Just finished building a new PC...

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DurocShark

DurocShark

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Joined
Jul 26, 2008
Messages
3,622
Location
Anaheim, CA
It's about time to retire the old eMachines box with its 15" LCD, and Sempron 3100+ CPU.

I picked up a 20" Acer LED monitor for $99 from Tiger Direct, a pair of 1GB sticks for $26 from Micro Center, and a mobo/cpu combo for $99 from Micro Center.

The CPU is a Phenom II x4. My first (personal) multi core processor. Hooray!! :D

I ran out of money, that's why I only got the two gigs of ram. I'll upgrade later on. I'm using the onboard video for now too. But it's still better than the card I added to the eMachines. :eek:

I went with Windows 7 and am installing my CS5 as we speak. Why do all the Adobe CSx packages take bloody ages to install?

I'm using an old old OLD Enermax case. That thing is at least 7 years old, and was collecting dust in the closet. I haven't used it for at least 4 or 5 years. I blew it out, stuck a higher wattage PSU in it, and went to town. Still using my old 1st gen Sony DVD Burner. 500u IIRC. That thing is ancient too! But it keeps on ticking...

I haven't built a machine in years. It was kinda fun. Especially when I noticed my 3.20 Ghz processor was running at 3.90. Yikes! This mobo has switches to set the clock speed. I must have bumped them during the install.. heh

Pics here if curious: http://www.flickr.com/photos/donimages/sets/72157626569424612/
 
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It would be sweeter if I could afford a real vid card and a pair of 4GB sticks for it.

Maybe someone will buy the Mac memory I put on CL and fund my memory upgrade. :D
 
Yeah, I built a quad core for my Dad last year. 8 gigs of ram and 1 gig vid card. It was hard to give it to him. 7 on 2gigs -vid has got to be frustrating
 
I can remember saving up for 4MB simms ($365 each) and finally buying
a Number 9 video card with (gasp!) 2MB of video RAM. Video RAM!! who
ever heard of RAM for a video card? No way could I afford the 4MB card..
the 2MB card was over $700.
things have changed..
 
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Hey, I've got the primo Quake (1) video card right here... The Matrox Millennium! Still works too!

Sigh. I paid a bunch for that thing too. A 2d card. I added a 3dfx to it later.
 
Oh those were the days! My first build was a 486 dx 2/66. Running win 3.11 which I believe was 6floppies. dOS 6. Good stuff.
 
MMmmmmm, yeah.

I worked for a computer store in those days. I built a DX4/100 and overclocked it to 120. I called it my Pentium killer because it would run Quake faster than the P100. And it was way cheaper.

I just don't have time or money to keep doing that stuff. Overclocking is for the young and rich. :wink:
 
NewLondon88 said:
I can remember saving up for 4MB simms ($365 each) and finally buying
a Number 9 video card with (gasp!) 2MB of video RAM. Video RAM!! who
ever heard of RAM for a video card? No way could I afford the 4MB card..
the 2MB card was over $700.
things have changed..
Click to expand...

I paid $3200 for an Apple IIe in 1983, and another $3000 for VisiCalc and Visi Trend/Plot...

Tom
 
thewishman said:
Remember when you thought you could never fill up a HUGE 10 MB hard drive? A blazing 4.77mhz 8088. Don't forget to lock in the 5 1/2" floppy.
Click to expand...

Oh, yeah!

I ran a BBS on a Commodore 128d with a LtKernel hard drive with a whopping 20 megs! And a 16 meg RamLink ram disk! Never did fill them up...

Then there were the floppy drives... The 1581 single sided drive... Punch holes in the single sided floppies and and use the other side!!!
 
Anyone want to buy a Bernoulli drive and disks? :biggrin:
100MB each.. precursor to the Zip drives. Bought a 5 pack of
disks ($499) and got the drive for free!
Almost 20 years later, they still work flawlessly.. not even a
single disk error (disks were guaranteed for 5 yrs) and I used it
on PC's, Macs.. DOS, Windows 3, Unix etc. Even 20 years ago
they were building stuff to last..
Disks look like the 3.5 floppys, only they're 5.5. Looks like a
disk on steroids. Parallel SCSI adapter, too.
 
DurocShark said:
Then there were the floppy drives... The 1581 single sided drive... Punch holes in the single sided floppies and and use the other side!!!
Click to expand...

I remember doing that! I felt so smart that I had gamed the system.
I was so jealous of the guys who had the 2 floppies so they could copy stuff without flipping back and forth. And then there were the programs so you could hack software. Oh my, those were the days.

I remember thinking my Commodore 64 was so much better than my Dad's 8088 because I had a color screen and he had the dinky little green and black 11 or 12" monitor.
 
thewishman said:
Remember when you thought you could never fill up a HUGE 10 MB hard drive? A blazing 4.77mhz 8088. Don't forget to lock in the 5 1/2" floppy.
Click to expand...

LOL .. my old company didn't upgrade their 80088's till they got a System 30
in the late 90-s :eek: I think they bought them used from Edsel.
 
SHUTUP! Now you age making me feel older. My first was a Timex Sinclare that I made my own board for. I even bought individual key switches and wired the matrix for it. bought the letters for the keypads from Roses (say WalMart) to rub on the tops. Then there was the TI that ran off casset tape and plug in modules. Finally, for Christmas, my wife bought me a genuine IBM Clone 8088 with one 5 1/4" floppy and a real color EGA monitor. A second drive was bought shortly for coping purposes and the floppy punch. 640K, yes kids Kilobites of RAM. Our Father (Bill G) told us that no one will ever need more RAM than that. Ran that for over a year with no HD. then I bought a massive HD, 40 Meg. Never did fill that thing. Them were the days, oh yea, those were the days. DOS 3.0. That is when I learned to never buy any software X.0.
Charles
 
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We were closing down a technology lab and I found a random memory stick, that was in an extensive box, with padding, plastic form fitting case, cushions, the works. I showed it to my boss. He told me that was one megabyte of memory from our first upgrade of the Cray Supercomputer. He paid $1,000,000.00 (USD) for it, and when the second upgrade came along, he couldn't bring himself to throw it out. I made a tie-tack out of it :biggrin:

Tom
 
TomW said:
We were closing down a technology lab and I found a random memory stick, that was in an extensive box, with padding, plastic form fitting case, cushions, the works. I showed it to my boss. He told me that was one megabyte of memory from our first upgrade of the Cray Supercomputer. He paid $1,000,000.00 (USD) for it, and when the second upgrade came along, he couldn't bring himself to throw it out. I made a tie-tack out of it :biggrin:

Tom
Click to expand...

LOL ... oh man .. that one hit my funny bone.
I stopped upgrading my Cray. Just wasn't worth it. :tongue:
 
thewishman said:
Remember when you thought you could never fill up a HUGE 10 MB hard drive? A blazing 4.77mhz 8088. Don't forget to lock in the 5 1/2" floppy.
Click to expand...
How many remember when you had to set spead sheets to manually calculate. If you didn't, every time anything was entered into a cell, it took 10 or 15 seconds for the sheet to re-calc (the bigger they were, the longer they took . . . . . duh). And those weren't very big spread sheets either.
 
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