midian182

In a nutshell: The Civilization games have been around since the start of the 1990s, entertaining millions of people. The launch date of the series' seventh numbered title has just been announced, but where did it all start? With a 386 PC in 1991 that packs 16MB of RAM, cost $10,000 at the time, and still works today.

Firaxis Games has announced that the next installment of the Civilization series, Civilization 7, will land on PC and console on February 11, 2025.

The studio invited members of the gaming press to try Civilization 7 at its Maryland offices. PC Gamer's Editor-in-Chief, Tyler Wilde, writes that an old leather desk chair and a similarly aged PC and CRT monitor are on display in the building, looking slightly out of place.

The reason for the reverence is that Sid Meier, the man who created Civilization over three decades ago, did so sitting in that chair and using that computer.

Firaxis learning and development manager Pete Murray told Wilde that the PC is a Compaq Deskpro 386. Incredibly, it cost $10,000 at the time, which would be more than $23,000 today.

The machine contains 640 KB of usable RAM, an architectural limitation of IBM-compatible PCs at the time. There's also expanded memory, and Murray said it contains "16 MB of memory," which appears to be the model's upper limit. There's also a Sound Blaster audio card, naturally, though the specific model is not mentioned.

What's surprising is that the PC was still bootable as of last year, though it did require buying some parts from eBay and "creative salvage" from Firaxis' IT department. The hard drive is almost dead, but Murray said there's a pre-release version of the original Civilization on the PC that's still playable.

MicroProse, formed by Meier, Bill Stealey, and Andy Hollis in 1982, was the original developer of Civilization. Meier left the company and formed Firaxis with two others in 1996, apparently taking the PC and chair with him.

In a 2019 Ars Technica documentary video, Meier said he'd saved two of the Compaq Deskpro 386 computers, but one of them exploded when he tried to boot it up due to the dust in the power supply.

Thanks, PC Gamer

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Firaxis preserves the 33-year-old, $10,000 386 PC Sid Meier used to develop Civilization – and it still works

jwdR311

They should make it a Wonder of the World and put it in the game.

StupidPeopleSuk

What's surprising is that the PC was still bootable as of last year

What's really surprising is that the machine hasn't self-destructed on it's way into the history of Compcraq's junk piles, as they there were some of the worst made machines of their time, with crappy, bottom barrel parts, most of which were proprietary & produced only for a particular model run, then poooof, they moved on to their next mass-produced pos model and parts for the previous model ceased to exist from that point forward.....

And back then, it seemed like they released some new models every 3 months, so that made the nightmarish parts fiascos even worse...

I managed a pc store back in the 90's, and out of the 12 brands we sold, we had way more returns & refunds on Compcraq's than all the other 11 brands COMBINED...

Hell I remember salvaging & installing parts from several other returned models to try & get one unit or another working so our customers could keep the one they bought & not have to deal with Compcraq's customer (non) service dept...who, just like the guy from Mission Impossible, immediately disavowed any knowledge of how their machines were built or how to fix them or get repair parts for them...

Seems like a miracle that Sid somehow got his hands on one that wasn't complete garbage and used it like he did...

thelatestmodel

StupidPeopleSuk said:
What's really surprising is that the machine hasn't self-destructed on it's way into the history of Compcraq's junk piles, as they there were some of the worst made machines of their time, with crappy, bottom barrel parts, most of which were proprietary & produced only for a particular model run, then poooof, they moved on to their next mass-produced pos model and parts for the previous model ceased to exist from that point forward.....

And back then, it seemed like they released some new models every 3 months, so that made the nightmarish parts fiascos even worse...

I managed a pc store back in the 90's, and out of the 12 brands we sold, we had way more returns & refunds on Compcraq's than all the other 11 brands COMBINED...

Hell I remember salvaging & installing parts from several other returned models to try & get one unit or another working so our customers could keep the one they bought & not have to deal with Compcraq's customer (non) service dept...who, just like the guy from Mission Impossible, immediately disavowed any knowledge of how their machines were built or how to fix them or get repair parts for them...

Seems like a miracle that Sid somehow got his hands on one that wasn't complete garbage and used it like he did...

I definitely take your point. But like PCs today, using more expensive components generally results in a longer lifespan. If it cost $10k there's a good chance it had a lot of upgraded components and was thus less likely to fail.

Endymio

StupidPeopleSuk said:
What's really surprising is that the machine hasn't self-destructed on it's way into the history of Compcraq's junk piles...I managed a pc store back in the 90's, and out of the 12 brands we sold, we had way more returns & refunds on Compcraq's than all the other 11 brands COMBINED...

Your timeline is skewed. Compaq beat IBM to market with the first 32-bit 386 PCs, and they were at the time hands down the best machines on the planet, far exceeding the quality and performance of the no-name clone vendors that existed at the time. At the time this machine was sold (1991), Compaq was likely outselling all those other 11 brands combined. Compaq also led the so-called "Gang of Nine" clone vendors into decimating IBM's proprietary Micro Channel architecture with the first major "open industry" standard of EISA.

Success wasn't kind to Compaq, though, and by latter half of the 1990s it was indeed suffering both from QC and its own proprietary-hardware issues.

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