What was Building Like Back in the Day (90s)?

[turkey3_scratch]

I hear often from experienced builders that things were a lot tougher back then. Of course I'm a newbie in the building world but I am curious as to what was different back then. Does anyone know?

 

[Shneiky]

1 - Lack of data - now you can find guides, benchmarks and supplier all over the place
2 - Hardware has evolved - now everything is like a LEGO for adults
3 - Before the CPU core was bare so if overtightened your cooler it would break the CPU
4 - Motherboards have become more robust - well all components have become harder to damage
5 - There are all protections from various types into place - in case you connected something wrong/overheating/broken fan or etc. - it will downclock/shut down the computer to prevent damage

Just some on the tip of my mind.

 

[Alec Mowat]

Operating systems were a lot less reliable, and there were a lot more driver issues. But there was also a bit more choice.

Just find old parts and try for yourself. Finding drivers is difficult though, especially for anything pre-Windows 2000 (anything on a DOS kernal)

 

[Archgaull]

Well, I can tell you alone that just from having a HP from 1999, the design was really, really bad. Just getting the case apart could take a couple hours alone, and even simple things like swapping out the hard drive was a nightmare. I built my new computer in December last year, just the existence of thumb screws, and hard drive rails is a godsend.

 

[USAFRet]

Pre and early internet:
Cruise through multiple magazines, reading parts info
Dissect a 600 page Computer Shopper
Attend a computer show, or find a local hole in the wall shop
Buy a bunch of stuff
Spend a week or two actually making it work

Today, I can (and did) point an intelligent 10 year old at a box of parts, and have a working PC in 2 hours. Compatibility mostly ensured, courtesy of pcpartpicker.

 

[i7Baby]

My first PC had a 286 CPU, 256kB ram and a 40MB HDD and ran on DOS. It cost over $1000 (1990 $s). There was no internet connection available at home.

I got 3 mates to help put it together. We had a lot of electronics magazines to read through. Then it was a lot of guesswork. It was hard to find a place to sell us the bits I wanted. We had to keep changing plans.

 

[USAFRet]

Stacker, DoubleSpace...trying to use a 10MB hard drive for 15MB data.
(yes, 10MB)

I remember people freaking out when Falcon 4 came out, and used up 40MB hard drive space. That is when I bought a 125MB drive.
And RAM crossed the $100/MB barrier.

 

[Archaic59]

Sorting through a huge pile of floppy discs to find windows 95 startup disc and sound card drivers etc....the good ol days. 1440 modem playing Quake online...LOL.

 

[USAFRet]

Sorting through a huge pile of floppy discs to find windows 95 startup disc and sound card drivers etc....the good ol days. 1440 modem playing Quake online...LOL.

Quake 1....still my absolute favorite game. Bar none.

 

[Archaic59]

Sorting through a huge pile of floppy discs to find windows 95 startup disc and sound card drivers etc....the good ol days. 1440 modem playing Quake online...LOL.

Quake 1....still my absolute favorite game. Bar none.

Absolutely...nothing as visceral eh?

 

[Shneiky]

My first home computer was a 386 with 176 mbs of a hard drive. It was a monster for its time. 4 mbs of RAM - the pure epicness of the sound "4MBs"

But what I do remember clearly is early days overclocking. It was practically impossible because aftermarket cooler became a real thing with the first socket 775. Before that - you got stuck with that 100 gram heatsink that you had. My current Cryorig R1 Ultimate with its 1.2 kg is larger than all the heatsinks I had on all my Pentium 1s and 2s and 3s all combined.

Also, there was a moment in time when motherboard were accepting both AMD and Intel CPUs.

 

[Itsbranden97]

Also, there was a moment in time when motherboard were accepting both AMD and Intel CPUs.

God this would be the next best thing since sliced bread.

 

[digitaldoc]

Don't forget the painful master & slave configuration in setting up the hard drive on IDE.

 

[USAFRet]

My first home computer was a 386 with 176 mbs of a hard drive. It was a monster for its time. 4 mbs of RAM - the pure epicness of the sound "4MBs"

But what I do remember clearly is early days overclocking. It was practically impossible because aftermarket cooler became a real thing with the first socket 775. Before that - you got stuck with that 100 gram heatsink that you had. My current Cryorig R1 Ultimate with its 1.2 kg is larger than all the heatsinks I had on all my Pentium 1s and 2s and 3s all combined.

Also, there was a moment in time when motherboard were accepting both AMD and Intel CPUs.

Editing your boot info, to allow certain things to load before other things, so everything would actually 'fit', and run.
Changing that boot sequence for each different game.
Burning a CD = coming back in the morning, and maybe it is done.

 

[Shneiky]

And you burn all your CDs at the lowest speed, since it was less likely for it to skip a track. (i still have that habit though)

 

[digitaldoc]

Yes, when they introduced buffer underrun protection to CD burners it was a big leap forward. Before that, you would make more coasters than usable discs.

 

[Shneiky]

The moment when they introduced CD burning as a default in Windows... God I loved it. No more Nero burning tool or something of the sort. The first time was in XP, if my memory does not lie to me.

 

[turkey3_scratch]

Wow sounds rough. Was it fun at all or more frustration?

 

[Archgaull]

Wow sounds rough. Was it fun at all or more frustration?

It really depends on your personality. I hated working on my computer, since it was just too much effort for too little reward. On my new computer, however, I find myself opening it up just out of sheer boredom and cleaning the fans.

 

[trickynick]

I remember back in the 90s when GHz was unheard of in terms of CPU speeds. While I was teaching, an article came up in a magazine saying that CPUs are about to reach 1GHz, and I remember joking with my class saying that they'll have to add air conditioners in order to keep them cool.

 

[Alec Mowat]

Wow sounds rough. Was it fun at all or more frustration?

It was exactly the same as it was now, except when we had an issue, we used our available resources to fix it ourselves. Now, people just go on forums and b*tch until someone else fixes it for them

But I guess that's why I get paid, so I'm not complaining

 

[digitaldoc]

Wow sounds rough. Was it fun at all or more frustration?

I think in the end it was a ton of frustration, but it was also more enjoyable when you could get something to work that pushed the limits. Also, most people did not have much computing power so it put us on the cutting edge. I was the first person I knew that had a parallel port scanner, and folks were always wondering how I could get these images into slides.