What's your computer history?

[Jman13]

Curious about everyone's build and computer history. I have a little spreadsheet I keep that has the details of all the computers I've ever owned (starting with a Franklin ACE 2200, which was an Apple II clone). Yes, I'm a nerd. Anyway, here are the vital stats:

1988 - Franklin ACE 2200 (Apple II Clone)
1.02 MHz 65C02 Processor
128 KB RAM
2x 5.25" Floppy Disk Drive
AppleDOS 3.2

1991 - Locally built PC
33MHz Cyrix 386 SX
2MB RAM (later upgraded to 4MB)
80MB HDD (later upgraded to 250MB)
3.5" and 5.25" Floppy Disk Drives
SVGA Video card (unknown make)
ProAudio Spectrum 16 Sound card
DOS 6.2 / Windows 3.1

1996 - Locally built PC - This is the computer I took to college
166MHz Pentium
16 MB RAM (later upgraded to 32MB)
2.1 GB HDD (later added an additional 6GB drive)
6x CD-ROM Drive
3.5" FDD
2MB ATI Rage video card
SoundBlaster 32 PnP
Windows 95

1998 - Gateway
350 MHz Pentium II
64 MB RAM (later upgraded to 320MB)
28 GB of HDDs (3 Drives)
32x CD-ROM, later replaced with 4x CD-RW and 6x DVD-ROM
16MB Riva TNT, later upgraded to 32MB GeForce II MX, then to 64 MB GeForce 3 ti 200)
SoundBlaster Live
Windows 98

Now starts my builds: (only main machines...two others were also built and not included here)

2001
Athlon XP 1700+ @ 1.58 GHz
Soyo SY-K7V Dragon Plus motherboard
512 MB RAM
300 GB of HDDs (3 drives)
Lite-On 40x CD-RW
NEC 8x DL DVD-RW
256MB ATI Radeon 9600 Pro
Windows XP Professional

2005
Athlon64 3000+@ 2.2GHz
Epox EP-9NDA3+
1GB RAM
520 GB of HDDs (4 drives)
Lite-On 40x CD-RW
NEC 8x DL DVD-RW
256MB GeForce 6800GS (unlocked to GT)
Windows XP Home SP2

2007
Core 2 Duo E6420 @ 2.67GHz
MSI P35 Neo 2
2GB RAM (later upgraded to 4GB)
690 GB of HDDs (4 drives), later upgraded to 2.95 TB of HDDs (4 drives)
256 MB GeForce 8600 GT, later upgraded to 512MB GeForce 9800GT
NEC 8x DL DVD-RW (later upgraded to LG 10x BD-R/RW)
Windows XP Home SP2 (later upgraded to Windows 7)

2012
Core i5 2500K @ 4.2GHz
Gigabyte GY-Z68AP-D3
16GB RAM
128GB Crucial M4 SSD
3 TB HDDs (3 drives)
1GB GeForce GTX460
LG 10x BD-R/RW
Windows 7

 

[Zap]

My list would be too long.

 

[Jman13]

No need to go component by component like I did...I just have the information handy, so I put it out there. Even something as trivial as:

386sx/33 -> 486dx2/66 -> Pentium60 -> Pentium Pro 200 -> Pentium II 400 -> Pentium III 750 -> Athlon 1.1 ->, etc would be interesting, at least to me.

Part of me just finds it fun to think back what I thought was awesome. I remember my friend when he got his 486 and a 750 MB hard drive. I remember making fun of him because that drive was obviously ridiculously huge...I mean, who could possibly fill 750 MB? And now, in a single day's shooting (I'm a photographer), I will sometimes shoot 8-12GB of photos. That's a big day's shooting, as it's my hobby, not my profession, but it's certainly been known to happen.

 

[mfenn]

CPU:
Apple II (so Moto 68K) -> 286 -> Pentium 120 -> Pentium III 500 -> Athlon XP 1900+ -> Athlon 64 3000+ -> Athlon 64 X2 3200+ -> Q6600 -> i7 860.

GPU:
Whatever Apple used -> some VGA card -> ATI Rage 128 (lol) -> Riva TNT -> GeForce 2 -> GeForce 4 440MX (yes, I was stupid) -> GeForce 4 Ti 4200 (got smarter) -> Radeon 9800 Pro -> GeForce 6600 vanilla -> 7600GT -> 8800GTS 640MB -> GTX 260 Core 216 -> 6950 2GB

 

[bendixG15]

started with 8086

 

[radhak]

Would be really interesting if you could recall the price you paid for each...

My first was when I was first employed, in India, in 1992 : a locally built 286 with 128kb ram, and 120mb of hard-drive (a friend was awed - 'what are you gonna do with that much space, play football?'). Cost me Rs.30,000, or $750 then - about 10 months of take-home salary for me then (no typo - 10 months!). Adjusted for inflation (and conversion), that's like me paying $45,000 for a machine today. I was crazy, for sure.

When I first arrived in the US in 1995, my first major purchase was from a shop called "Nobody Beats the Wiz". The name amazes me now as much as it did then. I took a 24 month 'deferred payment plan' to buy a Packard Bell 133 Mhz pentium, 4MB ram, 1GB HDD on Win95. Cost - $2400, of which they paid back $200 later because prices fell drastically within their 'return period' of 3 months. Still feels crazy now.

My job provided me laptops all the while (not listing them because I did not buy them), so my next machine was only in 2003 - my dear lamp-shaped iMac which still works just as good. The same year I also got my Dell 8300, refurb at $850 : Pentium 4, 1GB Ram, 120GB HDD, Win XP. This old beast is still with me, albeit upgraded all the way to 3GB Ram, three HDDs and Win7. Gotta build myself a new one whenever I can spare some cash. Have come a long way in how I view value of money vis-a-vis a new computer...

 

[birthdaymonkey]

These weren't really *my* computers, as I lived with my family at the time. However, they're the ones that I really learned computers on: 386DX40, Pentium 90, Pentium II 233

My desktops: P3 667, Athlon XP (didn't have this long as my apartment burned down and I switched to laptop only for a while), Athlon X2 5200+, Phenom 2 555 upg. to Phenom 2 940, i5 750, 2500K

GPUs: Voodoo 3 3000, Geforce 2 MX, Radeon X1650, Radeon 3650, GTX460 768MB, Radeon 6870, GTX560 Ti

Laptops: Toshiba P4 + 9700 Pro, Acer C2D T7200 + Geforce 7300, Asus C2D SU7300, Thinkpad T60

 

[fffblackmage]

First computer was an HP mini tower with a Celeron at 400MHz.

I started building after that.

CPUs:
Athlon XP Barton 2600+ (OC'ed @~2.1GHz, 2.0V, for about a month as a space heater before I moved on)
E6320 @2.8GHz
Phenom II X2 550BE (unlocked, @3.5GHz, 1.45V)
Planning on upgrading to IB.

GPUs:
GeForce 2 MX
GeForce 4 MX440 (I was a noob!)
6600GT
X1950XT 256MB (should have gone with 512MB D
HD4830 1GB @800MHz (my favorite video card, combination of cheap and awesome OC)
HD4890
HD5870

 

[Dave3000]

1993: This was actually the family PC and only PC in my home at the time. Leading Edge brand PC with 486DX-33 CPU, 4MB RAM

1996: My first very own PC. NEC brand PC with a Pentium 133, 16MB RAM

1997: Pentium-MMX 166, 32MB SDRAM

1998: K6-2 300, 64MB RAM

1999: Celeron 300A, 64MB RAM,

2000: Pentium II 333, 64MB RAM

2001: Pentium III 450, 256MB RAM

2001: Pentium III 700, 256MB RAM

2002: AMD Athlon 1.33GHz, 768MB SDRAM

2003: Pentium 4 2.53GHz, 2GB RAM

2003: Pentium 4 3 GHz, 2GB RAM

2004: Athlon FX-53 2.6GHz, 2GB RAM

2006: Core 2 Duo E6700 2.66GHz, 4GB RAM

2007: Core 2 Quad Q9450 2.66GHz, 4GB RAM

2009: i7 920 2.66GHz, 6GB RAM

2011: i7 960 3.2GHz, 12GB RAM

2011: i7 2600k 3.4GHz, 16GB RAM

 

[PhoenixEnigma]

Most of my first computers were hand-me-downs, so I'm going with those instead of the PCs my family had.

Motorola 6800 @ 7ish Mhz (Amiga 500)
Pentium 90Mhz (was in Toshiba laptop, I think. I remember trying to run POV-Ray on that thing.)
Pentium 133Mhz (OEM desktop of some flavour, never saw much use)
500Mhz Celeron. (Might've been 533? Went into a computer for my brother right away, as I got...)
2.50Ghz Celereon (First PC I bought for myself. Thought it was awesome until I saw it pwned by a 2x1.0GHz Xeon machine.)
Pentium M 750 (Beat the snot out of that Celeron, and I could put it in my backpack, too!
Athlon X2 3800+ (First dual core, took it over a...A64 4400, I think. It used to chew through DVD rips in the day. Took a healthy OC, too.)
Athlon X2 6000+ (Kind of letdown, even at 50% faster.)
Phenom X6 1090T (Still going strong)

GPUs that I recall:

FX5-something -> 9800Pro AIW -> 7900GT -> 2xGTS 250 -> 560Ti

 

[Ken g6]

Wow, I forgot some of these until I started writing them down.

Family computers from so long ago I don't remember when:
- Commodore 16
- Commodore 128
- Some 8088-type IBM compatible
- Packard Bell 486

1996: First computer I built: Cyrix (IBM) 6x86 P150+ (120MHz). Flaky Diamond Stealth video card that would display random lines across the screen. Hey, I don't think these forums existed at the time!

1999: Dell Pentium II 400MHz - College pretty much gave it to me free! Still works, but got obsolete fast in the GHz race.

2003: Compaq Athlon XP 2200+ (1800MHz), 768MB DDR RAM. Too busy to build with college. <<$1k, but I don't recall its exact price.

2005: Dell Inspiron laptop, Celeron-M 1.5GHz, 512MB RAM, 40GB HDD, >720P screen. $1k or so at the time. Still working!

2009: Current C2Q 9400 built in the Compaq case.
- 4GB DDR2-800 1.8V G-Skill RAM.
- G31 mobo - I had no clue mobos mattered for OCing (and now they don't much!) Still got up to 3.2 GHz before I swapped in a G41 and found out they don't OC the 1333FSB chips. :'(
- GTX 460 768 added later (more for compute than for gaming)
- Crucial M4 128GB added last month.

I planned to buy an Ivy Bridge laptop at some point this year; then I realized I may not have a lot of use for it.

Next scheduled build: 2013: Haswell.

 

[mindless1]

My abacus is bigger than your abacus, lol.

 

[Jman13]

Would be really interesting if you could recall the price you paid for each...

Have no idea on the first two...they were my family's computers. I did leave out the Packard-Bell Pentium 120 that my dad bought about 6 months before I got my computer for college, but mainly because I never considered that machine 'my' computer.

The computer in 1996 I paid $2,200 for...a huge chunk of my HS graduation money.

I think I paid in the neighborhood of $1200 for my Pentium II system.

My Athlon XP build cost me about $500 I think, and I harvested some components from my Gateway. As you'll notice, most builds had several shared components, drives usually last me two to three builds. In fact, one of the drives I retired in this latest build I had been using since that Athlon XP build (a 200GB Seagate drive...still works, but I figured it was time to let it retire).

My Athlon64 build cost me about $350-400 initially...the upgrades, of course were individual purchases over the course of the system.

My Core 2 Duo build cost $500 I think. Got a new PSU with that system, and a new, smaller case to replace my huge Antec case I had used on the previous two builds. It was big in size, but not user friendly like today's large cases.

My latest build cost $600 and included the Motherboard, CPU, Cooler, RAM, Video Card and SSD. Everything else is reused from previous builds. I harvested a 500GB hard drive that had seen very light use in a media PC I had built for our living room, but is now disconnected, and used that in place of that 200GB Seagate, and a 5 year old 250GB drive I'd been using since the C2D build.

You'll notice my monitors aren't listed, as they were almost never purchased with the new computer, except for the first 3. I have always just tended to upgrade monitors independent of the box. But, those went: 13" TV like monitor with the Apple to two different 14" CRTs, including a new one for the 1996 machine. I then went 14" CRT -> 17" CRT -> 19" CRT -> 22" LCD (ChiMei) (this guy), which I still use. I will probably eventually upgrade to a nice 24" IPS panel here in the next year or so.

Dave: That's quite the upgrade history. Just like upgrading, or do you do something with your machine that constantly requires faster and faster processing?

 

[T_Yamamoto]

1st PC i OWN, which i still use -_-
Pentium D 2.8
1 gig of ram
pos



my dad probably has more history with computers.

 

[Blain]

Started with a Cyrix 166MHz non-MMX

 

[Chiropteran]

1994(?) Some cyrix 486 clone at 30-40mhz, first PC.

1997 300mhz Pentium 2, felt like a huge upgrade from the old system, kept this one for a long time.

2000 700mhz athlon. First computer I built myself, nice upgrade from the pentium 2.

2001-2006 Gets a little blurry here, because at this point I built a lot of systems for friends and family and also did several CPU swap upgrades. I can't remember what all was a full "new computer" and what was just an upgrade. I know I built several athlon xp 1800+ based systems, at least one cheap "duron" system, a single northwood pentium 4 rdram system, finally built myself a dual cpu athlon mp 1800+ box on the tyan "tiger" motherboard.

2006 Some Athlon 64 dual core system, I don't recall exact specs but was very disappointed with it because I used some faulty motherboard and it crashed a lot, never did fully fix it.

2008 Intel Core2Quad Q6600. A Dell deal, one of the first computers I bought in a long time that I didn't build myself.

2010 1090T Phenom 2 X6, getting back into building my own computers. Using this one right now, though it's not my most recent build.

2011-2012 Several cheap athlon X2 systems, for bitcoin mining.

2012 FX-8120 system, using it as my primary home PC now, not much different from my 1090T in performance (probably a bit slower), but I needed a second PC to use for general stuff and the Microcenter deal was unbeatable. And then I needed a 3rd, and built almost the same system again, for the bedroom.

 

[aaksheytalwar]

1990 386 (my fathers, i was born in 1990)

1996 (was six years old) P1 166 16mb later 48mb ram

2002 (was 12 years) P4 1.7 willamette, 128(later 256) 32mb TNT2 40gb HDD

2005 (first personal PC) A64 3200 @ 2.4 1gb (later 2 GB) 6600gt 126 later 1900xtx 160gb hdd ncq

Since then

E4500
E7200
Q9550
I7 860

9600GT
4850
5850
6970

Currently
I7 2600k @ 4.3
7970 @ 1125 1575
16GB DDR3 1866
Approx 8 TB space with 180 GB Corsair Force GT

 

[NTMBK]

The PC in my signature has about 10 years of history...

 

[corkyg]

Started with the original IBM PC w/8088 CPU and two 5.25-in floppy drives. As I recall that was somewhere around 1982 or83. It was in Reagan's 1st term. My first actual build was circa 1991 with a AMD processor.

 

[bullbearish]

I remember building an 8086 system back in the 80s, but I don't recall what all I put in it. I remember being excited about the math coprocessor I installed so I could run Matlab faster.

I also recall buying something like a 56k baud telephone modem around then and having the salesman telling me that "I'd never need anything faster since I couldn't read that fast anyway". lol.

 

[piasabird]

Tandy 1000A

 

[Yuriman]

From the Duron to the 2500+ it was one machine, constantly upgraded. The 2800+ was a SFF, the 3000+ and 3800+ were one machine, and the Q6600 is still in use.


~1995, 486 DX
~98, P1-233mmx
2001, Duron 950
Early 2002, Athlon XP 1600+ (palomino)
Mid 2002, Athlon XP 1700+ (tb-b)
Early 2003, Athlon XP 2500+ (barton)
Mid 2004, Athlon64 2800+ (clawhammer)
Mid 2005, Athlon64 3000+ (venice)
Late 2005, Athlon64 x2 3800+ (manchester)
Late 2006, Core 2 Quad Q6600

^ I'm still happy with the performance of my Kentsfield. When I built this PC in 2006 I had dual 3850's in Crossfire. In 2007 I sold the 3850's and put in a 4870, which was no more than marginally faster, I was just done dealing with crossfire, and wanted something quieter. In 2009 I swapped my raided 2x80GB HDDs for 2x80GB X25M G2's and traded in my Audigy for an Auzentech X-Fi.

It's strange how I can go out and buy a new game and max it without AA on a system that was essentially the same speed 5&1/2 years ago.

 

[pauldun170]

Intel 166 or something like that
Intel 333
AMD 1333
P4 2.8 (Still have)
AMD 3800+ Newcastle
CoreDuo 1.7 laptop (Still have)
Q9550 (Still have)
i3-2100

 

[PCTC2]

Order of Purchase
Desktop:
Pentium 133 => Pentium III 800MHz => Pentium 4 1.6GHz => Core2Duo E6400 => Core2Quad Q6600 => Core i7 920 => Core i7 860 => Core i5 2400
Servers:
Pentium III => Celeron E3300 => Dual Xeon E5520 => Xeon E3-1220
Laptops:
Pentium III => PPC G4 1.2GHz => Core2Duo T7200 => Core2Duo (P8XXX) => Core i5 (2.53 GHz Arrandale) => Core i5 (1.6GHz SB-LV)
GPUs:
ATi Rage32 => Dual 7950GT SC SLI => 8800GTS G92 => Dual GTX260 Core216 SC SLI => Radeon HD 5870 => GTX 670

EDIT LOL I just resurrected a thread from the dead. To be honest, I followed a link from mfenn from this thread: http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2268057

 

[Gigantopithecus]

Self-assembled systems only, daily driver/main systems only:
Athlon XP 2500+ Barton -> Athlon 64 3000+ -> Athlon 64 3700+ -> Athlon X2 64 3800+ -> Core 2 Duo E6600 -> Core 2 Duo E6850 -> Phenom II X4 945 -> i3-2100 -> i5-2400 -> i3-2120 -> A8-3870K -> i3-3220