According to the fine folks over at Engadget, the IBM PC turned 25 years old today. So happy birthday to the IBM PC!

Over there, they took the time to mention some of their first PCs, so I figured it couldn’t hurt to take a trip down memory lane.

My first PC was an 8086 that my dad got. Amber screen, unknown amount of memory (hey, I was pretty young at that point ;) ). I remember playing Math Blaster and such on that thing way back in the day. I can’t remember if we had our first mouse on that particular computer or the one after, but in any case, I also have fond memories playing with Print Shop of all things. Making banners and newsletters about…odd…things.

The second PC I remember a lot more about. It was a Leading Edge, 386 SX (the crippled one) with a whopping 80MB hard drive. And color! We got so much mileage out of that PC. That was my first introduction to microsoft windows, which I figured out how to use before my Dad figured it out (it was his computer after all). We had windows 3.0 and we liked it back then! We also had some major addons as far as that one was concerned. Adding in a sound card an a 1x CD-ROM drive that connected through the serial port was my first introduction to games..and well…sound. I remember Where in Space is Carmen Sandiego had a really kicking soundtrack. That was so incredibly exciting when all of this stuff was new back then. Amazing actually, living through the time when computers were developing into what they are today. Eventually we got a 400 baud modem for that computer and Prodigy for an online service (they weren’t ISP’s back then), which was my first exposure to what would become the internet.

Now I’m typing this entry on a computer that could beat the crap out of my first ones without even really trying. Progress is amazing, isn’t it?

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