What got you into [H]ardware?

I

insanarchist

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Sep 3, 2004
Messages
1,387
Although I've been using computers since I was like 3, the day I got into computer hardware was when I was about 12 and my cousin gave me a computer for christmas. I opened it up and, lo and behold, it has 2 processors! (Abit BP6, dual 450 cellies) I just had to look it up on the internet and, hence-forth, I've been addicted :)

How about you?

edit: Also, how many of you still own/use your first computer?
 
my first job was at a local small computer store. the owner was very generous and basically let me take anything i wanted and put it on my account to pay for later. I didn't get a pay check the first year i worked there :).
 
My parentss bought a dell, I hated it when it lagged in CS1.6 and began to plan my graduation computer. And I deciced I would build it to learn some stuff.

Now I have it and love having a quality computer
 
Commodore AMIGA - Had to mod the NTSC / PAL converter to play imported games, in a Magazine I found what trace to cut on circuit board, had to try it, it worked!!! I think I was 12. Then on I've been modding
 
I watched my cousin play computer games when I was around 7 years old. I was completely hooked then and then soon got my first computer. I played games mostly, then I stopped playing as computer life got boring. However, it wasn't until I discovered internet at around age 11 or 12 and how addictive it was... it added much more "replay value" (heh) to computers.
 
Had a Intel 440bx with a 350 pII 350, still running at a friends house. Wanted to see what it could do(OC to 400 stable). Before that a pentium 75mhz? Slow with a 14400 baud modem, so I learned packet size etc., to tweak. Don't do much now, my current system is ok for what
I do, although I always test to see what the max fsb and mem timings are for fun. Someday I hope to play around with watercooling, right now I spend most of my time fixing older PC's with bad HD's and spyware. I come here to stay on top of what's on the edge! I built some AMD xp systems and liked the folding speed but didn't like multi tasking, seemed to lag a lot. However I've heard the multi cores fix this so I hope to test on my next system. Best thing I've learned is read and search the forums before you buy/whatever, all of you are an immense body of knowledge that fixes 98% of issues. The fun is figuring it out!
 
my friend got a ton of my friend's and I into computers and gaming. He started off with his own, and gradually we all got our own. I remember the first LAN they took me to. I also remember very first computer that I owned personally.

667 mghz Celeron
128mb SDRAM
Onboard Video
15" CRT
Logitech ball mouse
56k modem

pretty much the coolest computer ever. :p after that, it just kept giong and going on a rampant road of upgrading. :D
 
Got a Dell 5100 Laptop, possibly the most poorly constructed laptop of all time. After it melted the DIMM slot(yes, melted, you could no longer see the gold connectors, only plastic), they sent me a replacement 5150. The sound on that went, sent it in and they fixed it. Then the USB ports went, so it was either pay $600 for repairs or use a PCMCIA card. Between that and not being able to play any decent games and the constant issue of overheating(they used a regular p4 in the laptop), I decided on option 3. It was then that I started to feel that even I could build a computer that did better than these, so I found the [H]ardforum, and I did. I was always into computers, but it took the extra push from a crappy Dell to really get me into building them.
 
when i was 6, right after Win 3.1 came out, was using it and it crashed and I threw my old ass Epson 75mhz computer down the stairs.. it broke all apart and i felt bad about breaking it and was nervous about getting my ass kicked, so i picked up all the pieces and like halfass put it back together.. since my parents never used it, i spent like 2 weeks putting everything back in the right way.. since then.. i throw a computer down the stairs once a week.. :D

-Evil Juggalo
 
when I was young in my late teens "early 80s" my dad got me a Timex Sinclair 1000
Timex Sinclair 1000
Introduced: July 1982
Price: US $99.95
CPU: Zilog Z80A, 3.25MHz
RAM: 2K, 64K max
Display: 22 X 32 text
hooks to TV
Ports: memory, cassette
Peripherals: Cassette recorder
T/S printer
OS: ROM BASIC
I had a cassette recorder i used to save my basic programs on and it was hooked to a black and white 12" tv. this thing rocked. if i remember my dad got it at savon drugstore.
when bored i would just listen to the cassette recordings of my programs , kinda like modem screetch. yes i was high.
 
My First computer in 1995, i was like 11 or something... it was a Pentium 75MHz Packard Bell. Yuck. After a while, I wanted my internet to go faster. Because I didnt know any better, I had AOL 2.0 and 3.0 and a 14.4 Modem and thought my internet was slow because of my processor speed. So i bought one of them "quick chip" 3rd party processor things. And I opened up my machine, figured out how to pop in in there. Didnt notice the CPU under the heatsink because I didnt know what a Heatsink was, and I almost poped off a sodered chip on the Mobo that said "intel". WHo knows what it was, but I thought it was the CPU.

After that, i was lookin in there and was like wow, this shit is neat. Ever since then I have been hooked. And built my own computers ;)
 
My dad got me into it. His business always has a ton of 1-2 generation old hardware sitting around. Growning up, we had always had one computer at home, so when my dad mentioned getting me my own computer, I naturally got excited. He built it, I watch. Later that year, it was time for him to upgrade his business's hardware again (they are a technologically demanding company), so he asked if I would like to help. The IT dude built one while I watch, then helped me build one, then watched me build one myself. I had it after the 4th or 5th one. The rest is (will be?) history.
 
When I was 3 I had the uber dos gaming PC nobody could touch that. ;) I played games like Commander Keen (has anyone heard of that) on it. I got into consoles for the most part when I was older. There were still good games on the PC at the time though. I loved Command & Conquer, Warcraft I & II, and Doom. Although for the most part I played on the consoles. Then Half Life 2 came out... I wanted a good computer really bad.
 
I was always into computers, but my freshman year of college was when I becamse [H]ard. I took an HP Pavillion, gutted it, and put (most of) the components in a new case. I replaced the motherboard (so I wouldn't have a locked HP bios) and the video card (so I wouldn't have a GF4 MX), but everything else stuck around (except a CD-ROM that I broke in the process).

Then, I got [H]arder when I learned how to overclock. I started learning about cores, FSB, memory timings, etc. I'm an Information Sciences and Technology major, and I live on a floor with mostly other IST majors, yet I can still impress people with my "l33t skillz." That's empowering.

It's good to be [H]ard.

 
When I was 12 my parents spent $1200 on a Tandy Computer. Ever since then I have been playing with them. But what really got me into the [H] was when I learned you could water cool a computer. Honestly how cool is that! :D
 
I was obligated to become [H]. In the year 2000 my parents bought an HP as the family computer. Me being the ripe age of being able to understand and learn everything about computers made me the only one in the family able to maintain the machine. And upgrade after upgrade, that HP now does not look anything like it did back then.
 
I think it was 1993, I had a Packard Bell, Legend 450??? I think anyways, it had a 486dx, 8mb of RAM, and a very small hard drive, I don't remember what size. I was playing my first game of Doom ever, and the drive started clicking. Later that week my parents had bought a hard drive, and I put it in. I was 9 at the time, I later added more RAM for a wopping 16mb, and added a 32x CD-ROM. Eventually the PSU died, well the fan anyways, caused the PSU to overheat a couple of caps so it would turn on occasionally, but not always. I could never find a PSU that would fit in the case and it was proprietary, so I just stuck the thing in my loft.
My parents then purchased themselves a compaq which I hated from the get go. It had an AMD K6-2, 233mhz, 64mb of RAM, 8GB HD, and I spent many, many late nights playing Team Fortress Classic on a dial-up connection with this beast. That machine is now folding and serving as a smoothwall.
After this, I ended up buying another Packard Bell from a friend for $50 to tool around with, it had a pentium 266mhz, 8gb HD, 128mb of RAM 32x CD-ROM. The on-board video was much better with this, so I played TFC then CS with this comp on dial-up for quite some time, this was all during my sophmore year of high school (2000).
I could go through the rest of my previous rigs, but this post is long enough ;)
 
I started breadboarding digital circuts when I was six or seven. I followed the Bugbook series of books, using TLL logic chips and the little modules they provided to do experiments.
 
i had a friend in highschool that brought me to a lan back in 2000, thats prettty much where i got hooked
 
My parents bought an old 75mhz AST back when I was about 12, About 3 weeks after we got it I had the case opened up on the kitchen counter just looking at everything inside. My parents came home in the middle of all this and were VERY upset, they thought it would never work again lol. Ever since then, I've been addicted.
 
misterE said:
my first job was at a local small computer store. the owner was very generous and basically let me take anything i wanted and put it on my account to pay for later. I didn't get a pay check the first year i worked there :).
Click to expand...

Same with me. I worked at a local computer store and i tinkered with all the customers PC's and built my own from scratch and he showed me how. He also let me assemble high-end PC's which at the time was an XP3200+ and KT400 boards- I fried 2 of 'em in one day :D
 
I got into it when I bought my first computer, a Commodore Amiga 3000.
Upgraded the ram from 6megs to 20megs (18megs on the board and 2 megs on an extra SCSI controller card). This was when 8megs on a PC was the shit and no one believed I had 20megs.
Bought a PC case to mod into a small SCSI tower to house a couple of CD-Rom Drives.
I then added a Video Toaster 4000 card to the machine, this set me back $2,395.95 back in 93. That was the most expensive video card I ever bought and I bought it so that I could run LightWave 3D.

A year later, LightRave came out and allowed LightWave to run without the Toaster Card so I traded the Toaster for a complete 486DX2 50 PC since everyone had PC's and only a handfull of us had Amigas. I then bought a Picasso II Video Card for the Amiga for around $500 I think.

I eventually sold the Amiga and started to build my PC's.
At first it was cool to have the fastest processor and largest hard drives but then I just started to wait till the next generation of stuff came out and bought the slightly older parts cheaper, which in the long run saves you a ton of money. I actually purchased a Pentium 200MMX processor for about $500. :eek:
 
My first computer was Commodore 64 I received for Christmas in 1980-something, when they first came out. I even ran a BBS !!! (pre-internet). Well, the internet WAS around at that time, but it was ARPANET and used by the gov't.

Anyhow, got a Dell laptop(inspirion 5000e) in 2000. Graduated to a Dimension 8200 desktop in 2002. They then refused to release a bios update to allow 8200 users to utilize PC1066 RDRAM (it used PC800). Bought an 8250 (RDRAM capable) box from Ebay and Ebay'd my 8200. Got sick of the bugginess, resented the lack of control over the machine, limited bios, etc. Found [H]ardOCP, built first rig Jan 03, sold 8250 to a friend, re-built my rig a few times, watercooled, new case, built countless machines for friends and family. Sold the Dell laptop to a friend.

LOL and NOW I'm going for a Master's in Information Technology, so I can get PAID to be a gear geek!

[H] is the reason I got into building, particularly the forums.
 
Scroatdog said:
LOL and NOW I'm going for a Master's in Information Technology, so I can get PAID to be a gear geek!
Click to expand...

Watch out, I have a B.S. in IT and I'm actually a software engineer for Oracle now. How? I don't know, I did very little programming in school. I would rather be working with hardware, but I fear it wouldn't pay as much as software engineering :p
 
I wanted to see how far my 1GHz PIII Coppermine would go and how to do it. Unfortuantely I found out how far: Not very. Like everyone else, I got 1050MHz, but those 50MHz were significant. It allowed me to sit on Gigahertz Row at the early LAN Parties. A buddy of mine with an Athlon 900 was jealous :D

Nowadays, I sit on Terabyte Row.
 
My stepdad worked for Acer back in 1997-1998. He ships me free test computers since he works at the Test Lab department. I started to mess with the programs then of course it would crash cuz i would delete critical files. I had to reformat my HD several times and there is this one time that i had disconnect one of the 2nd HD and had no choice but to open the computer. From there on i started to fiddle around with the wirings and such. Then i worked for Staples for a couple of years and started buying components such as modems, HD, video card and that's how it started :D

I remember the Acer comp was a 200mhz Pentium II with no MMX, 64mb RAM, onboard video, and 10gb of HD space.
 
I think what got me into hardware was just my curious nature
I got my first pc back in 95, it was a Gateway with a 4gig Drive
And ever sence i had that pc i've been messin with hardware and building computers
Whats Sad, That box still runs :p
 
sitheris said:
My parents bought an old 75mhz AST back when I was about 12, About 3 weeks after we got it I had the case opened up on the kitchen counter just looking at everything inside. My parents came home in the middle of all this and were VERY upset, they thought it would never work again lol. Ever since then, I've been addicted.
Click to expand...

My parents still do that to me lol they come home and there dell is on its side and Im holding the ram and my dad starts yelling. Im like "IT NEEDS MORE RAM!!!"
 
started when i build my first compy... and the addiction never subsided... i keep on goin online and reading all the hardwares sites there are.
 
My first PC was DOS based and all i'd do was play games. After that was a Packard Bell 100mhz, 128mb ram, 6gb hd, on board video/sound(it costed >$1000 IIRC). I had Netcom with 28.8bps internet and a dot matrix printer, that thing was DAMN loud. Then I had AOL for a few months. That lasted me a few years until the HD crashed (didn't know much about comps then though).

My dad then bought us a new comp PIII 450 20gb HD, probably 256MB ram, on board sound w/ a Voodoo Banshee (i think). Then after the Banshee I replaced it with a TNT2 with like 32mb of ram to play more games on. First time I ever opened up the pc to look at the innards. When DSL came out, when it was Pacific Bell, the I started playing more games. After the comp was too slow for HL, I think it was the video card, I started looking for parts to upgrade.

I asked a friend who sold me on an AMD setup, I used to be an intel guy. Specs were as follow:

AMD Barton 2800+
Asus A7N8X Deluxe
2x512 GeiL value RAM PC2700
40GB WD HD
ATi 9700 Pro AIW
some crappy generic case w/ a window.

After I got the comp I started looking for sites about pc's. I stumbled upon the [H] and realized I paid too much for the PC :( It was like 600-700, which compared to today is nothing. After that I started doing my own upgrades/parts purchase with the help of the members here. Upgraded the stock heatsink to a SLK-900U, bought Mushkin LvLII's, SBLive soundcard, and such.

Didn't do much for a few years except read here and learn more and more and more. Last year I finally decided to step up to A64 with the 3000 winchester, msi neo4 play non-sli, g.skill, and the 6600gt. Now i'm onto my new setup, less then 6 months later, with the shuttle in my sig.

edit: all the upgrades to the barton and after were paid for by myself. dont want to seem spoiled :p
 
Finding out how expensive it was to ask someone else to build it for me i wanted to build my own becuase how cheap it is. And i did have fun doing it. And i just started to love working with computers.
 
My dad bought me my first computer 5 years ago. AMD 1600+, 256 mb pc2700 ram, and a geforce 2.

And, I still use it, though I upgrade the ram, hard drives, graphics card, and heatsink, added the sound card.

Eventually, I'll get a job, money, and buy a 939 or m2 system, but I'm going to use this baby until it dies. It's run so well so far... All it needs is a 9800pro and I'll game decently again.
 
Been playing with computers since I was 11, didn't really get into hardware until I was 21 (I'm 27 now).

Had a Gateway P2-350 that I managed to fry the motherboard on and Gateway wanted $400.00 to replace the mobo. Went out and bought a cheap motherboard, video card and sound card and rebuilt the computer. Then I discovered overclocking. That P2-350 did 466 when I was through with it. :D It all went downhill from there.

Next up was a Celly 466@581, then a P3-500@560, P3-550@620, Celly II 600@1133 watercooled w/Peltier, Athlon 800@920, Athlon 1200@1395, Athlon 2200@1.8, and finally the current Barton 2500+@2.04 that I have now. It's an addiction....
 
Gaming in the DOS days. You had to know your shit to get games going. Plus I had crappy machines that broke all the time. It was really games like Descent and Quake which pushed the boundries and needed better hardware. I'd change something, notice an improvement and before too long I was hopelessly addicted to computer hardware.
 
Sir-Fragalot said:
Gaming in the DOS days. You had to know your shit to get games going. Plus I had crappy machines that broke all the time. It was really games like Descent and Quake which pushed the boundries and needed better hardware. I'd change something, notice an improvement and before too long I was hopelessly addicted to computer hardware.
Click to expand...

Oh yeah. I have so many not so fond memories of my various boot disks...
 
Dude, descent was/is the shit. If I could find the disk, I'd install it now!

edit: Holy balls, they made a free port to OSX! And I have a G4! AAAAAAAAAAGH!!! MUST... RESIST.. URGE.. TO BUY... JOYSTICK!
 
I grew up in the 80's with computers in school, eventually got my parents to buy a Commodore 64 in the late 80's, and got hooked from there. Later on getting a used IBM PS/2 (10mhz :eek), and eventually getting newer machines up until I got my last prebuilt, a Pentium 166. With that machine I had figured out how everything worked and then started building my own.

I still have my Commodore 64, C128, and IBM PS/2 that got me into computing, along with my Atari 5200 & 2600 that got me into gaming.
 
insanarchist said:
Dude, descent was/is the shit. If I could find the disk, I'd install it now!

edit: Holy balls, they made a free port to OSX! And I have a G4! AAAAAAAAAAGH!!! MUST... RESIST.. URGE.. TO BUY... JOYSTICK!
Click to expand...
Descent was the shit ... anyway they made a VIRGE DX MAC OS8/9 version in the day ... anyway If there's one damn game I miss on PCs . its Descent!!!
 
well, i used the tandy 1000, then 286/486/p2/p3

and hten my dad bought us an athlon 950 gateway machine for the kids. i loved that thing, learned so much from it. i was never allowed to do shit to their machines, so when i got the one for us, i went apecrazy on it.

i have hte motherboard hanging on my wall, as it was a gigantic peice of shit and gave me SO MANY PROBLEMS. but i learned lots from it, so whatever. it only became a pain in my ass when it just wouldnt fucking work when i needed it to be stable. it was replaced with an asus a7v133 which is running strong in my brothers machine now :)
 
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