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Best Buy ad from 1996

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AdamK47 said:
Not only was 1996 the year of real Internet multiplayer gaming, but it was the year of the "3D Accelerator". There was the 3Dfx Voodoo, S3 Virge, Rendition V1000, Matrox Mystique, and ATI Rage.

Dark Ages? Far from it. 1996 was probably the most important year for PC gaming.
Click to expand...

Exactly. I still remember bagging a Diamond Monster Voodoo 1 at Incredible Universe (remember them?) to pair with my Matrox Millennium in my blazing P-120 system.
 
Heh I was one of the Beta VCR suckers. Although I used it for recording TV shows, obviously not watching any new store bought content, and it really did look way better than recorded VHS. The old school HD lol. Recorded VHS usually looked like a half scrambled channel.

I remember those old pentiums being able to OC like crazy as well, as in doubling the clock speed.
 
IndyColtsFan said:
Exactly. I still remember bagging a Diamond Monster Voodoo 1 at Incredible Universe (remember them?) to pair with my Matrox Millennium in my blazing P-120 system.
Click to expand...

i still have a matrox millenium and a voodoo 1

unfortunately i'm not sure if my board uses a real atx supply or uses that dell atx-lookalike pinout and it would kill the board if the wrong one was used 🙁
 
ElFenix said:
i still have a matrox millenium and a voodoo 1

unfortunately i'm not sure if my board uses a real atx supply or uses that dell atx-lookalike pinout and it would kill the board if the wrong one was used 🙁
Click to expand...

I still have my original Matrox Millennium and have used it on occasion to troubleshoot issues. It is still useful for stuff like that.

My old Pentium Pro system (built in 1997) is still completely intact and is currently in my garage. It has a Matrox Millennium II and a Voodoo 2. I acquired another Voodoo 2 of the same make and model and have seriously considered sticking it in the system and trying some old-fashioned SLI.
 
AdamK47 said:
Not only was 1996 the year of real Internet multiplayer gaming, but it was the year of the "3D Accelerator". There was the 3Dfx Voodoo, S3 Virge, Rendition V1000, Matrox Mystique, and ATI Rage.

Dark Ages? Far from it. 1996 was probably the most important year for PC gaming.
Click to expand...

man i loved my voodoo1 it was rather amazing card for the time.
 
I'm pretty sure my Dad got in on that Packard Bell deal, we had a printer just like that and a POS Packard with a 100mhz processor and 8MB of ram.
 
That Acer Aspire was pretty much my first x86 computer, still known as IBM PC-compatible/clone back then. I got it in September 1996 shortly before getting my N64 at the end of the month, but I got it from the Damark catalog and not Best Buy (none in my area at the time).

I was all set for the 166MHz version of it but my mom ordered the version with the IBM "P150" CPU instead and I didn't know until it arrived. I was pissed. The styling was about ten years ahead of it's time (Dell was still beige back then).

Note: The phone was not "digital." It was just a wired touch-tone phone that hung off the monitor. There was a "RingCentral" digital answering machine and voicemail system that let you set up multiple mailboxes and touch-tone-driven menus. Pretty cool, but that was all done but the shitty MWAVE modem/sound card that caused nothing but trouble for 16bit games and such. I remember an issue where MIDI wouldn't work when you were dialed in online and I had no idea that my favorite web pages were supposed to have music!
 
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AdamK47 said:
Not only was 1996 the year of real Internet multiplayer gaming, but it was the year of the "3D Accelerator". There was the 3Dfx Voodoo, S3 Virge, Rendition V1000, Matrox Mystique, and ATI Rage.

Dark Ages? Far from it. 1996 was probably the most important year for PC gaming.
Click to expand...

3Dfx Voodoo! I remember getting that thing. Awesome! Getting that and setting up GLQuake was like entering a whole new world of gaming.
 
I actually still have the pair of 3dfx cards I ran in sli back then, I believe I had em in my 200mhz P2 that survived being OC'd to 400mhz for quite a few years.
 
waggy said:
man i loved my voodoo1 it was rather amazing card for the time.
Click to expand...

Hell yea it was, 3DFX Voodoo is what started it all really. I remember the first time seeing a true 3d accelerated game on it, it was Tomb Raider. No turning back after that.
 
dud said:
The "dark" ages of technology? You must be pretty young. That was "advanced" tech for the day. I can remember NOT having to deal with people contantly talking on their cell phones ... and:

Imagine listening to your favorite music not on a flash-based ipod but on a 60's record player hand-me-down.

Imagine watching your favorite shows/movies on a 19" low-def TV ... and liking it!

Imagine getting cable TV for the first time (early 80's) and being amazed.



Those were indeed the days ...
Click to expand...

Nice sarcasm.
 
ElFenix said:
eh? back in 1996 if you wanted a computer you were basically stuck with spending at least $1500, unless you went used. or obsolete. a cyrix media gx powered compaq was the first sub $1,000 pc from a major maker since the mid 80s (from the pricing info i've been able to find).
Click to expand...

Yea, it was even like this up until at least 2003. I remember my parents wanting to have the computer last awhile and ponied up for the P4 3.2GHz, DDR 512mb ram, and a spacious 40GB HDD. Was at least $1200.

It was fast for a year or two and then its miniscule HDD started to show its age. The ram became obsolete pretty quick too.

Around 2007 I put Vista on it because they lost the old XP disk and had a catastrophic virus. Made the machine even slower.

Kinda funny how a cellphone would out-perform it.
 
I want those 3.1GB hard drives for $399 each! :awe:

I'd only need about 750 of them to match the hard drive capacity of my newly built computer!! 😵 LOL
 
I like the CD-Rom software; I still have some of my original disks. Let's see, old-school games that I have disks for:

Warcraft II (1995)
Starcraft (1998)
Diablo (1996)
You Don't Know Jack (1995)
You Don't Know Jack Sports (1996)
Duke Nukem 3D (1996)
Dark Forces (1995)
Civilization II (1996)
Various Ultimas (1981-1999)
Theme Park (1994) and so on

Haven't tried to boot any of them in a while, but can't bring myself to toss them either.
 
gevorg said:
Picture-in-Picture was a hit in TV those days. No one really cares about it now.
Click to expand...

Two of my TVs (LCDs) have PIP that you can also run as two side-by-side equal sized screens. Great for watching football.

I love the USFL screen shots on some of the TVs.

MotionMan
 
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