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Follow-Up: My Dad's 1st Computer
(lemmy.world)
So my last post, my dad found his 3rd computer... he finally found his first computer!
Bonus: Back of the receipt has some additional purchases: https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/8ed5e2cb-3a29-4a8d-9f0f-347cc41771f2.jpeg
oh yeah... 89/90... I remember, I wanted the 386 because 32bits and protected mode (windows 386 enhanced mode for the win!) so I bought something like your father but a 386/1MB/40MB and I upgraded to a VGA card and a 14" multisync VGA monitor (1024x768, at the time it was incredible). Cost of all this? $4000...
Saw that 45/HR labor charge (I work in IT and my going rate [for the company, not my pay] is a little above that. No wonder he said he'd do it himself, at those rates
oh I did everything myself too, bought all parts and assemble everything, always funny to plug everything, LED, turbo button, HDD led, etc.
What was the 'scariest' thing to do at the time? Like, before slipping into that sweet sweet AM5 chip with easy placement and locking, putting in the CPU and thermal pasting scared me and all my friends.
The scariest part was inserting properly all the ISA cards, some were pretty hard to put and remove. 386 CPU was soldered on the MB, we cannot replace it :-/
But it was the same in 1990 that in 2023, install spacers on motherboard, screws, PSU with AT plug, insert all ISA cards, and wire all the small wires for led/button, IDE cable, floppy cable, power cable, etc, it was a nest inside :)
Then you powered on (a big red switch on the side that made a big CLUNK) and pray everything work!
After that it was configuring your CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT to load driver etc. Playing with XMS, EMM386, HMA, to gain the smallest kilobyte you can from the first 640K, else some games weren't working.