When did you first get into computer hardware?

[Aikouka]

Probably when I built my first computer back around ummm 98 maybe? I've always been interested in how things worked, which mostly consisted of me taking them apart and being unable to put them back together again 😛.

 

[Blayze]

I got my first computer in 1995 (Packard Bell Pentium 75Mhz, etc...), and started upgrading in 1996 with a new video card and sound card.

 

[JeepinEd]

Some time around 1984, when I modified my first computer (Commodore Vic-20).
I created an external cartridge slot and used a broken Vic-20 to add a remote keyboard to it. (It's still in working condition).

I was probably around 14 years old.

 

[dbk]

96 when i got my packard bell and it had the turbo light... was about the baddest thing EVAR!

 

[RadiclDreamer]

Originally posted by: FelixDeKat

Originally posted by: BrokenVisage
When the digitizing gun from TRON shot me.

fail

Linking to a .RA file = double fail

 

[takeru]

i built my first pc just to play wing commander when it JUST came out 😛 and you know that game pushed stuff back then.

 

[Denithor]

1992 - last year of high school

Bought a 486SX25 from CompUSA with 1MB RAM + 370MB HDD. Installed a CD-ROM six months later, eventually upgraded it to a 486DX100 + 4MB RAM & 1GB HDD before selling it for more than I had in it. That got me started & I've never quit.

 

[imported_Champ]

2 years ago when my p5b failed and my computer store gave me a free p5k to replace it with...I didn't know the difference...then came overclocking

 

[eits]

Originally posted by: BW86
I'm 22 now and I got into hardware around 8th grade, when I built my first gaming computer to play Half-life/Counter-Strike. So around 1999/2000.

yeah, i'm 25 and i played pc games like tfc and nocturn and descent back in high school. my friends were into computers and gave me a voodoo card to put in my pc to make the graphics better. it didn't have a slot for it. it didn't matter because i was a really light gamer. i had a girlfriend who was overbearing and didn't want me going to parties or anything. she was afraid i'd leave her or something.

anyway, i went to undergrad and lived in the dorms. my parents got me a dimension 8100, which was pretty well loaded at the time. well, my buddy down the hall showed me how to benchmark with futuremark and his computer beat mine. i didn't know how it could since my computer was brand new and my parents paid a ton for it. he told me he built his computer and it was like $700 cheaper than the dell my parents bought.

slowly, i started picking up knowledge from him about what parts when were and what companies are trustworthy and what does what. i became a prodigal son at a new game to me, counterstrike, and i got hooked into constantly upgrading my computer and whatnot.

that all pretty much came to a halt whenever i got a girlfriend who disaproved of my being a gamer.

 

[Muse]

The day I answered a small ad in the newspaper for a used 486 proprietary local bus system (Visa local bus standard hadn't emerged yet). It was preloaded with Windows 3.1. When? This was summer of 1993. I took the train over there and paid $800 and talked to the guy for over two hours. Brought it home on the train. He was an electrical engineer and he'd built the system from scratch. He and his woman had decided that a PC was just too big for them and he was going to buy a laptop. Needed to buy a monitor for it and I bought a used B&W 12" or so for $80 locally. After that, I have built all my own systems, maintained them myself.

 

[Fritzo]

Originally posted by: Muse
The day I answered a small ad in the newspaper for a used 486 proprietary local bus system (Visa local bus standard hadn't emerged yet). It was preloaded with Windows 3.1. When? This was summer of 1993. I took the train over there and paid $800 and talked to the guy for over two hours. Brought it home on the train. He was an electrical engineer and he'd built the system from scratch. He and his woman had decided that a PC was just too big for them and he was going to buy a laptop. Needed to buy a monitor for it and I bought a used B&W 12" or so for $80 locally. After that, I have built all my own systems, maintained them myself.

I had the MasterCard Local Bus on mine. I think it was also compatible with the VESA local bus.

 

[Shawn]

I dunno. I took apart my first computer when I was 7 or so. It was a Packard Bell 286. I only took it apart because the hard drive died. I wasn't able to fix it, but I didn't make it any worse.

 

[Jeff7]

I'm about a month away from turning 27. It was in the 486 days when I started to get into the hardware side of computers.

 

[aircooled]

back in the 80's on my C=64

 

[Kanalua]

was 21, late 1998. My uncle built me a 366 mhz Celeron PC. I moved house and moved into an apartment with some friends from home (I was at college). At the new place the computer just didn't work...the display was all off...it was like this for three months until the same Uncle came to my place one day to see what was wrong (he lived out of state). Immediately he saw that my vid card had become unseated. He snapped it back into place and the computer was back to normal!

I felt like a donkey going three months of a semester without a computer because of a simple unseated vid card...

Haven't bought a store bought PC until just this year!

 

[SneakyStuff]

Originally posted by: ggnl
I only do serious research when I'm planning on building or upgrading a system, which is every 2-3 years.

This, and the general knowledge that I've gathered over the years.

 

[Colt45]

I've been playing with electronics / building / fixing shit since I was a child. Only about 10 years of PCs though.

 

[JMapleton]

Originally posted by: Kanalua
Haven't bought a store bought PC until just this year!

Why???? WHYYYYYY!?!?!!?!

 

[LtPage1]

Just about 6 years now- I think I was 17 or so.

 

[sdifox]

Originally posted by: Fritzo

Originally posted by: sdifox

Originally posted by: meltdown75
that depends if you consider a 1200 baud C=64 modem "hardware" 😛

technical aspect: 2004

you mean 1200bits per second right? I can't recall any 1200baud modem. The 1200bit per second modem were operating on 600 Baud. Baud = symbols per second. In essence, the only time Baud rate = data rate was when 1 symbol = 1 bit.

As an example, 56k modem operate on 8000 baud.

The Hayes 1200 Baud Modem was actually pretty popular

In those days, your modem was Hayes or Hayes compatible.

Hayes was the modem company, unfortunately people were confused on baud and bits per sec back then too 🙂