Common Hardware in 1996
So, this has probably been asked before, but I was wondering exactly what hardware was like for common people in 1996. I was wondering whether 64MB of RAM was normal, if less was more heard of, and the normal Hard Disk sizes of the time. I try to make my emulation as accurate as possible, and any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
It would also be helpful to learn about processors available at the time, and see what the cheapest, functional PC would be like in those times.
(Of course, by 'functional' I don't mean things like the Brother Super PowerNote https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0OAv-j-qGE which was quite cheap for the time, but more of a joke than anything else. Video by vwestlife)
Anywho, I'm hoping to see what the realistic specs would be for a usable machine back then, with real DOS/Windows and all.
I'm generally looking for a PC under $2000 for the time.
It would also be helpful to learn about processors available at the time, and see what the cheapest, functional PC would be like in those times.
(Of course, by 'functional' I don't mean things like the Brother Super PowerNote https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0OAv-j-qGE which was quite cheap for the time, but more of a joke than anything else. Video by vwestlife)
Anywho, I'm hoping to see what the realistic specs would be for a usable machine back then, with real DOS/Windows and all.
I'm generally looking for a PC under $2000 for the time.
Comments
In 1996, used PCs under $1,000 were typically 486s of some sort and 386s maybe for a couple of hundred.
New PCs were generally Socket 7 Pentiums. Cheaper models were typically using the Pentium 75 - 133 Mhz CPU with either 8 to 16 MB EDO RAM, 1-2 MB S3 Trio64 PCI video card or equivalent, SoundBlaster or compatible sound card, 850MB to 1.3GB hard disk drives, an 4 to 8x CD-ROM drive. and probably a 14" or 15" SVGA monitor. These were usually around $1,500 to $2,000 from a computer shop. Branded PCs were more expensive.
Should someone go for something more expensive it would be the Pentium 150 - 200 Mhz CPU with 32 MB EDO RAM, 4 MB S3/Diamond/Matrox PCI video card, SoundBlaster AWE 32/64 sound card, 2GB hard disk drive, 8x CD-ROM drive, and a 17" or 19" SVGA monitor.
The Pentium MMX CPUs hadn't been released yet. 3D videos cards weren't really mainstream. Windows 95 OSR 2.1 was the standard OS.
I found the Pentium 75, 100, 133, and 166 to be the most popular with people at the time. The 90, 120, 150, and 200 just didn't seem to sell as much at least where I live in Australia.
Same with a 2 Gb hard disk.
So, the cheapest would have been a 386 with something around an 800MB hard disk and 8MB of RAM?
And I'm guessing a medium PC would be a 486, a 1.3GB drive, with 16MB of RAM.
And for the ridiculously expensive, a Pentium, 2GB hard disk, and 32MB of RAM.
[EDIT]
I'm wondering about '98 as well. As you can probably tell, I didn't walk the Earth at these times, so I have really no idea what it was like, apart from emulating. I have a couple of older PCs too, but never used them daily, just for collection's sake.
[EDIT 2]
I'm currently in the process of creating a Windows 95 machine with a 486 processor, and 16MB of RAM on PCem
>went for the middle specs
[EDIT 3]
...And now I'm completely lost on the new hard disk menu.
It lists the size in heads and cylinders, not GB or MB
I have no earthly clue about Hard Disk geometry.
[EDIT4]
Thankfully this is the last edit. It took a bit of digging, but I found out how to make hard drives of all sizes with HDD Geometry
I'm a long time DOSBOX, VPC, and Virtualbox user.
Every time I boot a system, it says 'CMOS memory mismatch'.
Also, I have no idea which BIOS system is ideal for running Windows 95.
Also, I have no idea how to use a hard disk, floppy, or CD-ROM drives.
I'm used to having this all done for me by the emulator.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
(Yes, I named my computer. I'll give you the specs for it
*Intel Pentium 4 @ 2.66GhZ, no HT
*160GB Hard Disk
*2GB DDR2 RAM
*Nvidia GeForce6200 w/ 512MB dedicated vram
*Some sort of Soundblaster with x-fi HD
*Windows XP Home Edition SP3)
It's a modified Dell Dimension 2400, basically. I'm not sure as to why it lags my computer so bad.
DosBox and Virtual PC 2004 don't do the same thing.
I haven't yet tried it on my Dell Inspirion 640m, but the specs aren't much better, if not worse. The only saving grace of that laptop is the fact that it has a Dual Core processor.
*Intel Dual Core Processor @ 1.60GhZ
*2.5GB DDR2 RAM
*256MB Intel Integrated Graphics
*80GB Hard Disk
*Windows 7 SP1
*Integrated HD Audio
8-16MB RAM (Blazing fast!)
512MB HDD (How can you ever fill that space up?)
Some Intel x86 CPU (maybe 486 or Pentium)
CD-ROM drive (later upgraded to CD-RW)
3.5" floppy drive
Windows 95
32MB of RAM? 8GB hard drive? How deep were your pockets? According to my copy of PCGamer July '96 edition, the Ultimate Gaming Machine had 16MB of EDO and a 1 - 1.2GB hard drive.
The machine came with 8-16MB of ram and a 512MB HDD.
Later in its life it was upgraded to the specs I mentioned before.
"Surf the Net Faster!" with a MCT 33,600 BPS V42.BIS internal modem for $129.95
8.0GB Tape backup Just $389.95
8X ATAPI CD-ROM: $129.95
Seagate 1.27GB hard drive $205.95
Sound Blaster compatible (Taiwanese knock off): $29.95
On the low end: AM486DX4-100 - $49.95
On the high end: Pentium Pro 200MHZ - $739.00
Intel Overdrive BOXDX4DDP75 - $149.95
72-Pin SIMS Low end: 512KX35-70 2MB $49.96
High End: 16MX36-60 32MB $539.00
But for upgrading they sold DIP chips all the way back to the 4116 16Kx1 ($0.89 each!)
Thir budget motherboard seems to be a VESA/ISA 486 100MHZ, Opti Chipset, Zif Sockrt, AMI BIOS, Up to 128MB RAM, 256K-512K cache, DOS, Windows 95, Windows 3.1, DESQView 386, Novel Netware and OS/2 Compatible: 199.95!
Loads of other good parts and upgrades. Lots of nice no-nonsence beige AT tower and desktop cases, power supply upgrades for "8088"(PC/XT), "286"(Desktop AT), and "Upright" machines.
Microsofts new dumb looking "natural" keyboard - $89.95
A budget 1024*768 14" VGA monitor for $299.95
or a nice NEC Multisync XV17+ for $819.00 (I had one of those)
Cheap low-profile VGA IS card for $49.95
Stealth PCI A3 Vision 968 2MB videocard for $199.95
Or you could still buy a combo MDA Herc/CGA ISA card for $49.95
Ohhh, a 4-drive floppy controller MCT-FDC-HD4 for $59.95 - people kill for these on eBay.
IOMega parallel port Zip drive: $149.95
Snappy Video Grabber with lame parallel port interface $199.95
Genuine Sound Blaster AWE32PNP - $239.95
As always they had every cable imaginable
Software upgrades include:
Lotus 1-2-3 $99.96
Microsoft Office 95 $239.95
Norton Utilities 95 $59.95
Paradox 7 - $99.95
And WordPerfect $99.95
Dericks's High Tech Corner wonders why there are no 16" CRTs.
All this and more in their printed catalog or get "Unadvertised Specials on Our World Wide Web Site - See Page 67 or Browse http://www.jdr.com"
The memory size in PCEMs SETTINGS\CONFIG do not match the Bios.
Check the memory size in SETTINGS\CONFIG. Then from FILE, do a hard reset.
Watch for the message to RUN SETUP to see what key to press to enter Bios.
Enter Bios and set the memory to match PCEMs SETTINGS\CONFIG.
This should correct the memory mismatch and allow the system to proceed.
Remember that the Bios needs to be setup correctly just like a real PC.
Microsoft Office '95 was $239.95?! Even Office 2013 Professional is only around $126.
It seems to me that anything related to computers was horrendously expensive at that time.
SomeGuy said: "or a nice NEC Multisync XV17+ for $819.00 (I had one of those)"
$819.00. I'm speechless.
Adding inflation to that, I'd say owning a decent computer then would cost enough to buy a used car.
It's also interesting to note that a keyboard then would cost you $89.95.
A decent keyboard today is only around $20.00, unless you're a 'fancy gamer' kind of guy, then you're spending $200.00 on a keyboard that glows green or something like that.
Doing the math on this, I'd say that if someone wanted to build their own decent PC (I'm not even going that all-out here), it would look something like this:
*Seagate 1.27GB hard drive $205.95
*AM486DX4-100 - $49.95
*16MX36-60 32MB $539.00
*Microsoft's new dumb looking "natural" keyboard - $89.95
*A budget 1024*768 14" VGA monitor for $299.95
*Cheap low-profile VGA IS card for $49.95
*Genuine Sound Blaster AWE32PNP - $239.95
*8X ATAPI CD-ROM: $129.95
(That's just the hardware, assuming the person buys only from this magazine for some stupid reason.)
$2,084.65
That is around the general price of PCs back then anyways, I guess.
I'm not doing this for all top-line products... That would just be a ridiculous amount of money.
If you really want to see some really crazy prices, look at a Tandy RadioShack catalog from the 1980s. Many of their business machines even had monthly leasing options!
That MS keyboard was the only interesting one, they did also list a number of cheap looking ~$20 Taiwanese-made keyboards.
And now that I think of it, I probably bought my NEC XV17 locally some time later for about half that.
As I recall JDR did overprice some of their things, but they had some decent stuff.
Many 'Gaming' PCs are also quite expensive.
Personally, I don't see the point in spending that much money on a computer, when I use a PC with only 2GB of RAM, and a Pentium 4 daily.
I guess that's close to how it was back then too, even in '96. Most people just didn't feel the need to upgrade, so a lot used 386's, with less than 8MB of RAM.
[EDIT]
Is there any possible way to mount a .iso file to PCem? I'm using Windows XP, so there isn't any 'virtual mounting' that comes with it, unlike Windows 7.
After I got the CMOS all handy-dandy, I tried to install MS-DOS 5 to the VHD.
I was able to boot off of the floppy, but when it came time to format the hard disk, it would not work.
It rebooted as usual, then the BIOS gave me the error, 'OS Not Found'.
It refused to boot from floppy, and I'm guessing that's because when I tried to format the HDD, it thought it was a bootable volume, and tried to default to it.
More concerning, there is no way to change the boot order in BIOS.
I tried mounting the image, formatting it to FAT, and moving the MS-DOS files in manually, which gave the error "Remove Disks, and press any key to reboot" When there were no floppy images.
386 ranged from 12Mhz to I believe 50MHz(?)
486 ranged from 33MHz(?) to 100MHZ
Pentium ranged from 50MHz to 233MHz (233 was not around at the time I don't think)
A normal hard drive was between 60MB and 1.2GB.
Most computers had between 4MB and 64MB stock, but many supported up to 128MB.
A computer under $2000 in 1996 would probably be about like this:
Intel 80486SX 66MHz, 8MB of RAM, an 80MB or so hard disk, MS-DOS 5 / Windows 3.1 (or 95), whatever video chipset was built into your computer (probably S3 or Cirrus Logic for the time).
3DFX VooDoo was a godsend if you played games in '96, though.
The ultimate 1996 PC would look something like this:
Intel Pentium MMX 233MHz, 128MB of RAM, 2GB hard disk, Windows 95, S3 Trio64, 3DFX VooDoo 12MB.
My memory probably has failed me once again, I might be remembering a different time period or I might have just made up my own somehow. I'm only 35 and I feel 70...
Packard Bell Axcel 251CD Plus
Windows 3.xx upgraded to Windows 95 RTM
Intel 80486DX2 processor @ 66MHz
8Mb of RAM
3 1/2" 1.44Mb floppy drive
545Mb Seagate hard disk
Generic CD-ROM drive, speed unknown
Cirrus Logic onboard VGA graphics, 512Kb VRAM
Ess AudioDrive ISA soundcard (SB16 clone)
Some generic ISA dial-up modem
2 PS/2 ports, 1 parallel port, and 1 serial port
PS/2 Packard Bell keyboard and generic mouse
This seems to have been a low-end economy system or a lower mid-grade PC. Some people really bash old Packard Bell, but I like their stuff.
You're a bit low on RAM there, but I suppose that wasn't unusual to see systems with 8MB of RAM in 1996.
I hear you on that last part, ever seen a Windows 98 machine play Minecraft?
I try to make it a rule that all my Windows 3.1 and later machines have to have at least 16MB of RAM because when I have multiple things open, I tend to have almost everything open.
The oldest Windows 95 machine I have is an unbranded 386DX that I haven't turned on in ages. Been more focused on my Pentium 4 system, which has gotten a case of a bad power supply.