How You Become a CPU Fan Boy! or a Fan Boy at that...

[Max_C]

:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

My first PC was a Commodore 64. It was mine. Not my mom's. Not my dad's. Mine.

My second PC was a Tandy running an 8088 proc and DOS 2.11. It didn't even have a format command. Ditto about it being mine. I even upgraded the beast to 640KB of RAM.

My third PC was actually my mom's. I helped her spec it. It was a P90 running MS DOS 6.1 and Windows for Workgroups.

My fourth PC I got when I moved out. I payed for it all my own. I specced it carefully, had a shop build it barebones, and then fleshed it out myself. It was a kick-arse P133 and I used it and ugpraded it for years and years. It started out as a DOS 6.22 / Win3 machine, but ended up being a DOS 6.22/Win95b machine, then a pure Win98SE machine.

Finally though, one day the ol' P133 just got too expensive to maintain. All of the parts had to be bought special, and the performance just wasn't worth the money. So instead of buying a new motherboard, I bought an eMachine Celeron 500 PoS. I knew it was a PoS. It's sole purpose was simply to replace the P133 until I could save up for a decent box. I dremeled in holes for an intake fan and squeezed it in. I duct-taped a hard drive cage inside so that I could add the P133's old HD. I moved over the P133's CD burner. I moved over the P133's PCI graphics card. I upgraded the power supply. It was a total piece of crap, and it gave me all sorts of hell, but I loved that box. It was Frankenstein's monster.

Then I finally saved up enough to build my current system ... an Intel Northwood C with WinXP Pro. I assembled it from scratch. I almost dual-booted with Linux, but never quite found a reason to bother. I love my system. It's almost dead silent. I've modded the hell out of it over the years in strange and wonderful ways. And even though it's an Intel box, I like THGC/TG Forumz.

Were I to build a system today, it'd be an AMD box. They're just better performing and cooler running. I'd load on WinXP-64, and probably finally get around to a dual boot with Linux, just because.

Who knows what tomorrow may bring. If MacOS X can be loaded onto an Intel box, I may even triple-boot.

But it was f'ing funny to see how much mirrored or closely mirrored that tripe, and yet how I'm totally not the fanboy that it should have resulted in. :lol: :lol: :lol:

Either I deviated just enough, or it really has nothing to do with anything and fanboys are just fanboys because that's who they are.

Wow! Our stories are so similar it's scary. Technically my first computer was an Atari something 20 (I remember 20 was in the name, but don't remember what else.) Once I figured out that it wouldn't do anything, my grandparents bought me a Com. 64. I went on to an AT&T 6300 (I believe it was an 8086 processor.)

From there someone gave me a 386 / 40 that I kept for a little while. I didn't really get in to PC building until 1996 when I built a P133 with a 1.2 GB HD, 4MB video card, 24 MB RAM and a 28.8 modem. Cost me $2200 and I had to take out a loan to pay for it! I kept that thing for 3 years and finally passed it on to my mom for web surfing. I wanted to upgrade and it was all based on at AT case. I had to buy all new to move to ATX. In fact, the old girl (the computer, not my mom) *JUST* gave up the ghost about 6 months ago and my mom bought a Dell.

The 3700+ that I just ordered is my first 100% new PC since 1999 when I bought a Celeron 333. It's gone through many iterations. It's now a PIII 500 with 256 MB and an 80 Gig HD. Still does most things great, but as the company computer geek, I really should have something moderately current. It's also going to make 3D rendering much easier.

I really don't consider myself a fan boy. I'm a fan of whatever will give me the most for my money. I did a lot of research before buying the parts I just bought. If I had found that different parts from different manufacturers would have given me a better PC for the same price, I would have bought them.

Max.

 

[jimbo99]

I'm a fan of those companies capable of driving the market in the direction that gives us the best evolutionary/revolutionary changes to take us into the next 25-50 years.

Right now that company is AMD.

I started out in college with an old ibm pc that had no graphics cards, had the first versions of pc dos. Software was a whopping $500+ per title.

A friend and I used to go to the computer lab every day. Mainframes ruled everything there so most of the people didn't even consider spending time with the PCs. We had them to ourselves except for the various other students that used them for writing papers for class.

This was before the Macintosh was released and the apple IIs were still in widespread use.

We'd go to the dormitories, even though we didn't live in them, and in the middle of the night take them apart, or study various software that was being released. A good percentage of it was command-line driven. Everything was dos based until we got our hands on an original copy of Windows that we ran off single sided floppy drives. It took like what seemed hours just to get the os to boot and then to run a program took what seemed like longer. I remember we tried to swap some ram from one to the other machine so we could see if it would perform better.

Computers were extremely expensive.

My next foray was when I went to CA looking for computer gold and got a job at a company working as shipping and receiving. I got the computer parts in and those were then used to make computers. Those were then sold to companies (with ancient network cards) and integrated into LANs--Novell was the only show in town back then.

My favorite instructor from college called me once asking what sort of material he should be teaching in his new computer class, one that I suggested he teach before I left.

I was able to piece an old 8088 (nec V20) based computer out of that shop before I left and began a long struggle working temp jobs at various corporations. Being the only one that knew so much about software and hardware I found it extremely easy.

I read every possible magazine I could afford back then. At times there were 20-30 magazines added to my collection every month. Being that I was in the San Jose area I had access to every trade rag on the planet.

I always read the advertisements first because they always pointed out specifications back then. I could work out from the advertisements which ones had the most technical to offer and I focused on learning about those technical things.

I used BBSes for years before the internet was a gleam in most people's eyes. I would go to every computer swap meet I could afford to go to and upgrade my computers.

Today, I own my own small business fixing and upgrading computers. I have a computer gaming center with some nice and very capable gaming machines. I have only purchased 3 computers in my life. One of those was a tiny hand held device that I bought at radio shack. It had an 8 line lcd 25 character display and used a cryptic form of basic and only did what you told it to do with basic. About a year later I bought a commodore pet, and about 2 years after that I bought a Commodore Amiga 500 (I still owned several 8088 and 286 based computers at the time). I only bought it because one of my friends was adamant about it and swore it was the best at everything. Back then it was.

I have never purchased any PC based machine and I have always selectively purchased only what I wanted when building. I don't always buy the top of the line because if anything my 24+ years in computing has taught me is that top of the line is fleeting and it doesn't make sense to buy it when in a few months it will no longer be top of the line.

I encourage everyone I know and meet to buy the most price/performance effective parts, to never buy for cost, and to focus on supporting those companies that are driving us into evolutionary/revolutionary ways. We can't look at today as where we want to be. We have to look at the world as how it might be in 25-50 years and support those companies capable of getting us there as quickly as possible.

20 years of 32 bit processors is a bit much. Who gave us wide use of 64 bit on the desktop?