Do you remember the first pc you built!!

[Garfield99]

Do you remember the first pc you built!!
I’ll start the ball rolling it was a 286-16 in a slimline case (the type that used a daughter board)
256k video card
1 Meg in dram
40 Meg IBM hdd
5.25 Fdd

This was considered high end about 9 years ago (very sad)



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-Garfield99-

England 1 Germany 0

[Larommi]

I was a late bloomer. Grew up poor and in the country so I never had access until a few years ago. Summer of '98 I built:
K6-2 300
64 mb ram
PCCHIPS mainboard (I know better now)
usr winmodem (again I now know that winmodems suck)
i740 video (the kid at the counter said it would work great. Yeah I could choose 2 colors or 16)
Velocity 4400 agp (much better)
6GB WD HDD, and the rest of the standard parts.

I bought most of these parts on sale at the time that compUSA bought Computer City. I thought it was a good deal. In fact I just changed the MOBO last night. I got tired of fighting that POS PCChips. This is now my backup machine.

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You spend your whole life believing that you're on the right track,
only to discover that you're on the wrong train.

[cyberhh]

My 1st was an IBM PC with a massive Seagate 20MB MFM drive and a full 640K of RAM. Boy did that scream - just don't forget to park your heads.

[Sowulo]

How 'bout 8088's with dual floppies...before the days of hard drives....

[Green Iguana]

386 DX-33
8 megs RAM
120 meg HDD
EGA video
5.25" FDD
3.50" FDD
Sysdyne 13" monitor

[sdrawkcab]

I bought a 386SX12 at Sears and within 2 mos. I said "Screw this I'm buildin' a DX"

386DX40, 8MB RAM, 120 and 80 MB HD, 3.5 and 5.25 floppy (Teac combo drive), Number Nine 1MB ISA accelerator, 2400 modem. Later added Indeo capture card, Sound Blaster, CD ROM and 9600 modem. And a 14" SVGA NI Trinitron that my dog knocked off the table and BROKE the CRT! But that's another story for another forum...


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it's backwards backwards

[AFJuvat]

Commodore PET 2000, 16k RAM, built in monochrome screen.

Complete with a built in cassette tape drive to load all of those high tech programs.

(This was circa 1982)

AFJuvat

File not found, should I fake it? (Y/n)

[MAYHEM]

The original Apple. Hard wiring the keyboard and monitor to the Mainboard was an experience I'll never forget (thanx, Steve)

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Who the hell is General Protection and why is he messing with my comuter?

[dangleberry]

Well good for all you lot.

My first pc was a tommy talking alphabet.
I got this when I was 29. I have now advanced onto a tommy maths machine.
It has 1k of ram and no hard drive but it is a nice colour. If anyone could help me (I may be beyond help) could you let me know of any upgrades.

[MAYHEM]

Dangleberry, Tommy Talking Meta-Physics upgrade is now available at Staples and Best Buy for $49.99

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Who the hell is General Protection and why is he messing with my comuter?

[dangleberry]

Thanks a lot.
Only one small problem. It may only cost a few dollars for the upgrade but it will cost me $500 dollars for the plane fare. Any more bright ideas.

[Zealing]

I built my first PC about 2 years ago. I stuck with my 2nd hand 486 for a couple of years, then bought a 686 (Yes, I have learned my lesson) and then finally built myself a Celeron 300a on the trusty Abit BH6 board, clocked at 450mhz, I havent needed to do any major upgrades yet (RAM and HDD have been increased), and it still runs all the latest games quite well.

[ReBoot]

Built my first PC in 1977.
It consisted of 3 floor to ceiling racks holding multiple boards, most of which were hand made.
Dual 12" floppys, mono 12" monitor, no hard drive, and CP/M for the OS.
4k of RAM, and Z80 main processor.
All cables were the "rainbow" type, and all connectors were hand soldered on.
My biggest upgrade was to install 12k more RAM, and a Texas Instruments 300 baud accoustic modem so I could dial in to Compuserve at about $30 per minute (long distance too).

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Who needs a life, I have Internet!
Jim & Sue's Free Files (http://members.cnx.net/reboot) | Jim's Modems (http://members.cnx.net/reboot/modems.htm)

[Jallentino]

Radio Shack TRS-80.

[Jallentino]

Radio Shack TRS-80.

[MAYHEM]

Dangleberry, I think I can save you a few pounds. Just post your Mastercard number and I'll get it for you and FedEx it over immediately http://63.236.72.252/cgi-bin/forum/biggrin.gif

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Who the hell is General Protection and why is he messing with my comuter?

[dangleberry]

Hi Mayhem,

Laugh, I nearly **** myself.
You have as much chance of me sending you any details of any of my TEN accounts (Techs are rich) as I have of hitting the moon with a BIG MAC.

Good Try keep them coming

[MAYHEM]

It was a thought. Just trying to help http://63.236.72.252/cgi-bin/forum/biggrin.gif

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Who the hell is General Protection and why is he messing with my comuter?

[Garfield99]

A rich computer tech must be an impostor!!!

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-Garfield99-

England 1 Germany 0

[Geddes]

first computer being a cpm brittish telecom box, (3 feet tall two feet wide two feet deep) with a nine inch green screen and a keyboard the size of france with a grand total of 64k of memeory.
nice.

second computer a tandy (radio shack for the peops in the us) 1000ex with tga colour (tandy rip off of ega) 512k of memeory that I upgraded to 640k (woohoo!)and twin floppy disks (5 1/4 dd of course)

thurd was a amstrand with vga, 30 meg hard disk (I now have a graphics card with more memory on it than that)3 1/2 floppy disk drive (dd)

all of the above were ****. I now build the things for my self so I now know what the h*ll I am getting in the thing.

keep on smiling,

me, somewere in the london aea seriously considering a beer right now

[Sowulo]

I thought the topic was "first pc you built." Why are we hearing about the first you used/owned?

[Behemoth]

I have owned many many many....but the firs one i built was a z80 powered deal sometime around 20 years ago....yes to those who know me ....i was eight. the same year i had a coleco adam i rebuilt from landfill machines
and a 4.77mhz pc again from scrounged parts
oh and a vic 20 with an upgraded board for more sounds and ram.

my poor mom musta thought she gave birth to a scrawny little wired frankenstein.

[myarema]

My first PC was a sparkling 8088 with a 10 meg hd and 2 5 1/4 floppies. And from that point I went on to assemble several hundred more for the company I worked for. At a whopping $5.50 an hour!!!! Boy have times changed

[jtech]

8088 with 640k ram and a 20mb hd and color monitor cga. dont forget that 63 watt power supply what a screamer you could go out for dinner and it might be done booting when you got back. but i built it my self out of used parts and that ega monitor upgrade what a thrill. wow the colors. hard to belive the monitor was worth 1500.00 or so when it was new. 6 or 8 mhz of raw power.. HAHAHA

[jbar1]

In all reality the first I helped build was a monster at the Navel Air station In Memphis in the early 60s. No HDs, no floppies, no ram as it is now known. It did have over 5000 tubes not counting the same amount in redundancy state, over 1000 miles of wire. sorry no video output and it was programed with huge amounts of jumper boards. You walked inside of this one. It only did two tasks. Base inventory and twice a month payroll. It took 8 of us 16 hrs to change programs. Input was through 80 x 80 NCR cards via Keypunch. Internal temp was about 125 degrees and we had to work in it not on it. housed in a 40' by 60' room. Went through about 200 to 350 tube a day. Thank god they got smaller.

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If life is a bitch then what is death? I believe I will take the bitch!

[jbar1]

In all reality the first I helped build was a monster at the Navel Air station In Memphis in the early 60s. No HDs, no floppies, no ram as it is now known. It did have over 5000 tubes not counting the same amount in redundancy state, over 1000 miles of wire. sorry no video output and it was programed with huge amounts of jumper boards. You walked inside of this one. It only did two tasks. Base inventory and twice a month payroll. It took 8 of us 16 hrs to change programs. Input was through 80 x 80 NCR cards via Keypunch. Internal temp was about 125 degrees and we had to work in it not on it. housed in a 40' by 60' room. Went through about 200 to 350 tube a day. Thank god they got smaller.

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If life is a bitch then what is death? I believe I will take the bitch!

[format c:]

Well my first PC that I built was actually a migration from my Packard Bell
I built on a Biostar at board using my Pentuim 166 64 megs edo ram and my ATI expert@play video card, 10 gig drive and a 32 x cd rom drive, I upgraded to a p233 mmx CPU since the board could handle it ( All this since I wanted some L2 cache memory
I have had about 5 Mother boards,2 CPUs and 2 cases since then
I now have a Celeron powered system on an Asus board
I am glad I started now I would faint in a roon full of vacuum tubes and jumper boards

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Format c:( I'm givin er all she's got cap'in !!! )

[Kempo]

AMD 233, 3.2 ghd, Built on video & sound (not good) Went to a computer with a friend got all the parts, then drops them off at my house for me to build ( I had no idea what to do with these strange looking things and it took 3 days to finish it)

[CGI]

Last summer I built myself a 486 DX4/100 out of spare bits.

This died soon after, so I bit the bullet and bought a new Jetway (I know...) motherboard, K62-350 and 64MB DIMM. Recently I upgraded the HD to 13GB but apart from that the only problem's been Win98... But again, that's another story for another board.

[HF]

I built the first home PC. It was a Heatkit, I think it was in the early 70's. '72-'74 maybe? I had to make the keyboard, it had 9 "momentary on" pushbuttons. 8 for the bits, press one of the first 8 keys, and it represented a 1 bit, not pressing a key represented a 0 bit. The ninth key was the "enter" key. You used the enter key, to enter the byte. It had an RF output, you had to use a TV as a monitor. Useless by today's standards/needs, but at the time, it was real fun. At the time, I understood very little about computers, but I was on my way nonetheless. I wish I still had it. It was not only the first computer I ever built, but it was the first Home PC ever. Anyone out there still remember it?

HF

[Sowulo]

Yeah, I remember the Heathkits. Somewhere around 1970 you could also buy a kit and build your own microwave oven. I don't remember what other kits they had besides the computer, microwave, and color TV...

[k9fto]

My first computer to build was an Atari 800 (not the xl or anything cool like that). Built it with parts from other ataris for a College project at the U of M in Munich West Germany. Had a blast, we saw an IBM PC jr. with the detachable keyboard at a tech show and decided we could make the atari do the same thing with a long ribon cable and it actually worked! Now we build computers with jumperless mobo's and plug in memory. Remember when adding even 16k of ram meant a whole bank of chips plopped onto the mobo or on a add on card and it cost big bucks? Man has things changed in just a short amount of time!!
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
just a gun totin computer geek.....

[Nighthand]

I bought my first pc (486/66 4 meg ram, 245mg hdd). Been upgrading piece by piece ever since (still have memory from that pc and hdd)

[Jgold47]

the first real computer that i had was a texas instruments ti-99/4a
nuff said

then I had an IBM PCjr with 640k ram two floppy drives. to give it credit it did have an rca out to hook it to another tv or vcr and it also had a wireless keyboard that worked real well. cut my teeth with the racor upgrade that would switch it between pc jr and regular pc mode so i could play kings quest 1. i still have the games....

then a 486dx/33 with a massive 250mb hdd and 4mb ram, 2 floppies, a 9600 modem, no sound, no cd, nothing, windows 3.1 and came with dos 5. thats where i really learned that you cant really break an pc you can just mess it up an awful lot



[This message has been edited by Jgold47 (edited October 02, 2000).]