Be Excellent To Each Other

Discussion in B&B got me thinking about old computers...

List time!

1985 (ish) - Commodore Plus4 - Only ever had the bundled games for this. Not many others on sale
1987 - Atari 800XL - Had loads of games for this one. Thinking back, the Atari was probably my favourite computer of the 8 bit age
1989 - Spectrum 128k - This was a hand me down from a family friend. There were literally thousands of games on tape in a big cardboard box with it. And a few dozen copies of Your Sinclair (which in a pretty direct way, lead me here!)
Also 1989 - Spectrum +2 - I think my Dad got this from a guy at work. Built in tape deck simplified life for us!
1992 - Amiga 500 (512k with 512k upgrade) This broke within a month and was swapped for...
1993 - Amiga 500+ - What a great machine. Secondary school was all about the Amiga. Everyone (well, the boys) had an Amiga, so game swapping was rife. Everyone had a Dot Matrix printout of their spreadsheet (hello TheVision!) so swaps could be arranged. Thsi was upgraded with an external disk drive, a further 1meg of RAM (allowing a lot of "A1200 only" stuff to be run. Cheeky programmers!), a monochrome hand scanner and a Citizen Swift 9 printer. Good times!
1996 - Packard Bell P100 PC - P100, 8meg RAM, 1GB hard drive. Windows 95. Gateway drug
1997 - Onward - A never ending spiral of upgrades

My list

Computers :

ZX81 - either original games or some type in ones
Atari 800XL , started with tape and then upgraded to disk
C64C - again started with tape and moved up to disk
Amiga 500 - started with the basic model , upgrades were +512MB ram in the trap door , second disk drive , and then one of the big drive and memory upgrades on the side (20MB drive and +2MB memory)
from there onto PC's starting with a packard bell 486/25sx which is probably the machine i upgraded the most (+4mb / +250mb HD / and even a CPU upgrade to a 486/50dx)

Consoles (not including handhelds)

A pong clone
Acetronic
Colecovision with atari adaptor to play VCS games
then a long wait until
SNES
NES (yes i bought a SNES and then bought a NES when they were selling them off cheap to clear them out)
Megadrive (with Master system add on)
Jaguar
PS1
PS2
Dreamcast
Xbox
Gamecube
PS3
Wii
Xbox 360 (multiple 360's some for red rings or to upgrade to bigger HD's)
PS4

Fuck knows when any of this happened, but here's the order:

Texas TI99 4A
Amstrad CPC464
Amstrad CPC6128
Amiga 500+
Game Gear
Amiga 1200
PS1
PC (finally)
DS
XBox 360
Wii
PS3
PS4

BBC Micro
086
286
386
386SX
486
Various other PCs
N64
Gameboy
DS lite
Xbox
PS1
PS2
Xbox
Xbox360
PS4


I loved my BBC.

Amiga 500 (later upgraded to 1MB RAM)
NES
Sega Megadrive II
386 running W3.11
Amiga 600
Amiga 1200
Pentium MMX 200MHz
Another PC (can't remember specs but was around 2004)
Xbox
Gameboy Advance
Nintendo Gamecube
Nintendo DS
Xbox 360 Elite
Nintendo Wii
Nintendo DS Lite
Nintendo 64
PlayStation 2 Slim
PlayStation Vita
PlayStation 3 Slim
Nintendo 3DS XL
Nintendo Wii U
PlayStation 4
i5-4790K with GTX 970 (upgraded to 1070)
Sega Saturn

1984ish – Atari 400. I was obsessed with the cartridge slot (ooeeer!) and the touch keyboard which in hindsight, was a right pain to type on.

1987ish – Atari 800Xl. Like Davpaz, this was my favourite computer. My dad bought a disk drive for it with a ton of games and I loved it. I still have fond memories of clowns and balloons, Alley Cat, Karateka, Bop n’ Wrestle and Blue Max. Brilliant computer and one which I shall get set up again soon hopefully. I remember that we bought Donkey Kong Jnr on cartridge for it and I still love that game now.

1989ish – We borrowed a Spectrum off a friend. It had a few games with it but the majority of my time with it was spent playing cover tapes.

1993ish – Amiga 500+. Similar to Davpaz, this changed our computing lives. We had games coming out of our ears and it was probably responsible for the way I am now with my collecting. I too upgraded mine with the extra RAM and a disk drive. That made playing the original Mortal Kombat a breeze. Imagine swapping disks when you sent people into the spiky pit? Not anymore.

1995 – Playstation. I genuinely believe I was the first person in my home town to own a Playstation and what a console it was! I was blown away by Wipeout, Battle Arena Toshinden and that T-Rex demo. I also bought NBA Jam T.E. pretty early on and spent many an hour playing it. Amazing. I’ve recently returned my original Playstation to the original box with all the inserts, bags and instructions and put it safely in storage. It deserves the rest. Incidentally, I was at school one day and one of the prettiest girls in the year group turned to me and said “I hear you’ve got a Playstation. That’s cool”. She never spoke to me before or since but for that moment, I was cool!

1998 – The first family PC. I believe it was a Pentium 3 400? Does that sound right? Anyway, it was the first time that we had the internet at home and in my bedroom! Downloading an MP3 over 25 minutes was no bother to me, I ruled the world. Many an hour was spent on ICQ, Messenger, Napster and others. I cringe now when I think about talking to this American girl online but, those were the days. I fondly recall having loads of messenger tabs open with me chatting with all my friends. Good times.

After this I started working at Game and that’s when I started buying consoles left, right and centre. I soon had an N64, various Gameboys, a Megadrive, a Saturn, a SNES, a NES, Atari Jaguar, Gamegear, 3DO, Neo Geo CD, Playstation 2, Gamecube, Xbox amongst others. The only date I remember was the day I bought a Dreamcast. I bought that on the day of release and never had I looked forward to a console like it. You had to pick me up off the floor the first time I saw Soul Calibur running and I still play it now and think it looks amazing.

After I left Game I fell out with consoles for a while so I was relatively late in buying a 360. I think I even bought a Wii first! Still, it didn’t matter as the 360 was a brilliant console. Playing online with all my friends was great. I’d played online with the original Xbox and Dreamcast but the 360 was the first console that nailed it. It’s a shame the Xbox One hasn’t lived up to its predecessor so far.

I love video games.

You lot have good memories. As far as I recall, here's the rough order of how I started out -

Spectrum
Spectrum+
Spectrum +2A
Spectrum +3
Master System
Game Boy
Mega Drive

After that, it all just blurs into one mess.

I need to add a few

My brother owned a Gameboy and a Gamegear in the early 90's
I finally obtained a console in 2002 in the OG XBOX (still going strong as an emulation machine at work)
In 2006 or maybe 2007 we got an Xbox360 (still good. The kids like the Kinect games)
I have a few Atari 2600 units. They're both the "Junior" version, so not really worth anything, but they work.
A friend gave me a Wii, but I've only had it out of the box once.
I have a pimped out Amiga 1200 that I get out every now and again for nostalgia purposes. The kids like it, but I don't have the space to leave it out all the time. Which leads to...
A Raspberry Pi 3 running retropie with 2 USB SNES controllers. This is helping the kids with their games education. We're sticking with 16bit for now.

One of the few games that you can play in HD on the XBOX, fact fans!

EDIT: Soul Calibur 2, in fact.

Wikipedia reckons there's about 350. I had to check as I was going to say that you couldn't play it in 16:9 but Wikipedia says you can. so I would have been wrong there.

In fairness, I would have said there was only a handful so that's a surprising list.

Amstrad CPC464
Amiga 500
Amiga 1200 (first computer I bought myself, with my own money)
CD32

Built my own PC (Pentium MMX I think)
Built my own PC (can't remember the spec, but it was pretty much the 2nd best available of everything - half the price for 10% performance drop)
After that I've had work PCs and Laptops - nothing really suitable for gaming
PSone (picked up for £10 in Dixons! with 2 controllers and a memory card)
Wii
Xbox 360
Wii U
Xbox one

Also had a GBA and DS (gowing up my brother had an original Gameboy, and a Megadrive) and my youngest son has a 3DS. and I've got a 4/5 year old ipad (the first retina one, the last one with the wide connector, the latest one that doesn't support the most recent iOS release)

I wanna play. Systems I owed:

Atari 2600
Spectrum 48K
Commodore 64
Amiga 500
Gameboy
SNES
Atari Jaguar
Some kind of PC my folks had
PS1
PS2
Gamecube
Xbox
Gameboy SP
Xbox 360
PS3
Nintendo DS
Wii
PS Vita
PS4
WiiU
Phat ass PC

I reckon that's the lot. All fond memories of every system.

Oh shit, Gamecube! I forgot I had one of them. I loved it, too.

Me too!

480p doesn't count and you know it!

Nor does 720p imo. The first HD console was the PS4.

For me, I started ramping up the console buying when I discovered Yahoo Auctions, back in the days when Ebay actually had decent competition.

Hey mods! Whilst you're awake, you could move the lists to a new thread, maybe?

Sounds like a job for me! What would you like to call the new thread?

Let's Vote in Some New Blood to Help TheVision with Modding

The new blood: exactly the same as the old blood.

Polite mods are the mods for a new generation.

"Is this forum listing, or is it my wooden leg?"

Something I've asked about here before, but nobody can identify with multiple games on a cartridge.
Atari 2600
Atari ST
NES
PS1
PIII450 PC
PS2
GBA SP
NDS
A Dell something or other PC
Wii
Xbox 360
WiiU
PS4

As we're listing, here's the rest of the mess of stuff I've owned in the past (not in any particular order) -

Mega CD (currently own)
Multimega
Saturn (currently own)
Game Gear (currently own)
Dreamcast (currently own)
C64GS. Awful.
Amiga CD32 (currently own)
Atari 2600 (currently own)
Atari 7800
Atari Lynx (currently own)
Atari Jaguar
Amiga 500
Amiga 500+
Amiga 600 (currently own)
Amiga 1200 (currently own)
Neo Geo CD
Neo Geo AES (currently own)
Neo Geo Pocket (currently own.. I think)
NES (currently own half a dozen in varying condition)
SNES (own a temperamental one)
Game Boy/GBC/GBA (used to have a shoebox full, but now down to just a couple I think)
N64 (currently own)
DS (currently own, I think)
3DS (currently own)
Wonderswan (currently own)
Wii (currently own)
Virtual Boy
Gamecube (currently own)
Assorted dismal Tiger consoles like the R-Zone, the Game.com and the XPG
PC Engine (currently own)
Playstation (currently own)
Playstation 2 (currently own)
Playstation 3 (currently own)
PSP (currently own)
N-Gage (currently own)
3DO
Xbox (currently own)
Xbox 360 (currently own)
CD-I
Supervision (currently own)
G7000
GX4000

Umm, I think that's about it. Basically, most things apart from current gen.

1984-85 ZX Spectrum (this blew up over the weekend so my dad took it back)
1984-85 Commodore 64 with 1541 disk drive (replacement for blown up Spectrum)
1992- Long gap away from PC's bought another C64 to play with
1993- Mega Drive
1997-Gameboy
1998-to date lots of PC's and laptops

At the moment I have 4 laptops a PC, surface and 5 Ipads. Plus PS3, WII. Xbox, 360 and Xbox One

When we moved from purchasing PC's to leasing most of the old stuff went for disposal but I rescued what were CADD laptops at the time as they had 17 inch screens, so most of my laptops are these which I install Linux on.

3 of the Ipads I bought for 100$ each when the US office upgraded the sales force, they are 3's but had 64GB of Ram, these are used for static baby monitors as well as one in the kitchen for recipes etc

Also have a work laptop at home all the time in case I need do things after hours

Computers:
----------
Commodore 64
Amiga A500 (with RAM upgrade!)
Umax Pulsar (mac clone)
PowerMac G4
iBook 12"
PowerBook G4 17"
MacBook Pro (Intel) 15" - current laptop
iMac intel 27"- current desktop


Consoles:
--------
Sega Master System
Dreamcast
SNES - (Think this was borrowed?)
N64
GameCube
Wii - Kids current console
GBA
GBA SP
PlayStation1
PlayStation2
PlayStation3
PlayStation4 - my current console
Xbox
Xbox 360

Strange... I can't see any love for the Virtual Boy on here. Didn't anyone have one? I've got one. It's great.

Nah, don't know anyone who had one either.

I'd have liked a Saturn.. Oh I had a Dreamcast for a bit actually. (Edits)

I included it on my list, but I recently sold it though as I'm trying to offload the stuff I never use. It was a good console but hard to play comfortably. I only really ever played Tennis and Tetris on it though, the latter being a rather pointless game to play in 3D.

I'll stick with the vive, thanks.

Never owned one, but its by far my most played system on emulation

What controller do you use?

Nice short easy list for me.

Spectrum 48k
Sam Coupé
Various PCs
PS2
XBox 360
PS4

I always wanted one of those, despite the limited range of games for it. Having just looked on Ebay and seeing boxed versions go for £400-£600, I don't think I'll be getting one any time soon either.

c. 1980s (as far back as I can remember): BBC Micro
Early 1990s: Amiga 500
mid 1990s: 286 ('borrowed' from Dad's work)
486 with CD-ROM
then various PCs as time goes by,

I also had, as a student, a Psion Sienna which ran my life. I used a Thinkpad at graduate school, and now have a 6 year old Asus EEE Pc running Suse Linux for portability. I've been using Ipod Touches since 2009 and still like them.

BBC Micro
Amigs 500
286
386SX33
PS1
Celeron 100 gateway
PS2
Gameboy advance
AlMD athlon 2000+
Xbox 360
DS lite
Some PC
HP envy with B&O sub
PS4

Most stuff done on S7 now.

How do you guys remember this stuff?!

I had a dodgy old desktop when I was 14 that I ran MS-DOS and (briefly) Windows 3.1 on. I had access to (but not solely mine) a NES, SNES and Nintendo 64 over the years.

Was bought a Gamecube for my 18th(?) birthday.

Bought myself a Wii shortly after they came out.

Was bought a Sony VAIO laptop, replaced myself with a Dell Vostro, replaced by an Acer Aspire E1-571 (current)

Still have the VAIO and Gamecube and Gaz, being the awesome kind of husband that he is, bought me an N64 as a wedding present

Life for men is just one long game of Top Trumps. Need to memorise your stats.

I can't remember much about the PCs I've owned over the years as they were always unremarkable custom-built things. I do remember paying a mate £900 for my very first PC though. I think it had a Celeron 133 processor and all I can remember about it was playing Screamer on it. Oh and hazy memories of installing Windows 3.11 and 95 from floppy disks.

I use a GameCube controller on the PC, you need to get an adaptor like this one

https://www.amazon.co.uk/GameCube-Contr ... B0089NVTDM

Just say the word if you fancy a trip down memory lane

ZX Spectrum+
ZX Spectrum +2A
Amstrad CPC 6128
Amstrad GX-4000
Amiga A1200 (eventually bastardised into a behemoth of a tower system complete with Voodoo3 graphics card, sold this in 2003)
PC
Xbox
Nintendo DS Lite
GP2X, very briefly
PSP
PS2
PS2 Slim
Nintendo Wii
Xbox 360
PS3
PS3 Slim
SteamLink
Asus ROG laptop (sent back when the keyboard stopped working properly)
HP Pavilion laptop (current)

Like this:
48k spectrum
Spectrum +2
Spectrum +3
Amiga 500+
Amiga 1200
CD32
Amiga 500 (for the frees)
Cyrix 166 based pc
Athlon 700 based pc
Ahtlon Xp 2600 based pc
Gamecube
GBA SP
DS
Ps2
Xbox
Xbox 360
Wii
Ps3
Xbox 360 again (damn you, faulty original 360s. Thank you Kalmar for buying all my fridge old electronics)
Core 2 duo based PC
Xbox 360 slim
Ps2 slim
Core i3 based PC
PS Vita
Ps4
3DS
WiiU
Core i7 based PC

(some ordering may be wrong. And not including laptops )

Shit, I've got a PSP too. I call it my Loco Roco player.

And the Gradius Collection is The Bombdiggy.

The film was disappointing of the Hornby book which is lists set in a record shop.

Edit: High Fidelity

*subtly sneaks the PS vita I'd forgotten into list*

Don't worry, Sony have forgotten about it too.

I'm pretty sure I had to reinstall 3.11 several times over the life of the 486 because I'd do something wrong and wipe C:\WINDOWS by accident. We installed 95 via floppies, which was a fun way to spend an evening, particularly when disk 23 or whatever decided not to work.

As a loyal Spectrum owner, I wanted one too. Reading up on them now, I'm not entirely sure why.