Computer History

[Hauskaz]

Inspired by phone history.

First shitbox I had was this thing:



Intel 80286 running at 10 MHz, 1 MB of RAM and a whopping 30 MB IDE drive. It came with PC DOS 4.01 baked into the ROM but I got Windows 3.1 running extremely slowly on it. The power supply was integrated into the monitor for some reason, which I kept and continued to use with newer computers despite being a true VGA monitor, capable of only 640x480. It also came with that bitchin' slim IBM Model M keyboard which I still have. I might have also kept that horrible mouse somewhere too. It also had a MIDI card installed in it, allowing it to run Cakewalk on DOS using any outboard MIDI hardware, in my case a Yamaha PSS-795 keyboard.



(my keyboard sounded nowhere near as good as this)

Eventually I moved on up to this shitbox:



Pentium MMX at 233 MHz, 32 MB of proprietary SyncDRAM, a 5.25" 3 GB drive. The onboard S3 Trio graphics could either do 800x600 SVGA at 16-bit colour or 1024x768 XGA at 256 colours. It eventually had an 8 GB 3.5" drive put in it along with a Guillemot Maxi Studio ISIS soundcard for making halal beats with Cakewalk for Windows and Cubase VST. It's the slowest computer on the Multithreaded CPU Benchmarking thread as of this post date. The slot-loading CD-ROM drive eventually failed with god knows what CD still inside it. It had a built in speaker/headphone amplifier which looking back was pretty badass considering modern motherboards are now just starting to include amps on them, but other than that it was a total shitbox that I managed to keep using until maybe 2002 or so when I got this faster shitbox:



It was a Willamette Celeron at 2.4 GHz, finally moving up into gigahertz territory, along with 256 MB of DDR RAM and a 40 GB IDE drive. Shit seemed amazing after using a Pentium MMX shitbox for 8 or something years, but pretty much everything eventually failed in this piece of shit, from the CPU to the motherboard. By the end of its life there was nothing OEM remaining inside it, at which point I transplanted it into what I referred to as the Blackbox, despite having a substantial shitty looking silver accent on the front of it:



By this point, I was running some pretty hot shit (literally hot, not shit though), including a Pentium 4 HT that would commonly hit 80 degrees Celsius, and a BFG GeForce 6800 GS that eventually cooked itself and was courteously replaced by BFG with a GeForce 7800 GS for free (along with a shirt and a personally written apology, I really miss that company). The barrage of 80 mm case fans along with Intel's shitty stock cooler made this thing sound like a jet taking off. I used it until 2012 when I was employed and could afford to do a complete upgrade, resulting in the Resolver:



I've grown to hate my choice of case 4 years ago but other than that it's been a solid platform. AMD FX-8120 8 core CPU, 16 GB DDR3 RAM, CrossFireX Radeon HD 7850's, Samsung 840 SSD, and a SoundBlaster 2 ZS Platinum salvaged from the Blackbox. I still use it and don't really have a reason to upgrade it since I don't game like I used to.

That's more or less the chronological desktop history. Laptop history follows in next post.

[Mr Momentum & the Sidesteppers]

all the computers i've ever owned are black boxes that do stuff. they're usually filled to the brim with dust and held together with a single screw (or duct tape)

[Hauskaz]

I realized I already went over all my laptops in this thread, so I won't bother reiterating it.

Instead, I have some honourable mentions that were never main computers but came and went through my possession.



My granddad gave this thing to me when he finally entered the 21st century. Mendocino Celeron at 433 MHz as the name implies, although I can't remember what else was in it. It came with a bunch of games including Total Annihilation and Tomb Raider 2. I eventually gave it to Kuldeep who might still have it in his garage. I sort of want it back to play old games on, but it seems like too much of a hassle to set it up.



I found this thing on the side of the road, took it home to find it fully functioning but slow as hell from being slaughtered with shitty kids software. After reformatting, it was actually a solid machine. Coppermine Pentium 3 at a blazing 1 GHz, and I think I might have got it up to 1 GB of RAM by the end of its life.



A library threw this shitbox out, so I took it in. It has a 1.8 GHz Northwood Pentium 4 in it, but I eventually put an overclocked 2.6 GHz chip in there and it somehow didn't catch fire. I also had three CRT monitors hooked up to it, including that IBM PS/1 monitor from the first post, and it served as my homework computer for high school before I got the ThinkPad T42. I wrote pretty much all my grade 10 and 11 Java applications on that thing.



Lastly, there's good old Mayzuka, the server I built into a router box using leftover parts from all these other computers. It went through several iterations hardware-wise and primarily functioned as a seedbox, Minecraft server and NAS.

[Cheesemaster VI]

I'll post in here later if I'm unlazy enough.

[Duvet]

My first PC was some shitbox given to me by my aunt. I don't exactly remember the model or specs on the thing, but it was running Windows Millennium Edition and I only used it to play Solitaire and Spider Solitaire at the time. I didn't have an ethernet cable in my bedroom, so there was nothing else I could do on it.

I started using the internet around middle school, so I began using my oldest brother's PC during times when he wasn't using it. Again, I don't remember the model or specs, but it was running Windows 98. He soon purchased a new PC, which was running Windows XP with a Pentium 4 processor and I believe it was 256MB of RAM.

After entering high school, my parents bought me a PC since I needed it for school work. This is where the Compaq Presario SR2150NX comes in.


This was running on Windows Vista Home Basic with a Celeron D processor, 512MB of RAM, and 250W power supply when I first got it.

After a few years of using it, the motherboard fried due to an apparent power surge, which took the processor and 13" LCD monitor with it. With the help of Tyler, the motherboard was replaced with something better and Mohamdu graciously gave me a Celeron 420 processor to use.

Overtime, I had upgraded the hardware further as my necessities changed, so before swapping to my current PC, it was running a Core 2 Duo E6400 2.13GHz processor, 8GB of RAM, 400W power supply, and an AMD Radeon HD7700 for GPU. I still have this PC, it is just collecting dust because I haven't bothered to re-format the thing so I give it to my oldest brother.

The Compaq Presario SR2150NX served me for 10 years before I finally decided to get a new rig, lol. I was too lazy to pick parts and build a custom rig, so I just opted with a pre-built. Current rig is the iBUYPOWER ARC SERIES NE781K.


Currently running on Windows 8.1 with a Core i5 4690K 3.4 GHz processor, 16GB of RAM, 400W power supply, 120GB SSD, and an AMD Radeon R7 250x for GPU. Haven't had too many complaints on this thing other than the low end GPU, fairly low wattage power supply, and of course Windows 8.1.

I guess for good measure, I'll also throw in my only laptop in the mix, which was purchased before starting college.


15.6" HP Notebook G60-554CA running on Windows 7 with a Core 2 Duo T6600 2.2 GHz processor and 4GB of RAM. Pretty much, all my graphic design was done on this machine prior to upgrading the Compaq Presario's hardware.

[Hauskaz]

I'll bet they probably cheaped out on the motherboard in that iBUYPOWER thing, but eh, if it works it works. They put a great CPU in it at least.