Computer Chronicles: Home PCs (1990)

[@billn.1318]

Back in 1994 my dad used to take me to an electronics shop to check out the latest gadgets - and computers. I was in awe seeing computers for the first time (I emigrated from Asia to US as a child). I asked my dad if he can get us a computer. He told me we cant afford that right now and that I can just use the computers at school. We finally had one in 1997. It was a hand me down PC. Years later I ended up opening my own successful business. I surprised my dad a computer. He opened it and it was a machine from 1994. He laughed and asked if I stopped at goodwill to get this? I told him “no, this was the same PC I asked in 94 if we can buy this but we didn’t have the money”. He looked at me and he said “well, where we going to put this? Does it even turn on?”. We basically took an hour and used the machine only to realize it was archaic. It brought me and my dad closer as I got to find out what happened back in 1994. He told me that was about the time him and my mom were getting a divorce, his company went bankrupt and he worked as a janitor at a cruise Ship to make ends meet. He told me that mom. Speculated he was cheating on her because he lied about going to “work” at a company for days only to know he was heading for several days out to sea.. as a janitor.

[@AshtonCoolman]

I miss the exhilarating feeling I got when my parents would take me to a store that had computers on display. I had an 8Mhz XT and begged my father for an upgrade. Those were the good 'ole days.

[@JanuszKrysztofiak]

It depends on how to look at that. Computers got obsolete very quickly in those days. I remember reading minimum and recommended specs of games with dread only a year or two after buying a new machine.

[@jackilynpyzocha662]

Radio Shack, Sears and Service Merchandise!

[@maxxdahl6062]

@@JanuszKrysztofiak Obsolete very quick? The c64 lasted 10+ years.

[@jackilynpyzocha662]

Radio Shack was my "Technology Store"(their tagline!)

[@NortelGeek]

I got my first system in 1994, it had a 540MB hard drive, 4MB of ram, and a 77MHz Cyrix 486 DX processor. Came with Windows 3.1, a SoundBlaster 16 card, and a 9600 baud modem for jumping on bulletin boards and eventually AOL 2.5 for Windows.

[@CanuckGod]

Got mine the same year at age 16, but it wasn't quite as nice, storage-wise. Same RAM, but 200 MB HD, powered by an IBM SLC/2 66MHz. It did come with a CD-ROM drive, though, which was nice, and I believe had a 14.4K modem, though living out in the country at the time, I didn't have the chance to test that out much - did come in handy though a couple years later when I moved to Winnipeg for university, as the Internet was just getting rolling at the time.

[@Daehawk]

My wife got me my first system in 1994 also. A AST Advantage 486sx33 with 4 megs ram, 2400 baud modem, 512k onboard video, 210 meg hdd. By Christmas that year she'd gotten me 4 more megs ram at $250, a 28.8 modem at $250, a Sound Blaster 16 , and games. In a few months more I had a 4 meg video card and a 4 meg monster 3dfx video card, 850 meg hdd. And a year later upgraded to a 486dx4-100. Times for upgrades never stopped. I miss you honey. See you again one day my love.

[@jackilynpyzocha662]

A Tandy(Radio Shack) 286 with 20 mb hard drive, a 3 1/2" floppy drive, a mouse, keyboard, monitor, printer, software(additional). DOS, Desk Mate and Windows 3.1!

[@NortelGeek]

@@Daehawk I'm sorry you lost her. I'm sure she was your world, and I cannot imagine the heartbreak. I believe you will indeed see her again one day. Mine was also an AST, it was the Advantage Adventure 6066D. It came with a JP-1000 printer, which was a RadioShack special. It never worked quite right, either.

[@MrCcd123]

I just love the style of tv from the 80s and 90s

[@squaretrianglez]

Old is truly gold in computers. Dos days were interesting

[@hakemon]

When she cut out that tiny part of the audio she recorded on that LC Mac, I swear I saw an insufficient memory prompt.

[@ian_b]

You did.

[@ryanpascual9598]

You do not have enough memory to make this operation. Would you like to continue anyway?

[@ACellPhone352]

I must be really old, back in 92, our 1st home pc was a 386DX, 40MHz, 120MB hdd, vesa local bus 1MB ram, 4MB of RAM. i loved that thing, i had LOTS and LOTS of games from BBS under a batch file menu system,

[@waynehearst317]

dialling up those BBS boards on a 300BAUD Hayes Compatible modem? I was a few years ahead of you on a Commodore 64...but yep. Good time when you can read the text faster than it loaded on your screen.

[@hopydaddy]

@@waynehearst317 , a few years earlier still in 1982, I played on Commodore Vic-20 with 5K of RAM and cassette tape storage and TV as monitor. I didn't even have a printer back then because I couldn't afford one...

[@jackilynpyzocha662]

Tandy 1000 RLX 20 meg hard disk drive, 3 1/2" floppy drive, dot matrix printer, Tandy's own monitor, keyboard, mouse. Desk Mate(an early graphical user interface). I loved it!

[@maynnemillares]

Home computer, that will never catch on. What a waste of money, my typewriter still works.

[@MrSilverizer]

2:45 "Low cost Macintosh computers from Apple".... hahaha

[@MrSilverizer]

Adam M Couldn't agree more

[@OldAussieAds]

Up until 1990, Macs were almost at workstation pricing (Mac II onwards) and weren't exactly "home computing" prices. The Mac LC (which literally stood for Low Cost) and Classic represented a huge reduction in price. Compared to the Macs before it (not computers from other manufacturers) these were the low cost Macs.

[@christineayres5339]

Yeah only $4500 lol

[@maxxdahl6062]

@@OldAussieAds All of Apples pricing was almost at workstation like levels. When you can get much cheaper, and better hardware on commodore, IBM, Atari, etc.

[@RRaccoon99]

My first PC was a 2005 Compaq. ATI Athlon X2 with a Nvidia SE 6150. 2GB and 250 GB Hard drive. It has withstood the test of time and it's still working great today.

[@cubematrixstudio7605]

I lived the entire computer birth era, built my first home computer in 1979. I've never once noticed nor experienced any "dead home computer market" era... Quite to the contrary.

[@Barrymccockiner41]

CubeMatrix Studio Thank you.

[@MasterKoala777]

Exactly. I found that odd, too. Almost like clickbait. Home computers went from strength to strength in the 1980s.

[@Daehawk]

I remember Sears selling PCs and addons. I bought a mouse and a Epson printer in the mid 1990s. I laughed at the news bit when she said Apple was trying to shake themselves of the image of high priced computers. LOL. And that game..Its BIG. It takes 3 megs of space and 512k memory. I say its huge :)

[@captainkeyboard1007]

Hooray! As a microcomputer fan and lover, as well as keyboard specialist, this show was made right up my niche just for me!🖥💻

[@danielsantana540]

This is all Great Stuff. this Show computer Chronicles may be one of the Greatest Tv shows in the history of Television

[@theedrstrangelove]

That was the mistake IBM and others made. They stripped out some features and tried to double their market share by selling business class and home computers. Besides, calling it the PCjr did not help. My father bought us a Tandy 1000HX for Christmas of 1987. Neither my mother nor sister used it very much, so I took it back to Patrick AFB and then it came with me to Osan AB, Korea and back to Florida at Tyndall AFB. I used that thing for so many off duty college courses, learned to write code, added the max memory, got a hdd from a third party company, had an acoustical modem to call up bbs and even had someone make a custom cable so I could print letter quality papers on an okidata daisy wheel printer. Plus the games, games, games. Anyone ever use the first Falcon flight simulator?

[@Barrymccockiner41]

You mean I can get a computer that can fit in my trunk and that has all the software preloaded onto the hard file??? Where can I buy this???

[@JaredConnell]

Only $1999 for the color hard file model!

[@paulgascoigne5343]

Mean streets 2033! Just imagine in the no less than 16 years time we'll be receiving faxes in our cars! Kid today "what's a fax?"

[@BollingHolt]

Wow. In 1990, I was using a Color Computer 2, dialing BBSes for the first time at 300 baud, getting ready to receive my grandfather's Amstrad PC1512DD as a hand-me-down as he was about to GET one of the Tandy 1000 TL series machines. The early 90s were, in my mind, the last "golden ages" of computing, before the market shifted to target the "dumb masses" instead of the computer-savvy audience, but hey, that's just how business works. At least retro-computing and BBSes and such are still around and relatively sheltered from the social media, meme-posting masses!

[@jkb81]

"Preinstalled?" "No it's not." Magnavox. It's very smart.

[@judewestburner]

In this time period I had an Amiga 500 with a 52mb hard drive which was amazing, even with business apps, but have to say I became awaken to the academic and business side of computers when I got a 486DX2/80 in 1995

[@11679MRT]

Imagine going back in time and telling these guys that in 30 years people will be watching this program on a computer that fits in your hand.

[@EliasGabriel-c8i]

This video is pure gold !

[@mojifilmovi1]

There's no more floppy to copy. :)

[@christineayres5339]

I love how Skip looks like Clark Kent lmao

[@AshtonCoolman]

The PS/1 had a 286 processor in 1990? The 286 originally came out in 1982 and the 486 showed up in '89. I would have imagined IBM would have started users off with a 386 at least but damn...

[@CanuckGod]

There were more expensive PS/1s a year or two later that did start with a base 386, then 486, but my dad got the first model which was indeed a 286, though it did come with 1 MB RAM and a 30 MB HD, which to 12-year-old me seemed fast at the time. Fast forward 28 years later, my main PC has 32,000 times the RAM, and over 660,000 times the storage (about 20 TB)...

[@joojoojeejee6058]

Even 8086-based PCs were still being sold in 1990. As a matter of fact my first PC was a cheap 8086 clone in 1990. 286s were more expensive. 386 and 486 way more expensive. A 486 could cost as much as a car back in those days.

[@richardfeynman5560]

The 64K limit of the C64, oh so primitive looking in those days of 1MB PCs... Somebody once said that 640KB are all you will ever need... Fascinating to see how times are changig. I bought such an IBM XT clunker back in 1987. It had 640KB of RAM, a 20MB Harddisk drive and an 8Mhz 8088 processor with a "Turbo"-switch on it's front to slow it down to 4,77Mhz for some games that were running to fast(!!) at 8Mhz. Only a few years later this machine was horribly outdated, in 1993 I chose to buy a new Laptop with a 33Mhz processor, 200MB Harddisk drive, it ran Windows 3.1. But as a cost cutting measure I chose one with a monochrome display. All in all this machine still wasn't all that exciting. But things changed much more rapidly back then. Today in 2021 you can still work with a 2011 computer, it will run even Windows10 and all the important software, you can use the Internet, watch KZbin etc. In 2000 you could do really nothing substantial with a PC from 1990...

[@thesteelrodent1796]

PCs have reached a point where the continuos incremental speed increase no longer makes much of a difference. Most the software on the market can't fully utilize the current processors or graphics cards, and the few programs that push the machines to their limits are generally poorly written and lack any kind of optimization. If you never play the very latest games, and don't use the machine for 3D graphics or video processing, you can happily go on with a 10-20 year old computer and still have more than plenty power. As hardware prices continue to skyrocket for no justifiable reason it's more likely that we'll see people hang on to their hardware longer and longer as it becomes less and less realistic for the average user to be able to afford to upgrade

[@criskity]

My first computer was a Commodore PET with a whopping 16K of RAM.

[@gregorymalchuk272]

@Zion Thomas-Harmon What programming languages did you get started on?

[@dvddmc]

Good God we have come along way since then! Used to have a Tandy 1000 SX

[@678Gopi]

Wow that display spectacular.......

[@JB1994]

Damn. A CD-ROM bumped the price up $500.

[@jackilynpyzocha662]

I used a (for a brief period) laptop as a student at Elms College in the 1990s; as a commuter.

[@michaeld4090]

Can you put windows 10 on this computer ? If so, how much does this PC cost so I can buy it?

[@CraigsChannel2]

Doesn't surprise me he push the 1999.00 model out there. I love watching these old computer history TV shows

[@FurbyGender]

The first computer I ever used was an Apple II but, the first computer I ever owned was a Gateway Desktop that had Intel 266MHz Pentium II Processor with 512k cache, 128MB SDRAM and an 8MB video card. Now, I have a Dell Inspiron 15 laptop with Intel Pentium Dual Core processor 1.9 GHz (2 MB Cache), 4 GB DDR3 RAM and 500 GB 5400 rpm Hard Drive. Sure there are other laptops that are more expensive and have much more ram but, this is all I need and it does everything I want it to. It has 2, 2.0 USB ports and 2, 3.0 USB ports, a built in CD/DVD drive and an HDMI port. I'm sure that years down the road I will look back at what I have and laugh. I know that computers are going to continue to get faster and better and possibly more expensive.

[@leshpar]

I had an IBM PS/2 when I was a kid. 50 Mhz 486 dx2 processor with a 500 MB HDD. Good times.

[@kerenton5897]

That's a good sounding mic actually 22:00

[@Barrymccockiner41]

Hi

[@danielsantana540]

Macintosh IISI was released 10 15 1990 it's priced was 2999 us Dollars and was discontinued by march 15 1993

[@avihooves1801]

Why would you need a PC? We have a powerful mainframe at the office.

[@richardsequeirateixeira]

Windows and the Macintosh dramatically changed the home market. Home PC users obviously want a computer that is compatible with the same software that they use at work. Imagine doing work today only to find that your computer at home is largely incompatible with what you have at work.

[@MasterKoala777]

Maria Gabriel pronounced her last name almost normally in this episode 28:18.

[@lastofusclips5291]

lol so i'm not the only one who noticed that she pronounces her name funny

[@sologals361]

The Amiga,St,Spectrum,C64,CPC were still very popular in 1990 and a couple years on.

[@joojoojeejee6058]

No they were not in the USA, except the C64. I don't think Spectrum and Amstrad were ever even sold in the US, and also Amiga and ST were quite unsuccessful.

[@AmzitheSoldier]

I'm so glad they kept trying the home computer market after they failed in the 80's!

[@JeSsSe66]

16:43 It's great that they offered the option of being able to rice your system. The others didn't even mention anything about ricing. What's the point in buying a computer if it doesn't even offer ricing capabilities? Plebs

[@mrgraff42]

I learned a lot about DOS and QBASIC on that PS/1.

[@christineayres5339]

Online banking lol i only first used online banking in 2006 thats how long in the UK it took for the Banks to roll it out ha ha

[@michaeld4090]

2 MB RAM was considered a luxury. Now 62 GB is budget.

[@christineayres5339]

And if you have an Mac Pro you can have like 100 TB of memory lol

[@whattheheck1000]

My grandfather had an Aptiva around the late 1990s and early 2000s. I played on it sometimes. It was a later model with Windows 98. January 31, 2014 7:23 pm

[@videotape2959]

If you still have your IBM Aptivas then imaging the hard drives would be a seriously good idea.

[@beakt]

The 386 required 170 chips? I didn't remember seeing so many.

[@lastofusclips5291]

26:30 i wish these reviews were longer. this segment seemed more like an advertisement than a review. i expect more from an 'expert' paid to make that segment.

[@andrew41980]

it comes in a very handy sized box that will fit in most automobile trunks. lol. still laughing

[@IdealIdeas100]

we had older computers but in 1995 we got a windows 95 computer. I was 5 years old, my first game on the system was Warcraft Orcs and Humans. I think it had 20GB of space.

[@blacbraun]

20gb in 1995 would have cost you about $10, 000. More like 500mb hard drive.

[@ZoruaZorroark]

forgot what we had for our family computer back in 1990, but my first computer that was truly mine had a pentium 2 233mhz cpu, 512mb ram, 40gb hdd, and a really crappy ati card, with the os being windows xp. the first one i built myself had a fx8320, asus sabertooth 990fx rev2, 8gb ram, 1tb hdd (salvaged), 500gb hdd, sapphire radeon hd 5750 (salvaged), and a zalman server case my boss just gave me.

[@MrGencyExit64]

Jeebus... 512 MiB of RAM in a P2 233? I built a P2 233 in 1997 with 64 MiB of RAM and that was the absolute best thing money could buy. A few years later I built a Xeon 450 server and it only had 256 MiB of RAM. You were balling.

[@ZoruaZorroark]

ok, i may have been thinking of the ram i had in the core 2 duo e6200 rig i had, but at least i pay a bit more attention to what i got now in my rig.

[@glitchysoup6322]

1:20 "It is federal offence to copy software" Šūre. *Looks at free and open source GNU/Linux distro, from which I am watching this video*

[@ryanpascual9598]

*Looks at pop'n music Fantasia machine* "Warning: THIS GAME IS FOR USE IN JAPAN ONLY. THE COPYRIGHTED MUSIC/CHARACTERS/ARTWORK ARE SEPARATELY OWNED BY THE AUTHORS. VIOLATORS ARE SUBJECT TO SEVERE PROSECUTION UNLESS SPECIALLY AUTHORIZED BY KONAMI GROUP."

[@l27tester]

Alexa, there is a COVID-19 pandemic and I must stay at home, boot my PS-1

[@HuggieBear39]

WOW a PC in the home! That will never catch on. No one will ever need more than one PC in the home if they get one at all. 😊😊

[@thesteelrodent1796]

I went to school in the 90s and most my friends had the only computer in their home, and mostly only to play games on. When we had to do projects and reports for school we'd do in the school's computer room and would sit there till 11 pm some days, when we had to leave to catch the last bus home. It of course depended on what people did for work, but because many still worked with mainframe systems they couldn't take work home to do on the computer, so it didn't make sense to buy one

[@harasen_haras5]

Just hearing the words "How to use a mouse" forms a grin on my face. Of course, it's practical information. Especially for somebody who had never used one in their life. It's just much different from how I learned about it. I first used a mouse when I was 2, and my parents showed me at age 3 what button to use on it. (Left click)

[@GEORGE-jf2vz]

You can tell the first guy is a salesman. He called a hard disk a hard file.

[@drivecfl]

You can get this beautiful Mac for $3,799 or this beautiful Yugp vehicle. Both very powerful machines.

[@nilecitypatrik]

I love the future!

[@HerecomestheCalavera]

Think if you spent that much on a PC today, you could have one badass machine!

[@JRowe95]

Back in the 90's that was on the low price range for a computer, times where a lot different back then.

[@mcswabin207]

So cringy. IBM guy said "preloaded on the hard file." I am amazed the PC didn't die and I can still use a computer right now

[@jackilynpyzocha662]

I started with a TI 99 4A, 16K Color, computer software: games, educational and home and business use. It could be expanded. And it's own monitor, if you don't want to use a color tv, instead.

[@TNeulaender]

As many of the commenters: I feel old :(. My first computers weren't even C64 or 386dx/486dx. My first was an Amiga 600 :). Additionally an Amiga 500 came a little bit later. It was a nice time full of exploration because it hadn't a manual. Just a bunch of cables, periphery and a shitload of floppies.

[@Karma20XX]

Is there a Seymour Butz here? Seymour Butz?

[@mrhellotherehowareu1384]

I think the home computer market really took off due to games not because of software like word processing or spreadsheets. When I got my computer I was like what games can I play on it? Then after that it was like oh I can write my school report on it or whatnot.

[@jacobhn2]

When you record these old video tapes, I think you'll get better recording if you play it on an old TV and record the image with a modern camcorder, much information is lost when you go through a usb video adapter.

[@teltri]

I wonder how will we laugh at our computers in 30 years time :-)

[@hopydaddy]

The same way we are laughing at the computers of 30 years ago. Hahahahaha....

[@toddfromwork8931]

I think all this home computer stuff is hype. It'll never catch on. I'll stick to SNES thank you very much.

[@garyoptica]

The lesson for the early PC market was until it discovered why people were attracted to Macs, Atari's & Amiga's and port this under the pseudo brand name "multi-media" then operation home PC was put on hold.

[@mikeysaint4368]

You'll have to wait till next year for your SNES, unless you import one.

[@whattheheck1000]

Even if you import one you still have to wait until next month. Comment posted January 19, 2018 2:00 am

[@robertnussberger2028]

oh the horrors of screaming spoiled children... 12:00

[@DEEZENUTZ69]

lol I keep seeing this vide and the years keep changing from 90,93,95

[@roossi]

it's funny now that I'v been watching thees old videos, they don't seem to talk much about windows or playstation even those are most used thees days :D:D

[@m.ahdiatismanto8521]

My first computer is pc ibm at 80286 , ram 1MB , HDD 210MB , OS windows 3.1

[@albear972]

Spectacular VGA 640 X 480 photos! lol! ok better than the invisible computer I had in 1990 :|

[@games5522]

$2499 in 1990's dollars is $4,446 in today's US$. US$3,759 in 1990 is US$6,705 today.

[@spacemonkey9257]

I have a phone with an octo-core processor. Access to pretty much the entirety of recorded human knowledge, I watch youtube and porn. Yay the future!

[@_chipchip]

That's quite flawed logic considering they did have a range (and still do if you count lenovo) of home PC's. Aptiva's were very popular in the mid 90's.

[@dcjlove]

The Apple UI was so superior to the PC UIs shown. Amazing. Equally interesting is how little, really, has changed. More glitz but the fundamentals have not changed.

[@thedivinityman]

BTW 256 colors is 8 bit color, 11111111= 255 then add the 0 which is block that 8 bit becomes 256 colors

[@1355970]

anymore? yet!

[@seandra82]

Quate pohg of u may grmer

[@breabambi]

i would be born exactly 6 years later😢

[@livesimplyandhumbly]

10 million Commodore 64s sold. I had 5 of them... why ? It takes about 4 of them to have one that works. Most C64s fail after a few months.

[@bratseth2]

+AirScholar Really ? This is the first time i heard that. Almost everyone of the 24 kids in my class had a C64 back then and they all worked very well for many years. Never heard, that anybody of them had problems with his/her computer.

[@livesimplyandhumbly]

bratseth2 Now you know.

[@bratseth2]

AirScholar Haha, yeah i guess so.

[@livesimplyandhumbly]

bratseth2 One of the major reasons Commodore failed.

[@herauthon]

some have their first c64 - and still it works - dont use it to swat flies (it's in the manual, page 4 - never use the c64 for swatting flies - just after, warm booting is not putting it on fire..)

[@ekimregen3606]

These these "home computers" will never take off or become popular. What a ridiculous idea. Who would want to buy one of these things.

[@peterahjorter]

Oh crap, I have a PS1 laying outside in the rain...

[@edstar83]

Back when Commodore Amiga was King.

[@GamesbGames]

Love it!!!

[@bryonmiller4326]

Why would they talk about playstation in this video? It wasn't even made at the time this was filmed yet. At the time, Windows was understood to be the OS that would dominate, Mac was the minority & Amiga had an operating system that works very much like what we have today but this was a time when universal compatibility was still in its infancy, prior to the wide use of the internet that brought all those "machines" together in one universal language.

[@joojoojeejee6058]

IBM PS/1 had nothing to do with "PlayStation"... Windows wasn't really dominating in 1990, DOS was. However, Windows 3.0 got very popular soon after this episode was filmed. But even it didn't really "replace" DOS, as it worked on top of DOS. DOS and PC were the industry standards and the foundation of "universal compatibility". Mac was the exception to this and nobody used Amiga in the US.

[@rededwards3479]

Database Software Q&A....made HuGE money with that guy....wow....still have some in the bank.

[@LinuxGalore]

because before microcomputers there was only book shelf sized $20k minicomputers.

[@prototype21]

Back in those days people could afford homes w. a HS diploma, cars, and $3,000 computers, also jobs existed.

[@thisisyaren]

hahahah this is just crazy.... i love this sorta stuff... bring it on guys. it takes me back... how times have changed.. for the better or for the worse?? who will know... time will tell...

[@xmodsgaming]

Ok I'll copy that floppy😏

[@jomunoz]

you sloppy jalopy!

[@SteveLeicht1]

Oh yeah, my first computer was in 1984...a Commodore 64...64k, 170kb floppy drive,875khz clock speed. But at the time, it was cooler than shit.

[@DS-pk4eh]

What about Amiga? it was the best one in that time. I think I had Amiga 500+ at that time.

[@Tristinfate]

OMG that guy in Toys R Us, didn't they shave that middle brow in the 90's?

[@Lachlant1984]

"Once dead home computer market"? When was the home computer market dead? I thought the home computer market was alive from the mid to late 70s until now.

[@joojoojeejee6058]

America skipped the 16-bit home computer era. They were using their C64s until they got a PC. As a matter of fact I did exactly the same, although I live in Finland. Got my first PC in 1990.

[@AlyxxTheRat]

Relative low cost. Computers were much more expensive back in those days.

[@blackneos940]

11:58 That Kid's an Adult by now..... :D

[@alexman128]

What? you didn't know in 1990 when the SNES was about to come up to market, that Sony would release a PSX? come on you didn't have a magic crystal ball like the rest of us?

[@elgeneralxx]

i have a mac lc its really not what they make it out to be

[@cbw56]

Anybody have a Packard Bell?