1996: MY FIRST COMPUTER

My First Personal Computer - 1996

This photo was taken in 1996. That was my first personal computer.

It doesn't look like much today — a huge beige CRT monitor, a bulky horizontal desktop case on the floor, a mechanical keyboard, and a stack of floppy disks on the table. But in Malaysia in 1996, this was cutting-edge. This was the future sitting in my room.

The Specs That Defined An Era

1. Intel Pentium 75 MHz (S75i)

The heart of the machine. The Pentium 75 was one of the earliest chips in the Pentium family, released after Intel retired the 486 line. The "S75i" was the Socket 5 version. It was the processor that brought true multimedia to the home.

Before this, a 486 could handle text. The Pentium 75, with its 64-bit external data bus and superscalar architecture, could finally play Video CDs, play audio while you worked, and run Windows 95 without freezing every five minutes. In Malaysia, a clone set like this cost around RM3,500 to RM4,500 at the time — more than two months' salary for many.

2. The CRT Monitor

The big, heavy "tube" monitor that weighed 12-15kg. A 14-inch or 15-inch SVGA screen with a resolution of 640x480 or, if you were lucky, 800x600. It hummed, it flickered, and it heated up the whole room. Thin LCD screens existed in 1996, but they cost more than the computer itself. This CRT was the mandatory standard.

3. The 3.5-inch Floppy Disk Era

There was no USB drive. No CD writer yet. Everything moved on 1.44MB floppy disks. Installing Windows 95 required 13 floppy disks. Installing Windows 3.11 required 21. Printer drivers, assignments, games — all stacked on the desk like you see in the photo on the left. One bad sector and your assignment was gone.

4. 8MB to 16MB EDO RAM

Extended Data Out RAM. Today our phones have 12GB. Back then, 8MB was enough to run Windows 95 smoothly. If you had 16MB, you were considered a power user. RAM cost around RM80-RM100 per megabyte in 1996, so that 8MB stick alone was worth RM700+.

5. Windows 95 or Windows 3.11?

I can't quite remember which one I was using at that exact moment — it could have been either.

Windows 3.11 for Workgroups meant booting into black-screen MS-DOS first, then typing `win` to enter Windows. No Start button.

Windows 95, launched in August 1995, changed everything. It was the first with the Start button, the taskbar, and Plug and Play. If you look closely at the keyboard in the photo and you see the Windows key, that was Windows 95.

Why 1996 Was a Special Year in Malaysia

My first PC didn't happen in a vacuum. It happened right when Malaysia decided to become a digital nation:

• 1991: JARING, Malaysia's first ISP, connects the country to the internet. By 1995, there were only 40,000 internet users in the whole country.
• 1996:TMNet is launched. The Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) is launched — a 50km-long tech zone from KLCC to KLIA, including the brand new Cyberjaya.
• 1996:The National IT Council (NITC), National IT Agenda (NITA), and Multimedia Development Corporation (MDC, now MDEC) are all established.

In 1995, Malaysia had only 37.3 personal computers per 1,000 people. By 2002, it would jump to 126.1 per 1,000. I was one of those 37 in a thousand.

From a 75MHz machine with 8MB of RAM to the world we have today — that beige box in the photo is where my journey into computing really started.

Hj Zulheimy Maamor

2 September 2026: 12.01 a.m