Your favorite computer?
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JeanLouSchmidt
Member
My favorite Computer of all time was the IBM thinkpad x24,
12inch laptop with the famous red trackpoint "nipple" and the keyboard light.
I still have it, it still works but Wifi chip is dead.
I step on it 2 twice, let it fall from 80cm 3 times, bring it on camping with high humidity and temperature, truly a very good piece of hardware.
12inch laptop with the famous red trackpoint "nipple" and the keyboard light.
I still have it, it still works but Wifi chip is dead.
I step on it 2 twice, let it fall from 80cm 3 times, bring it on camping with high humidity and temperature, truly a very good piece of hardware.
Must be my Amiga A500. Still in working condition and on my desk since 1988.
Some of the original floppies from that period unbelievably still work too.
Gone through some 512K RAM upgrade boards (The refresh batteries on the boards fail and corrode after several years of use and the whole board fails with it!) but it still works with the original internal 512K ram.
It is currently part of a project to recover and transfer some of the working floppies using Cloanto Amiga explorer so that I can use them with emulators!
I think even when/if it dies, this will remain my most-loved computer for life as I built most of my early computing knowledge using it and it's been with me since I was 18 (now I'm 42!!).
Some of the original floppies from that period unbelievably still work too.
Gone through some 512K RAM upgrade boards (The refresh batteries on the boards fail and corrode after several years of use and the whole board fails with it!) but it still works with the original internal 512K ram.
It is currently part of a project to recover and transfer some of the working floppies using Cloanto Amiga explorer so that I can use them with emulators!
I think even when/if it dies, this will remain my most-loved computer for life as I built most of my early computing knowledge using it and it's been with me since I was 18 (now I'm 42!!).
iprice
Certified Guru
While I loved my Amiga A600, the computer that I care most for was the goode olde Amstrad CPC464. I had hundreds and hundreds of games, apps and tools for that. Pretty much every game was new or innovative at the time, constantly pushing and redefining the boundaries of what games were, are and could be (rose tinted specs view there!). Of course imagination played a massive part of the 8bit scene as the graphics often pretended to look like something so your mind made up the shortfall and created the rest. However, despite what the reviewers told you or what the back of the box said, the game never was "arcade perfect" or "true to the movie" or "scared you silly" or even, sometimes, enjoyable. but during that 5 minute (+ or -) wait as you loaded the game for the first time from cassette everything about that game was perfect. And then you pressed fire to start.
Originality didn't die with the 8bits - it just generally rested in the 16bit era and then returned in the 32Bit days of PS1, Saturn etc. and is still going strong (just take a look in the AppStore). Commercial pc and console games may not be able to claim originality but just look at the small studios or the indie scene - still bursting with fresh ideas.
Originality didn't die with the 8bits - it just generally rested in the 16bit era and then returned in the 32Bit days of PS1, Saturn etc. and is still going strong (just take a look in the AppStore). Commercial pc and console games may not be able to claim originality but just look at the small studios or the indie scene - still bursting with fresh ideas.
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Tough call,
I have a bit of fond memories of my first computer I owned myself.. not shared with my siblings.. It was a Tandy Color Computer 2.
But I would have it was the first computer I built from parts was my AMD 386-40Mhz back in 1992, I spent an entire summer break from school doing odd jobs to pay for half of the parts and then Christmas money to pay for the rest of them.. Later I slowly added a sound card, one of those new fancy 2X CD-ROMs that cost $400.. the 4 Megabytes of ram that was about $500 as well. I mowed a lot of lawns and did a lot of painting to get that computer.
I'd say my runner up would be the computer I built after I got out of high school and when I landed a good Job, I built a Pentium II 400Mhz system when the processor just barely came out.. The processor alone cost me $1200. Lots of excellent games back then. Half-Life, Unreal Tournament, Warcraft III..Etc. That computer is still running good today for being 14 years old.
I have a bit of fond memories of my first computer I owned myself.. not shared with my siblings.. It was a Tandy Color Computer 2.
But I would have it was the first computer I built from parts was my AMD 386-40Mhz back in 1992, I spent an entire summer break from school doing odd jobs to pay for half of the parts and then Christmas money to pay for the rest of them.. Later I slowly added a sound card, one of those new fancy 2X CD-ROMs that cost $400.. the 4 Megabytes of ram that was about $500 as well. I mowed a lot of lawns and did a lot of painting to get that computer.
I'd say my runner up would be the computer I built after I got out of high school and when I landed a good Job, I built a Pentium II 400Mhz system when the processor just barely came out.. The processor alone cost me $1200. Lots of excellent games back then. Half-Life, Unreal Tournament, Warcraft III..Etc. That computer is still running good today for being 14 years old.
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mcobit
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Wow, thats almost exactly my story
But as I bought the 386 second hand in 1994 I didn't have to mow as much lawns
and it already ahad a cdrom.
iprice
Certified Guru
Yeah someone recently (late last year/early this?) did a remake of Impossible Mission which looked pretty neat as well as a game based on the tv prog Space 1999. I'm sure there's plenty more out there for Oric that I don't know about (mainly interested in CPC, C64 and Speccy), but anything produced for retro machines is cool.
The 8bit scene is still thriving and producing stuff that could put some of the old commercial 16bit market to shame. What a pity that some of the demo writers of today couldn't/didn't produce this stuff back in the day.
The 8bit scene is still thriving and producing stuff that could put some of the old commercial 16bit market to shame. What a pity that some of the demo writers of today couldn't/didn't produce this stuff back in the day.
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skeezix
Internal Development
If we're talking retro..
Atari ST, hands down; I cut my teeth on that sucker so its in a special palce.. I learned to code assembly and C there, and it had a few really class games (and hell, pretty much invented the modern RPG.)
Pic:
"Current" era machines.. my Sager (nee Clevo) laptop; my Sager laptop is 4 years old but steel beets most laptops to death both in specs and in physical crowbar (its a heavy beast .. X9000 cpu (is what, 3.2ghz dual core!) and nvidia 8800m GTX GPU .. *badass*. 1920x1200 as well, none of this x1080 business.. since when do specs go down over time as with monitors?
nbr review of the Sager: http://www.notebookr...asp?newsID=4235
C'mon, this is a sexy beast, and put the macbookpro of the time to shame (on specs and price); think I got mine for $1200, plus the cpu upgrade which bumped it to $1500 or something CDN. This is a 4+ year old laptop I still use today for when I'm not at my desk (or for wieght lifting..)
jeff
Atari ST, hands down; I cut my teeth on that sucker so its in a special palce.. I learned to code assembly and C there, and it had a few really class games (and hell, pretty much invented the modern RPG.)
Pic:
"Current" era machines.. my Sager (nee Clevo) laptop; my Sager laptop is 4 years old but steel beets most laptops to death both in specs and in physical crowbar (its a heavy beast
.. X9000 cpu (is what, 3.2ghz dual core!) and nvidia 8800m GTX GPU .. *badass*. 1920x1200 as well, none of this x1080 business.. since when do specs go down over time as with monitors? nbr review of the Sager: http://www.notebookr...asp?newsID=4235
C'mon, this is a sexy beast, and put the macbookpro of the time to shame (on specs and price); think I got mine for $1200, plus the cpu upgrade which bumped it to $1500 or something CDN. This is a 4+ year old laptop I still use today for when I'm not at my desk (or for wieght lifting..)
jeff
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Link
ithic.com
I had this 486 laptop, generic as hell, but modular. IIRC CD ROM could easily be swapped out, as well as battery, but not sure the hard drive was all that easy.
It got me on the internet in S. Korea when I was homesick as hell. Probably kept me out of a lot of trouble. Listening to Pearl Jam bootlegs that took forever to download, was worth every minute, and every second of slow down on the other apps I was running.
It got me on the internet in S. Korea when I was homesick as hell. Probably kept me out of a lot of trouble. Listening to Pearl Jam bootlegs that took forever to download, was worth every minute, and every second of slow down on the other apps I was running.
kojack
Member
Based on how long I've been using it, I'd have to say my favourite is my HP48-SX calculator. (It's kind of a computer, it's got sound, graphics, games, can be programmed in assembly and RPL, etc)
I've been using it for 20 years (since I was an electronic system engineering student), and I'm even using it tonight to mark programming student maths exams.
I've got an emulator for it on my phone, but it just isn't the same without physical buttons (as fellow pandora owners will understand).
I've been using it for 20 years (since I was an electronic system engineering student), and I'm even using it tonight to mark programming student maths exams.
I've got an emulator for it on my phone, but it just isn't the same without physical buttons (as fellow pandora owners will understand).
thatgui
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Compaq Armada M300 - my first notebook ..or better ultrabook long before the term was invented. Accompanied me nearly through my whole time at the university and beyond. Bricked it ~10h after I got it (and after saving rougly 10 months every dime I could spare for it). Had to buy a broken one to fix it, which took another three months till I saved enough money to afford it.
