Five years ago...

[Steve]

Well it beats having a Dutton inside

[Jonny]

I had a 500Mhz K6, 256 RAM and PCI graphics, with a hard drive that made you go mad/deaf. I used it as a server until about 2 weeks ago when I got bored, overclocked it, broke it. It was fine at 550/560, but had serious problems at 600. I don't know what it was set to when it died - something ridicolous.

[Hans Voralberg]

I got a PIII 500Mhz back then, with a 10G HDD and generic stuff, onboard vid. Run Mine Sweeper nicely though

[Kumagoro]

Back in space year 2000, I had a 166 MHz MMX with a trusty 2 GB HDD 16 King dong megs of ram and a matrox mystique. A fine beast of a machine i had been using since the dark days of 1996 or 97.

When one day after a intense night of writing my report on some kind of analogue electronics I pushed the print button only for the machine to lock up. Once switched off it never woke up again. I lost everything and didnt have a back up.

I still dont keep back ups properly hahaha.

Oh yeah and i got a 450 MHz KIII so it wasnt so bad.

[oshta]

I still dont keep back ups properly hahaha.

There a bugger arnt they!
- Our file/domian server temperarly packed up on friday, although it wuld have been the end of the world to lose it, it was quite worring. I have now backed it all up!

Daniel

[ice]

Got my first proper machine in early/mid 2001 but in 2000 we had a family pc along the lines of...

Intel Celeron 500MHz
Abit BH6
64MB PC100
13GB HDD
SiS 6326 8MB AGP
SoundBlaster 128
15" CRT, Printer, Scanner
etc.

Cost around £850 from a local pc shop.

[Ben Rogers]

PIII-450@600
Abit BE6-II
8.4GB
192MB PC133
GF2 MX400
Santacruz soundcard
15" crt

[sawyen]

How come no one had a dual Voodoo2 12MB like I did before? Well... at least it did rocked the sand off peak district when it came out...

[Nemeliza]

Year: 2000
Job: Running company creating database driven web sites (honest - they WILL catch on)
System: 1.2GHz Athlon with 512MB SDRAM (133 ?) and a 60GB drive on a KT133a mainboard
Built By: Some bloke called Dutton who promised me he knew what he was doing
Lasted: 4.5 years - it is now in retirement but still sitting next to me - it is keeping a stack of IT magazines at 'hand-height'

Replaced by: 14.5Kg CPU called a 3.73Ghz EE with tons of something called DDRII and a hard drive that causes agorophobia in my data packets


Do I notice the difference when typing this message ?... not a lot

However, I have to say that my old system would not clear 100fps in HL2 - but this one does

Also - cos I lent him all the parts for a show - this one also carries the shame of being 'Built-by-Dutton'

Want to swap?

I think you need to learn the hardships

Im too ashamed to tell you what i was running back then....Lets just say Cyrix!

[SMPer]

How come no one had a dual Voodoo2 12MB like I did before? Well... at least it did rocked the sand off peak district when it came out...

i did!

Intel Celeron 633MHz
Chaintech mobo Apollo Pro 133a
256MB PC133
Aureal 3D sound card
3DLabs Permedia2 8MB gfx
12MB Voodoo2 SLI

spent a lot of time playing UT on this beast. good times

[arthurleung]

I was using P3 800Mhz with 512MB of ECC+REG PC133 SDRAM (oddly it worked on the I815EP)
With Western Digital WD800BB and Maxtor D740X 60GB
Then a Radeon 8500 Pro.
It still working

[Rod911]

Athlon XP 1700+ @ 1.75Ghz
Epox 8KHA+
256MB DDR RAM
Seagate 40Gb HDD
64MB Radeon 9000
17" CRT Monitor

All of the parts are still being used in one machine or another. Majority of the parts are in the file server.

EDIT: I think I had the above system. Otherwise it would have been:
PII 300 @ 333
Gigabyte LX4
128MB PC66 SDRAM
32MB TNT2
Quantom 6.4Gb HDD
17" CRT Monitor

[Nick F]

My first ever machine was a Tiny PC, can't rememer for sure but I think it was a P2 400Mhz, think it was actually about 6 years ago now.

[Rabs]

5 Years ago....

How about:

Abit KT7-RAID
AMD Duron 750@900 with a Delta screamer fan (faaaar too loud...)
256MB PC133 (2 x 128MB)
2 x 30GB IBM Deathstar in RAID 0
Hercules Geforce 2 GTS 32MB
Soundblaster Live! Soundcard
Pioneer DVD-ROM Slotload (116?)
Plextor CDWriter (Cant remember the speed)
Juno P6 Full tower case - big green monster

BT Internet £11.75 a month 'unlimited' 56K 0800 dialup (could access anywhere) with ICS to another machine (PvP gaming)

[sawyen]

Gosh... most people had Nvidia for their graphic chip 5 years ago. Voodoo2 still brings back memories, almost as convincing as Nvidia's SLI now... its pretty sad that 3DFX died so suddenly (alright, Voodoo 3,4 and 5 was a little rubbish... I admit, but hey, they pretty much spearheaded hardware AA!)

[Goretex]

I had a 486 machine that ran at 33Mhz until you switched on the "TURBO" button which bumped it up to 66Mhz! (of course I never turned off the turbo mode! the thing only had a heatsink (no fan!)). This rig had 8Mb of RAM (4 x 2Mb Simms if I remember correctly, they all had to be matching Simms too!), a 4X CDROM drive and a 200mb HDD.
In the same year, I upgraded to a rig sporting an overclocked 133Mhz Cyrix CPU (ran at 150Mhz, 500Mb HDD and 64Mb of RAM. Wow good times! I remember playing Command & Conquer Red Alert alot on this rig.
I also thoroughly enjoyed destroying these machines when they died. There is nothing like obliterating a motherboard with a hammer and chizel!