Well. . . the first computer that was entirely mine and not a family computer was probably a 2001 emachines I inherited, but that's not very interesting.
The first computer we had in our house was an old green screen atari piece of crap. It had an external 5" floppy drive. We had some wheel of fortune type game for it, and a printer that could print TEXT. The computer was also mustard yellow.
Next we had an atari st, which outside of space invaders on my dad's 2600, was the first thing I ever played games on. My uncle would bring over disks of cracked games. The first game I remember playing on it was Dynamite Dux. I also had Temple of Doom and I remember drawing an apple in paintworks.
The first PC with windows I got to use a lot was at my Dad's, it was 1995 or 96 and it had windows 95 and THE INTERNET. It also came with a crapload of software, including lode runner: the legend returns which came with a level editor and was my first foray into "game making".
Finally in 97 when I was 12 I got a PC at home, I don't remember if it was windows 95 or 98. That was the PC I first used any click product on. But that wasn't until 2 years after we got it. Before that, I used to make games with Powerpoint. Yes powerpoint. I'd have slides linking to different slides and basically designed mazes that you had to navigate around. I also used the timer that would automatically go to next slide to create crappy challenges. Like a slide would appear with an enemy on it and you'd have to click on him to be linked to the win slide where he gets shot, otherwise the 1 second timer would link you to a lose slide. I was actually getting quite inventive and creating adventure style games where you had to solve puzzles and stuff, but then I discovered Click and Create.
My next PC will probably be a Dell Studio XPS 8000 with 8 gigs of ram and a 2.8ghz quad core. I really wish I still had my first PC so I could compare the specs.
Actually does anyone know a good resource for old computer info? The one I had in 1997-2000 was a compaq and I'm hoping to figure out what model it was and what the specs were.
My first computer was a 386 with 8MB or RAM, can't remember the size of the Hard Disk.
I remember at first it had kind of a menu in DOS that you'd choose a number from a list of games in order to play them.
Later the computer evolved into a 486 and then I used Norton Commander like a true hacker.
Oh wow, Norton Commander! That's a name I haven't heard in a looong time .
Our Pentium 1 frequently only had DOS on it. We had Win3.1 but I only used it for games, so no real need for a full OS.
Infaaaact *checks* yup! still got my Windows 3.11 install disks! Along with Doom 1 and 2.
I don't know what I would consider my first computer, since I didn't use the first one my family owned. I can remember when I was naught but a wee lad, we had some sort of ancient computer that only ran DOS. My dad wrote sermons on it. I would play a snake game occasionally, but Sesame Street was more interesting at the time. Then we had an HP Pavilion 4400 366Mhz machine for the longest time running 98. (don't remember if it was SE) I never used it, because we had no internet and I had no clue what a video game was. Eventually a few years later, I started to use it more (I remember reformatting the hard drive several times in a short span, just to have a fresh windows and learn how it went. I'm a windows 98 installing expert. ) and we had dialup of some sort. I still only used it for things like looking up LEGO toys and stuff.
Then I believe was when my dad splurged and bought me a used thinkpad for my birthday because I was "into computers" and had wanted a laptop for a long time. I loved me ol' 600E. I still keep it running just for old time's sake. Probably opened the darn thing 50 times. Around then I used the computers in the church office a lot, and things just moved on from there, trading up from a 366Mhz machine to a 366Mhz WITH MORE RAM! machine, ANOTHER 366Mhz machine, and then most recently a 1300Mhz. I always had a few of other computers to mess with and take parts from, but recently I threw them all away in disgust and I only have my new thinkpad and the old Pavilion. (And my old thinkpad.) I would probably consider that thinkpad to be my first computer even though I used the pavilion a lot, because I did everything on that old piece of crap. I definitely got my money's worth!