How old was your first PC?

I've seen that somehwere, I think in a movie about Kevin Mitnick. He used a public phone to connect to the net. When I saw that I was amazed. Still can't understand how that can work...How those sounds get turned into 0's and 1's. :)

That's unfortunate... I never had problems with short circuiting and stuff like that. Although there was this one time, when I got a PC from somebody to take a look at it, it wasn't running...I plugged it in and smoke started comming out of the power source. :))

Telephone on a computer? Haven't seen anything like that... must have been cool! :D You could clean out the malware and try to restore it, at least for old times sake. :) And yes, you shouldn't just ignore the anti-virus, one time I didn't have one installed, and after half a day of internet surfing my PC was useless.

Wow that was a large sum of money to pay for a computer! :O Still, it does seem to have been quite a good one for that time. I remember mine didn't have a cd drive when I first bought it. I got one a little later from my cousin, and used it for about 5 years! time in which I went through 3 other PC's. I kept the old CD-ROM beacuse I felt it was worth having a part of the old computer.

I know what you mean, some things aren't made the way they used to be made. When I bought my current PC, I didn't buy a allready-built one, instead I went out and got everything I liked and assembled it from scratch. People should try to avoid purchasing computers from supermarkets and stuff. Where I'm from, there are these special offers, where you go to a supermarket and see a PC next to the vedgetables stand. :)) The idea is, only buy computers from specialised IT shops. :)

:)) The joke's on your friends then, if they thought you were crazy from naming your PC. Of course, after that much time, there is a bond formed between you and the object. It's not different from when people name their cars, or planes, etc. Good luck with your new one! :)

I paid $430. The same price today of a most advanced computer.

I won't laugh, one of my cousins used to play mario using nothing but a 286 and floppy disketes. And that was only a few years back. :)) 0.5mb seems a lot for 88'. Must have been state of the art then. Can't imagine what you paid for it. :)

Wow, nice setup, for those times! It must have been new. :) Watching movies was still a little out of my possibilities with my first PC. :) I remember the first movie I actually managed to play on it: it was the dancing baby clip. :))

Nice setup! :D 200MB sounded like a lot for me even then, I didn't have with what to fill 400. :) A manual scanner? That sounds... interesting :)) And yes, it's very good when your'e exposed to techology at a young age. I think information technology classes that are tought in schools should be given a greater importance.

I never used an Apple computer, but I know that platform differences are very annoying when it comes to sharing information between people. Nice of you to give away your old PC's, this way people with reduced financial possibilities can benefit from it as learning material. I gave mine to my best friend when I bought a new one, when he bought another computer he passed it on.

yeah mine did the same still have the damm thing adn it works son took it to school as part of a project. Everyone was amazed at it

Hmm, reminds me of my old Terminator game console I had. It used cartriges and I also had to plug it into the TV. It was great, untill the neighbour above me found out that my game was giving him bad reception on the TV. :))))

:) Nice of your son to buy you a new one. Holidays are definitely a good time for buying stuff, there are a lot of sales and promotions going around.

Well there actually are museums with old PC's and stuff like that. :) I searched some time ago on the net and found a lot of web-pages dedicated to the history of computers. So I'm guessing that there are some avid collectors out there. :D

I have a commodore 16 too... this is real informatic archeology ... ehehehehehh LOL

Yep, Yep, Yep! Future technologies will blow some of us away! I'm talking especially about those in my age group (middle age?). I remember my Dad (born in 1910), commenting about how rapidly technology had advanced just in his 90+ year lifetime. He didn't really keep up with it; never owned a PC, but clearly understood much about the possibilities to come. As we watch new technologies emerge, my greatest hope is that it doesn't get abused. Indeed, future technology will threaten peoples' privacy in ways we don't even know about yet. Even now, peoples' privacy is significantly compromised. The digital world is all too easy to track and tap into without the user ever even knowing it's being done. Scary thought, but I guess if there's "nothing to hide" it'll be ok...just don't like the thought of it, y'know? "Big Brother" is already here...perhaps not to the degree that George Orwell's novel ("1984") depicted, but it's out there! There are video cameras everywhere! When we reach the point that "they" (whoever "they" are!) start implanting chips in people's arms or foreheads (don't worry, it's coming someday, just don't know how soon!), I think that'll be my cue to jump off the planet. I can't fathom the thought of living in such a civilization...but I don't see how it will be avoided, either. The technology is available, and too useful (for those who want to know what civilization is doing!) NOT to put into practice. Even today, many American states are considering installing informational RFID (radio frequency identification) chips on driver's licenses, to allow remote tracking. Someday, "they" will be able to track everyone, everywhere! How nice! In the meantime, "Happy Computing"!

Actually you can fill it up very quickly.:) The better the quality of the media, the more space it will take up. You can get music encoded at 320 kb/s, that's more than double your normal 128 kb/s rate. So you get to have an album of 10 - 12 tracks which is bigger than 150 - 200 MB...

Well it's too old. :) Nothing some little upgrades can't fix.

Nice one. Monitors don't usually have a big lifespan. I don't know how mine made through almost 15 years of usage. :)

With the expansion of the internet and all, yeah it's like having a window with the world as your back yard. :)

Of course, if it isn't living up to your standards anymore :) 8 Years does seem like a lot of time, maybe it's time for an upgrade...

That's the same as my first PC. :) Interesting history, I know at first computers were very expensive, way out of the reach of ordinary people.