Building Your Own PC is Like Raising Chickens

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Headline of the day definitely has to be “Building your own computer is a lot like raising chickens.” What the cluck does that even mean!?!?

I know precisely where the eggs came from since one of my kids snagged them out of the coop that morning. I know just what went into them since I’ve been feeding the chickens for months and watching them eat countless bugs (and snakes and frogs and mice) from my fertilizer-free lawn. I really do love having my own chickens. You know what else I really love? Building a computer to my specifications from parts.
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That guy must have been really desperate to meet a deadline to come up with that article. Or really stoned. ;)
 
These days it's more like Legos. If nothing else, the rise of Windows and Plug&Play has made normal building and upgrades about 10 times easier than the days of IRQ's and clone parts using other OEM drivers.
 
Domingo said:
These days it's more like Legos. If nothing else, the rise of Windows and Plug&Play has made normal building and upgrades about 10 times easier than the days of IRQ's and clone parts using other OEM drivers.
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Ah yes the days of choosing IRQ's and COM ports with jumpers and switches and then coming up with a well crafted autoexec.bat and config.sys file so you have plenty of base memory to play games lol
 
niconx said:
Ah yes the days of choosing IRQ's and COM ports with jumpers and switches and then coming up with a well crafted autoexec.bat and config.sys file so you have plenty of base memory to play games lol
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Don't forget I/O ports and DMA channels. :D
 
ryan_975 said:
Don't forget I/O ports and DMA channels. :D
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just getting a modem to work was excruciating. Or keeping track of what SCSI number you assigned to your HDD's and Cards ...

... oh ... the horror ... :eek:
 
My first 2-3 PC's (early to mid 90's) were an absolute fight to get up and running perfectly as a gaming system.
My last few have pretty much been bulletproof, sans some driver issues, from the minute I closed the case for the first time.
While it was always a feeling of accomplishment getting a good custom gaming PC up and running, I love how convenient it has become.
Now I don't even have to format or fdisk when issues arise. Even Windows has a solid image back-up option.
 
vengence said:
A long long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, before there was 32-bit memory, there was Dos and the Extended memory crap. Before that were computers with a mere 16-bit of memory space, such as the 8086.
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You mean 20-bits (segmented). Otherwise, 64k would have been a bitch to get Duke Nukem going.

I was thinking of actual memory hardware... rather than addressing. 1 or 4-bit chips, 8/9-bit 30-pin simm (or sipp if your like that) 32/36-bit 72-pin simms, and 64-bit DIMMs.


Those 1-bit chips were ridiculous. Had a Compaq of some sort that required replacing 72 memory chips. But running Windows with 2MB was much better than it was with 512k.
 
I have raised, killed, cleaned and dressed chickens for consumption with my old man. 120 so far this year. And it is NOTHING like raising chickens. Nothing.
 
caniba said:
That guy must have been really desperate to meet a deadline to come up with that article. Or really stoned. ;)
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I think you need to be stoned to read the article.

TigerDirect is my favorite toy store on the planet
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After a long rambling you get to that line.

make killer compost from the droppings to make crepes with fresh eggs that just need to be tasted to be believed
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Is he saying that he uses compost to make his crepes? or was that supposed to be two seperate listings.


Overall i have to disagree with this story. I actually found it hard to figure out what is goal was to begin with. but I believe he was trying to say that school and companies should build their own computers instead of buying them. I dont' see schools really saving any money, and on top of that they get worse support. Have a few computers out of a lab build by some students, buy the rest from Dell or whoever. then have the students work on basic troubleshooting and fixing stuff for any computers not under warrenty.
 
ryan_975 said:
You mean 20-bits (segmented). Otherwise, 64k would have been a bitch to get Duke Nukem going.

I was thinking of actual memory hardware... rather than addressing. 1 or 4-bit chips, 8/9-bit 30-pin simm (or sipp if your like that) 32/36-bit 72-pin simms, and 64-bit DIMMs.


Those 1-bit chips were ridiculous. Had a Compaq of some sort that required replacing 72 memory chips. But running Windows with 2MB was much better than it was with 512k.
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No I was talking about before dos and the original 16 bit memory chips. The 20-bit to 32 bit space is extended memory which I referenced BETWEEN "modern" 32 bit and the 16 bit eras.
 
Pretty good story I thought. and it pointed out the pros and cons of rolling your own.
 
I actually "facebook-liked" the story. I expect to lose 10% of my "friends" over my decision to click the button.
 
well, sometimes i feel like sacrificing a chicken over a cranky computer...does that count for anything?
 
vengence said:
No I was talking about before dos and the original 16 bit memory chips. The 20-bit to 32 bit space is extended memory which I referenced BETWEEN "modern" 32 bit and the 16 bit eras.
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well, you mentioned, DOS, extended memory, and the 8086. all of which deal with 20-bit addressing or it's limitations. So forgive me for not reading more into what you wrote.
 
Don't know that it's a great headline ... but it got me to read the article (and this thread).

And there have certainly been times when I've felt like yanking all the cables off the back of the case, taking it over to the stump in the pasture and ending it with one mighty machete chop.
 
Who wants to bet that the author is from Russia, has lived through the Soviet Union, and has lived in Russia their whole lives?
 
32 pin SIMMS

1 MEG match PAIR LOL!!!

Screw that... Lets go 8088 clone of a 8086 \o/

Xerox 4tw, i remember the first Kings Quest on our Xerox 8088:D
 
It seems to me the two are complete opposites. If you raise a chicken and it lays an egg,it gets to go on clucking. If you build a PC and it lays an egg,it gets the axe!
 
"Oh damn...My graphics card is on the same IRQ as my soundcard..that aint gonna work well.

Time to reinstall and play the IRQ lottery again."
 
The first game I ever bought was Populous 2. It needed an insane amount of base memory to use the mouse and soundcard....something like 590KB. So I chose to use the mouse since well, that was pretty important.

Anyways, long story short, after some time we upgraded to a Pentium Classic 100Mhz. Just out of dumb luck one day I discovered that even with the soundcard drivers not loaded the game was still processing the music in the CPU and that if I tuned the radio to 100Mhz I could actually pickup the music (though with lots of nackground static).

It was a memorable point in my computer lifetime. Tuning into a CPU on a radio....classic.
 
ZDNet, no surprise here. Morons, Christopher Dawson has a job in IT in education and hates anything Windows and Loves NIX. I hope this guy never comes close to any of my futurekids.
 
Well, now I know how to get famous and made ad revenue for my "blog". Make stupid articles and wait for other places who have large user bases to link to it.
 
Was fairly interested until he stated that Tiger Direct was his favorite place to shop. I pretty much quit reading at that point. Then again, the fact that it was ZDNet should of been my clue not to bother, but sometimes even I am a sucker for punishment.
 
niconx said:
Ah yes the days of choosing IRQ's and COM ports with jumpers and switches and then coming up with a well crafted autoexec.bat and config.sys file so you have plenty of base memory to play games lol
Click to expand...
Those were the days. I had a half dozenish boot menu options at any one time:

Standard (worked for about 3/4ths of games).
Standard Lite (like standard but without as many TSRs)
Max EMS (like standard but for games that needed more than 1.5mb of EMS memory)
Max XMS (like standard but for games that needed more than 1.5mb of XML memory)
Max Low Memory (had minimal TSRs loaded to maximize <640k ram)
Windows 3.1 (nothing really special here, mostly for the sake of the non-geek sisters)
Tweaked for game X (for the annoying game that needed lots of memory but didn't fit any of my standard cut down TSR loads)


For the kids in the audience, TSR = Terminate and Stay Resident programs; essentially these were dos mode drivers.

My dos config was farther modified by a custom TSR written in a mix of x86 and Turbo Pascal that replaced the standard dos 13 key buffer with a 256 key one. Really useful in games like MOO that occasionally lagged because I could queue up keystrokes more or less indefinitely until it caught up. It also meant freedom from the obnoxious ding whenever you overflowed the tiny buffer.
 
Domingo said:
These days it's more like Legos. If nothing else, the rise of Windows and Plug&Play has made normal building and upgrades about 10 times easier than the days of IRQ's and clone parts using other OEM drivers.
Click to expand...

niconx said:
Ah yes the days of choosing IRQ's and COM ports with jumpers and switches and then coming up with a well crafted autoexec.bat and config.sys file so you have plenty of base memory to play games lol
Click to expand...

ryan_975 said:
Don't forget I/O ports and DMA channels. :D
Click to expand...

vengence said:
No I was talking about before dos and the original 16 bit memory chips. The 20-bit to 32 bit space is extended memory which I referenced BETWEEN "modern" 32 bit and the 16 bit eras.
Click to expand...

Wow, can you guys really bring back memories or what! :p
 
DanNeely said:
Those were the days. I had a half dozenish boot menu options at any one time:

Standard (worked for about 3/4ths of games).
Standard Lite (like standard but without as many TSRs)
Max EMS (like standard but for games that needed more than 1.5mb of EMS memory)
Max XMS (like standard but for games that needed more than 1.5mb of XML memory)
Max Low Memory (had minimal TSRs loaded to maximize <640k ram)
Windows 3.1 (nothing really special here, mostly for the sake of the non-geek sisters)
Tweaked for game X (for the annoying game that needed lots of memory but didn't fit any of my standard cut down TSR loads)


For the kids in the audience, TSR = Terminate and Stay Resident programs; essentially these were dos mode drivers.

My dos config was farther modified by a custom TSR written in a mix of x86 and Turbo Pascal that replaced the standard dos 13 key buffer with a 256 key one. Really useful in games like MOO that occasionally lagged because I could queue up keystrokes more or less indefinitely until it caught up. It also meant freedom from the obnoxious ding whenever you overflowed the tiny buffer.
Click to expand...

I had a 3.5" disk case that was dedicated to just boot disks. I think I had one for every memory setting possible. EMS, XMS, >600k, etc.

But, how else could I play Test Drive 3, Red Baron, Knights of the Sky, X-Wing, Tie Fighter, and Wing Commander?
 
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