Old School PC builders, what was you experience like in days past?

[Retro_R]

This is a question to every pc builder whos been building since the 90s-early to mid 2000s: What was you experience like back then? How did you learn how to build pcs without resources like the internet??

 

I've always had these questions. Thanks in advance

[badreg]

There was Internet in the early 1990s, and BBS before then. You had to be in the 1970's at the beginning of the PC revolution when you could only learn about things from magazines.

[Jurrunio]

Magazines just in case you're wondering how people build PCs without internet resources, tho this is way back than the 90s since prebuilt machines gave people a way to access the outside world without custom machines already. Mags stayed relevant for those without prebuilt machines though

[Deadsies]

Paper manual. 

[veli2501]

A friend taught me.  With regards to keeping up with hardware - magazines.

[Dedayog]

Took my parents first computer back in 1987 or so to my friends house, his dad was an IT Manager in a large company.  Walked me through opening the case, what every part was and what it did, how it interacted with others, the BIOS, settings, etc.

 

Since then it's been magazines, BBS, AOL chatrooms, internet, YouTube, etc.

[Yoinkerman]

There were a lot of cuts on unfinished chassis edges

[LogicalDrm]

Magazines for one. That's how I knew what kind of PC we needed to replace old P2 machine back in 2002. But I upgraded it myself in 2005/6. I can't remember if I already then had read some building guide from internet or was it at later upgrade.

 

The experience itself was bit different ordeal. You had to be more careful with things like compatibility. Our PC had broken DVD reader and semi-broken HDD for longest time as it refused to boot without them in correct order. Ofc it could have been solved with CMOS reset, but I learned that years later. Besides those kinds of things, working with IDE and floppy xables, plus molex powers was really pain. I went for SATA as soon as it was possible without extra cost. And updating BIOS with gloppy... Fun times.

 

I was 14 in 2002.

[mr moose]

I learnt from talking to people in the Industry and clubs in the 80's, then in the early 90's I complete an Associate diploma in EE.  I bounced between specializing in  the fields of CPU design and audio design. I think i favored Audio as that is what I have done the most of professionally with that education.

[Guest]

I sort of grew up at the right time to learn the basics. I was always into electronics breaking every device in the house before I was 10. That was 1980-81 and the ZX80 was released in kit form. I got one and learnt a lot from that. When you then go on with a ZX Spectrum, Einstein 256, Amiga and move into PCs you sort of know what you are doing and have read lots of magazines etc. There were also TV programs at the time that reviewed kit and games etc, mentioning what hardware is needed. So it just becomes part of your make up.

 

I then moved into the industry working on everything from 1960s mainframes and storage up to some very high end £40M+ kit today. Amazingly I still see in certain environments, kit from the 80s in use.

[cluelessgenius]

i have an older cousin who was a freak back then.

so when the time came for my first pc m parents bought it at some fleamarket (pretty sure thats not how thats spelled but whatever).

very crappy system. i dont exactly remember the specs since i had no idea about hardware then.

but not long after it was already time to upgrade. so we went to my cousin and he selected, bought and installed hardware for us.

all i can remember is seeing him uninstall what i am pretty sure was a pentium 2 266Mhz.

so basically i gained my first knowledge about pcs from him.

actually system requirements on the back of pc games cd cases thaught me about all the parts that are important to performance

and then at some point dial up internet happened and counterstrike was the shit all of a sudden. 

lan partys with people showing up with their dads pc that didnt even have a network port  

cutting a windows into the beige steel case. putting a plexi window in for looking at ugly af hardware and no cable management whatsoever. 

also painting the beige thing black with flames on it. all that shit.

spending every birthday and christmas gift buget wishing for pc hardware.

ripping and torrenting all the latest and greatest games.

being the cool kid on the block because i got all the shit.

burning cd and later dvds. somewhere i think i still have cod on 2 cds

having my parents go to a lawer with me cause i clicked on the wrong thing while downloading shit. 

what else.....i guess that pretty much sums up m childhood relationship with tech

oh and of course overclocking my old amd ...i wanna say athlon...but im not sure. it was a single core at i believe 900mhz or maybe 1.3ghz and it went all the way up to 1.8 freaking amazing

 

oh yeah and you couldnt turn the pc on without everyone in the apartment knowing you did. IDE drives. bios beeps, and of course the fan. 

[jones177]

The first PC I built was a 286 so mid to late 80s. 

No internet but I used an online service called GEnie. Without it I could not have built PCs.

It was also valuable when it came to games because without it I would have to wait a month or two the get an update so it would work.  

 

The hardest part was getting it to boot after installing all the parts. It usually meant putting code into a command line interface since Bioses had no GUI.

It was not unlike starting a car after rebuilding the engine.

 

Since the bios was in ROM any code needed to start the computer had to be written onto disk and used every time the computer was started.

You also had to know DOS and DOS is as complex as any computer language. I still have my DOS manuals and they are thick.

 

Once bioses got GUIs things got a lot easier and when they went to flash memory, easier still. 

 

Component compatibility was a big issue as well and it was rare to put all the part together and have them all work. 

I still have spares of everything lying around just in case even though just in case never comes anymore.

 

I consider those days as the bad only days since building PCs was a bit scary. Some I would even consider nightmares. 

Today things rarely go wrong and you don't need programing experience to get them started so now the time can be spent tweaking the performance of the computer rather than just keeping it running.     

  

 

EDIT. Without the help of local computer stores building a PC would not have been impossible. It was sad to see these Mom and Pop stores go.

[IntMD]

The manuals. Also, jumpers, too many jumpers.

[Dedayog]

Just now, IntMD said:

The manuals. Also, jumpers, too many jumpers.

Oh damn, I forgot about those!  Or blocked them.  Probably blocked them.  *shudders*

 

Master and Slave hard drives and disks too.  

 

Rewriting Autoexec.bat and config.sys files to free up just a little more memory to play a game.

[IntMD]

Just now, jstudrawa said:

Oh damn, I forgot about those!  Or blocked them.  Probably blocked them.  *shudders*

But surely everyone loved have to set up master/slave jumpers etc. properly so it would post properly! /s

[jones177]

45 minutes ago, jstudrawa said:

Oh damn, I forgot about those!  Or blocked them.  Probably blocked them.  *shudders*

 

Master and Slave hard drives and disks too.  

 

Rewriting Autoexec.bat and config.sys files to free up just a little more memory to play a game.

Some times I think I must have been smarter back then.

[Dedayog]

Just now, jones177 said:

Some time I think I must have been smarter back then.

Same here!

 

Or having to setup your Soundblaster IRQ every time you played a game?

[IntMD]

21 minutes ago, jstudrawa said:

Same here!

 

Or having to setup your Soundblaster IRQ every time you played a game?

Loved having to set up the IRQs for sound too..... Pretty sure IRQ5 for my sound card

[Norseman4]

The first PC that I built was when I was stationed in Ft. Bliss in El Paso in the very early 90's. It went together fairly well being careful about all the bendable pins that the CPU and memory used. When I tried to turn it on I got nothing. All the switches were on but still nothing.

 

Checked over all of my connections and they were all good so the last thing was to open up the PSU itself. One of the wires had come loose in the PSU. When I was buttoning up the PSU I cut my finger on the unfinished edges. Everything worked fine for years.

 

The builds I did for myself always seemed to have one or more cuts from the metal. This became known as the blood sacrifice. ( The first build I did using a case with finished edges I did not cut myself, and the MB had a bad RAM slot. Coincidence? )

 

I never cut myself when working at a PC shop, just for my own builds.

 

Back in the day, a "magazine"/catalog called computer shopper had hundred+ pages of thin 11x17 paper mostly filled with ads, many full page, but also had several articles.

[Jito463]

I taught myself by literally taking the computer apart and then putting it back together again.  Nothing beats hands on experience.

7 hours ago, CUDAcores89 said:

Back from 1995 and earlier and things get even more fun. Then you have to deal with more jumpers, IRQ settings, and SCSI HDDs.

3 hours ago, IntMD said:

Also, jumpers, too many jumpers.

Don't forget the dip switches.

 

Lots

Spoiler

and lots

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and lots

Spoiler

of dip switches.

Spoiler

 

[Uttamattamakin]

18 hours ago, Retro_R said:

This is a question to every pc builder whos been building since the 90s-early to mid 2000s: What was you experience like back then? How did you learn how to build pcs without resources like the internet??

 

I've always had these questions. Thanks in advance

I was fortunate enough to have gotten some pre built PC's back in the late 1980's and early 1990's.  To figure out how they worked, and upgrade them I took them all apart and put them together.  

Then in the late 90's and early 00's I just bought the parts to put my computers together.  By the mid-late 00's like a lot of people I had switched to just using laptops.  

[Slayerking92]

18 hours ago, Retro_R said:

This is a question to every pc builder whos been building since the 90s-early to mid 2000s: What was you experience like back then? How did you learn how to build pcs without resources like the internet??

 

I've always had these questions. Thanks in advance

BBS's and FIDOnet was the place for information in the 80's.  Local computer clubs, magazines.

 

I do NOT miss ribbon cables, or setting SCSI ID's and termination.