Share your trip down homemade computer lane

**ImitationMan** · 07-10-07, 04:23 PM

Since a lot of us mix gaming and building/upgrading computers, I was wondering what started the ball rolling for you building computers? I'm only listing my personal rigs and not computers built for others. I think it will also be interesting to see the system specs we started gaming on.

I started my trip with a machine built by a local store with a 486DX, 4 MB RAM, 1 MB Video, & 240MB hard drive. I started playing X-Wing and discovered that I wanted sound. Got a sound card and a 2400 modem for Christmas and spent a full day moving jumpers around to get the IRQ's to work on the sound card and modem.

Then Need For Speed came out and it required a Pentium. I purchased a mobo, Pentium 100, and RAM and had it assembled by the computer shop then installed the rest of my hardware just to play this game. I also installed Windows 95 on this machine but still ran DOS to load up the games. The next jump was to a Pentium 233.

When I upgraded to a Pentium II 450, I bought all the pieces and put it together without enlisting the help of the local shop. Not that it was hard to plug the PII/PIII CPU cartridge in to the motherboard. Next up was the Pentium III 733. I remember all the computer cases for these computers had unfinished edges on the inside. I always had cuts on my fingers from working inside the cases.

In early 2002, I built a AMD 1900+ with two IBM Deskstar 60 GB drives in a striped array. If you remember, the IBM Deskstar earned the nickname "Deathstar" because of the high failure rate and IBM sold the operation to Hitachi. I've replaced every IBM Deskstar under warranty that I'd installed for myself and others because of failure (6 drives). The worst was when the first disk in my stripe failed. Lost everything. I wasn't running a RAID configuration when the second failed so I didn't loose much.

In 2004, I upgraded the CPU to an AMD 2400+ and then last year to my most recent jump, AMD XP 4200+. Still not running a RAID 0....

And then there's the old video cards: A Voodoo 16, a GeForce 3 with 64 MB, a Radeon 9800 w/ 128MB...

So what's your story?

**Nuckle** · 07-10-07, 04:45 PM

Man I will do my best here but I have had many beers since my first PC.

My very first was an Atari 800XL and it used a black and white TV as its monitor. It used different tapes for programs and applications and had two 7.5 floppies I think. IT also had 8 megs of memory I beleive.

First real PC was a gateway PII 350 with 64 megs of memory, 30gig HD, 8 megs on board video and a 16 meg voodoo 2 card. It also had a soundblaster card of some sort but I dont remember shich one. 15" tube monitor and it was smoking. I think I gave about $2,800 for the rig and beleive it or not it is still running today at my aunts house.

Second PC was Nucklebuilt and had a 750mhz T-Bird, 256 megs of RAM and a voodoo3 and eventurally upgraded to a voodoo5. Seems it had a 60 or 70 gig HD and at that time I had a 17" flat screen monitor that I got from dell. I eventually upgraded to a 950mhz T-bird.

Third PC was Nucklebuilt and had a 1.7ghz athlon (cant remember the flavor), a whopping 512megs of RAM, a geforce3 video card and was my first dual HD maching with a seagate cheatah and barracuda set up.

Forth PC was a P4 3.2 with eventually 2 gigs of memory, Video cards ended up with 7800GS but had like 3 or 4 before it. I cant remember exactly which cards I had.

Final PC the one I have today. Copied and pasted from other post.

Manufacturer: Nuckle
Case - Antec 900
Main Board - Abit IN932Xmax
CPU - Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 2.66
Memory - 4 gigs crucial ballistix DDR2 1066
Video - BFG 8800GTX
Sound Card - Creative sound blaster X-FI extreame gamer fatlity
Main Drive - Western Digital Raptor X 10k 150gig
Slave Drive - Maxtor 300gig
DVD Burner - Lite-On with lightscribe
PSU - Thermaltake Tough Power 850W
Monitor - Sony SDM 19" LCD

Nuck

**MotoZ** · 07-10-07, 05:46 PM

Wow, what a coincidence that ImitationMan started this thread as his 286th post.

My first machine arrived in 1987. It was a PC's Limited Turbo XT and came with an 8086/8MHz CPU, 640K of RAM, and an EGA video card. My first upgrade ever was replacing the CPU with a NEC V20 and installing an 8087 math coprocessor. At the time I was in undergrad EE and had to run PSPICE circuit simulations for lab assignments. The math coprocessor reduced the simulation times from about five minutes to about a minute and half. Smokin'.

About 1989 baby AT motherboards became cheap and I upgraded that machine to a 80286 12MHz w/ 80287 math coprocessor, SoundBlaster V1.0, and 4 MB of RAM. That was a silly amount of RAM back then. That machine served as my primary Windows box until about 1995.

After 1995 I built countless machines from hand-me-down parts. 80386s, 486s, and Pentiums. I never built a Pentium II, III, or IV machine.

My first homebuilt "screamer" was a 1GHz AMD Thunderbird with a VooDoo3 video card. Over the years I upgraded the video card in that machine until the ASUS mobo gave up the ghost about year and half ago.

My most recent machine is a retired HP-X4000 Workstation from General Motors. I upgraded the video card, added some memory, an X-Fi sound card, and a Firewire card.

Over the past few years I have also built a Core2Duo machine and an AMD 64-bit machine for my parents.

This fall I plan on building my second screamer. It will be called "Nucklebuster".

**Toker** · 07-10-07, 06:03 PM

I was born. Quadcore fell from the heavens. The End.

I'll edit when I get a chance..

**styley** · 07-10-07, 06:22 PM

Well first, I bought BF2 for the computer although I had not a clue of how it works so I installed it. No results, I then later relized how my system could not handle it. I bought WoW instead since I had no video card, the folks at best buy where I bought WoW said I needed RAM so I purchased a 512 Mb stick to add to my 256. I played WoW for awhile and then bought CoD2 (I had returned BF2 and got it for the consle BTW) no luck either still not understanding the concept of a Video Card. I then started looking up custom computers, I said to my self that I wanted to make my own computer. I got my cousin into computers to we would stay up long nights on AIM showing eachother computer parts and mods. So finnaly after I managed to work up the money I made my own system and played CoD2 for a very long time adn then joined my first clan {TDB} and stayed with them until the clan finnaly collapsed. I then made my own clan with a freind of mine from {TDB} (That freind will hopefully be joining our BF2/2142 and maybe CS community soon.) which had many names (kinda like urbans clan) and then one day I bought CS:S off steam and joined a server named UV warcraft source and thats were I learned my talents I had carbine BBq added on my xfier but I never really knew him so I joined his server once (ttp) onder the name :H|W: Laker then changed my name to what it is now. I have upgraded my computer alot since then and I am about to make my next big upgrade. DX10 3gig RAM and a new Dual Core.

**Consultant** · 07-10-07, 08:23 PM

There was a boy, an Amiga 500 and a dream...

Then there was a man, a Core2Duo and a credit card bill.

In between there were 286s, 486s, PIIIs, Thunderbirds, Athlons and lots of paychecks.

The rest is too painful to recreate.

**KromMonkey** · 07-10-07, 09:04 PM

It all started for me when my roommate from the grand old days of being in the Corps bought a brand new Compaq PC for $2000.00 from the base PX because his "old" one wasn't working anymore. I think his new one was a "monster" of a system coming in at a P133 with 64mb ramm!

I gave him $100.00 for what he thought was a dust filled, beige colored paperweight but after a little TLC, a new video card (Diamond Monster Fusion), and a spanking fresh install of windows 95 loaded off of the 3.5" disk set the system was purring like a lion, ok a small lion, well more like a moderately sized house cat. Anyways the system was alive & kicking and ran circles around his shiny new system in MotoCross Madness.

This P90 w/ 64MB SIMMS running on a 1GB harddive was what got me hooked on building, upgrading, and tweaking systems. Rainbow Six got me hooked on PC gaming.

Current PC:
EVGA 680i mainboard
Core2Duo 6600
2 x 1GB Corsair Dominator 800Mhz
BFG 8800 GTS
Creative X-Fi Fatality pro series
G-15 keyboard
MX1000 mouse
Logitech Z-5300 speakers
Dual 22" Westinghouse widescreen monitors

**Citizen X** · 07-10-07, 10:05 PM

Oh oh oh me me me!

First PC, 1991. Was a Toshiba laptop 486DX, 200mb HD, 4MB ram. $7500 retail! I paid $0, buddy was a secuirty gaurd at a warehouse, heisted it for me! 8)

Then I got a 90Mhz Gateway Desktop, 4GB HD, 32MB Ram, bought by my parents to keep me out of trouble. Was swapping out parts within monthes to play games. Interestate 76, Mechwarrior 2, etc.

After that, never bought a complete system, strictly components, constantly upgrading. A 120Mhz, 400Mhz, 1Ghz, 3.2Ghz. Monster video cards, Permedias, Nvidias, Radeons, Audigys, Ensoniqs and the list goes on, I was dropping close a grand a year for upgrades.

Current PC:
ASRock Dual Vista MoBo :P
3.2GHz AMD 64

1GB Ram

Nvidia GeForce 6800 GTX

Sound Blaster Audigy 2

Microsoft Wireless Intelliemouse

Logitech Z530 Speakers

Crappy HP keyboard

Crappy Compaq 19" CRT

And I still run circle around bitches with $7000 in hardware!

**ImitationMan** · 07-11-07, 01:13 PM

I'm getting a kick out off all of these. Wow, post 286! Reminds me of seeing billboards in junior high for 386SX and I had no clue what it was. I thought it was a motorcycle or something.

I'd forgotten all about Diamond video cards. Those were top of the line right before the world went 3D. Thank you Voodoo!

I'll add a little bit to my history from before I started building and upgrading. My first computer was an Apple IIc with a 5.25 floppy disk and 128K. I played games like the original Test Drive with 4 colors for driving and the still images at the rest stops were 32 colors. It was the most beautiful graphics I had ever seen on a computer. In high school, my mother bought a used IBM AT with an 086, a piddly amount of RAM, 4 color graphics, and the real rarity of this setup was 10 MB harddrive. The only games I could get to play on it were Star Control and Sim City, but I played them.

**BigHub** · 07-11-07, 06:54 PM

diamond still manufactures bad ass video cards... i have their X1950PRO 512MB card right now. Its delicious.

I would tell you my trip down computer lane, but it will take too damn long. I have built all the computers i own. Still own the original one, just upgraded throughout the years.