TPU's Nostalgic Hardware Club

[Audioave10]

Hi,
Long time lurker, I really enjoy reading all the excellent info & discussion here from people who know far more than me about hardware i wanted, but never got to own. Please keep it up

Time to break my silence to celebrate a birthday.... 20yrs ago I built my first new custom PC to take to University.
I found the receipt recently and thought the spec/price comparison was interesting.

View attachment 261290
(Excuse the photo, no digital camera yet)

Not bleeding edge but not budget, I worked all summer to pay for it and hoped it would last me for a while.....

View attachment 261291

It was a huge upgrade to my hand me down PII with matrox graphics.
I grabbed a pioneer slot DVD and a few other bits from computer fairs, had a Dell OEM Soundblaster Live and reused an old 8.4GB hard drive until upgrading to 40GB later that year for £68!

In hindsight an Athlon XP system would have been cheaper and probably just as fast?

A few changes over the years - upgraded to an ATI 9800 pro, lost the dialup modem, memory etc, but it's still working fine and now my retro XP PC.
I still love the Lian Li PC60 but can't cable manage in it

View attachment 261292
View attachment 261293

Thanks for celebrating this milestone birthday with me does any one else have a nice build story or system birthday to celebrate?

Nice! I had the same case in black.

 

[Mr.Scott]

In hindsight an Athlon XP system would have been cheaper and probably just as fast?

Faster.

 

[Canned Noodles]

Hi,
Long time lurker, I really enjoy reading all the excellent info & discussion here from people who know far more than me about hardware i wanted, but never got to own. Please keep it up

Time to break my silence to celebrate a birthday.... 20yrs ago I built my first new custom PC to take to University.
I found the receipt recently and thought the spec/price comparison was interesting.

View attachment 261290
(Excuse the photo, no digital camera yet)

Not bleeding edge but not budget, I worked all summer to pay for it and hoped it would last me for a while.....

View attachment 261291

It was a huge upgrade to my hand me down PII with matrox graphics.
I grabbed a pioneer slot DVD and a few other bits from computer fairs, had a Dell OEM Soundblaster Live and reused an old 8.4GB hard drive until upgrading to 40GB later that year for £68!

In hindsight an Athlon XP system would have been cheaper and probably just as fast?

A few changes over the years - upgraded to an ATI 9800 pro, lost the dialup modem, memory etc, but it's still working fine and now my retro XP PC.
I still love the Lian Li PC60 but can't cable manage in it

View attachment 261292
View attachment 261293

Thanks for celebrating this milestone birthday with me does any one else have a nice build story or system birthday to celebrate?

I picked up a PC with a golden variant of this case off of Craigslist. On the bottom 5.25" bay the filler has a golden dragon. There is a 3-speed fan control switch behind that brown part the power and reset switch are on, but the fans are hooked up to a splitter so the speed doesn't have to be changed manually. The previous owner put in a Phenom II X4 955 BE, 2x Powercolor Radeon 6850s, a 1000w OCZ power supply (the fan is very loud, I'll probably replace it at some point), and 2x8GB 1600MHz DDR3. My only hardware change was adding a new drive for the OS.

 

[Valantar]

I picked up a PC with a golden variant of this case off of Craigslist. On the bottom 5.25" bay the filler has a golden dragon. There is a 3-speed fan control switch behind that brown part the power and reset switch are on, but the fans are hooked up to a splitter so the speed doesn't have to be changed manually. The previous owner put in a Phenom II X4 955 BE, 2x Powercolor Radeon 6850s, a 1000w OCZ power supply (the fan is very loud, I'll probably replace it at some point), and 2x8GB 1600MHz DDR3. My only hardware change was adding a new drive for the OS.View attachment 261317View attachment 261318

Wow, I absolutely adore that faux-wood detailing.

 

[Courier 6]

Hi,
Long time lurker, I really enjoy reading all the excellent info & discussion here from people who know far more than me about hardware i wanted, but never got to own. Please keep it up

Time to break my silence to celebrate a birthday.... 20yrs ago I built my first new custom PC to take to University.
I found the receipt recently and thought the spec/price comparison was interesting.

View attachment 261290
(Excuse the photo, no digital camera yet)

Not bleeding edge but not budget, I worked all summer to pay for it and hoped it would last me for a while.....

View attachment 261291

It was a huge upgrade to my hand me down PII with matrox graphics.
I grabbed a pioneer slot DVD and a few other bits from computer fairs, had a Dell OEM Soundblaster Live and reused an old 8.4GB hard drive until upgrading to 40GB later that year for £68!

In hindsight an Athlon XP system would have been cheaper and probably just as fast?

A few changes over the years - upgraded to an ATI 9800 pro, lost the dialup modem, memory etc, but it's still working fine and now my retro XP PC.
I still love the Lian Li PC60 but can't cable manage in it

View attachment 261292
View attachment 261293

Thanks for celebrating this milestone birthday with me does any one else have a nice build story or system birthday to celebrate?

Hehe nice rig!

 

[madlythick]

Hehe nice rig!

Thanks, it's served me well I don't think any of my modern systems will still be with me in 20yrs time.
Will there be much nostalgia for modern PCs that change so fast but with little noticable improvement?

Nice! I had the same case in black.

The black looks great, a window as well, very posh more sophisticated somehow, I'd be worried about scratches, does the silver show through?
Mines had a hard life with alot of scratches & marks now but the brushed finish hides them pretty well.

I picked up a PC with a golden variant of this case off of Craigslist. On the bottom 5.25" bay the filler has a golden dragon. There is a 3-speed fan control switch behind that brown part the power and reset switch are on, but the fans are hooked up to a splitter so the speed doesn't have to be changed manually. The previous owner put in a Phenom II X4 955 BE, 2x Powercolor Radeon 6850s, a 1000w OCZ power supply (the fan is very loud, I'll probably replace it at some point), and 2x8GB 1600MHz DDR3. My only hardware change was adding a new drive for the OS.View attachment 261317View attachment 261318

That is an amazing colour!! I've never seen one other than silver and black, was it a special edition / promotional? I suppose there's nothing to stop the panels being anodized any colour you'd want.....

Wow, I absolutely adore that faux-wood detailing.

Faux wood instead of faux carbon fibre

Faster.

I'm not sure if it was the quality of the motherboards or chipsets I had access to at the time (school&friends), but for all its faults I found the Pentium 4 (478) to be more stable than the Athlon XP, but probably slower yes

 

[lexluthermiester]

I picked up a PC with a golden variant of this case off of Craigslist. On the bottom 5.25" bay the filler has a golden dragon. There is a 3-speed fan control switch behind that brown part the power and reset switch are on, but the fans are hooked up to a splitter so the speed doesn't have to be changed manually. The previous owner put in a Phenom II X4 955 BE, 2x Powercolor Radeon 6850s, a 1000w OCZ power supply (the fan is very loud, I'll probably replace it at some point), and 2x8GB 1600MHz DDR3. My only hardware change was adding a new drive for the OS.View attachment 261317View attachment 261318

Love the brass colour!

 

[Greenslade]

I picked up a PC with a golden variant of this case off of Craigslist. On the bottom 5.25" bay the filler has a golden dragon. There is a 3-speed fan control switch behind that brown part the power and reset switch are on, but the fans are hooked up to a splitter so the speed doesn't have to be changed manually. The previous owner put in a Phenom II X4 955 BE, 2x Powercolor Radeon 6850s, a 1000w OCZ power supply (the fan is very loud, I'll probably replace it at some point), and 2x8GB 1600MHz DDR3. My only hardware change was adding a new drive for the OS.View attachment 261317View attachment 261318

It looks a cool coulerd case how much did you pay for it?
I should think you paid a few bob for that..

 

[Canned Noodles]

It looks a cool coulerd case how much did you pay for it?I should think you paid a few bob for that..

Believe it or not, the seller was giving it away for free! However, when we met up it was clear he had an emotional connection to this rig, so I gave him 60 bucks.

 

[Greenslade]

It looks a cool coulerd case how much did you pay for it?
I should think you paid a few bob for that..

That sounds like you got a bargin there for 60 bucks 52 pounds in UK money.

 

[Canned Noodles]

On the topic of old sexy cases, check out this bad boy I bought at VCFMW on Saturday:

Sorry for the big pic dump, but it looks amazing from all angles. I haven't gotten around to cleaning it yet, I've been busy doing things like building a desk, so I don't have to keep it on the floor
The PC is 100% functional, and it has Windows XP SP3 installed. It runs Starcraft and Far Cry beautifully at 1680x1050, and the WD Raptor makes everything a breeze. Not one capacitor on any component is showing signs of leakage. Everything is in amazing condition. Easily one of my best purchases.
In case you're curious about the specific model of Athlon 64 4000+ (like I was), it seems to be the first generation, Clawhammer.
According to GPU-Z, the card has the same clocks as the Nvidia model.

 

[68Olds]

The Abit uGuru panel is not something you see every day. I have one too, but it’s on my AW9D-Max Core2Duo board. You got a really nice collection of hardware in that box.

Ghetto Mods

This Peltier (80w), combined with improved case airflow resulted in more than 10C degrees on the 6800 XT that I transfer to more overclock :D What are the red and black wires for between the gpu and heatsink?

www.techpowerup.com

 

[Greenslade]

On the topic of old sexy cases, check out this bad boy I bought at VCFMW on Saturday:
View attachment 261553View attachment 261554
View attachment 261555View attachment 261557View attachment 261556
Sorry for the big pic dump, but it looks amazing from all angles. I haven't gotten around to cleaning it yet, I've been busy doing things like building a desk, so I don't have to keep it on the floor
The PC is 100% functional, and it has Windows XP SP3 installed. It runs Starcraft and Far Cry beautifully at 1680x1050, and the WD Raptor makes everything a breeze. Not one capacitor on any component is showing signs of leakage. Everything is in amazing condition. Easily one of my best purchases.
In case you're curious about the specific model of Athlon 64 4000+ (like I was), it seems to be the first generation, Clawhammer.
According to GPU-Z, the card has the same clocks as the Nvidia model.

Another cool-looking PC, at a bargain price.
Vintage Computer Fair, but what does MW stand for? Mid Week?

 

[Canned Noodles]

Another cool-looking PC, at a bargain price.
Vintage Computer Fair, but what does MW stand for? Mid Week?

Midwest

 

[Audioave10]

On the topic of old sexy cases, check out this bad boy I bought at VCFMW on Saturday:
View attachment 261553View attachment 261554
View attachment 261555View attachment 261557View attachment 261556
Sorry for the big pic dump, but it looks amazing from all angles. I haven't gotten around to cleaning it yet, I've been busy doing things like building a desk, so I don't have to keep it on the floor
The PC is 100% functional, and it has Windows XP SP3 installed. It runs Starcraft and Far Cry beautifully at 1680x1050, and the WD Raptor makes everything a breeze. Not one capacitor on any component is showing signs of leakage. Everything is in amazing condition. Easily one of my best purchases.
In case you're curious about the specific model of Athlon 64 4000+ (like I was), it seems to be the first generation, Clawhammer.
According to GPU-Z, the card has the same clocks as the Nvidia model.

Nice! I had the Abit AN8 a long time ago but traded up soon (I was dumb). That case is in good condition too.
Is that a removable Mobo tray?

 

[Greenslade]

Interesting video but would you buy it, Of course, you would not at that price.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Interesting video but would you buy it, Of course, you would not at that price.

He's absolutely correct about a lot of points, even if he's a bit cheezy. And he forgot to enable AGP in the bios, which is why none of the cards would post.. Those boards come from the factory with the AGP port disabled. However, no it's not worth $1000 for retro Win9X gaming...

EDIT:
Loved the BSOD when he tried the headset. Welcome to my world 2 decades ago.. For the record, Windows ME never had those problems. USB support on WinME was wonderful unlike the, at times, glitchy mess of 98/98SE.

 

[Canned Noodles]

Nice! I had the Abit AN8 a long time ago but traded up soon (I was dumb). That case is in good condition too.
Is that a removable Mobo tray?

Yes, it is removable! Very neat feature.

 

[Audioave10]

The Complete History of the Home Microprocessor​

I just had to show this!

 

[lexluthermiester]

The Complete History of the Home Microprocessor​

Finally had a chance to sit down to watch this and I've got to say that it was seriously disappointing. There were many instances of stated information that were either off the mark or patently false. Simple fact checking would have made all the difference(assuming this was not a sad attempt at rewriting history). It got a LOT wrong. Well presented, certainly, but deeply and factually flawed.

Additionally, the final conclusions of the narrator are as misinformed as they are misguided. CISC/X86/X64 is going nowhere. RISC is a solid platform and gives mobile devices life, but they are no substitution for CISC in general computing. And before anyone touts Apples M-series RISC SOC line, those are very niche, requires buying into the very limiting Apple ecosystem and have ZERO backward compatibility, even with Apples own software. While CISC has some challenges ahead, this is nothing new. There have always been challenges to overcome and there always will. Never slowed things down before and it is doubtful that the mantra of the industry, "Necessity being the mother of all invention." will change anytime soon.

There seems to be a small sub-group of people out there that seem to think CISC has reached an end. This is simply not true and will not be true anytime soon. My supporting evidence? History. It is not only the best teacher but it shows that everytime we hit a road-block in performance or advancement, an innovation is found that propels everything forward. Most of the people frequenting this thread knows that history by having lived it. That experience teaches us that there is always a way forward. RISC is not that way forward for most forms of computing tasks, including mainstream gaming.

 

[Count von Schwalbe]

RISC is a solid platform and gives mobile devices life, but they are no substitution for CISC in general computing. And before anyone touts Apples M-series RISC SOC line, those are very niche, requires buying into the very limiting Apple ecosystem and have ZERO backward compatibility, even with Apples own software. While CISC has some challenges ahead, this is nothing new. There have always been challenges to overcome and there always will. Never slowed things down before and it is doubtful that the mantra of the industry, "Necessity being the mother of all invention." will change anytime soon.

There seems to be a small sub-group of people out there that seem to think CISC has reached an end. This is simply not true and will not be true anytime soon. My supporting evidence? History. It is not only the best teacher but it shows that everytime we hit a road-block in performance or advancement, an innovation is found that propels everything forward. Most of the people frequenting this thread knows that history by having lived it. That experience teaches us that there is always a way forward. RISC is not that way forward for most forms of computing tasks, including mainstream gaming.

An interesting perspective, but one that could go by the wayside with any company adopting a little something called UCIe.

Ok, that was a little dramatic. However, the backwards compatibility and universality of x86 has been its lifeblood. ARM/RISC cannot compete with the established ecosystem of x86. However, it is now easy for chiplets to be connected in new ways - imagine 4 RISC cores to run Windows and truly background tasks such as AV, indexing, etc. and a 8 core x86 chiplet exposed to programs running within the Windows environment. Mobile/laptops could add efficient RISC and reduce the big and power-hungry x86 cores. Anyways, I am not saying that it will happen, just that it could. Sorry for hijacking the thread.

 

[Greenslade]

Finally had a chance to sit down to watch this and I've got to say that it was seriously disappointing. There were many instances of stated information that were either off the mark or patently false. Simple fact checking would have made all the difference(assuming this was not a sad attempt at rewriting history). It got a LOT wrong. Well presented, certainly, but deeply and factually flawed.

Additionally, the final conclusions of the narrator are as misinformed as they are misguided. CISC/X86/X64 is going nowhere. RISC is a solid platform and gives mobile devices life, but they are no substitution for CISC in general computing. And before anyone touts Apples M-series RISC SOC line, those are very niche, requires buying into the very limiting Apple ecosystem and have ZERO backward compatibility, even with Apples own software. While CISC has some challenges ahead, this is nothing new. There have always been challenges to overcome and there always will. Never slowed things down before and it is doubtful that the mantra of the industry, "Necessity being the mother of all invention." will change anytime soon.

There seems to be a small sub-group of people out there that seem to think CISC has reached an end. This is simply not true and will not be true anytime soon. My supporting evidence? History. It is not only the best teacher but it shows that every-time we hit a road-block in performance or advancement, an innovation is found that propels everything forward. Most of the people frequenting this thread knows that history by having lived it. That experience teaches us that there is always a way forward. RISC is not that way forward for most forms of computing tasks, including mainstream gaming.

I don,t know why you don,t have a youtube channel, as I have said before on here. With your vast knowledge of all this stuff.

 

[lexluthermiester]

I don,t know why you don,t have a youtube channel, as I have said before on here. With your vast knowledge of all this stuff.

I have a government job that restricts what activities I can engage in on the web. Otherwise I would have by now.

 

[Greenslade]

I have a government job that restricts what activities I can engage in on the web. Otherwise I would have by now.

Oh, I have never heard of that before. That's a bummer

 

[Keullo-e]

Just for curiousity, I tried the A7N8X-X* and holy crap, it booted! Now I'll install it to a HP case and I'm going to have a nice evening/night.

*the donor said that it's dead and as I read that those are known for crappy caps, I was sure that I need to recap it. POSTed fine though.

edit: a pic as well