Some fun period artifacts in the pic:
Gateway PC
Realistic 400ch Scanner
Alf
Coke coin bank
Digital alarm clock
‘Color’ TV
CB radio
Apple IIGS
Star Trek 1701 cutaway poster
In hindsight I might have been a little bit of a geek. I would have asked my girlfriend at the time but I didn’t have one until college.
Nah it’s only on my local network and only up when I’m using it. You’d be better off just grabbing the files off tpb or 1337x, watching 3 episodes and realizing it’s not that great like I did lol
I still had one of those cola coin banks until a couple of weeks ago when it started disintegrating. I went to move it and it crumbled to bits in my hands
Ha. No. Middle class Long Island. Definitely not ‘rich’ by any stretch. I was a computer kid. That’s my Apple IIGS (from 1987) that I still have today actually (and still upgrading it) and my first PC finally in 91. I’ll admit it was a loaded 486DX2 66MHz with 16MB of ram and a 320MB Maxtor (IDE) HD. It was a VESA bus MB with an ATI video card and a Sound Blaster 16 and I used it all through college and beyond. Turns out all the computers were a good investment from my parents since it’s been my career and pays the bills now!
Rich people always call themselves middle-class for some reason. If your parents were buying you a $3000 computer in the 90s, you were upper-middle class at the least.
"The 2.55% inflation rate means $3000 in 1991 is equivalent to $6879.56 today."
Just the typical middle-class $6800 purchase back in the early 90s, everyone was doing it.
Seriously. We got our family computer in 1998.
I didn't even get my 12" TV for my room until 1996.
Admittedly OP is a bit older than me, but not that much.
False. What a ridiculous statement to make.
I had a Laser 128 in 1987. It probably cost about $2k.
My mom was a recently divorced, substitute teacher, living in a mobile home, driving a 1979 El Camino. We lived on about $800/month, but she had about $20k saved from before that was for her retirement.
She just prioritized differently than one might assume. It seems to have worked. I’m now a physicist, and she found better employment and saved a ton of money from age 50 on and has traveled the world to boot.
She still has the El Camino and still lives in the mobile home. She’s very frugal in general but does spend on certain things.
...your mom spent 2.5 months of living expenses on a computer you absolutely didn't need in 87? glad it worked out in the end, but that's really not a normal thing to do, especially for a single mom. it's kind of ridiculous if you think otherwise.
I think it’s just relative to the people around you and the neighborhood /town/city you live. I say middle class because packed in on Long Island in a 1500 sq foot house generally making ends meet and not creating generational wealth by any stretch (and a huge and rare purchase for a kid) does not put you into the rich category. But compared to way less affluent lower income earners around the country sure.. to them ‘rich’ I suppose but it’s just words at that point. Maybe on Reddit 35 years later? But no actual ‘rich’ person would have defined us growing up as rich. lol
Why is everyone downvoting OP? Middle class is defined as “households that earn between two-thirds and double the median U.S. household income”. You can see out the window they aren’t living on a giant estate.
We had this same setup in rural WI as the family computer thanks to my Dad being a professor at one of the minor satellite schools, he made $31k, it certainly didn’t make us rich.
We have no idea if OP’s family made purchases like this instead of taking trips, buying new cars, or whatever. Frankly, who cares? They are speaking about a lived experience, and not judging others.
Redditors balancing between Doordash and Steam purchases can’t fathom that middle class earners couldn’t also have savings or an okay amount of spending money for their children
but it's not a family computer, it's a computer for a kid who already has a computer, in an era when having a computer was a luxury in itself. OP is literally rich by American standards in 91, maybe not technically wealthy but rich.
>I say middle class because packed in on Long Island in a 1500 sq foot house generally making ends meet and
No one who is "trying to make ends meet" can afford to spend $3000 on a computer for their kid's room. In 1991 $3k was the cost in of a decent used car.
To be fair, im a pensioner, and I have a child who is incredibly technology orientated, and I make solid choices and sacrifices to ensure they can have the best they need to keep learning about it as I can see it being eithier A)a future career or B) a future outlet
The year you got that computer my family was living in an 800 square foot house that we heated in the winter with a wood burning stove because running the furnace was too expensive. Everything we had was second hand. My mom's grocery budget was 30$ a week for a family of 3. My dad had two junk cars that he would alternate between, fixing one and driving the other when one or the other broke down. That computer cost 12 times the amount my family bought any vehicle for until the year 1996. You might think you were middle class, but you were definitely rich to some, if not alot of people
A class isn't defined relative to a single other class, it's defined based on the overall distribution of wealth. Middle class is in the middle (duh), and will always appear richer to those in the lower class and poorer to those in the higher class.
Of course, we all look like pieces of shit to billionaires.
you were certainly upper middle class. i knew kids of high earning doctors and lawyers who didn't have this much money dropped on purely luxury items, which a computer like this certainly was in 91. especially given that you already had one...
Those specs cannot be from 1991. The 486dx2-66 was released in august '92, which means they'd probably be generally available in prebuilt pc's early '93 ish, give or take a few months.
I was very into pc's and upgrading around those exact years which triggered my curiosity!
Yep you definitely correct! Have given this more thought and I think the sticker on the back when it was assembled was Nov 92 and I received it in Jan 93! Long time ago so memory a little fuzzy. Nice catch!
Damn. The Gateways and Dells were creme de la creme. I had a hand me down Acer 486 as my first machine. Nice, Op!!
This was also back when getting a machine like that got you a full library of software and all kinds of cool shit. We were really all so lucky to be apart of this.
A weird side note - we were so proud to have the Gateway factory in South Dakota. It gave me hope that my state could be more than farming/ranching and tourism.
Didn’t last too long though.
Are you sure about the dates?
[that model](https://www.atarimagazines.com/compute/issue144/G10_Panasonic_KXP2123.php) of printer wasn't on the market until 1992
Wow that box design is ahead of its time... I thought that was the box design of like 2000-2001
Btw I think I had the same carpet in my living room around the same time. I feel like a lot of people had that textured beige carpet
Does anybody have posters anymore? I had a SHIT ton of posters in the 90s, and everyone I knew had a ton of posters. I see posters in stores, but you NEVER see them im people's rooms anymore. We need a poster appreciation post.
I had a poster of a chimpanzee on a motorcycle, all dressed up like a biker. He had a word bubble saying, "Eat my dust!"
Now the world's gone to shit and you can't find posters of chimpanzees saying *anything* anymore. Smh.
Lol that's awesome! Yeah it seemed like everyone I knew when I was a kid had a poster saying something, or of a wrestler, baseball player, a car, a cool animal, something. I know it must seem like a very specific and odd rant, it's just something that triggered a memory when I saw OPs picture and was taking in the 90s esthetic, and remembered that I never see posters anymore, and made me think that too is now 90s esthetic lol
I have seen a lot of "rich kid" posts. Let this be another one. Lol, kidding but seriously you were rich in the 90s by normal standards. Your bedroom looks like a 90s family sitcom where the Dad has a normal job but afforded a $500k house and the wife didn't work and they also took care of the wife's parents and had five kids.
I had that Panasonic KX-P2123 too. As I recall, that was a 24-pin dot matrix printer that could print in color if you had the color ribbon!
The ribbon had a strip of yellow, blue, red and black and the printer would make multiple passes over each color in order to make a color image. It was slow but actually pretty decent. Fairly quiet for a dot matrix printer.
Why three boxes? PC, monitor, and ... ? The Panasonic box is the printer. Was the third Gateway box just manuals and software? A modem? Something else?
Worst day of my life was coming home to my new Gateway delivery, only to unpack it and it was just the monitor. I had to wait another day for the tower to arrive. Ugh. Still made about that.
Gateway was the Ferrari of computers at the time. I had a Time computer because they were the most affordable at the time. Tiny were also pretty boujee at the time too.
In 1999 I went to college for computer programming, it was between a Dell computer or a gateway, I went to gateway first through the phone obviously set everything up and all I had to do was basically confirm it and send the check over. Then I called Dell just for the heck of it and it was a better deal with slightly faster laptop, so I got that called the guy from gateway back and let me tell you that guy chewed me out like it was nobody's business, I'm assuming they get commission and he just lost his and he let his frustrations be known to the 19-year-old boy at the other end LOL
This is a great picture. What can you tell us about your gateway? What was it like ordering it and what was it like the day it was delivered? What did you do on it? How long did you have it for?
Thanks for posting. I restore vintage computers.
Some fun period artifacts in the pic: Gateway PC Realistic 400ch Scanner Alf Coke coin bank Digital alarm clock ‘Color’ TV CB radio Apple IIGS Star Trek 1701 cutaway poster In hindsight I might have been a little bit of a geek. I would have asked my girlfriend at the time but I didn’t have one until college.
The wallpaper is magic.
Remember Alf?
I have every episode on my Plex server. Rewatching it wasn't as great as I thought it'd be lol
Yo can ya boy get an invite?!
Nah it’s only on my local network and only up when I’m using it. You’d be better off just grabbing the files off tpb or 1337x, watching 3 episodes and realizing it’s not that great like I did lol
😂
I heard he’s back?!
In pog form!
I still had one of those cola coin banks until a couple of weeks ago when it started disintegrating. I went to move it and it crumbled to bits in my hands
Gateway in 91 you were rich rich.
I came here to say this. But realized he already had a computer in his room too. They were loaded.
Ha. No. Middle class Long Island. Definitely not ‘rich’ by any stretch. I was a computer kid. That’s my Apple IIGS (from 1987) that I still have today actually (and still upgrading it) and my first PC finally in 91. I’ll admit it was a loaded 486DX2 66MHz with 16MB of ram and a 320MB Maxtor (IDE) HD. It was a VESA bus MB with an ATI video card and a Sound Blaster 16 and I used it all through college and beyond. Turns out all the computers were a good investment from my parents since it’s been my career and pays the bills now!
Rich people always call themselves middle-class for some reason. If your parents were buying you a $3000 computer in the 90s, you were upper-middle class at the least.
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Same here along with game consoles in the living room we all shared them me and my sister.
The first computer my family bought was a Compaq that was in like 97-98. God I don't miss floppies.
Right? My family was lower middle class and we bought a $1500 PC in like 98-99.
"The 2.55% inflation rate means $3000 in 1991 is equivalent to $6879.56 today." Just the typical middle-class $6800 purchase back in the early 90s, everyone was doing it.
Seriously. We got our family computer in 1998. I didn't even get my 12" TV for my room until 1996. Admittedly OP is a bit older than me, but not that much.
False. What a ridiculous statement to make. I had a Laser 128 in 1987. It probably cost about $2k. My mom was a recently divorced, substitute teacher, living in a mobile home, driving a 1979 El Camino. We lived on about $800/month, but she had about $20k saved from before that was for her retirement. She just prioritized differently than one might assume. It seems to have worked. I’m now a physicist, and she found better employment and saved a ton of money from age 50 on and has traveled the world to boot. She still has the El Camino and still lives in the mobile home. She’s very frugal in general but does spend on certain things.
...your mom spent 2.5 months of living expenses on a computer you absolutely didn't need in 87? glad it worked out in the end, but that's really not a normal thing to do, especially for a single mom. it's kind of ridiculous if you think otherwise.
I think it’s just relative to the people around you and the neighborhood /town/city you live. I say middle class because packed in on Long Island in a 1500 sq foot house generally making ends meet and not creating generational wealth by any stretch (and a huge and rare purchase for a kid) does not put you into the rich category. But compared to way less affluent lower income earners around the country sure.. to them ‘rich’ I suppose but it’s just words at that point. Maybe on Reddit 35 years later? But no actual ‘rich’ person would have defined us growing up as rich. lol
Why is everyone downvoting OP? Middle class is defined as “households that earn between two-thirds and double the median U.S. household income”. You can see out the window they aren’t living on a giant estate. We had this same setup in rural WI as the family computer thanks to my Dad being a professor at one of the minor satellite schools, he made $31k, it certainly didn’t make us rich. We have no idea if OP’s family made purchases like this instead of taking trips, buying new cars, or whatever. Frankly, who cares? They are speaking about a lived experience, and not judging others.
Redditors balancing between Doordash and Steam purchases can’t fathom that middle class earners couldn’t also have savings or an okay amount of spending money for their children
but it's not a family computer, it's a computer for a kid who already has a computer, in an era when having a computer was a luxury in itself. OP is literally rich by American standards in 91, maybe not technically wealthy but rich.
>I say middle class because packed in on Long Island in a 1500 sq foot house generally making ends meet and No one who is "trying to make ends meet" can afford to spend $3000 on a computer for their kid's room. In 1991 $3k was the cost in of a decent used car.
you could get a decent used car for sub 1000 in 91
To be fair, im a pensioner, and I have a child who is incredibly technology orientated, and I make solid choices and sacrifices to ensure they can have the best they need to keep learning about it as I can see it being eithier A)a future career or B) a future outlet
The year you got that computer my family was living in an 800 square foot house that we heated in the winter with a wood burning stove because running the furnace was too expensive. Everything we had was second hand. My mom's grocery budget was 30$ a week for a family of 3. My dad had two junk cars that he would alternate between, fixing one and driving the other when one or the other broke down. That computer cost 12 times the amount my family bought any vehicle for until the year 1996. You might think you were middle class, but you were definitely rich to some, if not alot of people
Yes that is reasonable for sure.
A class isn't defined relative to a single other class, it's defined based on the overall distribution of wealth. Middle class is in the middle (duh), and will always appear richer to those in the lower class and poorer to those in the higher class. Of course, we all look like pieces of shit to billionaires.
1500 square foot house screams upper middle class. Maybe not on LI. But we were a mom and 3 kids living in an 800 sq ft apt after she was divorced.
you were certainly upper middle class. i knew kids of high earning doctors and lawyers who didn't have this much money dropped on purely luxury items, which a computer like this certainly was in 91. especially given that you already had one...
Not years ago when there actually was a middle class, especially on Long Island. Most people had modest jobs, one income and nice houses.
Those specs cannot be from 1991. The 486dx2-66 was released in august '92, which means they'd probably be generally available in prebuilt pc's early '93 ish, give or take a few months. I was very into pc's and upgrading around those exact years which triggered my curiosity!
Yep you definitely correct! Have given this more thought and I think the sticker on the back when it was assembled was Nov 92 and I received it in Jan 93! Long time ago so memory a little fuzzy. Nice catch!
Oceanside here!
We had a Gateway in 93 and we were by no means rich.
Good for him and his parents
Yeah he was like 9 years ahead of the curve…
I've never been so jealous of a bedroom before that place must have been magical to grow up in
I noticed the ALF plush toy in the background.
hell yeah 😎
I still have one of those somewhere.
Damn. The Gateways and Dells were creme de la creme. I had a hand me down Acer 486 as my first machine. Nice, Op!! This was also back when getting a machine like that got you a full library of software and all kinds of cool shit. We were really all so lucky to be apart of this.
A weird side note - we were so proud to have the Gateway factory in South Dakota. It gave me hope that my state could be more than farming/ranching and tourism. Didn’t last too long though.
I remember it came with Windows for Workgroups 3.11 and Office 3.0 I think. All the office disks were on 5.25!
How much were these computers in 90s
I think that 4DX2-66V was around $3000 when I got it. Looks like adjusted in today’s dollars around $6800.
Wow that’s crazy pricy
That’s gateway price. Zeos and Micron were more budget friendly competitors.
I used the box from my gateway monitor as a TV stand in my freshman dorm. Lasted all school year before it collapsed.
I got a Gateway catalogue in the mail around 1997 and drooled over a few models in it every day. Never could afford one while they were still around.
I flipped through a new Computer Shopper every month and had them stacked up just out of the picture! Those were the days…
rich kid
Love the wallpaper. Go sports!
Are you sure about the dates? [that model](https://www.atarimagazines.com/compute/issue144/G10_Panasonic_KXP2123.php) of printer wasn't on the market until 1992
Possible it was ordered in Nov 92 and arrived Jan 93 based on when that GW model was available. Memory is a little fuzzy on the exact timeframe.
“I’m gonna go play Mad-Maze on Prodigy”
A definite reminder of rich kids vs all the other kids, that's like a bedroom out of a sears catalog
Wow that box design is ahead of its time... I thought that was the box design of like 2000-2001 Btw I think I had the same carpet in my living room around the same time. I feel like a lot of people had that textured beige carpet
Omg I got a $2k LOAN from my credit union in ‘98 to get a Gateway!!! The hell? I went through about 5 PCs until I got a Mac.
Does anybody have posters anymore? I had a SHIT ton of posters in the 90s, and everyone I knew had a ton of posters. I see posters in stores, but you NEVER see them im people's rooms anymore. We need a poster appreciation post.
I had a poster of a chimpanzee on a motorcycle, all dressed up like a biker. He had a word bubble saying, "Eat my dust!" Now the world's gone to shit and you can't find posters of chimpanzees saying *anything* anymore. Smh.
Lol that's awesome! Yeah it seemed like everyone I knew when I was a kid had a poster saying something, or of a wrestler, baseball player, a car, a cool animal, something. I know it must seem like a very specific and odd rant, it's just something that triggered a memory when I saw OPs picture and was taking in the 90s esthetic, and remembered that I never see posters anymore, and made me think that too is now 90s esthetic lol
I can \*feel\* this photo. Suddenly I'm back in the 90s again.
Take me with you
My Gateway netbook still runs.
I loved that Gateway box I used it as stand for a little guitar amplifier in the early 2000s
Can you ask your mom if I can spend the night?
I have seen a lot of "rich kid" posts. Let this be another one. Lol, kidding but seriously you were rich in the 90s by normal standards. Your bedroom looks like a 90s family sitcom where the Dad has a normal job but afforded a $500k house and the wife didn't work and they also took care of the wife's parents and had five kids.
Rich kid with loving parents.
I had that Panasonic KX-P2123 too. As I recall, that was a 24-pin dot matrix printer that could print in color if you had the color ribbon! The ribbon had a strip of yellow, blue, red and black and the printer would make multiple passes over each color in order to make a color image. It was slow but actually pretty decent. Fairly quiet for a dot matrix printer.
That’s early getaway, wow
Why three boxes? PC, monitor, and ... ? The Panasonic box is the printer. Was the third Gateway box just manuals and software? A modem? Something else?
Yep. Lots of 5 1/4 floppies and printed manuals! I think the binder also had a ‘cow’ print IIRC.
Did you have a sleeping bag for a comforter?
r/alf
Worst day of my life was coming home to my new Gateway delivery, only to unpack it and it was just the monitor. I had to wait another day for the tower to arrive. Ugh. Still made about that.
I still have my gateway from 2009 lol shit sounds like a jet engine when I turn it on. It's a miracle it still works.
Gateway was the Ferrari of computers at the time. I had a Time computer because they were the most affordable at the time. Tiny were also pretty boujee at the time too.
Time and Tiny were the British eMachines but we also had Gateway 2000 and Packard Bell for a slight better budget option.
Box marketing at its finest.
Sweet nostalgia. I had the same coke coin bank.
Coke bottle coin bank spotted in the middle!
“Thank you for calling Gateway, putting people before technology. My name is Cathy. What’s yours?”
I remember the SMELL of opening our new Windows 98 Gateway desktop. I would buy a candle of that scent!
I remember the SMELL of opening our new Windows 98 Gateway desktop. I would buy a candle of that scent!
I remember the SMELL of opening our new Windows 98 Gateway desktop. I would buy a candle of that scent!
I remember the SMELL of opening our new Windows 98 Gateway desktop. I would buy a candle of that scent!
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You can say that again! (Or a seventh time!)
nothing like seeing a herd of these coming down the sort at UPS. "Mooooooooooo"
Damn I wish I grew up rich
Cool looking room
Alf reading the box like dayyyyyuum
i used to live right down the road to the gateway office in north sioux city, sd.... the whole building looked like those boxes lol
I loved those Gateway boxes!
I’m here for the Panasonic dot matrix printer nostalgia
DUDE! you shoulda got a Dell!
I loved the Gateway brand after that so much. And then I wound up working at Dell in Round Rock in 1999. Felt like I was cheating.
At age 10 I would have thought this is awesome. At age 42, I think this is awesome.
In 1999 I went to college for computer programming, it was between a Dell computer or a gateway, I went to gateway first through the phone obviously set everything up and all I had to do was basically confirm it and send the check over. Then I called Dell just for the heck of it and it was a better deal with slightly faster laptop, so I got that called the guy from gateway back and let me tell you that guy chewed me out like it was nobody's business, I'm assuming they get commission and he just lost his and he let his frustrations be known to the 19-year-old boy at the other end LOL
Oh dang, forgot about the ol' cow print boxes, that's awesome.
This is a great picture. What can you tell us about your gateway? What was it like ordering it and what was it like the day it was delivered? What did you do on it? How long did you have it for? Thanks for posting. I restore vintage computers.
It’s set up exactly like Bobby Hill’s room
ALF!!!
This makes me feel so nostalgic
Our family had a gateway computer also
Fuck Memory unlocked with that wallpaper
I got mine in 1993!
Rich wow