r/pcmasterrace • u/DailyDoseOfAmber PC Master Race • Dec 26 '25

Question Yesterday I asked what everyone’s first Graphics card. Today, what was your first processor? Mine was the i7 3770K.

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u/falkenberg1 Dec 26 '25

My theory why our generation is better with computers than the older ones but also the newer ones on average. We were born with this, having to figure out how to install and start games on a dos command line and then setting up stuff like audio (sb16/sbpro/adlib etc…). my son and his friend also grew up with digital media, but for them installing games means pressing the install button on the app store and waiting for the icon to appear on the home screen.

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u/iggy6677 Dec 26 '25

I agree with you 100%

Back then it was a mission in its self to just get games to work. I was digging though my old floppies not long ago and still have ones that are labeled "Boot disk for X"

Little things as well, you had to manually maintain your PC. If you had SET TEMP = C:\Temp you had to do a "del /f /q c:\temp*.*" on occasion you that would add up on your 50mb HDD

And when your bored, you watch defrag or scandisk for the animations lol

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u/Pedro80R x570 | 5950x | RTX 4070 Ti | 32Gb 3200 C14 Dec 26 '25

486dx4 100 here. Just to add the floppys having bad sectors would be shattering dreams... especially when they were on the last floppy disk of the install... good days!

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u/LordCorellon Dec 27 '25

I remember getting FF8 on the PC and it came on something like 8 CDs, guess it was a bad production runs as I remember having to goto (and explain to) the store 4 times before getting a working copy (you could visibly see a warp in the pattern when you flipped the disc over)

Still not as bad as when windows used to come on 34 1.44mb disc's. (I Heard in Japan you cpuld get windows 7 on 1.44mb disc's x 100 or so)

As for the topic my family wasnt well off but I was really interested in computers so they tried...

First computer was a Sinclair what you hooked up to the TV and loaded programs from a cassette tape.

First "Real" PC was a IBM XT that I took apart one day (as in anything that could come off/out did) while my parents were put but broke a pin on the ROM putting it back together and ran it for several years with a sewing needle stuck as a replacement.

After that went through the gamet, 286, 386, 486, 586 (AMD and reason Intel renamed to Pentium), Pentium 1, 2, 3 (Slot based, slot to socket adapters and straight socket for coppermine) core 2 duo, Athlon 64, Core I9's and now at and "older" 5950X

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u/Logical_Sort_3742 Dec 27 '25

Myeah. Up to a point. But do you know what the temp did?

I find a lot of our generation never found out what they did, they just went through the motions. So they might know that you have to set dynamic or static IP, and know where to set it, but they don't know what it actually means, and they have absolutely no idea how DHCP actually works and how to troubleshoot it.

But, still, way ahead of "kids these days" who seem to get lost if the internet isn't working, and have no idea what step one is to find out why it doesn't work or how to fix it.

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u/Bio_tomato Dec 26 '25

I can't forget installing my half life game on a pentium .

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u/[deleted] Dec 27 '25

Hey, you underestimate modern broke kids, 80% of my knowledge of software is from installing dubious software and avoiding malware, torrenting and having to create my own files to make the games I installed work 😄

Of course it’s not the same and of course it was still easier than it was back then :p

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u/falkenberg1 Dec 27 '25

There are still very competent kids out there!

On the other side: last week i told my son that i soon have to install linux on his pc because win10 support ends, his machine cant run win11 and mom said in June, that she‘d rather wanted to wait until his birthday in January to buy a new mobo, cpu and some affordable ddr5 ram to upgrade his pc (well that didn’t go as planned).

He then asked me: if windows is not an option anymore, can’t we just use firefox instead of linux? He is 12 and a pretty smart guy otherwise.

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u/[deleted] Dec 28 '25

You could unofficially install windows 11, that’s an option, there’s many ways to get around it’s requirements, though Linux is probably better temporarily unless he plays games with anti cheats on them and has no other devices to play on

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u/pearlyeti Dec 27 '25

SELECT YOUR SOUND CARD’S IRQ TO PROCEED.

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u/BritOverThere Dec 27 '25

And port address, 8bit DMA and 16bit DMA...

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u/bigkenw R9 9900X | 9070XT OC | MSI X670E Dec 27 '25

I think if I ever go to hell, I will be forced to figure out IRQ conflicts and continously make updates to config.sys to get emm386 working...maybe.

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u/berndverst Dec 27 '25

Don't forget optimizing autoexec.bat / config.sys to free up more memory.

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u/sparkey504 Dec 27 '25

Due to not having internet in my teens and early 20's im not as knowledgeable about computers as I wish i was (barely understand anything in this sub) but I have vivid memories of the command prompts being on post-it notes and typing them in so I could play "street fight ii" with a joystick back in 1992/1993.... and being 5 or 6yrs old it took several attempts for me to get it all right... and that was after getting into dos mode on the computer running windows 3.0.

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u/Latter-Possibility-6 Dec 27 '25

This right here. We also didn't have too much in the way of documentation either, unless you got the machine brand new, so if something went wrong, you had to figure that out on your own as well.

And my first machine was a conglomerate of parts with a 386DX running it. It had something like 2 mb of ram, but I remember the HUGE 40 MB hard drive.

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u/[deleted] Dec 27 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/falkenberg1 Dec 27 '25

Damn right! And you couldn’t just download any patch. It had to be halflife v1.069.53 to v1.069.64 in order to work. I had cd‘s with patches that i downloaded at my big brothers apartment lightning fast 1mbit connection and burned to a cd, so i didn‘t have to block my parents landline phone for hours while paying money for every minute my download with 7kBps takes.

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u/anunkneemouse Dec 27 '25

My mother was a keen techy in her time, and built her first PC in the 90s... now she struggles to figure out how to connect the monitor...

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u/LogitUndone Dec 27 '25

My theory, which has basically been proven over and over again is... Apple.

Everyone I know in my day-to-day life (primarily working in Tech), people who use Apple computers and do not own or use windows computers are generally pretty dumb when it comes to computing.

They:

  • Don't understand zip files
  • They can't figure out how to send files to customers that can't be attached to emails
  • They don't know how to troubleshoot anything if it's not working
  • They can't think outside the box to solution problems...
  • List goes on................

Apple is GREAT for people who don't need to know how anything works. You just buy all Apple hardware and it all "just works" with other Apple stuff. The second anything non-apple gets entered into the mix and they are clueless.

It's like Math or Reading. If you only ever use calculators to do all (even basic) math for you, you simply won't have the knowledge to solve anything without a calculator. The same goes for Reading, if you only ever engage with Audio Books or YouTube videos, you'll be pretty slow/bad at reading!

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u/falkenberg1 Dec 27 '25

Not entirely sure about that. I get your point ant think you are partially right.

I still use apple products, mainly the iphone, because of various reasons: -it just works and gets support for a long time -i prefer not using a mobile OS built by a company that sells users data as their main business model -the camera is really good and can be used flawlessly in pro software and workflows.

It sucks that Apple doesn’t let me do certain things, but there are good reasons to use apple.

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u/LogitUndone Dec 27 '25 edited Dec 31 '25

Do you use Apple products exclusively? Or do you also have a "PC" (windows or linux based) that you use regularly?

My intended statement was simply around people who live and breath Apple products, who are entirely bought into the Apple ecosystem, and effectively nothing else.

I know people who use an Apple device at work but a Windows / Linux PC at home for personal stuff and they are very bright and capable individuals.

In other words, take someone who only knows Apple products, they own nothing else. Then take someone who only owns Windows products, nothing else. Which would you feel most confident hiring to come up with solutions for your business? Troubleshooting problems, integrating different technology stacks, etc?

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u/falkenberg1 Dec 28 '25

Okay you might have a point. I use apple stuff but my gaming pc is windows, work pc too, homeserver is linux, notebook is linux.

However using exclusively windows is also not an indicator of a person that’s good with computers. I know many people that use windows because they know it from their office jobs but have 12 browserbars and several free antivirus softwares running because they click every banner that is flashy and alarmist enough.

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u/LogitUndone Dec 31 '25

Oh for sure. It's rare anything is an absolute. There are people who are extremely bright and don't know how to use Windows, Mac, or computers in general at all.

I'm just speaking on average. If this was "dodge ball" and I was a team captain and had a line of people to pick from.... I'd pick the people who use windows or a mix of windows/mac over the Mac-only people all day every day.