What is the slowest computer you've ever owned?

[iMacZealot]

Hmm.....my slowest was probably a Gateway my family bought in '94. It broke down horribly and my dad was talking to customer care and he had to open the thing and use a screwdriver to move something to another slot. We had to buy a new computer a few months after that in '97.

But it could also be my three Vadem Clios in the closet. Ah, those were fun. Everything "mini" and "pocket", just like Windows CE. I could never get it to the internet and we stopped using them after a matter of months. They were bad. Two of them still power on, though.

My fastest is probably my G5 right in front of me. As for my slowest mac, it was either one of my grade schools Apple ii's (which they still use to this day) or (if you're talking about one that I actually owned) then my sister's iMac 333 MHz. Our gateway Profile 3 is quite slow, too, but by today's standards.

 

[Cheese]

The year was 1977. Our family (I was only 17) got a Commodore PET 8k. 6502 CPU running at 1 mhz, chiclet keyboard, monochrome screen, cassette tape drive, 8k RAM, 14k ROM, 1k VRAM, OS was Commodore Basic 1.0. All nicely wapped in sheet metal. I still have that computer, though I haven't switched it on for a few years.
From there I got into TRSDOS, and by 1984 gave up on computers for the most part. In 1993, I bought an AST PC with a 486SX33 processor, which was the only machine I used until 1999 when we finally got around to thinking differently, and bought the iMac G3 DV400. the peecee is in deeper sorage these days than the Commodore PET, but the iMacs ( I also have the Rev. A iMac G5) are folding along rather nicely every second of every day.

I think I read another post where someone is running a 6502, but I think the sheet metal case for the Pet means that... I WIN!!!

 

[Sonic]

Same here. 7.14MHz of raw power, and a whopping 2MB of Chip RAM

Oh, and I once got a letter published in Amiga Format magazine. How cool was I? Not cool at all

Hehe, after years of Spectrum use, I got an A500, then an A1500 then finally an A4000/030 in the Amiga's dying days.

But I actually wrote a game that was the coverdisk of Amiga Format, Jet Set Willy 3!

 

[siurpeeman]

mac classic ii. 16mhz, 4 mb ram, 40 mb hard drive, system 7.1.

 

[Grey Beard]

An Abacus, and that was a huge leap ahead from using little piles of stones.

KGB

 

[Queso]

But I actually wrote a game that was the coverdisk of Amiga Format, Jet Set Willy 3!

Now that's cool

Can't say I ever played it though. Is it abandonware, and if so, where can I download a copy?

 

[poopyhead]

3.3mhz
texas instruments ti99/4

 

[ziwi]

Apple IIe - it was a sweet thing with that dual floppy drive set up and monochrome monitor, but it worked and actually still works...nice piece of engineering - Lemonade stand was the best game - boy things have progressed..

 

[gers84]

My old PC (386SX 12mhz) had a turbo button.

Totally forgot about the turbo button
what did it do any way apart from blink

 

[Dont Hurt Me]

Commodore 64, If I remember right you could use your cassette player as a drive.

 

[Markleshark]

Hmmm, for me it would have to be:

 

[iSaint]

IBM 8088. My father's company bought one in 1983 for around $20k US.

 

[thworple]

We had an MSX 1 (I think it was a Sony) which ran at 3.58Mhz and had 8kb RAM and 16kb Video RAM.

Later I, like many others in this thread, had an Amiga. An A500+ (7.09 Mhz PAL version), which still brings back fond memories, especially Turrican 2, Cannon Fodder, and Extreme Violence.

 

[mkrishnan]

This one. It was soooo slow!

 

[Chrismcfall]

Well, at my primary school we used acorn Pcs, the kind with the whole pc in the (rather large) keyboard?

 

[FF_productions]

Slowest Computer I had was a Performa 550, lots of memories on that comp.

It was 32 mhz, and had blazing speeds!

 

[savar]

What is the slowest computer you've ever owned?(Hertz wise)

Mine was an Apple IIc I bought last year: 1 (or was it 2?) MHz

You bought last year? Are you opening a museum?

The oldest I can remember my family having is a Mac Classic, although I am dimly aware that we had older machines before that. The first machine we had when I was old enough to start mucking around (I'm 24 now) was a Quadra 610: 25 Mhz, 8 megs of RAM.

If we stretch the definition of a computer, however, I did build a "computer" based on a Motorola 6811 that had a 16-button keypad and 4x8 segment LED display. The clock speed was 2Mhz, and I think it had 8k of RAM. (Actually I think it was 8K code/8K data--Harvard architecture.) We wrote the code in C, and if you linked in (by accident, probably) a floating-point printf you would use up about 4k of program RAM.

It gives me an appreciation for guys like Wozniak who could shoehorn so many features into such a tiny space as tinkerers in the garage.

 

[leekohler]

200 Mhz Umax c500 Mac clone with 16 Mb RAM. It was slow, but I loved it.

 

[Diatribe]

I am really tempted so say my current MBP as it has some issues I think.

But speaking numbers it would have to be my 286 that ran at somewhere around 16MHz. Now that was a racing machine.

 

[lmalave]

IBM XT Turbo clone. I think it was 8 MHz.

 

[Gaelic1]

My Slowest Computer

I had a Franklin which was an Apple 48K clone. They went out of business after Apple sued them. It had a floppy disc, very little memory and not a lot of programs. I think the salesman who sold it to me had been a carpet salesman a week before! No one knew much about computers. I know I had to purchase a "Star" card so I could use "Word Star" which was the premier word processor at the time.

 

[Swarmlord]

A Timex Sinclair, although I used an Atari and a Commodore Pet that my friends owned prior to actually owning the Sinclair.

I still have my Commodore 64 along with my tape drive and floppy drive! Wish I still had the monitor for it, but it can be hooked to a TV that has an antenna connection.

 

[0098386]

Anyone know what an Acorn Electron was?

Oh heavens yes. Relegated to the classrooms. Remember playing some animal game, the only bit in memory now was getting flees off a badger by dipping under water. Before that we had some old machine running Kid Pix

Personal slowest? Spectrum ZX80-something or other. Wish I could find mine

This thread is ripe for a certain song

 

[risc]

My first and slowest computer was an 8 bit Sinclair ZX81 running at 3.25 MHz it had some speedy accessories though 1 being the external storage, a cassette recorder running at 250 baud.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_ZX81

 

[risc]

Spectrum ZX80-something or other.

You mean the Sinclair ZX80 or the Sinclair ZX Spectrum. The ZX81 was the model right in the middle. 1 of my mates had a Spectrum while I was using the ZX81 man was I jealous damn him and his computer that could do colour!

* Oh God I'm so old that I actually remember all of these Sinclairs.