PERSONAL: Computer histories

Positron · December 19, 2016, 6:47am

Sometimes I get my chops busted because my PC is not brand new.
It's the best I can do ATM and it's sure to get better soon.

I started thinking about "Just how old is my computer and all the parts in it?"
I decided I would write the list into a blog and I invite you to add your history below.

edit: I just figured out this is the unholy child of Ancestry. com and PC Partpicker.

1983 Commodore 64.

After college the one thing I knew was I better learn how to get comfortable with computers because I hated then all through UCONN engineering school. I bought my C64 after work. My boss said "I'm gonna get one too, for my kids. I'll give you a ride to Crazy Eddie's." We get there and I buy my C64, just the CPU. Now my boss buys his: "Gimme 1 C64 and 2 monitors, 2 floppies, 2 printers, 2 modems."
Bonus score FTW !

1986 - Commodore AMIGA 500

I was working in NYC, was into the arts and Andy Warhol sold me on the AMIGA.
I didn't need much selling. I had an external HDD, ext floppy and upgraded the 68000 CPU and memory with a trap door board.

1992 - Commodore AMIGA 1200

I got a trap door 68020 to 68030 CPU + 68881 floating point co-processor + RAM upgrade board for the 1200 -

and a 20MB SCSI HDD. That extra stuff needed a better PSU also. I made a case+desk mod from an IBM PC to stuff the external HW in there. The case was bolted in place and was connected through the ribbon cable to the AMIGA.

Photoshopped: the PC had wood contact paper to match the IKEA desk.

1995 - My Brothers PC
I was pretty good with DOS PC's at work by now. The C64 then the AMIGA had been better at making art until now and that is and was my primary computer use.

I only game because I want to see the 3D art.

I have no problem with cheat codes.

I bought his computer because my AMIGA MechWarrior was a public domain digital board game that had sprites on a hexagons map. He had MechWarrior 2 with a Rendition Verite 3D accelerator. I think it was a 386.

1997-2008 Gamertag: Kamikaze
Because my MP-FPS technique was to run straight at you and get shot to pieces.
Gamerclan: LAN Misfits, Danbury CT

My friend Kevin and brother Ed went to LAN parties and with our local group. The Misfits had parties at each others houses and weekly Google Hangouts (CoD4, etc.). One misfit had a nice house with a big basement permanently jury rigged as a LAN party hall with power, Ethernet, plywood tables and about 24 folding chairs. I never had so much fun getting my ass kicked for 12 hours straight.

I had a series of cheap ass potatoes that I was always blowing up and constantly upgrading too much to remember. I know I had some 3Dfx Voodoo GPU's, some ATI Rage cards, some Riva TNT and AGP Geforce cards. The most expensive part was a $800 19" CRT monitor.

2008 - MagicBox
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from Magic
- Arthur C. Clarke

I got a new job and a barebones kit from Tiger Direct. With a Core 2 Duo E8400 (later Q9500), EVGA nForce 750i motherboard, 8GB DDR2, Geforce GT9600, 500W PSU, 24" LCD. I upgraded to a Geforce GTX 465 and needed a 700W PSU > which is still in my MBWS now, then a GTX 660 > MBWS.

For a compact no name ATX case it is still good. Only problem I ever had was the GTX465 sucked power and bled heat. I thought the bare metal inside looked dirty, so I painted the inside of the case a clean white hospital theme. I tried painting the motherboard too and fried it. Ooops. The new Asus socket 775 mobo needed 8GB DDR3 > MBWS. I tried RAID and it died, a few times. I had a 1TB C: & 2TB D: HDD's > that went into the MBWS . I got a dead HP at the thrift store, put most of the left over MagicBox parts in the HP case and sold it on craigslist.

2014 - MagicBox Workstation potato ;)
aka: MBWS

I wanted a new PC so bad, but I can't work anymore and couldn't really afford it. I upgraded the MagicBox piece by component piece until it was the mostly new MagicBox Workstation.

Nov 2014 - A Micro Center Black Friday bundle deal got me started with a Motherboard, CPU & Hadron heat sink.
Dec 2014 - A second EVGA GTX 660 Signature II FTW for SLI
Xmas 2014 - Bro gave me a 500GB Crucial SSD

Jan 2015 - 16GB 1800MHz DDR3
Mar 2015 - be quiet! Silent Base 800 and Thermalrite Macho Rev. B heat sink.
May 2015 - 500GB Samsung SSD - Intel RAID was flakey > Intel 750.
July 2015 - 3TB WD Red backup
Aug 2015 - Case modding for 'Pimp my PC'. Cable extensions, paint, lighting, fans, details.
Oct? 2015 - Joined this forum.
Dec 2015 - Just Cause 3 is not SLI compatible. Initially I got 20 fps.

Mar 2016 - Defective R9 390 > Functional GTX 970
Aug 2016 - Intel 750 SSD. Why manage my filled up SSD's when there are faster ones now?

Gratuitous PC pr0n

I tested my Intel SSD and immediately took it out to paint it. I void warranties.

The white LED strip and GPU lighting are covered with orange automotive lens repair tape. I painted drive clips, heat sink & fan, bottom fan shroud red. The bottom fan blades & PSU are painted gray. The blades of the white LED top fans were dusted with orange paint to tint the lights.

I had a tinted tempered glass side/top panel cut and I made the clips to hold it on. The tint tones down the Pimpin' inside to keep the HTPC subtle on the outside.

My lap desk is very ergonomic. I have a newer Cougar 550M mouse now.

The chair is a new ergonomic addition. My back needed this piece of PC gear.

I forgot how much I loved the Kamikaze. I used to play a lot more and this PC saw many a LAN party.
My roommate bought it for his sons HS graduation present when I built the MagicBox.

This is a long blog because I'm a little hyper and bored. I tried to be concise and still rambled on.

We would love to hear your PERSONAL: computer history

I encourage you all to add a chapter of your histories & gratuitous PC pr0n. My history took a while, so if you like, just do a rough outline of your history and edit the details in later.

Chaper 2: DOS days after noon.

PC work history

1983 - At my first job we had an original IBM PC with a 10MB HDD.

1987 - Next I was in NYC at doing architectural engineering and AutoCAD. We had 286's and 386's with tablets and a pen plotter for the CAD room. We were one of 1st office in NY to use acad and got got to be assist IT. Our consultant would send me the hardware and show up a day or 2 later to finish up. AutoCAD was so slow, just zooming took 5 minutes to redraw the screen. DOS crashed a lot and we tried to save often. One engineer always had bad luck. He had been working on a drawing for hours w/o saving. When he was done he leaned back, stretched and his toe turned off his power strip. I had to cut up some cardboard tubes to slide over all the power strips, so toes could not accidentally turn off the PC's again.

1993 - After a few years commuting to NY I got a job in CT with a stuffy engineers that didn't know PC's and only had 4 for 12 people. Every time they ordered a new Gateway, they bought another printer for that guys desk because they had never heard of networking. With Windows 95. I told my new boss "for what you are spending on printers you can buy a router and we can wire the office. So I became the 'Let's get some real IT guys I know to setup a real network' IT guy.

1996 - Then I got a job driving Mac's doing pre-press graphic design in a print shop. I had a cheap Mac, but there were some nicer Mac's, some token PC's, a lot of random hardware so we could take any digital format from a client and a pair of sweet Compaq servers. I also learned to maintain & color calibrate pro laser printers and photographic imagesetting equipment. Mostly I made poster sized 4 color halftone film negatives that went onto printing presses.

1998-2002 Black& Decker: Industrial Design
I had a pretty cool PowerMac G4 that I had glue a mirror to, because jerks would sneak up behind me at my desk.

The CAD guys had Lenovo Windows NT workstations with Quadro cards.

2004-06 - University of Bridgeport

Sun Ultra 10 workstation offers the 440-MHz 64-bit UltraSPARC-IIi with 1GB DIMMs max.
I learned Pro/E CAD on this in the lab and used mini Dell potatoes everywhere else.

At my next couple of engineering jobs, not even the biggest companies used proper workstations for the engineering staff. They just ordered a Dell with a Geforce in it.

Ctrl_Null · December 19, 2016, 7:29am

oh man.... ill have to take out the albums at my parents house... probably got my first pc around 1994

Positron · December 19, 2016, 7:34am

Ha! When I saw your notification out of the corner of my eye I thought it said...

first pc around 1974

I was like Wow! I'd like to see that! But I can't wait to see your history.
Think about it and come back when you are ready to share.

Ctrl_Null · December 19, 2016, 7:38am

hahaha, no i was born in the 80's . but of course. im 100% positive it was IBM's PC with floppy. i just cant remember the model. after that i had 3 others until i was in high school. crappy emachine that i was lucky to play wolfenstien 3d, blakestone, and quake. but i will collect all the info for a proper format.

anon38834281 · December 19, 2016, 9:28am

I wonder what triggered this

Positron · December 19, 2016, 9:32am

Cabin Fever.

Experiencing mania and banging keys to release the energy.
I was having racing thoughts about this, getting confused and felt that typing it out might help.

I am sure your history would be interesting. Please contribute a chapter.

anon38834281 · December 19, 2016, 9:46am

Maybe another time. Some shit just blew up in life that I don't have the energy to deal with anymore

Positron · December 19, 2016, 9:54am

@Rudster I rarely start threads, but I try to get people to participate in creating a document that would be a representation of the community, if read end to end. Thinking of my PC history made me want to read others PC histories and I thought others might like the idea of learning the history of PC's from each other too.

Can't wait for Senpai @wendell to enlighten us with the history of his BUMPin' system. I just remembered Wendell probably has about 100 computers currently and his history would be 10,000 pages long!

Positron · December 19, 2016, 9:56am

Take it easy

wendell · December 19, 2016, 9:22pm

I think the picture has finally fallen off the internet. Somewhere there is a pic of my room just before college when I was getting good at my craft of junk whispering.

It was a Sony Trinitron 21 display in the center with a monochrome text debug terminal to the side. Next to that as an IBM RS/6000 with a 15" CRT and a couple other boxes and keyboards. Mixed token ring and Ethernet. Novell NetWare. Full height hard drives. Massive electricity bills.

My setups have looked like the matrix since I was 9 lol

ThatBootsGuy · December 19, 2016, 9:42pm

Really? I have a 6300, 270x, and all my storage is spinning rust... not exactly state of the art stuff here. People who bust chops over that shit usually do it to feel less insecure, more confident, or just plain being an asshole. But I digress...

ON TOPIC:

Since I grew up really poor we had 1 family desktop for most of my childhood during the time we actually had one... It ran windows 95/98 not sure which anymore but we kept that thing until getting an xp machine around service pack 3 iirc. After that died we got a cheap acer laptop running vista.

I didn't get my own personal computer until I graduated high school when I recieved a Gateway something or other (too much shit on top to actually get the model number). It's running a B820 processor, 3GB ram, and a 320GB wd (caviar?) blue 2.5". It's in need of a new drive though which I may throw linux on. But currently it's running windows 7 with dosbox for some games along with a 3.1 vm and a windows 2000 vm running in virtualbox. It's been dropped many times, infected quite a few times (once with the fbi ransomware... that was a fun time). And somehow made it through my associate's degree and what I completed of my bachelor's. The thing is a trooper I'll give it that.

And currently I'm running my aforementioned AMD based desktop.

Alamar · December 19, 2016, 11:35pm

Nice thread. Looking forward to some more posts from folks.

Here's a brief rundown of my history with computers . . .

I think it all started at home when I was young with a Coleco Adam system.

I mainly used this system at home to play amazing games like Smurfs and Buck Rodgers iirc. I don't really remember too much more from this era since I was quite young.

The Smurfs soundtrack was simply amazing . . . /s

Some action-packed Buck Rogers gameplay . . .

However, the thing I remember the most was the controller that came with the unit. It was a large rectangular controller with 12-key and joystick. They made these 'inserts' for the controller that came with specific games you purchased. The insert slid into the side of the controller and covered the traditional 12-key keys with icons representing the keymapping for the specific game. Here's what the controller inserts looked like . . .

Next came the Apple IIe, which I used at grade school during my first typing/computer class. We basically used them to practice typing and to play amazing games like Oregon Trail (which was a popular favorite growing up in Oregon), Word Munchers and Number Munchers.

Number Munchers running on a IIe . . .

Next came this monstrosity. I believe it was a Macintosh LC 500 series system. It was actually an AIO, with the tower and CRT contained in a single chassis. This made the unit about 100-feet deep and like 100 lbs. Unfortunately, this thing became the family computer during the time that I really started to get into PC gaming. This is also when my general distaste for all things Apple started building. It was really hard to find good quality games on a Mac back in that time. The major Windows/DOS releases would be ported over a year later if at all. Going to the computer store (local CompUSA) was rough as I'd gaze in wonderment at the huge windows gaming section and then walk right past it to the small trash fire that was the Mac games end-cap. Luckily though, there were a handful of games ported over that would help catapult me into PC gaming. The two games that I have the fondest memories of were Might and Magic IV/V (World of Xeen), which is still one of my favorite RPGs and Escape Velocity.

World of Xeen let's play for those interested . . .

Escape Velocity let's play . . .

Next up, my dad, the super resourceful, bargain hunter that he is, purchased a Tiny Computers system as the family computer upgrade. At this time, hardly anyone in the US had heard of this company as they were based in the UK but had just made the leap into the US market. Its all a bit hazy, but I believe that we purchased one of these because they were super cheap either because they were a new brand in the US or that this was actually a time when they were on the path to going out of business. Anywho, this fairly terrible system was the first Windows-based family PC. I ditched the Macs and never went back. It was a great period for PC gaming in my household :D

Finally, the day came when I got a PC of my own. Unfortunately, I inherited an eMachines system, but it could have been worse. After a while Star Wars Galaxies was released, which I jumped into about a week after release. SWG quickly became quite an addiction for me. I remember playing every night after finishing school work and the other chores preventing me from exploring the digital star wars universe. SWG was the first mmorpg that I played. I quickly found an awesome group of folks to play with and got involved in guilds. I'll be honest though, SWG ran like poo on my system/network setup. I remember having tons of frame rate issues, rubberbanding, and network traffic jams. To help alleviate this, I ventured forth into my first PC upgrading. I purchased extra RAM, (doubling from 512MB to 1GB iirc), installed some random old Nvidia GPU and convinced my dad to upgrade our 56k connection. Success! :D

I'm particularly fond of this time in my PC gaming history as SWG became probably my all-time favorite PC game. I played that game almost every night for 2 years straight, making friends and eventually unlocking a jedi which was no joke for those who know about SWG.

Over the next handful of years I got my hands on other pre-built HP and Dell systems and nothing much changed.

A few years back I finally built a humble, but decent system. The photo above was from LAN Syndicate. I think the specs are still in my profile, but its basically a sabertooth Z97, GTX980, intel i7 system wrapped in a Define R4.

Freaksmacker · December 19, 2016, 11:44pm

There was a smurfs pc game ? :)

Alamar · December 20, 2016, 12:00am

'game' is probably too kind a word. I linked the video above :P

Freaksmacker · December 20, 2016, 12:03am

My god, We have come a long ways. They did not stray from the pitfall formula.

Positron · December 20, 2016, 12:48am

Interesting history. My first intro to Mac was using that AIO working in a printing house. My friend used that same eMachine to play Civilization, until I upgraded it for him. We put in a new CPU, more RAM and Windows 7. Civ save no longer worked, but the new version of Civ did and the PC was better.

What impressed me most?

Alamar · December 20, 2016, 1:02am

lol thanks. Unlocking in SWG was quite the feat during the first two years of that game. Here's one of the very few surviving screens of my old jedi toon (Alamar :D). Unfortunately I lost all of my early screens due to hard drive failures many years ago.

The first 2 years (known as Pre-CU) were pretty epic. Eventually Sony Online Entertainment made a bunch of sweeping, game-changing modifications and flushed it down the toilet, but those first 2 years were sheer bliss lol.

Raph Koster has a very cool blog site that has a bunch of behind-the-scenes info on SWG if you are interested. Most interesting to me is this article, which accounts some of the awesome initial ideas that the dev team had for the jedi system in game that didn't pan out. It's a great example of a development team having awesome ideas, but being hamstrung by management and deadlines.

Positron · December 20, 2016, 1:20am

I pre-ordered a years subscription and hardly used it. I liked SWG and so did my 5 year old nephew (who had his own account I made for him). It was one of those games I loved at first but after a few months I didn't play as much. I would have played longer if it didn't require monthly fees.

LAN Misfits was mostly FPS, but I could win when we raced cars. (Try Wreckfest steam beta). I invented Second Life with a Quake mod, before they did it better. And Kamikaze served up one of my favorite PC moments. I was playing DOOM 3 at 3 AM in the dark to make it more scary. A zombie janitor jumped out of a locker. I jumped out of my chair, flipped over backwards and hit my head on the floor, still seated in the chair.

I said "Time to save the game and go to bed". That was my greatest achievement.

Positron · December 20, 2016, 5:33am

I like your concise history cliff notes. Do you have a memorable favorite gaming PC that you had lots of fun with in your past or interesting PC disaster story?

wendell · December 20, 2016, 5:36am

I played a lot of battle chess, kings quest, space quest and many other lucas arts games. zork, return to zork, lot of bbs games. loads of stuff. I lost all my stuff regularly.
Somewhere I've got a bernoulli drive with tons of backups. actually picked up a bernoulii drive from ebay which either shredded one of my disks or itself is bad.