some sort of Spectrum, would have been a few years old back then mind you

my parents took it back the same day, as you couldnt play games at all, you had to programme them yourself

Had most of everything over the years. From memory countless consoles before the likes of Sega etc.. dont even remember their names as they are so obscure and played very basic games even back then.

Ones that stick in my mind are
Amstrad CPC 484,
Amstrad CPC 1628,
Amiga 500,
PS1,
PS2,
Dreamcast,
and my PC that I have now which is 4 years old now.

BiscLimpkit · Post by **BiscLimpkit** » 26 Mar 2007, 19:00

So see with the spectrum, could you not buy games on disk or something? Sounds weird, having to programme games.

I mind the C64 and the tapes lol.

romerojpg · Post by **romerojpg** » 26 Mar 2007, 19:07

BiscLimpkit wrote:So see with the spectrum, could you not buy games on disk or something? Sounds weird, having to programme games.

I mind the C64 and the tapes lol.

The first early Spectrum had no option to play games as you couldnt buy them on tape or anything.

You had to spend weeks programming text into it to create a game!

what a waste of time. Pages and pages and pages of garbage you would put into the computer and of one single key stroke was wrong it would not work

I tried it on my Amstrad when I was a young un and never got any to work ever and they were only a few pages of text, some of them had hundreds of pages. All to play some piece of crap game so basic its barley a game

bradavon · Post by **bradavon** » 26 Mar 2007, 19:24

* My first console: Gameboy then Gamegear. The only two consoles I've ever owned.

* My first PC: A 286. It had a 40Mb hard disk, yes 40Mb. It ran DOS and Windows 3.1. The motherboard was flipping enormous. It was really my Dad's and the first thing I did was go into the BIOS and choose Yes on this weird format option. Oops

. Still it was a good learning curve as I had to then put it all back on again.

My brother has owned a PS1 and now PS2 but except for those we've never been a Console family, PC's all the way.

As for PCs:

* 286, 40Mb hard disk. 1Mb of RAM (you could only access 640Kbps). This was way before Doom.
* 386 DX 40. Mine and my Dad's, my Dad gave me his 286.
* 486 DX2 66 - My first computer solely mine. 4Gb hard disk but 5.1/4", it was huge and slow. 4Gb was considered to be enormous. 8Mb of RAM which cost me £180. RAM used to be SOOO expensive.
* Pentium 90 - I can't remember much about this one.
* Pentium 2 333 - 384Mb of RAM.
* AMD Athalon XP 2500+ - My current PC. I've had for 4 years and due to be replaced over the next few weeks.

romerojpg · Post by **romerojpg** » 26 Mar 2007, 21:04

bradavon wrote: * AMD Athalon XP 2500+ - My current PC. I've had for 4 years and due to be replaced over the next few weeks.

Are you building your own then? if so what you decided on

I was never a console person, but certain games only came out on consoles and once you start playing them you want more and really certain games you need a console to get that game. I am buying a Playstation 3 for a killer game when it comes out, I am sure that game will be Grand Theft Auto 4 at the moment

BiscLimpkit · Post by **BiscLimpkit** » 26 Mar 2007, 21:16

I didn't even know there was such a thing as a 286. Showing your age there Brad?

Yi-Long · Post by **Yi-Long** » 26 Mar 2007, 22:00

I started out with a Commodore 64, which was cool. Played games like 'diving' and formula 1 and sex olympics (crapgame btw) and ofcourse the brilliant Turrican! and TMNT etc etc.

After that I got the Amiga 500, which was even better. It had Sensible Soccer, Final Fight, Speedball 2, Turrican 1 and 2, etc etc etc. Loads and loads of game. Also the lucasarts adventures

My first PC was a 486 DX2 66, with 4 mb's of Ram. As soon as I got it I went to the bookstore and picked up a PC magazine which had a demo of Doom on it, which just totally blew me and my friends away. 3d! Awesome.
After a year orso I got 4 extra Mb's of Ram, which was filthy expensive btw... (about 360 guilders, which is about a 150-160 euro I guess)

My first console was the excellent Megadrive. I had played it at my nephews' house, and Sonic was just stunning. When I was there on sleepovers we went out and loaned games at the videorent, and we just played all day and night I think. Games like Streets of Rage, Quackshot, Revenge of Shinobi, etc.
When I got my own megadrive I just loved it, especially NHL Hockey and Fifa soccer, and Sonic 2. Completed Revenge of Shinobi as well

My 2nd console was a SNES with copybox. Also a nice console, with some nice game. The copybox sure helped getting a lot of fun out of it.

I had a Dreamcast. Great console, great games. Too bad it flopped. Badly marketed in Europe, meaning I couldnt buy games for it, so all my games were just copied games. Sega's own damn fault.

Now I have an Xbox and a Cube. Xbox is terrific fun. lots of great quality games and I play on it daily.

Cube is a let-down. Not too many games are out for the system, and the games are a bit difficult to obtain and still very expensive (local stores are still selling RE4 for 60 euros...) I love Windwaker as much as the next guy, and it has acouple of other good games... but not enough to make me feel any love for the console nor Nintendo.

My next-gen console will most likely be a 360. Just waiting for a good offer to drop by...

captainjoe · Post by **captainjoe** » 26 Mar 2007, 23:33

First one was the Sega Genesis. I still remember running through Sonic over the weekend.

Second was actually the N64. I only really bought it for Goldeneye 64 which is still one of my favourite games ever made.

Then it was the Gamecube: meh.

Moved onto the X-box and now the 360.

captainjoe · Post by **captainjoe** » 26 Mar 2007, 23:35

Yi-Long wrote:
I had a Dreamcast. Great console, great games. Too bad it flopped. Badly marketed in Europe, meaning I couldnt buy games for it, so all my games were just copied games. Sega's own damn fault.

I had a friend who had the Dreamcast and I'd say 70 % of his games were copies of his friend's.

Kurgan · Post by **Kurgan** » 27 Mar 2007, 00:53

The first computer I had was a Commodore 64 (although we bought an Amstrad 464 or 646 first, but my dad took one look at the monochrome screen and took it back and swapped it for the far superior C64

). The first console was the mighty MegaDrive and the first PC I got was a 486 DX2/66. I won't bore you lot with my nostalgic tales of games played back in the day

@Yi: I'm surprised at the pricing of your GameCube games locally, I really am. Do online stores charge as much as well? Cos for a system that's dead and not being supported, that does seem very steep. But I think that you're selling the machine short. Some classic games were made for the system, much like the Dreamcast.
Oh, and if you can manage to stump up £375 for my 360, I'll sell it to you

- cos that's how much I'm getting for trading it (and all my games and accessories etc.) in against a PS3. Might not happen this week, but I'm pretty sure the 360 won't be around for much longer in this household.

romerojpg · Post by **romerojpg** » 27 Mar 2007, 01:28

Yi-Long wrote:
After that I got the Amiga 500, which was even better. It had Sensible Soccer, Final Fight, Speedball 2, Turrican 1 and 2, etc etc etc.

Turrican 2 one of the greatest games ever made

I have had it a few times for the PC but it never works

need a really good emulator I guess.

Lourdes · Post by **Lourdes** » 27 Mar 2007, 02:47

My first console was the Playstation, 10 years ago.

About a eyar later my first PC which was amazing for the time. P2 450, 256MB, 16MB AGP and a 16GB HDD.

EvaUnit02 · Post by **EvaUnit02** » 27 Mar 2007, 04:24

My brother had a Commodore 64. That was cool. He had a shit load of pirated games for it. My faves were probably Ghetto Blaster and Skate or Die.

Brother's first PC was a 386 (can't remember which model), over the years he had a 486 DX2/66, 486 DX/120, Dual Pentium Pro 200 oc'ed to 233 (back then you had to solder shit to overclock, not like the post-ATX days where you do it from the BIOS setup), AMD K6-2 400, Celeron 300A oc'ed to 450 (the case had a shit load of fans in it, we used to call it "the wind machine" since it was so noisy). He moved of the house in 2001 and has probably had many PCs since then.

My first PC of my own was a 2nd hand 386 SX/33 with 8MB RAM bought in 1996. I ran DOS 6.22, Windows 3.11 for Workgroups and OS/2 Warp 3.0 on it. Used to play heaps of old DOS games on it, old favourites like Wolfenstein 3D, Commander Keen 1-8, etc. It could run Doom, but with a bit of lag.

I had a hand me down PC from my brother in 2001/2002, I can't for the life me remember the specs. I ran Win98SE and XP Pro RTM in dual-boot on it until it died. I never got that running again, my mum brought home a shitty old Celeron 233 from work and we had to use that. I upgraded the shitty 2GB HDD it had with a 16GB one, pulled out the 2*16MB RAM sticks and shoved in 2*128MB ones. Ran WinME on it til that installation died, I wiped the HDD and put on XP SP1 which ran pretty slowly. This PC was retired when my mum bought a MacBook Pro + 19" CinemaDisplay in January this year.

My brought home in 2003 from work a P4 1.8Ghz w/ 512MB. It's still running today.

I bought my new PC a couple months ago, I use that almost exclusively now. Lovely machine.

As for consoles:- N64 in 1999, Gameboy Colour in 2000, PSX in 2000, a 2nd PSX in 2001 to replace the old one, PS2 in 2001, Xbox in 2002, Gamecube in 2003.

slasher13 · Post by **slasher13** » 27 Mar 2007, 07:32

oo great thread, okay my turn

My parent brought me an Amstrad CPC 464, and I caught the coding bug from typing in basic code from the manual as well as Amstrad Action. Favorites games from this computer was Chuckie Egg, Head Over Heel, Batman the Movie, Dizzy series and New Zealand Story

Then I got an Amiga 600 (Again Batman the movie was superb on this), Shadow of the Beast, Flashback, AnotherWorld Speedball 2

My father got a 286, very similar to Bradavon if not the same, here I played for the 1st time Prince of Persia (Excellent rotoscoping animation)

Then time went past and I got a 486 DX PC with 16 mb of RAM in 1996, Using this PC I played Doom for the 1st time, and also learnted Turbo Pascal

Then after this I kept on upgrading certain parts, and now I have the work pc instead and 2 other laptops

As for Console, it went like: Original Brick of a Gameboy, Sega Gamegear, SNES, n64, Playstation, Dreamcast, Gamecube and Xbox.

gasteropod · Post by **gasteropod** » 27 Mar 2007, 09:15

My 'Batman the Movie' for the Commodore 64 had some kind of problem. Whenever I did the level in the batmobile, suddenly the game would freeze up, then I'd press stuff and it'd end up on the final level of the game! Every time! So I missed out on most of the game lol!

bradavon · Post by **bradavon** » 27 Mar 2007, 19:01

romerojpg wrote:Are you building your own then? if so what you decided on

I've never owned a brand PC. I've always built my own and still would (like Hi-fi separates I prefer to custom choose) however by the summer I'll have moved out into my first "own home" (well flat) which will mean as much as possible down sizing.

A full size PC is completely out of the question simply because I suspect I'll have one bedroom and a front room. There's no way I want a full size PC in my bedroom and I've seen people do it but to me a full size PC, with cables etc... in the front room just looks awful.

My plan is to buy a laptop so obviously I cannot custom make and still have a full size monitor + keyboard/mouse though (the last two will be wireless so I can hide them away if need be). I don't play computer games and my requirements are really pretty standard:

* Internet
* E-Mail
* Word processing
* DVD Burning
* Converting video from one format to another - Power hungry but not something I do all that often
* Digital Photos
* Podcasting

That's "about" it.

I don't like using a laptop display/keyboard/mouse as my main equipment as they're just to small IMO, which is where the full size stuff comes in. I reckon a monitor in the corner of the front room will look fine. I plan to literally hide the laptop away, as long as I can get to it, and particularity the power button/DVD drive button that's all I need to see it for.

I can then if need be use the laptop upstairs too. I used a 17" laptop at work today which of obviously a more normal size but my god the laptop was huge and heavy too. No way do I want that.

I plan to buy a Wireless Print Server so can bung a printer literally in a cupboard. You need to be picky which printer you buy as it needs to meet the print servers compatibility list (I'll just pick a printer from the list) but otherwise it looks ideal. They're really small and have a USB connection on them where you just plug the printer into it. You can buy printers with Wireless in them but my god they're expensive.

Obviously cables cannot be avoided but I plan to minimise this as much as possible.

As to what hardware specification remember it's a laptop so won't be nowhere near as high. To give you an idea most laptop CPUs are 1.6/1.8Hgz, very few go up to 2Ghz. I guess it's not needed.

I'm looking at this one (click on the "Features" link):

http://direct.tesco.com/q/R.200-5491.aspx

I could pay a bit more but actually you get very little more for your money until you spend closer to £900 which is way to much. I'd like a Sony Vaio but those are simply way to expensive (for the same hardware).

My hard disk requirements are nothing compared to most people (I worked it out to be 75Gb of data) so 120Gb is fine. It's what I have right now.

I'd like more than 2Gb of RAM (I'll be running Vista HP) but that's not possible right now, most laptops still give you only 1Gb. I reckon 2Gb considering my requirements above should be okay. Vista also has ReadyBoost too which will help. I'll be buying a 2Gb SD card just for ReadyBoost (think of ReadyBoost as extra cache, NOT extra memory). I've not been able to find out what the Samsung's BIOS maxium RAM it supports is, in case I want to later upgrade.

I asked Samsung but got the numpty "you can buy 512Mb, 1Gb or 2Gb versions". Thanks but that's not what I asked. I do know some similar Acer's support up to 4Gb but I'm not keen on Acer laptops. I've heard lots of mixed reports and they do look a bit cheap.

The video card too will be fine as all it needs to do is display 7Mp photos plus Vista's Aero.

Besides like I said the £700-800 laptops get you virtually the same hardware. Samsung is a decent make too. I want Vista HP pre-installed as I cannot be done with Upgrade hassles.

Obviously uninstalling the trial Norton AV is the first thing I'll be doing.

bradavon · Post by **bradavon** » 27 Mar 2007, 19:08

BiscLimpkit wrote:I didn't even know there was such a thing as a 286. Showing your age there Brad?

No

Yep

It was too slow to even consider Doom (Doom 1 needed a 386 minimum) not that Doom was out at the time. Before the 2086 came the 8086 then before that the 8080 (the very first commercial CPU I do believe). Our first computer was a 286.

I remember back in the day before the 486 DX you had to buy an addon CPU to give a maths coprocessor. The DX CPU was BIG news.

It sounds like the 486 DX2 66 was really popular (probably because no one could afford a DX4). I was so jealous of my college for having 486 DX4 100s, they seemed so fast.

Obviously like everyone else I played Doom (and Wolfenstein 3D before it) for hours and hours, non-stop. That game really was years ahead of it's time.

degeneration · Post by **degeneration** » 27 Mar 2007, 19:19

My first comp was one that no-one's mentioned yet... The Dragon 32...

Had loads of amazing games on it like Cuthbert in the Jungle among others.
Then went to Commodore 64, then Amiga 500... brother got the next amiga but don't remember what number it was...

After that I think I had PS1 then Dreamcast. Don't remember anything between AMiga and PS1. Think I went off computers and consoles etc.

bradavon · Post by **bradavon** » 27 Mar 2007, 19:25

Presumabley you have a Mac or PC now?

A Dragon 32 what on earth is one of those? EDIT: A Welsh computer

-

http://www.6809.org.uk/dragon/

I had a Neo-Geo, okay no I didn't

. I remember how absurdly expensive they and the games were though.

degeneration · Post by **degeneration** » 28 Mar 2007, 12:31

bradavon wrote:Presumabley you have a Mac or PC now?

A Dragon 32 what on earth is one of those? EDIT: A Welsh computer -

http://www.6809.org.uk/dragon/

I had a Neo-Geo, okay no I didn't . I remember how absurdly expensive they and the games were though.

Didn't know it was a welsh comp, just knew I had it and played games on it!!!

Obviously have a PC now, but that's not particularly interesting compared to the ones that I had in the past!

bradavon · Post by **bradavon** » 23 Apr 2007, 17:42

I never owned one but 25 years old today:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_Spectrum

gojensen · Post by **gojensen** » 24 Apr 2007, 09:34

EvaUnit02 wrote:Dual Pentium Pro 200 oc'ed to 233 (back then you had to solder shit to overclock, not like the post-ATX days where you do it from the BIOS setup)

Pfft. My 486 DX2 had a jumper for overclocking, and that was way before the Pentium...

The spectrum was a nice little machine... with squishy buttons

Never got one as it was a bit boring compared to the C64 ay?

I got my first home computer back in the early 80s for a whopping US$560 - that was a lot of money back then but it granted me the nice Commodore 64. I had that for years till I got the Amiga 500 in 1988, which lasted me into "junior high" (? 10th through 12th school year in Norway) where I needed to get a dumb PC for processing - my first x86 entered my life - a 386sx 16mhz. That was a bloody expensive machine!

Speaking of prices, I ordered a 16MB memory upgrade from DELL once that a delivery man delivered COD to me. He was very curious about handing over a small envelope and getting around US$1400 in exchange! That's about $87.5/MB

I actually didn't get a console (if I discount the Atari Lynx which I only ever got 1 game for... :-/) before springing for the Xbox... and I didn't get it for playing games even! (I got it for it's mediaplayer hack XBMP). Since then my console collection has grown to include a PS2, a PSP, a Wii and recently a PS3.

IronMonkey · Post by **IronMonkey** » 24 Apr 2007, 09:43

XBMP? Crikey, I hope you're now using XBMC instead?