My PC past

[blueonblack]

You know the one I'm talking about! $&*(#@&*(!!!!

[slaveofconvention]

Over the years, I've had both AMD and Intel CPUs die on me, and both companies have had the same "all we can do is sell you another one" attitude - so I now show them the same level of loyalty they showed to me and buy whatever is best for ME when I need to get a CPU.

Funny Shane mentioned the ram upgrade - the AMD 266 system I bought was a real lemon. Tech support kept offering to send me parts and have me fit them instead of sending someone out (on site warranty) claiming "It's easy and we can get the part to you tomorrow but it'll be next week before we can get a technician out" - CD Rom first, then memory, then a graphics card. Finally they gave up and decided the problem was the motherboard - when they said they'd send one out, I said "No, send the technician this time - I think that's too much for me to do" - they did, I watched and thought "Hell that was easy" and while I'm stuck with laptops and the wife's touchscreen all in one desktop - every machine I've owned since has been self-built

[Twigsoffury]

You know the one I'm talking about! $&*(#@&*(!!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRLyMjvug1M

[blueonblack]

Thanks for that. I think I'll go strangle some kittens now.

[d_stilgar]

My earliest computer memories were from the 80s. I was just a few years old and could put 5.25" floppy disks in the drive and launch games in MS-DOS.

My family got the first Intel Pentium processor approved for home use in the early 90s. We had Windows 3.1 on the computer and got windows 95 a couple years later. It was also our first computer to have a CD drive, and would be the first computer we would use to go on the internet.

Most of my early computer memories were from that machine. My family kept it alive for almost a decade (probably because it cost $3000+ in 1990s dollars) with lots of reading and math games played at low resolutions, but those experiences were seminal in my childhood to who I would grow up to be.

My family got other computers through the years. I remember specifically when we got a new computer for Christmas that had a DVD drive in it. DVD players were still hundreds of dollars and it was difficult to find any movies on DVD, but DVD looked amazing.

After that things got pretty boring . . . and still mostly are to this day. It's probably due in part to the fact that things keep getting better, but there have been no huge fundamental shifts in the past few years. We aren't seeing the first sound card, or video card, or first 3D games. In the computer hardware side, and user-interface side we haven't seen anything really new in nearly 15 years. That or I'm just getting older and jaded.

In late 2003 though, my mom saw something on TechTV and made me run into the room to see it. A guy had built a computer into an NES. I was a huge Nintendo fan, especially of the NES and collected accessories and games from that early period of gaming (probably because I remember being really young and getting those games for Christmas). I thought, "I could do that" and decided I would build an NES PC myself.

I eventually did build an NES PC. It was the first PC I built and I really had no clue what I was doing. It was really fun, though, and I learned a lot. I'm not sure if there's a surviving build log of that machine, but here's a finished post of it at HardForum: http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=774517&highlight=

Later I would build a 2nd version, which was much better, and while I know that ship has sort of sailed, I'd still like to do another. It's really fun to do. Here's a build log of that machine, which I still can't seem to leave alone: http://www.thebestcasescenario.com/f...ar)&highlight=

In the mean time I would build my own machines as I went off to college and got married. I still almost exclusively build my own machines. Every now and then I'll be in the market for a whole new machine and I'll find a really killer deal that's cheaper than building, but I like to build myself, and I think I get a better product when I do.