What's your happiest/saddest computer/IT related memories?

[birdie]

This could be anything, a piece of hardware, a game, an application, etc. etc. etc.

Speaking of me, the memorable things:

• Games: HoMM 3, Crysis, Deus Ex Mankind Divided
• Computer purchases: my first full size stereo speakers, Google Nexus 5, an HRR monitor - the difference between 60Hz and 144Hz is staggering
• Applications and such: Windows XP (I loved it immensely) - I still consider it the best Windows release ever

The sad things:

• Windows 8/10
• VR - I was absolutely disappointed, had very high hopes, turned out to be a dud

What about you?

 

[nguyen]

4000h in PUBG with friends were a blast

 

[X71200]

PUBG has always been a mess, I remember the early days, it would lag all the time in some games. The player movement is sneezy, the whole thing is just unpolished. Regardless I have also spent quite some time in it, a good amount of the gameplay being sad times like looting for 30 minutes to die to somebody camping in a house.

I spent more time with CS:S and surf maps in the old times, those were a lot more fun.

They put a "1v1 me bro" mode to MW, and I'm actually liking it. Recently shreked a level 400 guy, it was pretty hilarious. Needs better maps though.

 

[64K]

I had the most fun with my Commodore 64.
Intro to the online experience in the mid 80s on Bulletin Board Systems.

My saddest experience was "upgrading" to Windows ME. What a dog OS that was.

 

[ThrashZone]

Hi,
Yeah 8-8.1 & all 10 builds are the saddest lol

Win-7 support ending was the happiest more like a long deserved vacation
Finally no more updates to research before they borked something or install 10 out of the blue one day

I use 7 on three computers daily no problems what so ever, the world has not ended as so many have said it would and keep on insist it will lol
I have four win-10's already they are rarely if ever used just updated/ benchmarked and thrown back in a drawer to collect dust.
Linux is used a lot more than 10 is.

 

[bobbybluz]

Before my retiring 5 years ago the local university (a Big 10 school) sent an endless stream of Computer Science grad students as LTE interns at the radio station. Without exception they were useless and clueless beyond belief. In live broadcast radio there is no room for error or incompetence. Sadly their parents would have spent that education money more wisely buying lottery tickets. Not a single time were any of them able to complete an assigned task without fux0ring it up beyond belief. Asking any of them to diagnose a failed piece of hardware was always an adventure to say the least. I used to have to come in late at night, look at the work logs then fix everything they'd touched. I could write a book about my adventures there.

 

[welly321]

For games, my most vivid and fun memories come from playing Everquest in early 2000. So many friends and experiences happened in that game.
I still remember building my first computer. It was an AMD phenom x3 triple core. I loved that chip. I eventually was able to unlock the fourth core.

 

[X71200]

I bought one of those 1.86 Ghz C2D chips back in the day... thing was so much better than what I had previously. No more CPU based drops in Source games. I clocked it to some 2.3 Ghz, even at lower clocks thing was still a beast for the money, and architecturally a great CPU.

 

[WhitetailAni]

Getting my first computer. It was an ASUS V400C laptop - Core i3-2365M, 4GB LPDDR3, 500GB HDD, iGPU, Linux Mint 17.3. The thing ran Minecraft 1.11.2 (that was as high as it could run) at 50 FPS at 1366x768, and just kept going until I dropped it down the stairs.
The hard drive still worked though, so I have that. Once I upgrade my motherboard and have more SATA ports I'll put it in and use it as my Linux boot drive.

 

[LFaWolf]

Before my retiring 5 years ago the local university (a Big 10 school) sent an endless stream of Computer Science grad students as LTE interns at the radio station. Without exception they were useless and clueless beyond belief. In live broadcast radio there is no room for error or incompetence. Sadly their parents would have spent that education money more wisely buying lottery tickets. Not a single time were any of them able to complete an assigned task without fux0ring it up beyond belief. Asking any of them to diagnose a failed piece of hardware was always an adventure to say the least. I used to have to come in late at night, look at the work logs then fix everything they'd touched. I could write a book about my adventures there.

That is the school’s fault for sending computer science students to do radio or hardware diagnosis. Most CS students are taught to do software development, not hardware of anything. Computer engineering is about hardware.

Happiest moment - playing Age of Empires over and over, for hours on end. That was one of the classic. Now I have the definitive edition and I still play it.

Saddest moment - recycling my first computer away because I had to move, a Compaq 386 sx/20 MHz

 

[AusWolf]

Happiest hardware: AMD Athlon 64 3000+ in 2004. My friends were all using Pentiums that ran a lot hotter and were slower. Also my HIS Radeon X800 XT.

Saddest hardware: GeForce 7800 GS AGP that I swapped my X800 XT for. It wasn't exactly bad, but wasn't faster than the X800, and overheated. Cooler swapping wasn't possible either because of the unique mounting points and the PCI-e - AGP adapter chip on the card that also needed cooling (I forgot what it was called). Could also mention my first graphics card: S3 ViRGE GX/DX with its partial DirectX 7 support that resulted in black squares around transparent (alpha-blended) textures and awful performance. Seriously, games ran better in software rendering.

Happiest game: Doom (1995), Age of Empires 2, Half-Life, Half-Life 2, Homeworld, Need for Speed 2, 3, Underground 2, Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War (LAN with friends), The Witcher, The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion, Nexus: The Jupiter Incident, Star Trek: Bridge Commander. All-time favourites that I'm happy to play any time.

Saddest game: World of Warcraft. Please don't hate me, but that game really doesn't get me for some reason. Boring quests, bad graphics for its age, too much emphasis on PvP. It's just meh.

 

[80-watt Hamster]

It's hard to identify "happy" moments, but there's a memorable one that I still relate over 15 years later. I was (re?)configuring my Slackware router/firewall, a Compaq P60 that I'd maxed out with a P75 and 32MB of RAM. Packets would not pass. Nothing I tried worked. After hours spent editing config files, loading and unloading modules and getting absolutely nowhere, I finally think to myself, "You don't suppose it could be one of the NICs?" Yup. Somehow, one of them had gone kaput. To date, still the only network controller I've had spontaneously die. I simultaneously felt 1) like an idiot for not trying that sooner, 2) a gigantic wave of relief that everything was working, and 3) a slight bout of satisfaction that my software setup wasn't the problem.

Sad moment: Retiring that same machine. It was a GD workhorse, plugging away at its task for probably five years straight, ten years past obsolescense by any objective measure.

 

[X71200]

Cooler swapping wasn't possible either because of the unique mounting points and the PCI-e - AGP adapter chip on the card that also needed cooling (I forgot what it was called).

https://images.anandtech.com/reviews/video/NVIDIA/GeForce6600GTAGP/bridge.jpg

That bridge, I also had it on my 6600. On some designs like the one in the pic, a little sink cooled it.

 

[AusWolf]

https://images.anandtech.com/reviews/video/NVIDIA/GeForce6600GTAGP/bridge.jpg

That bridge, I also had it on my 6600. On some designs like the one in the pic, a little sink cooled it.

Oh yes, I used to envy people who had a separate heatsink for it. On my 7800, the main heatsink cooled the GPU, that chip, and the VRAM as well, like this (though my GS had only 12 or 16 pixel pipes, I can't remember). I think this cooler design was beautiful, but calling it underpowered would be an understatement. It was loud as hell, too.

 

[Caring1]

Happy memories and a smile are made by the simple sounds of a dot matrix printer and a dial up modem.

 

[AusWolf]

Happy memories and a smile are made by the simple sounds of a dot matrix printer and a dial up modem.

And a 3.5 inch floppy disk drive.

 

[Jose Jeswin]

Hardware story
Saddest : First GPU- A Pine View SIS 305 Agp card in my first computer (A Intel Pentium 4 128 MB ram 40 GB HDD)... Died.
Happiest: Got my second GPU: A XFX Ge force MX 4000 64 MB card after 1 year.......a great relief from onboard Intel 845 graphics..

Software story
Saddest: NFS Special Edition in software rendering mode..
Happiest: NFS Hot Pursuit in full hardware acceleration mode...my jaw dropped on the floor seeing the shiny cars and dust flying behind the cars..
Colin Mcrae Rally 2..

 

[The red spirit]

And a 3.5 inch floppy disk drive.

I still remember running test drive and hearing that floppy drive music

 

[Space Lynx]

Happiest moment for me was when my mom got me a HP desktop / crt monitor combo from walmart in like 2004, and I remember upgrading the gpu in it and the ram (my first time doing such a thing) just in time for WoW 2004 november launch... was lot of good memories.

 

[delshay]

Hi,
Yeah 8-8.1 & all 10 builds are the saddest lol

Win-7 support ending was the happiest more like a long deserved vacation
Finally no more updates to research before they borked something or install 10 out of the blue one day

I use 7 on three computers daily no problems what so ever, the world has not ended as so many have said it would and keep on insist it will lol
I have four win-10's already they are rarely if ever used just updated/ benchmarked and thrown back in a drawer to collect dust.
Linux is used a lot more than 10 is.

INCORRECT

Part of windows 7 still gets updates. If you have the full windows 7 installed you should have Microsoft Edge installed. Every two to three weeks go to "About Microsoft Edge" & it will update to the latest version to match Windows 10 latest version. You have to do this manually every two to three weeks.

Quickest way to get update is to right click on the icon in the task bar & select "About Microsoft Edge"....

 

[micropage7]

bought a new laptop for school and realize that it just run on win 8/8.1 only

 

[pantherx12]

Happiest : mkmods sending me his bloodrage x58 board and Xeon CPU etc from his epic hidden wires build where he inverted the power connectors in the motherboard and had inputs on the motherboard tray so he could just plug it back in.

Saddest : Breaking that same board within a week trying to change the NB heatsink back to stock .

Rest in peace mark

 

[Deleted member 205776]

Happiest: building my own PC

Saddest: Buying a HP Prebuilt/Gigabyte board

 

[Arjai]

My Sapphire 580 Pulse, in my 2700 build, just died. Probably no chance for an RMA(guessing), in any sort of timely manner. I still need to test it...The MB says it's the GPU. Effed up is that the build is new-ish, May of last year.

Anyway, even though I haven't done anything, yet, it makes me sad that it has died so soon. I usually have good luck on my builds, lasting years. This one is just over a year old, now, it was probably just under a year old when it died.

I also wasted money, once, buying an NVME that was actually a non NVME M.2 it was some sort of PCIe type NVME? Anyway, Ironically, it is still in the build. I never got around to replacing it. SAD!

I have so many things to do. Yet, I have no motivation to do anything, let alone the things that need to get done! I believe it is a temporary condition. I should be fine, soon-ish, and start getting things done. But, not Today, no, not today.

 

[Aranarth]

Pretty much every computer I've built for personal use: Almost one from every generation!
386 with a 387match co, 486, 486 dx2, dx4, pentium 233, duron, athlon, athlon x2, core 2 duo, core 2 quad, core i7 2600k.
really like my current machine for gaming a dell alienware with 5600x and Radon 6800xt

Played Everquest for an entire decade then got sick of b/c I didn't ahve high speed internet at home.
The joy have getting starlink to fix that issue.

All the single player games I have in library going back to wolfenstein3d, doom, dukenukem v1 and v2, tyrian, etc. etc.
Very few multi player games b/c again no high speed internet plus I'm an adult now so I don't have much free time.

What sucks? ADULTING!