QOTW: What was the first PC you built/purchased?

[deeppow]

One of the first 8086 IBM machine from an agricultural supply store in Idaho, USA. DOS based machine, don't remember more than that.

[EvilCycle]

I'd had many systems bought FOR me before I bought my own, so depending how you look it, the first one I owned was a commodore c64, the first one I bought myself was a self build as at this point I had owned bought-for pre built PC's and learned to tinker and upgrade, anyway I digress, my first proper self bought PC was an AMD 64 X2 4200 and 2GB ddr2 with an Asus 8600GT, quite a sensibly balanced mid range machine for my budget and experience at the time I think.

[winactive]

First build
Intel Pentium P166MMX
16MB EDO RAM (2x 8MB)
PC Chips Triton 430VX mobo
2.6GB Fujitsu HDD UDMA2
Liteon 16x CD-ROM
4MB Matrox Mystique PCI
Creative SoundBlaster 16 ISA sound card
Some kind of beige mid-tower case (from Eclipse Computers, Coventry)
ATX PSU (can't be more specific)
Cherry DIN Keyboard
Microsoft Intellimouse PS/2
15" Belinea FST CRT Monitor
Windows 95 B (CD-ROM)

was bought from all over and assembled in under two hours but faulty RAM meant I couldn't boot it and took it to the local shop where they confirmed I built it right but had the substitute RAM to diagnose!

[naturbo2000]

AMD 200 mhz K6 I built as up till then I had an Amiga A4000/060 system. Was built with brand new copy of Win 98 as well

I had an A1200/030 which i replaced with a late model 166MMX (which I only ever ran at 233). Pretty quickly replaced that with a K6-2 300.

That 166 was poverty-spec, but could play quake and grand theft auto, so I'll claim 16MB RAM. Definitely came with a S3 Virge 3D graphics card (terrible, but it would try to work with things it didn't have a chance of supporting). I enjoyed the upgrade to first gen 3dfx.
Oh and a 14" screen with goldfish bowl curvature to it.

[fsxfan]

Mine was a 386sx, ran at 16Mhz but the case had Turbo button which brought the clock speed up to the heady heights of 25Mhz. The sx variant was the cheaper version of the full blown 386dx. I remember playing the original Wolfenstein and Commander Keen on it.

[fsxfan]

Meant to add that my very first computer was a Vic20. The neighbours kids had a ZX Spectrum and another family had the C64, but we were poor in those days so the Vic20 it was for me. Didn't get a PC until I was 18 or 19.

[malculator]

My first computer was an original (the rubber button job) Sinclair ZX Spectrum 16K, later upgraded to 48K. My first actual PC however was an Olivetti PC1 Prodest which ran off MS DOS via a 3.5" floppy (pre Windows). And the first PC I actually built completely was around a Pentium IV Northwood 2.6Ghz processor with 1GB RAM and I think an Nvidia GeForce 4 Ti4800SE.

[Bambooz]

First one I ever bought (used):

Commodore PC30 III

Siemens 286 12MHz
640KB RAM
20MB Tandon TM262 (later known as Western Digital WD262) MFM HDD
ATi EGA Wonder 800+ 256KB
Samtron (Samsungs low-end brand) 14" EGA monitor (640x400 16colors)

First one I built from scratch with new (albeit low-end) parts because the PII 300 I had at the time didn't cut it anymore:

AMD Sempron 2200+ 1.5GHz
ASRock K7VT4A+ socket A board
256MB DDR400 (later 768MB and 1GB)
80GB Maxtor Diamondmax Plus 9 7200rpm HDD
Geforce FX 5600 128MB DDR (souped up FX5200 basically and equally as slow)

[Nelly.]

1982 - Atari Console
1984 - ZX Spectrum 48k+
1986 - Commodore 64
1988 - Atari ST
1989 - Commodore Amiga A500
1992 - Commodore Amiga A600

Bought my first PC around 1994 - Packard Bell 486 25Mhz SX, 2MB Ram, 40MB HD - £999 from Dixons.

I bought a further two PC's, 1995 - Compaq Presario, Pentium I 120Mhz - £1199 and the last being a custom PC from Dan Technology built in 1998 - Pentium II 400MHz, ATI All-in-Wonder PRO 8MB, STB Voodoo II 16MB etc - £1,200ish. After that started building my own PC's with stuff from OcUK from 2001 onwards, using an ABIT KR7A motherboard (RIP ABIT) with an AMD Athlon 1700XP etc. (INTEL used to be crap then lol!)

[ablang]

In 1991, I bought a POC Packard Bell PC. It had a 386 16 Mhz processor w/ no math co-processor. I forgot how much RAM it had but this thing sucked big time. I paid like about $1500 for it. One of the biggest purchasing mistakes of my life.

[Core2Extreme]

The first one I built/purchased is my current desktop, with a Sandy Bridge processor. Unless you count re-assembling a machine, in which case it's my Core 2 Duo laptop that I've disassembled many times.

My family's first computer was an AMD 486, with a Western Digital Caviar 2850 hard drive storing 853.6 MB of data, and a VLB graphics card whose model I don't remember. We had DOS, Windows 3.11, and OS/2 Warp 3 on it, and Windows 95 once it came out and we added a second hard drive. It was a locally assembled, fairly unreliable computer, that had to be take in to the shop semi-frequently. But it still lasted almost 4 years, before being replaced by a Sony VAIO Pentium II that still functions to this day.

[BobF64]

First I personally bought was an Escom Pentium 75, 8MB of RAM, 1GB hard drive, an ATI Mach64 graphics card, 14" somewhat curved CRT and a whopping 2x CD-ROM drive, if memory serves.

In 1996 it cost a bank account, or in this case student loan, draining £1200, I still have the receipt somewhere.

Options I couldn't afford were a 6x CD-ROM and a 15" monitor, that was less bowl shaped.

[Gentle Viking]

First i purchased was a 66 MHZ DX2 machine, the second was a 266 MHZ machine, and the first i build myself was the 700 MHZ machine with a slot A Athlon processor.

I have never owned a budget computer, as Duron / semperon / Cyrix and what have you not processors, always gotten and build with good shi,,,,, stuff.

Only the best for me and my friends.

[markzero]

The very first one I was given as a kid was a TI 99/4a, but the first one I bought as an adult was a Hyundai Super 286e. Had a Connor 40MB drive which I kept, and still runs. I think I've also kept the RAMpart! AT board I used to get it up to 3 megs of ram. Within a few months bought Windows 2.11, mostly because it came with a bus mouse with its own ISA board.

The first one I actually used at home, though, was the family TRS-80 Model I Level II. My dad saved about $300 buying the chips to upgrade it from 16K to 48K and putting them in himself. The only graphics it had were character-based. No bitmaps, and no color, either. But it did have lower case letters! (I don't think the Level Is did.) Also had an enormous 132-column daisy wheel printer you could hear from the other end of the house, through closed doors.

[Euphonium]

First computer I helped build:
Acorn Atom with floating point unit and 12KB RAM. It came as a kit with case, mobo, sack of ICs, capacitors, and resistors, and I hepled my dad solder all the parts to the board

First computer I bought with my own money (second-hand):
BBC Model B (series 4) with 12" green screen monitor, 5.25" double disk drive, clock-doubled 65C02 processor (4MHz), solidisk 256KB expansion board with at least 4 extra ROMS (I remember VIEW and a database package), and 9-pin Epsom MX80 printer

First x86 PC I bought:
Escom Intel 486dx66 with 8MB RAM, 512MB HDD, 14" monitor, and SoundBlaster 16 soundcard

First x86 PC I built (into the Escom case):
Cyrix 6x86PR150 (120MHz) with 16MB EDO RAM, 1.2GB Quantum Bigfoot HDD, Videologic Grafixstar 600 video card, 2x CD-ROM, and the same SB16 soundcard and 512MB HDD

[Euphonium]

I still have the Escom case. A friend custom-painted it for me.
It now holds a VA503+ mobo with AMD K6/III 450MHz, 512MB RAM, SB AWE64 sound card, Voodoo3-3000 GFX card, CD-RW, DVD-ROM, and 2x80GB HDDs

I've also still got my BBC B and BBC Master systems, and the hearts of all of my major upgrades over the years, although the P166, P233MMX, Athlon, AthlonXP, and Athlon64x2s are all in storage.

The Core 2 E6600, Q6600, AMD Phenom 9950, i5-2500k, i7-2700k, and i7-3770k are all still in use for one task or another.