How common was it to have a computer and/or a game console at home in your country in the 90s? When did home internet connections become widespread?

21 comments

1. Pretty common by end of 90s to have pc and in my childhood most my friends had either playstation or nintendo. Internet started to really take off around same time.

2. I think computers became really widespread in 1995/1996, but before that you also had Amiga, Commodore etc. But to say that was widespread? Don’t think so, still early adopters.. imho the big boom was Windows 95..

   Game consoles were much earlier, probably the 80s with the Atari 2600 as the first. Later Nintendo, Sega joined.

   Internet connections became really widespread around 1999 I think. The first ISP was there in 1991..

   We had our first PC (286 16MHz, 1MB internal) in 1990. My father used to be a PLC programmer, which is why we had a PC. However I could use it for gaming.
   We got internet connection (dial up) at home in ‘99.

   When I went to secondary school in 1999, I think there was only one classmate without a PC, and probably about half had internet at home.

3. Game console, very common. Computer, not common at all until later half of the decade.

4. I had a hand-me-down DOS machine in my room in 95-96 when I was like 7-8. Used to just play a bunch of games. My dad had a Windows 95 machine and dial up right around that era. I had a computer and dial up in my room before 2000 and ADSL early 2000’s. 2001-2002?

   I remember pushing for it because I went to a family house party for the millennium when I was 11 and was exposed to Quake with online multiplayer whilst all the adults and teens were downstairs drinking. That was absolute crack-cocaine for a kid in that era. I felt like I was in the future.

5. Got a Commodore 64 mid ’80s because my dad thought I should get a real computer instead of a game console. Was the start and source for my career as an adult.

6. Did you have a Commodore 64 in Hungary? I thought there were almost none in Europe.
   In the 80s and early 90s, ZX Spectrum clones were popular, there were thousands.

   Home computers started appearing en masse in the first half of the 2000s. A typical situation was when new PCs were delivered to the parents’ office and the old ones were allowed to be taken home for free or cheap.

   I think that in the 90s, PCs were mostly owned by those who needed them for work and by computer nerds who really enjoyed Fidonet, DOS games and similar things.

   I read computer magazines from the 90s, computer hardware was very expensive and prices were only indicated in dollars, which is significant.

7. As my father worked in the IT field, we had a Computer as long as I can remember (mid/late 80s). We got internet 1996, when I was in secondary school and hardly anyone had heard about it.

8. From: Rural Austria with a ton of booming small businesses.

   By the end of the 90ies it was not that common, but all primary school classrooms had 1 to 3 win95 computers donated by the city to mess around with. Only families with small businesses had one at home. but usually everybody with a computer bought internet too. By 2002 a computer at home was common enough that middle school students were expected to practice typing at their home computers and the school supplied them with software on a floppy. In 2003 we bought our first USB stick, 265MB for 75€. I think it was around 2004 (I remember because Sims 2 was released), all of my classmates in middle school had internet, because it started to get “affordable”. Most families had charts on how many minutes of youtube each member was allowed to watch per month. 1-2 GB per household and month was the norm. 4GB was for “rich kids”

   Then around 2006 a big company in my village required more bandwith, but the national provider said no. They aren’t the only ones in my county, so they decided to build the bandwith themselves. By 2008 my <1000 inhabitants village had fibre. We were spearheading the development. And households went from a 1-4GB limit/month to 20GB-infinite. This is where it started to be about bandwith rather than data.

   The race for more bandwith kept going until roaming was banned in the EU.

   Edit: I’m an IT nerd with good memory.

   Fun Fact: I moved to a mayor city in Germany 2010 and horrified that one of the top 3 most expensive cities had less fibre coverage than my backwater county. Still hasn’t caught up.

9. My dad gave me an Amiga 500 in ’92, and then in ’96 my mom bought a Pentium 166 MMX PC. After that I got an AMD Athlon PC with a Voodoo2 card in ’99 for my birthday. We got internet in ’97, dial up.

10. Irish here. Father was a soldier. So we werent wealthy. I was the 1st in the local area to have a ps1. No idea how my parents got that for me and my bro at christmas. It was christmas 95 i think. Made me believe in the big fat red man again for a few yrs.

    We had a family computer, which i basically spent playing yahoo pool on and talking to what i thought at the time were perverted older women but who i realise now were probably perverted men. 🤣. Dial up internet. Not everyone had one but majority did from say 97/98 onwards.
    Games consolsles were more common than home computers.

    It may have been different in other parts of ireland as i grew up in what was then called the BMW (border mid west) region – the poorest region in the 26 counties at the time.

11. Commodore 64 and Atari (i think 800XE) were popular at the beginning of 90’s. I remember some friends had Amiga 500/600 in mid 90’s.
    I think I got first PC around 97 and most guys in my highschool had PC’s around this time.

12. I think we got our first family computer in 2000. It came with dial-up internet (via a phone line, so whilst you were online you couldn’t use the phone).

    Never had a game console.

13. Pretty normal to have a PC with Quake over a 64 or 128kbps connection in 1996. Consoles with ethernet only came in the PS2 era. That was a bit later.

    Before that we had a Macintosh with [Dark Castle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Castle)

    Before that we had an [Atari 2600](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_2600) with pong.

14. I got my first one in 1991, it was a 386 with 1mb or ram. It was the size of a fridge and made some diesel sounds, especially at startup.

    My brother and I subscribed to a bunch of pc magazines, which back then were issued monthly, were several hundreds pages, and had tons of tutorials on programming, maintenence, os, etc etc.

    I can’t say I learnt a lit, as I was 6 when I started, but some of it sure stuck with me, and eventually, many many years later, has become my profession and to some extent, my passion.

    I wish there was something remotely similar to that nowadays. Laptops don’t really allow you to dissect them and learn how they work under the hood. Software development is focused on UX, so there’s very little you can fix yourself. Young people use pcs for gaming, and are hooked on Ai when it comes to programming.

    I have a hard time believing that trend can be reversed.

15. My dad had an Amstrad PCW from…possibly before I was born (late 80s). That said, it was a weak pc that could do very little, so ceased being something to boast about quite early on. I think in about 1999 we finally got a Windows PC, which was a bit late to the party but I was definitely not the last person I knew to get one. Only a couple of years later I hit my own PC too.

    As for broadband, I remember the first time I saw broadband when one if my friends got it in…I want to say about 2001. My daily got broadband in 2003 and, again, I definitely feit like one of the last kids in my school to get it, but again definitely not the actual last.

    For consoles, we got a SNES around 1996-7, which was about average. I got a PS2 in about 2001 and at that point I definitely felt like most of my friends had better consoles and I was playing catchup.

16. We had a thriving gaming press and pirated software market by early/mid 90s, so obviously people had computers already. However, I associate the real computer boom with Windows 95/98. That’s when the normies got in, including my family.

    We got our first in late ’98 (an Intel Celeron 333 with 64 megs of RAM). By then it was considered a sensible purchase that a family would make to “stay up with the times”. Internet took a bit longer, we got it (dial up of course) in early 2001.

    As for the consoles, in the 90s I only recall the pirated clones of SNES/NES and the like. Compared to games on PC at that time they were downright primitive so most gamers grew up PC master race.

    Real consoles like PS technically existed, but game prices were outrageous and out of reach of regular people. They didn’t become popular until 2000s.

17. In the later 90s (which I remember) having a computer at home had become somewhat normal by many, but not the norm at all. Many didn’t have internet and broadband ADSL didn’t become rolled out where I live before 2004-ish, fibre just some 5 years later or so. You had to endure the dial up line and ISDN before that. It was just as common as having a telefax you can say. Many homes were slow to adapt new technology and many still live offline, particularly those slightly older who never felt the need.

    Game consoles were pretty normal in the 90s by kids, but wasn’t an expense every parent wanted to treat their children with.

18. We got our first family PC in 2002, which was quite late for Dutch standards. Before that, during primary schooI, I always used to go play games at my friends’ places. Their parents all got PCs, mine just didn’t care about that kind of stuff.

19. Pretty common to have a computer as far as I know. Internet more and more so, although it was only 2000-2005 that broadband Internet became widely available. In the 90s it was all still phone line and ISDN.

20. Depends on the parents i think. While common, a lot of parents back then wasnt into it or thought it was special.

    Im born 81, Denmark. mom amd dad didn’t have the best income.
    But i had a commodore 64, with tape and disk.
    Then Nintendo NES
    After that an IBM… cant remember which model. It ran on DOS.
    From there basically just an evolution of consoles and PCs.

    But I had multiple classmates that didn’t have anything until they were in their late teens.

21. Hungary too.

    Despite of its unpopularity here, my uncle had a real NES from somewhere in the 90’s, not the famiclones which were popular then, although they weren’t a rich family. Most of my relatives didn’t have an internet connection until around 2007. Me, and my parents used a 486DX PC with Windows 95 during the 2000s, and most of my relatives had a similar PC . We got internet connection in 2007, and we bought a new computer to use the internet, because we couldn’t use the internet with the old PC, but we also used the old PC until 2010.