Damnest PC Search

[cheetah]

Hi.
Lets see who got the oldest,damnest PC.I have two PCs.One is brand new,but other is a bit old whose specs are:-
64 MB Ram,
OS:-Windows 98,
10 GB HDD,
48x CD Rom Drive,
Intel 810 Board,

Go ahead and Post your PC specs below.

[vysakh]

few days ago i read a post that was worse than u

it had 640 KB of RAM

it was for sale. someone said to wait and give it to a musuem

[djmykey]

Hey guess what I got 3 of those comps at my cafe running good still.

[ycr007]

well,our English Lecturer has a PC that he claims has only 1GB HDD and nothing else but a Floppy Drive.He uses it only for MSWord and Typing
Letters/Notes etc which he then Prints out at the College Printer

[pimpom]

OK, here goes....

My first computer (which I still have) was an Amiga A500 made in 1986, though I bought it second-hand. It uses a 7MHz CPU and came with 512K RAM built-in on the motherboard (which i upgraded to 4MB). I used a TV as the monitor.

My second computer (which I also still have) is an Amiga A1200 made in 1992. It uses a 14MHz CPU with 2MB RAM built-in, upgraded with another 8MB and a 40MHz CPU.

My first PC, which I kept for sentimental reasons long after I bought an Athlon XP, was assembled from parts I collected from people whose computers I upgraded. It was a Classic (non-MMX) Pentium 166 with 8MB EDO RAM. IT NEVER HAD A CABINET !!! I used it with the motherboard propped up against a wall, the PSU (repaired dead unit) lying on my table, the CD-ROM drive sitting on top of the PSU. The CD drive was one that I put together with parts from 3 defective ones, and when reading a CD it sounded like a plane taking off. At first I placed the HDD directly on top of the CD-ROM drive, but the vibration from the CD-ROM drive sometimes caused errors, so I placed a piece of plastic foam between them. The 4.3GB HDD was built from 2 dead ones. The 14-inch monitor was also a dead piece that I repaired. Total sytem cost = 0.

My brother living next door still has a Pentium 100 with 1GB HDD that I assembled for him in 1995 for DTP work. He has newer ones now but his staff still use that first one.

[djmykey]

Wow pimpom now thats one hell of a story man but hey dont u think that u r goin too much into dreams when u say that u assembled a cdrom drive. Okies man no offence but I would like to know how u did it.

[geek_rohit]

Hey even one of my PC is quite old. Its config goes, AMD K5 90MHz, with 32 MB EDORAM with a 2GB HardDisk, with a mono monitor and a SiS Graphic chip onboard with external cache. It did give me a very good performance for a 90 MHz CPU. Nevertheless I got a new PC after enjoying(or sometimes annoying considering the slow speed) it for many years.

[pimpom]

Originally Posted by djmykey

Wow pimpom now thats one hell of a story man but hey dont u think that u r goin too much into dreams when u say that u assembled a cdrom drive. Okies man no offence but I would like to know how u did it.

I don't mean something like soldering all the chips by hand (though I did replace the motor drive ICs for others when CD-ROM drives were much more expensive). I collected 3 identical models to start with. I took the case-frame and mechanical system of one drive, the lens from another and the third one contributed the electronics board. Now do you believe me ? :-P

[pimpom]

Oh, and my graphics card was a SiS 6215 with 1MB VRAM. I desoldered the two 0.5MB RAM chips from another card, fitted them onto the first card, and voila! - a 2MB SiS 6215 graphics card. The difference in performance was dramatic.

[freshseasons]

Originally Posted by pimpom

I don't mean something like soldering all the chips by hand (though I did replace the motor drive ICs for others when CD-ROM drives were much more expensive). I collected 3 identical models to start with. I took the case-frame and mechanical system of one drive, the lens from another and the third one contributed the electronics board. Now do you believe me ? :-P

Ok and what about the harddisk thing . You said you made it using two dead harddisk. Ok go ahead and tell me you took 4 platter plate of each working harddisk and got the spindle needle from one, assembeled it and air packed it again ....
Didn't mean it as an offence but the harddisk made from 2 dead one. ????
Merry Christmas!!!!

[pimpom]

Originally Posted by freshseasons

Ok and what about the harddisk thing . You said you made it using two dead harddisk. Ok go ahead and tell me you took 4 platter plate of each working harddisk and got the spindle needle from one, assembeled it and air packed it again ....
Didn't mean it as an offence but the harddisk made from 2 dead one. ????
Merry Christmas!!!!

This was simpler. The first HD was dead - fried electronics. The second drive was still working, but had so many bad sectors that the owner had discarded it. I just swapped the electronics drive board. There's no need to open the hermetic sealing housing the platters. It's done all the time.

[hunttherock]

Hey i am posting this frm my old PC being 166Mhz, 16MB RAM, Creative soundblaster 16, and 1 MB VRAM

[[poWer]]

well my uncle has a commodore 64. he uses it 4 for featuring advertisements in satellite channels. runs good and has 3d games as well.

[pimpom]

Ah, good old C64. I never owned one myself, but it was one of the best (some will say THE best) of the early personal computers. I still have a book on programming for the C64. Some of you will know, but some may not, that the 64 in the name Commodore 64 stood for the size of memory it had, i.e. 64 KILObytes. It was made by Commodore Business Machines (CBM), the same people who bought the Amiga technology 20 years ago and turned it into one of the most loved machines.

[freshseasons]

Hey PimPon can you please tell me where one can get Amiga . Anything will do . Since you are so much into this stuff do you know someone who will sell it to me.



you have this Operating system or know someone who uses this ...
i desperatly want this ...Please help

[pimpom]

*********** Merry Christmas to everyone *********

Freshseasons, your questions can be answered briefly or with enough material for a magazine article. First the short answer and I'll try to be as brief as possible with the longer version.

Short :
Q1. Amigas are sold in India by Monarch Computers. The last time I contacted them was several months ago so I don't have precise figures for the price. It was around 20k bundled with a low-end Genlock (external hardware for mixing computer graphics with analog video).

Q2. No I don't have OS 4.

Longer version :
Some negative points so that you'll have realistic expectations if you do buy an Amiga - The Amiga A1200 sold by Monarch was introduced in 1992 with a very minor upgrade in 1995. It used a 14MHz CPU and even with the bundled 40MHz accelerator, it's still very slow by modern standards. For raw hardware speed, it's roughly comparable to a 386 PC. It has a TV-out built in, and an RGB-out that was intended for Amiga-specific monitors so that you can use a VGA monitor only for a limited range of screen resolution settings.

Workbench (the OS) is tightly integrated with the hardware. The A1200 was released with the Kickstart ROM chip v3.0 and Workbench 3.0. Both were slightly upgraded to 3.1 in 1995, but after normal development of the Amiga ceased, only the OS was upgraded to 3.5 and then to 3.9.

Amiga OS 4.0 is NOT a minor upgrade from 3.9. It's for an entirely new range of hardware using PowerPC processors. Development of both hardware and OS has been very slow due to reasons that are mainly financial and commercial. The hardware called AmigaOne has been produced in small quantities, and Amiga OS 4 is still in beta stage and is not compatible with older "Classic" Amigas. Most owners of AmigaOne are running a version of Linux on it.

Amiga OS 4 (or the earlier versions) is NOT an alternative OS for the standard x86 PC system. It's simply not compatible with the architecture.

As I said in an earlier post, one way to have a taste of Amiga OS is to use an emulation of it in MS Windows. For details send me a PM and include your email address.