Back in the good ol' days!

[Thomas @ Kustom]

Well since no-one wants to talk about their stunning systems :) I think it's appropriate that you should know, before I worked at Kustom, I was a customer, so I'll speak about my system.

I got my computer 2 years ago, cutting edge at the time, an ATX(WOW for that time)soyo mb, k6-2 333(oc'd later to 350 and 380), with a 4mb agp card and a voodoo2 8mb and 32 mb of RAM. Boy that thing could waste anything you threw at it. :D

Various upgrades happned nothing major, then i became Part of Kustom(Thankyou Graeme :) :) :) )

Being in here I realised how slow my computer was now compared to the 1ghz geforce comps i was building, I didn't have enough money to get an up-to-date computer, so Instead, I decided to get a computer that had only just gone out of date a little bit, but was still fast. Then by chance someone wanted an upgrade from a p3 550 to a p3 800, i bought the 550 for my own use. Then began the hunt for a good slot1 mobo, after hunting for an abit, graeme stumbled over the soyo 6ba+66, i looked at reviews, and the overclockers loved it. By chance we found one on clearance(which happned to be the better model 6ba+100 with ide raid) from one of our suppliers because the box was damaged.(hehe i got it for £54.99)

I now have a soyo 6ba+100 with IDE Raid, a 550mhz slot1 p3(Which overclocks to 622 without even trying ), and 128mb ram, and a Leadtek TNT2 ULTRA 32mb, I know I could upgrade the card, but i always have to have the best of a model, so I'll wait for Ge-Force 2 Ultras to come down :) )

As for the apperance of the computer, what started out as a white ghost has now become the red power hungry beast you can see in the Lan article if you have a look.

Replys... what do you have in your computers?

Any1 wanna publish my touching story??? ;)

Thomas

[Thomas @ Kustom]

This is my comp BTW

http://www.kustom.co.uk/archive/Articles/lan/pic3.jpg

[Graeme*Kustom*]

just to point out, he means its the one on the left, the other thing is a can of coke - it`s easy to get the two mixed up :)

[JADS]

My system is somewhat ancient, I bought it back in October 97 from Opus. Its original specification was,

Intel PII 266
Intel 440LX Motherboard
ATI RAGE PRO 4MB gfx card
32MB SDRAM
Yamaha onboard sound
24x CD-ROM Drive
4.2GB Fujitsu HDD
ATX Case
15" Monitor
3D 300Watt PMPO Speakers
PS/2 Mouse and Keyboard
FDD

First of all I O/C the processor to 300MHz a year after I bought it.

Followed sometime after this was an upgrade to 160MB of memory with another 128MB stick.

Soon afterwards a Celeron 333 was purchased, but I couldn't install this much later because the BIOS didn't support it, so it sat there gathering dust for 18 months

Then came the Creative 12MB Voodoo 2, which stunned me into silence the first time I played Quake 2

After that was the Creative 6x Encore DVD drive with MPEG Decoder.

Then the Celeron replaced the PII 300. It would O/C to 400MHz unstably on a Intel motherboard using SoftFSB.

Next upgrades followed in Christmas 1999, with a HP 9310i CD-RW, Creative SoundBlaster Live! Platinum, Hauppauge WinTV and the rather excellent VideoLogic Digitheatre speakers.

In October 2000 I replaced the Keyboard and Mouse with a Microsoft IntelliMouse Explorer and MS Internet Keyboard Pro.

Very soon after that I added a Maxtor 80GB HDD and switched my old 4.2GB Fujitsu to slave.

Before Christmas my Celeron 333 started burning out and someone offered me a free Celeron 400, which I took. It needed a Slocket adaptor, which I got within 3 days.

In Jan I added another 192MB 66MHz SDRAM to my system to allow me to print out larger documents more easily.

Now I am attacking some of the last remaining components. The Fujitsu HDD that had served me so well for more than 3 years was sold yesterday and replaced with a 40GB Maxtor Diamond VL40

Soon the motherboard will be replaced with an Aopen SX3SP PRO (i815), the Celeron 400 will give way to a new Celeron 766 and the old, but faithful ATI gfx card will give way to an Elsa 511 GeForce 2MX 64MB gfx card.

The original components now are the case, the FDD, the PSU and the monitor.

But soon all these will be replaced and my old computer will die a diginified death after years of faithful service. Yet even the new bits of kit in the my system won't last long. The DVD drive is getting slow and I don't need the MPEG card anymore, the memory, new motherboard and processor are all temporary until I do a major upgrade next year (involving thousands of £s). Yet the case (designed by Kustom hopefully, :)!) will last me for the next 4/5 years, providing good solid service and a home for my upgrades, :)

When I finally replaced the oldest components it will be like saying good bye to an old friend...

James

[Torch]

my system varies, as i do a lot of reviews for JSI Hardware, at the moment, it consists of:

1Ghz Tbird @ 1.1Ghz (1.2Ghz chip arriving soon)
Fop 38 cooler using Arctic Silver II Paste
Soltek SL75kv Motherboard (just sold my kt7, plan to upgrade soon)
128Mb Kingmax Tiny BGA PC133 (512Mb arriving soon)
GlobalWin 802 case modded
Home Made Fanbus controlling:
1 80mm intake sunon front
1 80mm exhaust sunon rear
1 120mm sunon top blowhole
Pioneer 105s dvd rom
mitsumi 4801te cdr
zip 100
Maxtor 40.9Gb HD
Leadtek SDR Geforce with Blue ORB
Diamond Supra Express Modem
Microsoft Natural Keyboard
Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer
Belinea 19" 106030 Monitor

erm i think thats about it for now :D
planning on getting an asus a7v133 motherboard soon, and as u can c i'll be using a 1.2Ghz Tbird in there, which is an avia btw ;) great overclockers

[Graeme*Kustom*]

I used to have an amazing system , 850tbird clocked to 1g, abit GTS64mb , asus a7v, adi g710 trinitron, sirocco`s, juno case... it was the business, but it was sold to generate revenue for kustom... i went without a pc for a few months but at xmas, cobbled together this thing

Abit BP6 (classic mobo! from my old rig)
Twin Celeron 400`s @ 570
GlobalWin FEP32M Coolers
GlobalWin LAC Chipset Cooler
Hercules GF MX 32mb w/blue orb @ 200/195
VideoLogic SonicFury
VideoLogic Digitheatres
Sony 12x8x32 CD-RW Black
Lope LP-600 Trans Blue Case
Trans Blue Keyboard with black keys
Rounded Cables
10gb 7200 rpm Fujitsu HD
Modem, 100mb Network
Dell 15" trinitron , but will have IBM P76 Black in the next few days
Trust Optical Mouse

It`s an ok rig, not the best for games , but excellent for productivity - run win2k most of the time for working on the website, doing the various artwork for Kustom etc !

I`m going to cut an 80mm blowhole in the next couple of days, i`ll post a pic :)

[willis]

I tell you why I don't want to talk about my rig - I haven't upgraded it yet. Although when I have you will never hear the end of it ! ;)

[[TD]Domipheus]

hehe

i started with my elite 486. (or wait, my commodore 64 should i say :] )

now it is this beast...

Asus A7V KT133 ATA 100
Duron 750MHz at 808MHz
256 MB PC133
Matrox Millennium Dualhead G400 32MB
Diamond Monster Sound MX300
Seagate Barracuda 7200 2MB 30.1 GB HDD
8.4GB Backup HDD
Creative 5x DVD
2x CDWriter
21" Monitor
Modem, Printer, Scanner, and that NIC i got off you :)
£3 cheapo mouse

The durons are amazing for overclocking, all u need is a pencil and it is done. I am in the process of getting it to the golder Gigahertz, as i know this is possible (my m8 has his 600 running at 1ghz no probs!) I mean, i got my 750 for less than £50 so is great value.

And the A7V is the best mobo i have ever bought. Ok, at £130 it is a little on the expensive side but you get what you pay for! Is is as stable as a rock.

Ohh, and all that is in my cool new Q3F spray-pained tower case :)

!i just hope my mouse doesnt break at this lan!

[DanAdams]

Athlon Tbird 1gig @ 1050 on ABit KT7
512mb PC133 RAM
60gb Seagate RAID 0 HDD array
13gb ATA-66 boot drive
50X Asus CD-ROM
IBM 19" flatscreen CRT monitor - thanks KustomPC ;-)
and the other bits and bobs everyone has.

[Thomas @ Kustom]

If you're worried about your mouse breaking at the lan, remember there's a prize for cheesiest mouse mat!!! A Trust optical mouse so you don't have to use the goddamn muse mat any more 8)

[[TD]Domipheus]

hrm.. i got a 'creative computing' mat i found over at this guys house.

If i rub some cheese into it, is that ok?

:]

[ 27 April 2001: Message edited by: [TD]Domipheus ]

[Graeme*Kustom*]

that would certainly by high in the running of the contenders... i`ve got a cheesy one, but i like it :) its an `alaskan moose pad` - its got a picture of a moose on it, you know those deer things??? :)

I`ve got an optical mouse now, but i still use that mouse mat, i think it gives my desk character..

[JADS]

I have two mousemats, neither cheesy.

The first is a Total Annihilation print, which is somewhat cool. Unfortunately I lost it, which is very sad as I had it for so long!

The second is a chunk of a motherboard, which is extremely bad for optical mice so I don't use it anymore!

James

[Richard]

I use an Everglide Attack Pad which cost 15 quid. Guess I wont win the prize ;(

[ross]

I've got a cheesy cartman shaped one!

[JADS]

Of course back in really good old days we had a 486 DX-2 66MHz and not just any old 486, no this one had multimedia enhancements! It had a truly staggering 2x CD-ROM, Sound and Speakers... phew, :)

Other than that...
8MB SIMM
420MB HDD
Cirrus Logic 1MB gfx card
14" Monitor
Desktop case
Windows 3.1
P/S2 mouse
Serial AT Keyboard

Bought way back in the day in 1994

Still have it working away at home as their main computer, with an increase to 2.1GB HDD (although only 512MB was available), 16MB SIMM and the original release of Windows 95.

Mind you they are getting a new Duron 750 system now after I convinced them... well actually after I broke the FDD controller whilst trying to fix the HDD!

James

[cyberscripter]

well, my computer life all started out with a dx2 33, dads old pc cause he had upgraded to a dx4 100. i then got that one which i was well chuffed and i still use to this day to do some typing in bed. then i started putting adverts in newspapers for "free, unwanted computers to goto a good home." to my suprise i got some results. first was an old 586 server 128mb :eek: , i still wish i hadn't gien that away. next came an old 486 100, this was given to me by one of my dads mates. the next one was a complete supprise. it looked like all the others. a heao of junk really, but infact it was pretty good considering wot had had b4, a cyrix 150mhz, 64mb ram, 3.2gb hdd !!cd!! etc... this one serverd me well and now sites in the corner as my file/backup server on my mini network, after a feqw years of building my knowledge of computers i took up the challenge to build my own pc and this is wot i use today:

AMD Duron 700
Gigabyte GA-7IEX4
128mb pc133
3.2gb hdd (out of my old cyrix)
6x mitsumi cd
3DFX Voodoo3 3000
cheapy ISA soundcard
56k modem

i was pretty chuffed after i built this but it needed some upgrades, and now this is how my pc stands:

AMD Duron 700 @ 805mhz
Gigabyte GA-7IEX4 1
256 Megs PC-100@115 SDRAM
20gb seagate HDD ATA66
samsung 52X CD-ROM
Phillips 8x4x32 CD-RW
3DFX Voodoo3 3000 + Radeon 32mb SDR
Creative PCI64
3Com etherlink III-combo 10 NIC
56k modem

dual display on a pair of comcrap 15" v55's which can't be bad for £10 each :eek: hehe.
well, b4 u fall asleep just a couple more bits of info, i will be upgrading to a asus a7v133a and a t-bird 1.13 in the near future and mayb a new graphics card but this one seems to bedoing ok at the moment so i may just leave it.

[JADS]

Getting stuff free is good, I like getting the best available, which is soo darn expensive, :D

James

[dotcom]

Here is my current rig :

Athlon 750 @ 750 (not overclocked)
Abit KA7-100 Slot A
320 MB RAM - PC133
Creative Geforce 2mx 32meg
Maxtor 13.5GB HD Master
Western Digital 8GB HD Slave
Plextor 16/10/40 CDRW IDE
Pioneer 105s x16 DVD IDE
SoundBlaster Live Player 5.1
Creative Fourpoint Surround Speakers
19" Viewsonic Monitor E790
Task Midi Case - still to be modded
Microsoft Natural Elite KB
Microsoft Intellimouse Optical

[JADS]

Am I the only one with ridiculous quantities of storage? I have 114GB after formatting at the moment, comprising of 1 80GB HDD and 1 40GB HDD. Might add a PCI ATA Controller and get a few more, :)

James

[ross]

I think you have enough! :D

[JADS]

Well I may stop for now, but I'll start collecting again when 150GB drives hit the market, :D!

James

[Dead_One]

How about a raid array consisting of 12 36.4 gb ultra 160 scsi drives, attached to the quad xeon server you saw at the lan, which also has 2 36.4 gb drives, and a couple of 9s for the os?

do i win a sweet or a bag of crisps?

[JADS]

Problem with RAID
1 - Greater chance of data loss if you are using striping
2 - The cost
3 - The overhead

So I will stick to having seperate drives for now, :)

James

[Stan]

My PC's all built by self

1st About 4yrs ago
AMD K6-2 233
32Mb RAM
8.4Gb HD
ATI Rage Pro and Voodoo 2
CTX 14" Digital

2nd
Abit BP6 (Great Mobo)#
32x CD
2 Celeron 400's
Voodoo 3 3500TV
96Mb RAM
30.7Gb Maxtor
CTX 14" Digital

Dodgy connection on Voodoo so sent it back, they gave me credit and got a Geforce 2 GTS 32Mb :D

Then the mobo went, just my luck so third and current PC
:mad:

Abit BX 133 RAID
P3 850@850
Geforce 2 GTS
160MB RAM
30.7Gb Maxtor
8.4GB Maxtor
6X Pioneer DVD (Reads CD's @ 32)
CTX 14" Digital

Thats about it, thinking about getting 19" monitor, new case (modded by Kustom hopefully) :), faster P3 or O/C Current

Thats about it

[Thomas @ Kustom]

Guys It brings tears to my eyes that I seem to have hit a soft spot with all of you in this post. Thankyou so much and keep the specs(and pics) coming, I want to hear about them all!
Remember a mans home is his castle, and his computer is... well his computer, but keep it going!

[Dead_One]

to contradict a previous poster, raid 1 may increase risk of loss, raid 5 (striping with parity), is designed to increase data read times, and to prevent data loss in case of disk failure, it also makes it easier to add new drives, replace broken ones etc.
a scsi raid array, set up correctly, is still the fastest safest way to secure data, especially if it is hardware raid.

And if you want to go to extremes, try raid 6 and above!
2 raid controllers, mirrored on each controller, with a striped parity drive.
thats 4 copies of a striped parity raid array, so 8 chances of having the data if a drive fails.

also 4 seperate logical drives to read from at any one time, so it reads one packet of data from each, increasing read speed by 3-4 times!

[ross]

Heres my history..
Commodore 64>Amstrad>386-Win3.1>486-Win3.1>Cyrix 120mhz-Win95>AMD K6 200mhz-Win98>AMD Tbird 1000mhz-Win98SE

Quite a few upgrades from a very young age. Yet to find someone the same age as me who knows as much about computers. I'm a dos veteran . :D

[JADS]

RAID 10 seems like a fairly safe option. Creating an array of mirrored drives for performance and reliability.

James

[LANcaster]

I have to new Rigs - yahoo!! :)
1st rig:
700Mhz Athlon
128MB PC 100 RAM
27Gb SCSI HD
Riva TNT 2 - 32Mb
DVD + CD-RW


2nd Rig:
650 Duron
128Mb PC 100 RAM
10 Gb UDMA 66 HD
GeForce2 MX 32Mb
50x CD
(this rig was a great deal, i built it myself for only £420 not bad eh?)

both r networked by the way

[JADS]

Nice.

James

[Dai-Bach]

Wow, some great stories, I must compose my opus!!!!
Spectrum 48K ---->AMD286 @ 16MHz PC clone
And I'm a DOS freak too!!!
Now Duron 800 @ 1000+ etc

Dai

PS Dead_one, what on Earth do you do with
that huge SCSI array??????? Do you work for the IR ?

[ 05 May 2001: Message edited by: Dai-Bach ]

[Thomas @ Kustom]

Nah, he works for himself, all this stuff is for his own enjoyment / experimentation.
We're just building his beast back up for him at the moment. 1333 t-bird c ddr memory, dual 30gb western digis 7200 rpm on raid-0.

lovley.

Hey Dead_one, if yer sooo crazy about performance, proove it!!! Get a better connection than DUAL ISDN!!!

[JADS]

RAID 0 strikes me as a fairly dangerous way to configure your drives as you double the risk of data loss.

J

[Thomas @ Kustom]

That's not quite how you work statistics, if you only had one drive, then you could say there is a 100% chance of failure, just cos u only have one drive worth of data. Just cos you split it between 2 drives in the end wheather one goes down in your one drive setup, or one goes down in the raid set-up, you've lost either way.

Raid is only dangersous if you use bad makes of hd's that are liable to break... stick with good makes, western digital, IBM etc...

But your data is no more safe on one drive than on two.

[ 05 May 2001: Message edited by: Thomas @ Kustom ]

[JADS]

Hmm...

With one drive you are just relying on that one drive not to fail. With two drives you are relying on both of them not to fail.

I suspect that it is statistically higher that one of the two drives will fail than one.

James

[Thomas @ Kustom]

Fair enuf i guess 8)

[Dai-Bach]

Hi
I've got 2 IBM 30Gb 75GXP ATA100 Deskstars as RAID 0.
I really think it flies, I didn't want to make them into a RAID 1 or whatever because I DO back things up, probably MORE often than needed.
Anyway, all these moans about it not being safe are just that...moans. If a HDD goes down the only thing to do is to re-start from a backup.
I've got 2 other ATA66 IDE HDD's (17Gb and 20GB) in my system, both of which are bootable and are in removable caddies. These are also used for backup and file sharing at work.

RAID 0 is fast, 4½ faster than these other Seagate drives. So if you want performance, and can do without redundancy go for it.

cheers
Dai

[ 05 May 2001: Message edited by: Dai-Bach ]

[Dead_One]

The thing to remember is that, as stated, if one drive goes you loose everything, if you have 2 drives in raid 0, then there is more chance of a drive going, more chance of the drive being faulty etc.

however, from my point of view, the beast is a pure games machine.
it will only have games data on it, and that will be backed up once a week.
if one drive goes, then i can just put an image back onto it whenever i get a new drive.

the real important data is stored on a raid 5 array.

fairly secure, and backed onto cd once a week.

[JADS]

I back up all important stuff onto CD every week or so.

James

[LANcaster]

Well, my first comp was an Amiga 600 with 2Mb RAM (yes a whole 2 meg!! - scary in those days!!) then in 95 I got a P75 with 16Mb RAM, a 1 Gb HD and 2 Mb of video RAM.
Then I had to wait about 5 years for my next one, a 700MHz Athlon with 128Mb RAM, DVD-ROM, CD-RW, 32Mb Riva TNT2 and a 27.4Gb SCSI Hard Drive. Lastly, I built my 650 Duron with 128Mb RAM, 10Gb HD, 32Mb GeForce2 MX for only £440 - bragain!!!!! and it gets about 1200 in 3D Mark 2001 and 3350 in 2000. :) :mad: :mad: :mad:

[DanAdams]

Originally posted by JStormont:
<STRONG>Hmm...

With one drive you are just relying on that one drive not to fail. With two drives you are relying on both of them not to fail.

I suspect that it is statistically higher that one of the two drives will fail than one.

James</STRONG>


Tut tut, none of you boys were paying attention in maths. Say there is a 10% chance a drive will fail:

Using one drive, you have a 10% chance of losing data.

Using RAID 0 (striping) each drive has a 10% chance of failure, and EITHER drive failing proves fatal for ALL data, so chance of loss is 10%+10% = 20% (DOUBLE) the chance of failure.

Using RAID 1 (redundancy) BOTH disks must fail to lose the data, which is 10% x 10%, or 1% chance. (ie not very likely).

Of course, those numbers above are just examples, and, hey, I use a RAID 0 array myself, so chances of failure are pretty slim. Just backup anything crucially important. Got me a SOHO network, so everything just gets backed up between machines for everyday stuff. Really important stuff is of course backed up to removable media.

Dan
dan@fearsome.net

[DanAdams]

Originally posted by Thomas @ Kustom:
[QB]We're just building his beast back up for him at the moment. 1333 t-bird c ddr memory, dual 30gb western digis 7200 rpm on raid-0.
[QB]

Any reason why you're plumping for Western Digitals? Have you checked out the Seagate Barracudas, Dead_One? They run very quiet, are highly reliable (500k MTBF compared to 200k with some other manufacturers) and have a lower disk access time (about 8ms I think) than any IDE WD's I know of. Been using various incarnations of SCSI and IDE barracudas at work and home and never had one fail on me. Solid, reliable technology that filters down from their Cheetahs, I guess. Anyone who makes a 15k rpm drive knows what they're doing in my book :-)

Dan
dan@fearsome.net

Update: Western Digitals are indeed slower - rated 8.9ms access compared to 8.2ms for the Barracudas - that's a fairly substantial 8% difference. Me's got a Barracuda RAID 0 array, so this just makes me feel smug ;-)

[ 10 May 2001: Message edited by: DanAdams ]

[Dead_One]

use wds cos thats what they gave me in the shop!!!
not realy that fussed about make, just trying a raid array to see if its noticably quicker!

For important stuff use an ultra 160 scsi array, running raid 5!

[Thomas @ Kustom]

:( I remember "Back in the good ol' days" when this thread was about computers and not raid 0! :(

[DanAdams]

sorry!

[Thomas @ Kustom]

:( :( :( ***SNIFFS*** :( :( :(

[Dai-Bach]

1982 Prestwick. I started with a Sinclair Spectrum 48K, this was well worth the £200 odd I paid for it as it lasted until I bought my first PC clone in 1989. I added various things like a proper keyboard that the speccy fitted inside (no more rubber key combo's for me to type), and a full analogue joystick with interface that I built myself!!!

1990 Moved to Shetland, and was so bored I bought a PC mail order from a Welsh crowd called Micro-Surgeons (who promptly went bust), this was a 286 (AMD) @ 16Mhz, 1Mb RAM, 256K Trident VGA, 40Mb Seagate ST157A HDD, 2 x FDD 3½ and 5¼ (still have the 5¼....anyone want it), and my first 14" Monitor.
Shortly afterwards I bought 4Mb RAM for about £150, and upgraded the VGA to 1Mb. And blew up first monitor!

1991 running out of room I got a 105Mb HDD for £190.
Got my first modem 2400bps, with 9600fax speed, useless but ok for the odd BBS attack (from Shetland every BBS was long distance).

1992 Decided to splash out on a 486 mobo!!! Got 486sx @ 25MHz, an extra
4Mb RAM which after de-soldering the pins on my 4 x 1Mb SIPPs gave me a grand total of 8Mb RAM....I was cooking!

http://www.btinternet.com/~dwestwood/forsale/4mb/Picture1.jpg
These cost about £150 at the time I think !!

1993 Fed up with the performance of the sx, I bought a 486dx2-66 which ran at double the mobo's clock of 25MHz (my first underclock!) until I bought a 40MHz crystal from RS, swapped it for the 25MHz, and strapped a heatsink from a large ex power supply onto the CPU. 80 MHz my first overclocking!!! Blew up 2nd monitor. Got 14,400 modem, started using Compu$erve who had a POP in Shetland!

1994 Moved back to the Real World.......well Kilmarnock anyway!!!

End of Part One (?) :confused:

[ 10 May 2001: Message edited by: Dai-Bach ]

[Thomas @ Kustom]

:p Getting better, can't wait for part 2!!!

[Kna]

Let's just end this all now:

http://www.owner.org.uk/pc/oldcomp/images/pet_open.jpg

This beauty is sat in my bedroom at the mo, also got the dual 5 1/4 drives for it (Couldn't get the 8")..

Mwaaahahahahhh.

[Graeme*Kustom*]

wow. respect ! does it still work? and what does it do? :) i guess even pong is gonna be out of its reach?

[ross]

That things an antique!

[Dai-Bach]

I can see why you "want to end it all now" !!!

Which of your grandfathers gave you that then?

LOL

Dai

[Kna]

It's a Commodore 4008 PET, first computer I ever owned (age 8, so.. 18 years ago), my dad got it spare from work (The whole place run their payroll from about 4 of them.

Mine ended up breaking *sob* and I managed to pick this one up cheap about a year ago. Still in good nick, works perfectly. Plays a mean Yahtzee.

Check out how 1337 it is here http://www.jps.net/foxnhare/pet.html

[Craig]

ah, retro world :)
i must dig out the amiga, as it's somewhere in the attic....

[Graeme*Kustom*]

amiga`s were cool... i had an a4000 for a while it was a mean bad ass computer for its day !

[Craig]

you think your a4000 was good
my amiga 600, had an extra 1mb ram :)
i could get the voices on worms!

[Thomas @ Kustom]

I had an A1200 with expansion card running at 25Mhz, a shocking increase from the standard 12Mhz(which i might point out was the same processor as most fridges! :D lol ) and a STUNNING 6MB OF RAM!!!!!!
and get this!
1.2GB Hard disk(£149) and that wasn't the standard 2.5inch one, this was a full blown pc 3.5 inch beast crammed and sardined in under the keyboard.
Guess who fitted it for me? Thankyou graeme 8)

[Graeme*Kustom*]

my a4000 had an 040 processor 25 mhz clocked to 30mhz (no softBIOS then , you had to change the timing crystal :) ) with modded heatsink, 24mb RAM, 1.7GB Hard Drive, SCSI, 64bit 3D Graphics card, 24mb RAM, 4x CD-ROM - it was amazing - ran AmigaOS at 1280x1024x 16bit colour, and was tweaked to hell... that was an amazing computer :)

oh, and it would emulate a Mac too while multitasking...

[Craig]

I demand that kustom sell Amigas :)

[Graeme*Kustom*]

they still exist? :)

[strax]

First post...WooHoo.


At long last a shop thats reasonably local :-)

only one thing though...wheres the 92mm sunon fans & griles?

can I join in the 'my pc' thread?

main system

Athlon 1gig @ 1400 (Week 8 AXIA Y) 140x10, Taison 742 hsf, Abit KT7a
256mb Crucial Cas2 PC133
Elsa Gladiac GTS2
Iwill 2935lvd SCSI card
3 x Quantum Atlas V 18gb Ultra160 scsi drives
Toshiba 6x DVD IDE
Dlink network card, WinTV, SBLive
Supermicro SC760 case (3x80's in, 1x92 + 1x60 out)
2 x hard drive coolers with twin 40mm fans
19" iiyama monitor
Epson Stylus 640
Epson GT7000 scanner

old system (now my sons, he's only 6 but I needed an excuse!)

Athlon 1gig, 128mb crucial cas2 PC133
Abit KT7-Raid, Teac 4x4x32 cdrw
Adaptec 2940uw SCSI card
Seagate 18gb ultra160 hd
Elsa Gladiac mx
addonics soundcard, network card
17" ctx monitor

copier

Celeron 366@578
large globalwin hsf (cant remember model)
Abit BM6, 128mb crucial cas2 PC133
Domex dual channel Ultra160 scsi card
Seagate 18gb ultra160 hd
Plextor 40x SCSI cd
Teac 4x24 SCSI cdr
Voodoo 3000, 15" mon, netgear network card
Aopex hxo8 full tower

All systems linked together with 8 port switch and zyxel router to home highway


and for downstairs I have...

Dell Latitude 4000 laptop
p3 650, 128mb ram 14" screen, network card

links into my network downstairs for net access throughout the house :-)

as you can see, it kinda got out of hand! this doesnt count the four or five systems that I have sold on in the last year.

It does mean that I hold my own lan parties on a regular basis, 3 pcs set up on unreal tournament all the time.


The big test will be in September, when I am gong to fill up my switch and have around 6-8 pcs for an all dayer.

[Dai-Bach]

Sounds fantastic Strax !
Wish I had more money :)
My daughter is 3½, very soon she's gonna be wanting her own PC......I'm sure.

Cheers

Dai

Duron 800 @ 1000

[strax]

Its just that I cant resist buying stuff.

I tell myself that I wont use my visa this month, but something always crops up!

[Craig]

Originally posted by Graeme @ Kustom:
<STRONG>they still exist? :)</STRONG>

err,. who knows, lets resurect AMIGA!!!!!!

[JADS]

www.amiga.com (http://www.amiga.com)

James

[Craig]

Wow :)

/\ (_)
/ \ _ __ ___ _ __ _ __ _
/ /\ \ | '_ ` _ \| |/ _` |/ _` |
/ ____ \| | | | | | | (_| | (_| |
/_/ \_\_| |_| |_|_|\__, |\__,_|
__/ |
|___/

POWER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[willum]

I listen to the specs for your first machines, and then I think of my first. I started back in the 80s with an Amstrad PCW running alongside a FX20 Twin Floppy drives
I then moved onto the Amstrad PC 1512.The real turn of speed came when I purchased a Diamond 486DX2 with !!! 16MB of Memory!!!. This was a terrific amount of memory in those days and cost me £126.00 over the price of the machine.

I then came into the trade and was lucky to able to play around with all the latest kit as it came onto the market. I worked for a Company called ASG and was their resident workshop manager, which allows you to have a lot of fun without having to pay out for equipment.

I currently run 3 machines , 1 Athlon 1.2ghz,on a ASUS a7v Motherboard with 256 MB Memory,and 60Mb Hard disk space on a raid system. The second is a ASUS CUSL2 with a Intel 600 chip same memory spec.

The third machine is a TYNAN Motherboard with a Celeron 533 chip which I use solely for recording CDs.

I,m quite surprised at the amount of interest, in what is virtually "Hot Rodding Computers, I think it,s brilliant that minds are fertile enough to think up and execute all the mods. Its also a smack in the eye for the critics of what is wrongly called "Computer Nerds". Theres a lot of intelligence,hard work and ingenuity going into this business and it,s refreshing to see.
Keep it up
regards
Willum

[ 13 May 2001: Message edited by: willum ]

[JADS]

I remember the old Amstrad PCW, my mum had on back in the 80's. I seem to remember it wasn't much good at anything in particular!

James

[Graeme*Kustom*]

I knew amiga`s still existed, was just joking :)

I had a Commodore 16, Spectrum 128, Amiga 500, 1200 then an A4000/030 then A4000/040 which was overclocked from 25 to 30mhz :)

I just didn`t mention the older stuff before because I didnt think it counted :)

For PC`s I got a PII 233, which was overclocked to 300 (nail varnish on B21 !) with a Voodoo 1 then a Banshee, Then a Celeron 400 with TNT 16mb, then TNT32mb, then twin Celery 400`s on BP6 @ 600 , moving on to TBird850@1000 with GF2 GTS 64mb which I parted with in September , so now back to a variation of the old Celery machine :)

[Dai-Bach]

Is no one else going to add their tuppence worth to this thread???

Surely someone can tell us of their Babbage programming experience, or when they were trying to crack Enigma codes, what kind of MHz were you running at then????

I remember doing some serious number crunching in school (early 70s ?) where we'd punch some cards in the class, about 3 cards/instruction line, and a complex instruction like 3*6/92+42 took flipping 20 cards or so!!! (Each card took about 5 minutes to clip the holes out in the right place). Then we'd send this card "program" off to Cardiff University for them to run in their computer and we'd get the answer back the following term sometime!!!! (answer also on cards which we had to de-code AAARRRGGGHHH!!!)
Outstanding stuff eh!!!!!!?
That must've been about 1GHz/Billion years.

Anyone else remember anything like that at school?
It's a wonder it didn't put us off computers for life !
Then in the late 70's we were banned from using early calculators (big as laptop) in school.
Now look what the youngsters get away with!!!
We 'ad it 'ard in the old days!

Cheers

Dai

PS The answer to the above program was:
42.1956521739130434782608695652174
(if I remember correctly) which none of us believed for a moment, and assumed it was just some Uni Students prank.

[Moldiver]

Here is the ultimate gaming system... :D
http://www.privateelwood.f2s.com/12.jpg PoNg 0nWz J00... :D

[ross]

commodore 0wnz j00.

[Karl]

I used to have a Commadore C16 plus 4.

My current PC was bought in July 1999 so i snearly two years old:

Abit BP6
Dual Celeron 366 @ 550 (When I fix my other golden orb)
256Mb RAM
IBM 7.2k rpm 13Gb Hard Disk
Fujitsu 7.2k rpm 13Gb Hard Disk
Nvidia TNT2 32Mb
Pioneer DVD
Ultra Scsi
Ricoh 20x4x4 Scsi CDRW
ATAPI Zip
Creative SB Platinum (Got that about 6 months back, had an AWE-32 before then)
MS USB Intelimouse
Mitsumi Keyboard
Diamond 56k pro external modem
Network card
InWin a500 full tower + 2 psus.
17" Diamondtron Monitor

[ 03 June 2001: Message edited by: Karl ]

[ling_thing]

i remember the days of the amiga
mines still sitting in the cupboard (500+ model)
although think i formatted all the disks to mac a few years back

have been trying to find a use for it but its not easy

before the amiga i used a acorn electron
its also still sitting in the cupboard
although dont think i have a casette player that could be used on it

these days however its just an old PIII 550
Soyo 6BA+IV mobo
512MBs RAM
2 * 20Gig SAMSUNG HDs (looking to upgrade one to at least a 30 when i get a job)
Ricoh 6x4x24x&4x CD-R/RW&DVD-ROM drive
a cheapy 50x cd drive
ATI All-in-wonder 128 pro
sound blaster 1024 live value
JENOPTIK port IEEE1394 FireWire Card
network card
external parallel 100meg zip drive
17" iiyama S700JT1 monitor

got a chaintech CT-6BDU dual processor mobo here that i plan to use once its working again

**** Microsoft (http://www.****microsoft.com/)

[Graeme*Kustom*]

Thomas will dig the mobo, he swears by the 6BA :)

Could you please remove the expletive from your signature though? Thanks !

[ling_thing]

yeah that mobo has served me well
even if i have never used more than 4 of the 8 IDE devices that it can take
(silly me bought a case that couldnt anyway)

but as soon as a i can get a replacement BIOS then i will be of in a search to find a cheap Slot 1 PIII 550 in order to change to the dual proc mobo

Graeme - i sent you a PM

[ross]

I had a Commodore 64 Edition 2.

[Tami]

In my loft I still have my first "state of the art" 286 8mhz with a whopping 3 mb ems consisting of 108 256k chips a 40 meg hdd and dos 3.2 with a 1.2 meg floppy. and I did GRAPHICS with it, no wonder I'm grey haired.

[Thomas @ Kustom]

Lol tami 8)

[Dai-Bach]

Outstanding !!!
You'd better get it out of the loft b4 it makes the house fall down !

:D

[Tami]

The case alone would crush someone if it fell, the front bezel is cast aluminium, make a good anchor though :)

[Thomas @ Kustom]

is it just me or is this one of the oldest and most active posts. :D
Cmon more ppl tell of your computers past and present, i wanna hear about specturm an everything!!!

:D

[Q]

Allright then, sit down children and grandpa will tell you of a computer that had an astonishing 1Kb of memory (what's a harddisk?) and used the television as it's monitor. It was called a ZX-81 (the grandfather of the ZX-spectrum). Sinclair beat Microsoft to it in using a year indication as I believe it was the year 1981 when I bought one of those.

Ofcourse, after programming 1K one-liners for about 2 months, you pretty much did everything there was to do, so it didn't take too long before I got my next one: an Atari 600XL with 16Kb memory (what again is a harddisk?), and soon bought a memory expansion to increase it to a whopping 64Kb.
Storage was done on a cassette drive, which acted like a WORN drive: Write Once, Read Never. Maybe it was just me... :p

Then came the Amiga 500. I loved that machine to bits and really I should have kept it at that. But because the PC was getting quite popular, I got myself a 286 with 16Mb memory and 40Mb harddisk (now I know!). With a few expansions (memory, HD, CD) I kept that for a decent time, until Intel released their next big thing: a Pentium 90!

That was the most expensive buy I've ever done. I bet you can get a Cray nowadays cheaper... :D
I managed to keep it for a whopping 6 years (!) and I've only sold it (£200 quid would you believe that?) recently to get myself a laptop (an IBM Thinkpad 600X, P3-500).

And the laptop is already up for sale as I saw the error of my ways and just have to have a desktop machine again.

[ross]

Ok I described briefly but here's more detail...

Picked up a Commdore 64 2nd edition at a jumble sale, bought games for it from old 2nd hand shops for months, then the PSU died.
Picked up an Amstrad CPC , the later model with a colour screen! Started using it towards programming and word processing, tried to get an old star printer working. Refused to work, dads mate at work knew a lot about computers, the printer port was dead :-/. We gave him the old c64 with broken psu and the amstrad. He gave me a nice ICL 386 with Windows 3.1 :). It lasted a while, had lots of games for it. Then it broke one day suddenly, the hard disc died :(. Dad took it to his mate who swapped it for a 486, which I actually never got to see. Dad had taken it home and it had blown up on him (erk). So was pcless for about a week then a Cyrix 120mhz arrived home with 16mb ram,500mb hd running windows 95. This pc had various upgrades done to it, a 4mb 3d card was added, 24x cd rom,1gb hd,32mb then 48mb ram. then the motherboard was replaced with a vxpro piece of crap ,a 200mhz amd k6 chip, 64mb ram,4.3gb hd. This was my pc till march 2001, due to the exceptions of a 2x scsi cdrw,wintv card,softmodem being added. March 2001, birthday pressie was new pc :) I had £300 saved up which I donated, went into graeme and thomas at kustom :o). Was VERY impressed, decided to start getting a kustom pc built (no pun intended ;-o). Tried to keep as much as possible from old pc which wasnt much. The final spec was decided as abitkt7a mobo1000mhz AMD thunderbird,128mb pc133 ram,20gb 7200rpm hd,hercules 32mb geforce2mx gfx,sb live!,dvd drive,10mb network card,trust hardware modem,floppy,basic case,optical mouse,natural keyboard running windows98se. The old pc had the tv card removed and put into the new box and had a 10mb network card. 2 pcs were networked together over a crossover cable. Since then got a nice adi 17" , epson 580 printer, trust usb scanner from kustom ;). Both pcs have also been reformatted and repartitioned...
Main pc- Dual booting win2k and win98se.
Old pc- Running win98se, should be dual booting with mandrake linux by tomorrow though :). Thats pretty much it.

Ps: Kustom 0wnz j00.

[Tami]

OK Thomas I'll join in
P3 500 256 meg 10 gig NO mods is my graphics setup W/G400 running two 17" monitors and a Mil2 running a 15"mon. this has slaved to it a P1,133@166 96meg "DosBox" to run my plotter/cutter, its 15" monitor completes a "Quad" setup, My wife 17"taxan is driven by a 400celeron @500 w128meg DVD and hard decoder drives a 32" JVC widescreen. That brings a total of 113" of CRT in one room,which is why we glow in the dark :D

[Thomas @ Kustom]

Cheers Tami 8)

[Dai-Bach]

Tami, my wife would totally FREAK OUT and leave me even if she just read the above!!!!
My new 19"IBM was a shock to her system, and until the old 14" was consined to the attic she was itching to "clean up" my Comp. room !!! (The later is a fate worse than HDD failure).
Your system(S) sound cool though <grin>
Cheers
Dai

[Tami]

After watching her quite mad hippie husband make a living for 10 years putting her designs into reality using all this equipment, she has resigned herself to living with it. We are currently working on a design for a bright red computer case with white pinstripes and a large white eagle on the side without a window. This is a new medium for her, but I have no doubt it will be dynamite. It also is hard for her to freak out and get her way since she is bedridden and has a lousy throw, but that might be because of the kind of tobbaco I use in her rollups. :)

[Dai-Bach]

LOL :D :D
Any chance of seeing some of the designs???
cheers
Dai

[Tami]

As soon as I can get my "Supplier" to send me a case to "Do" I'm sure you'll see it.
:D

[LANcaster]

HAPPY DAY!!!
I just got my old PC working again!!
YA BEAUTY!!
Believe it or not we (me and RossFra) had to bend two of the pins on the CPU back straight with tweezers, and it worked!
The PC spec is:
- 450 AMD K6-2
- 64 Mb PC100 RAM
- Voodoo 3 - 3000 16Mb
- 40x CD-ROM
- some crappy sound card
- NEED HARD DRIVE!!
and I got it about 5 months ago for £75 - I love life!

[Graeme*Kustom*]

I think a see a bit of a subtle hint in our direction there.... is there a particular case you want , tami? :)

[WaRpEdMiNdS]

My systems -

http://btinternet.com/~warpedminds/cube.jpg
http://btinternet.com/~warpedminds/desk.jpg
Tbird 1ghz@1.17 (10.5 * 110+1) w/ FOP38
256mb Crucial PC133 cas2 RAM
Abit KT7-RAID
2xIBM 30gb 75GXP R0
Creative GF2 GTS
YY-0221B (modded)
20" SGI Display
+stuff

No batts in the cam for more pics
P3 700@970 cB0 w/ FOP32-1
Abit BX-133
128mb Crucial PC133 cas2 RAM
10&15gb Maxtor DM Hds
V3 3k
20" SGI Display
Case is under the dremel right now

I have some more systems but there specs aint that impressive (K2, p2, p1, etc)

My upgrade path has been -

Amstrad CPC464
P90
p150
Cyrix233
p2 233
p3 550
p3 700
Tbird 1Ghz (current fastest)

...next - some 760MP(possibly X) action :D. The name "760MP" is the only reason Im not typing this from a 1.333@??? watercooled right now. DAMN MY OBSESSION! ;)

[ 22 June 2001: Message edited by: WaRpEdMiNdS ]

[Graeme*Kustom*]

Well I`ve got my old CPU back now - was on long term loan to Kustom :)

My TBird 850 runs at 1000mhz now quite happily, and I got a nice shiny Epox 8KTA3+ Mobo to pair up with it - I`ll post a pic of my new setup in the next day or two !


Warped Minds - I saw your system the other day, someone sent me a pic by email asking if we could make something similar :)
Well done tho, your YY cube looks real cool !

[WaRpEdMiNdS]

Thanks, that pics quite out of date, added some more mods since I took it. More neons (green), baybus (if I ever get around to wiring it up) and some other stuffs.

[Q]

My system is currently a IBM Thinkpas 370C (486, 20Mb mem, 512Mb hd, 650x480x16 vga, 28k8 modem, and no cd-rom)... I've managed to sell my other thinkpad, so Graeme/Thomas we seriously need to talk about my Qube :D
I will give you guys a call on monday, allright?

[Graeme*Kustom*]

sure m8, sounds great, or leave me a note of a number and a time (day or evening) and I can call you :) save u the cost of fone call.

[JADS]

Next year I think will be the time to buy a new system, there should be some really amazing stuff happening in 2002.

Intel bringing out Northwood and then cranking up the clock speed, as well as the release of i870 and i845 DDR platforms. AMD doing cranking up the clock speed of Palomino as well as their dual platform being produced by more manufacturers and maturing. Also the merge of 3dfx and NVidia technology in the next gen Nvidia architecture... very cool stuff, :)!

I'm waiting till then, :D!

James

[jon_e]

http://8bs.com/

I rest my case....

jon_e http://www.descent-world.co.uk http://www.iangreerrallying.com

[Darklight]

keeping up with the jones's!
Finally left the intel camp and said goodbye to my trusty 866@975 on my ABit VH6 - very oc gts card managed 3d 2000 score of 9874, farewell.
Now over to a AMD and a shiny new system, benifits of working where i do, and i am a very happy bunny
1.33Ghz Athlon on Gigabyte GA-7DX MOBO
256MB PC2100 DDR
GeForce 3 at 225 - 515
8MB Pci ATi Xpert
Maxtor 60GB ATA 100
12x CD-RW
Pioneer DVD-R - could be useful
SB Live
Zip 250
3 com 10/100 NIC
19" NEC Multisync monitor on GeForce 3
NEC 1530V connected to ATi
Soon up to 1.4GHz
3D Mark 2001 now 6137
very shiny

[ 29 June 2001: Message edited by: Darklight ]

[ 02 July 2001: Message edited by: Darklight ]

[beardybuck]

Home built rig

Generic Full Tower painted (shiny)black :cool:
Pioneer DVD-TDK Cyclone 12x10xsuffink
ABIT KT7A-RAID with 900 Tbird@1100
2xSeagate 30GB ATA66 (RAID 0)
Hercules Prphet 2 32MB (despite heatsinks CRAP at overclocking) :( on me new Sony E400 19"
256MB Crucial (maxed at 145 CAS2)
2x105cfm YS-TECH 105 cfm in
4x47 cfm YS-TECH 47 cfm out
Delta 60mm on a TaiSol CGK760092
Realtek 10/100
Firewire card
SB Live 1024


Believe me when I sat this is a noisy bugger and the wife hates it (she would hate it even more if she knew what I really spent on it) :eek:

Waiting with baited breath for my Rheobus to arrive.

And Looking foward to a REAL fun summer in Belfast
[ 28 June 2001: Message edited by: beardy ]

[ 28 June 2001: Message edited by: beardy ]