Best computer experience

[willawake]

i hate all these threads about worst computers and stuff.

i remember doing some programming on zx spectrum. that was quite exciting
i remember communicating via telephone line with two spectrums with modem via text
then doing some spreadsheet on sinclair QL
then we had some compuserve which wasnt it really
i remember getting a PII with i guess some diamond card and running win98 and we checked it out with tomb raider some version which was really incredible.
then i remember playing with linux and getting it to serve faster than win2k which was exciting
lots of other exciting stuff with the web and publishing on the web. networking excitement still no hardware excitement.
recently i fixed a friend's sons acer with windows 7 which looked pretty awesome i think that would be quite exciting for a first laptop.

[weirdlookinguy]

Re: Best computer experience

When I was in fifth grade, we got a P4 Gateway machine with AOL dialup (they were big back then). So many good times... I most vividly remember listening to David Byrne's "Like Humans Do" (remember how it used to come on early XP machines?) and staying up until 11 (that was a big deal back in fifth grade) playing the original rollercoaster tycoon. The second day we had it, I woke up while it was still dark to sneak onto the internet and to play some rollercoaster tycoon.

That little Gateway is sitting at the foot of my bed now, next to a needs-repair 17" Dell LCD. It may be out of comission now, but it will forever hold a place in my heart. My new system I just built, Windows 7... none of that will ever come close to how awesome running XP in 2002 on that Gateway felt.

[willawake]

Re: Best computer experience

i just wonder why since so many years i am not floored with the technology. it is more like a fine tuning. its nice the computers play dvd and hifi music though. and how the web became so big thing, that it interface with life so much. but also that it become so addictive and maybe in that respect become more than it should have been.

[370forlife]

Re: Best computer experience

I remember our first computer was a compaq presario 4712 with a 166mhz p1, 16mb ram, and a 2.5gb hd. We bought it new for about $3000. Played Movie Maker plus on it for hours and hours. My brother's and their friends would make some pretty funny movies. I remember I was always freaked out by the haunted house set.

[ratdude747]

Re: Best computer experience

my fav was when i got my free emachines t5026 running. it ran ubuntu really well... eventually i got a free p4 prescott 630 and 4gb of ram... and it was killer...

maybe getting my first eee pc... light weight, and my first device with a decent webcam. being able to run some quasi-hardcore games was a plus (unit before was celeron 550mhz with 512mb ram)

also, getting my new p4 board with the bad socket to run despite the damage to it was a very good experience. making something out of nothing always feels good.

writing my first program on my TI83 plus was a fun... considering my only way of learning the language was looking at how some ther programs were coded. It's a app called "cramer", which solves 2-var systems of equations using cramer's rule. i built in an hour. the next one was "cramer3", which did them in 3 variables.

getting my first palm was a good one. since i have been an addict... teacher let me use it in class since it has no phone/text in it. it helps me remember hw and i can play games on when i'm bored.

[pentium]

Re: Best computer experience

I fondly remember our Packard bell box we bought back in 1996.
To this day I still use it for DOS and early Pentium gaming and it's still running the original OEM install of Windows 95.

[Junk Parts]

Re: Best computer experience

AMD K6/2 450mhz on and FIC? Mobo.
This board had jumpers and dip switches for every speed setting that you could dream up. My brother built the thing and took it to its limit using the good old PC100 ram. It would BSOD now and then and he got tired of it so he gave the whole setup to me saying that the board was bad. This was back in the fine Win ME days...LOL Well I got 768 megs of PC133 and stuck it in the unit. I think I had to change one jumper to tell the mobo it now had PC133 ram. Because he had the fsb overclocked I guess it needed that little extra headroom the PC133 offered. The BSOD's went away. I wish I could remember just what that board was now. All I can come up with is FIC something, verision c. I know it was Win ME but that little AMD PC would be booted and online while this Dell P4 2.4, 533fsb, 1gig of ram thing is still showing the blue Xp welcome banner and getting its shit together. I set this PC up in my wife's office for web surfing and games during her slack time. Nobody could give her any crap about it because she owned the company and was the Boss...LOL The newer CPU's started came out with a new instruction set that the AMD didn't have so she had a real problem finding games for the old AMD. I gave her my Gateway and used the old AMD at home. One day the AMD PC went dead. I figured it was dead so I broke it down and tossed the mobo. Sometime later I tried to use the AMD's Matrox PCI video card in another PC and it turned out to be totally dead. I think I tossed a good mobo because of a dead video card.

[Junk Parts]

Re: Best computer experience

I think my board was the FIC VA 503+.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: Best computer experience

That was one of the best boards of it's time.

[Junk Parts]

Re: Best computer experience

I think it was a great board too, and someplace on this planet there is still a brand new unmolested one in it original box. All I have to do is find it...LOL

[Junk Parts]

Re: Best computer experience

yes it was the FIC VA 503+

[PCBONEZ]

Re: Best computer experience

There were a few on eBay [yes, NIB] a few months ago.
They didn't go all that cheap. - Cult thing I guess.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: Best computer experience

The one to look for is rev:1.2a with a sticker that says "E-0037" or "E0037".
That was the last version and is the only one that officially handles over K6/2-400.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: Best computer experience

There.
http://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-FIC-VA-503-S...item27ad5fbd83
He did have 3 or 4 listed.
Guess the others are too old now and ebay flushed the pages.