What were the specs of the first computer you ever built yourself?

[gophins72]

elephant memory required? Been so long i'd have no clue what the specs were nor would i really give a crap.

i think it was an amd k5 or something

 

[Golgatha]

In late 1998 or early 1999 I built...

Pentium II, 400Mhz
160MB PC100 RAM
ASUS P2B 440BX Motherboard
Matrox Millenium 2MB for 2D
8MB Creative Labs Voodoo 2 for 3D games
ISA Sound Blater Awe64 Value Sound Card
PCI 10/100 3Com NIC
ISA Creative Brand Hardware based 56k modem
10.2GB ATA 66 Western Digital HDD
Pioneer Slot Loading DVD Drive
4x Imation CD-R/RW
IDE Zip 100 Drive

That was a fast and expensive computer back when I built it. Probably dropped around $1400 on it.

 

[brandonwh64]

I had a AMD K6 3D 400mhz CPU and 16MB of ram, a voodoo 3 2000 PCI, 2GB hard drive, 100W PSU, Some random motherboard. had this PC til HL1 came out and it bogged down trying to play it so i upgraded to a ATI 3d rage card and it still didnt get like 20FPS

 

[thilanliyan]

Back in 1992:
486DX2-66
4MB ram
512kb Trident video card
130mb HDD
14" CRT
dot matrix printer
cost: CAD$2500

Playing Dune 2 on that was fun!!

 

[adlep]

CP/M, S100 bus, 4,77MHz Z80, 8" floppy drives, P31 green phosphor CRT w/80 characters. A whopping 64KB RAM! That was about 1978 IIRC.

Way too much point to point wiring in that one too.

In the 80s I had a Heatkit H8 and HERO robot. Those were lots of fun.

In 1983 I acquired a Sanyo MBC550 microcomputer. It had an NEC V20 CPU and 256KB RAM. A good compiler and cheap compared to IBM PC!

Are you Steve Wozniak?

Mine:
K5 Pr90. I think that the beast was clocked around 75 MHz and it used a socket 7 based motherboard.

 

[justinm]

First system that I built that my parents paid for (I was 11)...

486SX
4MB RAM
75MB hard drive
Trident video
Sound Blaster
Windows 3.1

The first system that I paid for was

Pentium MMX 233
32MB RAM
4GB hard drive
Windows 98
Sound Blaster AWE64
ATI Rage 8MB PCI

That's all I remember, that was in 1998...

 

[Arkaign]

First one I built was :

386sx-25 (overclocked to 33mhz)
Giant AT mobo with a billion jumpers (?? brand, but manual was mostly Chinese)
4x1MB 70ns Gold-plated-contact SIMMs
20MB IDE Hard Drive, I think it was IBM branded
1MB Tseng ISA Video Card (edit, this might have been a Number Nine actually)
1.44MB Floppy (Sony brand, lol this held over through many many many subsequent builds)
28.8 External USR Modem (the black box v.34 iirc)
Some cheapo ugly used case

^^ everything was used / recycled other than the ram, which set me back $90 at first saturday.

Not long after that I chanced across this really cool super mini pc, it was a 486-DX50 in a tiny cube case. Drive space was a real challenge, but it had 4 72-pin SIMM slots, onboard video of some type, and a single ISA slot. It was for some kind of Point of sale environment, but for my purposes (MIRC, Forte Agent, Doom, etc) it was absolutely awesome. Also had a like 9" IBM VGA monitor with it, I used that for mobile tech work for a while (this was in the early 90s and most monitors were ~14", heavy, and pricey).

 

[taisingera]

Built a Pentium 2 system back in 1999.

In-Win A500 case
Pentium 2 400 MHz Slot 1
Intel SE440BX-2 Mobo
128 MB PC100
WD 10.1GB EIDE HDD
ATI Xpert 8MB AGP
Yamaha sound card
Adaptec 2930U2 SCSI card
Realtek ISA network card
17" CRT

 

[soccerballtux]

this is one of those disappointing threads where everybody writes something and checks back to see if anyone replied to what they wrote but nobody does so everybody is disappointed.

 

[Makaveli]

The first computer I ever built was a 386 sx man that was so long ago.

I can't remember all the components now.

 

[SonicIce]

all of you people saying "way back in 2004 i built some athlon 64" make me sad because i still use mine as my main. it's really not that bad! text

 

[Zargon]

~2002?
athlon xp 1800+
2gb of ram
cant recall the gpu
msi board that I fried messing with the bios.


the socket 754 board that I replaced it with is still in use, this was the 4th computer I used...

 

[StarTech]

I was a radar maintenance tech on Guam in 1950 -- just before the Korean war started -- and my CO was a Harvard graduate who received the Alumni news letter. In one of them was a paragraph or two about a machine that had been built -- or perhaps only designed at that point -- by two undergraduates, Kalin and Burkhart, which could evaluate the truth table for logical expressions. The example mentioned was checking the terms of an insurance policy for logical consistency. He showed it to me and asked if I knew what they were talking about. I didn't, but asked him to let me take it back to the barracks that evening. By morning I had designed relay circuits that could realize and, or, if then, if and only if, negation, exclusive or etc. The most it required were two DPDT relays for the most complex functions and a single SPDT for negation. He asked if I could build such a machine and I said yes -- given enough relays. Aircraft used 28v relays so he got on the teletype and requisitioned from every supply site from Honolulu to Tokyo their stock of 28v DPDT relays. They must have thought that every aircraft at Anderson AFB had been struck by lightening to kill so many relays. Using two ganged telephone rotary stepping switches I wired up a 10 variable input -- i.e. it had ten output wires that would sequentially step through the 1024 states for 10 logical variables. Using the 28v aircraft relays I constructed modules for a large number of the functions that could be wired using pin jacks and pins from the front of the console. You set in the logical expression whose truth table you desired to map, turned on the stepping unit at state 0 --- 0 and let it step it's way through the 1024 states. When a state was reached for which the logical expression was true, a current flowed through the circuit closing a relay and stopped the stepping switches. You could then copy down the values for the ten logical variables from the state of ten lamps on the front. Pushing a button then caused the stepping switches to resume. At the end, you had the truth table for the original logical expression. It was the most satisfying computer I have ever built -- with all those relays clicking in and out and lights flashing as states changed. We named him George -- and when I returned from the South Pacific in 1953 managed to ship him home as hold baggage and talk my way through the port inspection. The secret was that George didn't look like anything they had ever seen and they were mostly looking for people trying to steal governenment property. He entertained a whole generation of student engineers just as digital computers were coming on the scene.

That must have been a lot of fun !

 

[thegimp03]

AMD Socket 939 3000+
Asus A8v
1 gb ram
BFG 6800nu

 

[Lightingguy]

I built my first ground-up systems in 1993 or 1994, I think. When you get this old, your memory begins to fail....
Before I built my own, I got a Kaypro PC in early 1985 (8 Mhz, MSDOS 3.3, 20 MB HDD, two 5 1/4" floppy, Hercules graphics card, no modem - I added a 1200 baud one later) that I used until '88 or '89 (it set me back $1500, with a monochrome 14" monitor, no sound, and a dot-matrix printer). Then I got a 286/12 from Gateway (CGA color graphics!), sourced through a savvy friend (it sorta ran Windows 3.1). But then I decided it would be more fun to build my own...
So in '93-94 I built from scratch 386-16 and 486-25 (that's 16 and 25 Megahertz) systems with HDDs no bigger than 40-80 MB, 1 meg RAM. I used assorted video cards - Hercules, early ATI. Floppy drives (1.2 meg) and, later, CD Rom drives (I was constantly tinkering). 28.8k modems. Tape backups. It was hard to get parts. Internet retail was nonexistent, so it was local vendors only.
Then I built a couple Pentium 166 and 200 systems around 95 or so, nothing special.
Then I started overclocking with AMD K6-2s - they were 266 MHZ parts to start but you could crank them up. That was 96 or 97, I think. The K6-3s didn't overclock well (but were 400 Mhz parts). 3dFx video cards (Voodoo2). HDDs up to 850 MB.
I built a nice Celeron 400 system that overclocked well to 500 MHz.
In 2000-2001 I turned out 5 1-Ghz Athlon (Thunderbird) systems on ABIT M/Bs which were all overclocked right after someone showed how to reconnect jumpers on the CPUs using auto defroster repair paint, which is conductive, and a toothpick. That was fun!
But it took me a week to troubleshoot a bug in Win95 or 98 (I don't remember which) with those setups that caused regular crashes...that was a pain.
Building now is much easier, but I got a whole load of old atx cases, mobos and accessories lying around. Gotta get a dumpster.
Now to order the parts for something new to go with this laptop and netbook...

 

[Silenus]

I honestly don't know how you can remember specific details of your most ancient machines. To the best of my memory the very first built machine I had was:

486 SLC2/50 with a separate math co-processor chip!
4MB ram + 4MB on board for 8MB total (I think)
200MB hard drive (that is MB, not GB!)

 

[JJordan]

Celeron 300a at 450 with an Asus Motherboard. Graduated to a P3-700 at 1Ghz again on an Asus MB I still have but dont use. I orignially ran th eP3 chip with a Slot1 adapter on the old Asus MB from the 300a. Just baby steps for me. Now an e4300 at 2.7 on a Brand New Gigabyte MB that is causing me memory issues

 

[Russwinters]

2001, was 13

First 100% fully built system with no help

AMD Thunderbird 1GHZ (These were amazzzing when they were released ha-ha)
384MB DDR
Geforce 2 GTS 64MB DDR2
40GB WD HDD
MSI motherboard (K7 i believe?)
Sound blaster live!

This thing played Quake 3 like a champ!

 

[bigboxes]

I honestly don't know how you can remember specific details of your most ancient machines.

Well, it was my first and quite a leap from the box it replaced. I loved that machine. I remember all the parts that went into it. I saved up for it a part at a time. I did lots of research and was sad when each of the parts died. I remember the good times and I remember the problems. If you're a techie... you remember.

 

[davidrees]

1985: C-64 + Audio Cassette Tape Drive (games load in 20 minutes!)
1986: added 1571 Floppy Drive (170 kilobytes per side)
1992: Amiga 500
1993: 40mhz 68030 Accelerator and 2MB RAM
1995: Compaq 486
1996: Built a Pentium 90Mhz with 4MB RAM and ~80MB HDD
1997: P133 / 8MB RAM / Voodooo1 card
1999: Added Voodoo Banshee then soon added a Voodoo 3000
2000: AMD 650Mhz (Friend got me the $200 CPU/mobo deal)
2001: Added Voodoo 5500
2002: AMD 1800+ / 256MB / Ti4600
2003: upgraded to 1GB RAM
2004: upgraded to Nvidia 5900 Ultra and AMD 3000+

I am surprised I remember all that...

 

[deimos3428]

Some sort of Zenith passive backplane frankenstein built from the remains of 11 POS terminals somebody had thrown out.

 

[Martimus]

all of you people saying "way back in 2004 i built some athlon 64" make me sad because i still use mine as my main. it's really not that bad! text

Same here. Actually I have upgraded most of the components over the years, and the only original components may be the S939 MB and the 3.5" floppy drive. My older builds of the P60, Athlon XP, Athlon 750mHz are long gone though. The funny thing is that my oldest computer (that I did not build) is still around. It is a 8088 with a 10MB hard drive and 64kB of RAM. I had a lot of fun with that computer, and it was old even when I got it. I wrote most of my own games on GW-BASIC, since I couldn't run any modern games on that computer. I'll have to bust it out someday and see if it still runs.

 

[E6700]

athlon xp 2800+

 

[CraigRT]

K6-3 450
Asus P5A
128MB Crucial PC100
10gb WD
ATI Rage Fury (later TNT2)
Iomega 4x CD burner

 

[CaptainGoodnight]

AMD T-Bird 700 Mhz
ABIT KT7
128 MB of RAM
3dfx Voodoo3

Circa: August 2000