First Computer — The IBM Aptiva E Series

As an IBMer myself at IBM’s Canada headquarters in Markham, Ontario, it looks like there is a childhood memory I need to share here. It also serves as a tradition to IBM itself, because the company was the manufacturer of this computer I shall talk about.

When I was four years old, I had my first exposure to a computer that my parents bought for all of us, because we wanted to do some business over here, while having the ability to play some childhood games. It was an IBM Aptiva E Series tower computer with Microsoft Windows 95, a single 3 ¼” floppy disk drive, a CD-ROM drive, two PS/2 ports for the mouse and keyboard, a VGA port for a CRT monitor, and a port for twin speakers. It looked almost exactly like this:

These are some of the memories I could think of from that time:

Press <F1> to go to the Setup Utility

That’s what I’ve always seen below the big IBM logo in pure blue when powering on that computer. It was quite amazing and lovely at the time.

Microsoft Windows 95

Seeing a screen of a blue sky with certain clouds, the Windows flag with red, green, blue, and yellow, and the words “Microsoft Windows 95” displayed in a high-resolution version of Microsoft Sans Serif with smooth anti-aliased edges was quite the excitement and pleasure back then, because it got me ready to load up games from compact disks and play them.

DOS-Based Games

When I was a young kid, we had a few games and applications that were distributed on 3 ¼” floppy drives. The earliest I can remember is this game made in 1990 through a contract with The Walt Disney Company and Distinctive Software Inc. called Mickey’s 123’s The Big Surprise. My parents also had Rags to Riches: The Financial Market Simulation by Interplay.

CD-ROM Games

Some of the earliest CD-ROM games I can remember playing on that PC alone was Tonka Search and Rescue, Disney’s Ready for Math with Pooh, a few games under the Fisher-Price brand (Great Adventures: Wild Western Adventures, Great Adventures: Castle, Great Adventures: Pirate Ship, and Ready for School — Kindergarten specifically), Disney’s MathQuest with Aladdin, and Disney’s Timon and Pumbaa Jungle Games.

I was actually more into PC games that existed on CD-ROM back in the day because floppy disks were becoming obsolete. It was also the age of the Sony PlayStation and the Nintendo 64. Some other games I quite played at the time were a few Disney games. Toy Story Activity Centre, Animated Storybook — Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree. One of my favourites was LEGO Island, which I felt was quite ahead of its time because it was the first video game to be under the LEGO brand, and it was all 3D in first-person perspective. We also had a few The Magic School Bus games licensed by Scholastic for development by Music Pen Inc, as a series of contracts with Microsoft Corporation.

Since I was living in Boucherville, Quebec, at the time, my parents wanted me to learn some basic French skills at the same time. So, they brought us two games by French developer Coktel Vision under the Adiboo series, both in French. In English, one of the games is called Adiboo: Magical Playland, whereas in French it was called Adibou 2 (Adibou deux). The other one is Adiboo and the Green Shadow (Adibou et l’ombre verte)involving a car.

Themes

When my parents had a fish tank in our basement, which was quite beautiful since it added a sense of nature while we were down there, one thing we decided to try out on Microsoft Windows 95 was add an ocean theme to it, where the mouse pointer was replaced with a starfish, and the desktop backdrop was a blue background with fishes and different artifacts including those beautiful coral reefs. It was absolutely serene, something I won’t forget because I felt like I was really there.

A Staple of Engineering

At the time, I was more curious of what’s in front of my eyes instead of thinking about what kind of information was there. But after recently watching the archived commercials of Windows 95 and this article published in the TIME Magazine in 2013, the software was quite innovative and something that made its way to how the Windows system looks today.

As an IBMer, I can relate it to one of our company values: “Innovation that matters — for our company and for the world.” Having the ability to use the IBM Aptiva computer to witness something innovative made me start thinking about practicality and creativity, because with the high rise of computer technology, there comes multiple sources of information and tools that can be used to get ahead.

Newer Version of Windows

As me and my parents were quite happy with getting ourselves started for what’s there, we decided to upgrade the operating system in that Aptiva computer to Windows 98 at one point. This allowed us to play games that were more up to date; RollerCoaster Tycoon by Chris Sawyer was one of them. We had so many games available on CD that we had to buy a CD case of our own and put it in one of the drawers for easy access.

We also decided to experiment with different themes as well. We tried out baseball, which I thought was pretty neat. Architecture was another. At one point we decided that Space would be our usual theme set.

Screen Savers

One of the abundant memories I can think of is when we left the computer on idle for a couple of minutes that a screen saver is then rendered and displayed on the screen. The most common screen saver we used was the Windows 98 3D Maze, which was rather simple and unique in a sense. We also tried out a few other screensavers since I remember at one point looking through these screen savers myself.

These were 3D Pipes, 3D Flower Box, Bezier, Flying Windows, Starfield, 3D Text, and 3D Flying Objects.

Microsoft Internet Explorer

I remember once seeing my brother roaming through a program where it had an encyclopedia of actual screen captures from the first season of Pokémon, where I was so thrilled to notice it and want to see it for myself. It took me a little while to figure out what program my brother was using, but eventually, I found out it was Microsoft Internet Explorer. My parents had to help me put on a website and save a link somewhere so that if I wanted to access it, I could easily find it.

I started to use the browser more often to look up different websites of interest including one for Ridge Racer 64, as back in the day, I was playing a lot of games on the Nintendo 64 rather than the Sony PlayStation.

It’s now safe to turn off your computer.

Every time I would ask Windows 95 or 98 to shut down, I would always get this yellowish brown message on a black screen saying I can press and hold the power button until the computer was turned off. This was always the case for several years, up until the point when me and my parents had an HP Pavilion 7940, which was able to turn itself off on its own.

What are your memories to share? What was your first ever computer? Do you remember what you used it for?