I'm a PC hardware nut so meh felt like making this for the lols What computers have you previously owned? Early 2000's PC (had a couple mods to it) Intel Pentium III (1.5 GHz) 512 MB (2 x 256 MB) DDR-333 RAM NVIDIA GeForce 4 Ti 4600 80 GB 7200 RPM HDD 250 W Power Supply Windows XP Home Edition (32-Bit) 2004 Intel Pentium 4 (3.2 GHz) 1024 MB (2 x 512 MB) DDR-400 RAM ATI Radeon 5200 160 GB 7200 RPM HDD 250 W Power Supply Windows XP Home Edition (32-Bit) 2008 (original) AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ (2.8 GHz) 1 GB (1x1 GB) DDR2-800 RAM NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GTS (2-way SLI) [NVIDIA Nforce 590 SLI Chipset] 250 GB 7200 RPM HDD 700W Power Supply Windows XP Home Edition (32-Bit) 2008 (post modification) AMD Phenom X3 8950 (2.8 GHz) 4 GB (4x1 GB) DDR2-800 RAM NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 (2-way SLI) [NVIDIA Nforce 590 SLI Chipset] 750 GB 7200 RPM HDD 550W 80+ Bronze Power Supply Windows 7 Home Premium (64-Bit) 2011 Intel CORE i7 860S (2.53 GHz) 8 GB (2x4 GB) DDR3-1333 RAM NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 Ti (added later, gave the 460's to me 2008 PC) 1 TB 7200 RPM HDD 600W 80+ Bronze Power Supply Windows 10 (upgraded later) (64 Bit) 2016 AMD FX 8350 (4.9 GHz) 16 GB (4x4) DDR3-1866 RAM XFX Radeon RX 480 8 GB (1.12 MHz) 1 TB 7200 RPM HDD 250 GB SSD 250 GB 7200 RPM HDD 2 TB 7200 RPM HDD 650 W 80+ Gold Power Supply Windows 10 (64 Bit) *upgrading that to an i5 6600k sometime later, reused the RAM and CPU so it's fairly good for the time but I want mooooooooore * Also forgot to mention ; I have a small army of Pentium III and 4 PC's, I think 13 in total. The 2000 and 2004 PC's are just some of the better one(s) of the group.
Oh boy... (Edit: I mixed up some time periods, but the story remains pretty much the same) It all started when my parents got a BBC Electron while my grandfather (who used to be a programmer, but not like we program now) got a Commodore 64. My first real computer, owned by me, myself and I was also a C64. Together with a tape drive (Datasette), two 1541 diskdrives (the good ole 5.25" floppies), monitor and a Final Cartridge which expanded on the C64 options tremendously. For example; the cartridge had a build-in assembler/disassembler which allowed you to relatively easy write machine code. Better yet: the 1541 disk drive had a whole EPROM on its own. Put simple: it was basically a disk drive with a "mini computer" build in. Allowing us to even go as far as to reprogram the whole thing. During copy parties we'd usually place 2 diskdrives on top of each other, load in a self-written program and after that they could copy disks without a computer attached. Just insert a source & empty floppy, wait for the noise to end & leds to stop flashing and done. Next... I used to keep in touch with highschool (I think that's the right term), even after I had graduated years ago. Because of my expertise with computers and all I helped them set up a small network of their own. This got me my very first PC: an Intel 286, with 1Mb of memory, CGA graphics adapter and, oh yeah, a whooping 20Mb harddisk. It didn't take long before I tried to really get the best out of that thing. I mostly used DOS, sporadically Windows 98 Windows 3.1 but that was often a memory & resource hog. I specifically recall using Qemm and Desqview to try and optimize memory usage as best as possible (Qemm) and trying to get some kind of multi tasking going (desqview). It "sort off" worked. This is also where I started my very first BBS. I was still living with my parents and at first I was allowed to use their phoneline during the night (my BBS would operate between 0:00 - 08:00 local time) but later I got my own phoneline and then it was permanently online. 2:2801/13 was my FidoNet node number, later I became the new net host when the former one stepped down (2:2801/0). Which created new & higher demands. Note that things didn't stop there. I visited many PC expo's to gain hold of good (but cheap) hardware in order to expand my gear even further. Next... During my first job as a systems administrator (I've always been a die hard sysadmin, always will be) I bought my first "official" brand PC. Through a "PC private" project in the company I was working for (basically: the firm would finance a PC for its employee's who could then pay back for that by allowing a small monthly cut on the salary). The fun part: the whole project was led by me, and after I got a PC many others followed my example This was an official brand: A Compaq Presario. I don't know the full specs anymore but I still have this one, it sits somewhere in my storage room. It was a 486DX2, had a whooping 4 (or 8) Mb worth of memory and an amazing HD capacity of 380Mb. This is also when I became a die hard OS/2 fan. I bought myself OS/2 Warp (3.0) and this immediately solved my problem with the higher BBS demands as well. I could simply multi-task if I needed (which was possible with 386 and up). But I ended up using 3 computers at once I upgraded my 286 to a 386 using an old motherboard I picked up from a friend, and turned that PC into a full dedicated BBS. My main machine was the Compaq running OS/2 and a test-BBS which was connected with the online one using a serial cable, and on top of that I still had my C64 (which I didn't use all that often by then). This was also when I build a program which allowed me to copy C64 disk images directly to the PC Around this time it's also when I picked up some decent network cards. The standards had always been Coax or UDP and the latter was so much easier to set up (you also didn't need any terminators or t-shape connectors). Next... Because my Compaq became slowly obsolete (but still useful) I eventually moved the BBS onto the Compaq, now running OS/2 Merlin (4.0, which I also bought, and it wasn't cheap! ) and decided to get myself a fully custom build PC. We're talking around... I think '92 - '95. It was fun because I had a cellphone from work which I was allowed to use, so during my trip to pick up components I could easily call shops to ask about stocks whenever another shop didn't have what I needed. Note: Internet didn't exist as it does today. Online shopping, online advertising? I think not, not in the likes we have now But yeah: I bought a huge tower, and some good components. Now I had my own AMD machine. I believe it was around 1.2Mhz, a very high-end NVidia video card (at that time!), and it was jam packed with stuff SCSI disks, I believe around 1.2 or 2Gb (which was huge), tape streamer for backups, CDR/writer, slot-in DVD player and of course network capabilities. This is when I slowly moved to Windows 95, also because OS/2 became harder to use because it didn't support all the modern hardware anymore (if only...) I owned this machine for many years to come, also because I simply upgraded it by replacing main components. At this time a new video card could actually make your games run twice as fast (I still remember this with C&C Generals). And this is also the time when I started to pick up on Linux some more. I had already a lot of Unix experience at this point (we're talking around 2000 now). The initial reason I started using Linux was to ensure that I kept my Solaris (Unix) expertise fresh. Eventually this led to me moving to Linux full-time (my computer used to run 4 operating systems besides each other: Novell DOS, Windows 2000, Win95 and Linux). Eventually I toned that down to Linux and Win2k where I managed to run most DOS & Win95 programs within Linux (basically using a very early version of Wine (Wine => Wine Is Not a windows Emulator ) and dosemu). Around this time it also became possible to purchase the X86 (PC) version of Sun Solaris, which I did, and from there on I ported my BBS onto Unix. "Which wasn't easy". In the mean time I had a place of my own, but eventually also decided to move out of my birth town to where I am now. Ye gods... So much junk I had to haul with me Next... So I picked up a Chilli Green PC somewhere. Running Vista initially, but I bought Win7 (professional) and upgraded it myself. Also expanded hardware and such, and this is the machine I use now. If only it stopped here... I'm a die hard sysadmin where my expertise (and passion) lies with Unix. No: Linux is not Unix. In specific: Sun Solaris, I was a die hard Sun fan. In fact: in 1990 I was already mocking around with Java which had a very early release on OS/2 Merlin (this came pre-installed with Java). Next... SO when I had the option to buy myself a Sun Sparcstation (the same one which I used to administer at my first job!) then I didn't have to think hard about it. This is a square computer case which a HUGE 22" tube monitor (Yes, around the early 90's we were already working with those) and specs so low... lol! This is also around the time when Solaris 10 got released (if I don't mix up my facts now, it's been a while) but unfortunately this critter couldn't cope with that. Solaris 7 was the best it could run, but even that was fun Next... And this is also where an IRC friend of mine told me he actually had a few Sun blades. Also sparc stations but much more modern hardware. Heck, mine even had a cardreader! I could easily run Solaris 10 on these and actually expand it with more modern (larger) HD's. SO around this time (somewhere) is when I started to work for myself full time. I got myself a bunch of virtual servers (VPS), but this time all running FreeBSD. The main reason I favor BSD so much is because it heavily reminds me of Solaris, and because well... Even though BSD cannot be officially called Unix you can easily see that its roots are well set within a Unix mindset. But to cut to the chase... Next.... I then took over ownership of 6 Dell PowerEdges. (19" servers). Not the best PC's to use in your home, trust me When I turn one of those critters on it's as if you're turning on a vacuum cleaner I still have a few of them. Hmm, I think this about covers it. I also owned a few laptops, my (own) company was even a reseller once, but for some reason I could never really get used to working on a laptop. I prefer a PC with a solid keyboard and big screen pfffff. And that's roughly my story
Ah, back when windows came on a looong series of floppy drives and the 58th of 72 would be broken or some bs XD
