Debian User Forums

Inspired by a chat I had with another Developer and most recently Trihexagonal's post:

https://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?p=815701#p815701 wrote:What I could do with a Tandy TRS-80 I saw for sale at RadioShack in 1977.

What specific hardware/manufacturer did you start computing on and what path did you take to get where you are on now?

I started on a Vic 20 -> C64 ->C128 -> Amiga 500 -> Amiga 1200 -> Amiga 1200+ -> Amiga 4000 -> IBM/PC -> Compaq -> HP -> Dell -> HP -> {{Here now}} All HP.

Friend of mine also started on a Tandy TRS-80 with a path similar to Trihexagonal's path and my path but instead moved to Pentium chips under PC at the time, building and soldering to his hearts and swap meets content. Guy has a personal Super Computer today with crazy unpublished numbers, a bit of wealth, and is still a super nerd and still just as awesome. Still would never hand him my cellphone .

Work was different. I may have my order wrong here: -> VAX, Sparc, -> Some IBM monolith -> IBM -> Sun -> Cray -> DEC? Comeback -> Sun-> Networking Fog -> Intel -> Manufacturer ( Dell -> HP ) -> Build our own.

My first computer is now a museum piece:

https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.o ... del-840-1a

Unfortunately lost in a burglary. Replaced with an Amstrad's NC100, which apparently was also a CP/M machine.

https://obsolescenceguaranteed.blogspot ... nc100.html

Hi

ZX spectrum, Amstrad PCW256 (added another 256 meself), Amstrad PC512.

Then a few self builds, with the odd magazine best buy.

Some I still have, but now it's Laptops.

A coupla old HP's and a Lenovo (does a chromebook count?).

donald wrote: 2025-01-22 06:11What specific hardware/manufacturer did you start computing on and what path did you take to get where you are on now?

disclaimer: This is gonna be long

My first PC was made by Mattel in the mid-'80s. Mattel's Aquarius was a small PC with a chiclet keyboard and 4MB of RAM - had a cassette drive for data storage and everything. I wrote my first BASIC program on this machine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mattel_Aquarius

Next was a couple of Atari 800XL - during this time I was buying "Compute!" magazine and typing pages of assembly code to get the game of the month working.

Then I made the move to Intel - had a 486DX2-66 and then an AMD 120Mhz 486 that was my first successful overclock; running at 160MHz I used it to embarrass my friend with his shiny new Pentium 75. The AMD 486 was also my first Linux machine as I installed Yggdrasil Plug and Play Linux on the box.

Next came a long period of what I call intellectual masturbation; my finest hour was a dual processor P2 with hardware wide SCSI RAID5 using three 10k rpm enterprise drives (and yes, this was a home PC). This machine was a quad-boot monstrosity that ran Win 3.11, a Win95 pre-release build, OS/2 Warp and a pre-RHEL Redhat install. The whole mess was held together with a boot manager called System Commander and I spent more time fixing things than actually using the machine

Next was a dual CPU P3 and my first and last experience with a watercooled PC.

Then I quit building my own machines and had a pair of Dell desktops, one running Windows, the other running Linux and connected them with a KVM switch. I dual booted both machines, I have no idea why. In 2008 I quit running Windows at home and switched to Linux exclusively. In 2012 I converted a Crunchbang Waldorf machine to pure Debian Wheezy; Wheezy was Testing at the time, I've never run a stable build of Debian. TBH it would have been easier to reinstall and restore from backup, but that intellectual masturbation thing had me convert the machine without wiping the drive which is something I wouldn't recommend

Since them I've been buying refurbished business machines from dellrefurbished.com and currently have a Fujitsu Stylistic tablet that's my backup PC, a Latitude 7390 (8th gen i7) and a Precision 3450 desktop that's my home server (10th gen i7) all running Debian Unstable.

Desktops/Home
C64 > IBM PC/XT > IBM PC/AT > AMD AM386DX40 > AMD AM486DX120 > AMD Athlon XP1400 > AMD FX-4300 > AMD FX-6100 > AMD FX-8350 > AMD Ryzen 5 1600AF > Intel Core i5 12400F

Everything subsequent to the IBM PC/AT I've built myself so no brand names there, other than those of the CPU manufacturer. Motherboards mainly Gigabyte and mainly their UD (Ultra Durable) variant where available.

There have been, and still are, a few branded computers for specific purposes that I pick up at auction. Mostly ex-Government so brand names like Dell, Acer and HP. Upgrade paths on these are really limited so they are single purpose and stay in service until they die, which isn't that often given that Government spec means pretty tough. I probably favour Dell, but that doesn't mean the others are bad.

Work
A terminal to an IBM System/360, working in Fortran, then COBOL. Those mainframes were as big as a car, weighed 2000kg/4400lbs and had 32K memory. At one stage we had 12 of them.
> various PC desktops, all IBM > IBM notebooks P1/P2/P3 > Dell notebooks > HP notebooks > Lenovo notebooks
The IBM and Dell notebooks were almost unbreakable, the HPs the opposite while the Lenovos are not quite IBM standard.

My first computer (of my own) was a Tandy Color Computer II with 16K RAM and cassette storage. This was quickly upgraded to 64k and a floppy controller allowing 140k storage per single-sided floppy, and then a software change (alter number of tracks and sectors) that gave 180k and another that allowed using the second side as a separate device. At one point, I owned three CoCo II and a silver-case, chiclet-key CoCo I, just before I bought a CoCo III (with 128k RAM and better video output) and promptly upgraded that to 512k. This was all over the space of about a year and a half.

Then (late 1987) I got a Laser XT from Sears; for about $1000 I got the computer (512k, dual 360k floppy drives, no HDD, CGA/MGA adapter, DOS 3.31) and a CGA monitor. I pulled the upgrade RAM from the CoCo III to bring the machine up to 640k, and later added a 20 MB hard disk, which eventually became 30 MB (switched from MFM to RLL) that needed low level formatting every 3-6 months and got a second 40 MB RLL drive as a companion. I then added an EMS card populated with 4.5 MB. I even ran Windows 3.0 on that machine for a short time starting with an EGA card on the CGA monitor, then got a VGA 512K 1024x768 256-colors and matching 12 inch monitor. Yes, Windows 3.0 would run on an 8086 (albeit very deliberately).

Around 1990 I bought a Laser 286, pulled DIP-package RAM off the EMS card to populate the XMS sockets and had 640k base and 4 MB XMS. A couple years later, I had a generic 386, then 486SX (no built-in math coprocessor), and finally around 1995 I moved up into Pentium class CPUs. I rebuilt machines (motherboard, CPU, RAM, sometimes video) in that 286 case for several years, and in 2003 finally bought a new bare bones system to get a "modern" case (and it was cheaper than a CPU/MB/RAM upgrade). I've continued to serially upgrade, and still have some files on my current system that were created on the XT. I've still go a PII/768k/GTx750 machine under my desk that I hope to sometime get time/money to convert to a NAS for the home network -- doesn't need much of a CPU, but I'm pretty sure 1 core/thread at 300 MHz and 768 MB RAM isn't going to be enough...

The first computer I used was 8-bit Spectravideo SV-328. Here there was a rival between C-64 and SV-users, which is better.

Then at uni were VAX- and unix mini-computers, which we used through black and green monitors, the first touch to unix.

My first PC, floppies and amber monochome monitor. Bought hard-drives (IDE and some hd-near standards were before, don't remember) and CGA, then EGA, VGA, SVGA monitors.

My first portable was Sharp Zaurus SL-3100, Linux in your pocket! Had a 4 G hardrive wich fitted to compact flash connector, 640x480 touch screen, and stylus. I have written more about it in other near similar thread.

Various PC-assemblies, dos F1GP was nice with two players and two PCs.

I still assemble desktop PCs, now I have one. Have had a few laptops, now a Dell Latitude 3340.

I am surprised that you people can still remember all the hardware you had. My pc journey started much later and when I was about 17 years old. My first system had a Pentium with already 95 Ghz and an insanely large 1 GB HDD I just bought for the absurdity of it. (It didn't cost much more than the 850 MB HDD that would have been normal at the time.) I mainly used this system for creating tracks with a synthesizer. It was still pre home internet access time in my area.

I did select and put together components for my systems until I bought my first laptop some time early after the year 2000. This was a huge shift for me and a bad experience because the Gericom laptop had bad components and needed repairs all the time. But I was so impressed by the fact that the screen was so flat compared to CRT monitors that I returned to using laptops when I bought my first GNU/Linux device in 2008. It was an Acer Extensa 5220 that came with Linplus Linux. I never was able to use this operating system since I only ever saw a command line and it didn't seem to run any graphical user interface. I didn't know how to deal with it. However, my research led me to Debian and ignoring all warnings that this wasn't meant to be a desktop distribution for end users but for servers used by experts I installed it as a newbie and never regretted it. (Unfortunately it did have a Realtec wireless card I never managed to use on Debian due to driver issues. So I kept using an ethernet cable on this laptop. Many years later I bought an supposedly identical used replacement device for spare parts which did have an intel networking card that was usable instantly. It seems originally I had just bad luck.)

I got the task of sourcing all the pc systems for the non-profit I work for. Originally I bought some cheap HP 250 G6 devices because my colleagues didn't need great performance and those devices didn't cost more than about 500 Euros while already sporting M.2 drives and having expandable memory. But soon I realised that cheap entry level laptops do come with cheap plastics and hinges. Those devices are all broken now.

This way I learned that used high end devices are much more reliable than cheap new devices.

I haven't seen any recent desktop system close up for many years. I nowadays usually get refurbished Dell Latitude laptops for my colleagues. Mostly E7470, E7480, 7490 and most recently 7390. They are rather cheap nowadays despite having good build quality and decent enough performance for office needs. Occasionally I get a replacement battery or a new screen, but other than adding more RAM those devices are usually still carefree.

For myself I bought a Lenovo T400s from Technoethical in 2018 which I still use as a personal system. But for work I use a privately donated Fujitsu Siemens Lifebook E781 in which I still have a slow 500 GB HDD but I have added 12 GB of RAM despite it officially only supporting 8 GB. For relaxation I have an Asus Pro7AJK laptop next to my sofa for watching films and TV shows since it sports a 17 inch display.