[H] Flashback

FrgMstr

FrgMstr

Just Plain Mean
Staff member
Joined
May 18, 1997
Messages
55,601
Some discussion this week got me going through the [H] archives that turned up the first BlowHole case we did back in 1997, yep, 20 years ago (date is wrong on the article). It got HardOCP all kinds of attention. Who knew that a jigsaw and no respect for a steel computer case could change your life?

And yes, the "thumbnail" shown below is actually full resolution taken with a Sony camera that used a 3.5 floppy disk for storage.

And a bonus pic of the camera, which still has a floppy in it this morning. I have to find a battery now to see what is on that floppy.
 
dr_drift said:
If you're anything like me, it would be best to make sure any women in your life aren't in the area before openly browsing unknown photo storage media.
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You made me LOL loud enough I probably woke up my wife. That said, I was not married till 1999, so anything is possible. But don't tell her that.
 
WOW Kyle... you are up early/didn't go to sleep yet.. cranking out the hits both past and present!! Thanks!!

Unless proven otherwise, this is how I picture you at 4am CST..

kyle_on_cam_2.jpg
 
Insula Gilliganis said:
WOW Kyle... you are up early/didn't go to sleep yet.. cranking out the hits both past and present!! Thanks!!

Unless proven otherwise, this is how I picture you at 4am CST..

kyle_on_cam_2.jpg
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That is pretty damn funny. Like the PCPer shirt the best.
 
RogueTadhg said:
The King is back, Baby! Man these were the days... Voodoo cards, Lan Parties, Pre-Napster, and AOL Dial Up internet.


I don't miss the Dial Up speeds.
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I had dual ISDN a couple months after that. I got a deal on the router at $900.
 
Ohhh this brings back memories.... when I started out case hacking, cause it was not modding back in the day, I stumbled accross [H]ardOCP :D
oooh ooh and I belive my watercooling endeavours started here too... come to think of it Kyle, just plain thanks for everything it's been great and still is. allthough I miss my old Pentium 90Hmz LOL

too bad my old user is not avail anymore, or that I just plain forgot what it was named.

Long time viewer starting 1999.

/Martin
 
Thats hilarious I remember doing that to all my PCs now Im seriously wondering I saw that here first. I'm also wondering if my join date is wrong. I feel like there was a revamp or something. I remember buying a stack of Athlon's here in the heyday 1300-1400s, but that was way before 2005.
 
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Now I am wondering if I had blowholes in my cases before 1997. I know I was overclocking way before then. I think it was probably 1992 when I first started overclocking. I just did a bit of checking release dates of stuff and pretty sure it was 1992.

The first system I overclocked had a 486-25Mhz in it. I noticed that there was a jumper on the motherboard that said 25/33Mhz. I switched it to 33 and was instantly hooked.

CPU heatsinks really sucked back then. I went with a heatpipe setup as soon as I could. I still have it. A Thermaltake Silent Tower.

Looks like it came out at the end of 2004.

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article201-page1.html

T925-2030.jpg


A few years ago I modded a heatpipe Socket 939 Opteron cooler so I could mount it on the heatspreader of a Slot-A Athlon CPU.

The thing doesn't get warm at all even when the CPU is overclocked. Back then, the best we had was the Massive Alpha cooler with the Dual 60mm screamer fans and it still got burning hot.

Super thin fins and heatpipes completely changed everything.

I am also guessing that the super crappy power supplies that we had back then were a contributor as well. Much cleaner power and stuff is just going to work better overall.
 
MrAhlefeld said:
Ohhh this brings back memories.... when I started out case hacking, cause it was not modding back in the day, I stumbled accross [H]ardOCP :D
oooh ooh and I belive my watercooling endeavours started here too... come to think of it Kyle, just plain thanks for everything it's been great and still is. allthough I miss my old Pentium 90Hmz LOL

too bad my old user is not avail anymore, or that I just plain forgot what it was named.

Long time viewer starting 1999.

/Martin
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Ditto, we started modding at our LAN parties in 98-99, squirrel cage fans...shoebox power strips...yes, someone made a shoebox with a wall plug because we were poor ~16 year old kids that spent all our money on voodoo graphics cards and quake. My buddy mrp1nkles had a full steel server case he strapped an 8" 120v fan on with a massive red switch. It was freaking awesome, if you turned it on the whole house would wake up! I remember going home one Monday at 3am after playing all weekend without sleep; as no one had ever heard of a LAN party, we got pulled over with all this computer equipment in the back and accused of stealing it. Didn't help the guy driving had a mullet and we were in a green 88 trans am.
 
20 years ago... I was using a Power MacIntosh 6100 back in 1997. I think that was the year I discovered porn on the internet.........

My father STILL has that computer.
 
OMG I am old. Although my log in does not show it, I have been a member and reading this site since before the this article, which I remember quite well. Actually Hard OCP was the site that got me into building PCs which lead to Networking which lead to my current profession. So a big thanks to Kyle from me. Hard OCP gave me a profession and a passion. Something I was sorely lacking before finding this site.
 
The ornamentation in front of that computer screams "Texas".
 
Oh man... blast from the past, legendary Celerons and Blow Holes, the cheap plebs were all on AMD K6 parts. Wasn't long after that that I remember getting screaming 60x60 delta fans that could slice your finger off.

I had a case somewhere, that we cut a 120x120 hole in the side of the case for a fan that we got from 3DCool, that was so redic, that we had to cut parts of the fan and case to get it to fit inside.
 
Oh this takes me back! Before I joined the forum this inspired me to add a hole to the top of my e-machines case. That thing was a Frankenstein of sorts! That was my AMD 333 computer, replaced nearly everything in it just to run quake 2. I then did it to the next computer my dad got me, some generic case with poor ventilation, it didn't even have an intake van and my x1800 kept dying.

I thought I got the inspiration from overclockers club, but nope, it was those exact pictures!
 
That reminds me of the Panasonic camera we had that used a Superdisk LS-120 120mb floppy drive. Good times.
 
Skillz said:
I remember when I got DSL back in 1999. Few months later I bought a DualWAN router. It was the Nexland Pro800 Turbo. Man that thing was a beast! Dual 1.5Mbps connections.
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Fuckin BALLER! LOL!
 
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Holy Crap it's been that long. Remember me and my buddys modding our old steel cases with a rough hack cut circle, glue, a fan, and some mesh screening.
Of course to all you young uns out there, that was back when a new build wouldnt boot right until you sacrificed some blood into the system, and those old steel cases
with the sharp corners helped out alot with that ritual.
 
Thanks for posting this up Kyle. Puts a time frame on my oc-ing adventures! I remember trying to explain to the guys at the computer store why I wanted ddr-133 for my PIII 600... of course that became an 800/133. :) And paying well north of $300 for 2 x 128MB sticks.
 
Hooksalot said:
OMG I am old. Although my log in does not show it, I have been a member and reading this site since before the this article, which I remember quite well. Actually Hard OCP was the site that got me into building PCs which lead to Networking which lead to my current profession. So a big thanks to Kyle from me. Hard OCP gave me a profession and a passion. Something I was sorely lacking before finding this site.
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hardocp and firingsquad were my go to hardware sites back then
 
Ahhh man Kyle....you got me in full nostalgia mode. All them hours spent playing Duke Nukem 3d and Quake.....man I dont think Ive had as much fun playing a game since. Had a internet cafe back then with 14 pcs. We served clients and played games non stop from noon till midnight and sometimes we would have all nighters during the week-ends.
 
freat said:
Thanks for posting this up Kyle. Puts a time frame on my oc-ing adventures! I remember trying to explain to the guys at the computer store why I wanted ddr-133 for my PIII 600... of course that became an 800/133. :) And paying well north of $300 for 2 x 128MB sticks.
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That would have been PC-133 (SDRAM). DDR wasn't around yet.
 
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