A Look Back to 1993 - the pick of the computer hardware

BabylenTatarsky · Sep 7, 2010, 12:58 PM

1993

Back then, we were happy with our cheap 486SX/25 clone, 512K Trident videocard and tower case in special needs beige with matching keyboard and mouse – a shoe-like device you had to open up and blow the biscuits out of every seventeen minutes.

We could think of no possible reason why we’d need more than 1MB free space on our 40MB hard drive, particularly when blockbusters like Doom still came on floppy disks. Who knew what 3D ‘hardware accelerator’ cards would do for gaming; that CDs – those newcomers to the music scene – would eventually lead to the extinction of floppies; how the Internet would change absolutely everything; and that it would be funny to read about seventeen years down the line?

Here is the pick of the best hardware circa ’93:

GRAPHICS CARD
ORCHID FAHRENHEIT
PRICE £200

3D cards aren’t on the market so no games take advantage of them. Famous names in 2D hardware include S3, Paradise, Hercules, Cirrus Logic and Tseng Labs, the Tseng ET4000 with VESA local bus known for making your system feel not quite as retarded as everything else. Persons lucky enough to own a Diamond Stealth or Orchid Fahrenheit ‘accelerator’ with its 1MB RAM and support for 32,768 colours at 640x480 have friends and neighbours misting up their French windows in the hope of getting a glimpse.

PROCESSOR
INTEL 486DX2/66
PRICE £400

Most PCs come with Intel’s omnipresent 80486 processor or a cheap clone made by Texas Instruments, Cyrix, IBM or AMD. Although there are only a handful of flavours on sale, ranging from the 486SX/25 to the 486DX2/66 (the DX2 variants supplied with a mysterious substance called ‘clock multiplier’), to have any choice at all makes the upgrade from the now obsolete 80386 feel even more indulgent, This year also sees the launch of the Pentium the price of which makes any Pentium-based machine at least £3,000.

SOUND CARD
CREATIVE LABS SOUND BLASTER PRO DELUXE
PRICE £165

Anyone tossing their AdLib audio card for an AdLib Gold gets home to find that AdLib filed for bankruptcy. This leaves products from Creative Labs as the only mainstream choice, the menu option for ‘Sound Blaster’ in id Software’s Doom setup cementing its position. Poseurs buy the Gravis Ultrasound instead, allegedly superior because it uses wavetable synthesis and samples, but to make your games work you must smash it to pieces with a keyboard while shouting.

SCREEN
MITSUBISHI DIAMOND PRO 17
PRICE £1,050

The sight of any monitor larger than fifteen inches invokes spontaneous dry humping, but CRTs such as the NEC MultiSync and Mitsubishi Diamond Pro are the ultimate in gamer cred. Not only do they boast four digit prices, they also make everything else in your bedroom look tiny. Features include an unnerving buzzing noise when you switch on, the sound a familiar prelude to late night gaming sessions. Rated at 70W and with radiator fins stretching back a third of a metre, they also make fine companions in winter.

HDD
QUANTUM PRODRIVE LPS
PRICE £220

Most gamers have an 80MB or 120MB IDE drive, chiefly because high-capacity units don’t leave much change from a half-year of mortgage payments. Utilities such as DoubleSpace and Stacker use on-the-fly compression to help everyone get more out of small drives while simultaneously trashing all your stuff at random moments. Seagate begin offering five-year warranty but disk failure remains part of PC ownership. Micropolis, Conner and Quantum are respected names with significant market share, yet none will see 2010.

How time’s have changed.

Liqourice · Sep 7, 2010, 04:55 PM

In 1993 I was still jumping up and down over the newly purchased Amiga 4000D. Only thing I recognise from your post is that Quantum LPS, I got a SCSI 120MB one for my Amiga 500 and GVP HD8+ controller back in 1992.

CJLMTLCA · Sep 8, 2010, 02:23 PM

I remember some of those and like Liqourice was also on the Amiga.

***craig5320*** · Sep 8, 2010, 02:55 PM

In 1993 I was an Atari ST 1024 / MegaDrive kid

Didn't get my first PC til 1998, AMD K6-2 350MHz, 64MB Ram, 6 Gig Seagate HDD, ATI Xpert @ Work '98 GFX. Before that was Mac Performa 5320, back in 95

Tyrsonswood · Sep 8, 2010, 03:02 PM

I was a tech just before this '90-'92..... We were building 386 DX 40s that were kicking butt on the 486 DX 33 when I got out of it. Still have an old Quantum sitting around here somewhere.......

Judas · Sep 8, 2010, 04:33 PM

i think we hadn't even gotten a super nintendo yet... i was still playing on the NES

it would be another 4 years before i would get to touch a computer at all beyond that of the Tandy 1000 we had at home doing nothing..... a POS Compaq Presario with a 15 inch monitor, intel Pentium 120mhz (actually was a 166 but compaq inforced the 120mhz), 40mb of ram, 1.6gb hardrive space, intergrated 1mb S3 Virge and a 8x CD-ROM drive. Sound was ESS1884 intergrated. Windows 95a. At that time it came with Magic Carpet, a game that i really quite enjoyed and gave me massive headaches oventually. And a machine i played Tomb Raider II on at 320x240 software rendering mode. And then i found doom/Quake.... that's when the ball got rolling.

It would be nearly 3 years later before i would insist on a new machine because the compaq was a hunk of shit. Got an intel Celeron 333mhz with 128mb of ram and Creative Voodoo Banshee 16mb, 6.4gb hardrive from seagate that gave me nothing but problems.. and a MSI Motherboard that i hated with a passion oventually too. I remember getting the voodoo banshee up to about 160mhz on the memory before it got to warm. Top it off, i have the sucker sitting behind me (the creative card)...

I had used it for a year or 2 and then sold it to a friend, which then sold the machine to another user, and it oventually came full circle back to me nearly 10 years later. In my attempt to remove the huge heatsink from the sucker, i broke the chip... i had tried heating it.. freezing it... and finally it busted... Sucks cause i wanted to build a cool retro rig.

IvanV · Sep 8, 2010, 05:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tyrsonswood

... Still have an old Quantum sitting around here somewhere.......

I've got a couple of Quantum Fireballs lying around, one of which is bricked in a very peculiar way.

If it's in a machine as the primary drive, it'll start booting Windows, but it gets stuck half way through, which would imply that, while not everything is well, it's mechanically and electronically sound (no funny noises) and there is data on it.

Yet if it's set as the secondary drive in an otherwise impeccably functioning machine, that machine will no longer boot until the drive is removed. Even the specialized programs such as Paragon Partition Manager or PQ Partition Magic will get stuck detecting drives if I try to use their bootable CD's when that HDD is plugged in and the same goes for Windows installation CD. And finally, if I put it in an external enclosure and try to plug it to a USB port once Windows on the host machine had already loaded, it would detect the drive and report the exact model, but the detection process would never finish.

It died a while ago and hasn't got any data that's relevant any more, but I really wonder what's wrong with it.

Judas · Sep 8, 2010, 05:12 PM

i had a Hitachi hardrive about 4 years ago that would act like that.

then one day it finally started reporting bizarre numbers at bootup or when detected before locking the machines up solid.

It was reporting hundreds of thousands of TB of available space.. even though it was a 20gb hitachi..

I always thought it funny when the sucker would boot.. and it would should the make and model of the hardrive... followed by the hardrive space on it which would wrap around the screen

Matth · Sep 8, 2010, 06:35 PM

The good old days...

Tweaking the memory into page interleave.

Cirrus cards, from ye olde AVGA3 (with hardware cursor, so no cursor repaint over active areas) to the 5428VLB, or the 5446 PCI.

My old kit box also contains a venerable Matrox Millenium 2, actually bought from a computer fair junkbox.

So much choice, and so many dead now, well, S3 graphics powers the VIA chipsets.
Never reckoned much to ATI in the early days.

ATI moved up with Rage -> Radeon
Nvidia moved up with TNT/TNT2 -> Geforce
They both stole a march on names that had far better pedigrees.
Did S3 drop the ball, I guess they did!

Liqourice · Sep 8, 2010, 06:39 PM

Oh, I still have that Quantum LPS 120 in my GVP HD8+ controller and it works just fine! Not that I have it on very often...

ferret2004 · Sep 14, 2010, 06:53 PM

I remember playing Doom 1&2 and Dark Forces on a custom built system with a 486 dx/2 66. I think we had 12mb/ram and I cannot remember much else about it. Prior to that we had a Tandy 1000 RL that replaced the Color Computer 2 that we got in '82 or '83.

Phil in england · Mar 14, 2011, 08:09 PM

Yep - in 1990 I bought an Intel 486 DX33 with 90Mb hdd and some crazy low ram, can't remember. It had a Turbo button to down tune it to 16MHz in case it executed programs too fast lol. I subsequently upgraded it with a soundblaster card, a CD drive and a 1Gb HDD running stacker. Windows 3.11.
It served me well, then when I changed machine (to an absolutely awful Time Computers 500MHz piece of rubbish) I put the 486 in the playroom for my kids to play games on. It's been retired to the attic now for about the last 6 years. I did try to reboot it but the battery on the bios module is shot but it still comes up with all the drive config panel so I guess it would work fine if I reconfigured the drive parameters on the bios. Many many happy memories playing Doom and Duke Nukem on it, around the time the kids were being born. My latest 6 core rocket of course won't run Doom or Duke properly. So much for progress!!

**synthesis204** · Mar 15, 2011, 11:17 PM

lolnecro.

I would also to point out I was born in 1993.

Tyrsonswood · Mar 16, 2011, 01:27 AM

Did you have a system?

**synthesis204** · Mar 16, 2011, 01:47 AM

No. I got my first computer when I was 4, to play Freddie Fish, Pajama Sam, and Doom.

blibbax · Mar 16, 2011, 02:09 AM

I did have a system in 1993, despite being one year old.

My parents bought one in 1991, only to be given newer ones by their employers a couple of years later. So, I had a PC sitting in the corner of my room until I was old enough to use it. I have no idea what the specs were, but I used it to make spreadsheets and play "Zool".

I was mortified when my mum took it to the tip while I was at school in 2005.

Tyrsonswood · Mar 16, 2011, 02:22 AM

I think everything ran on steam when I was a kid.....

Callandor · Mar 16, 2011, 04:32 AM

We had an IBM PC 100 when I was a kid, 100MHz of amazing speed complete with a Sound Blaster 16bit sound card, an 800MB hard drive and 16MB of RAM. Before that I used to play video games on the TV. It came with Windows 3.1.1 but I learnt how to use DOS on it and played games like Keen, Wacky Races, Skunny Karts, Toxic Bunny and Jazz Jack Rabbit to name but a few.

In Windows I had games like Fury 3 (which for its time was really mindblowing, anyone remember Hellbender too?), Gex, Microsoft Golf and the Magic School Bus Explores The Solar System. Good good times we had back then.

**kris23** · Mar 16, 2011, 06:02 AM

i was probably just a few months outside of the hospital in 1993.... lmao

BlueMak · Mar 16, 2011, 07:05 PM

1993, most of it I still had my last in my line of Atari ST computers, an Atari MEGA STE with its, I don't remember the model now, medium/low resolution colour monitor. Unfortunately the ST line was already dead so of course I had to jump ship to a computer with lots of future, which I did in late 1993 IIRC. An Amiga 1200 with its 20MB internal HDD, I don't remember the monitor. Obviously it was not the best move since in a few months Amiga was dead for good.
Which lead me to 1994 when I got my first PC, but that is another year.

ET3D · Mar 18, 2011, 06:35 AM

I still had my Amiga 500 at the time, though it was getting long in the tooth. I don't remember what brand my 100MB SCSI disk was. I bought my first PC at the end of 1994.

iPlayer · Mar 18, 2011, 10:53 AM

I was only a few years old then, and I don't remember the specs on my first PC too well.

80486 DX2 66
4MB ram
Cirrus Logic graphics adapter 256KB
240MB WD hard drive
3 1/2" & 5 1/4" HD floppy drives

To which I added a Sony 2x CD-Rom; SB 16 ASP; 10mbit NIC and 4MB ram later on.
I also had a Mega Drive, that was imported from Japan a couple years earlier.

**temeteus82** · Mar 18, 2011, 11:25 AM

I had Cannon made 8088 in 1988 and in 1994 I got Pentium 66 Mhz with 8MB's of RAM

best part of it was the Gravis Ultrasound that gave nice sounds in Doom 2

BlueMak · Mar 18, 2011, 04:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by temeteus82

I had Cannon made 8088 in 1988 and in 1994 I got Pentium 66 Mhz with 8MB's of RAM

best part of it was the Gravis Ultrasound that gave nice sounds in Doom 2

YOU CAPITALIST PIG!

***craig5320*** · Mar 18, 2011, 04:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tyrsonswood

I think everything ran on steam when I was a kid.....

It still does, just a different kind of Steam

blibbax · Mar 18, 2011, 05:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BlueMak

YOU CAPITALIST PIG!

My least favourite kind of pig

BlueMak · Mar 18, 2011, 08:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by blibbax

My least favourite kind of pig

There is a good chance you don't know what capitalism is then.

check this The Capitalism Site : Laissez-faire Capitalism is the social system based on the principle of inalienable individual rights.

Tyrsonswood · Mar 18, 2011, 08:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by craig5320

It still does, just a different kind of Steam

I knew someone would get confused at that statement, but I didn't think it would be you, Craig.......

**synthesis204** · Mar 19, 2011, 07:33 PM

It's sad I didn't get the steam reference. I thought more along the line of tugboats and the like...

And blibby is a commie.

Tyrsonswood · Mar 19, 2011, 08:33 PM

I was thinking Steam Locomotives and such when I wrote it....... You, the old stuff. Not games. Then I figured all the young guys would pass it of as the game download site and not get it at all.....

Sep 7, 2010, 12:58 PM	#1
BabylenTatarsky Rocks Your Socks Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: St. Helens [UK] Posts: 1,656 Rep Power: 63 System Specs	A Look Back to 1993 - the pick of the computer hardware 1993 Back then, we were happy with our cheap 486SX/25 clone, 512K Trident videocard and tower case in special needs beige with matching keyboard and mouse – a shoe-like device you had to open up and blow the biscuits out of every seventeen minutes. We could think of no possible reason why we’d need more than 1MB free space on our 40MB hard drive, particularly when blockbusters like Doom still came on floppy disks. Who knew what 3D ‘hardware accelerator’ cards would do for gaming; that CDs – those newcomers to the music scene – would eventually lead to the extinction of floppies; how the Internet would change absolutely everything; and that it would be funny to read about seventeen years down the line? Here is the pick of the best hardware circa ’93: GRAPHICS CARD ORCHID FAHRENHEIT PRICE £200 3D cards aren’t on the market so no games take advantage of them. Famous names in 2D hardware include S3, Paradise, Hercules, Cirrus Logic and Tseng Labs, the Tseng ET4000 with VESA local bus known for making your system feel not quite as retarded as everything else. Persons lucky enough to own a Diamond Stealth or Orchid Fahrenheit ‘accelerator’ with its 1MB RAM and support for 32,768 colours at 640x480 have friends and neighbours misting up their French windows in the hope of getting a glimpse. PROCESSOR INTEL 486DX2/66 PRICE £400 Most PCs come with Intel’s omnipresent 80486 processor or a cheap clone made by Texas Instruments, Cyrix, IBM or AMD. Although there are only a handful of flavours on sale, ranging from the 486SX/25 to the 486DX2/66 (the DX2 variants supplied with a mysterious substance called ‘clock multiplier’), to have any choice at all makes the upgrade from the now obsolete 80386 feel even more indulgent, This year also sees the launch of the Pentium the price of which makes any Pentium-based machine at least £3,000. SOUND CARD CREATIVE LABS SOUND BLASTER PRO DELUXE PRICE £165 Anyone tossing their AdLib audio card for an AdLib Gold gets home to find that AdLib filed for bankruptcy. This leaves products from Creative Labs as the only mainstream choice, the menu option for ‘Sound Blaster’ in id Software’s Doom setup cementing its position. Poseurs buy the Gravis Ultrasound instead, allegedly superior because it uses wavetable synthesis and samples, but to make your games work you must smash it to pieces with a keyboard while shouting. SCREEN MITSUBISHI DIAMOND PRO 17 PRICE £1,050 The sight of any monitor larger than fifteen inches invokes spontaneous dry humping, but CRTs such as the NEC MultiSync and Mitsubishi Diamond Pro are the ultimate in gamer cred. Not only do they boast four digit prices, they also make everything else in your bedroom look tiny. Features include an unnerving buzzing noise when you switch on, the sound a familiar prelude to late night gaming sessions. Rated at 70W and with radiator fins stretching back a third of a metre, they also make fine companions in winter. HDD QUANTUM PRODRIVE LPS PRICE £220 Most gamers have an 80MB or 120MB IDE drive, chiefly because high-capacity units don’t leave much change from a half-year of mortgage payments. Utilities such as DoubleSpace and Stacker use on-the-fly compression to help everyone get more out of small drives while simultaneously trashing all your stuff at random moments. Seagate begin offering five-year warranty but disk failure remains part of PC ownership. Micropolis, Conner and Quantum are respected names with significant market share, yet none will see 2010. How time’s have changed. __________________

Sep 7, 2010, 04:55 PM	#2
Liqourice HardwareHeaven Senior Member Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: Stockholm Posts: 1,702 Rep Power: 98 System Specs	Re: A Look Back to 1993 - the pick of the computer hardware In 1993 I was still jumping up and down over the newly purchased Amiga 4000D. Only thing I recognise from your post is that Quantum LPS, I got a SCSI 120MB one for my Amiga 500 and GVP HD8+ controller back in 1992.

Sep 8, 2010, 02:23 PM	#3
CJLMTLCA 14X Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Montreal, Canada Posts: 633 Rep Power: 63 System Specs	Re: A Look Back to 1993 - the pick of the computer hardware I remember some of those and like Liqourice was also on the Amiga. __________________

Sep 8, 2010, 02:55 PM	#4
*craig5320* HH Administrator Join Date: May 2002 Location: Manchester, UK Posts: 8,568 Rep Power: 445 System Specs	Re: A Look Back to 1993 - the pick of the computer hardware In 1993 I was an Atari ST 1024 / MegaDrive kid Didn't get my first PC til 1998, AMD K6-2 350MHz, 64MB Ram, 6 Gig Seagate HDD, ATI Xpert @ Work '98 GFX. Before that was Mac Performa 5320, back in 95 __________________ HardwareHeaven on Facebook

Sep 8, 2010, 06:35 PM	#9
Matth Flash Banner Hater Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: UK Posts: 3,426 Rep Power: 93 System Specs	Re: A Look Back to 1993 - the pick of the computer hardware The good old days... Tweaking the memory into page interleave. Cirrus cards, from ye olde AVGA3 (with hardware cursor, so no cursor repaint over active areas) to the 5428VLB, or the 5446 PCI. My old kit box also contains a venerable Matrox Millenium 2, actually bought from a computer fair junkbox. So much choice, and so many dead now, well, S3 graphics powers the VIA chipsets. Never reckoned much to ATI in the early days. ATI moved up with Rage -> Radeon Nvidia moved up with TNT/TNT2 -> Geforce They both stole a march on names that had far better pedigrees. Did S3 drop the ball, I guess they did! __________________ Mary had a little lamb, Her father shot it dead Now Mary takes her lamb to school, Between two crusts of bread

Sep 8, 2010, 06:39 PM	#10
Liqourice HardwareHeaven Senior Member Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: Stockholm Posts: 1,702 Rep Power: 98 System Specs	Re: A Look Back to 1993 - the pick of the computer hardware Oh, I still have that Quantum LPS 120 in my GVP HD8+ controller and it works just fine! Not that I have it on very often...

Sep 14, 2010, 06:53 PM	#11
ferret2004 HardwareHeaven Addict Join Date: Nov 2004 Location: Ohio, USA Posts: 285 Rep Power: 0	Re: A Look Back to 1993 - the pick of the computer hardware I remember playing Doom 1&2 and Dark Forces on a custom built system with a 486 dx/2 66. I think we had 12mb/ram and I cannot remember much else about it. Prior to that we had a Tandy 1000 RL that replaced the Color Computer 2 that we got in '82 or '83.

Mar 14, 2011, 08:09 PM	#12
Phil in england HardwareHeaven Newbie Join Date: Mar 2011 Posts: 1 Rep Power: 0	Re: A Look Back to 1993 - the pick of the computer hardware Yep - in 1990 I bought an Intel 486 DX33 with 90Mb hdd and some crazy low ram, can't remember. It had a Turbo button to down tune it to 16MHz in case it executed programs too fast lol. I subsequently upgraded it with a soundblaster card, a CD drive and a 1Gb HDD running stacker. Windows 3.11. It served me well, then when I changed machine (to an absolutely awful Time Computers 500MHz piece of rubbish) I put the 486 in the playroom for my kids to play games on. It's been retired to the attic now for about the last 6 years. I did try to reboot it but the battery on the bios module is shot but it still comes up with all the drive config panel so I guess it would work fine if I reconfigured the drive parameters on the bios. Many many happy memories playing Doom and Duke Nukem on it, around the time the kids were being born. My latest 6 core rocket of course won't run Doom or Duke properly. So much for progress!!

Mar 15, 2011, 11:17 PM	#13
synthesis204 Dragonborn Join Date: Sep 2010 Location: St. Louis, MO Posts: 1,175 Rep Power: 97 System Specs	Re: A Look Back to 1993 - the pick of the computer hardware lolnecro. I would also to point out I was born in 1993. __________________ Donate the spare computing power of your PC to help to cure alzheimers, ALS, huntington's, parkinson's disease and cancer: Fold for HH!

Mar 16, 2011, 01:47 AM	#15
synthesis204 Dragonborn Join Date: Sep 2010 Location: St. Louis, MO Posts: 1,175 Rep Power: 97 System Specs	Re: A Look Back to 1993 - the pick of the computer hardware No. I got my first computer when I was 4, to play Freddie Fish, Pajama Sam, and Doom. __________________ Donate the spare computing power of your PC to help to cure alzheimers, ALS, huntington's, parkinson's disease and cancer: Fold for HH!

Mar 16, 2011, 02:09 AM	#16
blibbax What does this do? Join Date: Sep 2008 Location: Oxford, UK Posts: 4,230 Rep Power: 254 System Specs	Re: A Look Back to 1993 - the pick of the computer hardware I did have a system in 1993, despite being one year old. My parents bought one in 1991, only to be given newer ones by their employers a couple of years later. So, I had a PC sitting in the corner of my room until I was old enough to use it. I have no idea what the specs were, but I used it to make spreadsheets and play "Zool". I was mortified when my mum took it to the tip while I was at school in 2005. __________________ Donate the spare computing power of your PC to help to cure Alzheimer's, ALS, Huntington's, Parkinson's disease and cancer: Fold for HH!

Mar 16, 2011, 04:32 AM	#18
Callandor Forged on Dragonmount Join Date: Oct 2004 Location: Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada Posts: 7,237 Rep Power: 304 System Specs	Re: A Look Back to 1993 - the pick of the computer hardware We had an IBM PC 100 when I was a kid, 100MHz of amazing speed complete with a Sound Blaster 16bit sound card, an 800MB hard drive and 16MB of RAM. Before that I used to play video games on the TV. It came with Windows 3.1.1 but I learnt how to use DOS on it and played games like Keen, Wacky Races, Skunny Karts, Toxic Bunny and Jazz Jack Rabbit to name but a few. In Windows I had games like Fury 3 (which for its time was really mindblowing, anyone remember Hellbender too?), Gex, Microsoft Golf and the Magic School Bus Explores The Solar System. Good good times we had back then. __________________

Mar 16, 2011, 06:02 AM	#19
kris23 Going Insane..... Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Los Angeles Posts: 6,018 Rep Power: 131 System Specs	Re: A Look Back to 1993 - the pick of the computer hardware i was probably just a few months outside of the hospital in 1993.... lmao __________________ Hardwareheaven Super-Moderator Building a new computer system and not sure where to start? Click Here! last updated (5/18/11) Rosewill FUTURE case replaces CM 690 II with its greater interior length. Building a PC: Step by Step Guide Written by Kristopher Pedemonte and Nathan Marks-Forder Edited by Allan Campbell Questions or Comments? feel free to post them in the forums!

Mar 16, 2011, 07:05 PM	#20
BlueMak HH's Asteroids' Dominator Join Date: Nov 2004 Location: Hellas->Macedonia->Thessaloniki Posts: 13,465 Rep Power: 349 System Specs	Re: A Look Back to 1993 - the pick of the computer hardware 1993, most of it I still had my last in my line of Atari ST computers, an Atari MEGA STE with its, I don't remember the model now, medium/low resolution colour monitor. Unfortunately the ST line was already dead so of course I had to jump ship to a computer with lots of future, which I did in late 1993 IIRC. An Amiga 1200 with its 20MB internal HDD, I don't remember the monitor. Obviously it was not the best move since in a few months Amiga was dead for good. Which lead me to 1994 when I got my first PC, but that is another year. __________________ The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others(Bertrand Russell)"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil,You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." - Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis This is slavery, not to speak one's thought. [Euripides-The Phoenician Women (c.411-409 B.C.)] http://www.macedonia.info/FALLACIESANDFACTS.htm *Sic semper tyrannis.*

Mar 18, 2011, 06:35 AM	#21
ET3D Hopeless Dreamer Join Date: Aug 2003 Location: Dreamland, near the pool of infinite graphics cards Posts: 3,057 Rep Power: 105 System Specs	Re: A Look Back to 1993 - the pick of the computer hardware I still had my Amiga 500 at the time, though it was getting long in the tooth. I don't remember what brand my 100MB SCSI disk was. I bought my first PC at the end of 1994. __________________ ET's Place ET's Place competition list

Mar 18, 2011, 10:53 AM	#22
iPlayer Filled with noobsauce Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: between the buns Posts: 1,450 Rep Power: 59	Re: A Look Back to 1993 - the pick of the computer hardware I was only a few years old then, and I don't remember the specs on my first PC too well. 80486 DX2 66 4MB ram Cirrus Logic graphics adapter 256KB 240MB WD hard drive 3 1/2" & 5 1/4" HD floppy drives To which I added a Sony 2x CD-Rom; SB 16 ASP; 10mbit NIC and 4MB ram later on. I also had a Mega Drive, that was imported from Japan a couple years earlier. __________________ Last edited by iPlayer; Mar 18, 2011 at 11:09 AM. Reason: typo

Mar 19, 2011, 07:33 PM	#29
synthesis204 Dragonborn Join Date: Sep 2010 Location: St. Louis, MO Posts: 1,175 Rep Power: 97 System Specs	Re: A Look Back to 1993 - the pick of the computer hardware It's sad I didn't get the steam reference. I thought more along the line of tugboats and the like... And blibby is a commie. __________________ Donate the spare computing power of your PC to help to cure alzheimers, ALS, huntington's, parkinson's disease and cancer: Fold for HH!