The PC That Ruined a Wrestling Career: Vendex HeadStart from 1987
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Date: 2022-04-14
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Comments and reviews: 9
Rob
This actually makes me appreciate my family's first PC more. I seem to remember being 11 years old when we got it, so that would make it around 1988. It was an XT clone with 10Mhz turbo and an EGA card paired with a 14inch color monitor. One 360k 5. 25 floppy and a 20 or 30Mb hard drive. It was from a local chain and was housed in a massive heavy steel case with a big ol red flipper on off switch on the back right side. I thought it was awesome until I bought a copy of Falcon 2. 0 and found that not only did I not have the required 286 CPU, I also didn't have 1. 2Mb HD floppy drives. I remember sitting there at night trying over and over with the floppies, hoping that somehow magically my floppy drive would figure out how to read HD floppies but to no avail. Another huge disappointment was buying a copy of the original Wing Commander and not being able to play it at all, just salivating over the instruction booklet and ship blueprint things it came with. Still had a lot of fun playing DOS games on that thing, was stuck with it till '93 I think it was when I somehow convinced my Dad to buy me a 386 clone. I think he maybe realized the future career potential of my interests (which more or less worked out)
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This actually makes me appreciate my family's first PC more. I seem to remember being 11 years old when we got it, so that would make it around 1988. It was an XT clone with 10Mhz turbo and an EGA card paired with a 14inch color monitor. One 360k 5. 25 floppy and a 20 or 30Mb hard drive. It was from a local chain and was housed in a massive heavy steel case with a big ol red flipper on off switch on the back right side. I thought it was awesome until I bought a copy of Falcon 2. 0 and found that not only did I not have the required 286 CPU, I also didn't have 1. 2Mb HD floppy drives. I remember sitting there at night trying over and over with the floppies, hoping that somehow magically my floppy drive would figure out how to read HD floppies but to no avail. Another huge disappointment was buying a copy of the original Wing Commander and not being able to play it at all, just salivating over the instruction booklet and ship blueprint things it came with. Still had a lot of fun playing DOS games on that thing, was stuck with it till '93 I think it was when I somehow convinced my Dad to buy me a 386 clone. I think he maybe realized the future career potential of my interests (which more or less worked out)
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zogmorp
My first PC was a Packard Bell -Multimedia PC- that had a 486 SX-2 50Mhz, 4mb RAM, 2X CD-Rom, speakers mounted on the sides of the monitor. and a box full of cd-roms. Lots of educational -multimedia- CD Roms and the one included CD game: Mega-Race. Of course it also had Ski-Free in Windows 3. 1. The first PC games I ever bought (from Wal-Mart) were X-Wing and Doom 2. I think it was $1200 and we bought it from a store called -Service Merchandise-. I eventually upgraded the RAM to 20mb (bought the RAM from Wal-Mart. A year or 2 later I attempted to upgrade the CPU to a 100Mhz Pentium. I followed the directions in the manual to change jumper switches to allow it. but it didn't work. So It remained. I used that PC from 1995 all the way until the summer of 1999 when I bought my first Win98 Compaq, which I later installed a Voodoo3 into.
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My first PC was a Packard Bell -Multimedia PC- that had a 486 SX-2 50Mhz, 4mb RAM, 2X CD-Rom, speakers mounted on the sides of the monitor. and a box full of cd-roms. Lots of educational -multimedia- CD Roms and the one included CD game: Mega-Race. Of course it also had Ski-Free in Windows 3. 1. The first PC games I ever bought (from Wal-Mart) were X-Wing and Doom 2. I think it was $1200 and we bought it from a store called -Service Merchandise-. I eventually upgraded the RAM to 20mb (bought the RAM from Wal-Mart. A year or 2 later I attempted to upgrade the CPU to a 100Mhz Pentium. I followed the directions in the manual to change jumper switches to allow it. but it didn't work. So It remained. I used that PC from 1995 all the way until the summer of 1999 when I bought my first Win98 Compaq, which I later installed a Voodoo3 into.
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James
Wow, it really makes you think about how far we've gotten technologically speaking, when only 35 year ago, computers or cpu's specifically were bench-marked by repeating simple tasks in just a basic word processor program!
Blast forward to 2022 and were now testing our CPU's power/limits with programs like Aida64 and Cinebench which renders a photo-realistic 3D scene and uses algorithms to stress all CPU cores, ect. It really shows just how fast and how davnaced our techolongly has come in such short peroid of time! It makes me excited to see what the next 30 or so years brings us!
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Wow, it really makes you think about how far we've gotten technologically speaking, when only 35 year ago, computers or cpu's specifically were bench-marked by repeating simple tasks in just a basic word processor program!
Blast forward to 2022 and were now testing our CPU's power/limits with programs like Aida64 and Cinebench which renders a photo-realistic 3D scene and uses algorithms to stress all CPU cores, ect. It really shows just how fast and how davnaced our techolongly has come in such short peroid of time! It makes me excited to see what the next 30 or so years brings us!
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Promptjock
I had one of these machines and it was a ROCK SOLID unit! I upgraded it to the full 768K RAM capacity and installed a 47M hard drive. I even got a copy of COLOR-CAPABLE MSBASIC so I could do -color- programming. I eventually gave it to a relative when i got a 12 mHz 80286 with 1 meg ram (I kept the 47M drive) and eventually installed an 80287 co-processor chip. I even bought the Vendex SERVICE MANUAL (I still have it) which helped me learn about battery-backup circuits.
Yes, that machine started me on becoming a -tech whiz- with -Intel-based- machines.
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I had one of these machines and it was a ROCK SOLID unit! I upgraded it to the full 768K RAM capacity and installed a 47M hard drive. I even got a copy of COLOR-CAPABLE MSBASIC so I could do -color- programming. I eventually gave it to a relative when i got a 12 mHz 80286 with 1 meg ram (I kept the 47M drive) and eventually installed an 80287 co-processor chip. I even bought the Vendex SERVICE MANUAL (I still have it) which helped me learn about battery-backup circuits.
Yes, that machine started me on becoming a -tech whiz- with -Intel-based- machines.
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JRBDBC
my first pc clone was an Epson Equity II + with XVGA and Xtree Gold installed. man watching this really makes me want to get it out and working again (thinking HDD failure) and play some of the old Reader rabbit, math blaster and super solvers outnumbered. I remember even getting a copy of Flight Simulator and I think by the end of its life it even had one of those early CD drives in it. you remember the CD drives that took CD in there own custom CD protector to load it into the system. good times.
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my first pc clone was an Epson Equity II + with XVGA and Xtree Gold installed. man watching this really makes me want to get it out and working again (thinking HDD failure) and play some of the old Reader rabbit, math blaster and super solvers outnumbered. I remember even getting a copy of Flight Simulator and I think by the end of its life it even had one of those early CD drives in it. you remember the CD drives that took CD in there own custom CD protector to load it into the system. good times.
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Atarimuseum
In The Netherlands Vendex was a private label of the Dutch department stores called V&D (Vroom and Dreesman. Their Headstart PCs were sold only in the V&D department stores. They also sold many other electrical appliances under private labels, like Vendomatic. Actually Vendex was the name of the holding company which owned the V&D department stores and many, many other stores back in the 80s and 90s. I am surprised to see that their PCs made it to the US market!
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In The Netherlands Vendex was a private label of the Dutch department stores called V&D (Vroom and Dreesman. Their Headstart PCs were sold only in the V&D department stores. They also sold many other electrical appliances under private labels, like Vendomatic. Actually Vendex was the name of the holding company which owned the V&D department stores and many, many other stores back in the 80s and 90s. I am surprised to see that their PCs made it to the US market!
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Wardenclyffe
Thank you for this video! My first computer growing up was this exact Vendex model. It-s currently sitting on my floor with a dead hard drive like yours was. I didn-t know about the compact flash adapter, and I will definitely be trying that out to get it up and running again! My dad used to code educational games for me as a kid on this pc, and it-s an important part of my interest in retro electronics today. Thank you for reminding me to work on it again!
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Thank you for this video! My first computer growing up was this exact Vendex model. It-s currently sitting on my floor with a dead hard drive like yours was. I didn-t know about the compact flash adapter, and I will definitely be trying that out to get it up and running again! My dad used to code educational games for me as a kid on this pc, and it-s an important part of my interest in retro electronics today. Thank you for reminding me to work on it again!
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MegaKnightX
I think my parents had one of these or at least a similar clone with a Hercules monitor that they had received second hand. I had a scuba diving game on a floppy disk. I wish I could remember what it was called. There was also a memory game and some banner design/printing software. I printed a lot of banners. I'm surprised my parents were cool with how much paper and ink ribbon I used. Maybe they were more annoyed than I remember. -
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I think my parents had one of these or at least a similar clone with a Hercules monitor that they had received second hand. I had a scuba diving game on a floppy disk. I wish I could remember what it was called. There was also a memory game and some banner design/printing software. I printed a lot of banners. I'm surprised my parents were cool with how much paper and ink ribbon I used. Maybe they were more annoyed than I remember. -
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Clint
My stepdad had bought the Magnavox 300 CD computer and it came with the Head start program and dos 5. When he traded his computer in for a faster 486, the guy who built my step dad's 486 didn't want the Head Start program so I ended up getting it he didn't want the single spin CD-ROM that needed the CD caddy to hold the CDs or it's controller card so I ended up with it and my stepdad got to keep his game called The Manhole.
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My stepdad had bought the Magnavox 300 CD computer and it came with the Head start program and dos 5. When he traded his computer in for a faster 486, the guy who built my step dad's 486 didn't want the Head Start program so I ended up getting it he didn't want the single spin CD-ROM that needed the CD caddy to hold the CDs or it's controller card so I ended up with it and my stepdad got to keep his game called The Manhole.
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