How did you get started with PC's

[Longlynx]

This is my story, what's yours?


My first Personal computer was a broken 8088. It weighed about the same as a bag of cement, and had about the same processing power! When I got it, the hard drive wasn’t working – which made it about as useful as it was graceful. Well a quick (quick?) removal of the cover revealed that the drive cable had come off the controller card (yes – drive controller card, no such thing as IDE back then!) I plonked the cable back in the right place, replaced the lovely beige cover (steel plate I think), and switched on.
The lights dimmed briefly all over town as this monster booted, wow, Dos 2! Now I could word process or play a text based dos game, hmmm.

My next machine skipped two generations (8086 and 80286) it was a sleek 80386, or 386 as they had become known. Now this was a sweet piece of kit! Light, elegant- a 3.5” floppy drive and…… a colour monitor! This beast had a 40MB hard drive and 2MB of ram. Now that’s what I’m talking about! I could even run a gui based OS. Ahh my introduction to windows 3.1. This machine could even render full screen images in 16 colours, and in under two minutes! Now I could word process or play arcade games, hmmm.

It was at this stage that I decided that the only way to get a good computer was to build one, now let’s see, computer shops in the Kerry area in the early nineties, hmm.
Mail order it is then! CPC in England for a barebones 486 system with case.
The first system that arrived was DOA and had to be sent back, but the replacement worked fine. Now I was the proud owner of a 486 33Mhz pc with 8 Mb Ram a soundcard, a separate graphics card and purchased separately, a 500MB hard drive.
Now I could use Windows 95, wehey!
Now I could play DOOM with a soundcard!!

This soon got too slow so I started tweaking. Upgraded the ram to 16MB and upgraded the processor to a 486 DX2 66Mhz. There were also empty cache ram sockets on the mobo (no L2 cache then!), which I populated with matching 16 pin DIL cache ram modules from another mobo. Now I was motoring, DOOM hardly stuttered or jittered at all!

Well from that point on I have been building PC’s for myself and friends. Pentium was a great achievement breaking the 100Mhz barrier, and with the advent of MMX extensions I could at last play DOOM flawlessly.

These days I’m using a Pentium 4 2.53Ghz which is overclocked to3.01Ghz.
1 Gig of ram, 180 gig 7200 rpm hard drive and a couple of 80gig SCSI drives for video editing. 5.1 surround, and a DVD burner keep me happy.
There are a couple of other PC’s scattered about which are networked up to the main machine. I use these mostly for storing music and video.

Next step is to upgrade the processor and mobo again, something that’s 800 fsb and a hyperthreading cpu. Possibly bluetooth as well, and I’d like to compare SCSI to SATA, ooh and an onboard firewire port for DV editing…. I could go on and on.

No, I don’t play DOOM anymore.

>>LonglynX<<

[tantone]

When they said we should no longer say Stewardess and had to go with the gender-ambiguous Flight Attendant. When Janitors became Custodial Engineers. When black people (even the ones from the Caribbean, stupidly enough) all became African-American.

[mireland]

Originally posted by tantone
When they said we should no longer say Stewardess and had to go with the gender-ambiguous Flight Attendant. When Janitors became Custodial Engineers. When black people (even the ones from the Caribbean, stupidly enough) all became African-American.

hardy har har...

[rraehal]

My first system was an 8088 with an RLL hardisk and 2 5 1/4 floppies. It ran DOS 5 and Wordperfect 5.1. My dad theorized it would be super expensive to put on mouse on it.

I was given a 386 with an empty hard disk. Installed windows 3.1 and dos 6. Got Wra Craft 2 a while later and wanted to play multi player so I leanered how to make a LAN. ( Coax is evil by the way. )

Now i sit here a wonder why I work with computers. Theyw ere better when all i had to do was play games on them or type a school paper.

[j.m@talk]

The B@$t@rd$ tried teachin me compootin at skool ............. Then decided I was as thick as pig poop & shifted me.

Around the time when Hdds wern't around & yas connected yas comp to a cassette player & adjusted the volume till the lil star in the top whatever side of the screen flashed about once a second

Gawd I feel older than Noah

Then I did a Sinclair ZX81 Then the Spectrum ....... A C64 (getting flash now) a Amiga 2000 ........ Then AT, XT 286,386,486 SX then DX or what ever the "X'S" were ....... Then Pent yadda yadda yadda ....... & now I still haven't gotta clue I should get a qualification for being utterly daft I think

(Serves yas right for askin)

[j.m@talk]

( Coax is evil by the way. )

Works good on TV tho

[j.m@talk]

Originally posted by tantone
When black people (even the ones from the Caribbean, stupidly enough) all became African-American.

Not in Manchester they don't

[Longlynx]

XT 286,386,486 SX then DX or what ever the "X'S" were .......

SX processor had no FPU
DX had built in FPU
(floating point unit)
>>Longlynx<<

[leprechaun_40]

Many moons ago, when I was 10,, my dad worked with IBM Main frames,, 360 and 370 series,, I was hooked. I actually knew how to run those beasts by the time I was 12. Then, the PC made it's debut. I bought an 8086 machine with 512 megs of ram, 2 5 1/4 floppys and DOS 2.11. Been moving up since then.

Now I have a small home network with 8 machines, and 5 printers, all shared.

And Cable ISP too boot.

[herosrest]

It's sad really....... where shall l........... ?

[ukulele]

I never did.

[j.m@talk]

My family are very anti-compooter

They ***** about my waste of elec.....

Considering I pay the leck bill thats a bit of a ................. Ummm argument really

My mob have decided I surf pr0n & fiddle all day ...........


Jeeebers they ain't that daft after all

[cdroman]

my first pc was a PII with win 98.

[j.m@talk]

I should never of computed

Or Smoked

Or Drank


Can yas see a chain here >?

[ogiedpogi007]

Started with an 8088, jumped to 386, then to 486. M now on a 2.4Ghz machine but fiddles with my 486 Compaq Contura from time to time, wondering how old I've become