Custom Build PC

Processor: Intel 486

Manufacturer: Custom

Year: Circa 1990

Donor: Private

This is a custom build PC running MS-DOS 6.22.  It comes from a time before a small number of manufacturers came to predominate the PC market (like Lenovo, hp and Dell together at over 60% today).  In the 80s and 90s, many small independent computer shops existed in each town offering custom build PCs, such as this one.

DOS is an operating system with a text-based user interface.  As technology progressed into the 1990's and with growing competiton from the machines like the Apple Macintosh (1984), Microsoft developed its own Graphical User Interface (GUI) environment, called Windows.  It wasn't until Windows 3.1 that this window system saw wide-spread adoption, but with Windows 95 combining the base operating system with a GUI environment, this was destined to be the future of the PC world.

Although much of Windows 3.1 will appear familiar, it did not yet have many of the features of modern Windows.  It lacks a start menu and taskbar, instead showing minimized programs as icons.  It also predates the convenience of the "close button," instead having a menu on the left which could be double-clicked to close the program.

-Contributed in part by visitor Jacob Umbenhauer