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Old timers thread. How long have you been in the game?

Hmmmm, Tandy 1000 was my first computer. My first build was a Pentium 90 when I was 15 years old. Usurper anyone
 
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Geezer000 said:
Hmmmm, Tandy 486 was my first computer. My first build was a Pentium 90 when I was 15 years old. Usurper anyone
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I didn't realize Tandy built 486s... My first x86 was a Tandy 1000 TL/2 which was a 286 with only an 8-bit bus cause Tandy was extra cheap... Had a lot of fun with that, replaced with a compaq p75.
 
toast0 said:
I didn't realize Tandy built 486s... My first x86 was a Tandy 1000 TL/2 which was a 286 with only an 8-bit bus cause Tandy was extra cheap... Had a lot of fun with that, replaced with a compaq p75.
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You are correct, 286. It was so long ago. I totally forgot LOL
 
First computer we had was a 386sx-25 running DOS 5.0 and Windows 3.0.

First system I overclocked was a friend's 486sx-25. Noticed a jumper on the motherboard for 25 or 33 MHz fab. Swapped it to 33 and was instantly hooked on overclocking.
 
My first taste of system overclocking came from HP lol.. had an Asus made board with an NFII chipset, and just downloaded the nvidia software and I was overclocking my Tbred 2600+ lol.

Shortly after that I had my first Abit lol..
 
I built my first system in 2004 but have been gaming in some capacity on PCs my whole life, as far back as the Intel 286 DOS days.
 
First system was an Apple //c. 128 K memory made it better than most of my friends who had Apple ][e systems with only 64 K RAM, but they were able to upgrade theirs, where I couldn't. Still, between all of my friends who owned Apple II series computers, and everyone owning a copy of Locksmith 5.0, I suspect that very few folks ever paid for any software. Even "uncrackable" software such as Rescue Raiders were easily cracked for those who didn't mind Locksmith taking about 30 minutes to do the job, and what Locksmith couldn't crack, Essential Disk Duplicator could fix.

I remember the last real games I played on this system were Rescue Raiders, Autoduel, Bard's Tale III, and Ultima V. After that, the platform was all but dead, and everyone had already moved on to PC's.

First self-built system was an AMD 386 SX-25, with 2 MB of memory. This was a big step up from my old Packard Bell Legend IV, with its 80286 CPU running at 12 MHz, with its 1 MB of RAM, and just about everything breaking in it.

First stably overclocked system was an AMD 486 DX-40 running at 50 MHz. It could play Doom II at full screen, high detail, no slowdown. With my Diamond Speedstar Pro VLB card, all of the DOS games ran smoothly, even Pacific Strike.

First significantly overclocked system was an AMD XP-M 2400+ CPU overclocked to 3200+ levels, without any voltage increases at all. This system was with me for 2 years before I sold the guts to another TFC player (Fivestar, if you're here, give me a shoutout).

First overclocked 64 bit system was my FX-4100 based system that ran quite stably at 4.4 GHz, no voltage increases needed. Yeah, Bulldozer was underwhelming, but that system played all of my games with good detail, and CPU wasn't an issue. This system is now 14 years old, I think, and running CENTOS 7.0, not connected to the internet, because I still need some Linux-specific programs for my research (NMR Pipe, CYANA, XEASY).
 
My first was C64 and a floppy disk drive with "Internet" connection to college computer using a dial-up modem I placed land-line handset on. Was cutting edge at the time, but slower than rock decomposing compared to what we have now.
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My first gaming was on a $5,000,000 mainframe at M.I.T. it had two games, bats, and a crude pinball. We had to sneak into the lab at night due to the cost of running the equipment. My first PC was an Otrona portable, using the term portable loosely. It ran CPM on a whopping 64K of memory with a built in 3inch screen and was built to military specs so you could drop it in the sand and it still worked. My next unit was a Xerox that you could upgrade to 128K and run either DOS 1 or CPM and had a HUGE 5 meg hard drive.
 
freeagentt said:
My first taste of system overclocking came from HP lol.. had an Asus made board with an NFII chipset, and just downloaded the nvidia software and I was overclocking my Tbred 2600+ lol.

Shortly after that I had my first Abit lol..
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Abit was my go to for Nforce 2 boards back in the day. The fun thing back then was getting a 2500+ to run as a 3200+..lol
 
first pc dad and I bought was a Hewlett Packard 486/66. second one was a Gateway Pentium Pro that I installed my first graphics card into. that puppy saw a lot of use until I went to college and built a PIII 450 that I overclocked to 558mhz. Very fond memories. I don't know when I got old. My boys like playing on them, but are not yet old enough to enjoy the building aspect.
 
so many old timers here. i love it.

my dad was a programmer in the early days. we had many computers over the years, some i was too young to remember. we had an IMB 8086 with the monochrome green screen. commodore 64. several 386 systems, a 486 DX2 66Mhz, pentium 90 and 200 Mhz, an old mac OS 3 system....the list goes on.

when i finally really started getting into hardware it was a celeron 333Mhz crap store bought build. the other systems were the 'business' machines and i was too young to really mess with them. i basically rebuilt it. came with an 8mb rage pro, swapped that for a voodoo 3 2000. needed a new mainboard, more ram, put in a sound blaster live because the old EAX was awesome in half-life. learned to overclock with that system. the V3 was stock at 143Mhz, got it to 183Mhz. the celeron i cranked up to 485 Mhz.

and the rest is history i guess
 
doyll said:
My first was C64 and a floppy disk drive with "Internet" connection to college computer using a dial-up modem I placed land-line handset on. Was cutting edge at the time, but slower than rock decomposing compared to what we have now.
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What sort of coupler was that? A short while after being hired full time out of school for my first job, I bought a 1200 baud Vadic acoustic coupler to go with my new H-19 terminal so that I could work from home. (I guess I was something of a pioneer, although it didn't seem unusual to me.) I remember paying $700+ for the Vadic, in 1980 dollars! Co-workers (with houses and/or families to pay for) were jealous.

I rented a room from my grandmother out of school, and my first work-at-home gear was a no-name 110 baud coupler (Might have been 110/300, I don't recall) and a Model 33 Teletype. I set that lot up in the living room and absolutely floored Grandmother. She had lived through the arrival of cars, airplanes, and atomic bombs, but this business of talking to a computer over the phone and having it reply right there in front of her was the most amazing thing she had seen in her life! 45 years later I can still see the shock on her face when she realized what was going on.
 
My dad bought a Tandy Color Computer (CoCo) 2 and then 3, and I had to learn to use command-line Unix OS/9 to access the 5 1/4" dual floppy drives via a ROMPAK, but that let me play some early Sierra/Broderbund games, with a Winnie the Pooh Hundred Acre Wood adventure (Eeyore lost his tail ofc!) and a Disney one with Donald Duck in a super early proto-Overcooked. By age six we'd upgraded enough x86 parts for me to actually assemble a 486-SX33-based system from old parts and by my own (tiny) hands, and I specifically remember extra triple checking with Dad that the DIP switches were set correctly for that processor so as to not melt it, because the mobo ranged 3-4x that dinky CPU's speed and auto thermal throttling wasn't really a thing in a time where needing active fans on the CPU was a new concept. We later sent that old CPU off to virtual Valhalla in exactly that way at its EoL, just set the motherboard to max, unplugged any fans and waited for it to crash out.
 
I bought a HP-intel with printer because my kids needed type written reports for high school.
Got on line and found out what a rip off prebuilt was.
Built myself a P3V4X, 600EB, Mushkin ram (A lot high speed), Maxtor 7200 10Gb, Enlighten case (still have one), not sure if I got the Turtle Beach Santa Cruz then, played with ram drives, stripped windows down to bare bones (ghost). I don't even know what I'm doing, but have built many for my kids, their friends, me. Been on this site under 2 other names forgot passwords and names (Hocp server change).
Had a voodoo 3300 somewhere along the way.
 
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JNavy89GT said:
Me? I had “computers” dating back to vic20:Commodor64 or if you want to qualify it “pong” gaming system . I had various IBM/intel pc’s but I’d buy them pre-built as it was all black magic voodoo to me lol. But the internet was a wonderful learning tool, so I started “building” and overclocking computers when I bought a decent new computer off eBay with an AMD K6-3 450 that I had to rebuild (due to UPS damage). I learned how to redo that setup and upgrade suspect parts etc. New heatsink, better ram, new graphics and overclocked it to 525mhz lol. it’s been a sickness since.

I was young enough and brave enough to crack open $200-300 slot A AMD Athlon CPU’s(1997) and would resolder resistors to change clock multipliers to overclock 500mhz CPU’s to 850+mhz. Eventually ,Slot moved to socket. Soldering moved to pencils. And eventually everything was in put into bios, which made overclocking accessible to the everyday person. That and windows evolving to allow non MIT grads to install drivers. I exaggerate, but pre windows 95 was a nightmare for me anyway to get networking actually working and just general driver conflicts and memory address issues. Ugh. I get a headache thinking about it!

AMD lost me after athlon x2 and I was with intel until just recently, when I built a Zen4 rig that I’ve enjoyed messing with and cycling several CPU’s and gpus through to gauge performance. Overclocking is a lot more civilized today. I appreciate that in my older age lol.

Looking back. I look fondly on the memories. Along the way, I was able to set a couple records, albeit briefly. I was able to work in review media. I was able to work with a well know memory company in the day and help develop new products and I was a nerd in a candy shop being able to play with unreleased/prototype hardware.

Kids and family happened and it all got put on the back burner. But, I have been having more fun recently tweaking in computers and perusing forums.

Where did your journey begin? Notable things to add?
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Overclocked 486 33mhz via jumpers and a bigger fan. Then first water cooling on pentium 3 flipchip (thermaltake bigwater) and watercooled everything since then on intel lga 1700 rn.
 
First computer was a TI99/4a in high school circa 1981. Had a 300baud modem by 1982 and pretty active with BBS forums. First PC was a 286 back in 1983… lots and lots of computers ever since then.
 
I first overclocked a AMD Athlon 3200+ to the tune of 32% on air around 2004 or so.

Now Listen here Children. Gather around the camp fire as I tell you tales of how many sets of RAM you can burn by not knowing the correct way to adjust timings and voltages!
 
kirbyrj said:
8088 with Hercules monochrome graphics. Dual 5.25" floppies.
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I remember 1993 or so. Helping my uncle reinstall a OS on some OLD system that needed 3-4 5.25' floppies for install. I was like damm Uncle. Next your going want to go repair that Tractor out back with me huh??
 
I first learned how to build around 93. With parts to build an x386 system.

First personal rig I built was an Athlon xp1600+. I flashed the bios to one that supported FSB adjustments. Managed to get 200 more Mhtz out of it.

After that I was hooked.

Shortly after I found the [H]. I've learned a lot being here! I'm glad it's still around and healthy.
 
Sta!nless said:
I first learned how to build around 93. With parts to build an x386 system.

First personal rig I built was an Athlon xp1600+. I flashed the bios to one that supported FSB adjustments. Managed to get 200 more Mhtz out of it.

After that I was hooked.

Shortly after I found the [H]. I've learned a lot being here! I'm glad it's still around and healthy.
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94 for me my first rig i built for myself that was all new was a amd tbird 1.2ghz with 128 mb of ram and a 6mb ati vivo 64 ddr gpu after trying some nvidia gforce that did nothing but over heat and crash
Before that i took older hardware and got the absolute max i could from it doing hardware level modifications to overclock 486 dx 4 120s to 160mhz and faster back when the fastest intel cpu was only 133 and 166mhz bios hack and swapping out the clock crystal to get a higher fsb base. The board could have went if i recall as fast as 175mhz but the cpu would have blown up in my face had i tried.
 
nanaki said:
94 for me my first rig i built for myself that was all new was a amd tbird 1.2ghz with 128 mb of ram and a 6mb ati vivo 64 ddr gpu after trying some nvidia gforce that did nothing but over heat and crash
Before that i took older hardware and got the absolute max i could from it doing hardware level modifications to overclock 486 dx 4 120s to 160mhz and faster back when the fastest intel cpu was only 133 and 166mhz bios hack and swapping out the clock crystal to get a higher fsb base. The board could have went if i recall as fast as 175mhz but the cpu would have blown up in my face had i tried.
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Oh the crystal thing. I think I remember hearing something about that in the early 2000's. I never went that far though.

And 94 my parents bought a Packard Bell 486 DX2/66 and it was amazing. I was the first kid in the neighborhood with dial up.
Back then I didn't know what black magic overclocking was.
 
Sta!nless said:
Oh the crystal thing. I think I remember hearing something about that in the early 2000's. I never went that far though.

And 94 my parents bought a Packard Bell 486 DX2/66 and it was amazing. I was the first kid in the neighborhood with dial up.
Back then I didn't know what black magic overclocking was.
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yeh basically most motherboards for 486 cpus had 20mhz i put a 33mhz i think it was on a dx mother board.
So instead of the fsb being 20 or 25 mhz or what ever it was mine was 33 mhz. So each multiplier of it was higher by default. Now it also required bios hacking as it would through off lots of other stuff lol But was worth it at least experimentally and for bragging rights. My 485 dx4 120 tore up early pentium mmx cpus in all but mmx instructions lol
 
I am 50 on the 23rd and have been into pcs since 1990 when I turned 15 years old. All console gaming before that. First pc of my own was a tandy 386 sx 25mhz in 1993. Jurassic Park came out that year and shit was magical back then. Staying up late geeking out on your pc back in 1993.....nothing even comes close to that nostalgia.
 
jarablue said:
I am 50 on the 23rd and have been into pcs since 1990 when I turned 15 years old. All console gaming before that. First pc of my own was a tandy 386 sx 25mhz in 1993. Jurassic Park came out that year and shit was magical back then. Staying up late geeking out on your pc back in 1993.....nothing even comes close to that nostalgia.
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Oh heck yeh i started with pc building etc in 93 i had lots of old hardware i rescued all the way back to old 8086 pcs i spent lots of time getting them up and running sometimes heading to the news groups to get boot disks to get in to the bios of those old machines. I managed to get a very old very ugly Compaq 8086 desk top up and running and booted i loved messing around with that old machine. One day it caught fire and i tossed it out the door in to the snow it was ruined i kept it for a few years in the basement. One day they were redoing the pavement on our road with one of those pavement recycling machines that grind up the old re heat the material and relay it in one constant step. So i asked the guy driving the machine what it would do to a very old computer he said lets find out. And well we did that old pc is now part of the road i grew up on mixed in to the pavement and as they always re do the road in the same way it will always be there. I fitting end to the machine. I also had a old leading edge 386 and a 486 one i loved the leading edge 486 case i reused it all the way up to a amd k6-2 350 at/atx built on a tyan trinity motherboard with 128mb ram. Leading edge made several pcs with these nice louvered air intakes nice looking machines snow white cases.

I miss many of my old computers from pre 2k and early 2k i wish i still had my old lian li case. Remember when we use to take the 5.25 inch bay covers and glue them to our cd and dvd roms to stealth our drives? I also had a industrial freezers thermometer and a new q bay amp i installed. I had the probe inside my case central to the main source of heat to monitor the case temps to make sure my airflow was not being obstructed worked great. Also let me know if there was any issues with my cpu cooling as well if case temp was 68 and cpu temp was 90 (temps in f) then it was obviously a problem that big of a delta at idle was a oh crap yank the plug deal back then LOL
 
My first computer was an Atari 800. Dad promised to match whatever I saved from my allowance + extra chores done over a 6 month span. He and mom surprised me with the Atari on my birthday. They even let me keep the $$ I saved. I used that computer almost every day from 8th grade through college.

Atari-800-Computer-FL.jpg
 
I did my first PC build because the local computer shop (desert sun computers in Las Vegas) was swamped and down a technical. They told me to go sit next to him at the work bench and he would answer any questions I had. I put a new motherboard into my old beige case, it was an ASUS P3BF slot one Intel with a Celeron 333. I got 425mhz out of it by running the FSB at an odd spec between 66 and 100mhz. I used that board for a long time and ended up handing it down to a friend who pushed it even further. It was gaming that got me into overclocking, trying to get better Quake and Half-Life performance. Back in those days you could walk into Best Buy and get the hot new 3D accelerator new at MSRP the day it came out. Lol, times sure changed.
 
FiveDollarBill said:
I did my first PC build because the local computer shop (desert sun computers in Las Vegas) was swamped and down a technical. They told me to go sit next to him at the work bench and he would answer any questions I had. I put a new motherboard into my old beige case, it was an ASUS P3BF slot one Intel with a Celeron 333. I got 425mhz out of it by running the FSB at an odd spec between 66 and 100mhz. I used that board for a long time and ended up handing it down to a friend who pushed it even further. It was gaming that got me into overclocking, trying to get better Quake and Half-Life performance. Back in those days you could walk into Best Buy and get the hot new 3D accelerator new at MSRP the day it came out. Lol, times sure changed.
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Now you can not even find a less popular card that is not scalped. Often times the scalpers buy the lower cards up then just do not list them for a few years and gouge on the higher end making mid range impossible to find to try and force people to buy the top of the line cards at extreme upcharges. Watch in about 2 years you will find intel b series cards at 1/4 the price they were on release.
 
A lot of experience around here!
Our first family PC was an 80086 running at 10MHZ. 360KB floppy and 20MB HDD.
4 color CGA, it was a horrible PC, and the dot matrix printer screamed, I'd close the door walk off and go outside. I found a maths coprocessor for it at a computer swap meet, which only bumped the speed up to 11MHZ, but it made a noticeble improvement lol
I was hoping for double speed since it was just as big as the CPU
I tried fitting memory expansion cards, but I eventually figured out being an 8 bit PC, anything more than 640K was an address larger than 8 bits.
The last build I did was 16GB which I thought was massive, but now even many GPU has more than that.
 
jarablue said:
I am 50 on the 23rd and have been into pcs since 1990 when I turned 15 years old. All console gaming before that. First pc of my own was a tandy 386 sx 25mhz in 1993. Jurassic Park came out that year and shit was magical back then. Staying up late geeking out on your pc back in 1993.....nothing even comes close to that nostalgia.
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This post definitely struck a cord. I'm a lot older and remember playing Leisure Suite Larry (the original) on a China Great Wall clone (386DX) in 1990. To prove your age you had to answer questions from the 1970s. That would definitely stump underage players with no Google, etc. Ken Williams FTW! :)
 
Yeah there was something in the air back in the late '80s to early and mid-90s. The Nostalgia is so strong for me, it literally made me never give up in life. Nor will I ever. It was just a fun time with a lot of good people around and a lot of happiness in society.

I remember the image viewer cshow software on my tandy in '93....that uhh...got a lot of use from my 18yo self lol. That and pkz204g. Good times. I used to dial up to a Wisconsin BBS from South Jersey. I did it for an entire month and then my phone bill came in and my aunt shrieked so loud from downstairs I thought a demon came through our dimension. BBS use after that came to a halt.
 
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While my first "experience" with computers was with an Apple IIe back in I think 1984 it wasn't till around my high school years that I looked at them in any way other than a word processor or something that played Oregon Trail lol. It was when my family got a IBM 486DX when I took an interest in them and would always be tinkering with it and trying to overclock it and remember constant crashes from me trying to eek out 80Mhz from the 66Mhz base.
 
My first overclock was 1997...my Pentium 150. Standard was 4.5x33 but I flicked the dip switches to 3x50 and it ran fine. I then probabaly upped it again but then I got a job in a IT team at work and then I had access to more computer gear than you could shake a stick at. We had all Compaq desktop PCs around 1998 to 2000. Most were running at 133 or 166Mhz. Any that came to me ended up OC'd to 166 or 200 as standard.
 
LukeTbk said:
was that a 1.5mhz overclock ?
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Totally! :LOL: Small steps. My first time and not a huge amount of info to dwell on, as the internet was still a bit youthful. But I did that cos it seemed a good idea to try a boost to the overall bus speed. I think the cooler was just 2 ounces of steel with a 30mm fan on it...

Thing is six months later I got a Gateway 200Mhz MMX desktop with this new thing called USB, free from work, which was nice. I gave the 150 to my Dad.
 
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