This was my first computer, just a keyboard and a cassette tape deck that hooked up to your television.
ATARI 800XL
And this was my second computer.
IBM 286
Both were before WINDOWS. I started messing with computers in the early 80’s before I was even 10 (1983 so I was about 8 or 9).
Me had this.
Courtesy of Sir Clive Sinclair. A.D. 1981
My first computer was a Intel 486DX-33 / 4MB RAM / Trident 8900C. That display card could only handle up to 800 x 600 with 256 colors, viewing photos back then really sucked. And it was so slow every time I moved a window in Windows 3.1, I had to wait for it to be repainted.
Sometime later a revolutionary technology arrived (for PC anyway) : 16-bit colors! That Cirrus Logic card could show 65000 colors. Along with JPEG, now photos looked MUCH better.
A little while later, VL-Bus and “Windows accelerator” arrived. Now with the Tseng Lab ET4000 W32, windows were painted almost instantly.
This is a major reason why AMD Ryzen has been taking a lot of mindshare away from Intel (at least outside of the gaming community). The chips are still vulnerable to some spectre attacks, but some of them actually require the hacker to be at the computer being hacked (so you’re more or less safe as long as you keep your doors locked).
I’ll take that and raise you a:
BR
JN
My first GPU was the voodoo5 5500, essentially 2 voodoo4 cards mashed together.
It was the top of the line, and also the end of the line for 3dfx. Seeing the dynamic lighting in x-wing vs tie fighter blew my mind. It also ran homeworld really nice.
My favorite part of the Glide drivers was the hot-togglable antialiasing. You could just press F5 and seamlessly switch AA on and off. It was great to be able to see the difference so easily, really helped to market that new fancy feature.
Also, super fun trivia about that card: the back of the box featured an early screenshot of Halo, before it was moved to the x-box, back when it was still slated to be released on both Mac and PC:
