Posted on November 10th, 2008 by Stuart Turton

My PC history: A road to ruin

Microsoft has just retired Windows 3.1, a move which got me thinking about my own computing history, and how I ended up with the monstrous desktop machine that now glares at me from the corner of my bedroom.

My first PC was a Carrera Swift, which was just slightly prettier than a sledgehammer. It had a 14in monitor, a hard drive so small I might as well have welded a floppy disk to the motherboard, no soundcard, CD drive or graphics chip, and I adored it. This will seem daft, but every computer I’ve ever owned had its own character. It’s own quirks and foibles that ensured it was more of a pet than a work machine. The Swift’s foible was that it was rubbish. Completely and utterly rubbish.

The 4Mb of memory and 25Mhz processor were just enough to make an intruiging slideshow of Doom 2, though thankfully the “turbo” button on the front could knock the processor up to a blistering 33Mhz, and then we were cooking on gas. Not a lot of gas admittedly, but enough to be eating toast in under an hour.

In order to get anything running, whether that was Doom, Word Perfect, or anything else I had to edit the config.sys and autoexec.exe files – plucking out drivers and commands that soaked up that valuable 2k which was the dividing line between a program springing into life, and the odious “not enough conventional memory” refrain which so blighted my early PC days. God I loved that machine. It was complicated, difficult to handle, moody and yet, when it all clicked, fantastic. It’s that girlfriend. The one you know you’re best shot of, and yet the one with whom the highs are so much higher because the lows feel like flooded graves.

It was on the Swift I first saw Windows 3.1. It wasn’t even preinstalled. It came on a seperate batch of floppy disks when I got the computer and I really didn’t get it. I remember being baffled by the idea of having to start DOS, start Windows, and then run the program. Why couldn’t I just start Word through DOS, like I could Word Perfect? And it was pointless for games. Opening Windows took so much of the gold dust that was my 640kb of conventional memory, that there wasn’t enough left to open the game. Ridiculous.

So, I ignored it. A lot. And plodded along with DOS quite happily until I upgraded. To an Apricot MS540. My supermodel girlfriend. Scarlet Johansson has less curves than that Apricot case, and the 120Mhz Pentium processor that powered it was essentially bottled geek sex. There was 128MB RAM, a hard disk big enough to hold the entire sum of human experience, a sound card, a 16in monitor and … well, it was phenomenal. And to this day my favourite machine. There was just one niggle, one flaw on her beautiful face, one bogey in the perfect nose, one peice of brocoli between the gleaming teeth – Windows 95. I hated it… really hated it. DOS was my environment. I was happy there, and suddenly Windows 95 was inflicted on me. DOS was relegated to a little icon in the menus – and it was a trimmed down version at that. None of my games worked properly, and the damn thing was so needy. Demanding my attention every five minutes with a stupid pop-up, or error message. I couldn’t leave it alone for fear it would drown itself in the bath while I was absent. So there it was, my Apricot. My needy, supermodel Apricot. Myself and Windows 95 did eventually come to terms, much as you have to with the chav brother of your partner, but there was never much love there.

Past that was a succession of self-builds. Processors offering 5% more whoosh, and RAM offering 20% more wow. The machines got bigger, faster, stronger, and increasingly hollow. Windows 98 arrived, ME, XP and Vista and while they grew on me, that place in my brain where I kept all the computer happy emptied out. And now I have a monster in the corner of my bedroom. A machine that made Crysis whimper, and slapped around Far Cry 2 for good measure. It really is a rampaging bull of angry technology that makes a china shop of whatever dares get in its way.

I feel absolutely nothing for it. It’s just a machine. It’s got Vista on it. It’s just an operating system. I miss my Swift. I miss my Apricot. I miss the days when technology wasn’t just an endless slog of incremental upgrades and carefully-crafted soundbites. I really need somebody to make technology exciting again, but I wonder if anybody can.

Tags: APricot, Calibra, pc, Windows

Posted in: Rant

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27 Responses to “ My PC history: A road to ruin ”

ian Says:
November 10th, 2008 at 3:37 pm
I understand completely. I started off with a 25Mhz 386, and my pride and joy was my 486 DX2 66. Now THAT ran doom. I thought my affection for my computers had long gone, and it had – until earlier this year when i bought my first mac. All of the joy associated with my first PCs returned, discovering new software that i’d never heard of before, learning how to use a new system and all its little quirks and hacks. I now have a very personal bond with my macbook pro, my first apple. No doubt by the time i’m on my 5th apple the hollow dissatisfaction will have returned, and maybe then i’ll have to find something else, but until that day i’m loving the rediscovered joy I once had for all things computer.
Paul B Says:
November 10th, 2008 at 3:41 pm
Awww, I think you need a big hug Stuart, and it might be worth giving OS X a go.

I remember my first computer – also a 120Mhz pentium running Windows 95 – goodness it was slow. So after that I built my own – with an AMD Duron 700Mhz processor running XP. And then followed a P4 3.06GHZ before I turned to the dark side and bought a mac mini.

Which I’ve been happy with ever since. Well not the same mac mini there have been upgrades since then – but I’m one of those who love OS X and don’t have a bad word to say against it.

Of course, I also have a PC for games
thatsjustme Says:
November 10th, 2008 at 5:18 pm
> I miss the days when technology wasn’t just an endless slog of incremental upgrades and carefully-crafted soundbites. I really need somebody to make technology exciting again, but I wonder if anybody can.

ever tried linux?
Stuart Turton Says:
November 10th, 2008 at 5:26 pm
Thanks for the sympathy folks I’ve never tried Mac OSX for long, though I’m aching to play with Scrivener for an extended time.

I’ve tried various incarnations of Linux, though, and generally quite enjoyed playing with them – though there’s usually something that gets in the way of me taking up with the distros full time. Still as a hobby OS, they’re great fun. Mind you, that’s really only part of the problem, for me.

It just seems that back in the day, technology was shifting beneath our feet every year – the Pentium processor, the Athlon, etc. These things completely changed the way I viewed, and used, my PC. These days we seem to have settled into a grind.

Mind you, I’ve recently become overly excited by Drop Box and Live Mesh – so maybe there’s hope, yet.
Daniel Says:
November 10th, 2008 at 8:06 pm
The best gaming experience (in terms of addictiveness) was Archimedes Elite on my old Acorn 3000. The graphics on modern games are very, very, good, but they are in many cases ditching playability for graphics and realism. I tried a modern combat flight sim a few years ago, and found myself yearing for Chocks Away and Mig 29, the most fun you can have on a PC! I dont want to fly over pretty terrain for 5hrs then get shot down because I haven’t set the radar to the correct mode etc… I stil keep trying, and failing, to emulate the A3000 on my PC
Stuart Turton Says:
November 11th, 2008 at 7:22 am
@Daniel. I know where you’re coming from mate. The first game I ever got going was Chuck Yeager’s Air Combat – grey polygon shoots brown polygon down, and watches it crash into the big green polygon below. Yet, strangely, I never could get into another flight sim after that.

Brilliant game.
Anon Coward Says:
November 11th, 2008 at 10:33 am
BBC Micro!! With the tapes!!! Write your own games!!!
Jon Gray Says:
November 11th, 2008 at 11:05 am
My first IBM PC was an Amstrad 286, 16MHz (Wing Commander flew on it!), 1MB ram, 20MB hdd, VGA graphics (256 colours 320×200! – sure beat CGA) and an Adlib soundcard.
I remember later (when i had a 25MHz 486) my dad spent £400 on a 2x speed SCSI CD-ROM (hiding the bill from my mum) which used caddies and was super fast at the time.
gordon Says:
November 11th, 2008 at 2:40 pm
Loved the article- reminded me of my first Dell 386/25mhz with 2MB of Ram and a 80mb hard drive. I still remember writing new batch files so I could load my precious games. Also, some less fond memories of the home-built pc that started smoking when I put the new power supply in wrong.

Went over to the dark side several years ago, just got my third apple two weeks ago. Great computer but no challenge to it.
technogeist Says:
November 11th, 2008 at 9:57 pm
My first computer was a modded ZX81 with a full travel keyboard. Not to mention the obligitary crashprone 16K Ram-pack. It served me well. But only few months later, after a school trip to London, I was determined to get an Atari 800. Although I admired the BBC Model B it didn’t have the sexy graphics or audio of the Ataris. The price seemed far too high for a machine that had about as much appeal as a teacher’s sense of humour.

I had several other machines upto 1988, including the Atari ST.

My first experience of IBM-compats was the Atari Portfolio (yes I was an Atari fanboy back then) It was DOS 2.11, although I can’t recall it being Microsoft DOS. Nice little handheld all the same. Shareware was all the rage back then, and viruses.

Around the same period, had an Acorn A3000 and Panasonic 1100FD Laptop (also rebadged & sold by Radio Shack) The NiCad Battery was lousy (~75mins) but I got absolutely loads of coding done on it. I had an Apple PowerMac for a few years, but the screwy nature of the MacOS put me off writing software for it.

Started building my own PCs in late ‘98, never looked back. As much as I detest MSFT at the moment. They have made computing popular, along with the stupendously cheap and powerful hardware it runs on.

It’s a real shame that great hardware advances are being constantly throttled with obese software, which makes it appear as if it’s running on hardware that’s due for retirement.
Nick Says:
November 12th, 2008 at 10:06 am
My favourite PC was an Amstrad, complete with green screen and floppy disk. I wrote my first book on that lovely machine in the corner of my parent’s attic.

For once I won’t bash Vista. The nostaligia is overwhelming. However these days I can print to pdf natively, use three screens, run an entire other computer within ram to host locally a massively database of all my characters, plot and off the wall inventions. I’ve six mail accounts, collaborating in real time with disparate parties over gmail, about 2tb of storage….some thigns are slower, some more annoying, but we’ve come a very long way since then.

I still miss the green though.
technogeist Says:
November 12th, 2008 at 6:03 pm
Oh, I forgot to mention that I stumbled upon a small booklet on Windows 3 when I was searching through some old magazines. It’s by Jon Honeyball no less, from his days with Computer Shopper
mat Says:
November 13th, 2008 at 8:46 am
If you want technology to be exciting again then quite simply install Linux.

I was raly excited about all things computery through my Speccy, Atari ST and finally Amiga. Then I bought a PC. For a while it was fun but Microsoft took the fun away from computing for me. I like to (at least) feel like I’m closer to the metal. So about 6 years ago I thought I’d give Linux a try and I’ve never looked back. It’s how ‘kids’ should be introduced to computers. Give them a compiler out of the box (how are kids going to get hooked on programming with a microsoft OS?).

I guess to relate to your issues of having to tweak DOS in order to get games working – you get that in Linux too! And this no slant on Linux (as I obviosuly love it) but I actually find it fun to try an get games running in WINE! I then get tired of the game pretty quickly though, once it’s working.

Amen.
Dave K Says:
November 13th, 2008 at 8:51 am
A good article, but there’s a couple of flaws in it. Enabling the Turbo simply made your computer run at the normal 25MHz speed, not 33MHz. Disabling it however underclocked your CPU to a lower level to allow for much older DOS programs (which had been coded with a specific speed of CPU in mind) to run. It was therefore a compatability feature for older programs, not a way of overclocking the CPU to faster speeds.

Also, you probably mean “autoexec.bat” rather than “autoexec.exe”. Oh, and the system will have had a graphics chip, otherwise that 14″ monitor wouldn’t have displayed much!

Still! brings back memories of my first PC – a 386 DX33. Had a 512k graphics card and 4MB of RAM. We doubled the RAM to 8MB for a nice and cheap £100. Unlike you however, when we finally replaced it with a P166 running Win95, I quite liked Windows. For games, sure you used to quit out of it and into DOS a fair bit, but it did make most other tasks a damn sight easier than messing on with Program Manager and the frankly awful File Manager.

As for memory, are you SURE it had 128MB? That was a /HUGE/ amount of RAM back then. The average PC came with 8-16MB and a high-end PC would have come with 32MB. Several years later, I still saw Pentium 600s coming with only 64MB of RAM.
Bob Massey Says:
November 13th, 2008 at 9:46 am
Ah the good old days… what you omitted to mention Stuart was the horrendous cost of early adoption.
After early dalliances with a 48K Sinclair Spectrum my first real PCs were ex-office jobs, first an IBM XT with a 4mb hard drive, then an Apricot XEN with (I think) about 40Mb of hard drive.
Then the early adoption kicked in and I spent about two grand on a Gatweway2000 486DX266… ah those heady days, a 450Mb hard drive which I expected I would never fill and a 486 processor that ran faster than the early pentiums.
Several generations of self build later I now have a PC with the computing power of Rwanda, but my typing speed hasn’t increased significantly, and I’m still stuck on chapter three of my novel!
Richard Melville Says:
November 13th, 2008 at 12:06 pm
I could be wrong but was there a 16 inch monitor; 14, 15 ,17 …
technogeist Says:
November 13th, 2008 at 12:59 pm
Mat.
Try Ubuntu Studio it’s got the real-time kernel and it’s running great on my laptop. (Pentium M 1.7GHz 512MB).

When starting up firefox, it doesn’t consume more than 55% of the processor. The UI is as minimal as can be. Although you can turn on the effects if you like that sort of thing.

This is my idea of what an OS should be. Zero gimmicks, clean and responsive. Spend your time adding what you need, rather than removing what you don’t.
Seph Says:
November 13th, 2008 at 3:32 pm
Install Ubuntu
BacchusHedonist Says:
November 18th, 2008 at 7:00 pm
GREAT article Mr T.

My eyes are dewey with nostalgia and I feel your pain.
Unfortunately I think it’s an age thing. Curses!!!!
I’m sure the new tech is as exciting for the youngsters as it was for us ‘back in the day’.
Just like music, fashion etc.

Well thats what we’re lead to believe isn’t it but goddamitt it WAS better back then!!!!!
I’ll never forget the excitement of huddling round the ZX81 with my mates waiting the 20mins for Flight Simulator to load and then someone would breath on the 16K RAM pack and the machine would reset! Guilty party would get a good slapping and reload would recommence!! Yet we’d all sit there excitedly waiting to get a go stabbing our fingers on the keyboard that would of course not register our teenage digits!!!
Or the excitement of waiting for a new Jeff Minter release..
Or the excitement of getting the VIC-20 Programmers guide and learning how to PEEK and POKE all those little hidden registers!

And I think that in essence was the difference – back ‘in the day’, the tech was S I M P L E. And you could be a master of it all. You knew everything about it all and could roll up your sleeves and dive in.

Whereas now, as each successive generation of OS removes us further and further from the bare metal it becomes more and more soulless. And a less fullfilling experience as a result.

Anyone agree???

Dave.
technogeist Says:
November 23rd, 2008 at 7:06 pm
I agree with you BacchusHedonist, that the machines are more soulless.
But I guess, that’s the price you have to pay for machines that are linked to public networks.

I doubt many PCs, that are dependent on rewriteable storage could survive todays world without all the protection of kernel modes & security boundaries provided by the OS.
Not a problem for machines that have their OS in ROM (like we had 25 yrs ago).
The CPUs we used back then were running at roughly the same speed as the ROMs.
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