You kids have it so easy these days in building a computer....

[Arct1c0n]

You kids these days have it so damn easy in building computers. It's utterly amazing how much has changed when 14 years ago at this time, I was spending hours and hours between my college IT classes figuring out why the hell Intel was getting its ass kicked by this "AMD" company and why spending the money on this new "Geforce 3" was such a big deal compared to previous versions that ran Quake 2 just fine but Unreal squashed that.

 

 

Back when I wanted to build my first computer in late 2000/early 2001 as a  young lad of 20 *God I feel old now* I had to go through a rirtual only other old, get off my lawn farts can understand now 

 

 

1. There was no Youtube, social media, flash art to give you visual refrences on how to put stuff together. You went and got a "Build Your computer Bible " Version 28 book from Barns an Noble and marked pages

 

 

 

 

2. You didn't have price search engines, you opened up multiple WINDOWS of etailers and compared prices side by side

 

 

 

3. You spent SLOWLY modem dialing across  forums for hours on end dealing with "veteran builders" who kept ignoring you

 

 

 

 

4. You had to still learn to use jumpers on your IDE drives correctly, or no booting for you. And God forbid if you bend one of the IDE pins

 

 

 

 

 

5. Make sure you didn't crush your new Athlon GPU die by putting too much pressure on heatsink

 

 

 

 

6.  USB was VERY MUCH "Plug and Pray" back in those days...

 

 

 

 

 

7.  Driver downloads took half an hour on times on dial up modems

 

 

 

 

 

 

8. BIOS'es were still big Blue and white screens of fear.  Good luck configuring boot up devices if you didn't understand with the included manual 

 

 

 

 

 

9. LED lighting? Hah, didn't exist. You spent good money on a cold cathode to show of your pimped rig through the window YOU YOURSELF cut and installed

 

 

 

 

 

10.  Dual CPUs?  On a single die? NO no, they had their own sockets. If you had a dual cpu setup, you were a farking god among men

 

 

 

 

11. Overclocking was a true russian roulette game, with a mis firing gun.  You would spend hours on forums trying to get detailed information on what BIOS settings to tweak and NOT to touch. There was no preset and "forget" oveclocking, let alone Windows versions

 

 

 

 

12. Boot to windows over USB? Whats that? 

 

 

 

 

 

13. If your Windows key didn't take for whatever reason, have fun spending half an our on hold with microsoft. 

 

 

 

 

14. Is your Soundcard or add on NIC card *most mobo's didn' thave onboard LAN* not working or crashing system? You got to play the PCI slot swapping and reinstalling gaming to find which one was the culprit

 

 

 

 

 

15. All in one, prebuilt water cooling kits for $100? Pffffaa bwaa haa!! You had to spend $300 or more from DangerDen on DIY kit with tubing like garden hoses and pray to god your seals held on your waterblocks and self made reserviors. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

16. Downloadable ISO's? Hah, you went to the store and bought your copy of Windows 98SE or Windows 2000 if you were a really rich pimp and prepared for hours long install with the CDROM drive spinning away

 

 

 

 

 

 

17. Pre painted and sweet looking cases with good airflow? HAAA!!! Nope, you broke out the spray paint cans, the dremel and jigsaw and MADE your case look good and cool well. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

18.   24-30 inch flat screen LCDs? Oh no, you were a pimp if you could afford a quality, 20" flatscreen Sony Trinitron that weighed 40 pounds that you lugged to LAN parties. If you were poor, you bought Viewsonic 19'' CRT monitor.

 

 

 

 

 

19. If your dial up 56k modem was getting you downloads speeds of around 33 kbytes a second, God was smiling on you.

 

 

 

 

 

20. Was your case getting to hot with that AGP graphics card and multiple hard drives?  You had to make your own blowhole, jigsaw style!  Or get real creative....

 

 

 

 

 

21. Presleeved power supply cables and SATA cables? Haa!!!  What are those?

 

 

 

 

 

22. If you couldn't afford a $300 CD burner, you got a Iomega Zip drive.

 

 

 

23. You wanna listen to your Blink 182 music CD in full digital? Be sure you have this cable installed

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So be thankful you little digital rascals of what you have today. Now get off my lawn....   

 

 

And after some googling, I actually found a archieved image of my VERY FIRST computer build back in May of 2001 with my very first case modding project based off the Enlight 7237 case which was vey popular back in the day. Wow....the feels....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[TheSLSAMG]

I have to say, that res is fucking brilliant.

 

Also, I don't see how his tone is "too condescending". It's obviously written in a whole "you kids these days" comedic sense?

[minibois]

Back in my day we didn't have colored Motherboards that told you where what header belongs!

You just had to get out the manual! (yeah I know, paper!) and look where it should be!

 

Windows wasn't that easy to install and pretty much everything was just hard to put in and out!

I like how PC building has become easier  

[WinNut]

I still know how to build a retro rig with IDE pins and Socket 7 with the small arm.

[Interfectorem]

Condescending much?

[Arct1c0n]

I have to say, that res is fucking brilliant.

 

I have pics of my water cooling setup almost identical to that, I had a smaller tupperware container and different radiator that was cheaper

[Arct1c0n]

Condescending much?

 

 

It's a joke, light up Francis

[Guest]

It's a joke, light up Francis

 

Someone's mad at your use of 'kids' 

[Interfectorem]

It's a joke, light up Francis

Yes. Sorry I fail to see through sometimes.

[SeriouslyMikey]

Just read the manual. Nothing is hard if you read the instructions. 

[DevilishBooster]

Just read the manual. Nothing is hard if you read the instructions. 

Yup. RTFM.

[Nuluvius]

Yes those were indeed the days...

[RedSphyxis]

Condescending much?

@Arct1c0n tone is a bit too condescending you could have just said cut the tone down a bit.

 

Let's just be clear on one thing though

 

We may have things easier these days but that's technology and it's not our fault that it's growing exponentially and making our lives better. But that doesn't mean this generation's builders are lesser. We also give all our mind and passion into it we just have the advantage of better technology on our side.

 

but hey you're also using that advantage today right?

[Dabombinable]

Yeah.... not every one runs a modern computer you know. I had to teach myself how to build a computer by working with old ones, and then some of the HDD had jumper configs that were different every single time-even between the same model HDD.

[Kyuubixchidori]

ah. i have a stack of good old IDE drives. 

 

still work to. gotta love early 2000 tech

[flibberdipper]

That Y2K Gaming PC video is awesome.

[TheSLSAMG]

ah. i have a stack of good old IDE drives. 

 

still work to. gotta love early 2000 tech

Same here, four 40GB Seagates and a Caviar 80GB. Had an "Ultra DMA" 120GB WD, but it kicked the can a few months back.

[Kyuubixchidori]

Same here, four 40GB Seagates and a Caviar 80GB. Had an "Ultra DMA" 120GB WD, but it kicked the can a few months back.

I still have my first computer sitting in my closet. got it before I could read. it has a 40 gig in it, no idea if that one works still

[Andrewf]

Instant gratification is what the modern world has been driving towards for hundreds of years now. Those of you who went through the trouble to build your own PC when it was damn near impossible, we applaud you. I agree things are only getting easier and more accessible for everyone, but that's the point of moving forward. I'm thankful to be alive now where it's so easy to do these things. I have much respect for you and people like you who were so determined and passionate about something that you would go through that much trouble. I bet it was far more satisfying to see those fans spin up, and mobo logo display on screen.

[Arct1c0n]

Same here, four 40GB Seagates and a Caviar 80GB. Had an "Ultra DMA" 120GB WD, but it kicked the can a few months back.

 

 

My very first Western Digital 40gig IDE cost I believe $150 at Best Buy in 2001.  Now i've got a 4 Terabyte Western Digital Black in my HTPC that I won for free

[TheSLSAMG]

My very first Western Digital 40gig IDE cost I believe $150 at Best Buy in 2001.  Now i've got a 4 Terabyte Western Digital Black in my HTPC that I won for free

Damn, I got all my drives for free since they were old things that I just found gathering dust.

[KE2012]

pffft, all childs play, I remember the days when  you had to turn a leaver to get any sort of computation going on...... Jokes 

 

But seriously, nice read!

[Ptopman]

Im 19yo and I started fooling around with computers around 2004 but I can remember dealing with some of this stuff, and they were a bitch. We really do have it easy, to the point that the hardest part of building computers is the cosmetics.

[GzeroD]

A usb external modem... Someone is super fancy. We got by just fine in my day with a serial external modem just for the love of god remember that windows dosn't remember com ports correctly so change it every time you dial up #windows95problems.

[McMurderMonkey]

Super entertaining. I did kinda start off with just my dad teaching me stuff on 2003-ish hardware, and didn't use the internet. My second case was also a 10+ year old flat packed clear acrylic job, with multi-colour LED fans, and a UV cold-cathode. So, although I had it a bit easier, I like to think I experienced a little of the era so intrinsically part of my childhood.