Your computer history!

This thread is making me nostalgic...I keep thinking of Norton Commander. I remember screaming at my older brother "how do I change drives?!?!?!?!?!?" ALT F1!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

lol I love it that it was a mystery to me.
 
I had computers at home for as long as I can remember. I was really young so I don't remember all the details but here it goes

I remember we had an IBM Aptiva, with a PII 300, and a ATI 3d rage pro 4MB, thats the first computer I remember.

Around 2000, we upgraded to an IBM Netvista with an AMD Athlon 1.1GHz (one of the first computers with 1+GHz!!). The gpu was an ATI all-in-wonder. We could watch TV on the computer!! that computer was really hi-tech for its time! Unfortunately it was running Windows ME ....

Around 2004, the family upgraded once again. This time it was a custom built computer, and I remember even helping choose the parts (but I did not build it, was too young). The model of the case was OGRE, so we nicknamed it like that. This beast was running one of the first Athlon64, a 3000+ socket754, 1GB of ram and a ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 256MB. The X800 was available, but it was too much for the time and the budget we had. This one is still running strong, my brother was still using it recently, but he got himself a new laptop 1 month ago.

During Ogre's lifetime, I got fed up sharing the computer with my brother, so I built myself my first computer! this was in 2005. I had a very limited budget so I got creative :p Bought an old PII from my friend for 10$ (used only the case), I found a deal for 40$ on a used trio CPU/mobo/ram online. IIRC it was a AMD AthlonXP 2600+ and a POS ECS motherboard. Bought on ebay a Radeon 9600 Pro for 100$, a 17" CRT for 75$ (which is still working today) and a refurb hdd for 50$. For around 300$ I had my computer!! It wasn't a workhorse, but it was mine :p.

One year later I decided to upgrade. Got myself a brand new custom computer. Opteron 165, 1gb of ram, radeon x800gto2. ahh the feeling of building a brand new computer from fresh and new parts :p. This is still my main computer, but I upgraded the GPU to an HD4870 and a couple 1TB HDDs :p

During that time, I had build another computer from random parts I had laying around, but I sold it not too long after. I also had a netbook last year (an aspire one 8,9") but sold it; it wasn't powerful enough for me.

And finally, this weekend, I received my new laptop "for school" (more of an excuse to buy a 2nd computer :p) a Thinkpad T400 with Core2 Duo P8700, 4GB of ram and a Radeon 3470.

sorry for the long read :wink:
 
(but I did not build it, was too young).

Too young??? Nonsense. I built a custom machine all by myself when I was 11. It's easy as pie.
 
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ok maybe I wasn't too young, in fact maybe I could have built it. But my father wanted a warranty on the computer, so the local computer shop built it.

(in fact, its the same computer shop where I got a job later on :p)
 
Yeah, I suppose you could have made a mistake like me and have ordered almost all of your parts when you realise that you forgot to put the video card in to the budget spreadsheet... :blush:
 
One year later I decided to upgrade. Got myself a brand new custom computer. Opteron 165, 1gb of ram, radeon x800gto2. ahh the feeling of building a brand new computer from fresh and new parts :p. This is still my main computer, but I upgraded the GPU to an HD4870 and a couple 1TB HDDs :p

1 GB of RAM and a 4870? That is such a waste :p
 
1 GB of RAM and a 4870? That is such a waste :p

HA! I know :cool: but DDR1 is so expensive now :?

I was supposed to buy a new tower, but I bought a laptop instead...

At least with 1GB im on the minimum reqs for most games, and I don't play a lot of brand new, to-the-max-graphics games
 
-some 386 computer that ran Windows 3.1
-Gateway running Windows 95
-Omniplex computer running Windows XP
-custom built computer running XP (soon to be Vista)
-laptop booting Ubuntu / Vista / (soon) Backtrack 4 Pre-Release
 
No real history over here:

1. Some used Sony Vaio from ebay
2. Some HP laptop which I killed with half a bottle of beer
3. Some other C2D HP laptop
4. Samsung NC10
5. AMD 5050e driven HTPC
6. 13" 2,0Ghz C2D Macbook
 
^so you've only recently been converted to gayhood Macs? :p
 
First can remember was my mother's PC, it played Pacman and Space Invaders, jeez that was so long ago :p
Then I had one of those V-tech things, then y Dad bought a gateway, was way too young to know the specs :p

Then he custom build one which we kept upgrading over time to a 2.0ghz Athlon, 512mb of RAM and a 80gb HDD.
I then got a Celeron Fujitsu, 256mb RAM 15.4" screen 5 minutes battery life pile of turd, great keyboard though. While I ahd that I was given a P4 Packard Bell, 256mb RAM. One day decideing by myslef that 256mb wasn't enough I bought myself another 256mb installed it and burnt out the motherboard, ah the curious mind of a 13 year old! When my dad told me the PB fried itself and was mysteriously missing screws I got the athlon box to counterpart the fujitsu, (Dad got a Dell which he still has.) this boned up soonish so I got my first brand new PC. A HP with 1gb RAM (Upgraded too two with help this time) 3.00ghz Pentium D and a 160gb HDD (which is now full). My Dad sold the fujitsu and I got a 7" EEE. After deciding the EEE was too small for fast typing which I always used the Fujitsu for I bought a ?70 Powerbook Titanium G4 from Ebay. Thinking I could fix it, I was wrong. I bought a iBook G4 which I adored but I changed again, to a slightly less boned Powerbook G4 Aluminum, which has a slightly dodgy screen and refuses to run anything but Panther. By this time I had decided an OSX laptop that was half decent was in order, ?450 later I purchased this off of a forum with a Devs edition of snow leopard. I adore it :)

So I currently have 4 Computers. 3 of which are macs :p (The Powerbooks are for sale ;))
 
lol. perfect topic for me!! click thiz: [YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9bfauQev4o&feature=player_profilepage[/YOUTUBE]

Thats just my laptop history. My full PC list wouldn't probably fit here. lol
enjoy
 
I have to separate this into 2 categories as we've had a few computers between the 3 of us (in the family I mean).
Family Computers


First computer ever:
Performa_6400.jpg


200 MHz, 2.3 GB....................of hard drive space. Like 128 MB RAM I think by the time it broke down, otherwise I remember we ran it on like 32 MB RAM for a while.

Then second computer ever:
gx280.jpg


Running Windows 2000, had like 256 MB of RAM. I think it had like 30-50 GB of HD space. Think it was like a P3, but I forget the processor speed.

Third computer ever:
a93437_dell-gx280.jpg


Whaddaya know? Same sort of model.

Only this time we had windows XP on it, 512 MB RAM, About 80 GB of HD space. Think it was like 2.4 GHz

Fourth computer ever:
gx280.jpg


I bet you'll be asking "LurkerPatrol, you went back to the 2nd computer?". Answer is nope, I forgot what our 4th computer looked like :mrgreen: but it looked similar to this so.

This time it was Win XP, 120+ GB of HD space, 1 GB RAM, Dual Core processor, 2.8 GHz. Intel accelerated IGP video card (pretty good as it ran San Andreas without a hitch).

Fifth, and current computer:
DSC01322.jpg


Yes I know it needs to be dusted. I'm going to do that next weekend.

Specs:
Dell XPS 630
Intel Core2Quad Q6600 @ 2.4 GHz
4 GB RAM
2 NVidia GeForce 9800 GTs on SLI
1.2 TB of HD space
Vista Home Premium (which it kicks the shit out of)
Sexy red finish

My own personal Computers

First computer that I got before frosh year @ Berkeley:
vaio_pcgk86p.jpg

Sony Vaio PCG-K
2.4 GHz P4
1 GB RAM
80 GB HD space
ATI something or other IGP video card


Comp that I got after 3rd year @ Berkeley:
xps_410.jpg


Dell XPS 410
2.4 GHz Intel Core2Quad Q6600
2 GB RAM
Nvidia GeForce 8600 GT
320 GB HD space

It's sitting in my aunt's garage in Marin, I miss it so much :cry:.

While I'm at home, I use our new XPS system (the red one). I want to ship my XPS from my aunts place though. The external hard drives have all the top gear episodes and my ipod is synced to it :mrgreen:
 
1) I believe it was a 486.. don't remember, I was fairly young and we didn't have it that long. It was a hand-me-down computer from relatives running Win 3.1
2) A "custom" P2 MMX box that we upgraded to have a 3dfx Voodoo card in it [I remember it because of it's name haha] running Windows 95, then 98
3) Compaq R4000 laptop with the AMD Athlon 64 4000+ with XP on it. Ran this thing as my primary computer for 3 years, including 2 years of WoW gaming
4) My current Q6600 rig that I built myself [specs in sig] running Win 7 RTM
 
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First ever computer that was my own was my parent's Apple Performa 6400/180 back in 2002. I was overjoyed because it was "my own". After that it was a Comapq 7400 from my uncle who smoked incredibly much so it was nasty and caused my bedroom to reek. Next was a PowerBook G3 Pismo which I still have and adore, toughest laptop and most versitile. After that it was an iMac G5(iSight) edition. Very nice, until it started to develop weird behaviors, Apple replaced it with a late 2007 20" iMac, forgot to buy AppleCare and now I'm in deep doo doo since the optical drive and disk drive is on it's last legs. But it only fails during high intense work. Since my folks don't do any of that I gave that to them and got myself a Sony Vaio VGN-NS110E. Upgraded it's hard drive to 500GB which is a danger since I have no other hard drive big enough to back that up. However my folks stuff is backed up via TimeMachine, so no worries for them.

I'd love a white MacBook since it has firewire 400 which all my devices need. But, that's a long way off right now. I'd also like to dabble in Hackintosh, but that's just a dream.
 
How about some thread necromancy?

My computer history... well

I've had 3 primary PCs in my life. My primary PC is the one I do my gaming on, that's my logic. Each one has obsoleted the previous. When the enclosure changes I consider it a new machine and give it a new network name.

I got my first PC in the late 1990s. It was a 350MHz Pentium 2 with a Voodoo Banshee GPU. Not sure about RAM but I think it had a 20GB HDD. It came with a 15" CRT. I didn't upgrade this machine at all while I had it, mostly because I was too young at the time (~ 10) and didn't know anything about hardware.

In 2002 I got my second PC. Back then it was an ASUS A7V133-C mobo with AMD Athlon 1400MHz CPU, NVIDIA GeForce MX GPU, and I believe 128MB of SDRAM and a 40GB HDD. I used the same display but pretty soon upgraded to a Samsung Syncmaster 950p (19") CRT. As you might imagine the PC itself went through some considerable evolution since those times. Lookie here: http://1drv.ms/1IE8r7a - main observations:
  • Four (4) base setups during 2002-2014, of which three AMD CPU setups until 2008 and then a single Intel CPU setup until January this year. Always ASUS motherboard.
  • NVIDIA all the way from 2002, eight (8) generations of GeForce. SLI only once very briefly in 2006-2007, which is when I learned that it's better to have one new and powerful GPU than two old ones in SLI.
  • 2002-2004 Air cooling, 2004-2008 water cooling, 2008-Today air cooling again. All my setups since 2002 have been overclocked as far as they will go.
  • In 2002-2008 the evolution of PC hardware was fast and meaningful. A lot of money went into new parts. In comparison, since 2008 I ran the same basic setup until January this year.
  • First SSD in late 2012.
  • Always been a high res gamer instead of high framerate gamer. Evolution of resolutions:
    • Pre-2002: 1024x768 (15")
    • 2002: 1280x960 (19")
    • 200?: 2560x1024 (17"+17" 1280x1024 dualhead - yes, I suffered with the middle bezel to get more pixels)
    • 2006: 2560x1600 (30")
    • 2013: 3840x2160 (55")
    • 2018: 7680x4320 (65" curved) ? :p
  • Operating systems: Always Windows. Started with Win 98SE, upgraded to Win ME, then to XP. Used XP for roughly 10 years - skipped Vista and 7. Since then, always the latest version.
  • My current Razer mouse is 8 years old and my Microsoft keyboard about 6 years old.

In January 2015 I got my current PC which I've posted extensively about on FG. It's an ASUS X99-Pro with Intel i7 5390k and SLI GeForce 980's. 32 gigs of DDR4 and 1TB SSD. But crucially, because of the dual GPUs and heat it couldn't go in the old enclosure, so it got a new enclosure and a new name. :p

Besides my primary PC I've had secondary, tertiary etc. PCs as tools for various purposes, and of course mobile devices. Too many to list.

Currently I have a 17" i7 + GTX 980M laptop for mobile gaming and office, which I use with the old 30" monitor, or standalone. I also still have the old office PC which the laptop replaced. In addition the previous primary PC is still alive and well, and will be refreshed soon with some more RAM, quieter chassis fan and Windows 10 to become a home theater / multimedia machine. I also have a bunch of old servers which have always run Linux (Slackware, Mandrake, then Mandriva, then Fedora Core, then Ubuntu). Also for work I have a HP 15" ultralight laptop with Broadwell innards.
 
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Your computer history!

Apple Performa 6400/180
Compaq 7450?
PowerBook G3 500MHz
iMac G3 tray load
iMac G3 slot load
iMac G5 iSight
iMac Intel Early 2008
iMac G4 15"
PowerMac G4 450MHz dual
PowerMac G4 733MHz
Sony Vaio NS series
Samsung series 3(current)
Home brew AMD A10 @3.8GHz

That's kind of it really, this all happened in the span between '01 to now.
 
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Not the most complete list as I have been using self built machines for a long time, and my memory is a thing of horror.

IBM PS/2 25
Dell 386s acquired by my father after an office upgrade
Custom built 486
Cyrix POS 686
K5
Pentium 75mhz
K6-2
Pentium 2 Celeron 300A over clocked to ten billion Mhz
AMD XP
AMD XP
Pentium 4
Powerbook 12"
Macbook 13"
Core i5
Mac Mini 2010
Macbook Pro Retina
3 x Intel Atom servers
 
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Pentium 1 100Mhz
Dell All in One PC - I remember this having a Penitum III, having a LCD screen built onto the chassis. Bought around 2000.
IBM Desktop - This was an insurance replacement after the Dell was stolen, Pentium 4 iirc.
Dell Inspiron laptop - Hyper Threading Pentium 4, was permanently pushed into a power reduction mode after one of the pins on the charger port broke. Dell refused to fix it because it was 1 month out of warranty!
Clevo D900T - 2004? Pentium 4 3.2Ghz, 1 or 2GB or Ram and a GeForce 7800 Go GTX. Was heavy as hell, pumped out more heat than the sun, and the charger weighed 2kg. It was clearly a "desktop replacement"! iirc, I had a second one around 2006 with better specs, died in 2009. Was insane to carry around uni, and just as pointless. Battery would die in 45 minutes.
HP Envy 15 - Core i7, 8GB RAM AMD 512MB graphics, 500TB HDD. Good laptop until screen started artifacting, then suddenly decided not to. Sold to friend, still works to this day.
HP Pavilion dv6. 2012. Core i7, 8GB RAM, mid range AMD 1GB graphics, 1TB HDD. Worked great for video editing, now reduced to a media centre/web laptop in my room. Terrible build quality, parts of the case just decided to break off. Pretty noisy at times, could probably do with a clean to get rid of dust.
Custom Editing PC/Hackintosh. Just built two months ago for video editing work/gaming. Core i5 4960K, 16GB RAM, 250GB SSD/3TB WD HDD, Nvidia 970 GTX. I love SSDs!
 
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