What's your computing history?

[Deadlight]

No games consoles here folks! OK, here's mine;

Sinclair ZX81 - 1K RAM, no sound and no colour, but 3D Monster Maze was superb!

Sinclair Spectrum 48k - keyboard felt like massaging dead flesh, but Jetpac! Sabre Wulf!

Sinclair Spectrum +2 - the Alan Sugar days. 129k RAM, a decent sound chip and an integrated cassette recorder! Woo!

Atari 520STFM - built in MIDI, and Starglider!

Commodore Amiga - I had; 2 A500's, A1200, A1500 and a 4000/30! Not all at the same time though. I swapped the 4000 for my first.....

PC - my first one was a Pentium (the original) 90, with 64Mb RAM and a Matrox Millenium! (3D had'nt been invented yet!) My first upgrades were an AMD K6-166 and an Orchid Righteous 3D!!

Ahh, those halcyon days...

[Mocib]

Here's my "money-pit" list

Computers & CPUs

1982-1989 Commodore VIC-20
1986- ???? Commodore C-64 (still have it )
1992-1998 Intel 486DX 50MHz
1996-1999 Commodore Amiga 500
1998-2000 Intel Pentium II 350MHz
2000-2003 AMD Athlon Thunderbird 800MHz @ 933MHz
2003-200? AMD Athlon XP Thoroughbred-B 2600+ 2083MHz

Video-cards

1992-1998 October - Trident 1MB
1998-2001 February - Matrox G100 4MB + Diamond 3DMonster Voodoo 2 12MB
2001-2002 April - ASUS GeForce 2 GTS 32MB DDR
2002-2005 March - Creative GeForce 4 Ti 4400 128MB DDR
2005- 20?? ??? - ASUS V9999/TD GeForce 6800 128MB DDR

[Stewart]

Not many computers.

Had a ZX Spectrum 48k, then pretty much every console up till now, and various gaming PCs.

[poolking]

Amstrad CPC 464 with a green screen

286 can't remember the clock speed

Pentium II 266 mhz I think

Currently AMD XP1800+

[DavidM]

Actually 3d Monstermaze needed the 16K rampack, as the 768 bytes of free memory wouldnt handle the game ... It still got a very playable game, which is the true ancestor of Doom and Quake, into less space than windows takes for a very naff calculator

[Paul Adams]

Sinclair Spectrum 48k (rubber keys, natch)

Commodore 64

Amiga (floppy disks! omg!)

IBM PC XT 8086 4.77MHz, 640k RAM, 20Mb HDD & 2x 5.25" FDD
Later upgraded the CPU to a "Turbo XT" one at 10MHz, got a maths co-processor to help me generate Mandelbrots quicker

Eventually got an MCGA colour monitor - 256 colours at 320x200 resolution

80286 12MHz came next, 1Mb RAM, 2 x ESDI HDDs (the size of house bricks)

80386DX 33MHz, upgraded to a DX2/66 later - think I got my first dual speed CD-ROM drive on this rig too (cost about £120 at the time)

80486 DX4/100

Pentium 100... I think I was up to 32Mb RAM and a 120Mb HDD by now

Somewhere around here I had a Cyrix K5 system with an EISA graphics card, I had no end of trouble with it though

Pentium 200 MMX

P2 266MHz

P3 500MHz (Slot 1 technology arrives), upgraded to P3 1GHz later

AthlonXP 1600+ and P4 2GHz in Shuttle XPCs - now my web server and domain controller respectively

AMD64 Socket 754 HP Pavilion system was bought at the beginning of 2005 (currently has Vista 64-bit Beta 2 on it to play with)

Asus A8N-SLI Premium / Athlon64 3700+ / 2GiB / nVidia 7800GT rig with 2x Dell 2001FP monitors - this is my current main system dual booting XP x64 and Vista 64-bit

[Smokey21]

First PC:

PII 400mhz, 8mb Matrox Vid card, 128mb RAM.

CPU's since then:
1700+ Palomino
2100+ T-bred B
2500 XP-M
3700+ Clawhammer (754)
3400+ Mobile (754)
X2 4400+ (939)

Video Cards:
Geforce 2 Ti
Geforce 4 Ti4600
X800XT PE
Geforce 7800GTX
ATI Radeon X1800XT

[Smudger]

Acorn Electron
Amiga 500Plus
IBM PS/Valuepoint 486 DX2/66 with a massive 1Gb Hdd
Amiga 1200
Current rig - AMD 64 3200+ Venice

[theslasher@ntlw]

ZX81 with 16k rampack
Commodore c16
sega master system
Pentium 75
Amd 450
Amd duron
AMD XP
AMD Barton
Oh yea a Spectrum + in the kitchen cupboard working with games(I loved the spectrums but we wernt rich that explains the ZX81)

[Ramedge]

Spectrum ZX
BBC Mircro
386 windows 3.1
486 windows 3.11
Toshiba latop 333 mhz 96mb of RAM 2mb graphics card, 20gb hard drive
Dell P4 - 1.7ghz - 256mb RDRAM - 160gb hdd and 40gb hdd - 32mb Nvidia Geforce somthing
-between here have had a Sony Vaio laptop but never play games so it doesnt count !!
and then to the one i use today which i cant be arsed to type out because its in my system

[Deadlight]

Yeah David, 3D MM required the RAM pack (with the infamous 'RAM Pack wobble'). Jesus - 25 years of gaming, eh?

Of course, I didn't list all the processor/graphics card/etc. permutations I'd had - I'd be here for a while otherwise!

[Fatboy]

Amstrad CPC 464, expanded to 128K RAM and twin disk drives.
DX4/100, 16MB RAM, quad speed CD-ROM and a whopping 800MB HDD
PII 333 MHz Lappy
AMD 700 MHz
AMD 1800+
AMD 2400+

Currently running an Athlon 64 3500 with all the trimmings,
edit...and also got another P4 2.6GHz desktop, and a Pentium Mobile 1.6GHz laptop.

[Betty_Swallocks]

Sinclair ZX81
Sinclair Spectrum 48k (all that memory! W00t! What will we do with all that?)
Atari 520STFM upgraded to 1024k RAM
486/33 with 4Mb RAM and a Diamond Stealth 3d card. Upgraded it to 16Mb. Cost me 400 quid. Memory sticks now being used as the most expensive keyring in the world.
Pentium 233 with a Voodoo 2 GPU. Ran Unreal Tournament quite well.
Athlon 1400 T'bird w. GeForce3 Ti500 (Still in use but transplanted from the original case into my daughters dolls house.)
P4 3000c with a 6800GT

[Moby-Dick]

ZX81 w/ 16k RAM
Spectrum 128+
Spectrum +3
Xerox 6065 - 8086 , 640k 20 Meg HD and the best keyboard I've ever used !
VTech 486 SX25 4 Meg RAM 120 Meg HD \o/ both 3.5 and 5.25 inch drives and super VGA graphics
Tiny Pentium 120 1.2 Gb Drive
PII 233 16 Meg 4.3 Gb drive and 4 Meg AGP graphics !
K6 500 64 Meg & voodoo II
and in gthe last few years several new boxes and a few old ones

[Lowe]

Tandy TRS80 with 32k expansion
Acorn Electron
286 PC for a little bit
Atari ST and Amiga 500 (still got em)
P2 233, with Voodoo1
P2 450, with SLI Voodoo2
P3 600@910, with nVidia Ultra
AMD AXIA 1ghz @ 1.4ghz with Rad 8500
AMD XP1800@XP2000 with Rad 9700Pro
Apple Powerbook 17"

And that's it!

[Flibb]

zx81 + 16k
Commodore 64 + disk drive
Amiga A500 with 1024k
NES
AST Cyrix 586 100 (I think)
Dell P3 550
PS1
XBOX
Athlon 1700 9800 pro
Compaq P3 500 used as server (going to be given to a friend this week)
Toshiba P2 266 laptop, now has 30gig HD. (still have)
Barton 2500 ATI 9800 pro (now has a kyro 2 in it and acts as my server + dl rig) (still have)
Amiga A1200 (yes I did buy it this year) (still have)
Acer travelmate celeron mobile, 512mb (still have, wife uses)
Opteron 146, Gig ram, ATI 9800pro (still have)