Thank you for this. It all sounds correct to me and brought back so many things I’d forgotten – but now I’m really curious how you remember these dates and numbers. My memory for details like these is pretty strong, but this level of recall is remarkable. I’m genuinely impressed.
Its cut&paste of research I did for Vogons (retro computing forum) post some time ago in my "I need to know everything about SIMM ram" phase :-)
Personally I started with PCs around 1995 and this I remember vividly due to major mistake* I made :) I had a school friend working weekends at the local computer fleamarket scrounge for me the cheapest second hand components possible to build barebones 386 system (minimum to play Doom*/Privateer) piece by piece in $50 increments. Tiny motherboard with soldered Am386DX40 + case was first. Next months $50 paid for 4MB, ISA VGA, keyboard and FDD. This got me off the ground once I hobbled together VGA to SCART cable with special driver to use TV instead of expensive VGA monitor. Third installment another 4MB and 40MB HDD, and the final $50 concluded build with sound card, CDROM and a mouse :)
* I will never forget my friend trying to convince me to throw extra $10 for a 486SX25 on a VLB board and me casually saying 'bah bro thats a tasty pizza money thanks but no thanks' :| This fatal f-up meant 5-9fps in Doom instead of what one would call fluid at the time 10-15 fps on 486SX25+VLB, motivated me to get into PC building and started my career in IT. 3 years later I was working in a service center for regional PC components distributor.
