Monday Musings: IBM PC Turns 25

[Jetherik]

This month is considered the anniversary where the modern IBM PC turns 25 (http://cooltech.iafrica.com/technews/924287.htm). Where MS-DOS and IBM teamed together. This is when computers went from the early geeks to mainstream homes.

We all have stories of the early PCs. My dad in 1977 bought a TRS-80 (http://www.trs-80.com/trs80-tl.htm). One of my best memories of the early computers was when I had gotten in trouble on the school bus. I had to write "I will not misbehave on the bus and I will listen to the bus driver," five hundred times. I told the bus driver that I was learning to type and asked if I could type it. He thought that was a great idea. We had a TRS 80 computer with a daisy-wheel printer (for those who do not know what a daisy-wheel printer - the print-out looks like a typed page). When my dad got home, I asked him how to set up a loop, typed in my sentence once, and printed out my five hundred sentences. I can't tell you how much time the computer saved me when I was ten and all the "I will not do..."

My first game was Temple of Ashpi on tape. I never did finish it. Some years later, I beleive my second was Need for Speed. Games for the PC came few and far between back then. Lucky for me, we had the original Atari with Pong. Now I hate to think how much money I have spent on PC games.

What was your first PC or first memories with it? What was your first PC game?

Monday Musings is a new feature to EA that will follow along the lines of Evil's Pure Evil - based on news stories of the time and whatever else comes along. In otherwords, anything goes.

[markster3000]

Probably King's Quest IV was the first game I remember watching my older sister play.

Also, one of the first games that I actually played was Ernie's Big Splash (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernie's_Big_Splash).
I know that I was playing SimCity pretty young too. I never understood why my endless swaths of tract housing never got full. (Come on! There's perfectly good commerical across town!)

[Camel]

Nice new feature Jetherik! I remember when I was in 2nd grade, my mom put a note in my lunch that told me we were getting a PC that day. I was pretty damn excited, since I always liked Fridays at my school, because Friday = Computer Day and I got to play Math Race, Lemonade Stand, Oregon Trail, and of course, my all time favorite, WORD MUNCHERS! We had some games on that computer, but it wasn't till way later that I played the two games that really got me into PC gaming...Wing Commander and Monkey Island! Since then I have always loved gaming on the PC.

[Knite]

My first "pc" so to speak was actually an Atari 800 (although might have been an 800XL). I remember my father bringing it home (I was like 5 or 6 years old at the time), and the flashing colors facinated me. I also somehow vaguely remember my father putting the reciever of the phone in a cradle, and getting me the Star Wars arcade game (the vector graphic one =P) . Guess my dad was a pirate. Talk about young influence. ;-) I also vaguely remember some space game called "Search for the Unspeakable Thing" or something like that. All I really remember about it is a big blue circle which was an alien or something. I believe that and Jumpman I played on it.

First computer I ever owned was a TI99/4a with the SOLID STATE SPEECH SYNTHESIZER!!!! *gasp*
Was a lot of fun to mess around with.

Then I finally got a real PC. A 286/12 with a whopping 16 Megs of RAM (2-4x more than any of my friends!). I think the hard drive was a 12 Meg hard drive, at at one point, only had DOS and Wing Commander installed. That machine ruled. =-)

[Xenkylm]

My brother and I were spoiled at first, cuz our dad wrote textbooks and could justify owning a computer long before they were completely mainstream (oh man, black and green screens!), but got very not-spoiled as soon as our dad realized that he only needed a word processor to write things. The last computer he bought was a 386, which he used until the late 90s. Then he got a hand-me-down pentium 60. Then he got my pentium II 266, which lasted until this year, when we all finally broke down and bought him a real computer.

Now he types MUCH faster! ;)

[Xenkylm]

by the way, I've yet to play a game as addicting as scorched earth.

[destoo]

First pc game I remember is some pinball game. I was really amazed at the possibility of designing your own tables and save and replay them.

First computer owned was the TRS-80 Color Computer. I still play Dungeons of Daggorath today.

[atariv8]

I got my first "computer" around 1985. It was a Commodore 64+ and it didn't play anything that the regular Commodore 64 did. So my parents returned it and got a regular C64. I had the color okidata printer, koala pad, and a wireless joystick. The wireless joystick would interfere with the keyboard (which meant ghostbusters was unplayable) so we returned that and got regular joysticks (which we soon broke playing summer games). The only thing I ever successfully printed on the okidata was the test picture that came with the software and the koala pad stopped working after a few weeks. My life of "borrowed" software from "user groups" soon followed...

[Soap]

Orgeon Trail on an old Radio Shack computer.

Other firsts on PC:

Loderunner
Leisure Suit Larry.

[Borys]

Too old to remember... probably some shareware title...

[Librum]

I had a Texas Instruments PC first, but since we're talking about PCs, I got a PCjr for Christmas in 1984 or thereabouts, and my parents had to make me use the thing because I had so little interest in it at first. Now as I sit surrounded by the soft glow of LCD monitors, it's pretty funny to think back to that.

My first games included a text-game called Zyll, Ancient Art of War, Kings Quest, Bard's Tale, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Wishbringer and Bureaucracy. Those Infocom games were a little hard for a ten year old, but it was pretty exciting stuff at the time, nonetheless. Probably explains why I'm still so fond of text-based environments.

[51|RandoM]

My first actual PC was a PC XT. I had Commodore, Apple, and Tandy rigs before/during that, though. We're talking 8MHz computing.

I can remember getting paid to upgrade hard drives in a bunch of machines to 20 MB MFM drives, lol. That's right, I said MB, not GB. One of my first real computer jobs that wasn't college workstudy BS.

[Housemixer]

My first computer was a C64 in 1985. I only had 3 cartridges in the beginning, then the tape player and later on the good old floppy disk drive. Actually I have no idea how many joysticks I had to replace because of all the different games that forced you to repeatedly push it left-right-left oder up-down-up.

[Jetherik]

I loved Ancient Art of War! Man, I haven't thought about that game in ages. Maybe that is where Total War got its inspiration from.

All my friends were playing the text based game, I think it was Zork? Had to use the dagger on the theif or something. I never did get into it.

[Rifter]

My first PC game was probably Icon, or Zaxxon. Those are early games I vaugly remember for my First 8086 PC. Before that, I had a TSR Model 100 portable computer, and had the 1 and only game I ever saw for it. :-) I don't remember the name of the game. It was defenderesque, though.

[Axiom]

I had an Apple II a few years before the PC came out. I remember playing Akalabeth, Ultima, Wizardry, and all the Sierra and Infocom adventure games. Anyone remember Scott Adams text adventures? Also, Temple of Apshai was awesome at the time. As far as PC goes, Ancient Art of War was great. I think I had Bard's Tale on the PC as well.

[bapenguin]

My first "pc" so to speak was actually an Atari 800 (although might have been an 800XL).

That's funny...that was mine too. Not sure if what the same model but it came with a 5 1/4" floppy and a 300 baud modem as well as the keyboard with the cartridge slot built in.

I used to love Ghostbusters on that bad boy as well as most of the Atari classics. We used to even dial up and connect to Prodigy on it!

[J Arcane]

Not to be too nitpicky, but the real accomplishment of the IBM PC wasn't bringing computing to the home; Apple, Commodore, Radio Shack, and the rest were well ahead of IBM on that.

The big success of the PC was bringing the personal computer to business. Business, even now, is where the real bucks are, and the IBM name was golden in the world of business back then. It throwing it's weight behind a machine like the PC was what essentially signalled the death knell for the minicomputers and mainframes that dominated business arhitecture back then.

My first machine was a Tandy Color Computer 3, and I still love that thing to death. Great little box, if a little wierd in terms of the hardware spec designs.

My first PC, was an original Compaq Desqpro, with two floppy drives. Damn power supply had some serious heat issues, and would get so hot it would power cycle itself. If it was too hot, it would just go into a loop, and the screen would just keep flickering as it turned itself on and then off again every few seconds. IT was basically unusable in the summertime.

Still fond of the old thing though. Sopwith (http://sopwith.classicgaming.gamespy.com/) and Rogue (http://home.wanadoo.nl/loche/rogue/index.html) FTW!

[jeffbax]

Still got my IBM Aptiva 286 and it works just dandy although I use a Mac now :p

I remember playing Thexder Firehawk on that baby... that, FireHouse Rescue, Commander Keen, Ninja Rabbits, Oil's Well, Stellar 7 which ran at like 2 FPS, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1 (the overhead then sidescroller game - hardest fucking game ever!)

Happy birthday PC :cool:

[imagecreature]

My first "pc" so to speak was actually an Atari 800 (although might have been an 800XL).

Star Raiders (cartridge) on was great on the 400/800 along with SCAM (tape) which simulated the operation of a nuclear power plant. Thinking of it, I would by SCAM now if it was offered on XBL.

[A Lusty Alien]

My first personal computer was a Sinclair ZX-80 (Note: This was a Sinclair ZX-80, not a Timex-Sinclair.) You could buy a kit and put it together yourself for $99, or buy it pre-assembled for $199. I ordered a kit, but they ran out and shipped me a pre-assembled one instead. That was back in '82 or so.

My second personal computer was a Sperry PC (manufactured by Mitsubishi, identical to the Leading Edge PC), purchased as part of a special employee program. 128K RAM, two 5 1/4 low density floppy drives (360K), CGA color monitor, Epson RX-80 printer, MS-DOS 2.11, Wordstar, Multi-plan. I paid $2000 for that bad boy.

[dirtbag]

My first computer was a TI 99/4A, but the one I fell in love with was the C64. The first game that completely sucked me in was Mail Order Monsters -- my friends and I would spend weeks training up monsters to fight each other with.

That C64 lasted from when I was 12 until my Sophomore year of college, when I got a cutting-edge 486-SX33.

[atariv8]

dirtbag, that's exactly what I did. I always kicked myself for not getting the dx chip...it was sooo much faster. I actually wrote college papers using Bank Street Writer on my C64 and the old Okidata Printer I talked about earlier (My C64 and disk drive is still running by the way).

And who here spent $400 on their first 1x cd-rom dirve in order to see the film clips on the Microsoft movie encyclopedia (Before I got it I would jealously go through the Beatles CD-Rom on the Mac at my college bookstore).

[destoo]

And who here spent $400 on their first 1x cd-rom dirve in order to see the film clips on the Microsoft movie encyclopedia (Before I got it I would jealously go through the Beatles CD-Rom on the Mac at my college bookstore).

Nah. My first CD-Rom had to be for Labyrinth of Time, Dragon Lore or something like that.. 1994'ish

I think I only spent 1200$ on my first PC, including VGA, around 1990?