My first computer
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@dashrender said in My first computer:
I bought my first computer when I was 12 (1988). It was a used 8088 with 640K memory (if memory serves), amber screen, two 5.25 floppies, no hard disk - $250. turned right around and went to Sam's club and bought a 30 MB drive for $300 - that was pre ATA (is that called Winchester?) My dad installed the drive, then I installed DOS 3.x on it.
I know I used computers before that, but I don't recall what they were though. I do remember playing with an Apple IIe in elemetry school, but we didn't have one at home. I think my computer was the first one owned by us in the house. Though my dad had a "portable" computer from the military that he brought home often. It was as large as carry on luggage today.
Before ATA I think it was ST-506 interface. "Serious" computers used SCSI disks though.
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@pete-s said in My first computer:
@dashrender said in My first computer:
I bought my first computer when I was 12 (1988). It was a used 8088 with 640K memory (if memory serves), amber screen, two 5.25 floppies, no hard disk - $250. turned right around and went to Sam's club and bought a 30 MB drive for $300 - that was pre ATA (is that called Winchester?) My dad installed the drive, then I installed DOS 3.x on it.
I know I used computers before that, but I don't recall what they were though. I do remember playing with an Apple IIe in elemetry school, but we didn't have one at home. I think my computer was the first one owned by us in the house. Though my dad had a "portable" computer from the military that he brought home often. It was as large as carry on luggage today.
Before ATA I think it was ST-506 interface. "Serious" computers used SCSI disks though.
lol - I'm pretty sure the 8088 was considered a PC, not sure about the 'seriousness' of it.. but I wouldn't expect most home users to have SCSI.
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@dashrender said in My first computer:
Before ATA I think it was ST-506 interface. "Serious" computers used SCSI disks though.
lol - I'm pretty sure the 8088 was considered a PC, not sure about the 'seriousness' of it.. but I wouldn't expect most home users to have SCSI.
With "serious" I meant workstation/servers contrary to desktops. When IBM brought the PC to the market, every machine was serious money, I think around $3K to $4K.
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@pete-s said in My first computer:
@dashrender said in My first computer:
Before ATA I think it was ST-506 interface. "Serious" computers used SCSI disks though.
lol - I'm pretty sure the 8088 was considered a PC, not sure about the 'seriousness' of it.. but I wouldn't expect most home users to have SCSI.
With "serious" I meant workstation/servers contrary to desktops. When IBM brought the PC to the market, every machine was serious money, I think around $3K to $4K.
Around that time was also the time when servers actually took off in the PC market. First it was networks cards with twisted pair and drivers on top of MS-DOS. More peer-to-peer type file transfer. But when Novell made their Netware 286 it started to take off. You would then run IPX/SPX drivers on top of MS-DOS and a server running Novell Netware would do file sharing, login and what not. Network was then coax cables.
The file server was born.
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@pete-s said in My first computer:
@scottalanmiller said in My first computer:
@hobbit666 said in My first computer:
Does an Amiga 500 count?
If not my First "PC" was a 486 Tiny ComputerHe didn't say PC, all of us posting had computers before PCs even existed. The 500 was well into the PC era, so you are unique there, but it was common at the time not to use PCs at home.
My first Amiga was the Amiga 1000, I still have it.
The Amiga 500 was an awesome computer for arcade style gaming. It had sprites and good sound. I had one too. Motorola 68000 16/32 bit CPU in those machines. Same as Apple had in their Macintosh before the started with PowerPC.
But the Amiga crushed the Mac. It basically had GPUs before they were cool.
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@dashrender said in My first computer:
@pete-s said in My first computer:
@dashrender said in My first computer:
I bought my first computer when I was 12 (1988). It was a used 8088 with 640K memory (if memory serves), amber screen, two 5.25 floppies, no hard disk - $250. turned right around and went to Sam's club and bought a 30 MB drive for $300 - that was pre ATA (is that called Winchester?) My dad installed the drive, then I installed DOS 3.x on it.
I know I used computers before that, but I don't recall what they were though. I do remember playing with an Apple IIe in elemetry school, but we didn't have one at home. I think my computer was the first one owned by us in the house. Though my dad had a "portable" computer from the military that he brought home often. It was as large as carry on luggage today.
Before ATA I think it was ST-506 interface. "Serious" computers used SCSI disks though.
lol - I'm pretty sure the 8088 was considered a PC, not sure about the 'seriousness' of it.. but I wouldn't expect most home users to have SCSI.
Some 8088 were PC, some were not. Only the PC ones got famous in years later. But at the time, there were loads of non-PC 8088 based computers.
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My First Computer was with an Intel Pentium 2 and the Intel SE440BX-2 motherboard.
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@dbeato said in My first computer:
My First Computer was with an Intel Pentium 2 and the Intel SE440BX-2 motherboard.
Get off my lawn!
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@scottalanmiller said in My first computer:
@dbeato said in My first computer:
My First Computer was with an Intel Pentium 2 and the Intel SE440BX-2 motherboard.
Get off my lawn!
Lol
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@scottalanmiller said in My first computer:
@dashrender said in My first computer:
@pete-s said in My first computer:
@dashrender said in My first computer:
I bought my first computer when I was 12 (1988). It was a used 8088 with 640K memory (if memory serves), amber screen, two 5.25 floppies, no hard disk - $250. turned right around and went to Sam's club and bought a 30 MB drive for $300 - that was pre ATA (is that called Winchester?) My dad installed the drive, then I installed DOS 3.x on it.
I know I used computers before that, but I don't recall what they were though. I do remember playing with an Apple IIe in elemetry school, but we didn't have one at home. I think my computer was the first one owned by us in the house. Though my dad had a "portable" computer from the military that he brought home often. It was as large as carry on luggage today.
Before ATA I think it was ST-506 interface. "Serious" computers used SCSI disks though.
lol - I'm pretty sure the 8088 was considered a PC, not sure about the 'seriousness' of it.. but I wouldn't expect most home users to have SCSI.
Some 8088 were PC, some were not. Only the PC ones got famous in years later. But at the time, there were loads of non-PC 8088 based computers.
Actually 8086 was the real CPU (hence the name x86 architecture).
The 8088 was just a cheaper variation with 8-bit external bus (8088) instead of the standard 16-bit bus. -
@scottalanmiller said in My first computer:
@dbeato said in My first computer:
My First Computer was with an Intel Pentium 2 and the Intel SE440BX-2 motherboard.
Get off my lawn!
:thumbs_up:
This is what the first generation PC motherboards looked like. If you like me were building PCs back then, you had to have an eprom-programmer and UV eraser if you wanted to update the bios (ICs in the top middle with labels). And you had to put all the memory chips in sockets yourself (the lower right area on the pic). 640 KByte was a lot of memory.
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@pete-s said in My first computer:
@scottalanmiller said in My first computer:
@dashrender said in My first computer:
@pete-s said in My first computer:
@dashrender said in My first computer:
I bought my first computer when I was 12 (1988). It was a used 8088 with 640K memory (if memory serves), amber screen, two 5.25 floppies, no hard disk - $250. turned right around and went to Sam's club and bought a 30 MB drive for $300 - that was pre ATA (is that called Winchester?) My dad installed the drive, then I installed DOS 3.x on it.
I know I used computers before that, but I don't recall what they were though. I do remember playing with an Apple IIe in elemetry school, but we didn't have one at home. I think my computer was the first one owned by us in the house. Though my dad had a "portable" computer from the military that he brought home often. It was as large as carry on luggage today.
Before ATA I think it was ST-506 interface. "Serious" computers used SCSI disks though.
lol - I'm pretty sure the 8088 was considered a PC, not sure about the 'seriousness' of it.. but I wouldn't expect most home users to have SCSI.
Some 8088 were PC, some were not. Only the PC ones got famous in years later. But at the time, there were loads of non-PC 8088 based computers.
Actually 8086 was the real CPU (hence the name x86 architecture).
The 8088 was just a cheaper variation with 8-bit external bus (8088) instead of the standard 16-bit bus.Yup, I'm very aware, was already in to computers when PC architecture came out.
8086 was never used in a PC however. PC architecture, which required x86, used 8088 in all the first models, not the 8086 to save money. But the 8088 was an x86. But the 186, 286, and so forth all got used in real world PCs, while the 8086 did not. You could, in theory, make an 8086 based PC, it fits in the architecture, but they didn't release at the time.
But PC is a full system architecture, not just computers based on 8086 family processors. That was my point. Back in the 8086 and 8088 eras, half of the machines made with those processors (some 8088s and all 8086s) were not PC, but were x86.
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@scottalanmiller said in My first computer:
@pete-s said in My first computer:
@scottalanmiller said in My first computer:
@dashrender said in My first computer:
@pete-s said in My first computer:
@dashrender said in My first computer:
I bought my first computer when I was 12 (1988). It was a used 8088 with 640K memory (if memory serves), amber screen, two 5.25 floppies, no hard disk - $250. turned right around and went to Sam's club and bought a 30 MB drive for $300 - that was pre ATA (is that called Winchester?) My dad installed the drive, then I installed DOS 3.x on it.
I know I used computers before that, but I don't recall what they were though. I do remember playing with an Apple IIe in elemetry school, but we didn't have one at home. I think my computer was the first one owned by us in the house. Though my dad had a "portable" computer from the military that he brought home often. It was as large as carry on luggage today.
Before ATA I think it was ST-506 interface. "Serious" computers used SCSI disks though.
lol - I'm pretty sure the 8088 was considered a PC, not sure about the 'seriousness' of it.. but I wouldn't expect most home users to have SCSI.
Some 8088 were PC, some were not. Only the PC ones got famous in years later. But at the time, there were loads of non-PC 8088 based computers.
Actually 8086 was the real CPU (hence the name x86 architecture).
The 8088 was just a cheaper variation with 8-bit external bus (8088) instead of the standard 16-bit bus.Yup, I'm very aware, was already in to computers when PC architecture came out.
8086 was never used in a PC however. PC architecture, which required x86, used 8088 in all the first models, not the 8086 to save money. But the 8088 was an x86. But the 186, 286, and so forth all got used in real world PCs, while the 8086 did not. You could, in theory, make an 8086 based PC, it fits in the architecture, but they didn't release at the time.
But PC is a full system architecture, not just computers based on 8086 family processors. That was my point. Back in the 8086 and 8088 eras, half of the machines made with those processors (some 8088s and all 8086s) were not PC, but were x86.
Yes, agreed.
But kids today think the 8086 is the Intel Core i7-8086K.
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@pete-s said in My first computer:
@scottalanmiller said in My first computer:
@pete-s said in My first computer:
@scottalanmiller said in My first computer:
@dashrender said in My first computer:
@pete-s said in My first computer:
@dashrender said in My first computer:
I bought my first computer when I was 12 (1988). It was a used 8088 with 640K memory (if memory serves), amber screen, two 5.25 floppies, no hard disk - $250. turned right around and went to Sam's club and bought a 30 MB drive for $300 - that was pre ATA (is that called Winchester?) My dad installed the drive, then I installed DOS 3.x on it.
I know I used computers before that, but I don't recall what they were though. I do remember playing with an Apple IIe in elemetry school, but we didn't have one at home. I think my computer was the first one owned by us in the house. Though my dad had a "portable" computer from the military that he brought home often. It was as large as carry on luggage today.
Before ATA I think it was ST-506 interface. "Serious" computers used SCSI disks though.
lol - I'm pretty sure the 8088 was considered a PC, not sure about the 'seriousness' of it.. but I wouldn't expect most home users to have SCSI.
Some 8088 were PC, some were not. Only the PC ones got famous in years later. But at the time, there were loads of non-PC 8088 based computers.
Actually 8086 was the real CPU (hence the name x86 architecture).
The 8088 was just a cheaper variation with 8-bit external bus (8088) instead of the standard 16-bit bus.Yup, I'm very aware, was already in to computers when PC architecture came out.
8086 was never used in a PC however. PC architecture, which required x86, used 8088 in all the first models, not the 8086 to save money. But the 8088 was an x86. But the 186, 286, and so forth all got used in real world PCs, while the 8086 did not. You could, in theory, make an 8086 based PC, it fits in the architecture, but they didn't release at the time.
But PC is a full system architecture, not just computers based on 8086 family processors. That was my point. Back in the 8086 and 8088 eras, half of the machines made with those processors (some 8088s and all 8086s) were not PC, but were x86.
Yes, agreed.
But kids today think the 8086 is the Intel Core i7-8086K.
LOL, I've never heard of someone referring to that processor
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Similarly, Motorola later make an 88000 RISC processor, too, as a RISC counterpart to their 68000 CISC processor family. Never really took off, though.
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@scottalanmiller said in My first computer:
@pete-s said in My first computer:
@scottalanmiller said in My first computer:
@dashrender said in My first computer:
@pete-s said in My first computer:
@dashrender said in My first computer:
I bought my first computer when I was 12 (1988). It was a used 8088 with 640K memory (if memory serves), amber screen, two 5.25 floppies, no hard disk - $250. turned right around and went to Sam's club and bought a 30 MB drive for $300 - that was pre ATA (is that called Winchester?) My dad installed the drive, then I installed DOS 3.x on it.
I know I used computers before that, but I don't recall what they were though. I do remember playing with an Apple IIe in elemetry school, but we didn't have one at home. I think my computer was the first one owned by us in the house. Though my dad had a "portable" computer from the military that he brought home often. It was as large as carry on luggage today.
Before ATA I think it was ST-506 interface. "Serious" computers used SCSI disks though.
lol - I'm pretty sure the 8088 was considered a PC, not sure about the 'seriousness' of it.. but I wouldn't expect most home users to have SCSI.
Some 8088 were PC, some were not. Only the PC ones got famous in years later. But at the time, there were loads of non-PC 8088 based computers.
Actually 8086 was the real CPU (hence the name x86 architecture).
The 8088 was just a cheaper variation with 8-bit external bus (8088) instead of the standard 16-bit bus.Yup, I'm very aware, was already in to computers when PC architecture came out.
8086 was never used in a PC however. PC architecture, which required x86, used 8088 in all the first models, not the 8086 to save money. But the 8088 was an x86. But the 186, 286, and so forth all got used in real world PCs, while the 8086 did not. You could, in theory, make an 8086 based PC, it fits in the architecture, but they didn't release at the time.
But PC is a full system architecture, not just computers based on 8086 family processors. That was my point. Back in the 8086 and 8088 eras, half of the machines made with those processors (some 8088s and all 8086s) were not PC, but were x86.
oh - I forgot that Scott loves to jump on the "PC is an architecture" bit. Not saying he's wrong, just that most people don't talk about it that way.
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@scottalanmiller said in My first computer:
Similarly, Motorola later make an 88000 RISC processor, too, as a RISC counterpart to their 68000 CISC processor family. Never really took off, though.
Yeah, many things have failed over the years.
And also similar to Intel's 8088, Motorola made their cheaper variation of the 68000 called the 68008. But it was the 68K architecture - 68000, 68010, 68020, 68030 etc.
Assembler on the 68K where beautiful compared to the cluster-f*ck of the x86.
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@dashrender said in My first computer:
But PC is a full system architecture, not just computers based on 8086 family processors. That was my point. Back in the 8086 and 8088 eras, half of the machines made with those processors (some 8088s and all 8086s) were not PC, but were x86.
oh - I forgot that Scott loves to jump on the "PC is an architecture" bit. Not saying he's wrong, just that most people don't talk about it that way.
Well, it's true but it sure doesn't matter much. You would need IBM PC compatible hardware for it to be a PC. That meant a BIOS, all DMA and interrupt circuitry, 8042 keyboard controller, ISA expansion slots etc etc.
I remember I had a book detailing every hardware aspect of the PC and another book detailing all BIOS functions into minute detail. I was writing device drivers in assembler at the time which was really in-depth stuff.
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@pete-s said in My first computer:
@scottalanmiller said in My first computer:
Similarly, Motorola later make an 88000 RISC processor, too, as a RISC counterpart to their 68000 CISC processor family. Never really took off, though.
Yeah, many things have failed over the years.
And also similar to Intel's 8088, Motorola made their cheaper variation of the 68000 called the 68008. But it was the 68K architecture - 68000, 68010, 68020, 68030 etc.
Assembler on the 68K where beautiful compared to the cluster-f*ck of the x86.
Man, I so wanted a late model Amiga with the 68030. So effing fast.
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@dashrender said in My first computer:
@scottalanmiller said in My first computer:
@pete-s said in My first computer:
@scottalanmiller said in My first computer:
@dashrender said in My first computer:
@pete-s said in My first computer:
@dashrender said in My first computer:
I bought my first computer when I was 12 (1988). It was a used 8088 with 640K memory (if memory serves), amber screen, two 5.25 floppies, no hard disk - $250. turned right around and went to Sam's club and bought a 30 MB drive for $300 - that was pre ATA (is that called Winchester?) My dad installed the drive, then I installed DOS 3.x on it.
I know I used computers before that, but I don't recall what they were though. I do remember playing with an Apple IIe in elemetry school, but we didn't have one at home. I think my computer was the first one owned by us in the house. Though my dad had a "portable" computer from the military that he brought home often. It was as large as carry on luggage today.
Before ATA I think it was ST-506 interface. "Serious" computers used SCSI disks though.
lol - I'm pretty sure the 8088 was considered a PC, not sure about the 'seriousness' of it.. but I wouldn't expect most home users to have SCSI.
Some 8088 were PC, some were not. Only the PC ones got famous in years later. But at the time, there were loads of non-PC 8088 based computers.
Actually 8086 was the real CPU (hence the name x86 architecture).
The 8088 was just a cheaper variation with 8-bit external bus (8088) instead of the standard 16-bit bus.Yup, I'm very aware, was already in to computers when PC architecture came out.
8086 was never used in a PC however. PC architecture, which required x86, used 8088 in all the first models, not the 8086 to save money. But the 8088 was an x86. But the 186, 286, and so forth all got used in real world PCs, while the 8086 did not. You could, in theory, make an 8086 based PC, it fits in the architecture, but they didn't release at the time.
But PC is a full system architecture, not just computers based on 8086 family processors. That was my point. Back in the 8086 and 8088 eras, half of the machines made with those processors (some 8088s and all 8086s) were not PC, but were x86.
oh - I forgot that Scott loves to jump on the "PC is an architecture" bit. Not saying he's wrong, just that most people don't talk about it that way.
Matters a LOT in a discussion like this when you are specifically discussing the original processors used in PCs and the original PC itself. In today's terms, people are loose with it. At the time, no one used that loosely, it was an incredibly strict term. So when you are talking first generation IBM PC, if you use the term loosely, there is no way to have the slightly clue what you mean. Today, context would tell you mostly.
