Building my childhood dream PC • Hacker News Board

Re: Building my childhood dream PC

#41

Post by micv » Sun, May 18, 2025, 8:25 PM UTC

christkv wrote: post #33

vunderba wrote: post #3

Great article. The mention of Cyrix brought back a rush of nostalgia - one of the earlier PCs I built used a Cyrix 686 166mhz processor. From the article: > 8BitDo makes a fantastic modern keyboard inspired by the M looks and feel. Hard disagree. I found most of their keyboard replicas to be rather cheap feeling. However, their controllers such as the Arcade Stick and Pro 2 are excellent. I think the closest approxim…

I had the same Cyrix cpu and all I remember is that FPU performance was terrible in Quake.

It was alright in Quake, as I recall, but it really didn't cope at all well with Quake 2 and Jedi Knight.

Re: Building my childhood dream PC

#42

Post by adamcharnock » Sun, May 18, 2025, 8:29 PM UTC

The very moment I saw the letters ‘MMX’, a long forgotten part of my brain woke up and said, “I know what that smells like!”

Which is bizarre. But to me it is (apparently) the small of new electronics, plus perhaps the ‘hot dusty things’ smell. It also comes with the memory of playing Pod (a racing game), by Ubisoft (I think). Good teenage memories!

Re: Building my childhood dream PC

#43

Post by [deleted] » Sun, May 18, 2025, 8:32 PM UTC

[deleted] wrote: post #29

[deleted]

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Re: Building my childhood dream PC

#44

Post by tecleandor » Sun, May 18, 2025, 8:43 PM UTC

adamcharnock wrote: post #42

The very moment I saw the letters ‘MMX’, a long forgotten part of my brain woke up and said, “I know what that smells like!” Which is bizarre. But to me it is (apparently) the small of new electronics, plus perhaps the ‘hot dusty things’ smell. It also comes with the memory of playing Pod (a racing game), by Ubisoft (I think). Good teenage memories!

Oh, that was nice. I think it was one of the first "high fps" games and it looked super smooth...

Re: Building my childhood dream PC

#45

Post by keyringlight » Sun, May 18, 2025, 9:05 PM UTC

p_ing wrote: post #36

keyringlight wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MY likely-underinformed opinion is that the ATX form factor for building PCs is creaking at the seams for the generic '1x dGPU' specification, but there's a number of factors that work against a change to something substantially better. It'd need a number of companies to offer new product lines at the same time, probably incompatible with ATX and all the challenges that would bring. It's not just the huge heatsinks t…

Intel proposed the BTX format [0]. Didn't catch on. ATX has a lot of momentum (including the related mATX, EATX, and so forth). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BTX_(form_factor)

I think BTX serves as the example for why a major change is unlikely, it's death is a warning to anyone thinking of doing the same. That said, even though it was led by intel back when they were in a much better position than they are now, I wonder if it wasn't against the background of Pentium4/"Preshott" and Athlon/Opteron would it have gone down better.

It's a shame as the only real personal computer desktop/tower maker that's exercised their freedom to make a significantly different design Apple with Mac Pros, and that's a different animal entirely.

Re: Building my childhood dream PC

#46

Post by liotier » Sun, May 18, 2025, 9:07 PM UTC

I did that a few years ago, with the 1990 computer that I lusted over as a teenager: the IBM 8595 AKD (European reference - it is 85950KD in North America)... 486 DX, XGA display, 320 MB SCSI, 64 MB RAM... At that time my computer was a 1988 Olivetti PC-1 (512 KB 8 MHz Nec V40 with CGA and a floppy drive)...

I was awed by the beast... Everything about it screamed over-engineering - even the case was incomprehensibly robust and the power switch had a satisfyingly loud motion... I could even touch its legendary tangential fan... Touching the 20 years-old dream was an emotional moment - I'm glad I did it... The ultimate Windows 3.0 host !

But it had to go after a little while: my two-room apartment was too small for so much awesomeness, so it went to another fan.

Re: Building my childhood dream PC

#47

Post by somat » Sun, May 18, 2025, 9:27 PM UTC

Waterluvian wrote: post #28

In Part 2 the photo immediately after “It seems IBM integrated it to the motherboard” completely fooled my brain into believing that I’m looking at the side wall of a garage. The garage door to the left. The opener equipment top-right. And I’m just immediately fixated on this whole vibe of a life-sized tinkering workspace that’s the inside of a PC case.

makes me think of the IBM AN/FSQ-7 built into the SAGE air defense stations, the largest computer ever built.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AN/FSQ-7_Combat_Direction_Cent...

While realistically I understand it was just a bunch of racks and consoles, due to the permanent nature of the installation and the way it was integrated into the building I like to imagine the operators and technicians scurrying around admits bunches of wires and tubes.

Re: Building my childhood dream PC

#48

Post by coolcase » Sun, May 18, 2025, 9:36 PM UTC

automatic6131 wrote: post #6

You never forget your first teenage dream PC. For me, it would be a 8800 GTX SLI build with a QX6850. And now I've revealed how old I am :^)

Mine was weird. An Amstrad 1512 but shrunk to about half the length in every dimension inc. monitor. I could probably make that now using 3d printer and rpi!