My computers through the years – Part 1

I’ve thought about listing down my computers throughout the years after listing down my mobile phones for my memory lane’s sake. I want to test my sentimentality and my memory. Computers were a huge part of my life.

1. Intel-386 with DOS (1987-1994)

My dad says that his first computer was a Mac. But I remember that the 386 PC was the first computer that I saw in the living room. Which was not a simple technology to learn for a toddler.

I learned and memorized the common DOS commands such as “cd”, “cd..”, “cd…”, “dir”, “dir/w/p”. “Del” brought trouble, and “copy” was tricky. I’m still using these commands at work via cmd. My four year old mind also learned that typing .exe runs the game before it became a meme.

There was no GUI and the mouse was a mythical object back then. I think it would have been a magical experience to see a mouse cursor in action. So yes, my first computer was just a tower, a monitor, and a keyboard.

My notable games at age 3 and up!

The notable games with the Intel-80386 were Alley Cat, Simcity, DigDug, Centipede, and Pacman. I loved creating levels on Lode Runner. I tasted racing with Test Drive and I was super curious I can reach the horizon in front of the dashboard. Then I also played Grand Prix Circuit on manual to beat the named AI drivers Tse Sakamoto, Bruno Gurdo, and Travis Day. I tasted real time warfare games with Ancient Art of War and Ancient Art of War at Sea. Finally, the 386 played the mesmerizing 8-bit level intro of Paratrooper. Let’s not forget Broderbund’s Prince of Persia!

A: and B: drives used the 5.25″ floppy diskette

I cannot find the exact model of this computer but it used the 5.25″ diskettes. The computer also had a turbo button and a latch to lock in the diskettes. The diskettes normally contained computer games.

I remember I told my mom out LOUD that I wanted to go home to play the computer while my kindergarten teacher was discussing my report card.

My most memorable application was “E”. No doubt. Not Lotus 1-2-3 nor Wordstar. I just typed E, and enter: text editor loaded. Typing was fun. I memorized Toy Story’s dialogue from watching it too much that I typed up the script while watching along. No joke.

I could not run a few DOS games like Alf, Afterburner, and Back to the Future likely due to corrupt files. We installed games back then using 5.25″ floppy diskettes and most of the time it was a manual copy and paste command prompts.

2. Intel-486 with Windows 95 (1994-1998)

First time using a computer with a colored monitor. The screen was monochrome during my 386 days and I’m not sure if the text was amber, green, or white. But the 486 at least had pink and cyan. So lifelike!

Maybe I was 7 or 8 years old when I installed Windows 95 using the 3.5 floppy diskettes. You know, the save icon on your computer. I used the original 13 diskettes and my dad told me to install it even when he left for work. He told me to call my auntie on the telephone if I needed help.

I met Windows 3.1 prior and I was sold

My dad brought me to his office one day back in 1994. I still remember that we rode the elevator to the cafeteria and lunch was burger steak. I got to check out Windows 3.1 and a working mouse! Then we went home past 4pm with a bunch of old folders and white paper for me to draw on. life was simple back then and I was happy with a bunch of old folders and paper. I knew that Windows 95 was going to be a different that DOS immediately felt ancient.

The notable games of my 486 are Sid Meier’s Civilization, and Colonization. I played the first Mortal Kombat and the gore was unfamiliar. And I remember that The Pit stage had the highest fps. I also played Dangerous Dave in the Haunted Mansion which was a tough game! It was also interesting to play Scorched Earth – which would later become a genre for the Worms series and Gunbound.

This was also the time where I fully appreciated city building. Off from Simcity, and now I’m playing Simcity 2000. I built my cities while trying to balance the budget with a toddler’s brain. Cutting back the funding to services seemed to cut the deficits. Raising taxes made people leave. And so is crime. But I eventually figured it out.

Self-taught in Windows 95

No, there was still no dial-up yet. So I learned Windows 95 by tinkering the settings, menu, and buttons on the desktop. F1 and index were helpful. Looking back, Windows 95 was user friendly with a hint of heuristics – the process felt natural and self-explanatory. But I understood not to delete random things like system32. I’m innately not the type of person to delete stuff.

I don’t know how but Windows 95 felt sophisticated and I thought it was unnatural to just turn off the 486 computer then. But I did. It went to scan disk when I turned it back on. So I learned that I had to click shut down first and then power it off.

My notable computer program is Powerpoint 95 if my memory serves me right. I remember that my godfather lent me a copy and we created a newspaper article. Clipart was fascinating with all the new drawings, and how you can stretch and skew it.

3. Intel Pentium II 266hz with Windows 98 (1998-2002)

Things were getting serious now.

Microsoft Word entered the chat and my dad also bought a dot matrix printer. And it was mighty slow. And mighty loud.

My brother brought a Warcraft 1 installer home and the graphics looked creepy. I didn’t know what orcs were and the dungeon maps were scary. Then there was Warcraft 2 and its map editor which influenced me on map making, scripting, and modding. Starcraft was installed next and the Desperate Alliance level was traumatizing at first. A lot of hours were spent on map-making and building custom campaigns.

Other notable things with this computer would be my introduction to the dual channel plastic speakers. I believe this is the computer that made me identify my taste in music. In short, this is the time where I’ve become an audiophile. The combination of music and gaming started here.

Story-driven games opened my eyes to gaming

Descent Freespace was AMAZING. And it was my first true experience of getting hooked by a videogame’s story-telling. The intro of this game still sends me chills. The Shivans were scary, man. From rumors of their existence during the start of the game until the last mission. Furthermore Freespace 2 is an amazing sequel.

Despite having Starcraft and Warcraft, Command and Conquer Tiberian Dawn was my primary real-time strategy game driver. Then Red Alert 1 was installed. Played lots of skirmish games.

We still had hard-disk space for Mortal Kombat 4. I still like fighting games and MK was in my computer. While Street Fighter 1 was on my SNES.

This is the computer where we played Fallout 1. Seeing and hearing the talking heads on Fallout 1 namely Junktown’s mayor Killian Darkwater (aka MacGyver) will always be a good memory. We installed Fallout 2 but it took about 5 minutes to save the game because our computer had a slower hard-drive. I would play Fallout 2, save the game, and study my school notes while I waited. No joke. It was a good motivator. I remembered too.

Specs and dreaded overclock

I am pretty sure that my video card had a 2MB VRAM and the system RAM was 32MB. The hard-disk was about 128GB. Less than 128GB of course. And it was partitioned too. This was the computer that lead me to learning computer hardware.

The last blunder I made with this computer was overclock the 2MB videocard with a generic driver software without knowing what overclocking meant.

As a result, my dad wondered why the computer suddenly started acting weird. Eventually artifacts started showing up on the monitor. From then on, I never touched overclocking. It was one aspect of tinkering that needed learning.

Ending it here for now

The world was slowly getting smaller with the Internet. The next thing I knew was we were playing games on the streets to playing multiplayer games by the hour. Videogames no longer meant as pure single-player experiences. And multiplayer would be another dimension.

Cable television also showed teasers and trailers to new games I’ve never heard of. A wave of new technology was on the horizon, both my dad and I were interested. Ultimately it would be one hardware has been my primary focus whenever there’s gaming for as long as I can remember.

I don’t know how many parts to write for this series. And I didn’t know that I would be able to blab a lot on this entry. I haven’t even expanded my take on the games I played yet.