My first Desktop

Well, the first time I used a computer was about nearly 23 years ago. Maybe more! When my father brought it home, it was one of the best days in my life. You can imagine how happy I am that day when I saw game named Sokoban and few other games in front of my monitor. And application named Printshop and Printmaster to create a greeting card. And word processing too!

But the most important is, I need to learn the common dos command. For the first time.

My first PC was a desktop type. Buying a notebook or laptops could cost my dad arms and legs. Or… Maybe I notebook still not created at that time. I’m not sure.

From what I can remember, my first PC equipped with Intel 286 or (before that, I can’t remember well), 2 x 5.25 Floppy disk, 14” 256 color monitor, white keyboard, no mouse, damn heavy casing and… I think an Epson dot matrix printer.

Yes, I’m telling you the truth. No hard disk, no CDrom or DVDrom, no multimedia card and not even a 2.5”+ floppy disk in my PC. I think, most of the children at that time want to come to my house. To play games. I said no way man!!!

I’m not sure how many RAM I have that time. But according to my father, my PC was the fastest PC available in my place. And cost him nearly RM3000 or maybe at that time about nearly 2000USD.

So I tell you short story about how I used that PC.

This pc is not the same as what we have right now. Today we boot our OS (Windows or Linux) using our internal harddisk. I know, some of you boot using the thumbdrive (maybe for Dos). At that time, when I switch on my pc, I need to have a MS-Dos or PC-Dos disk in A: to store it temporarily in RAM. Using some special Dos command, I instructed the PC to read my other big floppy drive or B:. Yeahh, there you go new games on the screen. I jumped happily. And my brother starts to disturb me. Hahahaha…

I have so many memories about my 1st PC. The ‘best’ one is the idea how to save my electric bills. I saw a switch behind my power supply. One showed 240V and the other one 120V. So I said to my brother, we change to 120V surely can save us a lot of money. In the end, smokes came out from behind of my PC. And to change that power supply, it nearly cost my father RM 400 or nearly 8 times the price of low cost power supply today. I don’t know that we can’t use 120V setting in my country.

So do you have one? Why not you buy your 1st beautiful desktop pc and tell us a story about yours.