HN Reader

The 286/12, with its 1MB memory, 60MB RLL Hard drive, and 5.25" floppy... oh and the VGA card and 14" 256 color VGA monitor, and the Panasonic KXP-1180i. It was October 1988. My Dad's boss financed it through the company, and brought it over and set it up for us. And offered 13 year old me the opportunity to call him any time I needed help. And that I did. Between the computer purchase, the endless phone calls, and then a year later ending up on Prodigy's excellent discussion groups, I learned huge amounts.

It wasn't until much later in life that I properly appreciated how much of a sacrifice it was for my dad- a man who could barely read, worked 12-14 hour days, and came home covered in mud and grease regularly- to buy a $3300 computer in 1988. That's about $8000 in today's money.

I don't know if I ever got the chance to thank him properly for it. He died when I was in my mid 20's, self absorbed and busy with my new family.

Thanks, Dad.

Love the image of the monitor showing Battle Chess! As a side note to all like-minded people that love old DOS games, check out the library of DOS games on archive.org: https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos_games

Most of the PCs I had access to growing up sucked in some way, so I have no nostalgia to recreate any of them as entire systems.

In 2013[0], I built a PC with the loose goal of being the best the 20th century had to offer, at least as far as core components were concerned. (I considered 2000 as part of the 20th century for the purposes of this build.) I ended up with a Pentium 3 600 MHz, 256 MB RAM, Geforce 2 Ultra, 52x CDROM drive, and crappy "multimedia" speakers. Somehow, I still had the same Yamaha-based soundcard I grew up with, so that's the only original part of this nostalgic ship of thesis. I threw in a 40GB hard drive, and later upgraded to 250 GB. The 17" CRT, keyboard, and ball mouse are early-mid 2000s and Dell-branded (the PC case is beige and unbranded). The only thing that would complete the build would be a modem, but no one liked dial-up, ever, so I have a fast ethernet card instead. The clock noticeably drifts out of sync by a few minutes every month, so I have an NTP client.

I installed Windows 98 on it, and promptly started playing games I loved growing up, and later, others: Starcraft, SimCity 2000, Road Rash, Chips Challenge, Fallout, and Diablo. It barely runs the original Warcraft 3 (but Frozen Throne refuses to install).

[0] https://theandrewbailey.com/article/120/Project-Twentieth-Ce...

My first x86 was acquired in 1997: a 200MHz pentium MMX with 32 MB of RAM, a 2.0 GB harddisk, a 2 MB S3 ViRGE as video card, Aztech Labs AZT-R 2316 sound card, a 33.600 bps winmodem and 28X (I think) CD-ROM. I soon wanted to install Linux on it. It ran minilinux, a small distro that could be launched directly from DOS without partitioning, relatively well. I also downloaded Debian and prepared the 10 floppies to install it but never got ahead because it didn't support my keyboard layout (ABNT2) out of the box. I eventually installed Conectiva Linux 3.0 (marumbi), a RedHat based distro, on it. It worked somewhat beautifully but had no support for the modem and soundcard.

As my relatives and siblings updated their computers, I inherited their spare parts. My machine got some very interesting upgrades. It got 2 floppy drives (very rare at the time), 2 harddisks, a cd-recorder unit, RAM was upgraded to 64 MB and the modem was replaced by a ne2k compatible network card. I also had a Linux-supported Canon BJC 4200 and a SANE-supported TCE table scanner. Still, I couldn't get the SoundBlaster that my brother had and, sadly, my machine continued without sound support on Linux.

At around 2006 I replaced it with a new self built computer which had better compatibility with Linux than with windows-xp and then this new computer became my first dedicated Linux machine. I found out that Linux eventually got support for AZT-R 2316 at around 2007, but the last time I tried my old computer, it displayed "parity error" probably from oxidation in the memory connectors. I then just gave up on it.

Later on I thought about if it would be possible to install a graphics card with OpenGL support and USB port on one of the remaining PCI ports. I certainly wouldn't be able to install a modern Linux distro on it, but certainly it would work with one of those specially crafted for old computers like TinyCore. With recent kernel changes, swapping maybe smart enough to be usable on SSD with SATA to IDE adapters even in that computer. Now, that would be a dream machine.

The part about buying a misleading CPU really hit home with me. Man all those small retailers in the 90s were living the dream with their unaware customers.

My parents bought an AMD 486 100mhz at the end of 1995, it was still a viable low end machine for that time but they paid as if it was a Pentuim. Had to somehow make it work up until 2001 with that machine. Don't know if I had a career in tech if I wasn't forced to tinker with it.

The very moment I saw the letters ‘MMX’, a long forgotten part of my brain woke up and said, “I know what that smells like!”

Which is bizarre. But to me it is (apparently) the small of new electronics, plus perhaps the ‘hot dusty things’ smell. It also comes with the memory of playing Pod (a racing game), by Ubisoft (I think). Good teenage memories!

I did that a few years ago, with the 1990 computer that I lusted over as a teenager: the IBM 8595 AKD (European reference - it is 85950KD in North America)... 486 DX, XGA display, 320 MB SCSI, 64 MB RAM... At that time my computer was a 1988 Olivetti PC-1 (512 KB 8 MHz Nec V40 with CGA and a floppy drive)...

I was awed by the beast... Everything about it screamed over-engineering - even the case was incomprehensibly robust and the power switch had a satisfyingly loud motion... I could even touch its legendary tangential fan... Touching the 20 years-old dream was an emotional moment - I'm glad I did it... The ultimate Windows 3.0 host !

But it had to go after a little while: my two-room apartment was too small for so much awesomeness, so it went to another fan.

My entry was the mentioned 486DX2-66Mhz. Double speed CD-Rom and Sound Blaster. Norton Commander was great, Doom and Pirates Gold where my games of choice.

Also started programming on this one with QBasic and then moved to Turbo Pascal 7 (because I needed a .exe file to be called from autoexec as a password protection vs. my sister which I couldn't do with QBasic :)

Didn't take me long to destroy everything by trying to install some old SUSE-Linux from a floppy disk :D

Great article. The mention of Cyrix brought back a rush of nostalgia - one of the earlier PCs I built used a Cyrix 686 166mhz processor.

From the article:

> 8BitDo makes a fantastic modern keyboard inspired by the M looks and feel.

Hard disagree. I found most of their keyboard replicas to be rather cheap feeling. However, their controllers such as the Arcade Stick and Pro 2 are excellent.

I think the closest approximation you can get to an old school model M keyboard with buckler springs is probably from Unicomp. If you don't care about that kind of authenticity I would just stick with something like a Keychron mechanical keyboard and call it a day.

https://www.pckeyboard.com/page/product/NEW_M

PS/1 seems like an odd choice since it was intended for the home and small business market. It was IBM's answer to beige box clones dominating everyone who wasn't an institutional buyer and paying for the PS/2 premium.

My teenage dream machine was a PDP-8 (the original) and a Teletype ASR-33. Fortunately, I never got it.

When I had a Timex Sinclair 1000, I wanted a VIC-20.

When I had a Radio Shack MC-10, I wanted a Color Computer 2.

When I had a Commodore 64, I wanted a Commodore 128.

When I had an Atari 130XE, I wanted an Atari ST.

When I had an Atari ST, I wanted an Atari Mega STE.

When I had an Atari Mega STE, I wanted a 486.

I now have all of these!

>IBM PS/1 is that they were upgradable. Contrary to PC clones where everything was often soldered, these came with an Intel Overdrive socket to upgrade the CPU, and extra slots to increase the L1 cache, RAM, and VRAM.

Plenty PS/1 came with everything soldered on and missing pinouts for CPU socket/ram/cache, LPX form factor makes you married to the case. Mom and pop build PCs were kings of expandability, everything standard off the shelf, could continuously upgrade step by step component after component all the way to ~2000.

PS/1 was a funny series of IBM computers. The idea was to make something low end and cheap, that necessitated using common third party components resulting in more standard and compatible PC than stupid MCA/ESDI PS/2 line. Epictronics loves PS/2 line and has plenty of repair videos, its a never ending stream of WTF where they thinking combined with oh well that part is unobtanium now, IBM IBMing.

>"Hanging note bug"[9]. I had to go to the next level and get a MIDI card.

SB16 firmware was decompiled and bug patched out, fix requires replacing microcontroller with $3 Atmel. All in all SB16 was a rushed (early reviews complained about glitchy sound, not working ASP) poor product. I associate it with hissy sound and lack of SB Pro Stereo mode support.

You never forget your first teenage dream PC. For me, it would be a 8800 GTX SLI build with a QX6850. And now I've revealed how old I am :^)

Thanks for sharing. I love the design/theme of the site. Pure bliss.

In Part 2 the photo immediately after “It seems IBM integrated it to the motherboard” completely fooled my brain into believing that I’m looking at the side wall of a garage. The garage door to the left. The opener equipment top-right.

And I’m just immediately fixated on this whole vibe of a life-sized tinkering workspace that’s the inside of a PC case.

Must have been an amazing journey, thanks for the great writeup! I also have a DELL 2007FP, now I'm thinking about getting an AMIGA 1200 again (which I coded on in assembly), and a 1997 Pentium as well :)

I can't say a PS/1 would have been my first choice for a 486 platform; I'd imagine there are faster motherboards out there and a desktop (i.e. ASUS w/ SiS chipsets). That said, I had a 486/66, so... (some Dell).

And it looks like the PS/1 is missing VLB, but of course the video card is integrated in this model so that makes sense.

I would have probably went with a Cirrus Logic VLB video card and a Sound Blaster AWE64.

But that's my childhood machine, not the author's :-)

Could be a fun exercise:

- Commodore 128 with dual floppy drive vs my tape-only C64 - Maxed out Amiga 1000 with a bunch of sampler and MIDI extensions vs my A500 + 512kb - B/W PowerMac G3 fully expanded just because - Dual Celly 300A @ 450 with Dual Voodoo II vs my 450 with single Voodoo II

Nothing after that had this "I really want this, but I can't get it" thing. I just bought what I wanted.

Maybe not quite related, but I remember as a teenager dreaming about building the ultimate modern gaming PC, because the PC I had kind of sucked. But now that I'm an adult and can more-than afford it, I simply don't want to spend the money. I mean, I still would love to have my dream PC, it's just not worth the value in my mind.

More than once I’ve had a TI-99/4a and fully loaded peripheral expansion box and an Atari 800XL on my eBay watch list. I’ve come so close to pulling the trigger but I know it would give me a weekend of fun and that would be about it. Back to eBay it would go for the next impulsive dinosaur.

Reminds me a lot of the IBM 486 we had in school, it was the first Windows PC I had ever seen, most everything else was either an Apple II or an IBM running PC DOS.

It had a CD-ROM, speakers and sound and color and everything. I think it was $10,000, or that's what the computer teacher said.

Reminds me of my first computer... a 386 20Mhz black and white laptop. Ran DOS by default, but you could jump into Win 3.11 with the lovely "win" command. laugh I remembering so wanting a color monitor so I could play games...

You can feel how much this machine meant to him back then, and how satisfying it must've been to finally track one down and bring it back to life

I can’t help but notice the ship date on both the keyboard and the main unit. It looks like you had already bought the keyboard before the pc itself arrived.

That looks actually nice. Interesting screen also. Seems rather practical, with all those inputs and optional scaler.

RadioShack catalog, lots of suped-up “TRash 80s” and Realistic audio equipment. Super tweeters and Psycho Lite for the win!

I love this. What a trip down memory lane.

Thanks for sharing. Its a great writeup

My teen dream machine was a Pentium 3 with a Voodoo 3. Luckily, this is a machine I now own.

Jealaous of that video game library. Fabien has good taste indeed.