My Computers - Laser Turbo XT
Metal Shade. The name I called my first computer. Named that because the hard drive is made of metal, versus the material that floppy disks consisted of. Purchased in my junior year of high school. I scraped up every bit of spare change I could muster. In fact, when I first bought this system, I did not have enough money to buy a monitor. Being, head-less will not stop me! In fact, I would boot the computer up, and run Space Quest by guessing the commands just to hear the PC speaker music. It didn't take me long to upgrade this system. It originally was CGA, but I quickly bought an 8bit VGA card. Then a few months later, I got my first Sound Blaster card as a b-day gift. What a trip hearing actual voice in Stellar 7 was! This system helped me survive the lonely summers in Coon Valley. I beat Ultima VI and Monkey Island on this very system. This is also where I taught myself to program in Quick Basic.
vTech Laser Turbo XT
- Intel 8088 CPU clocked at 10 Mhz
- 640 kilobytes RAM (on motherboard)
- 40 meg RLL hard drive
- 720K 31/2 inch floppy drive
- 360K 51/4 inch floppy drive
- 8-bit VGA card ISA
- Sound Blaster 8-bit ISA
- Microsoft Serial Mouse
- Laser 14 inch color VGA monitor (interlaced .39 dot pitch)
- MS-DOS 4.01
Total system cost: $600 (purchased in 1991)
Sold for: $250 (sold in 1992)