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Post your computer specs when you first got the Internet

[views:22702][posts:72]
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[Jun 17,2014 11:00am - arilliusbm ""]
150mhz
16MB RAM
14.4 modem

DLing Pictures would take more than 10 minutes

Mp3s were unheard of

Computer games used midi format with horrible wav files

CHIPS CHALLENGE CHAMPION 1993
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[Jun 17,2014 11:19am - Mark_R ""]
133 mhz Pentium processor and an incredibly massive 1.6 GB hard drive. I was so excited to make the transition from playing Doom on Sega 32X to the real PC version.

MP3s were around, but took ~30 minutes to download a song on my 28.8 kpbs modem.
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[Jun 17,2014 11:36am - xmikex ""]
Trying to figure out the standard specs for a Packard Bell 486 desktop in 1994 because I doubt my parents spent any extra cash on it.

2400 kbps modem.
I remember having to upgrade the RAM just to meet the minimum AOL requirements.
Eventually upgraded to a 9000 Kbps modem that the Boston Edison IT department was going to throw out and gave to my dad instead
 _______________________________
[Jun 17,2014 11:54am - Yeti ""]
granite
iron chisel
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[Jun 17,2014 12:09pm - HookedonMetal ""]
My first exposure to internet was around 1998.

Windows 95 (upgraded to Windows 98 a few months later)
200mhz

Not sure about the rest. As an 11 year old kid, I didn't care enough to look into that type of stuff.
 _____________________________________
[Jun 17,2014 12:16pm - arilliusbm ""]
I remember thinking "LOOK AT ALL THE COOL PEOPLE WITH THEIR COOL LITTLE COW BOXES AND THEIR FANCY GATEWAY COMPUTERS"
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[Jun 17,2014 12:47pm - Yeti ""]
my first computer was hand-built by a former co-worker, I got it in 99 I think. My parents were anti-computer, they thought a word processor was good enough. it was decent, though I only used AOL 5.0 and played Rollercoaster Tycoon so who knows.
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[Jun 17,2014 12:52pm - Samantha ""]
I don't remember the RAM or hard drive space, but for me, it was a piece of junk Packard Bell with 486 processor, 2400 dial-up modem, and Windows 3.1.
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[Jun 17,2014 12:53pm - Samantha ""]

xmikex said:Trying to figure out the standard specs for a Packard Bell 486 desktop in 1994 because I doubt my parents spent any extra cash on it.

2400 kbps modem.
I remember having to upgrade the RAM just to meet the minimum AOL requirements.
Eventually upgraded to a 9000 Kbps modem that the Boston Edison IT department was going to throw out and gave to my dad instead



I think we had the same computer. LOL. Does anyone remember how easy it was to scam month after month of free AOL service?
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[Jun 17,2014 1:01pm - xmikex ""]
My mom was a pro at getting free AOL despite hating the fact that we used it at all and that it would tie up the phone. She'd just call up pretending to cancel and they'd hand her another 3 months free. In retrospect she probably would have done us both a huge favor by just canceling it but I had more fun on BBS's anyways.
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[Jun 17,2014 1:17pm - LongDeadGod ""]
had a hand me down hp I believe, first started dubbing around the web in 98 or so, basically just used it to download tabs(which after I actually learned to play, realized most were wrong)
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[Jun 17,2014 1:24pm - Alx_Casket ""]
By the time we got the internet, it was a Pentium 2 with an AST computers badge, running Win95. Don't remember any of the other specs but I used to fap longingly at the 3dfx voodoo cards at computer shows, thinking about how much better destruction derby and mechwarrior could have looked.
 _______________________________________________________
[Jun 17,2014 1:52pm - DYA is DUAL BISMUTH YAW GATE  ""]
I'm still not sure I really "get" the internet.
 ________________________________
[Jun 17,2014 2:46pm - xmikex ""]
Slayerized.com

Tabs were usually legit and was loaded with some sweet 4 second long wav files for rocking out
 ____________________________________
[Jun 17,2014 3:03pm - arilliusbm ""]
Before the Internet, We had an old Compaq from the early 80s and a typewriter, lasted a long time. The Compaq was the shit.. Monochrome monitor and 5 1/4 inch floppy disk drive where I raped such 80s games as ALLEY CAT and DEFENDER OF THE CROWN. But when it came time to get/afford a "modern" computer and eventually access the net, my parents shelled money out on HSN and we got some third party computer brand called Proteva. The early to mid 90s for computers were fascinating, in retrospect. The technology was just getting interesting and the Internet was young. Also, fuck off .midis, we used to track .mod files with SCREAMTRACKER, still use it to this day.
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[Jun 17,2014 3:08pm - hlrie ""]
People remember that stuff? Jees idk it was just before my 386. Other than that, who knows. I turned it on. It worked, then it didn't. I had dial up of course but beyond that it was all miracles.
 _______________________________
[Jun 17,2014 3:09pm - hlrie ""]
Before internet and all that modern hoo ha, had an Apple II. Write 100 lines of code to make it say your name. 5" floppies and dot matrix printers.
 ____________________________________
[Jun 17,2014 3:27pm - arilliusbm ""]

hlrie said:People remember that stuff?


IDK, I guess I only remember because I was a PC Gamer and had to pay attention to the specs. Though it certainly meant a lot less back then than it does now. ]
 ____________________________________
[Jun 17,2014 3:28pm - arilliusbm ""]
Also, most people that are into building computers or upgrading hardware will most likely remember every little spec for their computers. I'm sure Aaron remembers his shit.
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[Jun 17,2014 3:29pm - blaine the train  ""]
i had this piece of shit. basically a glorified word processor with no hard drive. at least it was king kong bundy approved.

[img]
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[Jun 17,2014 3:29pm - narkybark ""]
I first got on the internet around 1990. I don't remember what the specs were but it was one of those little square apple computers. The "internet" was pretty much just text at that point.
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[Jun 17,2014 3:34pm - arilliusbm ""]

narkybark said:I first got on the internet around 1990. I don't remember what the specs were but it was one of those little square apple computers. The "internet" was pretty much just text at that point.


Win
 ____________________________________
[Jun 17,2014 3:37pm - arilliusbm ""]
SPENCE, POST YOUR SPEX
 _______________________________
[Jun 17,2014 3:53pm - Pires ""]
We were too poor for a computer. So we had this instead. It was terrible. Anyone else have this abomination?

[img]
 _______________________________
[Jun 17,2014 4:05pm - hlrie ""]
I hear you Jim. Just surprised at the people who weren't into building computers or whatever remember it, that's all.
I still say there are little fairies inside every microchip making them work.
 _______________________________
[Jun 17,2014 4:08pm - hlrie ""]
Most interesting stories though are from my parents generation that grew up with only radio.
My Dad's stories about being at school at MIT and "playing" with their computer are funny. Things that filled entire rooms to make simple calculations and had less computing power than todays average cell phone.
Has to be weird seeing things change so much in one lifetime.
 _______________________________________
[Jun 17,2014 5:07pm - HookedonMetal ""]
What Aril said! Its fair to say it's far more advancd than what most people on this forum started out with.
 ________________________________
[Jun 17,2014 5:29pm - xmikex ""]
RE: Pires

A friend of mine managed a restaurant and had someone call up irate that their website wouldn't load. After some prodding he found out that they were trying to view it on a WebTV browser. This was like 5 years ago too so he had to explain to some woman that her internet service had been extinct for over a decade.
 ________________________________
[Jun 17,2014 5:35pm - xmikex ""]

arilliusbm said:SPENCE, POST YOUR SPEX


ITT: Spence wistfully SMH's at the days of yore having to use IE8. Simpler times...
 ________________________________
[Jun 17,2014 5:44pm - xmikex ""]
A couple of laughable memories...

I eventually had a throw away Compaq 386 in my bedroom (that I used my smokin hot 9000 Kbps modem on). It booted up to a security login and then loaded a Boston Edison graphic. I played around the with Autoexec.BAT and changed the security login to the Moria gates riddle from LOTR and the Boston Edison graphic to a terrrrrible Slayer sword pentagram I made with an ASCII graphic generator.
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[Jun 17,2014 5:48pm - arilliusbm ""]
Hahah
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[Jun 17,2014 6:06pm - demondave ""]
[img]
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[Jun 17,2014 8:00pm - DYA is DUAL BISMUTH YAW GATE  ""]
Real talk, in any case: Actual IBM 386, with a recently-installed 20MB hard drive and a 1200bps modem. (By "internet" here we're talking "dial-up BBS with email service and door games and horrible 320x480 porn GIFs that take an hour to load and the Jolly Roger's Cookbook and fucking ASCII art.") Later on I did a bunch of Usenet. Still remember the first time I saw Netscape at my girlfriend's house. 90% sure the first thing I searched for on the web was "Madball hardcore." LOLLLLLLLZ
 _______________________________________________________
[Jun 17,2014 8:07pm - DYA is DUAL BISMUTH YAW GATE  ""]
Oh, yeah: MS-DOS I wanna sayyyyyyyy 3? Or possibly 4 (I believe 4 was the one that came with a shell, and I remember upgrading to that around that time).
 _______________________________________________________
[Jun 17,2014 8:09pm - DYA is DUAL BISMUTH YAW GATE  ""]
Bonus memory: Mom finally broke down and bought an EGA monitor because of King's Quest III. I got her hooked and it totally worked in my favor.
 ______________________________________
[Jun 17,2014 8:48pm - the_reverend ""]
in before spences first internet computer was a windows 8 machine.
 ______________________________________
[Jun 17,2014 8:50pm - the_reverend ""]
And commadore 64 with a 300 baud modem.
 ______________________________________
[Jun 17,2014 8:51pm - the_reverend ""]

xmikex said:Trying to figure out the standard specs for a Packard Bell 486 desktop in 1994 because I doubt my parents spent any extra cash on it.

2400 kbps modem.
I remember having to upgrade the RAM just to meet the minimum AOL requirements.
Eventually upgraded to a 9000 Kbps modem that the Boston Edison IT department was going to throw out and gave to my dad instead



I had that same computer! it was 33mhz or 50mhz. IF it was the cheap one, it was 33mhz. that's what I got.
 ______________________________________
[Jun 17,2014 8:54pm - the_reverend ""]

HookedonMetal said:My first exposure to internet was around 1998.

Windows 95 (upgraded to Windows 98 a few months later)
200mhz

Not sure about the rest. As an 11 year old kid, I didn't care enough to look into that type of stuff.



I had that for my last 2 years of college. it eventually got windows me.
 ______________________________
[Jun 18,2014 3:23am - Lamp ""]
Can't remember exactly what years this spans, but back in the 90s we had a computer in our house with a 32 inch monitor and wireless keyboard that doubled as our television. It was pretty snazzy.
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[Jun 18,2014 4:09am - xgodzillax ""]
I dont remember the specs of the first computer we had for internetting.. I remember using BBSs after school in 7th and 8th grade. I know I landed myself on some lists because of all the anarchist cookbook shit I was looking up, munitions instructions, hacking, etc etc. good times..

anybody (mainly xmikex) remember the game L.O.R.D.?
 ________________________________
[Jun 18,2014 8:16am - xmikex ""]
LORD has been well discussed on RTTP. Only Violet's sweet ASCII tits are real.
 ______________________________________
[Jun 18,2014 9:13am - the_reverend ""]
I think this is a list of all the "main" computers I have had:

commodore vic 20 (returned after a couple days)
commodore 64
Apple IIgs (1987)
packard bell 486sx 25 (1994)
133Mhz pentium custom build machine (1996)
200Mhz pentium custom build machine (1997)
700Mhz AMD atholon custom build machine (2000)
Dell 1.2 centrino 12" laptop (2004) << still runs
2Ghz core 2 duo custom build machine (2008)

QNAP TS-639 Pro (2009) << NAS
3.4Ghz quad custom build machine (2010) << use every day at work
HP proliant 1.5Ghz (2012) << my back up machine/HTPC
hp envy 15 i7 3610qm (2012) << my daily driver for RTTP stuff
surface pro 2 (2013) << my desktop replacement
 _________________________________
[Jun 18,2014 10:29am - xmikex ""]
Can I say this about BBS-ing... it took real life balls to troll somebody knowing that a guy that lived 2 towns over from you that had your name and phone number and could find your address in the phone book.

The worst thing that ever happened though was a sysop calling my house to yell at me because I harassed him for ruining a Barren Realms league that I had lobbied to get the BBS into. Only getting screamed at by a middle aged man on the phone while your mom stares you down because she knows you did a bunch of asshole shit on the computer and doesn't believe that it's just a friend of yours calling about math homework and you have to poker face the fuck out of everyone... is real.
 ________________________________________________________
[Jun 18,2014 10:34am - DYA is DUAL BISMUTH YAW GATE  ""]
That's just that old school ride or die BBS attitude for ya.
 ________________________________________________________
[Jun 18,2014 10:36am - DYA is DUAL BISMUTH YAW GATE  ""]
THERE'S GONNA BE TWO HANDSHAKES: MY MODEM CONNECTING TO YOUR MODEM, AND YOUR FACE CONNECTING TO THE FLOOR
 _____________________________________
[Jun 18,2014 10:39am - arilliusbm ""]
If you've never stared at a monochromatic monitor, YOUVE NEVER LIVED
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[Jun 18,2014 10:58am - xmikex ""]
In 9th grade I wrote a QBASIC program for a history fair project. It was really simple Input$ GOTO stuff but I wrote it from scratch and did it so that if you typed in one of the terms on my cool posterboard it told you things about Napoleon's conquest of Europe. I had it displayed on a 10" monochrome IBM laptop that was already obsolete in 1996.

I think I got a B- on it and my teacher barely looked at it. The winner was a rich kid who had his parents drive his desktop computer to school and run a PowerPoint slideshow of photos that he scanned (not a commonly affordable piece of hardware at the time) that probably took him 15 minutes to do. He eventually graduated and went to Harvard.

tl;dr: Oi. Oi.
 _____________________________________
[Jun 18,2014 11:04am - arilliusbm ""]
Haha, that sounds like a Simpsons episode.
 ________________________________________________________
[Jun 18,2014 11:28am - DYA is DUAL BISMUTH YAW GATE  ""]
The entry that beat out Mike's "is Napolean smarter than my brother" project:
[img]
 ________________________________________________________
[Jun 18,2014 11:29am - DYA is DUAL BISMUTH YAW GATE  ""]
"Napoleon," rather.
 ____________________________________
[Jun 18,2014 11:30am - demondave ""]

I'll have to ask my father what he built. (He has been involved in computers since punch cards)

But I do remember playing HACK on his computer as a kid, pre internet. I loved typing out in DOS on its amber screen. I would have marathon HACK games at night and would write down the highlights of the adventures.

 ________________________________________________________
[Jun 18,2014 11:53am - DYA is DUAL BISMUTH YAW GATE  ""]
Oh, man. Amber > green ANY DAY.
 _____________________________________
[Jun 18,2014 12:15pm - arilliusbm ""]
Green or GTFO
 _______________________________________
[Jun 18,2014 12:20pm - the_reverend ""]

arilliusbm said:Black AND Green? too many bits
 ________________________________________________________
[Jun 18,2014 12:28pm - DYA is DUAL BISMUTH YAW GATE  ""]
Aril's monochrome monitor is actual monochrome, green only. None of that poser "green AND black" shit.
 _________________________________
[Jun 18,2014 12:33pm - xmikex ""]
"Mono" means one and "Aril" means Aril
 ____________________________________
[Jun 18,2014 1:10pm - arilliusbm ""]
That could quite possibly one of the nerdiest things someone could argue about. Just imagine someone walking into an argument overwhether or not Green or Amber monochromatic monitors are real.

GREEN all day, though. Amber was for pussies.
 ____________________________________
[Jun 18,2014 1:12pm - arilliusbm ""]
Also, 5 1/4 Floppy disks > usb sticks
 _______________________________________________________
[Jun 18,2014 1:15pm - DYA is DUAL BISMUTH YAW GATE  ""]
I'm surprised nobody wandered over to that Ramlord/BT thread to call them posers for using 3.5" disks instead of 5.25".
 _______________________________
[Jun 18,2014 2:26pm - hlrie ""]
Isn't this all like bickering over what dead language is best?
Btw... Sanskrit or gtfo
 ____________________________________
[Jun 18,2014 2:33pm - arilliusbm ""]
One thing I can agree on is that the computer cases were much better/heavier back then.
 ______________________________________
[Jun 18,2014 2:42pm - the_reverend ""]
I was in to tapes before floppies were only 5.25"\'
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[Jun 18,2014 2:46pm - arilliusbm ""]
Http://www.old-computers.com
 ____________________________________
[Jun 18,2014 2:59pm - Alx_Casket ""]

arilliusbm said:One thing I can agree on is that the computer cases were much better/heavier back then.


They were designed like tanks, but I wouldn't say they were better. Nowadays cases are lighter, quieter, built with more capabilities, and have better airflow. They've evolved with the needs of the hardware they house.
 ____________________________________
[Jun 18,2014 3:12pm - arilliusbm ""]
Obviously, I was talking in the sense of the case itself, not comparing it to the technology inside. Same thing with cars. Give me a 4000 pound metal boat over a 1200 fiberglass piece of shit any day.
(even though I drive a cheap ass Civic.) :/
 ________________________________
[Jun 18,2014 9:52pm - Marsh  ""]
Compaq presario in 1995-1996ish
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[Jun 19,2014 6:48pm - BeholdJudas  ""]
I don't even fuckin' know. Some home model running 98 from around '97 or '98; I don't recall having internet until around '99 or '00.
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[Jun 19,2014 7:11pm - xmikex ""]
[img]

Definitely had a TI-99 at some point when I was really little that had a couple of text based RPGs and Hunt the Wumpus. I remember being really inquisitive about it and my parents being very "*shrug* It's just a stupid computer who cares?" THANKS A LOT MOM.


bennyhillifier
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[Jun 19,2014 7:13pm - goatcatalyst ""]
[img]
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[Jun 20,2014 8:38am - DYA is DUAL BISMUTH YAW GATE  ""]
Wumpus huntin' FTW
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[Jun 20,2014 1:43pm - BobNOMAAMRooney nli  ""]
Macintosh II
16 MHz
1MB RAM
Got online with an acoustic coupler
 _____________________________________
[Jun 21,2014 3:18pm - AUTOPSY_666 ""]
WebTV

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