Computer History

Hint to where my
first PC came from.
I was digging around clearing out a load of old paperwork from the house the other day and came across a load of old receipts and invoices.  I nearly threw them straight in the recycle pile but looked through and thought they actually contained quite an insight into the history of computer progress and pricing.

Not necessarily wanting to hang on to the paper I thought I'd make the info available here for future reference so here follows my computer history from way-back-when.  There's a chance not all of it was mine since some of it was delivered to friends houses and I've always regularly ordered kit on behalf of parents (who doesn't?), etc.

1995 June - My first PC system, we actually bought it from a shop in Basingstoke!
Pentium 60 PC with 540MB hard disk, 14" CRT monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers, joystick, mouse mat, DOS 6.2, Windows for Workgroups 3.1.1, OS/2 Warp.  £1229.
1995 September - Wow, these things really were quite expensive!
10 Floppy disks.  £18.60.
1995 November - Replaced my Epson dot matrix (used with my Acorn A3010).
Canon BJC 4000 Printer.  £280.85.
1996 January - No idea why I kept the receipt for this. 

Worms.  £27.99.
1999 August/September -  I didn't invest in computer kit in the previous years (during university).
Borland Delphi 4 for Windows 95.  £89.30.
2x 16MB SIMM.  £47.00.
Maxtor Quantum Fireball Plus 13.6GB UDMA66 Hard Disk £138.65
120MB LS-120 Floppy disk driver.  £58.75
1x LS-120 120MB Floppy disk.  £10.57. 
Abit BE6 Motherboard.  £88.12
Pentium III 450Mhz Slot 1 Processor.  £88.12
32MB PC100 DIMM.  £31.00
2000 February - This was actually for some university work!
Creative Sound Blaster Live Player 1024 PCI sound card.  £56.40.
2000 August - Probably my first investment in photography as a hobby.
Agfa Snapscan e40 Flatbed Scanner.  £146.86. 
2001 January - Interesting hard disk, small (by today's standards) but fast.
46GB IBM PATA100 hard disk, 2MB cache, 7200 RPM.  £101.47.
Guillemot Force Feedback racing wheel.  £92.81. 
2001 June - First home network.
Dlink 8-Port 10Base-T Ethernet Hub.  £34.07
8cm cooling fan.  £5.87.
5 metre CAT5 patch cable.  £7.05.
2001 August - What on earth did I do with all these hard disks?
IBM Deskstar 20.5GB UDMA100 hard disk £69.32
Maxtor Fireball Plus 10.2GB UDMA100 hard disk £64.62
128MB PC100 168 pin CL2 DIMM model £18.08
2001 September - Not yet writing CDs or DVDs.
Pioneer Slot-in IDE DVD ROM, 16xDVD 40x CD £56.40
2002 May - I'm still using both of these today!
Asus 16xDVD 40xCD Player IDE
Epson Stylus Photo 790
 

Comments

Kevin X Brown said…
I had an ESCOM PC (386) as my first one too, which I bought from a shop in Chelmsford around 1994! How much memory did you have? I remember desperately trying to decide whether it was worth paying a large amount extra for 16 or 32MB RAM.
13 October 2011 at 20:17:00 BST
Anonymous said…
You know that's one thing I can't remember at all. It didn't have much memory as I recall and I did upgrade it a little while later so it probably had 16MB and I upgraded to 32MB or from 32MB to 64MB, really not sure. The receipts I've got don't seem to include that though even though they do detail the specs in other areas, I guess possibly since the amount of memory was an option.
14 October 2011 at 10:14:00 BST
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