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What got you started with PC's? Tell your story.

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I think i found it, if not extremely similar, the keyboard definitely has a curly wire.

 
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Software lots of movies and Windows 10 with win 7 shell
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I think they were 5 1/4 Floppy size, all i know is they were abnormally large even for the year 2000 or so lol.
Maybe it was a zip drive. Those zip drives really never replaced those floppy drives.

I had a zip drive so that I can download porn from the library and take it back home with me. My only reason that I bought a zip drive.

wow I am remembering so much of my past.
 
Joined
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Memory 16GB DDR4 3ghz / 4GB DDR2 800mhz
Video Card(s) 2060 Super / 5700-XT / GTX 650Ti
Storage 120GB + 1TB SSD / 160GB SSD
Display(s) Samsung CRG5 144hz QD
Case CiT shit chassis modded / Coolermaster Elite 430
Audio Device(s) Soundblaster FX / Audigy 2 ZX
Power Supply Superflower Leadex III GOLD / BeQuiet 450w bronze.
Mouse Razer Basilisk
Keyboard Read Dragon Kumara
Software Windows 10 Pro x64
Benchmark Scores 1 Billion
Maybe it was a zip drive. Those zip drives really never replaced those floppy drives.

No i am 100% of how it looked it's just a bit fuzzy lol, it was an all in one type computer with it's own green monitor and a curly wired keyboard but since there is a few like that it's hard ti pinpoint.
 

Mussels

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oh and what got me interested in overclocking was a turbo button on that 486dX2 - i could use it to make some games run at double speed, and others to run at half speed. It was basically a cheat mode for some of the harder, newer games.

Along came my pentium 90, which still had the button on the case - but it didn't do anything. Altavista/yahoo searches led me to the DIP switches on the motherboard and a 10Mhz overclock to 100Mhz...
 
Joined
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System Name MSI GP76
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Storage x2 PNY 8tb cs2130 m.2 SSD--16tb of space
Display(s) 17.3" IPS 1920x1080 240Hz
Power Supply 280w laptop power supply
Mouse Logitech m705
Keyboard laptop keyboard
Software lots of movies and Windows 10 with win 7 shell
Benchmark Scores Good enough for me
No i am 100% of how it looked it's just a bit fuzzy lol, it was an all in one type computer with it's own green monitor and a curly wired keyboard but since there is a few like that it's hard ti pinpoint.
oh ok, on my 1st computer I did a a 3.5 inch floppy. Never used it.
 
Joined
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Messages
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System Name MSI GP76
Processor intel i7 11800h
Cooling 2 laptop fans
Memory 32gb of 3000mhz DDR4
Video Card(s) Nvidia 3070
Storage x2 PNY 8tb cs2130 m.2 SSD--16tb of space
Display(s) 17.3" IPS 1920x1080 240Hz
Power Supply 280w laptop power supply
Mouse Logitech m705
Keyboard laptop keyboard
Software lots of movies and Windows 10 with win 7 shell
Benchmark Scores Good enough for me
oh and what got me interested in overclocking was a turbo button on that 486dX2 - i could use it to make some games run at double speed, and others to run at half speed. It was basically a cheat mode for some of the harder, newer games.

Along came my pentium 90, which still had the button on the case - but it didn't do anything. Altavista/yahoo searches led me to the DIP switches on the motherboard and a 10Mhz overclock to 100Mhz...
I had a business class in high school had those computers, back in 1998. I dont know the specs but I do remember the turbo button and that it made the fans go faster.
 
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Enter & Compute Gazette magazines.
 
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I really enjoyed computers and games since I can remember. Gamed on the Commodore 64 and Atari 2600 when I was little. I remember constantly bugging my mom (I was 3 or maybe 4 at the time) to play Hunt the Wumpus on the Commodore 64....we'd play it almost daily, even though I know my mom was disgusted with playing the game.

On then to the NES when I was 6 - I think my dad thought him and mom "taking a break" and him living away from home for a bit, the NES was a good present for his two older boys.

Time moves on and we moved to a new city when I was 8. Moved away from all my friends and family that literally lived down the street and some family that lived a few blocks away. My mom got a new computer, but I was too young to know what it all entailed for hardware. I simply remember the Windows 2 or 2.1 and the 14.4k modem we had. I also remember all the floppy discs and games: Duke Nukem and Commander Keen - I played the crap out of these games.

I was on the computer so much, I taught myself how to use the modem and get online (Prodigy and Genie baby!) I found MUD games on those two online services. My mom eventually saw the phone bill and realized I had been getting online. She had to change the password for access - though I figured it out again. She also became very mad when I figured out how to change everything around in Windows. I set it up how I liked looking at it. Eventually she refused to let me use the computer and I had to enjoy my gaming on the NES.

Time goes on and my use of the computer is limited. SNES and Sega Genesis comes out, along with the GameBoy. When I was 11, my parents finally divorced. Three years pass and then game along WarCraft - my friend that lived next door, he had a better computer and we played the game whenever his parents weren't home. I became self taught in DOS by this point.

A few months later my younger brother and I moved states with mom and soon to be step-dad. He used computers a lot and his computer was twice as good as the one we still had from when I was 8. I remember it having a Pentium 133 (if memory serves me correctly) in it. So once again, I moved and left all my friends and family behind. I only had my younger brother and my mom and my soon to be step-dad - all other family lived a state over (older brother, dad, grandparents, etc....). I knew no one so I was left to my imagination, consoles and the PC. A few months after we moved, my step dad purchased a Pentium II 366 computer. It came with a crap ton of software on floppy 5.25" and 3.5" floppy discs. The computer had 4 specific games that I absolutely fell in love with:

Relentless: Twinsen's Adventure
Star Wars: Tie Fighter
Doom (it also had a disc with a ton of levels)
Mechwarrior 2

These games (and along with a ton of other floppy disc games that I can't recall the names of) kept me entertained a lot. This was also the time AOL had started becoming very popular. It was the online service that came pre-installed on computers so that's what learned to use. The new 28.8k modem in the new computer was awesome. Online was awesome. I came into a new MUD game - Gemstone III - this was in 1994. Time online wasn't cheap. When the first phone bill came in that was over $400 my mom was pissed (again). I was grounded from the computer for a month (A MONTH!). Once I was allowed on the computer I was rationed to 6 hours a week online and each and every minute was devoted to GSIII. Eventually AOL went unlimited and when that happened my step-dad got a dedicated phone line for online and we upgraded to a 56k modem - the speed was blazing! I spent countless hours on GSIII and playing computer games. Warcraft 2 and Starcraft and so on.

A couple years pass and I'm given the PII 366 as step-dad moved up to a PIII 733. I'm basking the glorious Windows 95 on this thing and enjoying my games. Playstation comes out and I enjoy many games on it, but the PC still took priority for games. 1999 comes along and I get my very first own computer - houses AMD Athlon 600 processor - for my freshman year of college. The computer crushed whatever Pentium III my roommate had. We both found the enjoyment of Half Life and Counter Strike. We played Counter Strike a lot. Since we sat across from each other, we didn't have to rely on VOIP and we could communicate instantly. We played the game as it should be played, working together and we absolutely slaughtered the competition. We constantly got kicked or banned from servers because we were accused of cheating. We embarrassed high ranking clans on their own servers. The clan members would all be on one team and we'd be on the other with a few random people. My roommate and I worked together, called out locations and flanked like no one else...every match came down to him and I being the last 2 survivors on our team as we wiped out the 7+ members on the other team. A few clans tried to recruit us, but we didn't have time for tournaments and such with school so we always declined.

College wasn't my thing. A few years passed and I upgraded the GPU in my computer (don't remember what it originally was) to what I thought was an awesome card...a FX 5500! It was a little better over what I originally had and it did allow me to play the leaked Doom 3 demo.

I purchased a PS2 and enjoyed a lot of games on it, but that was my last gaming console. Once Oblivion came out and my computer (was running a Nvidia 7800 AGP - best AGP at the time) had a lot of issues handling the game, I finally splurged on a new computer. I didn't know enough about computers to build my own, but I knew enough about some hardware to get something I considered decent for around $1000.

I purchased a computer with the following specs:
AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ (Manchester chip - 939 socket)
2GB DDR RAM
2 7600 GT in SLI
80 GB (might have been 160) HDD
The computer also came with AIO water cooler on the CPU - the CPU overclocked like mad from 2.0 to 3.1

From that point on it's strictly been PC for me. I build my own and build computers for friends/family if they need help. I love the hardware and I love solving the problems that come up - whether it's hardware related or software. Computers are logical and I love logical things - they just fit with my personality.
 
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I got ill 10-11yrs ago (age 24-25) with a un known problem which Dr's have never been able to figure out, got really high blood pressure, basically got worse and worse over a period of 2 weeks till it got to the point I couldn't get out of bed anymore. Nearly had a heart attack one night and died because of it. Had to quit my job at the time as a Linen courier and then spent pretty much every waking moment in front of a PC as I went in and out of Hospitals and Dr's trying to figure out what happened. Got really interested in Computer hardware and building them for a few yrs learning how they all work etc then started my own business back in 2009, rest is history, that's how I got into Computers :)
 
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I think i found it, if not extremely similar, the keyboard definitely has a curly wire. [image]
I seen one of those when I was in high school in NJROTC (Navy Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps) sitting on the Sargent's desk.
 
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My first PC, a Packard Bell 486DX2 66Mhz, is responsible for my addiction.

That's right, I know it's hard to believe, but Packard Bell got me into computers.

EDIT: Holy crap, someone made a Packard Bell Wiki and I found my old model... the horror:



http://pbclub.pwcsite.com/wiki/index.php/Executive_8707_D
 
Last edited:

stinger608

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Who remembers 5 1/4" floppy disks????? Not 3 1/2, we are talking 5 1/4! Well, waaaaaaaaaay back then; in mid 80's when you had to load an "operating system" with a floppy disk.

That was when I got my very beginning........If you remember that far back then you will probably remember that any computer in that era had to have the "hard disk" parked. If it even had a hard drive.

I came up with a really really short code that would actually park the hard disk automatically........Yep, it soon became a hit and was put into the firmware of every frigging hard disk made.

Now, fast forward about 8 years, and Doom was the turning point in my computer history. That is when I became a junkie for computers and gaming!

Crap, that is when dial up was costing per minute of use! AOL was a hit! Hell, everyone was getting them disks in the mail LOL.

And as @ThE_MaD_ShOt stated, Unreal Tournament was a huge turning point for me as well. Hell, I still play UT2004 more than probably any other game.

Old school? Yea, I reckon. :laugh:
 
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I was one of those kids that pulled things apart to see how they worked, radios, watches, TV's, motors etc, basically anything I could get my hands on kept me amused, and I guess taught me a lot.
My father brought home old electronics and mechanical gauges for me, probably to save the household items from that fate.
Generally things worked again after reassembly, even if broken prior I managed to fix them.
The first computer I remember was massive and you had to use punch cards, it was at the local University, home computers weren't available as far as I remember.
I got my first IBM compatible clone after I got married in my mid 20's, I think it was a 386 but i'm not sure, I did have a 486dx later.
I wasn't very good with the software side of things, but knew how to put them together blindfolded.
I still remember the sounds of the dial up modem, and the dot matrix printer clattering away.
 
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Cooling TT Esports Duo / Chinesium cooler
Memory 16GB DDR4 3ghz / 4GB DDR2 800mhz
Video Card(s) 2060 Super / 5700-XT / GTX 650Ti
Storage 120GB + 1TB SSD / 160GB SSD
Display(s) Samsung CRG5 144hz QD
Case CiT shit chassis modded / Coolermaster Elite 430
Audio Device(s) Soundblaster FX / Audigy 2 ZX
Power Supply Superflower Leadex III GOLD / BeQuiet 450w bronze.
Mouse Razer Basilisk
Keyboard Read Dragon Kumara
Software Windows 10 Pro x64
Benchmark Scores 1 Billion
I was one of those kids that pulled things apart to see how they worked, radios, watches, TV's, motors etc, basically anything I could get my hands on kept me amused, and I guess taught me a lot.
My father brought home old electronics and mechanical gauges for me, probably to save the household items from that fate.
Generally things worked again after reassembly, even if broken prior I managed to fix them.
The first computer I remember was massive and you had to use punch cards, it was at the local University, home computers weren't available as far as I remember.
I got my first IBM compatible clone after I got married in my mid 20's, I think it was a 386 but i'm not sure, I did have a 486dx later.
I wasn't very good with the software side of things, but knew how to put them together blindfolded.
I still remember the sounds of the dial up modem, and the dot matrix printer clattering away.

A lot like me as a kid but i got in trouble lol.
 

Outback Bronze

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Display(s) Gigabyte 34" Curved
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Audio Device(s) Onboard
Power Supply PCIe5 850w
Mouse Asus
Keyboard Corsair
Software Win 11
Benchmark Scores Cool n Quiet.
My addiction started with "Aliens vs Predator 2" which was an awesome game at the time.

Before the "PC" started I was on the old 8 bit Sega console, followed by the 16 bit Sega console, then PlayStation 1 and finally my last console PS2.

So what happened....Well I was happy with my console's until I went around my mate house and we started playing AVP2. We loved it that much he set up another cheap PC so we could played lan games against each other where we learnt a hell of a lot about the game.

So I purchased AVP2 (coz I loved it sooo much) and installed it on my parents Pentium 3. I didn't run too well (must have been onboard graphics) and I knew absolutely nothing about computers. My mate said lets install a voodoo 2 to see if that helps. Well we did but it did not run a great deal better.

During this period I also installed Diablo 2 on my parents computer which I also enjoyed quite a bit. I would still play my PS1 with the like's of Tekken 2 but the PC was starting to get a strangle hold of me.

My parents ended up getting divorced and the whole family split. I was 21 and my sister ended up getting the family PC grrr.

I needed a computer to play my AVP2 and Diablo 2. So I went to a Electronics store (not even a PC shop) and purchased a Pentium 4 2.4Ghz (533 FSB) with a GeForce 4 which I had to make payments on just to pay it off. Cost me like 2K in the day. I made sure when they built the PC they made the case upgradable and it had a side window.

This is where my addiction started! :)

I was going down to my mate's house and was reading his PC magazine's he would buy. It was around 2003/4 when I was reading his mags and saw these Radeon 9800 pro's making piss on everything. 6 moths later I was still watching these Radeon 9800 pro's making piss so I decided to collect all my funds to purchase one.

WOW I was hooked!! :) From then on it didn't stop. The 9800 pro was and 8x AGP and my board was only 4x so another upgrade, an 8x motherboard. I purchased an Intel 865 with later on down the track a Pentium 4 (800 FSB) HT.

Then.....It was getting too hot and overheating in the summer. What did I see when my mate took me to a PC store??? A 478 Socket Water cooler!! Came with a 478 Block, Pump, Res, Radiator and all the pipe work to boot. Lovely kit!!

What happened??? The water kit would not fit inside my original case so I Purchased a UV Acrylic case (still got it) so the entire unit would fit.

Long story short....This is where I started with PC's :)
 
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I live in Iceland. back in 1998 i lived in the west fjords. my father was a fisherman. i was 17 at the time. he lived in a place where there wore only 200 people. Sudureyri :) ..but.. there was nothing alse to do but playing on computers. We playe'd Quake 2 alot. and my dad and his friends put a coax cable between all our houses, so we could play when winter came. practilly snowed in for many month's. it was like a internet between us. well.. voodoo 2 card. Quake 2. Half Life. The first 1 Ghz CPU, the birth of Geforce cards. ISDN landline.. so on and so on. now i have a i7 5820K @ 4.4 Ghz and a jetstream GTX 1070. the years have been kind to me ;)
 

tabascosauz

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Power Supply Corsair HX1000┃HDPlex
I've gotta be a late bloomer amongst y'all. But then again, I'm also quite a bit younger than many of you.

My first PC came straight out of hell, though I didn't know it at the time. It was 2004/05, I was basically too young to know anything, Intel was waist-deep in yet-to-be-uncovered, nefarious anti-competition behaviour towards AMD and thus my first was a Gateway tower powered by none other than the venerable (HAHAHAHA) Pentium 4 530. For the next 8 years, I tried to eke out of that piece of shit some semblance of "performance", of course failing because there was nothing that sonuvabitch couldn't do. I learned to endure the screaming of its Cooler Master-manufactured abomination of a CPU cooler for hours at a time. Nothing comes close. If all the young'uns think that the R9 290X was loud, then they should be damn grateful they never got to make this POS' acquaintance.

2012 came with an XPS 8500 from Dell (still repurposed and acting as a work computer for a family member). It was interesting for me because it was the first time I had experienced such performance. It had an i7-3770, 12GB (4 + 4 + 2 + 2) DDR3-1333 and a very special GT 640 (full GK107 core with all the TMUs and ROPs). The GT 640 was special because it was basically a downclocked GTX 650 without the connector, none of the ROP-cutting, GDDR3 or Fermi-rebranding bull of the rest of the GT 640 variants. In 2014, I built in an H440 with an E3-1230 v2 and R9 280X...the rest is history. I think I've assembled no less than 8-9 PCs in the past few years, and continue to care for a good chunk of them as they fulfill their various purposes.

Ol' Beastie came in January of 2015, and with its 7th flight and 50,000km mark due in less than 14 days, it's going to need an upgrade to keep doing what it does. That said, the other thread with all the pics of everyone's PCs will know when Ol' Beastie gets a makeover :)


In the process of my tinkering, I also developed a penchant for collecting old CPUs and GPUs out of the [really] old ones at the office. If I'm not mistaken, my current collection stands at:

P2 MMX 233MHz in glorious Slot 1 / Some Mendocino Celeron in Socket 370 (could be 333MHz?? not sure until I find it again) / A metric ton of desktop Core 2 family CPUs throughout the different generations (including E5200, E2140, E7400) and one mobile T7100 in Socket 478 / beloved Q8200 still runnin'

As for the GPUs, my collection is small but certainly vintage. One is a S3 Trio64-based Expertcolor DSP3364 circa 1994, and the other one is a Cirrus Logic CL-GD5446 circa 1996.


Even though it's taken sort of a backseat to my insatiable keyboard obsession, getting started with PCs is something I'll never regret. The knowledge I've gained from trudging through more forums than I can count and almost building more PCs than I can keep track of is invaluable and cannot be summarized in a single document in any form. And it's definitely something that I won't be putting down for as long as I can help it.
 
Joined
Aug 22, 2016
Messages
292 (0.11/day)
My father got me and y elder sister a PC when I was 13. It was Intel Pentium 1. Basically, it was ordered for my elder sis so she could work on her college projects but I was the main one using it. Watching mp4 videos and playing that boring card game.
 
Joined
Jan 17, 2010
Messages
12,280 (2.37/day)
Location
Oregon
System Name Juliette // HTPC
Processor Intel i7 9700K // AMD Ryzen 5 5600G
Motherboard ASUS Prime Z390X-A // ASRock B550 ITX-AC
Cooling Noctua NH-U12 Black // Stock
Memory Corsair DDR4 3600 32gb //G.SKILL Trident Z Royal Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) 3600
Video Card(s) ASUS RTX4070 OC// GTX 1650
Storage Samsung 970 EVO NVMe 1Tb, Intel 665p Series M.2 2280 1TB // Samsung 1Tb SSD
Display(s) ASUS VP348QGL 34" Quad HD 3440 x 1440 // 55" LG 4K SK8000 Series
Case Seasonic SYNCRO Q7// Silverstone Granada GD05
Audio Device(s) Focusrite Scarlett 4i4 // HDMI to Samsung HW-R650 sound bar
Power Supply Seasonic SYNCRO 750 W // CORSAIR Vengeance 650M
Mouse Cooler Master MM710 53G
Keyboard Logitech 920-009300 G512 SE
Software Windows 10 Pro // Windows 10 Pro
Downloading porn with a 14.4 baud modem from a BBS. Pre www. One pic at a time. Painfully slow

Hey if anyone wants a 56K 90 Hardware modem Creative Labs ISA slot I give it away
 

MxPhenom 216

ASIC Engineer
Joined
Aug 31, 2010
Messages
12,944 (2.61/day)
Location
Loveland, CO
System Name Ryzen Reflection
Processor AMD Ryzen 9 5900x
Motherboard Gigabyte X570S Aorus Master
Cooling 2x EK PE360 | TechN AM4 AMD Block Black | EK Quantum Vector Trinity GPU Nickel + Plexi
Memory Teamgroup T-Force Xtreem 2x16GB B-Die 3600 @ 14-14-14-28-42-288-2T 1.45v
Video Card(s) Zotac AMP HoloBlack RTX 3080Ti 12G | 950mV 1950Mhz
Storage WD SN850 500GB (OS) | Samsung 980 Pro 1TB (Games_1) | Samsung 970 Evo 1TB (Games_2)
Display(s) Asus XG27AQM 240Hz G-Sync Fast-IPS | Gigabyte M27Q-P 165Hz 1440P IPS | Asus 24" IPS (portrait mode)
Case Lian Li PC-011D XL | Custom cables by Cablemodz
Audio Device(s) FiiO K7 | Sennheiser HD650 + Beyerdynamic FOX Mic
Power Supply Seasonic Prime Ultra Platinum 850
Mouse Razer Viper v2 Pro
Keyboard Razer Huntsman Tournament Edition
Software Windows 11 Pro 64-Bit
Played Counter Strike Source at my friends house back when i was 13 (23 now). Decided i wanted to play it more and installed it on my Dell Dimension 3000 with a P4 2.8ghz and no graphics card. The game barely ran. Bought a FX5500 and put it in, and thats when my life changed.

1 year later i was building a $1600 rig with a E6600, X1950XTX, 2gb of ram inside a Thermaltake Armour case.

Ever since then computers have basically been my life. Built about 15 other computers for families back home, and couple for my friends gaming and workstations.

My first official job was a Lab Engineer at Microsoft. My sisters always talked about how i made more money than they did and i didnt even have a degree yet. I had just graduated high school when i was given a chance to work at Microsoft for the summer. Which ended up being about a 2 year thing while i finished up at a community college.

I am now 23 and getting an Electrical Engineering bachelors degree with emphasis on Computer Engineering at Washington State University.
 

CAPSLOCKSTUCK

Spaced Out Lunar Tick
Joined
Feb 26, 2013
Messages
8,578 (2.12/day)
Location
llaregguB...WALES
System Name Party On
Processor Xeon w 3520
Motherboard DFI Lanparty
Cooling Big tower thing
Memory 6 gb Ballistix Tracer
Video Card(s) HD 7970
Case a plank of wood
Audio Device(s) seperate amp and 6 big speakers
Power Supply Corsair
Mouse cheap
Keyboard under going restoration
To start......i am 50

My first experience of computing was 1977/78 when my school got its' first BBC computer. We used to play Space Invaders during morning break. At least sometimes we did because invariably it would take so long to load the game off tape ( if at all) that the bell would ring before we got to play.

Fast forward 10 years and pcs were becoming common in the workplace so me and my brother got ourselves on a free course where we learned the basics.......word processing, data base and excel.

This opened up new work opportunities but didnt inspire me at all. Home pcs werent a "thing" back then as it was pre WWW.

Then the use of email really took off and i wanted access to it. Amstrad brought out an cheap flimsy email machine and though i didnt buy one it made me start rethinking the whole pc thing...............me and my wife had moved to London for work and i wanted to keep in touch with my friends and family as they moved to far flung corners.

The Amstrad thing was shit and shoddily made and as soon as i saw one for real i decided i needed something better. My son was just born, i was earning good money so i bought a second hand IBM 486x and my world completely changed. I suddenly had access to all sorts of amazing information.....no more trips to the library .

I now had easy access to all the topics that interested me, yes, dialup was shit but it was available. Back in those days i had to really prioritise my searches because loading took ages and cost money by the minute.


The 486 served us well.....I'm typing with the k/b now and the balled mouse is in a drawer for posterity. When the kids were little i bought reading and educational games for them, i was working shifts including nights and my kids slipped into a similar sleep pattern when they were pre-school so at the times when there were no TV shows on for them the PC was a great distraction.


that was it for a while till i found TPU through GPUZ. The 486 was showing its age and prebuilt PCs were still outrageausly expensive......i wanted to build one so i did !!

I had the 486 hooked to the WWW and a big box of brand new parts and being honest i said to myself " what have i done?" Hundreds of pounds spent and i really didnt have a clue what i was doing.


With the help of various videos and many Google searches i built it, and it worked at the first press of the button.
Athlon ii x 4 630
HD 5750
4 gb ram

unlocking and overclocking was the next priority......getting more power for less and i havent looked back .


Since then i have built many, many computers, several for me but many more for other people. Using recycled parts i get people on the web for cheap and get my friends gaming for as little money as possible.


TL/DR

TPU led me down the road of pc addiction..........thankyou TPU, i love you ( see sig for further info)
 

silentbogo

Moderator
Staff member
Joined
Nov 20, 2013
Messages
5,470 (1.45/day)
Location
Kyiv, Ukraine
System Name WS#1337
Processor Ryzen 7 3800X
Motherboard ASUS X570-PLUS TUF Gaming
Cooling Xigmatek Scylla 240mm AIO
Memory 4x8GB Samsung DDR4 ECC UDIMM
Video Card(s) Inno3D RTX 3070 Ti iChill
Storage ADATA Legend 2TB + ADATA SX8200 Pro 1TB
Display(s) Samsung U24E590D (4K/UHD)
Case ghetto CM Cosmos RC-1000
Audio Device(s) ALC1220
Power Supply SeaSonic SSR-550FX (80+ GOLD)
Mouse Logitech G603
Keyboard Modecom Volcano Blade (Kailh choc LP)
VR HMD Google dreamview headset(aka fancy cardboard)
Software Windows 11, Ubuntu 20.04 LTS
Who remembers 5 1/4" floppy disks????? Not 3 1/2, we are talking 5 1/4! Well, waaaaaaaaaay back then; in mid 80's when you had to load an "operating system" with a floppy disk.

That was when I got my very beginning........If you remember that far back then you will probably remember that any computer in that era had to have the "hard disk" parked. If it even had a hard drive.
I remember worse....
For a short time I transferred to a government-sponsored special school (Ukrainian Physics and Mathematics Lyceum in Kiev), and while it all sounded awesome at the time, it was teen's debauchery heaven in early 2000's :rockout:
We lived in dorms, attached to the main campus building, slept on 50y.o. metal-spring beds that sagged almost to the floor, and had a computer lab with already pre-historical collection of 386s and 486s, most of which did not have a hard drive.
In short breaks between classes, weekend drinking marathons in the nearby park and occasional trips to female student dorms not far from there, I used to go to the lab to play Civilization and brush-up on my Turbo Pascal skills (the only thing that interested me at the time besides beer and boobs). My reserved space had a computer with both 5.25" and 3.5" FDD, but no HDD, so I had to bring the whole pack of disks with me. A book store located a block away from the campus, was one of the very few places where you could still get brand new 5.25" floppies.
Got expelled 6 months later and that, to be honest, was a blessing.
 
Joined
Mar 24, 2010
Messages
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Location
Iberian Peninsula
I started at a printing house, translating and editing with a huge computer with 5,5 floppies and a green screen! :peace:
Many years later I had my first computer, a 386, and again years later I got a game on a floppy...
 
Joined
Jan 17, 2010
Messages
12,280 (2.37/day)
Location
Oregon
System Name Juliette // HTPC
Processor Intel i7 9700K // AMD Ryzen 5 5600G
Motherboard ASUS Prime Z390X-A // ASRock B550 ITX-AC
Cooling Noctua NH-U12 Black // Stock
Memory Corsair DDR4 3600 32gb //G.SKILL Trident Z Royal Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) 3600
Video Card(s) ASUS RTX4070 OC// GTX 1650
Storage Samsung 970 EVO NVMe 1Tb, Intel 665p Series M.2 2280 1TB // Samsung 1Tb SSD
Display(s) ASUS VP348QGL 34" Quad HD 3440 x 1440 // 55" LG 4K SK8000 Series
Case Seasonic SYNCRO Q7// Silverstone Granada GD05
Audio Device(s) Focusrite Scarlett 4i4 // HDMI to Samsung HW-R650 sound bar
Power Supply Seasonic SYNCRO 750 W // CORSAIR Vengeance 650M
Mouse Cooler Master MM710 53G
Keyboard Logitech 920-009300 G512 SE
Software Windows 10 Pro // Windows 10 Pro
Remember 100Mb Zip drives. They were crazy big back in the day. Obsolete now

Remember having to set up sound cards with IRQ address. And you would get conflicts with other address for hardware like the keyboard and modem
 
Joined
Oct 22, 2014
Messages
13,210 (3.83/day)
Location
Sunshine Coast
System Name Black Box
Processor Intel Xeon E3-1260L v5
Motherboard MSI E3 KRAIT Gaming v5
Cooling Tt tower + 120mm Tt fan
Memory G.Skill 16GB 3600 C18
Video Card(s) Asus GTX 970 Mini
Storage Kingston A2000 512Gb NVME
Display(s) AOC 24" Freesync 1m.s. 75Hz
Case Corsair 450D High Air Flow.
Audio Device(s) No need.
Power Supply FSP Aurum 650W
Mouse Yes
Keyboard Of course
Software W10 Pro 64 bit
Remember having to set up sound cards with IRQ address. And you would get conflicts with other address for hardware like the keyboard and modem
I remember doing that for early joysticks.
 
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