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Thread ID: 53655	2005-01-23 10:12:00	ok : why did ya, and did ya regret it???	beetle (243)	PC World Chat

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
317318	2005-01-24 10:36:00	Well since I beleive around 1994 or so we had a 286. I know nothing of the specs as I wasn't into computers at that time (this was my dad's, I had no money etc, I would only have been about 4 when we got it. It had a 5 1/4" floppy and a 5 1/4" hard drive, around 25MB I think. I started taking any interest at all when I was about 6, and would write things in the word processor. I needed Dad to get me into the word processor though. It had a program called Main Menu loaded. One day, I accidentally got into it's BIOS and noticed that you could change the heads / cylindars / sectors. I thought this was cool fun, and put them all up to 16, 65536 or whatever they would go to, thinking it was like, tuning the hard drive or something. Obviously it couldn't boot up anymore, and we didn't have the knowledge to reset the values or the money to take it into a shop. So we had no PC, and I became disinterested in the buggers. Later in 1997, dad saw an ad for a Compaq Presario 2230 (200Mhz 486, 16MB Ram, 2.1GB hard drive, Win95 and IE) - and a 33.6 modem. It was $1500, which was a really really good price at the time, so we bought it. Compared to our last one, everything about the interface was welcoming and exciting - this was a leap from Dos to Windows 95 - a very big leap. I liked the PC, and developed a large amount of knowlege. Soon I knew more than Dad. At one point we upgraded to 48MB of Ram. Gradually, I began to hate its slowness and non-upgradeability (no ISA or PCI slots). Over the years, I began to buy and upgrade my own PCs. My enteprenuerial side came out of the dark. I spent my life savings, $230, on a 486/66Mhz off T&E. 24MB Ram and a 600MB hard drive. About 2 months later I got sick of it and sold it for $250. Then for $230 I bought a 486 DX4/100Mhz with 36MB Ram and an 853MB hard drive + Windows 98. By this time my life savings were back up in existance again, so I bought a CD-Rom drive at DSE for $109. Wow, they were cheap by then. Later that year CD-R drives came out. They were over $700, and the discs around $7 a pop. I bought a series of computers over that time, and also a 1X CD-RW for $175, a bargain. In 2000, we bought a new PC *cough*Lemon*cough* from the PC Company, for the amazingly low price of $2300 - a custom made one. 1.1Ghz. It is still dad's PC. It sucks. 2004 is when things actually happened. At the start of that year, 333Mhz was blazingly fast for me, something out of my reach. I wanted a PC badly as my P75 @ 100Mhz had died (mobo failure). One day it was given to me - our neighbours broken Celly 333. I bought a new motherboard for it for $75 (included 96MB Ram and another 333Mhz Celly). Put it together and sold it for $165. That set me off. In May I turned 14, and around then I made my business, making PCs and selling them. I moved to new PCs a few months later. Then I could afford better and better. Rapidly I progressed through PCs. - PIII 500Mhz, 128MB Ram, 3GB Hard drive - Upgraded to 4Gb hard drive in a big hurry as 3Gb was making graunching noises, upgraded to 192MB ram - Swapped for PIII 733Mhz, 10GB hard drive, 192MB Ram. - Added more Ram so I had 256MB - Swapped for Cel 1.2Ghz, 30GB hard drive, 256MB Ram - Added more Ram so I had 384MB - Secretly swapped 30Gb hard drive for my Dad's 40GB without him knowing (used a drive imaging program to swap the data). - Finally took the plunge and got a Celly D 2.4Ghz, 512MB Ram, 40Gb hard drive. Many parts were taken from old PC. Got a DVD-ROM drive. - Filled the 40GB very rapidly, bought a 120GB. Filled it too, getting a 200GB ASAP but no channels left :(. Left out heaps of random stuff, but I am sick of typing and you are undoubtedly sick of reading.	george12 (7)
317319	2005-01-24 10:42:00	Get yerself a PCI IDE expansion card, George. Not the best, but it works.	agent (30)
317320	2005-01-24 11:26:00	And BTW no regrets. Still young enough to think that a computer isn't frivolous ;) :D Besides where else could I put my newish graphics card :thumbs:	Raikyn (6293)
317321	2005-01-24 12:34:00	Get yerself a PCI IDE expansion card, George. Not the best, but it works. That's exactly what I will be doing agent. But first I have to save for a hard drive, I'm pretty broke atm (bought an MP3 player a week or so ago). Managed to free 20 or 30 gigs anyway, by encoding some raw VOB files into DivX :)	george12 (7)
317322	2005-01-26 05:07:00	1992 we got a 386SX-25 w/ 2MB, 50MB HDD and 5.25" FDD from one of those stores which closed down. We got sold a preinstalled copy of Dos 5.0. We didn't knew much back then. Well, we learnt a lot and became computer geeks. It did make us unproductive, playing games, sharing games with other students. Regretted? Maybe. We did bugger all playing games, on the BBS and using a color dot matrix printer. We didn't have scanners, took any serious learnings off the PC or have the internet or email back then. Was in uni in 1997 and Internet had to be purchased on a voucher basis per hour. Free email were done on Macs Eudora or some sussy application on Windows 95 on the backbone of a NT infrastructure. My first internet connection was Ihug the Diamond Account for flatrate at $40nz. That was good at uni so useful of hte PC but the internet was a let down too. Played too much, too less work.	Nomad (952)
317323	2005-01-26 05:16:00	We learnt a lot from accicdental formatting esp the low level format in BIOS and installed various parts into the PC. We from that to a AMD 200MHz 64MB, a odd video card, 3" floppy, 1GB HDD, new monitor, scanner, printer CD ROM, Sound Card (the famous Sound Blaster 16). All of which we are still using now. Hey .. but now, I have used various latpops, one Tosh at a 486DX4-75 to a Thinkpad PI to a PII and now PIII with DVD-ROM and LAN internally. STill have the 200MHz PC thou and working fine, goes online with its 56k model now and then, runs AVG and various spyware detectors blah blah.. with of course MS Ofrice as used during school days. Thou I think the 8yr old scanner has crapped up. STill with dialup thou gotten into the LAN cards but not used at all now. I rather tug my laptop to the desktop's printer. Don't have WLAN yet.. or a DVD Wrtier or any of the 3D cards. Maybe soon eh? And a TV Tuner too!	Nomad (952)
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