Nostalgia: What was the first PC you played games on?

Jaco Smit

Jaco Smit

New member
Hallo folks,

So, a nostalgic turn. What was the first PC you gamed on or your first gaming PC.

In my case, it was a 386DX in a family friend's home. We gamed DuneII and SimCity on that PC for hours!

Our first home PC was a 486SX with a DX conversion/upgrade. A wow 96Mb of RAM and 260Mb HDD. DOS 6.22 was on 3 disks and Windows 3.1 on a further 6 (formatted to 1.8Mb).

My own first PC was a gift. Pentium MMX 166MHz, 128Mb RAM and 1Gb HDD, if memory serves. I bought a CD-Writer from Incredible Connection, R1800. I had to budget it over 6 months.

Your turn...
 
The first PC i played a game on was at School. I can't remember the setup but they had monochrome screens and had Logo with some word games loaded.

My first PC was a XT running at 10Mhz (turbo) with an EGA screen, 640kb ram, 360kb fdd and a massive 20mb hdd. The whole setup cost me R700 at the time.
 
This...
ibmpcat.jpg

And it ran Space Quest, Kings Quest, Prince of Persia and Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego just fine.
 
I only came into an XT after I started working and a client threw theirs out. I played a bit with it and disassembled the poor thing.
 
They were okay'ish machines. It quickly ran into mem issues which required you load only the most essential drivers on startup. 1kb under requirements and a game wouldn't even try to execute. Had DR Dos 6.0 running on it.
 
Jaco Smit said:
Hallo folks,

So, a nostalgic turn. What was the first PC you gamed on or your first gaming PC.

In my case, it was a 386DX in a family friend's home. We gamed DuneII and SimCity on that PC for hours!

Our first home PC was a 486SX with a DX conversion/upgrade. A wow 96Mb of RAM and 260Mb HDD. DOS 6.22 was on 3 disks and Windows 3.1 on a further 6 (formatted to 1.8Mb).

My own first PC was a gift. Pentium MMX 166MHz, 128Mb RAM and 1Gb HDD, if memory serves. I bought a CD-Writer from Incredible Connection, R1800. I had to budget it over 6 months.

Your turn...
Click to expand...

Yo man that was a truckload of EDO modules you had to get to 96MB on an old 486. I thought I was the boss with my 16MB. Sure you got that detail right?
 
kirplunk said:
Yo man that was a truckload of EDO modules you had to get to 96MB on an old 486. I thought I was the boss with my 16MB. Sure you got that detail right?
Click to expand...

Yup, my dad bought it to run his Quatro Pro Spreadsheets. He had a similar system in his office. Carried the files around on 1.44Mb stiffies. Think the PC has 8 filled slots of EDO RAM.
 
Speaking about 1.44Mb stiffies (like us SA okes called it, or floppies, as the Yanks call it). Remember going to school with a few disks to give to mates to copy games?
 
First PC I played on was my dad's Old Faithful. It was an 086 with a Hercules monochorme monitor. I have no idea what the specs were. I played Monkey Island, Test Drive, Police Quest, Space Quest, King's Quest and Leisure Suite Larry on it.

My dad also had a ZX spectrum before the 086, but I never really played on it. Mostly just sat with him when he did.
 
PsychoFish said:
Or the good old "SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1"
Click to expand...

Hey, forgot about the SoundBlaster!!! Nice one! Ever had to troubleshoot one before the internet became popular? You had to check jumpers, boot, change config files, reboot and test, keeping a note with settings tried. And quite possibly do this a few times until restoring the jumpers and config.sys and the sound magically works...
 
I had a ZX Spectrum in the mid '80s and then in '89 I purchased my first PC.

She was a beast with 4MHz processor that had a turbo button that boosted it to 10MHz! I had a green monochrome monitor and a colour emulation card that gave me 16 shades of grey (well green in my case). It came with the standard fdd and a whopping 20meg HDD!

Many an hour was wasted back in the day gaming instead of studying ...
 
PsychoFish said:
Well...your config.sys file
Click to expand...

You could also customize your config.sys to load drivers when needed.
Code: 
[MENU]
MENUITEM DEFAULT, Default Startup
MENUITEM CD_ROM, Load CD-ROM Driver

[DEFAULT]
device=c:\dos\himem.sys
device=c:\dos\emm386.exe auto
dos=high,umb 

[CD_ROM]
device=c:\dos\himem.sys
device=c:\dos\emm386.exe auto
dos=high,umb 
device=c:\drivers\cdromdrv.sys /d:mscd000

Something like that and then add mscdex to autoexec
 
Reavs said:
You could also customize your config.sys to load drivers when needed.
Code: 
[MENU]
MENUITEM DEFAULT, Default Startup
MENUITEM CD_ROM, Load CD-ROM Driver
MENUDEFAULT DEFAULT, 10

[DEFAULT]
device=c:\dos\himem.sys
device=c:\dos\emm386.exe auto
dos=high,umb 

[CD_ROM]
device=c:\dos\himem.sys
device=c:\dos\emm386.exe auto
dos=high,umb 
device=c:\drivers\cdromdrv.sys /d:mscd000

Something like that and then add mscdex to autoexec
Click to expand...

There, I fixed it so that you can walk away and make a cup of coffee without having to press enter to select a menu item.
 
386 sx 33
4mb ram
2x 40mb MFM harddrives (ide drives was a luxury)
12 orange monochrome display ( upgraded to 16 color EGA afterwards)
ms dos 6.0 & windows 3.1


Starfield simulation was the most amazing screensaver ever

and neko , lander, jezzball block breaker where the games of choice

there was also dos games that were always a mission to get running

golden axe, some bike game, stunts

oh and qbasic which i never new what to do with
 
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