computer build...remember your very first?

Z

zoinks

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 16, 2005
Messages
261
ok. so i got to thinking about this since i finally built a new one for myself. at first i thought it was the 286 with a 10 meg mfm hard drive. then i realized this:

in college(1983) i had a challenging class "microprocessors". built and designed a wire wrapped comp that consisted of about 30 ic's.

sys spec:
1k memory(2 chips)
keyboard: 16 momentary buttons wired in a matrix fed to encoder chip + debounce circuit, toggle switch to route keypad entries for data and address
input display: 4 7-segment led's (assembler)
output display: 8 led's for data 16 for address (reads binary)
power supply: stepdown transformer with bridge rectifier (+5v only)
cpu: intel 8088 (2 8085's in parallel)
runs on assembler code

all this stuffed into a briefcase. lol...a dual core laptop.
 
well since im consiberably young, my first home brew was a mere this:

2.4g P4a
756mb of ram
GF4 mx440 (ha, which newbie comp builder hasnt been suckered into buying this, or the 5200FX)
SB Audigy (which i migrated to my new rig)
15in monitor (considered above average back then)

took me 2 days to build and configure everything...

fun times
 
Well, like Asian Dub, I'm pretty young. My first build was less than a year ago, and is still my current system..:

AMD 64 3000+
DFI Ultra-D
6600GT
2x160GB HDDs (no raid)
1GB Geil RAM
DVD/RW, etc..

Anyway, not quite as impressive as zoinks. :p
 
667 mghz Celeron
128mb SDRAM
Onboard Video
15" CRT
Logitech ball mouse
56k modem

ownage.
 
I guess I'm middle aged! First was a PII 350 with a 16mb voodoo banshee(kick ass at the time). It had 128mb ram and is still my friends pc.
 
Asian Dub Foundation said:
15in monitor (considered above average back then)
Click to expand...

Doode !!! 1 5 ' ' above average in P4 days !!! I had one matched up to my P75Mhz and it was nearly kick ass then, but 17" and 21" were out.
 
My first was an 486 with the intell upgraded chip, 64 megs of mem, 754 mb hd, and to top it all off a reveal 2x cd-rom with an attached sound card (back when the cd-rom attached directly to the sound card).. iceing on the cake was a token ring card..... and all in a Compaq case..... and boy oh boy did it run windows 3.1..... oh and a 15" monitor i think.... and back then you had to ask yourself "whats a video card for??"
 
hope this doesnt date me
Myfirst build from scratch."had done many upgrades before this"
nameless 486 VLB motherboard. early amptron i think.
intel 486DX2-66 was this socket 3?
8x1mb 30 pin simms.256k cache on board. 8mb =200.00
minitowercase w/so cool turbo button and led display I set mine to 99mhz on turbo. ;)
DTC Vesa Local bus Controller. OC with some fancy driver
Trident 9400 VLB video with full 2mb "had to upgrade it to get that"
conner 420mb HDD smokin fast. " i got more room then that on my keychain now"
1.44 and 5-1/4 floppys.
2x cdrom kit from creative but had a SB16ASP that kicked butt
only bench mark I had was landmark speed200 and something else i checked the hdd with. .
now guess the year ..?
 
My first total build was a lot more ecent then some of you guys:
AMD Athlon XP 1800+
Some crappy Gigabyte Mobo
512MB PC-2100
GeForce 4 Ti 4200
Creative Audigy
Intel 56k modem
Hitachi 19" CRT that I am still using
 
I built my first PC in 1998.

Celeron 300
2x 64 MB Ram
Abit Mobo, something with a Via Chipset
Voodoo 2 16MB
ATi Rage 4MB
Sound Blaster
33.6 Modem

Sigh... I was 13 or 14.... good old days. Then quake III came out and I had to build my Pentium III 500 w/ Voodoo 3 3000AGP <3
 
USMC2Hard4U said:
I built my first PC in 1998.

Celeron 300
2x 64 MB Ram
Abit Mobo, something with a Via Chipset
Voodoo 2 16MB
ATi Rage 4MB
Sound Blaster
33.6 Modem

Sigh... I was 13 or 14.... good old days. Then quake III came out and I had to build my Pentium III 500 w/ Voodoo 3 3000AGP <3
Click to expand...
when i was 13-14 i was pretty damm impressed with my digital watch oh and disco ruled the world
 
486, uh, 33, maybe 66, quit possibly a DX4100. 8MB RAM, then doubled to 16 (Woohoo!)
570MB hard drive
CD-ROM of some sort
No Case
14" monitor that could only show 640x480
 
Guess I can say im a bit young for this but... I remember modding the crap out of my first dell back in 8th grade. This was back in 99 i think

P3 350 overclocked to around 450. Cant quite remember
384mb PC133 (so fast heh)
15gig stock drive 5400rpm
30gig 7200rpm :)
Turtle Beach Montego
Voodoo 2 12mb
CD burner 4x (burned a cd in under half an hour haha)
56k v.90 modem with AOL 4.0, or was it 6.0... cant remember

Ran Unreal/UT99, Brood Wars, and TFC like a champ :D
 
I'm 23, and I didn't want to spend money on my own build until I was out of college, had money, and didn't need 3 yr Dell warranties anymore.

Now that I'm there, my very first build is the first computer in my sig :)
 
The first one I built was a Cyrix 166+ with 32megs of Ram, 1.6gig hard drive, 4X CD-Rom, 4meg Video Card, mid tower case. I am thinking that I paid around $1300 for it.
 
Athlon 750
Asus K7V mobo
GF256 (Creative)
SB Live! 4.1
256mb PC133
45 & 30gb hdd
4x2x32 CD-RW
6x DVD-ROM


I formatted that thing more times than I can remember. over 120 before I gave up and bought a CUSL2/800eb that still works to this day.

Stupid Via KX133/Win2k/GF bug...


(all other systems before then were either store-bought, or given to me. Above is the first I built)
 
1st one I *built*. Upgraded my then 500 Mhz Celery powered Compaq with a new A7V333 Asusu mobo with a 750Mhz T-Bird. Voodoo 3000 and SB live! card. And a new power supply. Only reason I say this was my 1st build was having to gut and modify the Compaq case and wiring for the new parts. What a PITA it was too. And I JUST put the mobo and CPU to rest a week ago, it was running in my bosses machine with zero glitches. That CPU went though hell might I add. It was the start to my overclocking adventures. It went though Pelt cooling, had a cracked core from all the HSF swapping. Went 24 hours with the pelt heating it up while the system was off.. silly dual PSU days.. and lack of turning the one off that powered the pelt. Was hot enough for me to notice something was wrong when the downstairs got to about 80 degrees. Booted it up to see the temp up in the 200 degree F mark. And it's still alive :p
 
75 mhz Pentium, 8mb of RAM, 850 mb hard drive, and the eternal struggle-fest that was Win95. Eventually upgraded to a massive 24mb of RAM before that one was rendered useless by the passage of time. Can't say that I miss it, though nostalgia and some of these "show your old stuff" threads make me wish I had kept the thing.
 
I remember back in High School around 10th grade I wanted my own computer so I didn't have to use the family's crummy AMD K6-200. I was an avid reader of Arstechnica (still am) and they had an article on the *new* Celeron 300A. So my first build consisted of:

Celeron 300A
Abit BX6 ver. 2.0
64MB PC100
Diamond Viper770 (Vanilla Nvidia TNT2 32MB), this thing costed $100, the TNT2 Ultra was too pricy for me!
Western Digital 4.3GB drive, was second hand.
noname 36x CD-ROM
Intellisound soundcard (can't really remember)
No name beige ATX case.

Anyway, put it all together, upped the front side bus to 100Mhz, instant 450Mhz of luv'in. All for $80, I think at this time the PIII 500 just came out, so I was sitting pretty good with my budget CPU.

Funny thing is I STILL have this processor in a box somewhere.
 
My first homebrew:

Pentium 2 350
128 mb RAM
ATI Rage 4mb
15 GB Hard Drive (an IBM, I think)
DVD Drive
Onboard Sound
17" Monitor
Awesome logitech ball mouse.

I remember being so amazed at how fast it ran Windows 98.
 
my first build is rig #4 in my sig
Dual 500MHz Celerons on an Abit BP6 mobo
5GB HDD
Diamond S580 32Meg Video Card
Aureal Vortex2 sound card
and a Creative DX3 DVD decoder card and 5X DVD Rom

it now has a Geforce2 MX 32Meg card and an 80GB HDD and an old cd burner but it runs rock solid, never had the cap problems others have had
 
CPU: P100
Mobo: Don't remember right now.
RAM: 2 8 meg FP 72 pin SIMMs
Video: 2 meg Diamond Stealth card
HDD: 1.6 gig
CDROM: 8x
Sound Card: SB16
Modem: 28.8 USR
Monitor: Princeton EO15

I believe that is the majority of it and it was built in 1996. I still have the CPU, mobo, case/PSU and RAM. The vid card died after many years of usage through a couple of systems. The CDROM was sold off at one point. The sound card disappeared after I upgraded to an AWE64. The hard drive died after a few years (longest I ever had a Maxtor live). The monitor died after five years of use.

I'm thinking about putting a bunch of the system back together for use as a DOS gaming box. I'll probably toss a P233 MMX (that will only run at 166 in the mobo) in it and a Voodoo 3 2000 PCI with a DVD ROM. That should run most of my old DOS games rather well.

 
The first computer I built...well...I'm still in the process of building it :D I did upgrade to a MSI motherboard in my Dell a few months ago ;)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top