PC ownership History

[recovery]

Come on, Share us your embarasing machines or show us back then you still had a big ego. Can you remember all the PC machines you had?

Sorry for the vague details, but it's all that I can pull from memory.

Heh, my first PC had the following:
UnMarth I (2002-2004)

• AMD Atholon 1.2GHz Something... Socket A
• 128MB ram (likely SD )
• ATI Radeon 7500se (se - super econmic edition?),Back then a few linux distros spat at this as I tried them. PCBSD, Fedora1

This machine died I'm afraid, I think the mobo failed on it. But it was on it's last legs. Things attached to the Southbridge was slowely but surely stopped working. Glad I had 5 PCI slots to replace my USB, Sound etc... Again, at the time of death, couldn't really get a replacement mobo.​

UnMarth II (2004-2007)

• AMD Atholon 1.5Ghz-ish Something better than Socket A (05-07)
• 768Mb DDR Ram. (was 256 for awhile, I still owe my friend £10 for the 512 stick, But I'm sure he has forgotten now XD)
• Ati 9550 128MB - (Why did I bother with this thing? AGPx8 card in AGPx4 slot)

I donated this to my brother as I upgraded it, sadly he thought he could handle taking it apart, first he killed the graphics card, I got a replacement. And soon, the motherboard was dead, after it was kicking around in his room as he saved and waiting for the card to come. Little point in fixing that >_>.​

UnMarth III(2007-Present)

• AMD Turion64x2 512KB L2 chache(shared) 1.5Ghz
• 1GB DDR2 600MHz
• Ati Mobility m200 128Mb shared.
• It's a laptop , Insprion 1501, mm3 is familair with it.

I thought I'd get this as a Be all and end all to my desktop needs. However, with missing my Lan party needs, UnMarth I never saw those days though >_>. And realised to played TF2 so badly, I thought wearing glasses might make it more appealing.​

UnMarth IV(2008-2009)

• AMD Atholon64 AM2 1MB L2 chache 2.5Ghz (apparently 45W is 'effiecent', no laptop will last longer than 5 mins on battery if it were the case!)
• 2GB DDR2 800MHz
• Nvidea 7600(not ati for a change, 256MB GDDR3) PCIe

Well, I gave this away in an exchange, I don't really need it anymore. I was plannign to upgrade it to 4GB rammage, Dual core Etc.. But felt like it wasn't going to happen. I thought I'd blow off the dust on UnMarth III, I like to game, but I could do without it though.​

So what do I have now? Apart from UnMarth III, I present to you! UnMarth V! I've had this machine for awhile, I think I bought it in 2005 off ebay for £26 (inc P+P). It's a PII 500mhz (Cartridge!) with 640MB SDram 100Mhz. 1MB shared memory on some 2D acceleration by some S3 trio crap! It's what I am typing this off of now. Still rock solid.

This isn't all the machines I have, I got more kicking around the place. In 2006 I bought 3 u5 servers off ebay cheap. And oen of them was dead. So I swapped parts around and had my very first DUAL PROCESSOR machine! "* 500MHz PII cartridges as described above. It also houses my Raid5 array for my user area for awhile. But 40GB was too little, I've got 500GB mirrored now. Just need a machine that will accept SATA now I got rid of my last desktop .

Also, I changed the case on my UnMarth I to one of those 1337 ones with windows and lights XD. It was really cheap and tacky. But I kept that case and use it for all my other builds. And when I gave UnMarth IV away, I ensured I kept the very badly beaten case which I have so many fond memories of. And just but it in a normaly beige/white case. At least this time it has all it's front pannels. And yes, I think UnMarth II had 4 CD bays used up and all plugged in for a week or so .

So got any interesting or not so interesting stories to tell us

 

[Lil Snap]

Wow, I hope you are ready for this!

1) Packard -Bell 486-66mhz eek package that had a massive 14" monitor and integrated speakers, and a printer for the low low price of $1749. Was on prodigy and found my first diaper related info soon after


2)Custom built Pentium 166 or 200 mhz I don't remember but it was a badass when it was new (I could look, as I still have it somewhere in my storage room) yeah, it was $3200. Kicked the internet dialup at 28.8, while my buds were at 14.4

3)HP Pentium 3 1Ghz ( I actually still use this box for network storage ) and it ran F***in circles around #2 for about 1/3 of the money. made me sick.

4) Laptop Toshiba P4 3.2Ghz (still use, but the battery is crappy)

5) Gateway with AMD Phenom quad core, 4 Gig RAM, 640Gig HDD, Radeon crap graphics (about to upgrade to HD4750) all for about $650. Yeah, about half the price of #3. Damn

 

[ShyBaby]

Hmmm, it's stretching the grey cells a bit - mine is mostly an evolution by upgrade punctuated by occasional calamity

After the Commodore 64 I moved into the PC world in 1990 with a hand-me-down from my dad:

- 286 processor
- 1MB RAM (I think I managed to find another meg at some point - they were DIPs back then)
- Massive 40MB Kyocera HDD with a new-fangled voice coil thingy in it (how would I ever manage to fill that up)
- Standard VGA (ie 640x480x16 colours)
- 14" Teco "Fire Hazard" monitor
- 2400bps modem

In '92 I ploughed what meagre savings I had into it:

- 486SX-25 (SX means no FPU and less cache than a DX IIRC) bought from a friend at Uni
- New motherboard to suit (No idea what it was now)
- 4MB of RAM (4x 1MB SIMMs) - that really hurt; the price had recently shot up to AU$100 per meg

In '94 I got off my arse and got a part-time job:

- NE2000 compatible network card (For gaming - Doom I/II with DOS drivers )
- 340MB Western digital HDD
- Another 4MB of RAM
- Cirrus logic (ISA) graphics card - It's still running in my server after its AGP port died)

Got a real job in '95:

- 486DX4-100 CPU
- Gigabyte (I think) VESA local bus (eww)
- Some nasty graphics card I've managed to forget
- SoundBlaster 16 Pro
- internal 14.4k modem
- 16M Ram (I think)
- KTX XGA 14" monitor

Then calamity - a nearby lightning strike took out the modem and with it most of the computer. After the insurance claim:

- Tseng labs ET64000? (something) graphics card
- PCI motherboard
- same old 486DX4-100 - somehow it survived the strike
- RAM - can't remember how much
- Same sound and network card I think

Yep, that was my gaming rig - pretty awesome it was too until my friends started getting Pentiums

Over the years it evolved a bit - AMD K6, then a K6-II, a CD burner, more memory more HDD etc and all the old bits flowed into my server (RedHat 6, I think)

Calamity again - in 2000 just when I'd put the machines into some respectable looking cases, someone broke in and nicked them. Insurance to the rescue and I got two new PCs to replace them: a Pentium III - 700 Riva TNT-2 graphics - can't remember the rest - was starting to lose interest by then and a Pentium II - 566.

The Pentium III is languishing in a corner with a memory fault - the P2 is still running as my server with a shade more RAM (256M) And and extra HDD. (Running Debian and a home for dust now)

My desktop is now an embarrassing Acer Sempron and my Laptop is a once respectable Inspiron 9300 with Radeon X300 and very respectable 1920x1200 17" display

The glory days are over

 

[thewiseguy7]

#1 May 08-present
Toshiba satellite p205 with 2gb ram, 250gb HD, 17'" screen, multimedia hot keys, intel centrino, vista home. My main computer

#2 Oct. 08-Present
Custom Rebuild of a 1998 Future power (free from uncle) 384 ram, 80gb hd, intel celron, xp home. This will be a small home server

#3 1-1-09 to present
My old family comp that was replaced, so i got it . Dell dimension 2350 with 640 ram, 40gb hd with xp home, 20gb hd with ubuntu 8.04, light scribe, wireless g card

So basically i get the "hand me downs" lol, except for the Toshiba, i bought that

 

[Valentine]

I can't even remember all the computers that I have owned, let alone the specifics of the technology.

It started in the mid '80s with an Atari 130 XE (128K RAM)
A Mac SE
An IBM PS/1
PC of unknown type
"Laptop"
PC of unknown type
Toshiba Laptop
HP PC (I still have this one)
Dell Laptop (I am using this one)
Dell PC (At home)

To be honest I don't really care what kind of processor it has, or what all the nifty things in it are, I just want it to work in a timely manner. When the manner isn't timely any more I replace it.

 

[Hex]

[font="Calibri,Arial"]
Computer 1a:
1998-2003
750Mhz Pentium (II? might be III. I'm not sure)
128mb RAM
4GB Hard Drive
Win95 (98 Pretty quickly however, got it free from my uncle)

Computer 1b: Got another computer, slightly higher end model than 1a same range.
1998-2006 (In my grandmothers)
750Mhz Pentium (II? might be III. I'm not sure)
128mb RAM
6GB Hard Drive
Win95 (98 Pretty quickly however, got it free from my uncle)
ATI graphics card - pre Radeon

Computer 1c: Combined 1a and 1b to run XP (just about) 2006-2007 died of mobo failure
750Mhz Pentium (II? might be III. I'm not sure)
256mb RAM
4 + 6GB Hard Drive
Win95 (98 Pretty quickly however, got it free from my uncle)
ATI graphics card - pre Radeon



Computer 2: Dell Dimension 8300

Factory Spec 2003-2007
2.4Ghz Pentium 4
Nvidia Geforce 5200 (or "old faithful", still in use, still runs things beyond its spec. My uncles computers graphics card died last month and he couldn't get an AGP card for his PSU, so he has it now)
1GB RAM (4 x 256)
80GB + 10GB Hard Drives
Win XP Home (Later Pro)

After 2 sticks of RAM failed, I upgraded it.

Upgraded spec: (2007 - This November)
2GB RAM (4 x 512)
120GB + 80GB Hard Drives
XP Pro - PCLinuxOS dual boot

A power surge fried the hard drives and the mobo so I bought my current laptop to replace it.




Laptop 1: Dell Precision M60 2005 - early 2007
2GB RAM
2Ghz Pentium M
60GB Hard Drive
Nvidia Geforce Go 5650
XP Pro

Graphics card crapped out so I got my uncle's old Inspiron 8600 with no HDD(he runs a computer repair shop so he always has loads of computers and parts around). It's basically the same laptop as the precision M60. I just took the hard drive to the new laptop.

Laptop 2: Inspiron 8600. 2007 - still in use
Same spec as above.


Laptop 3: Dell Studio 17 2008 - main computer now
4GB RAM
Vista Home Premium - PCLinuxOS on VM
Intel Core 2 Duo T8300 (2.4Ghz 6MB cache)
2 x 250GB Hard Drives
ATI Mobility Radeon 3650.

So basically, there are no desktops in my house because the power supply is crap and trips whenever the kettle + dryer are on but there are 3 laptops now (The Inspiron, my Dell studio 17 and my brothers Dell studio 15). Sorry the post is a lot of rambling, I might edit it to make more sense later, I was trying to remember all the specs.[/font]

 

[kevindhca]

I really have to think back on this one.

#1
1984 Apple 2e clone, If I remember right it had 32K RAM.

Took a break from computers for 10 yrs.

#2
IBM 486, 640Mb HDD, running win98. I can't remember the specs. It was the first computer I got on line with. Ahhh Dial-up, lol.
Eventually I put in a second ethernet card and turned this machine into a linux firewall.

#3
Intel P3 pentium 1Gig, 128mb RAM, 40 Gig HDD, Windows millenium. Mainboard died, replaced it with Intel P3 1.2Gig Celeron, upgraded ram to 192mb.
Recently died maybe for good this time, parts are still good though.

#4
AMD 1800+, K7S5A mainboard, 512Mb RAM, 40Gig HDD, Nvidia mx400 graphics card, Win2Kpro.

#5
Got this from a friend's closet. It works, lets put it to use.
IBM Aptiva, 650Mhz (I think), 6Gig and 3Gig HDD, 256Mb RAM
I put Win2Kpro on it and turned it into my music server.

#6
Built myself a new one.
AMD 5000+ 2.6Ghz Athlon x2, Asus M3N78-EM mainboard onboard Nvidia 8300 graphics Gigabit lan, 4 Gig RAM, Western Digital 300 Gig HDD, WinXPpro

 

[Peachy]

Hmm...let me see.

My first PC was a Commodore PC1. It used an Intel 8088 with 4.77 MHz andt 512 KB RAM (I had to google that information).

My second PC had a 286 with 8 Mhz and a "Power" button that increased it to 12 Mhz. I think that system had 1 MB of RAM eventually (after upgrading it). If I'm not mistaken, the system is still around in my parents' attic!

My third PC (from 1996) was an Intel Pentium 75 Mhz with an amount of RAM that is unknown to me at this point in time. ALso my first PC with a hard drive - 40 MB!

My fourth system (late 2002) jumped to 1.1 Ghz AMD with 512 MB of RAM (later upgraded to 2) and 40GB (later 80GB) hard drive. It came with Windoze ME (*pukes*). I later had to upgrade the system to 1.2 Ghz AMD chip because I had physically broken the previous chip apart (which also killed the motherboard).

My current system is a 3 Ghz Intel Pentium 4 system with originall 1 GB of DDR2 RAM (now 2) and a 250 GB (now 640 GB) hard drive.

So, compared to my first PC, the processing speed has increased from 4.77 Mhz to 3 Ghz, i.e. almost a 1000 times! Hard drive capacity from my 3rd to system to now has increased by the factor 16,000! Yay for progress!

And now imagine what our children will say about what we consider the latest and most expensive technology today...

Peachy

 

[mm3]

Oh dear God don't make me do this.

It's a laptop , Insprion 1501, mm3 is familair with it.

Yar, my 1501 is my main machine as well. It's got 1GB of RAM though, my 2nd GB module borked on me a little while back. I'll purchase another stick one of these days...

*Sigh* I guess I will. *keeps tab open* ... *opens jEdit* ... I'll be back...

 

[Kraiden]

Shit Box--
Let's see, my first computer was some really crappy piece of shit Pentuim 2, back when I was 13 or 14, and it was a hand-me-down. Ran windows 98, had a hard drive that was 1 or 2 gig, and all I really used it for was playing various emulators and games on it.

Shit-shit-box--
When mum bought a new computer (Yay pentium 3!), I got "upgraded" to the old compaq presario desktop that was in the lounge room. It didn't last longer than 6 months, actually, because something died on it and I was left without a computer for about a year.

Old Faithful--
Then I got another hand-me down. I think it was a pentuim 3, not really sure. 512 ram, onboard sound, graphics, and I ran on that sonofabitch for close to two years. It survived me flipping the red switch on the back of the power box, (well, "survived" = Repaired), and it just grinded along, somehow not exploding from the literal mess of shit I had on there. Seriously, you ever seen those "Oh god what a mess!" shows on Tv where crazy ladies have houses full of shit? That was the crap on this computer. Hell, I remember back when Gameboy advance emulators were just coming out, this bastardly machine could actually run them at around 50% speed. Shit yeah. Eventually it slowly died, not liking windows and only booting into DOS, then one day it just died. Awh.

Organ Donor --
After I moved up north my mother bought me a computer, since I didn't get to go on a vacation with them to some hippie boring place. So I got a rather basic acer. 512ram, onboard sound, graphics, Pentium 4. Hell yeah! Played around on that thing for about a year, Before I slowly started adding shit to it. More RAM and a cruddy ATIx1300pro card. Then for some damn reason it died, which led me to get

Frankenstien --
A CPU Case, Motherboard and processor, nothing else. ripped out the guts from the organ donor (and found out the problem of it dying was a dead bios battery, which messed up my HDD load order. rawr), and turned it into the thing it is today. Core 2 duo, 2gig ram, soundblaster 5.1 soundcard, and an Nvidia GeForce 8600pro.

So, err... yeah. what was the point of all this again?

 

[Lazy]

in 1999 I had my first PC. It was from my daddy's place of work (a popular engineering firm in Pasadena which designs and builds many popular buildings and makes the weapons to destroy them as well XD)

It was an IBM machine that laid vertical on a desk. I forgot what they're called but this thing was oooooooooold. I believe it had a Model M keyboard and it had Windows 3.x

in 2000, after much begging and crying. I got a Compaq Presario 7470. I remember it really well because that computer had SO MANY problems that eventually led to my vast knowledge in computer troubleshooting and repair. On that machine, I first discovered DPF while doing a search on COMPUSERVE.

AMD K6 300 MHz
128mb of SDRAM
40GB HDD I think?

2001 I got a Cable modem. 1.5mbs down/256 up, I also upgraded it to a GeForce 2 MX200 because I was heavily into Counter-Strike at the time.

2002 My mommy bought me an eMachines T2200. It was from Fry's electronics and made gaming much better with its specs.

AMD Athlon XP 2200+ (1.8 GHz)
512mb of DDR RAM (something that I loved instead of crappy SD)
100GB HDD

The same day, my Mommy also bought me a video card to go along with it. It was a GeForce 4 MX400. Diablo II, Counter-Strike were awesome.

2004 - I upgrade to my video card to an HIS 9800 Pro because I am unable to play Halo PC on any decent settings. It was this card that allowed me to enjoy HL2 when i

2006 - I build my first computer because I'm finally able to afford it.

AMD X2 3800+ (S939)
2GB of G.Skill RAM
Lite-On DVD-R/W Lightscribe
100GB HDD
eVGA 7900 GT KO
OCZ GameXStream 600W

In September 2008, I upgrade to an HD4850 thanks to some birthday money.

Christmas 2008 - With a large amount of Christmas money at my disposal thanks to my loving and generous family, I decide to upgrade again. This is important because I've become an AMD fanboy over the years, but it is hard to ignore the fact that Intel has stepped up their game and has finally ditched their crappy Netburst archietcture and is now the current performance king.

Q6600
P5Q Pro
4GB of RAM
Visiontek 4870 X2
Lian Li 65b (Black)

I also upgraded from a long time use of CRT's. I bought an ACER 22" Widescreen LCD. It has only 1 dead pixel but I am happy with it and think it is great. Sure it's 1680x1050 resolution doesn't take advantage of my beastly card but this is the first time i've had great display in awhile so i'm not complaining at all.

:]

Edit: Whoa this year marks the 10 year anniversary of me being into computers. You see ever since I was like 5, I was intriuged by computers but no one ever let me touch theirs because they're so complex and a child shouldn't be messing around with them. Now i'm the guy everyone goes to for computer help

 

[andysetra]

Oh god...where do I begin? All these computers were mine (in that they were given to me, resided in my bedroom, and were NOT the main family computer). These are also ONLY my main systems. Buy me a drink sometime, and I can bore you with the hundreds of desktops/laptops I've gone through in my life...

(1989-1994)
IBM PC (the old original one) - My dad built this from parts he got from working in the computer industry, so it went through many upgrades. At one point it had a text-only video card, but I was 4 ...so yeah )
-8088 Processor, 640k ram (I think..)
- BUS mouse
- 33MB MFM hard drive
- FULL size 5 1/4" Floppy Drive
- CGA Graphics (16 colours to choose from, but can only display 3 at a time...)
- Epson LX-800 Dot matrix printer
- OS: DOS (don't remember the version, probably 5.x)

(1994-1997)
- Custom built 80386DX4 40Mhz - I was given this board/cpu because it had noise issues on the ISA bus (and produced ugly squiggles when I used a VGA video card)
- 8MB (8x 1MB 30pin SIMMS)
- 640K Trident VGA Card
- 8Bit Zoltrix Sound Card
- 80MB IDE Hard Drive (don't remember the brand, but it didn't allow master/slave on the IDE channel, so when I wanted to use the CD-ROM I had to disconnect it and boot off a floppy...)
- 4x Sony CD-ROM (had trouble opening and closing, but worked fine otherwise)
- OS: DOS 6.22 / Win3.11 (I tried running Win95 and it could, but was painfully slow!)
- Black and white monitor at first, then an old 14" VGA monitor

(1997-2001)
- Compaq Presario Desktop - this was given to me by a family friend when they upgraded
- 80486 DX2 66Mhz
- 24MB RAM (4+4+8+8, 72pin DIMMs)
- Onboard 1MB Cirrus Logic Graphics
- Onboard 16Bit Sound Blaster
- 3Com Etherlink II 10/100 NIC
- Onboard 14.4k Modem (we didn't get high-speed until around 2001)
- Western Digital 1GB Hard Drive
- 40X BTC CD-ROM (given to me to replace the crappy 2x that came with the Compaq... this one also had opening/closing issues, but was speedy)
- OS: Win95 D
- 14" TTX Monitor

(2001-2002)
- Intel PIII Celeron 633Mhz (ECS Mobo) - First system I bought new with my birthday money - it was a hodgepodge of parts I bought, as usual)
- 128MB PC133 ram (later upgraded to 256MB)
- 4GB Fujitsu Hard Drive
- Same 40X BTC CD-ROM, I added my dad's old 4x4x24 Mistumi CD burner later on
- 4MB ATi Rage (AGP), this was upgraded to a GeForce2 MX200 64MB
- Same 14" TTX Monitor
- OS: Windows ME (uggh, yes I know, it was awful. My dads system ran Win2k and there were some games that wouldnt run under 2k at the time. One time it told me I had 6GB free on my 4GB hard drive....windows crashed brutally shortly after that >_<)

(2002-2004)
- Intel Pentium 4 1.6GHz (ECS P4VXAD I think...)
- 256MB PC-2100 (upgraded to 768MB later on...)
- 80GB 7200rpm Seagate HD (added a 200GB Western Digital later..)
- 16x Pioneer DVD-ROM (plus the old Mistumi CD burner)
- Same GeforceMX200 64MB (later upgraded to a GeForce4 Ti4200 64MB)
- OS: WinXP Pro
- 17" TTX Monitor

(2004-2005)
- AMD Athlon XP 2600+ (Barton core, Asus A7V880 mobo)
- 1GB PC3200 (later upgraded to 2GB PC3200) - dual channel
- 80GB Seagate, 200GB Western Digital (added a 200GB Seagate later on)
- ATi Radeon 9800 Pro (128MB)
- 16X Pioneer DVD-ROM
- 4x4x24 Mistumi CD Burner (replaced by a Toshiba 2x2x8 DVD-RW Drive later on)
- Antec 400W PSU
- OS: WinXP Pro
- 17" TTX Monitor (I added a 15" Compaq LCD later on for dual monitor)

(2005-Current)
- AMD Athlon64 X2 3800+ (Asus A8N-E Mobo)
- 2GB PC3200 (2x1GB dual channel)
- 200GB Seagate, 320GB Seagate, 320GB Seagate, 500GB Seagate (All SATA)
- GeForce 7600GS 256MB (PCIe)
- Two 16X Pioneer DVD-RW Drives (DVR-111D)
- Ultra X2 550W PSU
- OS: WinXP Pro
- Viewsonic 20" widescreen LCD + Viewsonic 19" LCD