PCs and Computing in the 1990s

Post Reply New Topic

Hi, guys. You know, I was thinking about how I've spent all my life around a computer, or at least for as long as I can remember (about two years old, personally), and think about some of the good times I had with computing and PCs, in the 1990s.

The 1990s was a time, for me, of finding out that computers were the future for this world. Oh, yes, my first computer that I remember using Windows on was an old Gateway 2000 computer we got in 1994; it served us well until 2000 a year after I had moved, and by that time, that old 60 MHz processor was LONG since obsolete.

On May 25, 1997 (don't ask me how I remember), I got on the internet for the first time via America Online (and how I remember that nuisance that was dial-up internet!), and that was my first exposure to the internet; it wasn't until 2001 that we got our first broadband internet connection.

Lastly, if you look on the Internet Archive (google "Internet Archive Windows 3.1"), you can access a WHOLE bunch of software that was made for that OS, and you can play them to your heart's content. It's a nice trip down memory lane.

That's all for me on this post. Share your memories of 1990s PCs here.

I think some of my earliest favourite memories of computers were:

- Typing up stories on the old Amstrad, with the black screen and green text. I was 7 at the time. I don't remember much more about the computer, but remember the stories I wrote and I enjoyed being able to type them.

- Later, games including: Millennia: Altered Destinies, King's Quest VII: The Princeless Bride, Orly's Draw a Story, Sword of the Samurai, Theme Park/Hospital and Transport Tycoon. I was also really into Age of Empires and the Catz and Dogz virtual pet games, and Creatures.

Some of those games I definitely continued to enjoy long into the early 2000s when we got internet at home - I remember campaigning to get the 'net at home in 2001. That was our dial-up, with NTL. I remember the interface perfectly. Prior to that I had spent a couple of years at school going to the computer room at the end of each day - you were allowed to stay for an hour after school, and I spent a lot of time learning website design and creating my own websites. I have such vivid memories of the computer room, which was always incredibly quiet as the other kids hadn't discovered computers yet, and so it was a silent room with just the whirring of computers and a really beautiful, unique smell to it. To me, that hour each day was so precious.

Broadband, we got in 2004 once I was earning my own money and could pay for it myself.

Hmm the oddest one I still remember is "EXEC 41194" the days I wanted a user to "Press any key" changed forever!! !! (Dragon 32)

In 1991, a freind showed me how to use BBS on his computer at the time, which was a Fountain 286 TurboAT clone with 2 megs of RAM and a 20MB hard drive running QDOS. In 1997, I discovered the Internet in 1997, and in the end of 1997, I was online officially with my own computer, an AST Pentium 90 laptop with 10" DSTN screen, 1 GB Hard Drive and 20 Megs of RAM.

Before that though, another person turned me on to The Source in early 1985, which was an online community not unlike CompuServe. We accesed it via a 300 Baud inline modem and a Wyse terminal or a Sanyo 8088 machine which was only partly IBM compatible.

The thing was, I was a Windows user at home, and in grade school, an Apple user, because that's what our old grade school had.

Well... back in 1994 i landed my first computer job. Before that i had been handing delivering unsolicited ads and other non qualified work. The job was as an intern, i had no experience whatsoever, just some basic Windows 3.1 + Office training, and i ended up working with an old guy who was an engineer. He had an application that was about standardising electronical components. I added a secondary application to their inventory for scanning documents into a database and presenting them (TIFF CCIT G4 multipage documents) so they could be reviewed quickly instead of them having to dig down into folders full of papers. I also added HTML support (Netscape version 0.9 at that time) so they could get some basic navigation by publishing the content from the DB. That was fun, but all i got out of that was a pat on the shoulder by some upper management guy and "good luck".

I then got some more training (Windows NT server 3.51 and Novell Netware 3.12) and ended up working as a systems administrator and manager for 3 technicians. Then i worked as a tech guy who fixed PCs and Apple boxes.

At the start of the decade i was on an Amiga 500, progressed to an Amiga 1200 and then to PCs. After i was introduced to DBase / Access Basic (The latter we now call Visual Basic for applications), i continued to learn VB 3.0. I also tinkered with C but never did anything with it. Before this i had only coded in C64 basic/ASM and Amiga Basic so learning object oriented programming with classes and stuff at the end of the decade (C++) was a new experience. I also briefly touched Lotus Notes, but didn't do much with Lotusscript.

In 1996 during another course i took, men and another guy did a pen-test with the tools of the time (simple password crackers) against an early beta of Windows NT4 and Linux. This was the first time i came into contact with a Unix flavoured system (i had only read books in the library about it).

Back in 1998 i got really interested in Security and wrote a couple of tools, amongst other things a security scanner and some crypto stuff. I also learned about network sockets programming and i had lots of fun during the 90s.

These threads make me feel old. You haven't lived until you have to boot your mainframe with a spool of magtape.

I've booted Alpha Micros from VHS tapes; does that count?
(The AM was an 80's semi-pirated functional clone of the PDP's & many were still running in the late 1990's at banks and other companies that loaned money or leased things to people. They backed up to VHS video cassette machines. Also, much of that accounting software was still written in BASIC.).

For me the 1990's were a fun time for computing. Plug-and-play (automatic allocation of resources such as IRQ lines and memory segments for drivers) had finally stabilized, mostly. Then PCI came along and everything was a mess again until PCI 2.0. And at the same time, the amazing MPC or "multimedia PC" became standard, which meant everyone had a CD read only drive and a sound card of some sort. So a hobbyist or admin still had to have a good working knowledge of the bare metal functioning of the system in order to load drivers and not have memory conflicts. Knowing your way around the first MB of memory was still incredibly important, as was knowing how to optimize them and sort out conflicts. So even gaming was a different beast as you likely built your rig yourself. Which brings up a few favorite games from that era: The Myst series, Creatures series, Mech Warrior and something called Descent.

It's also when I first got a hold of something called "slackware" from Walnut Creek Software, circa 1994. Also, "memory doubler" drivers.

Worst memory was when I got home after buying a 4MB stick of memory for the fancy Cyrix 586 VLB (vesa local bus) rig I'd built. That 4MB was *expensive*. And then...I learned that with a 32-bit CPU, 32-pin memory had to be installed in sets of four, until bigger (72 pin) sticks were invented that were installed in pairs. It was months before I saved up enough to buy the others.

Much as I love reminiscing, it was also incredibly frustrating as the standards were always in flux & there was no guarantee anything would work. Games usually crashed several times an hour, so you learned to save often.

Edenthiel, that totally counts. You're a geekess of a certain age, one might say.

I spent my early adolescence in the 1990s, so the first computer I honestly remember using religiously was our Windows 98. Obviously not HELLA old, but still pretty old concerning today's PCs.

My first acquaintance with computers came in the late 1980s when I spent some time with a BBC Master 128 at my workplace. This led to a few months infatuation with programming in BBC BASIC and a fleeting introduction to Assembly Language on the 6502 processor. Shortly after this the Master 128 was replaced by an Archimedes machine which I just couldn't be bothered with for some reason.

Then in the late 1990s I discovered the internet, which I interacted with in public libraries until a couple of years ago I acquired my first PC. At that point I knew virtually nothing about the whole scene - I didn't know what a browser was, and stuff like copying and pasting was a total mystery to me.

Since then, I've acquired two desktop machines, five laptops, have got into Linux as well, and have generally been making up for lost time.

Lol, this probably counts as a 'Special Interest' come to think of it.

Haven't done that but they did have TN 3270 at the first job i had and i had to create macros for the engineers to use. Though i have experienced running out of memory after writing a few lines of code on the Vic 20.

Oh, IRQ. Haven't had that headache in years



Dont forget about MSDos 6.2 that added Stacker file compression that MS were sued for, they removed it in 6.21, then added it back in 6.22.

That and writing Autoexec.bat and Config.sys to customise bootdisks with menus with Choice and creating custom Win, system and protocol ini-files to dynamically load drivers like the 3Com 3C509, 3C589D or NE2000 so you could access the network and run GHOST to load an prebuilt Windows image onto the harddrive.

Lots of monkeying around those days just to get the stuff onto a 1.44 MB disk, had to create a ramdrive and unpack stuff there to decrease the file size on the disk

My first computer was a BSR 486sx 20 mhz in a tower case. Windows 3.1 and DOS 5.0.
I later upgraded to a 133 mhz 486 DX.
The 1990s were the "Golden Age" of computer shows and building your own machines.
Them were the days.....

I miss those shows. They were a mix of enthusiasts just mulling about talking, vendors trying to push the latest & greatest and dump their old wares, and people buying systems and parts because..well, that's where you could get them without having to deal with mail order. Oh, and table after table of bins of shareware on 5-1/4" disks...