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

[Ertman]

Remember S3? Riva TNT? Voodoo SLI... sigh.

just replaced the TNT in my old rig last week and added a nic. The TNT still works, just put in something slightly beefier.

Just glad we had agp slots at that time,

[Dabombinable]

just replaced the TNT in my old rig last week and added a nic. The TNT still works, just put in something slightly beffier.

Just glad we had agp slots at that time,

Use  '  in your quotes not  "

[Ertman]

Use ' in your quotes not "

that wasnt my problem.

[mr moose]

anyone remember these:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_8087

 

or when ram upgrades were  DILs?

[TheSLSAMG]

Sir! DO NOT sully this conversation with that name.

Trust me, these retorts are better heard from GzeroD himself

[The Crazed Child]

i remmeber smoking weed

necessary fact lol?

[DarkEnergy]

I still have retro parts from computers I took apart. I don't mind the blue/white BIOS screens, but I hate when they don't give you much information. 

[MblaZe7run]

"Woah, is this paper? That's like so retro throwback!" -Roscoe Santangelo, Vice President of Cool New Shizz at Gryzzl

Wow, $300 for a DVD reader, something that goes for $15 today and is completely obsolete.

My dad remebers paying $300 for a CRT monitor 10+ years ago, and says he couldn't imagine my current mid-range $119 24" 1080p TN panel at the time.

 

My dad said that their first VCR unit when his mom bought it was close to $2k. Now, you can't hardly find one in a store, and they have them for $20 at GoodWill. I can't wait until I have kids and everything is solid state at sub-$100 for 1TB drives. I can't wait to tell them that my first 512MB flash drive was around $70 back in the day.

[Rotarcased]

Is that a Voodoo 5 5500 in the last img? :rolleyes:

[orangecat]

I actually liked tinkering with older computers better than it is now it was more fun. i mean it's easy now and thats cool but sometimes I like to tinker with small things like IDE jumpers.

[gnarly0531]

lol i was in 6th grade in 2001... me and my friends were building computers. we gotta a micro center 15 minutes from us so it was easy to figure stuff out for us.

[Blebekblebek]

everything set by pins

 

no pins, no boot, no oc, no power

 

the era of Athlon XP / Pentium 4 actually a breakthorough

 

ABIT gone wild with their bios setting for oc

 

and everything look gigantic and not to forget the weight..... heavy cases, CRT Monitor

and booting from floppy is a painnnnn.... my motherboard fail because the disk got corrupted while updating bios.

 

I can't believe that I actually enjoying those.

[Dabombinable]

everything set by pins

 

no pins, no boot, no oc, no power

 

the era of Athlon XP / Pentium 4 actually a breakthorough

 

ABIT gone wild with their bios setting for oc

 

and everything look gigantic and not to forget the weight..... heavy cases, CRT Monitor

and booting from floppy is a painnnnn.... my motherboard fail because the disk got corrupted while updating bios.

 

I can't believe that I actually enjoying those.

I have to say, after using an abit dual CPU motherboard, its a shame that they are no longer around, just look at this LGA775 mono as an example. http://abit.ws/page/sa/motherboard/motherboard_detail.php@pMODEL_NAME=IX48+GT3&fMTYPE=LGA775, if I can find one I'll be buying it-though it doesn't support 45nm CPU's so I could use my Xeon.

There we go, the version that supports 45nm cpus- http://abit.ws/page/en/motherboard/motherboard_detail.php@pMODEL_NAME=IX38+QuadGT&fMTYPE=LGA775

[Cookie Monster]

I remember the joy of when coloured PS2 ports were introduced in 1997. Before then it was squint in hte dark for some tiny scratches for a mouse or keyboard icon.

[Dabombinable]

I remember the joy of when coloured PS2 ports were introduced in 1997. Before then it was squint in hte dark for some tiny scratches for a mouse or keyboard icon.

^story of my 100MHz FSB slot 1 boards from '95.

[Xsinar]

Well look at it this way, 20 years from now we would probably be saying " Kids these days have it so easy, back in 2015 it was a lot more difficult ". It's the same for everything electronic... As time passes things will get a lot easier and we will be saying "I can't believe how we manged without this...."

[Dabombinable]

Well look at it this way, 20 years from now we would probably be saying " Kids these days have it so easy, back in 2015 it was a lot more difficult ". It's the same for everything electronic... As time passes things will get a lot easier and we will be saying "I can't believe how we manged without this...."

In 20 years time I'll still have my 85MB HDD running, and still tell people to stop whining about capacity.

[Xsinar]

In 20 years time I'll still have my 85MB HDD running, and still tell people to stop whining about capacity.

 

I think you mean 85GB coz I don't think you can run any OS on a 85MB HDD

[Dabombinable]

I think you mean 85GB coz I don't think you can run any OS on a 85MB HDD

DOS with Windows 3.1. not every OS is a resource hungry monstrosity. It even runs with 8MB of RAM. I'll probably start a topic demonstrating it once I have a new 5.25" floppy drive and my 386 motherboard's minor damage repaired. (The problem will be finding the drivers for all of my expansion cards).

http://www.melbpc.org.au/pcupdate/9200/9205article5.htm

[Xsinar]

DOS with Windows 3.1. not every OS is a resource hungry monstrosity. It even runs with 8MB of RAM. I'll probably start a topic demonstrating it once I have a new 5.25" floppy drive and my 386 motherboard's minor damage repaired. (The problem will be finding the drivers for all of my expansion cards).

http://www.melbpc.org.au/pcupdate/9200/9205article5.htm

 

But would there be a point in doing some thing like that? Why use Windows 3.1 when there is so many other options available? Is a 8MB Ram or a 5.25" Floppy Drive sill available to purchase with ease? Don't tell me you prefer using a typewriter over using any kind of word processor or maybe carving on stone is better than writing on paper  :mellow:

[mr moose]

But would there be a point in doing some thing like that? Why use Windows 3.1 when there is so many other options available? Is a 8MB Ram or a 5.25" Floppy Drive sill available to purchase with ease? Don't tell me you prefer using a typewriter over using any kind of word processor or maybe carving on stone is better than writing on paper  :mellow:

I think what you'll find here is that retro conputing is like hotrodding, no one builds a hotrod for their daily driver, and no one build a retro pc for their daily driver.  It's just a thing people like.

[Xsinar]

I think what you'll find here is that retro conputing is like hotrodding, no one builds a hotrod for their daily driver, and no one build a retro pc for their daily driver.  It's just a thing people like.

 

Well if it's not going to be a daily driver then I understand, but then it would be more like an antique like some classic car people use.

[MageTank]

As funny as this thread is, a lot of what is posted is not as bad as it is being made out to be. Most PC parts back then still followed the "It only fits one way" rule, making it still a difficult thing to screw up for anyone that pays attention. Some things were not exactly clear at the beginning, but even as time progressed, became very clear later on. They started writing Master and Slave on the IDE ribbons making it idiot proof. Simply looking at the back of your IDE drive told you exactly where to put the jumper to run the drive in your exact configuration, so its not like this was an unknown mystery that could not be solved without tech support. 

 

People often poke fun at CRT's, but i loved mine damnit. They were still pretty sweet to game on. While i have been around computers all my life, i am lucky enough to say i never had to deal with the plight of the 56k modem. I mostly played already installed games on my dad's PC, like the original prince of persia, or redneck rampage. I also avoided the floppy era by a few years, so i am thankful for that too. 

 

By the time i actually got into PC's, OCing became easy enough to understand and pretty much all hardware and bios configurations were known on forums, so i agree that OCing was probably difficult when done alone and less informed. Especially considering how expensive computer hardware was back then, destruction from a failed OC would be a risk i would not have taken if i were me back then.

 

You should have totally mentioned those monochrome monitors that you see at bank tellers and court rooms. Those things were an eye sore, lol.

[Dabombinable]

But would there be a point in doing some thing like that? Why use Windows 3.1 when there is so many other options available? Is a 8MB Ram or a 5.25" Floppy Drive sill available to purchase with ease? Don't tell me you prefer using a typewriter over using any kind of word processor or maybe carving on stone is better than writing on paper  :mellow:

You don't quite get it do you? The computer is a piece of history, especially its hard drive, which after 23 years use as a boot drive with save-to-disk storage (the same kind of use my 60GB SSD sees since I have a 1TB HDD for storage) still works just fine. Its not about using it daily, as that would shorten the life of it, however long that is as its already a true legacy PC.

I think what you'll find here is that retro conputing is like hotrodding, no one builds a hotrod for their daily driver, and no one build a retro pc for their daily driver.  It's just a thing people like.

If you can class Pentium III's as retro, then I actually built a rig based on them for use as a daily driver. Having a dual socket motherboard that comes with 2x Pentium III 1GHz, 2GB PC 133 SDRAM and the stock Intel coolers enables you to build a rig that is 14-15 years old, and can still do the exact same things as a newer computer (except youtube). It even works with all of my PCI cards, so its got wifi, a HDTV tuner, 5.1 channel sound card, VIA Raid card (for the 1TB HDD), and a USB 2.0 card on its way, as USB 1.1 is too damn slow (using a RW DVD is actually faster). And to top it off a Geforce 6200 512MB (not retro I know, but it works) as its graphics card.

[Xsinar]

You don't quite get it do you? The computer is a piece of history, especially its hard drive, which after 23 years use as a boot drive with save-to-disk storage (the same kind of use my 60GB SSD sees since I have a 1TB HDD for storage) still works just fine. Its not about using it daily, as that would shorten the life of it, however long that is as its already a true legacy PC.

If you can class Pentium III's as retro, then I actually built a rig based on them for use as a daily driver. Having a dual socket motherboard that comes with 2x Pentium III 1GHz, 2GB PC 133 SDRAM and the stock Intel coolers enables you to build a rig that is 14-15 years old, and can still do the exact same things as a newer computer (except youtube). It even works with all of my PCI cards, so its got wifi, a HDTV tuner, 5.1 channel sound card, VIA Raid card (for the 1TB HDD), and a USB 2.0 card on its way, as USB 1.1 is too damn slow (using a RW DVD is actually faster). And to top it off a Geforce 6200 512MB (not retro I know, but it works) as its graphics card.

 

If it's for casual use it should be fine, but if you want to do Video Rendering, Photoshop, Gaming or Watching Youtube as you said you would need something newer. There is lot of disadvantages using legacy stuff, why take the headache unless you want an antique for old memories, in which case I understand what you are saying.