Computer History Table
List of desktop computers that I have personally used over the years.
Shared computers
I started life on the family 486, but there was a 386 that died from an internal battery leak (at or around the turn of the Millennium, think 2000~ish), the distinctive story about that 386, in particular is that I got a Kellogg's copy of Age of Empires 1, only to discover that it didn't have a CD drive, and had to use the main family computer that at the time was a IBM Aptiva 2153. That 386 unit had a 5.25-inch floppy drive that deceptively looked like a CD drive to my infant brain.
That 386 lived in my childhood bedroom, had Windows 3.11 and I only ever used to play solitaire on. My older brother had a 486 that I used to play Sim Park on and probably SimCity 2000 as well. - that 486 when to my younger brother when I eventually inherited that IBM Aptiva 2153, and it became my first ever computer.
At or around the same time, as my parents had long separated, at my dad's, I was given a Pentium 200mhz that is stilled used to this day as my main DOSBox machine but was used to play Age of Empires II on, back in the day (I received a collector's edition copy of Age of Empires 2 for my 10th birthday in 2002, keep in mind, that game was only released in Australia in November of 2001).
IBM Aptiva 2153 (2003 - 2006)
It was already an 8-year-old computer when I inherited it.
Specs: *A Celeron* processor, 64mb ram, 4g.2b hard drive, Windows 98 later ubuntu 6, a CD drive, later CD burner, a floppy disk drive.
Notes: I was always told this unit had a Pentium III equivalent processor in it but never actually knew what the specs of it was, it was also my first computer to ever get Linux installed on it, that being ubuntu 6. It died of hard drive failure sometime in 2008 (it was a Maxtor drive after all). - I had made numerous attempts to get it going again but it is very particular about what hard drives are installed.
The Custom-built Pentium (2002 - 2009)
This computer has an interesting story, it was a surplus asset disposed of from a local power station (so it was bought at an auction or sale of some type), from what I understand it didn't come with a hard drive, possibly there was a need for a graphics card as well, and my dad contracted a local nerd to get it running again, I say nerd endearingly, because I have a vague memory of visiting their place out in some rural farmland, and they had star trek curtains.
Those star trek curtains would be considered vintage now and I looked them up on eBay and they are now worth a pretty penny.
Specs:
Case: the most generic beige box of the 90's (probably made by InWin).
OS: Windows 98 SE
CPU: Intel 430vx Pentium-S 200mhz
GPU: Nvidia Riva TNT2 Model64 (32 MB SDRAM)
RAM: 32Mb
MB: Gigabyte GA-586VX Socket 7 (Rev 3.36)
BIOS: Award Modular BIOS v4.51PG with a Plug and play extension 1.0A.
Storage: Originally a 1GGB Seagate hard drive, later a Syba SD-CF-IDE-A 3.5" IDE Host Interface to Compact Flash Adapter with 32Gb Compact Flash card.
Sound card: Aureal Vortex Sound card
For the motherboard, I need to replace the RTC module on mine; either by de-soldering the ODIN OEC12C887A CMOS battery or bypassing it with the CR2032 standard 3v hack.
The combination of graphics, sound card and CPU made this an ideal machine for playing a plethora of old MS DOS games on, and in some circumstances, they ran even better than the Aptiva.
I upgraded this unit in 2020 in post 80.
In 2009, I moved to my dad's house, bringing with me, at the time my main system a Compaq Presario SR1910AN, that I had gotten to replace the Aptiva 3 years prior in 2006. When that happened, this computer was placed into storage up until I moved out of home.
Compaq Presario SR1910AN (2006 - 2010)
I had been bugging my mum for quite a while for a new computer, finally in June of 2006 she caved and got me the cheapest kit from a local Harvey Norman. (2006 was a very different time and I hadn't realised yet how awful they were, or the markup), to save cash at the start I carried over the CRT monitor from the Aptiva, still this is what first felt like my big boy computer, having something that was far more reliable and didn't crash all the time was a game changer from the dark ages of Windows 98. - I say that in perspective knowing that Windows 98 was relatively reliable, just selective about its reliability.
While I had been making websites on the Aptiva using Microsoft front page since at least 2004, this was the first real computer that I started to program on using Visual Studios C++ 2005 express edition, visual basic among other tools, like batch scripting, it was probably also the best computer I ever had for games because the majority of titles I bought just worked, all the way up until around 2009, I think the first game to be significantly laggy to a point where It didn't run was Call of Duty World at war, and even then I could always just buy it on Xbox or PS3, this is the first computer I know almost the exact time it died because I made a post about it at the start of 2011 (Post 14). - Edit: not sure why I wrote 8 years when I only ever had that computer for 4.
So, I had this unit all the way through high school, right up until graduation. - I did eventually get a flat screen 17-inch monitor that I carried over to my Windows 7 machine.
Specs:
OS: Windows XP Home Edition
CPU: AMD Sempron 3200+ (1.80 GHz)
GPU: Nvidia Gforce 6150LE
RAM: 512Mb (later 2Gb DDR2)
Storage: Originally an 80Gb hard drive, later 1Tb hard drive.
Optical drive: DVD burner.
For the NVIDIA graphics card Gforce 6150LE, It was integrated onto the motherboard, but actually was a fairly competent graphics card given it that the majority of games I played were rendered in 800 x 600
When that Windows XP machine died, I was forced to use my piece of shit Compaq Presario C700 laptop that ran Windows vista Basic for about a month until I had enough money squirreled away to buy my next machine.
Cooler Master Gladiator 600 (2011 - 2019)
My first ever custom-built PC referred to as the "Cooler Master" as that was the brand of case that all the components were enclosed in.
I was still quite young when I bought this and didn't quite know any better, remember at the time there was no Linus tech tips (or he was just getting started), buying the NVIDIA Gforce GTS 450 Fermi chip was a mistake as it would frequently overheat. And it was noisy and loud! (Almost to a point where it was unusable).
I made an exciting post back in 2011 after I'd finished building it, (post 15), this was the first time I went online through a computer catalogue and picked out the components, agonised over whether or not they would work together, and then just eventually pulled the trigger, it kind of reminded me of an old 486 that my dad had built at least 20 years earlier, in ~91 comparatively it had a 1 gigabyte hard disc Dr whereas mine had a 1 terabyte hard disc drive, it started life with 4 megabytes of ram whereas mine started its life with 4 gigabytes of ram, his CPU was a single threaded AMD variant that ran at around 33 megahertz, whereas mine was an AMD variant with six cores that ran at 2.80 GHz, so the technology felt matched about 20 years apart...
I salvaged what other components I could out of my Compaq Presario before giving it a proper burial.
Specs:
OS: Windows 7 Pro
CPU: AMD Socket AM3 Phenom(tm) II Thuban x6-Core 1055T (2.80 GHz stock) 3.3GHz OC
MB: GIGABYTE GA-880GM-UD2H
GPU: Currently it has an ASUS Radeon R7 360 2GB at 1070 MHz engine clock from the 2016 Upgrade. Originally it had NVIDIA Gforce GTS 450 1GB Clocked at 830 MHz (From around 2010, Fermi chip architecture 🔥).
SSD: 250GB Samsung SSD 850 EVO (Added in 2016 Upgrade).
HDD: Original: 1TB SATA II Seagate Barracuda at 7200RPM with 32MB Cache (From 2009).
CASE: Cooler master Chassis Gladiator RC-600.
PSU: Currently: Cooler Master (600 Watt) B600 ver.2 (RS-600-ACAB-B1) (Added in 2016 Upgrade), Originally: Included with case, Cooler Master eXtreme Power Plus RS-500-PCAR-J3 500W ATX12V V2.3 Power Supply (From 2009).
CPU Cooling: Currently: Corsair Hydro Series 120mm H55 Quite Liquid CPU Cooler (Added in 2016 Upgrade). Originally: AMD AM3 Stock Cooler. 🔥
In 2016, (post 46) I did a refresh of this computer, and it finally ran efficiently cool and felt a lot more stable, I had dipped into a bit of a depression knowing that I had bought a lemon and was reluctant to upgrade from it, another factor was the way that Windows 8 was received, it wasn't until about 2019 that I had finally retired this unit, and even then it's still saw some frequent usage becoming a remote desktop.
Project PC or Corsair Obsidian 750D (2019 - ????)
I was very reluctant to upgrade to Windows 10 and was basically dragged kicking and screaming into the modern era, at the time I coped with this by essentially building a second machine and running it in parallel to my main Windows 7 desktop, (starting in post 65), and this was at the point where I felt in control of my own destiny, this was around the time I started enjoying programming again, stopped chasing the latest and greatest and started commissioning "retros systems" starting with a new old parts Windows XP box. By this time, I had also dragged my vintage Pentium out of storage.
There is a picture on Twitter (*or here) that shows all three\four computers that I was using at the time.
The big one being this system, with my main Windows 7 desktop still in service and a newly commission XP box beside it, as well as a HP small formfactor desktop that I was doing Linux development on (yes, VMs exists, and there is merit to using real hardware both solutions are fine).
This new machine started life with second hand spare parts from family as I was still waiting on the likes of intel, AMD and Nvidia to deliver something new exciting and special, I eventually settled on the Intel Core i9-9900K as it became clear that HEDT wasn't a thing anymore, and the AMD 5950x hadn't been announced yet.
I put all these parts together in post 66, started playing newer games again and enjoyed life, for graphics I settled on the first-generation RTX 2080 Ti knowing that a GTX 1080 Ti Would have probably been sufficient for my needs, I also feel like I overpaid for it, but this was pre pandemic pricing when everything just got ridiculously expensive. - I know a number of people who have expressed buyer's remorse at the 1st generation RTX cards and I'm among them, but I'm compensating by keeping it around for a long time, and that's the philosophy I seem to have with my computing hardware, is that its price should dictate the expected service life of it.
It was also built at a time in my life where I could finally consider myself to be a computing professional and therefore justify the cost, as I'm not intending to upgrade my computer at least for the next 10 years, so see you in 2029.
Specs:
OS: Windows 10 Pro
CPU: Intel® Core™ i9-9900K 16M Cache @ 5.00 GHz
GPU: Gigabyte GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Xtreme, 11GB
RAM: 64GB (4x16GB) G.Skill Sniper X @ 3600MHz DDR4
SSD: Samsung 970 PRO 1TB NVMe M.2 (PCIe) SSD, 64L MLC V-NAND, Type 2280
SSD2: Samsung 860 EVO 1TB SSD
MB: Gigabyte Z390 Aorus Master Motherboard
CASE: Corsair Obsidian 750D Black Airflow Edition ATX Case, Window
PSU: Corsair HX850i 850W Power Supply
Peripherals:
Mouse: Cougar MINOS-X3 Gaming Mouse
Keyboard: Gigabyte GK FORCE-K81 - Mechanical Gaming Keyboard with Cherry MX Blue Switches.
This machine also had a Blu ray burner, and 4 terabyte hard disk drive added to it at some point as scratch space, supposedly that means it would boot up slowly, but I have never had an issue with this.
One of the other requirements of building the system is that it did not have any RGB at all.
* I also inherited a lot of old motherboards which aren't listed here because they're used for spare parts.
** Q: Why do you have this on your website? A: I can name at least two other nerds that have this kind of information on their websites: http://toastytech.com/about/computers.html and http://advsys.net/ken/
