What was the first computer you ever built?

Michael Daly, Crewzan, Nenu have me beat. My first "real" computer that I built happened during the summer of 1992. I was 13 yrs old and I remember vividly that was the summer I had MANY firsts (3rd base, smoking, weed, learned how to "take care of myself", etc) - Wolf 3D had come out and my aunt was sporting it on her 386DX-40. I had all manner of Commodore stuff (vic-20/C-64/C-128) and my neighbor had an Apple 2GS she let me play with (3rd base was with her equal aged daughter :) ) -

My friend and my cousin came up with and executed a plan to get the newly released Sound Blaster "$199+"!!! from the local radio shack. (This was the first real "sound card" btw) - 8 bit 22khz - fm synthesis and VOICE!!!! We ripped it off one night right before they closed, just walked out with it. My cousin, friend, and I played wolf 3d non-stop. We were 37337 access at a BBS and found the full version all 6 maps of Wolf3d and it only took 2 days to download at 9600 baud.

Well we fought a LOT over it and my aunt told me that I couldn't come over and play anymore since I chucked a matchbox car at my cousin the night before over Wolf3d.

2 weeks later there was a computer show at the local college, and I took the bus there with my $60 or so that I saved up from allowances and mowing grass. I bought 2 XT IBM PC's - 8088's - none of that 8086 garbage, I got 16 bit registers!!! No hard drives, but they both had DS/SD 360k floppies 5 1/4's that they claimed worked, and BOTH had the Model M keyboard.

I also picked up a couple 10MB and a 20MB MFM/RLL drives and a controller. I also nabbed a 1200 baud modem. This was old stuff even for 1992. I took a cab home and had enough to tip the driver for helping me load my boat anchors. It took several days and I eventually found out that one of the cpus was bad and one of the memory chips was bad, but I ended up with a fully functional XT with 2 10MB MFM's and 2 360k floppies! I loaded up dos 3.3 (the last version compatible with the 8086's) and found a terminal program and I was off to bbs land! My dad happened to have an old CGA monitor that I could use, but I had to resolder the connector. No biggie.

So:

8088 - 4.77mhz
1MB RAM (who needs more than that?!) - of which of course only 640K available.
2x10MB MFM FULL HEIGHT (thats 2x CDROM drives in height) hard drives (with a FULL LENGTH MFM HDD CONTROLLER!!!!)
1200 baud modem (almost full length)
CGA graphics
2x 360k floppies.

No the case only held 2 full height drives so I never put the case on it. This started a trend that lives until today - no case evar on my pcs.

I suppose I could go earlier, and since I hacked together 2 broken commodore 64's into my working one - But I think this thread is about PC's.
 
..Wow, I feel like such a noob ;) Then again, I am. The first computer I ever built... was a month ago :p

I do remember everything about our old ones, because I loved computers when I was young but my parents wouldn't actually let me mess with hardware. Our first one (Which is still down in the basement along with about 4 other old desktops and giant CRT monitors) was 133mhz and had 16MB of RAM. Along with the 14.4k modem and our incredibly crappy old dialup service, Netcom. I think the HDD had about 125MB of space on it. This was when I was 10 so it was back in 1995 then. I've honestly spent all of my free time on computers since we got that first one.

Good times.. I just wish I had been able to build my own back then, or at least upgrade our systems.
 
bobdole369 said:
summer of 1992.

newly released Sound Blaster "$199+"!!! (This was the first real "sound card" btw) - 8 bit 22khz - fm synthesis and VOICE!!!!

8088's - none of that 8086 garbage, I got 16 bit registers!!!

10MB and a 20MB MFM/RLL

<a lot snipped out>
Click to expand...

I think you mean Sound Blaster Pro if it was newly released in 1992. Also the 8086 was the superior processor of the two, but they both were the same 16-bit processor inside, just had different sized data buses feeding them. (8086 -16 bit data bus 8088 - 8 bit data bus).

I might be wrong on this point, but aren't MFM and RLL two different recording techniques?
 
Built way back in 1999

AMD 700MHz Athlon (slot A)
Gigabyte (something something dark...side) 7 something. (it was the time that manufacturers were scared of showing support for AMD's new CPU)
256MB SDRAM
Geforce 256 Pro
Sound Blaster Live!
56k Modem
16x DVD ROM
Creative DXR3 DVD decoder
27.3 GB IBM Deskstar
Chenbro Mid tower (the ones with the beige case that came apart with the undoing of one screw and semi transparent blue front panel)
Creative 4.1 surround speakers
 
Outamyhead said:
Built way back in 1999

AMD 700MHz Athlon (slot A)
Gigabyte (something something dark...side) 7 something. (it was the time that manufacturers were scared of showing support for AMD's new CPU)
256MB SDRAM
Geforce 256 Pro
Sound Blaster Live!
56k Modem
16x DVD ROM
Creative DXR3 DVD decoder
27.3 GB IBM Deskstar
Chenbro Mid tower (the ones with the beige case that came apart with the undoing of one screw and semi transparent blue front panel)
Creative 4.1 surround speakers
Click to expand...


That's really similar to my current server.
Athlon 700 "Classic"
Gigabyte 7IX motherboard.
256MB PC-100 (although I have 384 installed, high density PC-133 FTL :rolleyes:)
the rest is all different though.
 
Pentium Pro. Dont remember the MHZ. AWE 32, the god of all sound cards, it made warcraft 2 sound so great. Win95 does run on a 486. After my build and I learned how to do things on the comp, I put 95 on my old 486. Worked great.
 
Went through a lot of pre-builts before I finally took the plunge on a self built.

Dual Athlon MP 1900+
Tyan Tiger MP (S2460) Motherboard
512MB DDR ram
GeForce 6200
Sound Blaster Live!
30GB WD Hard Drive (x2)

Was quite a step up from the Compaq Deskpro with a Duron 750MHz I had before it.

 
First computer was a HP Pentium II 400mhz.

First built computer was:

AMD Duron 850mhz
Aopen AK77-Pro (or something like that)
2x 256mb PC-133
Western Digital 20gb
Diamond Stealth S540 eXtreme 32mb

I bought all the parts on ebay, put the sucker together and worked like a champ.
 
800mhz pentium 3
intel board
dont remember how much ram.
power supply was probably 200 watts and that would get laughed at today.
 
first computer i ever built was...

AMD Athlon X2 5200+
2x1gb Amp X DDR2 RAM
asus m2n-sli deluxe motherboard
xfx 7950GT extreme

heh.. wasn't that long ago at all. i think i'm obsessed with building/updating
my gear.. it's taken quite a toll on my wallet.

i really miss my xfx card.. passively-cooled, still hella powerful..
 
I upgraded several before this but the first computer I built totally from scratch was a Gigabyte GA-5AX motherboard with a K6-2 500 proc. It was right after the 500's were first released and it was a sweet system that lasted me a good while. I bought a K6-2+ 450 mobile chip later and oc'ed it to 600mhz. Ended up selling it to a friend with the original 500 back in it (sold the K6-2+ chip on Ebay for a very good price) and just got it back last week from him when it finally died when the power supply died and took everything out with it. It was still being used everyday until last week!! It's laying on my desk right now - LOL. He was wanting me to just fix it but I talked him out of that. I put a newer used AM2 motherboard/cpu/memory combo in it that I got off the forums to get him back up and running. I forget what I paid for the parts originally but as long as it lasted it was sure some money well spent. :cool:
 
First one I built was:

AMD XP1800+ Socket A
Soltek 75DRV4 KT266A (died in 14 months from bad caps)
256MB PC2700 Samsung Ram
ATI Radeon 8500 AGP
Lite-On Combo DVDRom/CDRW IDE
40GB Maxtor D740X HDD IDE
Floppy and Zip100 Drives (same floppy in current system)
56K USR Modem
Sparkle 300W PSU (had a burned resistor)
Beige/Blue ATX Case (current case)

First Soltek mobo arrived DOA. Otherwise it ran fine for all of 14 months with Win98SE.
 
Altair. 1975. Heathkit that cost me 2 summers of grass-cutting money. Perf board, caps, resistors, some logic chips, an Intel 4004, a little solder, a handful of DIP switches and LEDs, and a lot of wire-wrapping goin' on.

Those were the days, folks...
 
my first system was a socket A atholn 1800 athlon xp on a now non exisitant motherboard company Soltek with a VIA chipset 512MB of 133Mhz SDRAM with a 30GB HDD, 1x Lite-on CD-RW AND 1x sony DVD-ROM and a geforce 2 winfast still got it and is still running
 
A barebones socket A TBird 700MHz system

I feel embarassed remembering it... I never figured out how to get it to work :\
 
I think it was the 1998 time frame, my final year in middle school. Upgraded my K6-2 266 Craptiva to this:

Celeron 400a @ 450
ABit ZM6 mobo
384MB PC100 SDRAM
Aureal Vortex SQ2500
PCI Creative Labs Blaster TNT -> AGP GeForce2 GTS 32MB
LianLi case - can't remember the name but it's probably their most popular case ever, I'm using one at work right now actually.

I loved playing on that thing. The CPU probably could have been pushed to 6x83=500MHz, as most Celerons topped out there at the time, but I had a stock heatsink and it didn't like it. That soundcard was also the reason why I repeatedly got called for cheating in the beta CS days (4.6 ftw). Ah the power of A3D, how I miss thee. I eventually gave that PC to my folks who retired it in 2003 I think, but I kept the soundcard and the TNT as a PCI backup.
 
I went through an Acer Pentium 75MHz retail setup around 1995 doing all sorts of tinkering around like upgrading the CPU to a Pentium 120MHz and changing out the ~800MB hard drive for a whopping 1.5GB! :eek: This got my lips whet before asking a family friend to help custom build a Pentium II 400MHz machine around 1998. After tinkering around with that for a few years I ordered the parts for my first build around 2002 that comprised of:

AMD Thunderbird 1.4GHz
2 X 256MB Crucial RAM
FIC AD11 motherboard
Sound Blaster 128
OEM TNT Ultra 32MB
Antec 400W PSU

A lot of the parts were recycled from the Pentium II build and various other upgrades I had accumulated beforehand, but man was that thing fast for its day! I literally had the fastest machine out of all of my friends at the time; and over the next few years I upgraded to a Radeon 9800 Pro, replaced the RAM to top out at 1GB (FIC motherboard only had two RAM slots) as the Crucial's eventually died, added the first generation 100GB Western Digital 7200 RPM hard drive, and eventually upgraded to a XP 2000+ (less than $40 upgrade thanks to Ebay :D) only months before I built my current setup.

So in my 13+ years of computing I've really only built two systems of my own, but have gone on to help others do a few builds as well. The addiction of wanting to play with new hardware is too expensive for my wallet at the moment, but I love the joy of getting to play with new stuff any chance I get. :D
 
My buddy and I started off in 1992 with a 286-12MHz and a Winchester 10MB HDD, which was failing, so we slapped in a 20MB HDD and started up a dos-based BBS with the 1200-baud modem. I don't remember the RAM size, maybe 8 or 16MB.
 
I had a 486/33 at work that I upgraded to a 486/66 in 1993 or 1994. Then ordered a Micron P133 without a video card and installed a Matrox Millenium I ordered separately, in Sept. 1995 when Win95 came out.

I think the first full builds I did for myself was a P200 MMX, then P2-300, Celeron 400 oc'd to 500, P3-550E, 700 AMD Tbird, 1200 AMD, Athlon 1600, Athlon 1800+, Athlon 2200+, Athlon 2800+, A64/3000, A64/4200+ X2, E4300 oc'd to 3.1ghz, and currently an E6850. Each system probably got morphed into the next and rebuilt several times in-between.
 
I managed to pull together enough money for some Heathkit test equipment in the early 70's. As for computers I never had the money, so I had to wait until someone would actually pay me to do it for them. That took until 1980. It was based on a Z8000 with 64K RAM.
 
What a great thread, quite an eye opener of what things used to be.

My first machine was a ginormous steel tower w/ a 486 DX-33.
8 megs of ram
256k memory VESA video card
1x CD-ROM (yeah the kind that poped out by pushing it in then it opened upward)
255 meg HD
5.25 and 2.5 flooooopy
14" Tatung crt
Yes sir I was flyin high....fastest one in school :)
Oh yeah, and the color panasonic tractor feed baby. May as well of been daisy wheel.
Then I got good grades and scored a sound blaster 16 followed by 32 megs of ram total,
and buckle up everyone....upgrade to 512K video memory !!! I was a man let me tell you when I got to pop in those IC's :cool:
By then i was long bitten by the computer bug and manged to up her to a dx66 and a 540 meg hard drive. Just weren't enough lawns to mow and driveways to shovel :D

Now I sit here w/ a busted ass 780i and a qx9650. Oh where have the good times gone.
 
The first computer I ever built was my third computer. Celeron 300A baby.

Good Times.
 
Mobo: Asus P4P800 SE
CPU: Intel Pentium 4 2.80 Ghz (Prescott, Runs very hot) w/ Zalman cooler
Ram: 2GB Corsair
GPU: ATI Radeon 9800 PRO
Sound Card: Creative SB Audigy 2 ZS
PSU: Changed 3 times now..get what you pay for :p
 
Bbq said:
Back in the day, we used to have a thing called sundials. Amazing invention, really. Baffled many people..

:p
Click to expand...

Back in my day, all we had we're some sticks and dirt. If you wanted the time you had to use your imagination and draw a clock in the dirt using your sticks, then you had to estimate the amount of time since your last meal and draw the hour hand. If you were feeling pretty confident about yourself that day you would also estimate a 'minute hand' as well :D.
 
My first build was in 1989. It was a 286-16MHz + full size AT motherboard, Hercules compatible MGA card, 1MB memory, floppy, RLL 30MB hard drive all in a heavy thick steel case and amber monochrome screen. I not much later got a Plantronics compatible 16 color video card that could do "CGA" and better on monochrome screens. Even my first VGA monitor a little later was grayscale monochrome. :p

I was working for a medium sized computer vendor at the time fixing returned systems and doing Xenix/Unix installations. I could get old hardware from them cheap or free (out of warranty/"broken"). In 1989 was the first time I had overclocked PC CPUs by replacing a crystal on the motherboard. Too bad a soldering iron was needed until the motherboard makers wised up and started putting in sockets. Remember how crystals used to be zip tied down? :cool:
 
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