Find my first computer!
February 9, 2004 11:35 AM   Subscribe

My family's first computer was an 8086 system made by Canon. I've since lost everything that could tell me what model name it was, and I'd like to somehow maybe find one for nostalgia purposes. The only specs I can remember is that it had a 20mb hard drive, besides the processor. Oh, and 640kb of RAM. I'm hoping someone had one of these and could give me more info. I'd love to have my first computer again. (*sniff*)
posted by angry modem to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)
 
A quick Google search on "Canon 8086" turns up a couple references to the Navigator.

I'm not sure you'll find many Intel-based PCs that old. Most have probably been stripped of their gold or donated to inner city schools. Old "IBM Compatibles" don't really have the nostalgia value that a Commodore 64 or TRS-80 CoCo has. Plus I don't think the Canons were all that popular in the first place. I'm only guessing though, who knows what you might find at a thrift store on on eBay.

640K? Luxury! My first computer had...
posted by bondcliff at 12:14 PM on February 9, 2004


Response by poster: I'm fairly cetrain the model name wasn't Navigator. I think it was just a plain old number/letter combo. I know this is probably a lost cause, but everything's worth a shot.
posted by angry modem at 12:21 PM on February 9, 2004


8086's were PC XTs, far as i can remember.

my father had one, with the math coprocessor, and and extra two hard drives giving it a whopping 60 MEGABYTE HARD DRIVE split into three physical partitions.

i had to clear one of them ALL the way off to play ultima 6.

it also had ... an EGA GRAPHICS CARD!

and a 1200 baud modem (!!!), which turned me into supergeek once I found a list of bbs numbers in our local "California Computer News"

wasn't made by cannon, but i'm sure it was pretty similar.
posted by fishfucker at 1:05 PM on February 9, 2004


Response by poster: I remember this thing had CGA graphics. I remember always being so sad because I saw everything in terms of four colors at a time...
posted by angry modem at 3:55 PM on February 9, 2004


"I'm not sure you'll find many Intel-based PCs that old" - I often see such archaic computers at my local transfer station : PC's with 20 meg hard drives. I'll keep an eye out.

I imagine there are still plenty of these machines hanging around in people's basements and gathering dust.
posted by troutfishing at 9:25 AM on February 10, 2004


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