Huge, noisy and absolutely no fun at all. No, this was not the teacher's summary on my school report card, this was in fact my first thoughts on viewing my first proper PC when I went to college in 1990.
The PC in question was an IBM XT PC complete with huge green monochrome screen, chunky keyboard that seemed to be far too heavy, and the main base unit that seemed to take up a huge amount of desk space, which had a huge red on/off switch on the side that, when placed in the ON position booted the PC up with a huge 'whirrrrrr' of fans and spinning hard disks. It made you feel as if you were in charge of an important piece of hardware. It had a huge 20MB hard disk full of exciting software like Supercalc and FoxPro.

 

 

 

 

 

Our college class utilised these PC's for a variety of purposes. We programmed simple things in languages such as Turbo Pascal, COBOL and Turbo C++ which I thoroughly enjoyed and about the only thing I miss during this time. I also used to edit the autoexec.bat file so that when a dim-witted student booted the machine up a menu would pop up saying 'Press any key to play an exciting game' whereupon the machine would then format the hard disk - naughty!

The IBM XT PC's were not something I ever visualised playing games on in 1990 - even my Spectrum computer at home was more fun than these things. Still, as the years went on, and as technologies improved, so did the games. In 1991 our college removed all of the BBC Micro networks plus most of it's IBM XT PC's and bought new IBM PC compatible PC's with colour screens! Now we could program C++ in colour, whoopee!

During break-times I was fascinated in learning all the MSDOS 5.0 commands and quickly found the QBASIC editor that was bundled free on the C drive. And once I had discovered the freebie basic games that could be run on the editor, then this was my first experience of PC gaming.

Nibbles was a simple QBasic game that many people these days have played on their Nokia mobile phones. Controlling a snake called Sammy that grew longer the more you survived, you had to collect the numbers dotted around the screen and amass the highest score possible!

But my personal favourite QBasic game was Gorillas. This was an impressive, full-colour animated game that had you in control of a large gorilla who threw bananas at your opponent on the other side of the screen on top of the skyscrapers. Entering the correct angle and strength would find your opponent destroyed with a deadly fruit.

 

 

 

 

 

1993 arrived and I was now in my third and final year at college. We still had the same PC's but we now had Microsoft Windows v3.11 installed. We had a mouse pointer, and icons, and more free games like Solitaire and Minesweeper!

In 1994 after having left college I managed to start employment with a local computer company. And what did I start doing? Testing PC's, printers, and installing over and over again DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.11 on every PC that went out! Oh and not to mention the 31 (yes, 31!) disks for MS Office 4.3 Professional that I had to slam into the floppy drive for what seemed like hours on end........

 

 

 

 

 

Now that I was faced with cutting edge 486SX25 PC's with huge, powerful (cough) VESA graphics cards I could now experience playing games like Doom and Doom 2 on the work network with my other friends! And if we were really lucky then there might have been a sound card installed so we could hear the growls and the gunshots!

 

 

 

 

1995 was a landmark year in PC land. At our work we were preparing for the release of Windows 95, the new version of Microsoft's Windows that promised proper multi-tasking, faster game-playing, easy internet browsing and lots of user-friendly help screens and easily set up networks. Compared to Windows 3.11 it came on several more disks (13) and took longer to install.

 

 

 

 

 

We had lots of fun with Windows 95. Later releases included 'Hover' a simple 3D game and also some music videos bundled free - our favourite in the office was Weezer's Buddy Holly which was set in the old 'Happy Days set' which we used to play at pretty much full volume to test the soundcard and speakers on every new PC at the time!

In 1996 Quake was released by ID Software, the same company that had produced Doom and Doom 2. Running around underground caverns we would splatter each other to pieces with rail guns and rockets.

Another First-Person-Shooter game was Duke Nukem 3D. This was set in a ravaged L.A. where you played the macho Duke who had to rid the place of pig-ugly (literally) aliens. Set in a real world environment unlike previous FPS games, it also had several 'adult' scenes and was graced with an 'M' rating for Mature and 17+ years only.

By this time I had got bored with my Amiga 1200HD at home and gradually moved over to owning a PC. If I remember correctly my first machine was a 486DX266 with 8MB of RAM - good enough to play my several DOS games. Now I had re-discovered games for my PC that I used to play on my Amiga. Titles such as Monkey Island 2 and Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis I could now play on CD and in 256 colours, the latter having digitised speech for each character.

In 1997 I had upgraded my home PC to a slightly more powerful Pentium 90 and was able run Windows 95. I had also introduced my work colleagues to the joys of computer emulation. We used to play Spectrum or C64 games, and I even remember a copy of Sonic the Hedgehog doing the rounds with a Sega Genesis emulator!

 

 

 

 

The following year we were graced with Microsoft Windows 98 - again it proved to be extremely popular and was bundled with every new PC that we sold at the time. Improving on Windows 95 in many ways, mainly on the reliability side, and it proved to be ideal for playing games with - even DOS games were completely compatible unlike the future Windows ME and 2000 versions that were soon to follow.

And there ends my 'retro' memories of the IBM PC Compatible computers. A long and happy friendship which I look back on fondly - the 90's were indeed a great time to be in the PC world!