[architect_santo]

Mine was assembled, in late 90’s
Pentium II 350Mhz, 64 MB RAM, 4GB Hard Disk,
17” Monitor, Creative CD Drive with Sound Card and Speakers, TVS Mechanical Keyboard, HP Inkjet Printer.

[DevOnWheels]

Got my first PC in 2004 (I was in class 4 then) as birthday gift from my Grandpa.

Acer desktop
14 inch CRT Display
AMD Duron processor
256MB DDRI RAM (later added two 1 GB RAM as it had 3 slots)
160GB Hard Disk
Running on Windows XP
i-Ball UPS
Frontech 2.1 Speaker System

I still have it and is in perfect working condition. But the sad thing is it's not used now. Just install in and test run it twice a year.

[sgm]

I got a Laptop in 2003 and it was a Dell Inspiron model with Intel Pentium CPU. I can't remember the spec now. I was too excited to get a personal Laptop because I wanted to do stuff once I was back home from office but nothing happened other than installing Linux to do dual boot, upgrading the OS left and right for fun. My friend working in Intel was getting an offer where he could buy a 1L model for 80k and I fell for that offer. Later in my life, I realized it as one of the most stupidest decision financially, as that amount was enough to get a 30x40 site in the outskirts of Bangalore It would have easily fetched 40-50L today. I continue the same pattern today but the fancy toys are not gadgets but Cars

[fhdowntheline]

I got my first home PC in 1996 or so. The configuration was a Intel Pentium, RAM was 16MB or something , and hard disk was 256 MB. OS was Windows 3.1. We had VSNL internet courtesy Balasai Net in Pune, at a blazing speed of 32kbps. But it had Creative Soundblaster speakers and a CD drive to play songs. Whats interesting is that this fully bespoke configuration cost about 15000 Rs back then. Just shows how much cheaper computing has become.

Otherwise I have worked with even more primitive configurations. In school we used to have the DOS computer on which I learnt BASIC for the first time !

[yogeshnagpal]

My first computer was in the year 1995 with the following config-

Processor - 80386 DX 40 Mhz
RAM - 4MB
HDD - 250 MB
Floppy Drive - 1.2Mb / 1.44 MB
Monitor - CGA
Printer - Epson LX 300 Dot Matrix.
OS - MS-DOS 5.0, later upgraded to DOS 6.22
Windows 3.1

Softwares-
Wordstar 4.0
Lotus 123
Foxpro 2.5
DBase III+
and a few more.

Had a language software too in those days, which could do typing in Hindi.

Interesting bit was - There was a software called "BANNER" in those days. I used to design interesting stickers for our M800 - Michelin, Scenic sport etc


My dad had purchased this in those days for about 55k. I was in 5th Grade then. Loving memories of me having learnt Wordstar 4.0, Lotus 123, Foxpro 2.5, Dbase III+ and more, on this computer. This is the machine that kindled my interest in computers 2.5 decades ago, and went on to do engineering.

Hell, I even learnt how to open the computer, remove the HDD, FDD and RAM in those days.

Interesting ports then - PCI, PCI-X, ISA and so on.

I used to play Prince Of Persia, a few Qbasic games like Nibbles and Gorilla, Dangerous Dave, Mortal Kombat, Alleycat, and the list goes on..

It used to be so interesting to maintain a database of my dads shares purchased and sold on this very computer, on a foxpro database. Yes, I learnt these when I was in Standard 5.

In about 5 years, the landscape completely changed and in the year 2000 after my SSC, we changed the computer, and brought home the following config-

Pentium III, 550 Mhz
RAM - 128 Mb
HDD - 8.2 Gb
Monitor - Samtel Colour Monitor
Creative CD ROM drive with IR Remote
56.6 kbps GVC external modem, with a landline that raked in bills worth a few thousand s on late night ICQ chats, planning blind dates


Its interesting how technology has evolved with VLSI, VVLSI, Nano chip integration etc.

Hell, today's phones (even smart watches) are more powerful than the computers back then.

But nothing beats the simplicity and utility that the un-connected machines of yester-years offered.

[Lobogris]

My first computer was bought in the US in 1998.
It was a NEC computer along with their own NEC monitor and a printer.
The specs were as follows:
AMD K6 processor 166Mhz
12 GB HDD
64 MB RAM
OS Windows 98
Price: approx $1000
I remember the RAM as next year we upgraded to high speed broadband and the minimum requirement was 64 MB. I was happy but when the installation didn’t work, the technician explained that 4 or 8 MB was reserved for video playback. So I had to go buy additional RAM and then the broadband worked great. It was exhilarating to use high speed broadband at 1 Mbps then!

[dark.knight]

Ah lemme see if I recall :

Pentium II MMX 333 Mhz
HDD : 512 MB HDD (or something)
RAM : 64 MB / 32 MB, not sure
Creative Soundblaster
U.S Robotics Modem
Logitec Webcam
Samsung Monitor
Logitech Mouse (somethings never change)
Microsoft Keyboard
DOS+ Windows 3.xx

Either way, a MASSIVE waste of money, and I wanted a computer so bad without knowing how much it truly costed, adjusted for inflation, all to just play silly games with 2 total pixels as graphics. I know no matter how much I pay back my dad it won't be enough.

If weren't for work emails and Team-BHP, I'll toss my laptop out the window (kidding, sell on OLX), technology is so overrated. I spend barely an hour a week on the laptop anyway.

[1.2TSI7DSG]

1996

Assembled

Intel Pentium
Windows 95
16 MB ram (remember it because nfs didn't run on it because it required 32mb ram)
Floppy drive
CD drive
CRT 15 inch monitor
It had a mouse (feature back then)

[Engine_Roars]

I was in 6th -7th grade, year was 1997-98 I guess, not sure though. I had just started getting to know about computers & what they can do. We were struggling financially, when I say struggle, I mean struggling to survive & earn enough to eat. Fortunately, had a roof over our heads, thanks to my grandfather.

However, when has struggles like this stopped parents to give what their children yearn for. I was good at computers, in school, at neighbors, relatives. I wanted to own one too however I also understood we could not afford it.

Cutting long story short, my mother sold her only gold jewellery and both of them got me my first every computer. It was a black and white monitor, 486. I think the ram was 2 or 4 MB with a floppy drive, storage space was 64 MB or 128 MB. Don't remember much about the configurations but I will always remember the sacrifice of my parents & will never forget my first ever computer, ever. This story always makes me teary eyed. Those were the days.

Thanks for starting this thread, apologies, if I could not add much.

[sachind]

1985

Just finished my class X exam and got a Commodore C-64 !! I am not sure anyone here has even heard of one. Needed to be connected to the TV as a monitor and had a tape drive interface !! It ran C-Basic which was so poky and slow that it forced me to learn assembly programming on the 6510 processor.

Luckily there was a plethora of books available in the local British Library...

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_64 for details of this piece of history.

[saisree]

Year 1998

CPU - Intel Celeron 133 Mhz
RAM- 64MB SDRAM
HDD - 512 MB, Out of which 128 MB went to bad sectors and was not recoverable
Sound Card - Yamaha YMF74
Monitor - Priya
Keyboard - TVS Gold
Mouse - Logitech
Speakers - Creative Sound Blaster 100.
OS -Windows 98

Used it for learning C Programming and playing Road Rash Game.

[buntee90]

First PC 2006 (Assembled) I was in 10th Standard

Pentium 4 2.6 Ghz
Intel 845 Motherboard
512 MB Ram
80 GB HDD
Floppy Disk Drive and CD RW
OS: Windows XP SP2 (Which i believe is still the best OS till date)
Yamaha Speakers
17 Inch CRT Monitor

My PC was the subject of envy for my friends. It could run GTA Vice City/ Need For Speed-Most Wanted easily. I used to play NFS for long hours"
the time trial races, laps, drag races! Pink Slips. Oh those were good times!

[vikram31]

Assembled PC

Processor: Intel 486
Ram: 4 mb
OS: Windows 3.11 for Workgroups
Monitor: Monochrome VGA
HDD: Seagate bigfoot 540 mb

Kicker: CD Drive - 2x speed with play button and headphone jack!

[dipdawiz]

Those were the days... assembled in 1999.

Specs

• Intel Celeron processor (mostly 433mhz)
• Intel motherboard
• 4.3 GB Seagate hard disk - partitioned it 2.1GB+2.1GB
• 32MB Kingston RAM
• 1.44" floppy drive (way to boot and copy files)
• Windows 95
• LG 14" color monitor
• TVS gold mechanical keyboard
• Logitech mouse
• Dedicated PCI graphics card with VIA chipset (even AGP was not there)
• Creative Sound-blaster live value kit (used to come with a set of active speakers, CD-ROM and PCI sound card)
• Caltiger, 28 or 32kbps dialup internet connection. It was free with advertisements. Do not remember the modem brand though.

Used it for three years, and then got another brand new assembled PC for my college use (in hostel) in 2002, with more MHz, RAM, HDD, CD-writer, AGP graphics card and what not .

[Prowler]

My first computer was Sinclaire Spectrum 48k RAM (no floppy drive) in 1985. Then Sinclaire Quantum Leap with 32 bit Processor in 1989. I used these for Video titling with my own machine code software kept in a cassette.

Finally an IBM compatible PC with 486 Processor/4 MB RAM/630 MB Hard disk. in 1990. It came with DOS 6.21 which was upgraded to Windows 3.11
The Spectrum + beat the IBM PC in a game of Chess. Everyone thought that the 'modern' PC would beat the ancient Spectrum computer in Chess. But the Spectrum software was far more efficient, tiny in size and written in machine language.

It was a different era. The dialup connections we had in 1995 topped with a speed of 28kbps. You had to wait with a lump in throat to hear the handshaking signal from the modem as a sign that the connection is finally through. I won't be surprised if you think it must belong to the cave man's time.