Remember the day...

[Concillian]

To think the average zip drive has 10x the capacity of a hard drive back in the 386 dayz.

My main computer's memory is 300x more storage than the hard drive in my 386 was.

It would have taken 300 hard drives to store what now can go into DRAM. Yes, things have definitely progressed.

 

[Concillian]

double post, sorry

 

[nyker96]

So yeah, I built my first PC a while ago and it was an AMD 386DX40. I had been using 8088 and 286 prior but only at work. I sure love the evolution of technology! :biggrin:

I think Intel 386 was my first chip. But didn't build my own computer until my cousin showed me his newly built celeron machine, I didn't know I could build my own computer, always thought it required a PhD or something. Then a thought occured to me, if my dumbass cousin can do it, that means ... Then after I built my first celeron, I came across articles of overclocking, man who'd thought you can turn a $150 chip into something faster than the fastest chip $300 chip on the market. Those were the days ...

 

[evolucion8]

I do remember those 386DX25MHz, barely enough to run Windows 3.1 and the 2D word screen saver. Also I remember when IBM launched the Aptiva series along with Windows 95, 16MB of RAM, and a power Pentium 133MHz processor and allowed to run full frame video content at 30fps!! Or my first videocard, an S3 Trio 64,

 

[pm]

I remember back when I had a TRS-80 and to turn it on you had to type in a bunch of commands.

I remember back when games came as hex code in magazines and you would type them in by hand (read: hours) and then play them and not turn the computer off because you had no way to save the game.

I remember loading games on tape (used audio tapes) and it would take like 30 minutes to load a game.

I remember getting a floppy drive (5.25") and thinking "wow. this is SO much better than tape".

I remember the very first time that I saw a hard disk (1981-1982 or thereabouts) and it was about the size a toaster ("full-height") and held a whole 10MB and it was unbelieveably fast compared to a floppy disk. As I recall it also got about as hot as a toaster and it cost something like $800.

I remember the very first computer that I built myself was a 386 and the day that I finished building it - the very afternoon - I had it in a full height tower case and I was on a 6 story building in Santa Clara, CA, when the 1989 Loma Prieta 7.1 magnitude earthquake hit and I watched the computer rocking back and forth on top of my desk and in the middle of this huge earthquake and I jumped across the room and grabbed the computer and then fell on the floor hugging it (yes, this story is completely true).

I remember my very first major overclock was an AMD 5x86-133 which I overclocked to 200MHz and it was stable. TAt the time, that seemed like about as fast a computer as I would ever need.

 

[Davidh373]

Me: Sonny, my first computer was an AMD 233.

Wipper Snapper: 233 cores?

Me: No Megahertz boy!

Wipper Snapper: That's really slow old man, just like you...snicker.

Me: Get off my lawn or I'm gonna mega hurts you!

lol

Anyways, I don't remember because I got my first PC in '98, but it fascinates me to know how far we've come

 

[jimhsu]

My main computer's memory is 300x more storage than the hard drive in my 386 was.

It would have taken 300 hard drives to store what now can go into DRAM. Yes, things have definitely progressed.

Just as amazing is how SLOWLY access times have progressed. Remembered that access times were 20-30 ms in the old 10 MB hard drive days... now consumer hard drives are 15, and the fastest are only a little under 10? By comparison, CPUs are at least 1000x faster, and that is probably conservative.

Hence why SSDs have so dramatically changed the performance landscape...

 

[Motorheader]

Just as amazing is how SLOWLY access times have progressed. Remembered that access times were 20-30 ms in the old 10 MB hard drive days... now consumer hard drives are 15, and the fastest are only a little under 10? By comparison, CPUs are at least 1000x faster, and that is probably conservative.

Hence why SSDs have so dramatically changed the performance landscape...

I go back 40+ years - quite a few "wow" moments come to mind. I hate to think of all the trees lost to greenbar for terminal output.

One had always been the price of computer memory. I traded a matching set of 2 x 16mb of 72 pin memory back in '94 for a house full of very well made furniture. We both thought we made out great in the deal. Memory was $40-$45 a meg at the time - and that was through Computer Shopper vendors.

Voodoo SLI, a Matrox Millenium 4mb, and a 233mmx.

 

[gevorg]

I still remember my i5-760, nice value chip back in the days. My current Sandy Bridge chip just blows it away.

 

[alaricljs]

I remember selling used 64MB SIMMS from a dumpster dive and buying my first car with the proceeds (and a stereo, and as much ram as my current 486 could take). And no... I didn't buy a cheap car, although it was used.

I remember buying the FPU as a separate chip, having an XT with an external harddrive that took up all of half the space the complete XT case took, and when upgrading to 256 colors was a revelation.

I remember 8" floppies, a full carriage line printer that literally shot the head assembly out the left end because the return speed regulator shorted out, CP/M on a system my father built (back when building a computer meant using a soldering iron and weeks or more of time)...

 

[Rubycon]

Ah yes 8" floppy drives with their induction motors! All anyone needs is a Zilog Z-80 at a blistering 4.77MHz running CP/M. A whopping 64KB of RAM! 64KB!

Hold that call to Bremen, I need you to put the phone down on the coupler so I can send this 3KB program. It may take a while so plan on a long lunch. :biggrin:

 

[Markfw]

Ah yes 8" floppy drives with their induction motors! All anyone needs is a Zilog Z-80 at a blistering 4.77MHz running CP/M. A whopping 64KB of RAM! 64KB!

Hold that call to Bremen, I need you to put the phone down on the coupler so I can send this 3KB program. It may take a while so plan on a long lunch. :biggrin:

How about the 8 inch floppy for a Tektronix 4051, the box has 2 drives, and is about 2 1/2 feet wide, 3 feet deep, and a foot high.

And the 4051, dual 8086 processors, 16k of ram, and a tape drive to load programs !

 

[Ajay]

PDP-8 booting off of paper tape...programming in BASIC using a line printer station as the only input/output device...running batch jobs on and IBM 360 (just for fun, written in COBOL IIRC)...punch cards on a DEC 10. Geez, I suddenly feel real old.

 

[Markfw]

PDP-8 booting off of paper tape...programming in BASIC using a line printer station as the only input/output device...running batch jobs on and IBM 360 (just for fun, written in COBOL IIRC)...punch cards on a DEC 10. Geez, I suddenly feel real old.

How about running Fortron in an IBM 360... I did it in 1983.

 

[Pohemi]

Haha...I was five in 1983, but even I had exposure to the brand spanking new Apple 2e personal computer, and had my very own Texas Instruments beast at home. Had a C64 too...loved the games on it. Had several Atari 2600 decks and probably 8 controllers. Colecovision, Intellivision, etc...
I remember the advent of 256 color graphics, but I was more impressed by later VGA releases.

I didn't build my own system until P2s had been out for a while, but I remember what got me into custom builds and "tweaking of the toys"- socket A + mobile Barton core CPUs. Think that was probably the first time I really got into it and researching it.

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

Love reading this sort of thread...it reminds me how young I am...

 

[MrTransistorm]

Haha...I was five in 1983, but even I had exposure to the brand spanking new Apple 2e personal computer...

Haha! I remember the Apple IIe. I used it in elementary school to draw funny shapes with Logo :biggrin:

On the PC side, my family's first computer was a secondhand Leading Edge Model D. It has an NEC processor (8088 clone), and it ran DOS 3. I don't remember how much RAM it has, but I do know that it has a whopping 20MB HDD. We had two CRT displays for it: 1 CGA (long since dead) and 1 monochrome. There is a switch on the back of the Model D to chose which monitor to use at startup. IIRC there is also a keyboard shortcut to switch monitors while running. I dug this old machine out of the basement a couple of years ago, and would you believe that it fired right up? Power on to DOS prompt in 8 seconds! It's fun digging through the dozens and dozens of silly BASIC programs I wrote back then.

 

[Rubycon]

How about the 8 inch floppy for a Tektronix 4051, the box has 2 drives, and is about 2 1/2 feet wide, 3 feet deep, and a foot high.

And the 4051, dual 8086 processors, 16k of ram, and a tape drive to load programs !

Haha don't even get me started on tape! When I ran out of space (using cassettes) I would tape up the protect holes on pre recorded cassettes and save work to them. Hilarity ensued when someone found one and put it in their deck and instead of hearing Jimi Hendrix they heard ferocious squealing! (and the smell of cooked ferrofluid in tweeters!) I even made a joke about it and said you found a special "easter egg" track that was recorded with Jimi's own "Purple Hayes" modem! :biggrin:

 

[Ajay]

How about running Fortron in an IBM 360... I did it in 1983.

Thanks, I feel better now. I was in HS when a friends dad would sneak us into work on a Sat. so we could 'steal' some time on the 360.

 

[BBMW]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

'79, the High School had one computer, a DEC (anyone remember DEC any more) PDP-8E. To boot this thing up, you had to manually key in (with switches on the front of the rack mounted CPU, for instruction in binary machine code.

My digital watch now probably has more processing power. It probably had 32K of RAM

 

[Axon]

I remember getting online around 1991 - I was like 11...I spoke to a professor in Germany who wanted to practice English. Hah. It was on some kind of IBM PC. Then around 1994 I got deep into AOL...anyone remember mass mails?

 

[IcePickFreak]

My big "wow" moment was in 91 right when Falcon 3.0 came out. My parents bought me a custom built 486 33mhz right around that time. I was (and still am) a sim fanatic and bought Falcon 3.0 when we went to pick up the new computer. That replaced my 8088-2 8mhz and actually had a hdd.

Shortly after, I saved up for a 2400 baud modem for a $110. Of course I would always get yelled at for tying up the phone line with "your stupid computer." Now they call me almost daily with computer questions it seems lol.

After making that big jump I remember daydreaming about the day we would see computers with 200 or 300mhz clock speeds.

 

[Slammy1]

They opened up a server near me that played multiplayer Doom II over a dial up BBS type connection. They were one of the 1st to do that so there were a lot of people on it at any time. I was on my DX2 50MHz with my USR 14.4k modem. It was great, playing guys from Japan and Europe (well, trying but they usually lagged the game out). Usually the smallest level and everyone died quickly and repeatedly. Definitely felt the potential for great things.

 

[Rubycon]

My big "wow" moment was in 91 right when Falcon 3.0 came out. My parents bought me a custom built 486 33mhz right around that time. I was (and still am) a sim fanatic and bought Falcon 3.0 when we went to pick up the new computer. That replaced my 8088-2 8mhz and actually had a hdd.

Shortly after, I saved up for a 2400 baud modem for a $110. Of course I would always get yelled at for tying up the phone line with "your stupid computer." Now they call me almost daily with computer questions it seems lol.

After making that big jump I remember daydreaming about the day we would see computers with 200 or 300mhz clock speeds.

Falcon 3.0 was awesome. I enjoyed getting court martialed for ejecting while still on the runway. :biggrin:

That game also taught a LOT of folks how to organize their low memory. Programs like 386Max (OK), QEMM (Excellent) and MS' Memmaker (ok in a pinch) would try thousands of combinations of getting TSRs loaded into UMB so as much of <640KB was available. It became a contest on its own to see how much free memory was available after booting into MS DOS 6.22. I think my best was 633K. That was with a Sound Blaster Pro and Turtle Beach Maui (MIDI card).

 

[CurseTheSky]

Computer speed doesn't really amaze me. I know that no matter what I buy now, 5 years from now it'll be a dinosaur.

What does amaze me is the aesthetic and ergonomic progress made in the computer world. In the mid 90's, who would have dreamed of a back-lit keyboard, display so slim that you could mount it on a wall like a picture, or computer case with beautiful brushed aluminum and fans that move a great deal of air while being nearly inaudible? Hell, I remember just back in 2004 when I was building a computer, it came with FIVE 80mm fans that sounded like a jet engine. D:

Don't even get me started on beige...