# Do you remember the specs/price of your first computer/internet connection? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [September 17, 2009, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-remember-the-specs-price-of-your-first-computer-internet-connection/510492 "2009-09-17T20:17:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![tacoloco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7993a0/32.png) [@tacoloco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tacoloco)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2009, 3:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-remember-the-specs-price-of-your-first-computer-internet-connection/510492/21 "2009-09-18T03:31:00Z")
Franklin Ace 1200, an apple ][e clone. I think I paid $200 for it, including monitor. The person I bought it from was a coworker who used to work at Franklin. 128k, 80 column card, two full height floppy drives. This would have been in the '85/'86 timeframe. ---
**Author:** ![Cisco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ccd318/32.png) [@Cisco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cisco)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2009, 5:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-remember-the-specs-price-of-your-first-computer-internet-connection/510492/22 "2009-09-18T05:09:18Z")
My first computer must’ve been around 1989 or 1990. It was a Tandy with no hard drive (ran disks only), and I don’t know the other stats. Around 1991 (think), we got a 386sx. I wanna say it had 4mb of RAM. The CPU was 12mhz normally, but 25mhz on _turbo!_ (which was a physical button on the case.) It had a 2400bps modem and 3.5 and 5.25 floppy drives. I don’t know how big the HDD was. I dialed up to local bbses a lot but I never really knew what I was doing, and I didn’t have a credit card so I had to just play around in the free areas, which sucked. We mostly played Leisure Suit Larry and Wolfenstein 3D on it. We called it a “super computer” by the way, heh. > [@Lamia](#): > > My family purchased its first computer in about 1987. It had two floppy drives, one for the big floppies and one for the small floppies that weren’t actually floppy. In middle school, my computer teacher ripped one apart one day to show us that the actual disk was, indeed, floppy. That case that wasn’t actually floppy wasn’t actually the disk. ---
**Author:** ![Waffle\_Decider](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/77aa72/32.png) [@Waffle\_Decider](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Waffle_Decider)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2009, 12:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-remember-the-specs-price-of-your-first-computer-internet-connection/510492/23 "2009-09-18T12:04:03Z")
First computer was an Apple II+ clone in the 80s. Green mono display, 48 kb RAM, 5" floppy. Didn’t get on the Internet until 96 or so, I think. With a 28k modem. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2009, 1:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-remember-the-specs-price-of-your-first-computer-internet-connection/510492/24 "2009-09-18T13:01:34Z")
My first computer was secondhand, I bought it from a friend. I needed it for my thesis. It cost me 50K pesetas. One of the questions I had during the viva was “why are the calculation times so high?” “If you look in the first page, the specs of the computer used are listed. It was a Z86. A current model would logically give much better results.” This was in 1994. My first new computer, bought in 1997, was so early adapter that the idea disappeared from the market for years. It cost me $995 (and my credit limit was 1K, so I paid it with the card and stopped at the ATM on the way home to pay the card up). The screen was LCD (a technology which, according to my IT friends, “will never catch up other than in laptops”) but it was thicker than a closed laptop, because the screen was the computer; it only used 25W, I would have brought it with me when I went back to Spain but back then nobody sold adaptors. HP has some models built that way now. ETA: strictly speaking, that first computer wasn’t the first one, but the previous one was paid for by my parents and it was an MSX made by the company where Dad worked, so we got it at worker’s discount. We got the MSX in 1985 IIRC. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2009, 1:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-remember-the-specs-price-of-your-first-computer-internet-connection/510492/25 "2009-09-18T13:21:58Z")
My first real computer\* was an Apple ][e in 1984. Cost about $1200. I also paid about $1000 for a daisy wheel printer. I first got a network connection through GEnie in 1989. It was essentially free. This didn’t connect to the Internet, though. First Internet connection was dialup at about $20 a month. This was in 1996, after I left GEnie and tried Compuserve for awhile, then getting a real ISP. \*Not counting [Digicomp](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digi-Comp_I). ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2009, 1:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-remember-the-specs-price-of-your-first-computer-internet-connection/510492/26 "2009-09-18T13:38:51Z")
My first computer was a [BBC Micro B (32K)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Micro), handed down from my brother in about 1988. Nominal processor speed: 2 MHz. I didn’t get another one until 1997 - a Hewlett Packard Pavilion [insert 4 random numbers and a letter]. 233 MHz Pentium, _with MMX_, whatever that was. I got internet access about a year later- AT&T WorldNet service @ 56kbps. I was essentially living in a hotel, though, and the shitty phone system limited practical connection speeds to about 28.8 kbps. ---
**Author:** ![KneadToKnow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kneadtoknow/32/3999_2.png) [@KneadToKnow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KneadToKnow)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2009, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-remember-the-specs-price-of-your-first-computer-internet-connection/510492/27 "2009-09-18T13:52:17Z")
First PC, fall of 1993: [ul] [li]Tandy PC-clone[/li][li]486 SX at a mind-ripping 25 MHz[/li][li]Originally equipped with 2 gargantuan MB of RAM (later upgraded to 4 when I began decoding the human genome)[/li][li]110 MB hard drive which, I know you won’t believe this, I eventually filled up and had to install Stacker on[/li][li]14-inch S-VGA CRT monitor[/li][li]right at $1000[/ul][/li] (about 2 weeks after I bought this rocket box, I saw an ad for a laptop that had essentially all the same specs) First internet connection, fall of 1995: Compuserve over dial-up with 56K modem. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2009, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-remember-the-specs-price-of-your-first-computer-internet-connection/510492/28 "2009-09-18T17:12:46Z")
> [@Musicat](#): > > That was the POST (Power On Self Test), and told you the amount of memory (RAM). No device ever counted the size of a hard drive that way. That makes sense. Someone may have even told me that it was the memory at the time, but as a kid I think I don’t think I would have understood the distinction. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2009, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-remember-the-specs-price-of-your-first-computer-internet-connection/510492/29 "2009-09-18T17:19:42Z")
I still don’t, and I _built_ my computer! 😉 What was the _turbo_ button on early 90s PCs _for_? I see Cisco’s post above that says it boosted the processor to 25 MHz, but if the processor was capable of that, why didn’t it just run at 25 MHz all the time? Was this like a factory overclocking button or something? ---
**Author:** ![Harmonious\_Discord](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/74df32/32.png) [@Harmonious\_Discord](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Harmonious_Discord)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2009, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-remember-the-specs-price-of-your-first-computer-internet-connection/510492/30 "2009-09-18T17:31:06Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > I still don’t, and I _built_ my computer! 😉 > > What was the _turbo_ button on early 90s PCs _for_? I see Cisco’s post above that says it boosted the processor to 25 MHz, but if the processor was capable of that, why didn’t it just run at 25 MHz all the time? Was this like a factory overclocking button or something? Until those mind warping speeds showed up many games used nothing to determine passing time. They just ran at full bore, which could be way to fast to play anymore. Something many people don’t remember is most early computers didn’t have a built in clock either. That’s why on start up the OS asked for the current date and time to be inputted at boot. ---
**Author:** ![Cisco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ccd318/32.png) [@Cisco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cisco)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2009, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-remember-the-specs-price-of-your-first-computer-internet-connection/510492/31 "2009-09-18T17:52:04Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > What was the _turbo_ button on early 90s PCs _for_? I see Cisco’s post above that says it boosted the processor to 25 MHz, but if the processor was capable of that, **why didn’t it just run at 25 MHz all the time?** Was this like a factory overclocking button or something? I only ever took it off turbo a couple times as a curiosity. Even as a kid I figured it was a gimmick. ---
**Author:** ![Balthisar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/balthisar/32/2825_2.png) [@Balthisar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balthisar)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2009, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-remember-the-specs-price-of-your-first-computer-internet-connection/510492/32 "2009-09-18T19:01:18Z")
They had built in clocks; they just didn’t have built in batteries. For turbo buttons, the default _was_ the full speed. The turbo button actually slowed things down for the reasons mentioned above. Now to merge the two points together, Commodore magazine games had to specify changes for (typically) US servicemen in Europe, because their Commodores’ clocks ran off of the 50 Hz buss, and ours in the USA ran off of the 60 Hz buss. ---
**Author:** ![KneadToKnow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kneadtoknow/32/3999_2.png) [@KneadToKnow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KneadToKnow)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2009, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-remember-the-specs-price-of-your-first-computer-internet-connection/510492/33 "2009-09-18T19:09:02Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > What was the _turbo_ button on early 90s PCs _for_? Some early software didn’t take its timing cues from the computer’s clock, but instead ran their own clock according to the CPU’s cycles. If such a game were written for, say, a 10 MHz 8086 processor and you had the misfortune to be running it on, say, a 25 MHz 80486 processor, the results were not always pleasant. Sumbitch, there’s a Wikipedia article: [Turbo button - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbo_button) ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2009, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-remember-the-specs-price-of-your-first-computer-internet-connection/510492/34 "2009-09-18T19:37:15Z")
Huh. I need one of those! Can’t use mouse or keyboard scroll on Warcraft II in XP because the scroll speed is way too fast regardless of how fast it’s set in the options menu. ---
**Author:** ![BubbaDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bubbadog/32/333_2.png) [@BubbaDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BubbaDog)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2009, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-remember-the-specs-price-of-your-first-computer-internet-connection/510492/35 "2009-09-18T19:52:44Z")
1984 -VIC-20 with a cassette drive to store and load programs written in basic. I paid $250 for it. It had 8K of internal memory. A year later when it sold for $50 a co-worker chided me for jumping in early and paying so much. I just pointed at the IBM PC on my desk and asked him what was sitting on _his_ desk. Because of my experience with the VIC-20 I demonstrated an ability to “figure out” new equipment like PC computers. So I was the first person in a company employing 400 people to get a PC assigned only to me. 1986 - my first home PC purchase cost me $3200. It was an AT processor with a 10 MByte hard drive. No Internet. I connected to a local BBS via a 12K modem. ---
**Author:** ![Harmonious\_Discord](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/74df32/32.png) [@Harmonious\_Discord](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Harmonious_Discord)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2009, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-remember-the-specs-price-of-your-first-computer-internet-connection/510492/36 "2009-09-18T20:43:27Z")
> [@Balthisar](#): > > They had built in clocks; they just didn’t have built in batteries. > > For turbo buttons, the default _was_ the full speed. The turbo button actually slowed things down for the reasons mentioned above. > > Now to merge the two points together, Commodore magazine games had to specify changes for (typically) US servicemen in Europe, because their Commodores’ clocks ran off of the 50 Hz buss, and ours in the USA ran off of the 60 Hz buss. All computers had a systems clock that ran the chips. They didn’t all have a real time clock unless you purchased an add on. My Apple IIc upgrade was the Z-RAM Ultra II by Applied Engineering and it upgraded the computer memory to 1M at the same time. It didn’t need a patch for the software clock bug either. [Add on real time clock article.](http://en.allexperts.com/e/a/ap/apple_ii_system_clocks.htm) > [@](#): > > Apple II system clocks, also know as real-time clocks, were commodities in the early days of computing. A clock/calendar did not become standard in the Apple II line of computers until 1987 with the introduction of the Apple IIGS. Although many productivity programs as well as the ProDOS operating system implemented time/date functions, users would have to manually enter this information every time they turned the computer on. Power users often had their Apple II’s peripheral slots completely filled with expansion cards, so third party vendors came up with some unique solutions in order to mitigate this problem with products like the Serial Pro and No-Slot Clock. ---
**Author:** ![loshan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ce73a5/32.png) [@loshan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/loshan)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2009, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-remember-the-specs-price-of-your-first-computer-internet-connection/510492/37 "2009-09-18T21:06:38Z")
1986 I bought an Apple Mac Plus with 1 mb Ram and NO hardrive ($2600 new)…it had a 800k floppy drive and I bought an additional external floppy drive so I didn’t have to switch out the program/file floppies as often. About a year later I paid $300 for an external 20mb hardrive and added one extra mb of RAM (I’m thinking the 1 mb ram was somewhere in the neighborhood of $160?). The only software I purchased to go with the computer was Adobe Pagemaker 1.0 for $700. The computer came packaged with MacWrite, MacPaint and MacDraw. There were no “versions” on any of the software or the OS. ---
**Author:** ![loshan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ce73a5/32.png) [@loshan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/loshan)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2009, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-remember-the-specs-price-of-your-first-computer-internet-connection/510492/38 "2009-09-18T21:12:31Z")
edit: at the time it was “Aldus Pagemaker”…Adobe bought it later on. ---
**Author:** ![KneadToKnow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kneadtoknow/32/3999_2.png) [@KneadToKnow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KneadToKnow)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2009, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-remember-the-specs-price-of-your-first-computer-internet-connection/510492/39 "2009-09-18T21:38:54Z")
Crap, I can’t believe I totally forgot about my VIC-20. ---
**Author:** ![Projammer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/projammer/32/559_2.png) [@Projammer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Projammer)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2009, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-remember-the-specs-price-of-your-first-computer-internet-connection/510492/40 "2009-09-18T21:47:18Z")
> [@BubbaDog](#): > > 1986 - my first home PC purchase cost me $3200. It was an AT processor with a 10 MByte hard drive. No Internet. I connected to a local BBS via a 12K modem. nitpic. I think you mean a 1200 baud modem.. 😉 I upgraded from my 300 to a 1200 for the amazingly low price of $275 from the DAK Industries catalog. Was in heaven logging into local BBS’s. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-remember-the-specs-price-of-your-first-computer-internet-connection/510492.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-remember-the-specs-price-of-your-first-computer-internet-connection/510492.md?page=3)