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 :^)
A Q9300 + 9800 GX2 (later stepped-up to a GTX 280) was my college build.
Building my childhood dream PC
61–70 of 90 posts
Re: Building my childhood dream PC
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
The days of nearly-full slots was great. While by the time I had my first computer, a 386SX (12Mhz?) IDE and floppy controllers had made it to the motherboard, we still had a sound card, modem, video card, potentially game card if no game ports on the sound card, and awhile later in PCI land a 3Dfx card. Today it's... video card and that's it. Every other PCIe slot is a 'waste' (though I do have a BT 5.1 card for a p…
TFA is a great read, although the PS/1 being a turnkey system, the author didn't need to piece together a lot of compatible accessories to make a great system. "LEGO for Adults" is a very apt analogy I began to hear recently, about PCs in those days. It was an exhilirating feeling of self-determination and control for aficionados, that you could walk into a huge Fry's Electronics and there may be an entire wide aisle…
> However this sort of self-assembly of PCs has long passed us by.
How so?
From my recollections, building a Pentium-era PC was very similar to building a PC today: case, PSU, motherboard, CPU, RAM, video card, and storage. Most components could be upgraded independently. Granted, any meaningful upgrade of the CPU is probably going to involve the motherboard and RAM as well. That is pretty much the same as today. There were a few hiccups along the way if you wanted a smooth upgrade path, mostly with respect to the transition from PCI to AGP to PCIe for video, but that sort of thing is happening on different fronts today.
It was a slightly different story in the 486 era and earlier. There was far less I/O built onto the motherboard, but even then your computer was probably retired with the same I/O cards that it started with. The main exceptions were modems, sound cards, and some sort of controller for a CD-ROM. Yet that had more to do with online services popping up and multimedia titles becoming popular. Gamers may upgrade their sound card and a tiny fraction of people may upgrade their disk controller. So there wasn't a huge difference there. Pre-486 was slightly different since it was more common for peripherals to come with an expansion card, yet even then there were often alternatives that didn't require an expansion card.
The biggest change I can think of is the rate of progress. Performance and capabilities were exploding at a mind-boggling pace, and the only way one's wallet could cope (while keeping up) was to upgrade piecemeal. On my end, my last fresh PC build was in 2012. It has been progressively upgraded, and still has some of it's original parts. In other words, I have been upgrading that machine for 13 years, which is roughly equivalent to time-span between the introduction of the IBM PC and the introduction of the Pentium processor.
Perhaps the second biggest change is that is used to be cheaper to build. But that hasn't been true for a very long time either.
Re: Building my childhood dream PC
#63When I had a Timex Sinclair 1000, I wanted a VIC-20.
When I had a Radio Shack MC-10, I wanted a Color Computer 2.
When I had a Commodore 64, I wanted a Commodore 128.
When I had an Atari 130XE, I wanted an Atari ST.
When I had an Atari ST, I wanted an Atari Mega STE.
When I had an Atari Mega STE, I wanted a 486.
I now have all of these!
Re: Building my childhood dream PC
#64More than once I’ve had a TI-99/4a and fully loaded peripheral expansion box and an Atari 800XL on my eBay watch list. I’ve come so close to pulling the trigger but I know it would give me a weekend of fun and that would be about it. Back to eBay it would go for the next impulsive dinosaur.
And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that! We used to rent consoles from Blockbuster; buying an old computer off eBay for a lark and then reselling it is totally fine.
Re: Building my childhood dream PC
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 bu…
> Weight 250 tons So that doesn’t qualify for free shipping, I imagine. I absolutely love the aesthetic of a big classic telephone receiver attached to the end.
Those huge CRT vector consoles with the light gun are amazing as well.
And, and, (I really am unable to contain my glee here) each one come with a cigarette lighter and ashtray. I love it.
Growing up My father enjoyed classic cars and at one point we had a 1962 Cadillac, and yes, it did have the infamous Cadillac fins, not as majestic as the 1959 models(peak fin year) but they were there, it looked like a four door bat-mobile. Anyway, the other thing I remember about it was that it had 5 ashtrays and lighters, one for each kid. Truly peak luxury.
Re: Building my childhood dream PC
#66Maybe not quite related, but I remember as a teenager dreaming about building the ultimate modern gaming PC, because the PC I had kind of sucked. But now that I'm an adult and can more-than afford it, I simply don't want to spend the money. I mean, I still would love to have my dream PC, it's just not worth the value in my mind.
Re: Building my childhood dream PC
#67The 286/12, with its 1MB memory, 60MB RLL Hard drive, and 5.25" floppy... oh and the VGA card and 14" 256 color VGA monitor, and the Panasonic KXP-1180i. It was October 1988. My Dad's boss financed it through the company, and brought it over and set it up for us. And offered 13 year old me the opportunity to call him any time I needed help. And that I did. Between the computer purchase, the endless phone calls, and t…
> a man who could barely read, worked 12-14 hour days, and came home covered in mud and grease regularly- to buy a $3300 computer in 1988. That's about $8000 in today's money.
The best way to celebrate that kindness is to pass it down to people around you.
Re: Building my childhood dream PC
#68Maybe not quite related, but I remember as a teenager dreaming about building the ultimate modern gaming PC, because the PC I had kind of sucked. But now that I'm an adult and can more-than afford it, I simply don't want to spend the money. I mean, I still would love to have my dream PC, it's just not worth the value in my mind.
I justify building computers only when it means I will play coop with my friends or my wife. These shared moment are priceless :) !
Re: Building my childhood dream PC
#69Most of the PCs I had access to growing up sucked in some way, so I have no nostalgia to recreate any of them as entire systems. In 2013[0], I built a PC with the loose goal of being the best the 20th century had to offer, at least as far as core components were concerned. (I considered 2000 as part of the 20th century for the purposes of this build.) I ended up with a Pentium 3 600 MHz, 256 MB RAM, Geforce 2 Ultra,…
Did you take a photo of that marvel by any chance?
Re: Building my childhood dream PC
#70>IBM PS/1 is that they were upgradable. Contrary to PC clones where everything was often soldered, these came with an Intel Overdrive socket to upgrade the CPU, and extra slots to increase the L1 cache, RAM, and VRAM.
Plenty PS/1 came with everything soldered on and missing pinouts for CPU socket/ram/cache, LPX form factor makes you married to the case. Mom and pop build PCs were kings of expandability, everything standard off the shelf, could continuously upgrade step by step component after component all the way to ~2000.
PS/1 was a funny series of IBM computers. The idea was to make something low end and cheap, that necessitated using common third party components resulting in more standard and compatible PC than stupid MCA/ESDI PS/2 line. Epictronics loves PS/2 line and has plenty of repair videos, its a never ending stream of WTF where they thinking combined with oh well that part is unobtanium now, IBM IBMing.
>"Hanging note bug"[9]. I had to go to the next level and get a MIDI card.
SB16 firmware was decompiled and bug patched out, fix requires replacing microcontroller with $3 Atmel. All in all SB16 was a rushed (early reviews complained about glitchy sound, not working ASP) poor product. I associate it with hissy sound and lack of SB Pro Stereo mode support.