a commodore pc 20 Model III
somewhere in 1998 it was outdated in 1990 already let alone in 1998
( 8088 8 mhz
20 mb hd
640 k ram
and dos 4.01 if wondering )

it was followed by a commodre ( again )
pentium 1 120 mhz ( yes 120 )
16 mb ram
1,5 gig hd
COLOR monitor
sound card
cd rom
a 2 mb diamond video card
and wandows 95

A friend's Commodore 64 or my father's Atari STF 1024.

Atari 800 XL - great stuff for its time

One of my uncles had a Atari 2600 that got glued to when we visited their family some time in the 80's. Finished Asteroids that afternoon.

My first own computer was a Commodore C116 that my parents bought second hand for 2000 East-German Marks in 1988.

I'm not completely certain which was the first, but we had a machine (Fujitsu/ICL, maybe? 386?) running Windows 3 or 3.1 in the classroom of my 4-6 grade class, a friend had either a Commodore or an Atari (one of those with the keyboard fused to the computer, as I apparently can't even remember the brand, I obviously can't remember the exact model either), and my father had a Macintosh PowerBook 140 (I'm quite sure that was the model).

Perhaps the first was the machine the special needs teacher had, which think I started using in 3rd grade. I don't remember the machine itself (though it most certainly ran Windows 3), but I do remember the sound of the dot-matrix printer *shudder*. Maybe it was that one at dad's work I used to play PacMan (he worked at a TV studio, there were at least a couple computers there, though most desks were still adorned with type writers), never knew what kind of machine that was.

History blurs together, especially 20-25 years ago when all this happened.

My first own machine was a Macintosh Performa 475, I got that 20 years ago, it was my primary machine for five years.

Either way, I became multi-platform-aware quite early.

I'm alive and...well-ish?

EKG came back normal, heart is functioning fine (despite slight murmur), no signs of past damage like a mini-heart attack or anything. Doc wants me to do the stress test, but I really don't want to go through with it considering the EKG came back good.

Next stop? I need to have an MRI of my pituitary. I have low testosterone (no, I'm not an athlete & I've never used steroids), therfore my LH & FSH should be high in order to compensate....they are not. I never would've guessed I had low-T, since I'm always checking out females & I know my equipment works. But it would explain why I have low energy & am dependent on my morning coffee, and will take a nap when the opportunity rises.

well that sounds good ?
im no doctor so i have no idea what most of that means but at least its positive

*** TO DUTCH GOG'ers ***

So our Belgian CEO of the railroad company has just cited the dutch example of "trein zonder trein begeleiders" as a way to make some "besparingen". I'm really scratching my head as how it's possible to do that while keeping law and order in those trains because certain lines can be dangerous (time to play "welcome to the jungle" by guns&roses ^o^) and anyway, who would pay a ticket if no one is controlling them? And how the "trein bestuurder" can manage the whole train by himself (like checking if every doors work correctly, managing the people who goes on and off, etc...)?

So please share your experiences or articles(english or dutch) ;)

Probably <span class="bold">Commodore VIC-20</span>. I was amazed how it could have "almost" arcade-perfect versions of Space Invaders and Pac Man (called "Jelly Monsters" IIRC; I think Pac Man publisher (Atari?) later forced them to stop selling Jelly Monsters, as it was too good, and made the poor Atari VCS version of PacMan look so bad.

However, what I wanted (and got) instead was <span class="bold">Texas Instruments TI-99/4A</span>, as I saw that it got even better versions of the aforementioned games (TI Invaders, and Munchman).

One home computer I always wanted to have was TRS-80 (Color Computer?). I only read about it in some computer magazines, some of its games seemed really great. I don't think it was sold here though, it seemed to be quite US-centric home computer (a bit like Sinclair Spectrum was quite Europe-centric, I think).

Spectrum 16K

my computer - a progression.

IBM-PC (AT/XT) with EGA monitor. At my sister office.
IBM-PC (AT/XT) with EGA monitor. At my school (later in life) introduced me to simple games, like double dragon, alley cat, etc.
IBM-PC (AT/XT) with monochrome. Owned (a donation).
IBM-PC (AT/XT) with CGA monitor. Owned (a donation). This introduced me to more complex games, like ultima 4,5,6.
IBM-PC with SVGA monitor. Purchased.

Jelly Monsters indeed!

They usually strongly focus on European history; getting stuck at prehistory, Ancient Greek and Rome and WW2. Czech history is usually taught a bit later and is the least popular part of history class.
The persistent problem with Czech history classes is that they rarely reach the point of cold war and modern times.
We - as in people in my high school - have learnt more about other continents through geography, literature and philosophy classes than in history classes.
I think it's mainly due to a bad structure. Basic points ordered by Ministry of Education say you will dedicate, let's say, 7th grade to prehistory. While the period is definitely interesting, there is so many other events, you simply don't have time to teach them.

There has been a reform of education which was supposed to lead to more relaxed basic points and ability to define what your school is going to teach in these classes but I used to have teachers as roommates and it didn't sound like it got better much.

If you are lucky, your teacher is less about grinding important dates and more about understanding a flow of events and interconnections. I was lucky and remember quite a lot due to the "epicness" of my history classes :).

A PC of our neighbour. It had MS DOS and I wanted to spend a lot of time there playing Dune 2, Silk, Arachnophobia, Ducktales (where you can take a snapshot of rare ping elephants in jungle) or writing a short stories in MS-DOS Editor :). I don't know about HW; most definitely IBM.

I would say a majority of Czech people older than 20-25 years came into contact with PC. Consoles were Western rarity and viewed as a luxury. Even now it is way, way harder to bump into people owning console than a PC/laptop used for gaming.

C16
C64
Amiga 500
then my custom build pc era began...