[awilso]

Thought it might be interesting to see where we all started out and remember how far we have come.

http://homepage.mac.com/andrew_g_wil...toAlbum17.html

[Koodari]

386SX with, umm, 20MHz? Running DOS 5 and no Windows if I remember correctly.

[Gargoyle]

Well, while searching for a picture of a Commodore c64 I got distracted by this interesting geeky read!

[curiousuburb]

circa 1978 or '79... (misc web photo)

Complete with Paddles... and cassette tape drive... later 2 floppy disks and acoustic modem. Eventually got the joystick, too. IIRC we didn't get the monitor, we used an RF splitter and an old trinitron.

[scratt]

Cool thread!

1. Commodore Vic 20. Bought an 8K expansion block and then the huge multi-card motherstation thing which sat out the back of it and blew it's capacitors with big bangs at least once a month!!

2. Atari 600 XL (Sale item - No Manual at all) - Which I actually peeked and poked until I knew what every memory location did and then wrote some games that were published!

3. Commodore 64 in a huge suitcase type box, with a little colour monitor and a detachable keyboard which made the lid. Forget what it was called.

4. Commodore Plus 4 - I wrote an assembler for that in Basic, so that I could write an assembler in machine code and then write games for it. In fact I think I wrote the only machine code assembler for that which was available (in the UK anyway). It was called Merlin. I also wrote a GUI for it too!!

5. After that it got boring.. I got into Amigas and stuff and got a job!

[spotcatbug]

Atari 800

Googled picture

[Luca]

Mac IIcx, much like this one:



16 MHz, 80 MB hard drive, don't remember how much RAM (8 MB maybe?), oh, and COLOR!

[awilso]

Originally Posted by Koodari 386SX with, umm, 20MHz? Running DOS 5 and no Windows if I remember correctly.

LCD screen - used to run Wordstar and Reflex on it off floppy disks. Man did I ever lose work when I sat on a disk or something!

[awilso]

Originally Posted by awilso Thought it might be interesting to see where we all started out and remember how far we have come. http://homepage.mac.com/andrew_g_wil...toAlbum17.html

Updated to show a picture of the Sinclair zx81 where I first programmed a calculator at the age of 10. I can't believe I got so exited about adding up numbers.

[awilso]

Okay - it seems that .mac finds limits rather early. Can't seem to get this picture of a ZX81 on to the site.

Please find linky to the site that explains.

Seems they are still for sale for some reason

http://www.nvg.ntnu.no/sinclair/comp...x81_photos.htm

[Eugene]

Ti-99/4A

[kretara]

First family computer: Apple ][ (given to us by a rich friend after he used it for 1 month. It had the dual 5.25 floppy drives and the oh so beautiful green screen monitor. It also had a printer (about 3-4 feet long) that you could hear printing across the street. It sounded like a machine gun. The computer, monitor, floppy drives and software are in my attic.




First computer I bought with my own money: Compaq desktop. God, I'm forgetting the specs. It was something like this. 133mhz processor, 16mb RAM, 14.4 modem, 2gb HD, printer and 15" monitor. It cost something like $2700 to buy this thing. I spent many hours enjoying warcraft on this sucker. Its still in use today at the prep school my brother-in-law teaches at in CT.

[stonyc]

1. Apple //e
2. Packard Bell 486 DX-something
3. Self-built Intel P3-400MHz
4. NEC Laptop AMD K6 300MHz
5. Dell Dimension 8250 P4 2.8GHz (quite a leap there, hehe)
6. 15" PB 1.67 GHz, Super, 100GB, 128mb VRAM

[Quagmire]

1. Powermac 6100( Dead lasted 6 years then mother nature killed it)
2. Powermac G4 400 Mhz( still running)
3. 12" Powerbook G4 1 Ghz( still using and typing this on it)
4. 20" iMac G5 2 Ghz.

[Kickaha]

Oh god. Um...

Apple][+
Mac IIcx
Mac IIsi
PowerBook 180
PowerBook 5300
NeXTStation (w/ that tank of a laser printer)
B/W G3 PowerMac
PowerBook G3 (Bronze) (ie, Pismo)
PowerBook G4

A few others in there I'm sure I'm missing....

[FFL]

we did this a few months ago:
http://forums.applenova.com/showthread.php?t=7677
which was a repeat of:
http://forums.applenova.com/showthread.php?t=2560

but I'll be a sport and repost my list:

early 2005 - Dual 2.0 GHz Power Mac G5 (current)
early 2004 - 20" iMac G4
mid 2002 - 800 MHz PB G4 Ti (current)
late 2001 - 667 MHz PB G4 Ti
early 2001 - iBook Dual USB (sold to a friend who's still using it daily)
late 2000 - Dual 450 Mhz Power Mac G4 (sold to another friend who's still using it daily)
Mid 1999 - Lombard PowerBook G3/400
Late 1998 - Wallstreet PDQ PowerBook G3/266
Mid 1998 - Wallstreet PowerBook G3/250
Late 1997 - PowerBook 3400c
Early 1997 - PowerBook 1400c
1996 - PowerBook 5300c
1995 - PowerBook 540c
1993 - Quadra 605
1991 - SE/30

This does not include Macs I've used at work, or Macs belonging to businesses I owned - only computers in my home that I've owned personally.

[kretara]

Thought this topic sounded familiar.
Pulled this from an old thread from about 1 year ago
How trouble free have your Mac years been?

I'll just add a few machines to my list.


Come on Murbot. I challenge you to see who has gone through more personal computers in their lifetime.


Family Machines
* = still own

*IIc -- No problems. It still works!
Packard-Bell 66mhz -- this was a big POS. Never worked right. All sorts of HD and MB problems.
520 -- monitor died
520 -- yet another dead monitor
iMac 233 -- another friggin dead AIO monitor
iMac 350 --dead fucking monitor -- see a pattern? -- I'll never buy another AIO again
Compaq 120mhz tower -- had problems with the OS, but never with the computer. Its still running with the original parts. I donated it to the school my brother-in-law teaches at.
Compaq 233mhz desktop -- this was my fileserver for 3 years (I bought it when it was 2 or 3 years old). It worked fine. I ebayed it still working.
*Compaq 500mhz desktop -- this is my mothers machine. it works just fine and has never had a problem.
*Dell XPS-T 450 bought in 1999. Still up and running (its my Grandfathers now) with all original parts
*Acer 75mhz -- given to me in exchange for the XPS above. It still works with the original parts.
B&W 350 -- no problems. Upgraded to G4 450 + HD's + ATI 7000.
*5GB iPod -- no problems. I still use this daily
Cube 450 -- never a problem. Sold for an outrageous sum of money on ebay.
Gigabit DP 450 -- dead processor and flakey logic board. Sold for parts
15GB iPod -- Flakey from day 1. CompUSA swapped out for 20GB iPod after I made a big stink in a store full of Christmas shoppers
*20GB iPod -- gets about 1.5 hours of battery life. Is flakey as all hell.
Dell Poweredge 400sc -- had one for 1 year and it worked perfectly. Sold to a coworker.
Quicksilver 733 -- I should have learned my lesson. Quicksilvers have bad MB's.
MDD DP 867
Mini 1.42 -- works just fine in spite of the HD
*MDD DP 1.0
*Dell Precision 530 DP 1.7 -- works just fine. Currently runing Ubuntu.
*Pismo 400mhz/640mb/30gb
*Thinkpad 570 -- running Ubuntu
*iMac 350 -- broke down and got one for my daughter (it was free). The screen is only usable if you keep the computer on 24x7. If you turn it off the screen goes wonky for about 1 hour, then it settles down to something like normal.
Sun Ultra 10
Sun Ultra 60
Thinkpad 770
Thinkpad 750 (x2)
Thinkpad 760
2 very forgetable Dell laptops (p3 450 and p3 700)




Work Machines (that I have used or have maintained)

5xx (x4) -- dead monitors
7xxx (x10) -- no problems. If we did not have retire them they would still be chugging along
iMac (233-500) (x5) -- dead monitors, 1 dead logic board
iMac 450 -- still running. I'm amazed
B&W 400 -- worked great for 3.5 years (until I left my old job)
B&W 450 -- dead logic board (I claim full responsibility for this)
PowerBook 233 (x6) -- all are still in perfect condition. Never a problem.
eMac 700 (x7) -- everything went wrong. Apple had to replace 7 of these defective pieces of shite.
Quicksilver 733 (x10) -- all went down with dead logic boards if I remember correctly
xServe (x3) -- no problems
Ti500 -- Still works fine in spite of having my wife pour coffee all over the keyboard
Quicksilver DP 1ghz -- still working fine. (WOW!!! A Quicksilver that still works....amazing)
G5 DP 2ghz -- my pride and joy. no problems
12" PB 1.33 -- soldered on RAM went missing. Apple fixed in 3 days
12" PM 1.33 -- (not the same as above) bad logic board, video etc..... You name it and it was borken. Took weeks (I forgot how many, something like 8 weeks) to get this machine back.
PM Gigabit DP 500 -- HD died.

[geneman]

First computer, I think I got my dads SE (maybe HD) when he moved to an SE/30
IIRC.

after that lets see,
1994 - LC 475
1997 - performa 5250CD (I think, I remember it was 225 Mhz)
2000 - Powermac 7300
2002 - Powerbook G4 (400Mhz TiBook)
2005 - iBook G4

I think all of them are still at my parents house, except for the powerbook as it got stolen

(I'm not really a 100% on the years an exact model numbers but it's close)

[psmith2.0]

A Quadra 610, purchased in February 1994 at MicroCenter in Tustin, CA. Behold the awesome specs (grab on to something, it's pretty intense):
- 25MHz '040
- 8MB RAM
- 230MB hard drive
- 2x CD-ROM (with that $#%^@ caddy thing)
- 1MB VRAM
Running the magnificent System 7.1, if I recall correctly (and I think I do).

All that for only $1,799.



(look at the 20" iMac $1,799 buys you today! )

It was the low (2-3" tall) sorta pizzbox shape (a big square, basically...but taller than those LC-475 or whatever they were called).

Mouse and keyboard NOT included...a separate purchase, and EXPENSIVE.



I did upgrade the RAM to 16MB, by adding a 8MB chip...for the low, low price of only $259.

And I also had a 13" (or was it 14"?) Apple Color Display, in lovely matching beige/gray, for $429. Ran it at a tater-boggling 640x480 with THOUSANDS of colors, mind you.

I thought I was hot stuff.

[BarracksSi]

First computers I remember working with at school were the black Apple II (oh okay, ][ ), programming BASIC and doing math exercises. This was 5th grade, and for the class exercises I got paired up with one of the nicest, cutest girls there. Roooo-xanne.. lol

First computer of any kind that we had at home was a portable Radio Shack word processor that my dad brought from work. Heavy, but still backpack-sized, with a dot-matrix screen and a separate acoustic modem. I read its instructions enough to figure out how to run a little Etch-A-Sketch drawing program.

My family didn't get their own computer at home until a grape 266 MHz iMac while I was off in college in late '98 or early '99. They recently put a big HD in there, and I think it's still running OS 9.

I held off on getting a computer for years, freeloading off the university's computer labs most of the time, and finally got a RevA iBook in '99.

[Wyatt]

Hmm... I've had four or five myself (including three at the moment), but I'll include the family computers from when I lived at home:

The first was a custom-built computer. I'm not sure on the specs, but I believe we once *upgraded* it to 16MB RAM, so I think it either started with 4 or 8 MB and the hard drive was small enough that we couldn't save any files to it, just our applications. It ran Windows 3.1.

The next one was an Acer with an AMD K5. I don't really remember any of the other specs, but I do remember the motherboard crapping out several times (5 times, I believe).

The first one that was really mine was an eMachine. It had a 500 MHz Celeron, 32 MB RAM (upgraded to 96MB) and 4 MB video memory (Upgraded to a 32 MB GeForce 2). It had a wimpy 8 GB hard drive, but that was plenty for a while.

The next one was a custom-built 450 MHz PII with 128 MB RAM, the same GeForce 2 and a 20 GB hard drive. I added 80 GB and a DVD-ROM and immediately thought I was the shit because I had 100 GB of hard drive space and a DVD player. I was 16 years old.

My next one, which I still have (but am in the process of selling) was another eMachine with a 1.79 GHz Athlon, 128 MB RAM (Upgraded to 640), 40 GB hard drive (I immediately added the 80 GB from the other machine and later replaced the 40 with a 200 GB) and the same GeForce 2 (Yes, again) and DVD-ROM. I later replaced the graphics card with a 256MB GeForce FX 5700 and replaced the CD burner with a DVD burner. I also added an ATI TV tuner to this one.

Next (about 20 months later) was my Gateway laptop (typing on it at school right now). It has a 1.3 GHz Celeron M, 64 MB Video RAM, 60 GB hard drive, and 512 MB RAM. I'm hoping to upgrade it to 1 GB next month.

About a month later, I ordered my Mac mini, my first Mac (but certainly not my last, I'm sure). It's a refurb of the original 1.25 GHz, still with original specs (1.25, 128, 40). I hope to upgrade to 1 GB RAM and add an external DVD burner around Christmas time.

[Mac+]

BBC Micro Model B


Manufacturer Acorn (United Kingdom)
Type Desktop
Production start (mm-yyyy) 12 - 1981
-
RAM 32Kb
ROM 32Kb
CPU 6502A - 2 Mhz
Operating System
Text (Cols x Rows) 20x32, 20x32x8, 40x25x2, 40x25x8, 40x32, 40x32x4, 80x25x2, 80x32x2
Graphics 160x256x4, 160x256x8, 320x256x2, 320x256x4, 640x256x2
Sound 3 channels of sound (SN76489)
Storage memory Tape

loved it too!

When I was at Uni I bought my first Mac: Classic II - with a whopping 4MB of RAM and 60MB HD. Woot!

[scratt]

Wicked machine that.

Used them at school.

Worth something now.

[Mac+]

Really? We never throw out anything ... pretty sure it's still at Mum and Dad's back home in Oz. Meh, who am I kidding - don't think I'll sell it.

[scratt]

Naa.. Don't sell it...

There's something so cool about the Beeeeep-Boop when you hit the break key.

And I never saw a machine quite catch the neon bright arcady feel of Defender like the BBC did, and it wasn't even a perfect copy graphically.

When you got down and dirty with them they used to feel like all the sexy bits of Unix machines feel now...

[åsen]

In 1979, a PDP-11 which I played with at school.

All I remember is the card reader which never worked, the 8" (?) floppy discs, and a space-invader-style game called Epic.

[*Joe*]

Hope I can remember them:
Macintosh SE, Macintosh Classic, Macintosh Classic II, Powerbook DUO 210, LC 1, LC 2, LC 3, DUO 250, Macintosh IIsi, Quadra 700, Performa 630, Pentium 2 - 266, Powermac 7600, Pentium 3 -500, IBM Thinkpad T20, Powerbook G4 -550, iBook G4 1GHz, Powerbook G4 1.5GHz.

I think that list is complete, many of them were machines we recieved free through my mothers office when they did upgrades. There probably were a few others too.

[BlueRabbit]

Including all of my dad's work computers, we've had all of these:

Mac Plus
Mac SE (dual floppy)
Mac IIsi
Powerbook 5300
Beige Powermac G3 Desktop 233
Powerbook G3 12"
Indigo iMac 500
1st Gen. TiBook 400
The Cube
And my current computer, a 12" Powerbook

[Brad]

Apple IIc



With a whopping ONE MEGAHURTZ processor.

[CoolToddHunter]

My own first computer was (I believe) a 286 with CGA graphics. I sold that pretty quick and got a good deal on an Amiga 500. That was a much better computer for me. However, my father had the gall to bring a TRS-80 into the house when I was much younger.