[DreamReaver]

While I was looking for something I came across, the receipts for my first custom built computer way back in 1998. I have had computers before then but never got one custom built till this one and still one of my all time favourite builds.



Processor: AMD K6-2 300
Hard-drive: 6.4gb Hard-drive

CD-Rom: 36x CD-Rom
Floppydrive: 120mb SuperDiskDrive
Soundcard: AWE 64 Soundcard
Videocards: AGP 8mb graphics card, think it was an intel.
2 x 12mb Voodoo2 Creative Cards in SLI



The machine rocked and I got Unreal to show off how good the twin voodoo2s where.


Fond memories, shame I don't have it anymore.


How times have changed.


Anyone else remember there first custom built computer or most memorable computer?

[Callandor]

My first and most memorable custom built computer was an AMD too, an AMD Athlon to be exact, can't remember how fast it was but it had a V3800 Magic graphics card, onboard sound and I remember I got it with Turok 2: Seeds of Evil and Xtreme G 2.

I didn't build it myself, we got it from a workshop in some South African city, can't remember which one now and I loved that computer to pieces. It was my first computer that had a subwoofer, it had 2.1 surround sound. Ahh sweet memories.

[Dyre Straits]

Well, my very, very first "computer" was a Commodore VIC-20. I'll never forget that one.

But, probably the most memorable one was the "Hard Copy Fax Machine" I intended to buy from Circuit City back in the early 90s.

I used to own and run a construction/remodeling business (for over 20 years) here in the Metro Atlanta area. My hearing loss had gotten worse and I was needing a better way to communicate with clients. This was all prior to the huge advancements made with the Internet and Email.

So, I stopped by Circuit City one afternoon and inquired about buying a hard copy fFAX machine. I didn't like the heat transfer type of roll paper that was most common and wanted something more durable.

I found that a decent one was going to cost me around $800 USD. Ouch!

But, the salesman mentioned that I could get a PC that had a modem and a built-in FAX program -- as well as many other additional features and programs for just a couple hundred dollars more.

So, my "Hard Copy FAX Machine" ended up being an AST DX-33 PC.

[dj_stick]

would either be my Pentium 2 133mhz, or my AND K7 750mhz
the pentium was my first comp, and managed to blow up and replace the motherboard on it twice, without even checking the manual (not bad for an 10 yo)

the K7 was my first system after that, once I knew what I was doing - managed to overclock it "by accident" playing with the jumper switches

[Jac]

Easy answer

The ZX Spectrum



Still an iconic design IMO, to the point where someone has put a modern computer into the shell of one for that retro appeal. I loved the rubber keys that made those clicks when you typed. I can remember programming kaleidoscope like patterns on it in BASIC. The only thing that annoyed me about it was it's graphical limitations - you could only have two colours per block of 12 (?) pixels. This meant that your character sprite would change colours when walking over a coloured background. Or the programmers just made the games in monochrome. A mate had an Amiga which had 256 full colour display so I was a bit jealous.

Bought my 1st PC in about 95. A 486 SX25 with about 4mb of ram and a 20mb hard drive. Cost me nearly a £1000. I haven't bought an entire rig since then, it's just evolved over time to what I have now

[Kizo]

First PC ever (I'm not young, just wasn't into this computer thing until 2002 ):
Athlon 64 3200+
1GB Ram
Radeon 9600XT

Bought it as soon as A64 was available here

[jandarsun8]

My first machine was a 486DX50 with Win 3.1 but the first machine I had built was an Intel 233MMX, 64 megs of ram, Diamond Pro 2 meg vid card and Voodoo 2 12 meg 3D card, Sound Blaster 16, 2 gig hd and Win 95B.

I remember the specs on it because playing Might and Magic on it required you to run a program called Mo-slo in order to slow the CPU down to play the game and Duke Nukem was the first game that I had ever networked and got me into setting up networks as a career.

[Judas]

first one i built i actually have most of all the main components back on my shelf here at the shop..

it's the first one i built and purchased ... although i had a limited budget and top it off, i had a very limited selection of parts.

The first part i purchased as an MSI Slot A AMD motherboard with 3 SDram slots, the amd chipset, 2x AGP. Along with an AMD Slot A 600mhz CPU

Running at the time only 256mb of ram which was a PILE of ram at the time (june 1999)

I got it with my first ever 3D accelerator, a Voodoo Banshee 16mb (creative card)

Top it off with a 6.4gb Seagate hardrive (which later on would fail repeatedly for me.. but not for the guy that we bought it from)...

It came with a shitty sound card which i didn't pick and would be problematic.. we reused the 8x CD-rom drive out of the peice of shit compaq that was purchased in 97. We also reused the keyboard mice nad monitor.. a small 15 inch with max 1024x768@ 60hz.

The case was a generic hunk of crap... but did the job for awhile even if it was a pain in the ass to do any work in it due to the psu being mounted on the side blocking everything related to the ram and cpu.

Almost emediately i snagged the first ever Motherboard with not only ATA 100 capability, but with RAID support.. and to this day i think it's still one of the best, it was the Highpoint Technology 360 series chip. The board was a Abit KA7-100 motherboard..... still got the sucker behind me.... That little thing has made miles... and was netorious years later for bad caps, but even in my case, while using the computer about 3 years on, would be sitting there and all of a sudden, POP, and the machine kept on running. Oventually i retired the board and moved back to the MSI board due to the bad cap issue, shortly after moving back to the msi board, i sold the machine all souped up with 512mb of ram and a sweet radeon 7000 video card as well as a 20gb hardrive to my very first customer that wanted a cheap little machine. Back when Yamaha was still making the best CD-RW drives with DiscT@oo.

before that i had built another machine around a duron 700 with a Voodoo 3 3000 that i think still to this day, is one of the world record holders for 3DMark2001se.... i was receiving emails every once in awhile up until futuremark removed the 3dmark2001se from the orb. People asking me how in the fuck i got so many 3Dmarks with such a shit video card and cpu. Geometry Assistance in the 9.xx Community driver betas was stellar (enabled Hardware T&L on the voodoo). Scores without would be sub 3000, scores with put it up over 5000 or more i think my highest was just shy of 7000. Another factor was the fact that i couldn't find a single overclocking program that could get me any higher of a clock on the card, the chip was amazing, most people couldn't get much above 166mhz stock clock, meanwhile i had my pegged at 220mhz, which was the MAXIMUM that the overclockers available could provide. Any other overclocker that "claimed" to go higher just couldn't, and wouldn't.

That voodoo was later replaced by a radeon 7000 and then a Kyro 2 at which point i held onto that card as long as i could... because jesus, that thing was and still is amazing, Beating out video card with 3 or 4 times the power. Nothing was better then a kyro 2 that not only could match a Geforce 2 GTS or even Ultra, but the kyro 2 that managed to muscle with the Geforce 3 occasionally.

Beautiful card. I miss it. I really wish PowerVR would produce through the help of intel.. another stellar enthusiast card.. even though the kyro 2 was label as a low-midrange card but outperformed the top end.

[BiGBrOwNPimpsta]

800mhz AMD Athlon with 128mb ram and a rage 32mb card... came onto this site with that and later upgraded to an audigy 1 and geforce mx420 (hated that card). huge upgraded from my 233mhz P1 MMX

[Cow_160483]

Wow Pimpstar i had the same first PC, 800mhz AMD Athlon with 128mb ram and Nvidia 4400 64mb card blazing graphics lol

[Takaharu]

Most memorable? Well, the system specs I can't remember for the first few PCs I've had; I was rather computer-illiterate for years then I went through a few PCs (I "was" quite power-hungry) but I don't recall the specs of most of them. I did have a 20GB Maxtor for many, many years, however. That was one heck of a harddrive (98SE, 2000, ME, Xp, it had them all at some stage or another).
So... I'd have to go with a Q9550 overclocked to 3.2GHz (got to 3.4 but it wasn't a very good oc) with 2GB DDR2 800MHz and a trail of a Sapphire X1950XTX, two 3870s, a 4870, two single-slot 4870s (yep, all Sapphire) and, I believe, a GTX 295 (the brand of which I can't recall).

[Tyrsonswood]

Most memorable......

386-40 on a DASH Motherboard that had 32MB of RAM and 32k of onboard WB cache with a math co-processor. Add to that an early 4 drive IDE caching controller card with 3 Maxtor drives in RAID 0....... I had just shy of 1 GB of drive space between two partitions..... This was '91-'92, nobody had that much HD space. (well, actually I did, I had a 486SX with an ESDI 1GB drive as a server... But that's another story.) I don't remember the specs on the Diamond VGA card nor the brand of the 15" monitor but this thing flew through the original Doom game, even modded versions of Doom, and ate the early 486's for lunch.

It was still running when the monitor gave up the ghost in 2000 and sadly went to the dump in 2004..... Wish I still had it actually.

[BiGBrOwNPimpsta]

Originally Posted by Cow_160483

Wow Pimpstar i had the same first PC, 800mhz AMD Athlon with 128mb ram and Nvidia 4400 64mb card blazing graphics lol

4400 was respectable... the 800 thought i dont think could utilize the performance. but my most memorable card is the 9700 pro.

[temeteus82]

MY Canon 8088
I had huge 20 MB hdd and 1 MB of RAM

[Tyrsonswood]

My XT system had 1MB of RAM too..... did yours do the "phantom floppy drive" deal?

[Cow_160483]

Originally Posted by BiGBrOwNPimpsta

4400 was respectable... the 800 thought i dont think could utilize the performance. but my most memorable card is the 9700 pro.

That 4400 was a decent card for its day but my most memorable card was my X1600 pro donated it to a friend recently

[BlueMak]

Most memorable...Not one, but 4.
In no particular order:
My first owned computer, an Atari ST back in the Fall of 1987.
A friend's computer, an Amstrad CPC 464.
A Multitech PC in 1984-85 I had access to in a...let's call it "college". Among the first computers I ever used. I still remember the loud but very satisfying clicky keyboard. I wish they still made them.
Oh yeah, the fourth, an uknown (I can't remember) PC that had a built in monitor, it was an unusual design, all black in colour and I think it was french. A cousin had it for a while. Very weird system. That was in late 80's IIRC.

[shALKE]

P3 700Mhz
256mb ddr3
Vodoo 3 card
40GB

[synthesis204]

My current one (:

<------

Definitely is my child ♥

[OmegaRED]

While it was actually my 2nd PC, my most memorable would be my first custom built computer in 2002 because:

-It turned out to be my first gaming PC, sold my new PS2 to buy a Geforce MX200 card for it.
-I learned how to maintain my PC hardware and troubleshoot (more on that in a sec)
-It was an Athlon XP 1600 with 256mb of ram and it ran Windows Xp which my HP could barely do.
-It lasted a long time and saw several gpu, memory and cpu upgrades before it was retired 3-4 years later.
-It was the PC I was using when I registered on Hardware Heaven! If not for my various driver problems I might not be here now.

[crowTrobot]

My Abit BP6 build which was my first custom assembled system.

Greatest motherboard ever made.

[jwrealing]

So many, yet each and every one was memorable. Should I mention my Vic 20,
C-64, Amiga 500+, Amiga 2000, Pentium 133 or the 233. Or was it my AMD 1000 TB. Or is it my build I have now.

No it would be my AMD 1000 TB, MB ECS K7S5A, SB 16, 10 gig HD. With a Mod BIOS from OCworkbench.com. I was able to get my 1000 TB up to 1.5 and stable with a Volcano 5 cooler, it ran with out any problems. Oh I did have to put in several 120mm case fan, which meant I had to mod my case. Plus I did it with a 300 watt PS No name that when you looked at the specs. it should not have worked. I did replace it with Antec 450 PS. Only because I got a good deal on the 450.