My Old Computer
After cleaning out the furnace and storage room in my basement. I found an old computer of mine. This thing was a beast. Originally it was a 486 with 4MB of RAM. The hard drive was pretty tiny. I’m thinking it topped out at 80MB. The video card, geez, I dunno, super VGA. The thing had lotsa colours, okay. Floppy drive was 3 1/2″ and the CD-ROM was a 2x.
Over time and use, the thing needed certain upgrades and fixes to keep running. Out went the 486 processor. In came the mighty Pentium running at a whopping 100 MHz. The RAM was doubled to 8MB. After a nasty hard disk crash, I put in a 1GB drive. One friggin’ Gigabyte. I remember thinking, I’ll never fill that sucker up.
Seven years ago I retired that machine when I bought my Pentium III machine. But seven hours ago, I took that old machine and dusted it off. The keyboard is so old, it plugs in through at AT keyboard jack. In fact, as I look at the grime living on the keyboard, this is my keyboard from my 286 I got in 1989. After I plugged everything in, I pressed that big power button on the front of the machine.
Its ALIVE!
After a couple of minutes of loading, I took a peek around the hard drive to see what I actually had stored on this machine. Lots of emulation programs and tons of ROMs. I even had my homework from high school still on this thing.
The data that’s stored on this machine is pretty much there for good. I can’t get it off. The only way I can output data from this machine is through the floppy drive. The computer has no networking card or modem. It predates USB.
Its just sort of nostalgic to take a look back at this machine. Its not even that it was my first machine (it was my third after my 8088 and 286), but it was the first machine I had Doom running on. It was my first Windows machine.
Recommended Listening: Start Me Up by The Rolling Stones.
Tags: Computers
November 6, 2007 at 3:56 pm
Ha! I have some old emulation programs on my old computer too. It’s resting in peace under my computer desk. I think it still works. Heh. ^^
November 6, 2007 at 8:30 pm
We went through three computers before my mom coughed up the money for anti virus/spyware software.
November 7, 2007 at 10:39 am
Fun to go through however please tell me you are discarding this machine now or giving it to someone that can use it for word or whatever.
November 7, 2007 at 10:47 am
Shae - I grew up playing lots of simple but fun video games. Emulation is the way for me to keep playing them.
Woozie - This computer had some virus issues at some point. Dang boot sector viruses.
Miss Ash - I’m giving to a co-worker of mine. He wants a cheap computer for his kids to play games on. And this way, even if they screw up the computer, he won’t have any of his important stuff on it to get lost or deleted. Lord knows I’ve deleted my mother’s files too many times.
November 7, 2007 at 10:49 am
I recall buying a Packard Bell system at Sears in the early 90s. It cost me over $2,000 and had a massive 233Mhz processor (if that), 128MB RAM and a whopping 4GB HD. I even spent the extra $$$ for an Iomega Zip 100 drive.
I bought a Gateway system this weekend for about $1,000 less. It’s got, how shall I say it, a little more oomph than the old PB monster.
November 7, 2007 at 10:59 am
Dave - I don’t remember how much that machine cost. I went through a lot of upgrades and repairs over the years. A lot of stuff I did myself too. But keep this in mind, my first computer was at least 2500 Canadian. 21MB hard drive, 640K RAM and I think 1 or 2 Mhz. And it needed a stiff slap to boot up properly.
November 7, 2007 at 12:21 pm
I miss my old Commodore 64
November 7, 2007 at 12:34 pm
wiwille - get an emulator!
November 7, 2007 at 1:18 pm
It is pretty cool or at least interesting to find one of those beasts & take a look at what’s on there still. I have 2 of my old hard drives in storage so that one day, if I have the desire I can pay to see what was on them. Most likely it’s pure crap, but it’s my crap.
November 7, 2007 at 1:31 pm
The day the light went on for me was when I plunked down a bunch of money for my first PS2 and while I was reading the literature that came with it I realized that it had more memory and processing power than the PC I had at the time.
And Dave with the Zip drive? I feel your pain.
November 7, 2007 at 2:30 pm
BDS - you get it. This is our hill, and these are our beans!
Dan - My PS3 probably has more juice than either of my machines. Hell, have you seen what a PS3 can do. It is a PC.