Your history with computers.

[Plester]

i apologize in advance if this bores the ... out of you.

as the subject implies, give a brief history of your computer use, dwell on 1st system, and 1st big upgrade. i'll start.

it all began on a dark and stormy night, an icy wind blew down from the north....ahh sorry wrong story.

1994, my new wife who was in the business of consulting, bought us a Dell P60 w/ a whopping 8mb ram, 320mb hd, and a nifty 1mb S3 trio based #9GXE, os - windows 3.1 all for a mere $2500. prior to this i'd touched a computer once, in the mid 80s. she tried to teach me dos, got a 1000 yard stare and fell from my seat every time. alas i began to tinker, broke things and she showed me how to fix them - loved to play in the system files.

then i did my first upgrade - an additional 8mb of ram and it only cost $350.

later the new found urge to upgrade had me on the net looking into system building, discovered overclocking. bought a p200, TX based mb, ran it at 225 - look out!

next a vid card. much research led me to a 4mb hercules thriller3d - rendition v2200 based. what a card. 18fps in Q2 at 800x600, and the image quality - amazing. it even o'ced, from 60/120 to 75/150. discovered a rendition fan site - bjorn3d - still exists, even has a forum for the 2 people left w/ rendition based cards.

after reading russ's famous 'celery reports' at anandtech, jumped on the 300A bandwagon, coupled this w/ a CL TNT - holy sh.t, the speed and image quality were mindboggling. became a 366 @ 550 early adopter, w/ a TNT2, then a 500E, then 650E w/ GTS. habit has been fueled by friends and family asking for homemade boxes, so for a few cents on the dollar i rotate new gear into my box every few months. all in all an excellent hobby.

 

[jgilbert]

off topic forum is better suited for this post

1st PC: Vic 20 baby!!
1st upgrade: $1000 for a whopping 1MB of Mac+ memory

 

[konichiwa]

I think my first was a Commodore 32. My first real PC was an Apple II. Then...some more Apples, then an IBM, then a Packard Hell 200MHz...ugh...then I've built my own ever since.

 

[Eli]

My first computer was an XT, with a 2400baud modem. Teleconference was fun.

My 2nd computer was a 486SX/25, with 2mb of ram(Eight 256kb 100ns 30pin SIMMS- still have them:Q) and two 40mb HDDs. Next I upgraded that computer to a 486DX2/66, and chucked the old ram in favor of four 4mb 30pin SIMMs.

My next upgrade was a Quantumn 210meg HDD. Still have it, too. Works great

Then I got a newer 486 board, with PCI slots, and purchased an Am5x86/133 for about 75$, along with two 8mb 72pin SIMMs. Enter overclocking. I ran it at 40x4=160. "Screamin', man".

Then I got a Samsung 2.5gb HDD. 5400rpm, ATA/33. Woo!

I used that computer for a long time. Then I somehow aquired 400$, and bought a FIC PA2013, K6-2/300, 32mb ram PC100, and a new case. WOW! The speed...

The rest is history. On a K6-3/400 @ 450, 128mb ram, 18gb WD Expert..

Can't wait to go Athlon

 

[Napalm]

I was quite late to the game.

I did not buy my own system until I was 23 and at that time i486's were the rage. My first system was a 40MHz i386. It saw me through my undergraduate degree and later on my wife's Master's degree. I think that I will get through my Ph.D. with a 900MHz Celeron2 which means that computers have advanced alot in the last couple of years, or that I have taken way too fvcking long on this degree...

Napalm

 

[Napalm]

doh!!

double post fever...

 

[DarkManX]

my 1st computer when I was about 10 years old, the year was 94 or 93, someone gave me there old commode64 and i played with that for a while, in 1995-6 my parents bought me a Packard bell P60, 8 megs of ram on board, which my uncle upgraded to 16 as soon as we got the computer. it had a 2x cdrom, 14.4 modem, 2 meg video card built in, and 420 meg hard drive, after windows95 was released I myself installed a Quntum bigfoot 1.2 gig HD. later I upgraded the cd-rom to 16X and that was it. in january of 1997 i went to computer show got AMD K6 233, matsonic board, 64 megs of PC66 RAM, the vender was amazed at why I would need to 32MB sticks in one system lol. a 4 gig HD and I moved most of the other parts from the packard bell into the new system, as the months went on I upgraded to a 56K, 4 gig HD, and other stuff. Later I was lucky to get a "free-PC" which was a compaq with an AMD k-6 2 380MHZ. It was a nice system, then i go a FIC 503+ and AMD k6-3 400 to put in my older system. My current system is in my sig, All the systems were fully built by me I guess thats alot of upgrades, most of my friends dont have there own computer, dont upgrade it, and never seen what its like inside. So for a 15 year old I guess I did alot of upgradeing.

 

[Eug]

"I think my first was a Commodore 32."

Hmmm... Never heard of that. What was that?

Anyways:

Zeus (Apple II+ clone) - circa 1984. Downloading a 45 k file was an hour or something.
Multitech (Apple II+ clone - small footprint) - I think they became Acer. (Now where have I heard that before? Still works too.)
386SX25
386DX40
486DX4/100
Celeron 366/412
Celeron 533A/897

 

[DBavaria]

off the tpic but everyone knows that PACKARD BELL SUCKESSSSSSS
THEY SCREWED EVER OWNER!!

 

[steelthorn]

My mother brought me my first computer when I was 25, it was a 486sx33 packard hell. I really thought it was a nice computer at the time. It has a whopping 1 meg of ram in it, which I upgraded later to two megs. Cost me fifty dollard for that 1 meg upgrade. I then returned the computer after I had some difficulty with it, and then I got the return fevor craze. Best buy had a 30 day money back guarrantee so I kept taking my computer back every 29 days and getting a new one. I finally upgraded this way all the way to a packard bell pentium. I think I did this about 7 times before they caught on to me. And the price got cheaper everytime so that I actually made money returning computers. I finally settled down though and used my computer refund to get a Dell p90, my real first computer. I loved that computer but it burned up in a fire in the house, so I used the insurance money to buy me a nec p133, it was a piece of crap. And then finally I learned to build my own computers and have upgraded about every 6 months since then. I now have a
Pentium 533eb, asus p3v4x, 256 megs pc133 ram, voodoo5 5500, soundblaster live, creative labs 5x dvd and 4x2x24 CDRW, 21 inch viewsonic p815, camrbridge soundworks 5.1 speakers, HP 2000 printer, scanner and digital camera, etc.

 

[Blayze]

My first computer was a Packard Bell P75 with 16 megs of ram
a 4x cdrom, 1.2 gig hard drive, and a awesome soundcard/modem combo card
The only part of that system still in use is the 15 inch monitor.
which is on my 2nd machine.

 

[Prodigy^]

386SX 25 MHz 2 Mb RAM, grey-color DSTN screen, laptop

486 50-ish I think, 4 Mb RAM, same crap monitor, laptop

PII 266, 64 RAM, 4 Gb HDD, crap integrated audio (Crystal) and video (ATI), 17"

PIII 750E, 320 Mb RAM, 30 Gb HDD, V3 3k, SB Live!, DTT2500, Pioneer 104S, HP burner, 17", etc., etc.

 

[sandorski]

My first experience was in grade7 in 1978. A teacher had a TRS80 and offered a class in computing, so having seen them in the Radio Shack catalogue, I thought it would be neet to sign up. I wasn't dissappointed! There was no software, so we were taught to make our own! To my 11 year old mind making a machine ask someones name and gender then spitting out "xxxx is a nice name for a (gender)!" was just too cool for words!! As fate would have it, our family moved away about a month into the class, but I was hooked and knew that I wanted my own computer.

Years passed and in 83/84 while Christmas shopping I saw a clearout on a VIC20/datasette/3 game cartridge package for $120cdn. I almost had enough money, so I quickly started to talk my younger brother and sister into going in with me to get the deal for the family. Woohoo, got it then proceeded to re-learn basic. All went well until I tried to program a game that was bigger than the 3 or 4k of ram in the VIC20, I just couldn't figure out how to split up the program in small enough pieces to run it from the datasette drive.

In 1987 I took Computing Tech at Camosun College in Victoria BC, but dropped out after the first year(I hate Assembly...blech). I did get a good grasp in Pascal though, which I later used to make a nifty database proggie.

Eek, verbal diarrhea! There is more, but I'll just make one more point: I have always been more impressed with videocard upgrades than cpu upgrades.

 

[KilrB]

My first Comp was a Cyrix. My next was home built by my brother a Celeron366, Gigabyte MOBO 3.1 HDD and a ATI Vid Card. My recent system uses the ATX case from the last and I put in a CeleronII533 ona SOYO 6VCA MOBO, Maxtor 20GB HDD and a TNT2 Video card. I'm hoping to soon biuld anouther system with a BX MOBO and a PIII, but all it takes is money right.

 

[llamaman]

I'll join in on this.

First computer was a Commodore 64 as well. I used to love playing this lawn-mower game...niner or something of the sorts. Can't forget Frogger either. Long long time ago, so it's hard to recall everything. The commodore was like an advanced version of atari, it came with a monitor Was an 8-bit system if I remember correctly.

Next I also got the Apple IIe. I never liked this computer all that much, guess that is why apple never grew on me. Anyways, it didn't have a hard-drive if my memory serves me so it wasn't all that. I remember having to put in a disk every 5 minutes for my ultima game on it

Then I think I got a 386 from Zeos. Don't ask me if they are still around, I haven't a clue. Was a fun system, and I took it apart and messed around with the insides countless of times.

And basically so on 486, then a pentium-pro 200 (which is still kicking)....and I'll stop there before I bore you.

Its been fun

 

[damocles]

Zx81 (1k memory)
Zx Spectrum
Commodore 16
Atari ( i forget model)
Apple IIE (back when apples rocked)
Commodore 64
atar1 520ST
Amiga 1000
Amiga 500
486 DLC40(cringe)
486 dx266
P100
P150(@166 huge overclock)
K6-266 (uke)
Celeron 300@450
Celeron 400@600
Cash in hand right now weighing P3-700 vs Tbird 700
There are others too, but thats roughly the order

 

[PCAddict]

Commodore 64
Commodore 128D
80386 DX 16MHZ
80486 25MHZ (later upgraded to 66MHZ)
Pentium 75MHZ
6x86 200MHZ *
K6-233 *
Pentium II 400MHZ #
Pentium III 600E@672MHZ #
Pentium III 550 $

Key:

* - various incarnations of one PC I owned
# - various incarnations of my current PC
$ - secondary PC I have as a a backup.


I also have a Pentium 166MHZ laptop that serves in a very limited capacity.

 

[ltk007]

My first computer was a Commadore Amiga 2000 with a huge 8mbs ram, 2mb ram video card (still worth like $500), a 200mbs scsi ultra hd, and 2 floppies (one 5 1/2, one 3.25). We had a 386 emulator card, but that was crap and didn't work. Then we upgraded the CPU got an extra 8mbs ram and it was about the equiv of a P 80 I think.



Then, finally I got PII 266 with 64mbs ram, a 6 gig hard drive and a ton of other stuff. We got it from Micron and it cost about $2500 (ripped off).

2 1/2 years later I built my own Athlon 700 now @ 854.

ah bliss

 

[Haowitzer]

Hmm, my first computer was well..the same one im using right now, which is pretty sad..well anywayz i've got an p200, p5i430HX-T2 Frontier MB (izit possible?) 32 mb ram, though i upgraded to 96ram afterwards, and matrox mystique 2mb, and ive putted an diamond monster 3d 4mb upgrade on it, seagate 2.1gb HD for...3000$ !!! ouch i'd say, oh well

 

[Rankor]

WARNING Contents long but entertaining . Well worth a read. I was just remembering this off the top of my head :Q. Names w/held to protect whomever. Any likely coincidences are purely your fault .

First system was for college at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, CA. It was a Gateway 2000 (yes they were called that back in the day) in Summer of 1992. It was an i486SX-25 (w/c was an i486DX with Math Co disabled), 4 MB of RAM, 14" Monitor, 200 MB hdd, 5 1/4" and 3 1/2" fdd, kb and mouse all slapped into a desktop case. All that goodness for $2000 US. Also had an HP 500C ($550). Well, it got ripped off from my college apartment during Christmas of 92 (was only gone 2 days!).

Second system was to replace first system. January 1993. Purchased another "rig" from now dead AIC computers (local computer shop in Industry CA.) It was a Cyrix 486SLC-33 (POS), 4 MB of RAM, 14" Acer Monitor, 200 MB hdd, 5 1/4" and 3 1/2" fdd, kb and mouse into a semi-full tower solid steel strong-box case. All that for $1600. Had to buy a printer, too (HP 500C was stolen, also). Grabbed an HP 500 ($450). Had this system for 2 years. Late 1994, moved back into the dorms with a drug addict @**ho1E. Spilled beer on my HP 500 and fries. I then proceed to beat the living crap out of him and report him to the authorities for his drug-taking habits. He is promptly kicked out of the University. Still had to buy the printer (another HP 500 @ $400).

Summer 1995...decided to upgrade the system. Purchased i486DX2-66 ($125), WD 850 MB hdd ($209), and stick of 4 MB ($150). Didn't know crap back then. Took it to PC Club and they told me had to upgrade motherboard, add new vid card, etc. Had to pay extra $1000 for all that:| . After that debacle, made mental note not to trust any frickin' computer sales person and to get down and know how to build these systems. Also purchased a multimedia pack of Panasonic proprietary 2X CD-ROM drive and Creative Labs SoundBlaster 16 Value ($200). Fall 1995...next upgrade was to an i486DX4-100 proc ($100). Added ISA 14.4 modem ($75).

Jan 1996...upgraded to Amd 5x86-133 proc ($75). Feb 1996...upgraded old Trident vid card to Hercules Terminator 32 (VLB-stylin' man!) for $180.

Third system--December 1996...spent two paychecks to FINALLY upgrade to a Pentium 1 rig. SuperMicro P5STE w/512k L2 ($150), iP-133 ($225), 16 MB EDO RAM ($200), Hercules Dynamite 128 Video 2MB based on Tseng Labs ET-6000 ($149), Creative Labs SoundBlaster 16 Value Retail ($125) [other card died and forgot about warranty service]. Creative Labs 8X CD-ROM drive ($100). All of this in same case from second system. Spring 1997 upgraded amount of RAM to 32 MB EDO ($89). Bought KDS 1710 17" monitor ($399).

Fall 1997...upgraded proc to iP-200MMX ($230). Spring 1998...added Diamond Monster 3D (Voodoo1) for $149. Also purchased USR 56k X2 INT ISA for $125. Finally added extra 64 MB EDO RAM to total out @ 96 MB ($169). Summer 1998...upgraded hdd to Samsung 4.3 GB ($125). Late Summer 1998...Samsung failed/got another one under warranty. Bought yet another hdd: Seagate 1.2 GB ($79). 3 months, Seagate failed/got another under warranty (refurbed 2.1 GB). Sold Samsung 4.3 GB to relative (made mental note not to buy Samsung drives again). Bought Maxtor 6.8 GB ($145).

Fourth system--Fall 1998--...Bought Inwin Q500 ($75), Fic VA 503+ ($86), Amd K6-2 300 ($125), 3DFXCool PHO HS/Fan ($25), Matrox Mystique G200 8MB Retail ($149), BTC 36X CD-ROM drive ($40), upgraded USR 56k INT modem with V.90 version (Free), Creative Labs Sound Blaster AWE 64 Retail ($100), D-Link OEM SN2000 ISA NIC ($9). Winter 1999...upgraded to Amd K6-2 350 ($89), 2nd hdd: WD 4.3 GB ($99), and CD-RW Memorex CRW 1622 ($147).

Fifth system--Late Winter 1999--...Bought Inwin Q500 ($75), Abit BX-6 Rev. 2 ($114), iCeleron 300A Retail Bulk ($100), transferred Mystique G200 over, purchased Best Data Arcade FXII V2 (12MB) SLI ($250), Maxtor 6.4 GB ($85), D-Link OEM SN2000 ISA NIC ($9), transferred AWE 64 here and replace 4th system w/Creative Labs PCI 128 ($40). BTC 40X ($40). 96 MB PC-100 RAM ($120). USR 33.6 EXT ($25).

Spring 1999...purchased V3 2000 retail for 4th system ($112).

Fall 1999...upgraded 5th system: replaced BTC 40X with Toshiba 6x DVD/32x CD-ROM ($75). Upgraded case to Tornado 2000 ($225). Sold Maxtor 6.4 GB to relative and replaced with IBM 15.2 GB ATA-66 5400 ($118), upgraded RAM to 128 MB PC-100. Sold 300A and purchased Celery 466 Retail ($117). Abit Slotket ($7). Replaced Retail HS/Fan w/3DFXCool's Little MoFo w/c is a GlobalWin FEP-32 ($21). Upgraded to SB Live X-Gamer ($81). Replaced Mystique G200 w/Millenium G400 32MB DH OEM ($157). Purchased KDS AV-7T 17" monitor ($225).

Winter 2000...upgraded 4th system: replaced BTC 36X with Sony 48X ($38). Upgraded proc to Amd K6-2 550 ($69). Upgraded mobo to FIC PA-2013 1MB ($79). Upgraded RAM to 256 MB PC-100 ($170).

Winter 2000...upgraded 5th system: added Sony 48X ($38), Upgraded mobo to Asus P3BF ($125). Upgraded RAM to 256 MB PC-100 ($170).

Spring 2000...upgraded 5th system: bought Celery 566 to replace Celery 466 ($109), Gorb cooler ($15), Asus Slotket ($19). Upgraded 4th system: added Zip 100 USB ($100). Bought Canon USB Scanner (Free).

Sixth system--Summer 2000--...purchased Inwin S500 ($60). Celery 466 w/GlobalWin FEP-32, took V3 2000 from 4th system and placed it here. Took Mystique G200 out of retirement and placed it back in 4th system. Using Abit BX-6 Rev. 2 mobo. Bought 256 MB PC-133 ($269), Toshiba 48X ($40), Altec Lansing ACS 33 ($37), old NEC MultiSync 3D (Free), Creative Labs Sound Blaster Ensoniq ($17), D-Link OEM SN2000 ISA NIC ($9). Purchased Logitech Optical USB wheel mice (3x$29).

July 21 2000...Sold Celery 466. This weekend, will be shopping for a Retail Celery 566 ($99) and Gorb ($15). Will be purchasing GF2 MX-based board when available (~$120). Will be purchasing KDS Avitron 19" within next 3-6 months.

Only systems remaining are the 4th, 5th, and 6th systems. Original semi-full tower solid steel strong-box case from 2nd and 3rd system is still on my desk as a testament of how much a case SHOULDN'T weigh.

 

[Dennis Travis]

Commie 64 with 2 Floppie drives
Atari 800 with 2 USD Doubled drives
Atari 800xl with 4 floppie drives
Atari 130XE with 320K RAM 4 Floppie drives and 2400 Baud modem
Commodore 128
Amiga 500 with 120 Meg HDD and 4 Megs RAM
Atari 1040 ST with 30 Meg HDD (Later became my BBS's computer)
Atari 1040 ST with 200 Meg SCSI HDD
IBM Clone 286/16 with 1 Meg RAM and 40 Meg HDD
IBM Clone 386/25 DX with 4 megs RAM and 80 MB HDD
386-DX/40 with amd chip megs ram and total of 500 Megs HDD
486-SX/33 with 16 Megs RAM and 850 Megs HDD
486-DX/33 with same as above
486-DX2/66 with 32 Megs RAM with 1.2 Gig and 540 Meg HDD's
486-DX4/100 with same as above
Pentium 75 with 32 Megs RAM 4x CDROM 1.2 Gig and 2.1Gig HDD
Pentium 133 with 64 Megs RAM 4X CDROM 1.2Gig and 2.1 Gig HDD
AMD K6/233MMX with 64 Megs RAM 32X Sony CD 2.1 Gig and 1.2 Gig HDDs
AMD K6/2-300 Fic503+ 96 Megs RAM 32X Sony 8.4 Gig and 2.1 Gig HDD
AMD k6/2-350 MSI 5169 96 Megs RAM 32x SonyCD 13Gig+8.4 Gig UDMA
Intel Celeron 366 wAbit BM6-128 Megs RAM-13Gig+8.4Gig UDMA HDDs
Intel Celeron 366@550/Asus CUBX-256Megs Ram/HP Burner and 22 Gigs HDD

 

[RSI]

I have the same 2.1gb seagate and yeah it really stinks... but I dont use it, that's downstairs.

I went 386/33 with 4MB ram to 486/66 (DX2) with 4MB ram then upgraded to 8MB then upgraded to 16MB then upgraded to 24MB (all FPM/EDO). I had a 420MB Seagate (Still have it, lying on my floor) in there, no cdrom, no sound card/speakers, etc...

After a while, realizing how badly our 486/66 running Win95 sucked, we decided to plan an upgrade... we sold the 486 motherboard for $20 including CPU, kept the ram... got a VX Pro motherboard which supported up to 300MHz K6, 6x86's and Pentium's (Socket 7's).

After getting the VX Pro motherboard I got the Cyrix 6x86MX PR200 processor, which at the time I knew nothing of the PR system (I learnt, ok...).

I noticed that in Norton it said was 150MHz.. I was like "wtf? it should be 166!" I thought the PR200 was 166 after reading a bit... Something was up with the board. We replaced it with a TX Pro.. same specs but I think it had better/more cache or some crap, I forget...

Anyway, after all this I was starting to get familiar with motherboards, multipliers/fsb, etc... so I saw how it got to 150MHz, I saw the 75MHz fsb and 2x multiplier... I must say, was semi-impressed that they made it up to 75MHz fsb early... but still, it was still a Cyrix. I overclocked it to 166MHz and to 183MHz, each being completely stable... I decided to just leave it at 183MHz...

We got more ram, we had 40MB total now.. still FPM/EDO though. The 420MB Seagate was too small, then came in the 2.1GB Seagate... so we had the 2.1GB and the 420MB in at the same time.

All this is still in the original 486 case using the same power supply. Well, I decided that the TX Pro needed some sort of BIOS update... either it wasn't flashable or I did something wrong, but I ended up killing the motherboard.

So, off we went... we got the FIC VA-503+... that was after we bought our 10x pioneer cdrom and sb16 isa. I read a little and it seemed ok, but I really didn't know too much about motherboards... but I bought it, it was not expensive.

Someone from the U.S sent me an MII-300 - was pretty much his trash, he was getting K6-3's and stuff. I started off using the MII at 225MHz and 75MHz FSB... Then the tweaking began.. I eventually just left it at 233MHz since I still had only a 486 fan on it...

At xmas we got the Banshee (over $200 for pci version at the time.. was one of the best possible video cards we could buy, TNT was the competition - I didn't like TNT) and 64MB PC66 sdram.

So now we had 40MB of mixed EDO/FPM ram, and 64MB sdram... I stuck it all in there, and although they SHOULD have different settings - voltage, etc, it all worked, I had 104MB of ram total, and everything was beloved patriot dory.

Soon after that I received (free) 32MB more PC66 sdram and a nice 3DFX COOL fan/heatsink for my Cyrix. I popped on the fan and stuck in the sdram (removed all the fpm/edo.. although it didn't seem to slow it down, at ALL) so I now totalled 96MB pc66 10ns sdram.

Now that I had the fan of course I had to overclock... I tried every fsb setting of the VA-503+... I had PC66 sdram, and I was trying out 75, 83, 95, 100, 112 and 124MHz bus speeds...

At 100 and 112 I could smell the ram melting, literally. At 124, no boot. At first everything up to 95 was rock stable, but after some melting of ram, 100 didn't work at ALL, 95 was a no go, 83 was slightly unstable (After a while, crashes and reboots), the highest stable one was 75MHz..

Also, my Seagate also decided to stop working properly... when booting up, it should detect the hd and cdrom and display it (it does with other hd's on the same settings/mobo), but it just hangs for a minute (yeah more like 30 seconds), and it continues booting!!

HD lights and cdrom lights always stay on. Strange. But everything seems to work ok..

Oh yeah, I also overclocked the banshee too.. no I dont have a fan on it.

That's the downstairs system to date.. Running Win98, boots in a few MINUTES (ack), the cyrix is staying at 262.5MHz using 75 fsb and 3.5 multiplier... the ram seems ok, I wotn take it any higher...

And I got a second computer now, my main one which is in my room.. P83 with 128k l2 (forgot to mention, Cyrix system has 1MB L2) and 24MB EDO (ram spots full), no cdrom and no sound, 261MB Seagate hd, 14" Dell monitor...

A very nice and generous friend of mine so kindly donated a 2MB Stealth 3D 2000 PCI (my Dell has a 1MB Cirrus Logic built in ISA chip) and 32MB more PC66 sdram and 8MB EDO ram (I originally had 16 in the Dell, that's how I got 24), and most importantly of all, a kick-ass broken Optiquest V55 monitor (a good 15&quot.. I just brought it in to the shop and got it replaced/repaired for free.

So instead of using a crappy crappy 14" Dell at 800x600x60Hz, I am using a much much much nicer Optiquest V55 at 1024x768x72Hz.. I mad out my Cirrus Logic. I can't use his Stealth 3D 2000 because I have no PCI slots in this piece of crap motherboard (desktop form) and my ram slots are full in the va-503+ so I can't make use of his 32MB either..

So I am sick of lagging to death under win95 with a 261 and 420MB seagate (I brought my 420mb into this system)... Windows took the 261 completely by itself, 25MB free with no programs installed, not one.

So eventually I get the chance to get a new hd... I grab the 20GB Quantum Fireball+ LM for $240 canadian... biggest hd I could find for a reasonable price - 40gb didn't exist (for reasonable prices ok!).

Well, not surprisingly I could only use 8GB.. but it WORKED, my dad really doubted it would work at all, but I knew it would. I discovered drive overlay technology... I installed it and voila I have all 20gb on my P83. Splendid.

Now I run Win98 on my P83 with everything installed/enabled pretty much, and it boots/runs faster than Win95 did on my Seagates... not bad considering its still using horrid ATA2

Well, I've babbled long enough, and you're probably all puking at how crappy my computer(s) is(are)... adios

 

[Blackhawk2]

My first computer was a texas instruments ti-86. The first basic program that I wrote/copied made a little white ball bounced around a blue screen :Q

pc's and the like:
Intellivision
ti-86
Atari 2600
Sega Master System
Nintendo
Super Nintendo
Sega Genesis
Playstation
286
386
486/66
Pentium 200MMX
Celeron 400

 

[Eug]

Kinda off topic, but some of you may appreciate the Toys II map of UT. Part of the map consists of a giant sized Atari 2600 with Combat on screen, as well as games like Pac-Man and Yar's Revenge.

And I'll ask again...

What the heck is a Commodore 32?

 

[Slacker]

If I knew then what I know now

Way back in 8'th grade (1978) my school tried to get me interested in computers, but, they sucked, a crappy, tiny, dark screen, with blurry yellow text, and you had to type all this gobbledygook everytime you wanted it to do something, it took twenty minutes of "programing" to make it do the most uninteresting stuff, man I wish I had caught the bug way back then