My Old School Computer

Those Slot-A Athlons (and boards) are about as impossible to find as anything these days... I've seen more Tualatin Pentium III's and Athlon XP 1900's then those Slot-A's.

Two 8,000rpm Deltas on that Athlon? Wow. I wonder if a 120mm fan in place of the two 60s would be a better choice for less noise and maximum airflow (~2,500rpm). I slapped a 92 on my 700 Slot-A Thunderbird in the place of the OEM 50mm 7,500rpm Delta and it was FAR cooler and quieter.

OK, enough of that. One of my favorite builds (2000-2001) consisted of the following:

AMD Athlon 1.10GHz Thunderbird Socket A
FIC AZ11 motherboard
256MB of PC100 SDRAM
Nvidia GeForce2 GTS 32MB
12.9GB IBM Deskstar 14GXP HD
Kenwood 72x CD-ROM (which lasted a few months)
Memorex 2x CD burner
Enermax 350W PSU

Most of the stuff was one or two step below the top of the line at the time, which made for a FAST machine back then. Especially when my previous build was ~20% as fast.
 
ok, so i got everything put up... but darn worked called and I had to deal with some Mac stuff.... sometimes being the only guy who owns and uses a mac sparingly becomes the mac guru... lol
 
geforce said:
Those Slot-A Athlons (and boards) are about as impossible to find as anything these days... I've seen more Tualatin Pentium III's and Athlon XP 1900's then those Slot-A's.

Two 8,000rpm Deltas on that Athlon? Wow. I wonder if a 120mm fan in place of the two 60s would be a better choice for less noise and maximum airflow (~2,500rpm). I slapped a 92 on my 700 Slot-A Thunderbird in the place of the OEM 50mm 7,500rpm Delta and it was FAR cooler and quieter.

OK, enough of that. One of my favorite builds (2000-2001) consisted of the following:

AMD Athlon 1.10GHz Thunderbird Socket A
FIC AZ11 motherboard
256MB of PC100 SDRAM
Nvidia GeForce2 GTS 32MB
12.9GB IBM Deskstar 14GXP HD
Kenwood 72x CD-ROM (which lasted a few months)
Memorex 2x CD burner
Enermax 350W PSU

Most of the stuff was one or two step below the top of the line at the time, which made for a FAST machine back then. Especially when my previous build was ~20% as fast.
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hurrah AZ11... i had 3 or 4 of those... i sold them or gave them all away eventually... i wish i still had one! KT133 chipset that didn't actually run 133! you needed the "A" model chipset for that lol

first computer i built was athlon xp 1800+ with a pcchips 810LR and 512MB ram that i got for cheap after mail in rebates from best buy... 15GB maxtor HDD... i had thermal paste slathered all over the chip... between the copper "cpu shim" that came with the combo... friggin everywhere

the first computer i actually owned was a compaq 120mhz pentium machine with 16MB ram... i upgraded that beast to 128MB ram (EDO, lol), put a CDROM in it, and put that 15GB maxtor in it... later i totally maxed it out and had one of those first cheap CDRW drives that i got on black friday for 30 bucks... i couldn't even burn at the full 16x because my IDE bus and FSB kept causing underruns! lol i had to burn at 8x... it wouldn't even play MP3s with media player, didn't have the CPU power... lol had to convert my music to WAV

i still have both of those machines... the second one is in a different case now and has different hard drive and stuff...

those were the days...

but the first computer i actually used (my parents had) was 286 ibm, don't remember the specs, but it had a sound card!!!
 
AthlonXP said:
Well guys after cleaning out some stuff from my parents place I fell upon a few of my old parts from my very first self-built computer.

Here are the following parts i am going to use:

Case: Chieftech Dragon Case (Black)
PSU: Antec 350w
Motherboard: Abit Kt7A
CPU: Athlon T-Bird 1.33ghz ( I coulndt find my 1ghz tbird)
HSF: Thermosonic Thermoengine w/SilenX 60mm fan
GPU: Geforce 3 Agp Card
HD: WD 40gb ata 100 7200rpm drive
Rom: Kenwood 72X cdrom Drive
Network: Linksys 10/100 card
Sound: Soundblaster PCI


Now as for OS i am up in the air on this should I go with windows 2k or go with Windows 98SE?? Anyhow I will get some pics up once I start putting everything together. I also wanted to start this thread to see who else has done this in the past?
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With those spces i'd go with windows 2000, make sure you slipstream the install disk to SP4, and get a nice firewall like Comodo before going online :D
 
Hm, I remember my first computer.... it was an ibm clone XT, 4Mhz, iirc. I used it up until college where I picked up a 486. What a change!

I do remember switching to pentium & finally a pentium pro. I still use that Pentium pro to this day as my openbsd firewall. It sits idle most of the time and has 128M of 72pin edo dimms.

A few years after upgrading to a P3, i bought a backup, IDENTICAL motherboard incase the ppro one ever fails (it's a tekram). I still have it NIB to this day.
 
Just to humor the older members here.
My first self-built computer was and still is an:
Overclocked Opteron 165
2 gigs ram
1.2tb storage
Xclio PSU
Antec case
EMU-0404 sound card
ATI X1650 vid card
2 DVD recorders
1 DVD drive
21-in-1 card reader
Dell 2007wfp
Gateway 21 inch screen (forget the name)

I'm QUITE a bit younger than a good number of people here! haha!
 
Oh man... I've seen some "first computers" on here that still seem halfway respectable to me.

I'm only 23, but the first computer I ever built myself (excluding cheap old 486's) was:

AMD K6-II 300Mhz
96mb pc-133 SD-RAM (3x32mb)
Asus Via AGP mobo
16mb AGP nVidia Riva TNT video card (this was the source of much W00Tness!)
15" CRT

I can honestly say I've been with AMD since forever. Even before the word "Athlon" was invented. I <3 AMD through thick and thin. They gave me a processor capable of playing Half-Life at less than half the cost of the Pentium II, which I couldn't afford. I think I was like ~14 at the time.. go paper route money...
 
Vic 20 anyone? No? ...(sigh)...
Cyrix P166+?
How about celeron 300A?
 
Hehe.. I had a Commodore 64... Wish I wouldn't have sold it.

I also had a Timex T1000 for a while till I sold it as well.

The first computer I ever had though was a 386sx-25Mhz.
 
toddw said:
Vic 20 anyone? No? ...(sigh)...
Cyrix P166+?
How about celeron 300A?
Click to expand...

I had a Cyrix 166 that I played with for a while. I also had a Pentium Pro 180Mhz. Man, that little thing was a BEASTIE! I put a Voodoo 2 12mb in it and played TFC! rofl. They were basically Pentium II's...
 
man i have quite a few old school computer still up and running in our house...

Duron 650
128mb PC100
20GB IDE
48x cdrom
Used as machine to run a program that teaches Piano (comes with a midi keyboard so you can play the piano

my file server, DNS, DHCP server:
dual Pentium 3 Katmai 600/512/133
20GB IDE, 30GB IDE
Windows 2000 Server SP4

another machine:
Athlon Thorton 2400+ at default speed (2.0GHz/266fsb)
512mb PC133
Nvidia TNT2 M64
20GB IDE

another (just put it together)
Athlon T-BRED 2400+ @ 2.25GHZ (a litttle over 3200+ speeds)
1GB DDR 2700
40GB Hitachi Deskstar
Radeon 7200
 
Pentium 66mhz
32mb ram
4.3gb seagate
matrox millenium
voodoo 2 sli
 
My oldest rig is a 486.

I remember playing on my dad's old comp. I forgot it's specs. We played Warlords II on it. We had the Ultima Games. We also had this fighter pilot game that was based in space. You could fly an X-wing look-alike. I forgot the game's name, but it had these big tiger dudes in it.
 
The first PC I can remember was an old Compaq with a Pentium 100, I then remember buying, rather stupidly, a Pentium 133. I even put a Voodoo 3 in that thing. The first computer I later built was as follows:

AMD K6-II 450 MHz
AOpen AX59 Pro
64 MB SDRAM
20 GB HD
Acer 32x CD-ROM
Diamond Monster 3D Audio
Voodoo 3 PCI

Man I thought that computer was a beast back in the day.
 
CamaroRacing said:
The first PC I can remember was an old Compaq with a Pentium 100, I then remember buying, rather stupidly, a Pentium 133. I even put a Voodoo 3 in that thing. The first computer I later built was as follows:

AMD K6-II 450 MHz
AOpen AX59 Pro
64 MB SDRAM
20 GB HD
Acer 32x CD-ROM
Diamond Monster 3D Audio
Voodoo 3 PCI

Man I thought that computer was a beast back in the day.
Click to expand...

That's pretty similar to the computer I had from late 1999 to mid 2003.

AMD K6-II 450
Epox EP-MVP3G2
128MB SDRAM
15.2 GB IBM Deskstar 25GP (DJNA-351520)
4x/4x/24x IOMega ZIPCD 650
Creative SB PCI128 (later SB Live!)
S3 Savage4 32MB AGP

Definately a long way from the PCjr I started out with. :D
 
I'm almost 20, but I just built my first computer this year...so...

e4300 @ 337 w/ 9x multiplier
Abit AB9 quadGT mobo
8800GTS 640mb version (now an 8800GT)
creative x-FI
4 gigs of corsair dominator ram @FSB
 
check this out: my collection of old cpu's from systems i've had in the past... im only 22, just been doing this for a long time...

from left to right, top to bottom...

Intel Pentium 90mhz, Intel Celeron coppermine 900/128/100, Athlon XP 2000+ 256/266, Intel Pentium MMX 200mhz, Intel Celeron 566/128/66, AMD-K6-2 333mhz, Intel Pentium MMX 200mhz, AMD-K6-2 533mhz, AMD-K6-2 300mhz, AMD Duron 600mhz

oldcpus.jpg
 
I remember when I upgraded my K6-II 300 to a K6-III 400. Man, that L3 cache was so bad ass!
 
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