This little computer had rubber keys with each key having more than five functions! A computer with 8 colors with two tones each (normal and bright). The monitor resolution was 256 x 192 (again no mistakes here). In the current day and age we now test at 10x larger monitor resolutions, at 2560x1600. Loading up software into that ZX Spectrum computer had to be done with a data-cassette, little cassette tapes from which you could actually hear the noises (bits and bytes) being transferred to the Spectrum computer at a rate that's now considered to be shameful.

That Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48KB was my first... it's probably the most fun device I ever had, it taught me all the basics of computing, and it's where my passion for ICT started. I actually got a ZX Specturm 48K a few weeks ago for my birthday, nostalgia.

Hilbert's first...

In the years following I owned a Commodore C16, C64, C128. Then another revolution started, the Commodore Amiga 128, 500, 2000; my last one was a Commodore Amiga 4000. The Amiga 4000 was the last in a line of Amiga machines that gained incredible popularity during the rise of the 'PC' architecture. There are still a large number of Amiga users out there keeping these machines alive today.

Fun facts: Commodore Amiga had a 25 MHz Motorola 68040 processor. The 4000 used the AGA chipset to allow it to show 256,000 colors on screen from a palette of 16.8 million. There were several models but the high-end version had 6MB RAM, yes yes 6MB :) I always regretted selling that computer, but I do have a Commodore Amiga 2000 and 500 still stashed somewhere in my attic.

It is now 1994/1995 and the Personal Computer is really progressing. As such, in 1995 I purchased my very first Personal Computer, the era of the PC began.

My first PC was based on Socket 5 which was followed by the release of the Pentium processors in speeds of 75, 90, 100, 120 & 133 MHz by the end. I started off with a 100 MHz model which was a premium price model. The PC era started and people could play sprite based games like the original DOOM, and that opened up a whole new world. But things were still oh so limited. Next to running a BBS (bulletin board system) with 4 nodes this new thing called Internet also started to progress. I was at university trying out this new thing called FTP sites and was transferring files from all over the world at (at the time) at a hideously fast 8 KB/sec transfer speed. Seriously, a transfer rate of 8 KB/sec was amazing.

But it wasn't as amazing as the development that started in 1996/1997, I purchased this 2D/3D card from Diamond Multimedia. It had the S3 Virge chipset and it was able to play games in '3D'. It just did that in a hideously crappy manner.

And then it all started... in 1997 a company called 3Dfx emerged from the ground and launched their 3Dfx Voodoo chipset. An add-in card that sat next to the videocard. You linked the videocard output to the 3dfx card, and the 3dfx card would output to the monitor.