# What  made you get into Pc life?



## lnd2288 (Feb 10, 2011)

Basically wanted ppl to share there love passion and story in how they ended up loving in building pc  gaming and etc? 


My story began basically when I was 14 had I think a pentium 4 or less and just use too use kazaa for downloading. Pc was really slow had 512ram and about 40gb hard drive. Through the month I felt like downloading movies and music was the best thing on a pc. I felt like an upgrade would bring more too life with a lil faster ram and bigger hard drive space for more storage. never new I would now spend quite a lot of money years and years to come for gaming. I think my first game on a pc was age of empire. From there on there is nothing like gaming and building a gaming pc. What's your story ? Something I had in mind that water to share with TPU....


{another things it surprises me a lot when i see my friends parents still having windows NT/98 asking me "hey i know your good at computers is there a way to make my pc faster with out scarifying my current PC" i think to myself WOW when will they upgrade.}

(thanx for everyone participating in this thread.great stories keep em coming)


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## MxPhenom 216 (Feb 10, 2011)

i started playing CCS on my Dell Dimension desktop with a p4 CPU and FX5500 GPU and then started talking to people on there and this one guy stepped up and added me on steam and taught me the basics for like the first month then helped me piece together a rig and it all started from there when i was like 13 or 14, can't remember


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## hat (Feb 10, 2011)

I had my first PC when I was 8. Had a K6-II 400MHz, 16MB onboard graphics, 64MB RAM and a 4GB hard drive. Since then I've always had one, always upgrading. I've always been interested in gaming... that's primarially what I use it for, as well as storing anime and whatnot. I have more PCs now than I normally would due to WCG/FAH.


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## lnd2288 (Feb 10, 2011)

Cool. Lol back then I never new you can add video cards I had for a couple of months on board video card I think was  Intel video something . Crazy how just a couple of years how things are so advance


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## lnd2288 (Feb 10, 2011)

Ug





hat said:


> I had my first PC when I was 8. Had a K6-II 400MHz, 16MB onboard graphics, 64MB RAM and a 4GB hard drive. Since then I've always had one, always upgrading. I've always been interested in gaming... that's primarially what I use it for, as well as storing anime and whatnot. I have more PCs now than I normally would due to WCG/FAH.




Wow.


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## MxPhenom 216 (Feb 10, 2011)

when i was like 5-8 years old my older sisters loved sims so we had sims 1 and 2 on this P4 rig which i still have and its my backup but it didnt have the FX5500 it had onboard and sims ran like crap lol!


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## AphexDreamer (Feb 10, 2011)

I've always been messing with computers as a little kid. Breaking a few then learning to fix them 

But the story that got me into the hardware aspect of it is... (Sumed Up)

Saw my Cuz play Morrowind on Xbox went out to get it, only found the PC version and played the amazing game Morrowind (and learned about mods from it) on PC.

Then since it was so great got Oblivion, needed new hardware learned about Graphics Cards, got my first X1300, installed it and played Oblivion 

Then wanting to increase my FPS googled "How to have a faster PC" or something along those lines. Learned about Overclocking Software and Hardware. Since I had an OEM PC (HP) found out about a program called Systool on this site called TPU. At first I had no intention of joining TPU or knew how great it was but since I has some trouble with Systool joined to get help with it. 

In the end I expanded my knowledge and met awesome people from here on TPU, all thanks to Morrowind and Systool


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## Mussels (Feb 10, 2011)

i learned to read from watching dad use DOS.

by the time i was 8 i was helping him repair computers, and by 10 i could do assembly and OS install unsupervised.

first PC i ever built myself was a pentium 90 with 16MB of EDO ram and a 4.3GB quantum fireball (and scarily, i still have that CPU, ram and HDD still around somewhere as spare parts, in working order)


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## Anarchy0110 (Feb 10, 2011)

5 years old, I started to play NES and also uses my uncle's computer. Pentium II 400 MHz, 64Mb Ram, 15 inch CRT ...
At that time I learned how to type in MS Word 97, and messing up Turbo Pascal.
Long after (maybe 6 years later), I accidentally bought a magazine about computer (instead of video games one). I started reading, but don't quite understand about that. At that time NVIDIA SLI was introduced with the GeForce 6 Series GPUs, and I really love an AMD Athlon 64 4000+ 2.4 GHz Socket 939. It really takes a lot of time to understand that. So it quickly becomes my major interest.
Playing a lot of video games also is a reason why brings me to the PC life. I always want to have a powerful PC and notebook to play any games I like (unfortunately I can't), and also up-to-date my own rig. Keep updating each single movement of the PC life is now something quite essential to me, it has become a part of my personal life.


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## streetfighter 2 (Feb 10, 2011)

Isn't it obvious? I got into it for the chicks.

I also got into it to seduce TheMailMan78. 

In all seriousness my love for computers started the minute I realized, "If you're afraid to break it, you'll never learn anything."  That's been my life's motto.



Mussels said:


> quantum fireball


I still have one or two of those as well.  Back when HDDs didn't have LBA, MTBF was measured in minutes, and they had really manly names.  Honestly, who's afraid of a "WD Caviar" . . .


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## hat (Feb 10, 2011)

lnd2288 said:


> Ug
> 
> 
> Wow.



For reference, I think that was Christmas in 2000 when I got that...


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## lnd2288 (Feb 10, 2011)

I learned most of my teenage years from making mistake and incompatible hardware when buying at tiger direct . I think I had the most returns ever in that store . I remember the tech guys told me " in order to play better fps you need to upgrade  video card " that time I had a agp motherboard n had no clue what  that meant at the time and went along and bought a pci video card.. Lol those times I was really clueless


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## exodusprime1337 (Feb 10, 2011)

Everquest is what got me into computers, ruins of kunark xpac to be specific.  a friend of mine had the game and was hooked.  I decided i wanted to play so i started doing the research and had some(a lot) of help from my friends, and i built my first pc.  From then on.. all i ever wanted to do was play with a pc, it went from gaming to building to tinkering, more building, breaking the 6ghz barrier on my 1090t recently.  It's a hobby that consistantly evolves with the person who enjoys it, every year i get bored with my setup and i get a new one and change thigns and the cycle goes on.


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## lnd2288 (Feb 10, 2011)

Faith[ROG].Anarchy said:


> 5 years old, I started to play NES and also uses my uncle's computer. Pentium II 400 MHz, 64Mb Ram, 15 inch CRT ...
> At that time I learned how to type in MS Word 97, and messing up Turbo Pascal.
> Long after (maybe 6 years later), I accidentally bought a magazine about computer (instead of video games one). I started reading, but don't quite understand about that. At that time NVIDIA SLI was introduced with the GeForce 6 Series GPUs, and I really love an AMD Athlon 64 4000+ 2.4 GHz Socket 939. It really takes a lot of time to understand that. So it quickly becomes my major interest.
> Playing a lot of video games also is a reason why brings me to the PC life. I always want to have a powerful PC and notebook to play any games I like (unfortunately I can't), and also up-to-date my own rig. Keep updating each single movement of the PC life is now something quite essential to me, it has become a part of my personal life.




Damn CRT old school. I remember those  tanks sitting on my desk 640 resolution horrible


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## Anarchy0110 (Feb 10, 2011)

lnd2288 said:


> Damn CRT school. I remember those  tanks sitting on my desk 640 resolution horrible



640 x 480. And Windows 95  You know


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## Mussels (Feb 10, 2011)

Faith[ROG].Anarchy said:


> 640 x 480. And Windows 95  You know



you had high end. i ran some DOS based OS which was really nothing more than a GUI with shortcuts and a mouse cursor at 320x240


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## Anarchy0110 (Feb 10, 2011)

@Muss: Forgot to told the time, 1998. What about u ?


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## lnd2288 (Feb 10, 2011)

exodusprime1337 said:


> Everquest is what got me into computers, ruins of kunark xpac to be specific.  a friend of mine had the game and was hooked.  I decided i wanted to play so i started doing the research and had some(a lot) of help from my friends, and i built my first pc.  From then on.. all i ever wanted to do was play with a pc, it went from gaming to building to tinkering, more building, breaking the 6ghz barrier on my 1090t recently.  It's a hobby that consistantly evolves with the person who enjoys it, every year i get bored with my setup and i get a new one and change thigns and the cycle goes on.



I agree with you its pretty hard not to upgrade years to come when products are advanced they are even tho we know  it is still future proof. For example I can't wait to upgrade 5970 to and 6990


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## Mussels (Feb 10, 2011)

Faith[ROG].Anarchy said:


> @Muss: Forgot to told the time, 1998. What about u ?



that would involve math, of which i am not fond. also involve revealing my age, which is not allowed!


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## Anarchy0110 (Feb 10, 2011)

Ok  ! No problem man.


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## lnd2288 (Feb 10, 2011)

exodusprime1337 said:


> Everquest is what got me into computers, ruins of kunark xpac to be specific.  a friend of mine had the game and was hooked.  I decided i wanted to play so i started doing the research and had some(a lot) of help from my friends, and i built my first pc.  From then on.. all i ever wanted to do was play with a pc, it went from gaming to building to tinkering, more building, breaking the 6ghz barrier on my 1090t recently.  It's a hobby that consistantly evolves with the person who enjoys it, every year i get bored with my setup and i get a new one and change thigns and the cycle goes on.



My favorite of all time for strategy was command and conquer 2/zero hour with it many mods they had .


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## MxPhenom 216 (Feb 10, 2011)

Mussels said:


> you had high end. i ran some DOS based OS which was really nothing more than a GUI with shortcuts and a mouse cursor at 320x240



what did you do with the computer. you didnt have internet right??


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## Frizz (Feb 10, 2011)

First computer I had was 13 years old (I'm 21 now turning 22). It was a Pentium II and had integrated graphics and 64mb of ram. It was a damn dated piece of crap but it ran Diablo 2 fairly well and that kept me entertained for a while.

When I was 14 I received my first real system for my birthday! I had Doom 3 pre-installed on the system too! 

Specs were:
P4 3.0ghz
512mb ram
Integrated GPU

So, see the problem with the picture? The damn thing couldn't run Doom 3 properly because it had an integrated gpu which then got me to invest pocket money on my first ever GPU the ATI 9550 128mb! Thats when I first started tinkering with a rig.

Being in the high school years I spent alot of time screwing around in my teenage years so I didn't really pay attention to my PC as much until I met my girlfriend. When I finally settled down I found my true interests, my true PC life began end of 2007 up to present day.


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## lnd2288 (Feb 10, 2011)

nvidiaintelftw said:


> what did you do with the computer. you didnt have internet right??



AOL was top notch back then remembering when few of my friends had DSL I was like wow.


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## Mussels (Feb 10, 2011)

nvidiaintelftw said:


> what did you do with the computer. you didnt have internet right??



we had a really pain in the ass dial up system to get online, but mostly i used it for DOS games. the old puzzle adventure kind, like the original prince of persia game.


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## streetfighter 2 (Feb 10, 2011)

nvidiaintelftw said:


> what did you do with the computer. you didnt have internet right??


Word processing, games in Qbasic, Leisure Suit Larry for pron.

I should know, I'm apparently older than Mussels...


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## MadClown (Feb 10, 2011)

pentium 75, 16 megs of ram, 1 GB harddrive, come at me bro


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## Mussels (Feb 10, 2011)

streetfighter 2 said:


> Word processing, games in Qbasic, Leisure Suit Larry for pron.
> 
> I should know, I'm apparently older than Mussels...



ahhh, good old leisure suit larry! before they added mouse support and it got easy.

i had no idea what spanish fly was back then, so i got stuck not far off finishing the game  stupid puzzles before google.


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## HXL492 (Feb 10, 2011)

Got my first pc somewhat recently ago when i was in year 7. It was all strange to me, because it was custom built and i only knew of machines that were built by dell, acer, hp etc. so i started taking off the case panels and just examining the insides of the machine, visiting websites that sold computer gear and yeah, i have been stuck into the pc world ever since


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## lnd2288 (Feb 10, 2011)

MadClown said:


> pentium 75, 16 megs of ram, 1 GB harddrive, come at me bro



Nice


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## lnd2288 (Feb 10, 2011)

HXL492 said:


> Got my first pc somewhat recently ago when i was in year 7. It was all strange to me, because it was custom built and i only knew of machines that were built by dell, acer, hp etc. so i started taking off the case panels and just examining the insides of the machine, visiting websites that sold computer gear and yeah, i have been stuck into the pc world ever since



I use to think a custom pc was just adding fancy accessories to the case lol.(fans/leds/etc)


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## IndigoGoose (Feb 10, 2011)

I had grown up in the Gameboy era with a amega 32,Nintendo 64 and dreamcast. Oh those where the days.
The first console that was properly mine (not my das) was the original Playsation 
Which my dad had chiped to play downloaded games. I played hundreds of games doing everything on them cause i'm a perfectionist.
I also still have the orginal Playsation 2 10 years old and still working perfectly 
I had my first laptop when i was 10 i saved up for ages. But i had always been allowed to play on my dads thats when i thought i need my own.
My dad used to play alot of CCS and half life,Doom
i used to watch him in awe  Its all his fault i play so many games
Then i started playing games at my private school 
And we did tornaments for money on CCS, Unreal Tornament and of course Age of empires which soon moved on to Rise of Nations
The first game i played on PC i think it was Doom or Doom 2? Not sure could be something else
From there i just got better and better at games and just wanted more with better graphics and faster processors
I have always found computers interesting and still do to some extent.


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## BumbleBee (Feb 10, 2011)

Team Fortress for Quakeworld. I wanted a voodoo card so I could run OpenGL and a cable modem so I could have a lower ping. I think my brother had a 486DX or something so I built a new 486.


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## ShiBDiB (Feb 10, 2011)

you mean besides the fact that computers are everywhere and pretty much everyone in a civilized area uses one?



But i dunno, i think I was jus bored and tired of using the ghetto emachines


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## Mathragh (Feb 10, 2011)

I got into my computers at around 6 years old, when my dad bought us a 386, with windows 3.11. Played alot of games on it like wing commander, hocus pocus, prince of persia, red cat, and must've been like a hundred more. 
I got my mom to take me to some book store at the weekend so i could buy a floppy diskette with 3 shareware games on it; thats how i got my first commander keen(which was extremely awesome).

Then in 2000 my dad bought a new PC, a Pentium II-MMX 400Mhz, with windows 98, and a voodoo2 graphics card. Man! that thing was awesome!(for me, at that time )

After that he bought us a pentium 4 2Ghz, but with 256 RAM and a Geforce II something that was a load of crap. Me and my brother decided it really needed upgrading(we started to get interested in the newest and high end games), so we upgraded to 1GB ram, and a radeon 9600Pro. We played a hell of a lot morrowind on that on a huge ass 19" 1600x1200 CRT.

After that i got to buy my own stuff, and first bought a cheapass medion laptop, and after that a custom specced one. Currently I'm planning on buying a pc for myself this spring/summer.(My first real system, yay)

The reason i got into PC life, apart from the games and the fun, is simply because noone else in my family was, and i just started troubleshooting things for everyone and learned more and more^^. These days that means alot of calls from family or friends when they got a computer related issue, and building alot of new systems for friends, to keep their cost down, and to meet their needs as best as possible


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## DaedalusHelios (Feb 10, 2011)

First started computing with a commodore64 when I was 4. Played frogger, asteroids, and altered beast mainly. When I was much older I started my internet life with a new 300mhz Mac with a motorola processor when they came out. First had 14k modem them later a 44k I think. The best one it had was a 56k US robotics modem when they hit the scene with affordable prices. Remember when photos loaded in like one minute on web pages.


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## Deleted member 67555 (Feb 10, 2011)

Ive had a computer since as far back as I remember but my first gaming computer was an Atari because you could plug the Atari games in it...Other than That my next gaming rig was 386sx 33mhz with turbo and 4mb of memory an external cd-rom with Sound Blaster pro...I remember many of nights wasted on Wing Commander 1,2, Privateer 1,2, Chuck Yeager Air Combat....I miss DOS 5.0 and Win 3.1.....I liked tweaking the autoexe.bat files and whatnot to get enough memory to do this than have to switch it back to load windows LOL


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## 20mmrain (Feb 10, 2011)

I wanted to get better graphics on a flightsim I was playing. Then while upgrading my Video card I shorted out the Motherboard. So I had a choice pay someone a fortune to fix it for me.... or do it myself. I chose do it myself.... and have been upgrading and building ever since!


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## Bot (Feb 10, 2011)

lol ppl get hooked early
me too, i was 7 when we got a commodore vc20 in 1982 and upgraded to a c64 in 83ish, 84 maybe.
it was bit's and bytes ever since.


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## 20mmrain (Feb 10, 2011)

Bot said:


> lol ppl get hooked early
> me too, i was 7 when we got a commodore vc20 in 1982 and upgraded to a c64 in 83ish, 84 maybe.
> it was bit's and bytes ever since.



Not everyone  Mine was a later in life obsession....I Used to work on cars soup them up, show them and race them. I went from that.... Modding cars to this. Actually not as far as a jump as one would think. I started @ 21 I am 29 now.


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## erixx (Feb 10, 2011)

haha, bold memories.
I actually started with computers at work in the late 80's when there were no graphics at all, just Asci text! 





Then in 92-93 I got my first pc at home, a pentium, a clone with a chaintech (sp?) mobo. Windows 3.1 was installed with dozens of floppies!




I passed hours and hours, checking every single windows OS file, just out of curiosity....


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## lnd2288 (Feb 10, 2011)

erixx said:


> haha, bold memories.
> I actually started with computers at work in the late 80's when there were no graphics at all, just Asci text!
> http://retropages.uw.hu/Gepek/PC/Olivetti-386-25.jpg
> Then in 92-93 I got my first pc at home, a pentium, a clone with a chaintech (sp?) mobo. Windows 3.1 was installed with dozens of floppies!
> ...



Lol Damn. I  remeber playing that game a lot . I Think that pc was top notch at best buy.lol


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## erixx (Feb 10, 2011)

Chiquito de la Calzada


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## Aceman.au (Feb 10, 2011)

My first real game I played was Battlefield 2 around when it came out 2005-2006? (I would've been 12-13 years old), but I did also play AoE and some online games before getting into serious FPS gaming, I used to have to go to internet cafes to play BF2 and I got my first PC because of my love of that game... 3 years ago was when I wanted my own PC instead of parents junk and they couldn't see why i wanted to upgrade on an already functioning PC, they didn't understand games had requirements. I was using P4 and ATI 9200 pro which was very old at the time couldn't play BF2 at a decent speed on low so I upgraded.

First rig, from the store I did work exp at, and where I learned to build a PC
Q6600
ASUS EAH 3870 512mb
4GB 667mz ram
EP35-UD3? I think
320gb of storage
generic case

I love PCs because of its amazing ability to bring a whole different world to you when the real world isn't so great and by "isn't so great" I mean bullying, I was severely bullied through-out primary school and a little in high school, before you poke fun at me, I was 8 years old when I had my first suicidal thoughts, get the picture? Keep your mouth shut.

So yeah I'm kind of happy I found computers, and as most of you know kids that are bullied like myself do choose to be alone, and usually find computers as a safe haven when they are bullied or have trouble fitting in like I did.

So I'm a late starter but I must saying I love modding my case and making it look neat and colorful as well as performance.

Hope you're all in tears over my life story! Jesus I wrote a lot. SPELL CHECK!

EDIT: I remember using Windows 1997 on my families first PC ever. My parents still have the PC and I think it still works if I plug the insides back together. I took the cables out when I was learning about PC's and how to build them.


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## MRCL (Feb 10, 2011)

Actually, boredom.
I was one of the n00bs who thought a P4 with 3600MHz would be the fastest there is, needless to say I was oblivious to dual cores and such.

Then I saw on TV something about case modding. Bored at work, I searched for case modding galleries, and well, TPU popped up. I lurked around a bit, just looking at the gallery.

Then my uber fast supercomputer went downhill, I went to the TPU forums and immediately was sucked in. Also there was need for a new PC and the TPU crowd encouraged me to try build one myself.

A story of joy, more knowledge and less money began


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## AlienIsGOD (Feb 10, 2011)

Ive always been interested in PCs as long as i can remember.  Pretty sure it started after the NES came out, I was entranced by GFX and wahtnot.  1st PC i remember using was a Tandy 1000 ( not incl the Commodore PETs at school) w/ a CRT that did like 10 shades of green.  After that i was homeless from 94-00 so i didnt get to see PCs much.  When i did tuen my life around, I got right back into PCs.  

1st PC i ever built was a Celeron D 320 @2.4ghz, 2 gigs DDR ram, ATI 9250 SE, and a 80GB IDE drive.  Shortly after I built it, i was looking into o/c ing stuff and I came upon this site.  This site has def helped broaden my interest in not just PCs but all kinds of electronics.  TPU def helped in the building of my 2 current rigs and will continue to help into the future.


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## Aceman.au (Feb 10, 2011)

OMG I just remembered I had a SNES as my first console then a PS1, I can vaguely remember playing Sonic the Hedgehog on a SEGA console too...


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## AlienIsGOD (Feb 10, 2011)

l33tGaMeR said:


> OMG I just remembered I had a SNES as my first console then a PS1, I can vaguely remember playing Sonic the Hedgehog on a SEGA console too...



Some of us can go back further than that   My 1st console was an Intellivison, then Intellivison 2, Colecovison, and finally NES


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## Aceman.au (Feb 10, 2011)

Curse you older people


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## Frick (Feb 10, 2011)

My brothers had an Amstrad CPC464 the younger siblings played games on. Games on tape deck, Good times. 

Then my dad got a Intel 286 computer and while there were no games on it I was attracted to it.. I mostly wrote short stories on it. We had some computers at school as well, and me and a friend made an RPG in Qbasic. I came up with the ideas and he did the coding.

Then dad got a Pentium 133 Mhz (from Olivetti) computer with Windows 95 and then gaming came along. A bit at least. I also had a Sega Mega Drive (Genesis) then. Some time later my sister and her husband started what would become Sweden's fifth largest ISP until it all went to heck in like 1996. Computers computers. After that they moved to my home village (small place with like 70 people in it or so) and had computer classes. So I had access to a room with 16 Pentium II machines with kickass 17 inch monitors. We played tons of games then and around that time I got into tinkering with the hardware. I've always been interested in tinkering with things though but now I did it a lot.

Then that thing ended and ever since I've been a hardware hoarder.


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## pantherx12 (Feb 10, 2011)

Atari 520st playing blood money, dungeons and dragons and dungeon master.

Loved that machine shame all its ports died.


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## Kovoet (Feb 10, 2011)

Well mine started when I bought a brand new P4 and thought it was the best there was not knowing anything else of cause.
I had some ex-army  and biking buddies that played Black hawk down and found out they would go on TS and land up playing this game to all hours and playing matches against other people.

So I went to the local game shop tried to install the game to find out my PC was not good enough.
So i went to the store I bought the PC from and they told me I would have buy a total new PC again. So I was not happy thinking I had an awesome PC only to find out it was a load of c..p.

So i let one of my mates know and he then gave me a list of things to buy which I did and instructed me how to put it to together and ever since I have been upgrading my PC's about every 6 months, as well as spending about 4 hours everyday gaming. Played in two different squads since then and played games like Joint Operations Call of Duty 4 etc.


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## HossHuge (Feb 10, 2011)

I have been pulling apart electronics since before computers just to see how they work and then it was a natural progression into computers.

This site and the people involved have also reinvigorated my love of technology.


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## AsRock (Feb 10, 2011)

HossHuge said:


> I have been pulling apart electronics since before computers just to see how they work and then it was a natural progression into computers.
> 
> This site and the people involved have also reinvigorated my love of technology.



Yeah same here always taking things about and being only 4-5 at the time things did not allways go back right lol.  Still today i take every thing and any thing apart just that they go back together right now.

With that and having some black and white ping pong hand controllers that pluged in to the TV in the 70's then going on though Zx81 the atari 2600 and ZX128K for flight sims.

Around 1993 was when i really got into them as my parents got my brother a DX66 system and of course i could not resist taking shit apart me and my bother did so and being in the DOS days i messed up windows 3 badly and would not boot.  So my father told me that if i did not fix it i be grounded for life.  With in 2 days i found some one who had DOS and windows 3.11 get home and fixed the system and ever since then been highly in to them.

Building a system was so much fun back then..


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## scaminatrix (Feb 10, 2011)

My Mum - she's been an avid gamer for as long as I can remember. Atari, Amiga, NES, SNES (w/ Super Wild Card), SEGA's, Nintendo's etc. etc.

You know I'm evidence of evolution? I've got something I call "Playstation Thumbs". My Mum used to game so much when she was younger, that my thumbs are double-jointed


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## dr emulator (madmax) (Feb 10, 2011)

no one's mentioned pron and boobies


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## lnd2288 (Feb 10, 2011)

scaminatrix said:


> My Mum - she's been an avid gamer for as long as I can remember. Atari, Amiga, NES, SNES (w/ Super Wild Card), SEGA's, Nintendo's etc. etc.
> 
> You know I'm evidence of evolution? I've got something I call "Playstation Thumbs". My Mum used to game so much when she was younger, that my thumbs are double-jointed
> 
> http://img.techpowerup.org/110210/SAM_0165.jpg



lol good one. thumbs up/side ways.


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## lnd2288 (Feb 10, 2011)

dr emulator (madmax) said:


> no one's mentioned pron and boobies



i think that's definitely true for some of us.


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## horik (Feb 10, 2011)

omg,i'm older than all of you?¿


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## KainXS (Feb 10, 2011)

when i got my old IBM and it had a nice Pentium 2(or was it a pentium) in it and started asking around how to oc it.

but one day I had some soda and put it on it, it was a flat tabletop type not a tower(thats what was mainly made then) and pushed it over and it spilled all in it and it burned up into flames and I was just like damn that was awesome and I got into PC's like that lol

I not a Pyro freak or anything(I think)


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## lnd2288 (Feb 10, 2011)

KainXS said:


> when i got my old IBM and it had a nice Pentium 2(or was it a pentium) in it and started asking around how to oc it.
> 
> but one day I had some soda and put it on it, it was a flat tabletop type not a tower(thats what was mainly made then) and pushed it over and it spilled all in it and it burned up into flames and I was just like damn that was awesome and I got into PC's like that lol



i had a PC i purchase from circuit city back in the days and at of nowhere it caught on fire. never open it and mess with it, lol when i open it found out there was a screw lose from the motherboard that came like that. scary scene that was. friend the CPU and almost everything else. except for CD drive/hard drives .


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## malcolm2608 (Feb 10, 2011)

ME and my friend alec used to play Halo combat evolved ( I dont play it any more)
and my computer started messing up so I goggled all my issues until i started to learn more about computers. Before i did that I thought that a computer case was filled with random wires and shyt. That isnt entirely it thought, my friends found out i was learning more stuff about computers and they started to ask me about how to fix there broked computers and i helped them. Since then i started to like computers and learn about them


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## JrRacinFan (Feb 10, 2011)

I don't need to really say much than these 2 phrases 2 words each: tape drive & commodore 64. LOL 

Stuff since I was 5 years old. I had gotten more involved when i introduced myself into overclocking about 15 years ago.


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## DRDNA (Feb 10, 2011)

I called tech help for a laptop I purchased many a year ago and ended up with someone I couldn't understand that had me do a bunch of needless stuff that didn't fix the issue..

I then said to my self " self thats the last time I am going to rely on someones else ignorance just because I am ignorant."

So then I discovered Forums and I would test everything I read in a computer lab I constructed in one of extra rooms. I would download all kinds of application VIA kazza at the time and test them out in my computer lab. Doing that helped me understand the nature of software. I then was reading about benching PC against others. Which lead me to a fast understanding of hardware and configurations which finally lead me to a career! Thats the short and sweet of it...I have been absorbing the IT technology information ever since and still love it some 10 plus years later.


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## Bjorn_Of_Iceland (Feb 10, 2011)

what made me get into Pc life?

PC games. Didnt even have a hardisk that time for my 286. Had to boot dos from the floppy drive.. started from playing pacman, prince of persia, wings of fury, or test drive in monochrome monitor. And everything was like copied from friends.. thought pc games were free back then lol.

I even had the game boot up whenever dos boots up through autoexec.bat lol. Learned that from a friend, and I felt 1337 back then.


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## CDdude55 (Feb 10, 2011)

When i was younger (from probably around ages 3-12) i was a huge Console gamer, but i wasn't into computer hardware much. My love for hardware and upgrading came from my growing interest in PC gaming, Unreal Tournament 2003 was really the only game i got into on PC, i played it on my moms crappy Dell machine through dial up so it naturally wasn't a good experience, i think that's really when i decided to open it up and see what was out there that i could throw in it to gain more performance and better gaming. And from then on i just started learning and growing with PC hardware and these days it's definitely switched around, now im much more of a PC gamer then a Console gamer like i was when i was little.


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## devguy (Feb 10, 2011)

For me, I didn't really get into computer hardware much until high school when I started messing with my original Xbox.  As the device was basically a PC, I learned how to do all kinds of cool things.  I upgraded hard drives, replaced DVD ROM drive, replaced fan, upgraded heatsinks, added RAM, and did a ton of software stuff to it.  I was even modding Halo 2 maps with a hex editor (not for Live, but for offline hijinx).

Later in high school, as I was really focused on my automotive classes, I came to an (apparently unique) situation; I was unable to sign up for both the double block Auto-tech class, and AP Calculus/AP French.  So, working with the counselor, I told her I'd like to fix something, and she suggested computer repair.  As I was already taking computer science and enjoying it, I thought I'd give it a try.  Fast forward, and I was the only student in the class to take and pass the A+ hardware/software examinations.

My first PC I built was a bunch of scraps centered around an old s478 Shuttle matx motherboard.  But my first from scratch build was s939!  Good old Tforce939-6100.


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## n-ster (Feb 10, 2011)

Ah, I remember My SEGA Gamegear, Gameboy Color etc 

My 1st Computer was some 200MHZ Athlon, and I didn't know much about anything except games... I did assemble a PC when I was 7, I think that was a 400MHz one. But was wasn't into PC HARDWARE until TPU. Wanted to build myself some awesome Computer wthout paying to much... that dream came to an end unexpectedly until recently, but TPU sucked me in 

I remember, my 1st thread was like, Phenom II X4 940 vs i7 920


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## yogurt_21 (Feb 10, 2011)

got into computers because i l;iked electronics and tweaking. Plus i jsut could never get into console gaming.


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## Nailezs (Feb 10, 2011)

well, when i was 10 or 11, that godzilla movie with mathew broderick came out. i really like godzilla lol. my family had a dell computer with a 333mhz intel processor and 3 2GB harddrives. my mom found a godzilla online game at Gamestorm(does anyone remember Gamestorm? good memories there). that got me into gaming, and i gamed with my gamestorm friends for quite a while. then when i was 15 a friend of mine got me going to a local isp to hang out, made new friends, and that got me into the hardware side of computers, and is where i learned the basics of building computers and such. we had CS tournaments every weekend lol...and partied. and partied. and partied...lol. and since then i've taken my passion into my own hands, and joined tpu a few years ago.


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## arnoo1 (Feb 10, 2011)

my brother, he used to work with pc's back in the days, i always wathed him working on those things, and on one day i had to do it, because my brother had to go.., and i liked it , so made it my hobby, and now i am a noob xd


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## manofthem (Feb 11, 2011)

Back in the day of Windows 3.11 and Lemmings, I started to get into it but hit a lull. It wasn't until my friend got my into Medal of Honor Allied Assault that I got again into the PC world. Learning how to download using mIRC change things forth better. First PC I built was like '03 was like an Athlon XP 2600+ single core and a 5400GT, or there abouts. Things have changed!


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## Anisotonic (Feb 11, 2011)

the first PC my mom bought was a pentium 133, I was 13. at one point I upgraded it with a voodoo banshee which came with the first three chapters of half-life. needless to say I forgot about my n64 and ps1 rather quickly, especially when I started playing quake, unreal tournament and tribes soon after. later I got a p3 500 with a voodoo3 and friends would come over to marvel at need for speed: high stakes with the view distance at maximum.

good times.


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## Soylent Joe (Feb 11, 2011)

Really what brought me into the world of computer hardware was Team Fortress 2.

I rented it for the PS3 twice in the fall of 2007, it was a lot of fun to me. Christmas time '07 came and I wanted it for the PS3, but I saw in the paper that The Orange Box was $20 less for the PC. Before then I'd only used computers as a "noob user" and my game were always on consoles. I knew a little bit about using them but wasn't a PC gamer and couldn't tell a video card from a sound card. Long story short, I got T.O.B. and it ran like shit on the family computer at the time (P4 HT, 2GB, X300 256MB), so I bought a $350 small form factor Acer in mid 2008. That was a mistake as it also sucked for gaming (integrated NV 8200 graphics). I started looking into how to actually be a PC gamer and found out about custom computers. Late May 2009 I started ordering the things for my first build, and am currently still using a lot of that stuff now in Feburary 2011.

Luckily I had the good people here at TPU and some other forums to help me get the right gear, so it has all lasted well for the 1.5 years and was a good choice at the time. Now, I know the basics of hardware like the back of my hand and can really do just about anything with computers. I've made some stupid decisions here and there but I think it has all turned out for the best. The End.


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## Mussels (Feb 11, 2011)

if a PC company actually released decent gaming computers without apple worthy price tags, this whole console gamer thing would drop off pretty fast...

and what i mean by that, is stop cheaping out on the F'ing graphics cards


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## n-ster (Feb 11, 2011)

Mussels said:


> if a PC company actually released decent gaming computers without apple worthy price tags, this whole console gamer thing would drop off pretty fast...
> 
> and what i mean by that, is stop cheaping out on the F'ing graphics cards



Yea, a gaming rig at 2000$ is a 5770 + i7 920 lol


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## L|NK|N (Feb 11, 2011)

*My Story*

Basically I started gaming on the Intellivision at the age of 5 (1985). Growing up I went through every console released with the exception of the 3DO, Atari Jaguar, and Sega Saturn. In Junior High and High School, the majority of my friends were gaming it up on there PC's a la Doom, Decent, Quake, Duke Nukem. They tried to get me into it, but I just couldn't see myself enjoying the Keyboard / Mouse. So I stayed away from PC gaming until 2003 when I took a s370 emachine with a 600 mhz processor and upgraded the memory to 512mb, 700mhz processor, and bought a PCI Geforce MX4000 to play some Warcraft 3. Then I heard about this cool MMORPG called Guild Wars having a Beta/World Preview. I got into that and I was hooked. I had to build a new system though to play it decently, and from there it just took off. Then in 06 I was researching overclocking my ati video card and found TPU.  

PS. I have since learned just how Ultimate the KB/Mouse combo pwns as a controller!


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## cdawall (Feb 11, 2011)

My first pc I built with my dad in about 05 I guess? It was an athlon xp 2000+ tb and ecs k7s5a pro it was a frys combo with an asus ti 4200 64mb still got the ti 4200 best card I have ever owned. The ecs blew its caps got an msi k7n2 delta and from then on I have been building primarily amd rigs. Never been a huge gamer but liked benchmarking lol weird.


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## Champ (Feb 11, 2011)

when I was 12 or 13, my older brother was heavily into building gaming PCs.  Now I built my own PCs, fix other peoples and went to school for networking.  If I hadn't picked that up from him, that would have utterly altered my life.


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## WhiteNoise (Feb 11, 2011)

My mom got her first pc and I started messing around with it. It's as simple as that. I was 27 years old and I would visit my Mom and surf the web and thats when I decided I wanted a computer. That was 11 years ago.


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## hat (Feb 11, 2011)

Back when I had that K6-II 400MHz system, my dad burned lots of CDs for me. Most of them contained Dragonball related stuff. Music videos, clips, episodes and whatnot he found on various archaic file sharing services like Kazaa and Grogster back in the day, downloaded over a dialup connection. I remember one time I got a disc with a single Dragonball GT episode on it, low quality 60MB or so with Japanese audio and hardsubbed English subtitles. I told him "hey, I really liked that" and one day some time later he handed me a stack of discs with every DBGT episode, 1-64. I still have those.

That's mainly what I used that machine for, watching the shit he gave me, and playing some old games like Quake, Quake 2, and Unreal Tournament using the software renderer. I would hear my dad talking with my uncles about other games, Quake 3 being one of them. I was facinated at the fact of there being a Quake 3, and I desperately wanted to try it out. He told me I didn't have powerful enough hardware to run the game, and he would see what he could do about upgrading it. That machine never got upgraded, but I did get a whole new tower some time down the road with a 2GHz Celeron, 512MB RAM, and some 32MB PCI video card... later an FX5200. Since then I've been upgrading that computer, evolving it into what it is today (and building other rigs along side this one, mostly thanks to my interest in the DC projects we're involved here, and thanks to my interest in hosting games). Now it's a part of me that I don't see going away any time soon.


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## Melvis (Feb 11, 2011)

Illness yay


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## Virus-j (Feb 11, 2011)

My Dad Got me a Tiny Computer (400Mhz processor, 256mb Ram, 10Gb hard drive ,4mb graphics Running windows 98) When i was 4 Think he paid £1000 back in 1996 and bought direct from Tiny, When my Dad first set it up and turned it on i was like WOW what is that first thing i played on it was reader rabbit and my bed time was like 7pm and i diddn't want to come off and was holding on to the desk ; ) I was soo amazed by it.

Think about 2 years later we went in to a computer shop and bought a CD called Mame32 which had like 1000 Old arcade games like pacman,Toobin,Golden Axe Etc. First games i ever played on pc and loved them. Still have the Original cd today ; ) 

When i was 8 though i decided to open the case up and took some of the bits out of the computer and stuck them on the carpet when my dad come in from the garden his face looked like he was gonna cry. ; ) Had to get a engineer from tiny Fix it and replace the parts.

2 years later my dad got bought command and conquer games by my sister and he played them alot and once i saw them i was totally Hooked i would not come off them, then i think on the game Tiberian sun i saw the trailer for Emperor battle for Dune and Ended up buying it but then when i installed it and went to play it my pc diddn't have a good enough graphics card.

I was so Gutted that i decided to get some books from the library and once we got internet (Dial up) i went around finding the info i needed to play this one game ; ) Never did end up playing it though i think once i started learning about the parts i was more into how the computer works then getting this one game to work. 

Even today u still take apart Tv's, Dvd players Etc Fix them or just fiddle : )


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## _JP_ (Feb 11, 2011)

*No comments...*


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## n-ster (Feb 11, 2011)

_JP_ said:


> [url]http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_UOxUepAAo6U/Sx7MHgskmCI/AAAAAAAAACk/8FAhsvgCe6E/s400/Windows+Millenium+Edition+%28ME%29.jpg[/URL]



TBH, I never had problems with ME XD

but 98 SE was the best for sure


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## freaksavior (Feb 11, 2011)

This has been asked before  but I love these.

I was 10 when my dad built a pIII machine, watching him build the machine, loading windows 95 on it, going into the bios to configure all the hardware and listening to him mutter under his breath how he hates doing this becuase it never worked right the first time.... oh good times, gooood times.


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## Swamp Monster (Feb 11, 2011)

I got my PC later than my friends and I knew nothing about PC's, so I went to my computer teacher and he wrote PC specs on paper and told me to go with that to the store. It was Athlon XP 2000+ with 256MB RAM, MX440 64MB, 80GB HDD. I bought that PC with Win XP and NFS: Hot pursuit pre installed. That game got me hooked up an later I got Max payne 2 and Colin Mcrae 04. It really lagged with MX440 and I went to my teacher again and he sudgested me to buy ATI 9600 128MB. When I saw improvement in graphics performance I played more and more games that had good graphics and started to learn what is the difference between graphics cards and how to make my PC run faster. That is how it started


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## Black Panther (Feb 11, 2011)

Hmm several things actually..

1) I had a Pentium IV with an MX400 and 256MB RAM. The Sims 2 was released, and I couldn't play the game. So I took my entire tower (!!) to a large popular pc franchise outlet so they find out what was wrong with it. The tech there suggested I buy a 512MB RAM stick, I remember it was some €70... and as the best bang for buck graphic cards he sold me the FX5500 :shadedshu for €95..... Now everyone knows that the FX5500 is crappy for gaming, and was a flop even on release..

2) Oblivion (the game).
By then it was 2006 and I had started reading and lurking on a lot of forums, and getting to know computers more. I immediately knew there was no way I could play this awesome game with these out-of-this earth graphics on a Pentium @ 1.5Ghz and an FX5500 which barely ran the Sims 2. So I did some research on how much a new pc would cost....

3) The prices.
I found a German ebay shop, and asked them for a quote on an aeroengine jr (I just chose the 'prettiest' cheapest case on offer since I never heard of air-flow!), a 550W PSU (lol as long as it was 550W I didn't care about the brand ), an E4300 (was cheap and I had already read that it would overclock like hell, so I planned to try that next ), a 'good' cpu cooler, 2GB of whatever RAM, a 320GB HDD, dvd burner, an 8600GTS 256MB and any motherboard as long as it was compatible.
I was adamant not to buy from abroad since if something happens it's easier to go 2 miles to the shop rather than ship it etc etc. 
Anyway these guys told me the parts would cost €800 (specifying the PSU would be LC Power, zalman 9500 led for the cpu cooler, the DVD burner LG and the HDD Seagate Barracuda and remember this happened 5 years ago).
So I promptly went with the same specifications to that same large franchise which has the best prices in Malta...
The price they gave me for the same hardware was €1400  and I had to add €23 if they assembled the pc for me.

Sure the_ assembly costs_ were a bargain, but I had no choice except get the bits and pieces from abroad and go forth from there.

Anyway to cut this short, lurking and reading on TPU I managed to get the E4300 to 3Ghz, which I felt was an awesome feat then 

After buying Oblivion, I realized I hadn't exactly made the right graphic card choice, so barely 6 months later I put the 8600GTS on a shelf and got me a new 8800GT 512MB on release. This was November/December 2007. The 8800GT made my games fly - especially since I was gaming on a 19" 1280x1024.

The next step was a bigger monitor, so I got the LG 22" 1680x1050.

Later on in 2009 a new pc was needed at work. For warranty purposes and the like  dad wanted a pre-built. So we agreed that on this pre-built they put my old E4300 and I get the new E8400 (E0 stepping ) and I pay the difference. So I got the cpu dirt cheap, and immediately oc'd it to 4.2Ghz 

2010 came and I realized that although I had a fast cpu, my 8800GT couldn't keep up with maxing out games like Fallout 3 with full anti-aliasing on the 1680x1050. So I did a crazy thing and splurged out on a Corsair HX 850, and HD5970 graphics (totalling like €800!). I wasn't sorry for the splurge though, fraps couldn't even keep up to count the fps at 1680x1050 (ok I'm exaggerating that a bit).

Come Oct/Nov 2010 I started thinking that a powerful card like the 5970 was wasted at 1680x1050, so I did my next crazy thing and spent a fortune on a 2560x1440 Dell..... What makes me feel a tad guilty is the fact that I have no regrets on spending so much money on this stuff! 

All my games run perfect now, from Sims 3 to Fallout New Vegas, maxed out resolution, maxed out AA..
Well, nearly all. Metro 2033 leaves to be desired but wait a sec my E8400 a quite old core 2 duo now and probably is bottlenecking the card from reaching its full potential...

So guess which upgrade is next?


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## wolf (Feb 11, 2011)

Back in the day we had a PC for the whole family, running win 3.11 and a handfull of dos games, after a year or so we got rid of that for a P2 MMX 233mhz, that eventually became mine in favour of a AMD K6 533mhz. I started playing games on it (poorly) until I was given a GF 2 MX 400 PCI 32mb card as an Xmas present and from there on in it has just grown and grown.

I was given the K6 533mhz machine when the family pc was upgraded too, and a couple of years later my first build was a 2.4ghz 800mhz fsb Celeron on a 800 series intel chipset, with a radeon 9200. later on that same mobo came to hold 2gb od DDR 400, a 3.2ghz prescott p4, and a 6800Ultra AGP card. at this point I was sold on PC gaming, mid-high end parts, and indeed overclocking.

the story after that involves a shitload more parts, upgrades and overclocking, but yeah, thats how it all started. ask for more details if you want to hear the whole story


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## Frederik S (Feb 11, 2011)

I got my first gaming PC when I turned five or six, it was an IBM PS/1 oh gawd that was a sexy machine back in the day. It was super you could buy games at the super markets in Denmark on floppydisks. But yeah I started rocking space invaders and then I was hooked. 

Amazing how you could make do with just a 10 MHz CPU single core CPU back then. And that was only 16 years ago. Previous sentence just made me feel really really old haha!!


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## Ptep (Feb 11, 2011)

Started with a Commodore 16 at age 8 or 9 i think, my cousin gave it to me one christmas! The games or programs were loaded from a tape drive or typed in (i was handed a stack of magazines full of basic programs for the C16). 

After that i had a whole series of machine ranging from Acorn Electron - with 3" floppy drive and expansion unit, Acorn Archimedes, BBC Micro, Apricot XEN, and then various 186, 286 and 386 machines!

Then came my love for all things Amiga, this was also my first foray into computer modding! I originally started with an Amiga A500 Plus, and soon afterwards upgraded to an Amiga A1200 bought from the ill fated Escom (they bought the Amiga brand to revive it, then shortly afterwards went bankrupt). My A1200 stayed in its standard form for a long time until i had finally saved up enough money for a hard drive for it - i was about 13 at the time - the keyboard all in one style A1200 case could only accept a 2.5" drive which at the time were much more expensive than a 3.5" ide drive, so i bought a 40-44 pin ide converter and a pc psu. 

Eventually i got fed up with the cable and drive hanging out of the side of the case so i completely dismantled the A1200 and refitted it into a PC tower case which had been modified with the help of my father, plus some adapters from a company that specialized in converting A1200s to tower case computers. This was my first case mod I guess!

I used my parents computers for a long time and sort of lost interest with computers until I got a job which if i remember rightly paid for a 3.6Ghz P4, DFI Lanparty motherboard and an Nvidia 5700 graphics card, plus watercooling gear for the cpu and motherboard, it was a lot of fun to build and looked awesome at the time!

TL : DR im sure but you did ask


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## TheMailMan78 (Feb 11, 2011)

Because consoles suck for FPS. True story.


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## n-ster (Feb 11, 2011)

TheMailMan78 said:


> Because consoles suck for FPS. True story.



And RTS


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## Thrackan (Mar 31, 2011)

My first experiences with computers were Commodore 64 games. Alot. We had a monochrome green/black monitor, and if Dad was in a nice mood he'd plug it into the TV so we could play in colour
C64 is also where I learned my first programming skillz  GW-Basic ftw!

I must have been about 6-8 or so.

Meanwhile, my Dad had a 286/386/486 with Windows 3.11 at work. I got to use it a couple of times and played Dark Forces on it. That should be around '95/'96 according to the release date of the game, so I was 11-12 

Around '96, we got our first PC at home  If I remember correctly, it was a P2 333Mhz, and I *know* it had an ATi Rage 2, which I have abused alot through the years, altering drivers and installing wrappers, so I could play games that were not specced to work on it 

Afaik, not along time after that we got Interwebs. Actually the first region with Cable, so I never experienced the horrors of Dial-Up. We got a 10Mbit *hub* and somewhere along the line I got an old 486'er to play with  That 486 (DX-100!) lasted me quite a while, but after I got myself my first (partially second-hand) AMD Athlon 600 (which I clocked to 750 with the flick of a jumper  ) the beast was unleashed.


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## Rowsol (Apr 2, 2011)

Doom.


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## Doherz (Apr 3, 2011)

I was about 12 years old. Unreal tournament 2004 came out, played it on a friends pc and wanted it. Month later and lots of nagging my Dad gave in and got his cousin who worked in a small pc shop to build us a gaming rig, he basically let me build it with him. 7 years and two rigs later here I am with my own computer paid for and built by myself. Feels good, but nothing beat the feeling of playing UT2004 on my own pc at the age of 12.


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## overclocking101 (Apr 3, 2011)

my first custom cuomputer was built with an asus A8N SLI deluxe, and 2 7950GT KO's 1gb ddr, and an amd 64X2 3200+. was a decent rig back then, before that i rocked a emachines  i got into pc's mainly due to being on house arrest.


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## VulkanBros (Apr 3, 2011)

Gyro computers in Leopard 1 tanks (WAX driven - if anybody knows what that is  )
I was electronic mechanic on these things in 1993...

Comodore 64  / 128 - Sinclair - ZX Spectrum


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## Lionheart (Apr 3, 2011)

First off, Ind2288 Im glad you made this thread, I can feel the awesomeness of TPU coming together but anyways my story with computers would most likely start back in the early 90's.


1992 - I remember having this old type of computer, but its so long ago I don't even remember the specs or what type of rig it was (OLD) all I can remember it used those huge floppy disc's and it had alot of awesome games on it like, Tetris, pong, star wars, battle chess, heaps of card games, and heaps of others I can't remember, oh and apparently I screwed the whole thing up, I rearranged the whole OS sumhow and none of my family could use it except me because I remember what everything was I was like 4yrs old


In 1997 - we bought another PC, it was a Packard Bell or something and I had some fun times on it, specs were....Intel Pentium 200Mhz, 32MB RAM, 2MB Onboard Video and 2GB HDD, I remember playing POD (racing Game) and basic Win 95 games.


In 2002 - and this is where my seriousness and real interest started in computers, all I can say I had some of the best times with this computer and some shitty times too(Dial Up net), here are the specs Win XP, AMD Athlon XP 2100+ 1.77Ghz, 512MB Ram DDR, 80GB HDD and ATI All In Wonder Radeon 7500 64MB and sum generic PSU. First game I played on the system was Battlefield 1942 and OMG, awesomeness also had Age Of empires 2, Starcraft Broodwar, Half Life, Counter Strike and the list goes on. The yrs past and I upgraded the system to 1.5GB RAm and bought a FX 5200 128MB vidcard (POS) The RAM helped but video card sucked (I was still a noob) so down the line I saved up more money and bought a ATI X800 Pro 256MB, and it was an awesome card, had a CPU bottleneck though I bought it so I could play Half Life 2, Doom 3 and Quake 4 decently, and it did the job well.


Now I bring to 2007 - this is where I first started to get into high end PC gaming you could say. The specs were Win Vista 32bit, AMD Athlon X2 6000+ 3Ghz, 2GB RAM DDR2, 320GB HDD and a ECS 8800GTS 320MB, came with a generic PSU but I changed it to a Solytech 500W or sumthing, did the job well. All I can say is I fell in love with dis rig, played all games maxed out at the time, but ran into many issues (Vista Related) but still, played old games and new ones like Company Of Hero's, Bioshock and so many others. upgraded it abit with an extra gig of RAM and swapped out he video card twice, first with a HD 4850 512MB which was an awesome card but didn't really like my nvdida motherboard, so I bought a GTS 250 512MB, it was smoother This was my first rig when I became a member on TPU I still have this PC BTW


End Of 2008 - I decided to finally buy my own rig and choose the parts, and I went nuts, also I was a big AMD/ATI fanboy you'll see why, I pretty much built an AMD spider platform, specs were AMD Phenom 9950 OCed @ 3Ghz, 8GB Corsair Dominator RAM, 500GB WD HDD, HIS HD4870 1gb vid card and a Vantec 550 PSU. Long story short, it was an awesome rig and played all my games at full detail including crysis (played at low res) but I had to sell it, needed the money


And end of 2009 - is my current rig and I have upgrading it ever since, I don't really need to go into detail, because I feel like its been with TPU ever since I built it...The End

THATS MY LIFE STORY............


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## sakai4eva (Apr 6, 2011)

Wow... My first computer belonged to my dad. Those were the days of 286s and whatnots. I remembered inserting 3 disks to install MS-DOS (they were in the IT industry back when it was called the computer industry), another 3 disks to install Windows 3.1.1, and 30 disks to install the entire Lotus SmartSuite. Yeah... those were the 1.44 MB not-so-floppy disks. Oh, and we (that is, my brother and I) had to install all those on 30 computers. Nice way to spend a Saturday when you're 10. 

First PC game I played was... Tetris, maybe? First game I really dug into was Diablo.

I have been putting rigs together since I was 12, so naturally I have a huge advantage compared to my peers (who had very unbalanced rigs).

My first "seriously mine" PC was back in 2004 I think, when I bought an AMD Athlon 2000 (I think) with 1GB RAM and a 7600 GT, and also a generic mobo (can't even recall the damn thing now), and then plugged them into a steel case from the PIII days (yeah, my prior PC was a "gift" from my dad... a PIII) and started playing games at low resolutions. I had this 17" CRT monitor that goes 1024x768 pixels.

When Crysis came out, I splurged on a new PSU (another generic basterd) and the ASUS 8800GT. Man, that was awesome. Until I realized my whole rig was imbalanced and bought more RAM and a 3500+ processor.

Fast forward to 2009 and I bought a 5770, my current CPU and Mobo. A few months later I bought my current RAM. I just got the other components this year.


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## Akrian (Apr 6, 2011)

Hmmm we let me see. My first "intro" to PC world was in 1996, when my friend's older brother installed DOOM 2 and Duke Nukem 3d on his pc ( and me, being a 6 year old naturally enjoyed killing countless monsters and demons lol), then some obscure strategy came up, and then HOMM.
Aaaanyway till year 2001 I was hanning out with my buddies that had their Pentiums with 100 mhz speed, 32 mb ram, and 1 mb video... yeah... fun times.
At 2001 I got my first PC... it was Athlon Thoubird 1.0ghz, 256mb ram, 40 gb IDE hdd, a generic cd-rom and a 32mb Geforce 2. If I remember it correctly I was bitching about the system, because I wanted a Pentium III or a Pentium IV at that time ( 1.5 ghz was it ?) and I didn't like the fact that my parents spend 1k on that rig, while I calculated that it only costed 700ish dollors to build it. 
And so with my own PC my so called advanture begun. first I went only through cards - Geforce 4 MX 440SE, Sapphire ati 9200 256 mb ( at that point my love with ATI begun, since this card pulled me through Doom 3, Half Life 2 and many other games), then I got Sempron 1800+ ( I think it was 1800+ ?).
Then in 2005 I've worked my ass off during summer to muster some money for AMD Athlon 64 3000+, and some random Biostar mobo, paired with ddr2 512 mb of ram ( increased to 1 gig later in life), and gigabyte x600. The era of PCI-E kicked it pretty hard. 

Then in 2006 I bought x1900xt which blew my mind at that time

in 2007 my mobo died. So I went with ANOTHER biostar mobo and an Athlon x2 2600+ as I recall, and 2 gigs of ddr2 800 ram. Actually my system handeled Crysis at 1024x768 on high with around 40 fps lol.
2008 - x1900xt died. Got 3870 Toxic
2009 - Phenom 9600, subbed for Phenom 9950 later on. M4A32 MVP deluxe mobo ( correct me if I'm wrong with the name, that was a AM2+ mobo). 4x1 gb mushkin ddr2 800, 4850 + 4850 from MSI, + a new PSU and a monitor.
2009 fall - Q9550, Foxconn BlakcOps x48, TWO  4870x2, a new case, ddr3 1600 g-skill ram 2x2 gb, later patriot viper ddr3 1600 4x2gb.
2010 - 4870x2 went away in favor of two 5870. 
Summer 2010 - changed 5870. for the frst time in 5 years I went with nvidia - gtx 480s in SLI. To accomodate sli I went with Phenom II x6 1090t, and MSI NF980-G65 mobo. Actually despite all that critisizm about 480, with the right price the cards weren't half way bad. 
2011 - GTX 480s changed for 580s with minimal xtra payment. Also had 5970 for a month, before putting another 580 in my second rig ( it's quiet, drains less energy and it's still powerful as hell)
ATM my Q9550 system is going to it's rest, and will be salvaged for $$ in favor of i7 2600k based system.


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## Aceman.au (Apr 6, 2011)

Rowsol said:


> Doom.



That was also one of the first games I played. Scared the living shit out of me, I cant remember exactly but I was very young when I played it.


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## Mussels (Apr 6, 2011)

l33tGaMeR said:


> That was also one of the first games I played. Scared the living shit out of me, I cant remember exactly but I was very young when I played it.



quake got to me. those spike traps that insta gibbed me in SP scared the shit out of me and into my pants as a kid.


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## Eric_On_Web (Apr 6, 2011)

Gonna make it short: When I was tired of hearing my mother telling me to leave the computer to my whinny brother to play the freaking Solitaire on Windows 98. Decided to savemoney and build my own first computer with a PC-chips mobo with soldered onboard AMD cpu of 1.something gig.


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## Thrackan (Apr 6, 2011)

sakai4eva said:


> Wow... My first computer belonged to my dad. Those were the days of 286s and whatnots. I remembered inserting 3 disks to install MS-DOS (they were in the IT industry back when it was called the computer industry), another 3 disks to install Windows 3.1.1, and 30 disks to install the entire Lotus SmartSuite. Yeah... those were the 1.44 MB not-so-floppy disks. Oh, and we (that is, my brother and I) had to install all those on 30 computers. Nice way to spend a Saturday when you're 10.



Try Windows 95, on THIRTEEN (13) disks


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## sakai4eva (Apr 6, 2011)

Thrackan said:


> Try Windows 95, on THIRTEEN (13) disks



Read the part on Lotus SmartSuite, buddy... I'm still having nightmares...


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## Thrackan (Apr 6, 2011)

sakai4eva said:


> Read the part on Lotus SmartSuite, buddy... I'm still having nightmares...



Yea I read over that  Maybe Dos, Win 95, and then SmartSuite?


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## Eric_On_Web (Apr 6, 2011)

Thrackan said:


> Yea I read over that  Maybe Dos, Win 95, and then SmartSuite?



Yeah still remember that when people were still using Win95 on floppy in their old rigs and I came with a copy of 98 on CD and a flashy red Pc-Chips mobo with a "new" cpu company they never heard of before (AMD) since all people were used to get 486, 200mmx and 233mmx  . Fascination in their eyes lmao


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## Funtoss (Apr 6, 2011)

It all started from when my Pentium 4 died! 
i bought a core 2 duo e6600 and then i was like hey! why not make a computer with all those led's and stuff  and then i started playing shooting games and then i started to like putting my settings on max lol and then i started buying good parts for my pc and then I BECAME A PC GAMER


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## FreedomEclipse (Apr 6, 2011)

Well...Back when I was a kid, my pappy used to work for BARCLAYS BANK. and back then in the 80's security was generally a lot lot more relaxed then it is today. So a lot of the time my dad would take me with him into work -- he used to work in one of their data centers running scheduled backups and monitoring all sorts of processes. He used to show me around his workplace and one of the places i loved to hang out was on the tech support floor. partly because my dads friend that worked there had a huge room packed full of tools, pc parts, dead/parted out pc's and other shit waiting to get repaired. and i think seeing all the pc stuff laid out all over the place sorta inspired me a little.

a few years after that my dad bought 2 Pentium SX/DX II machines back from work that i could use for school and play around with. not exactly state of the art tech. probably 50mhz, 60-80mb ram 300mb hdd running windows 3.1

I ran that machine ragged. but i was never allowed to have my way with it due to it being the only family pc.

I used to play Doom, Wolfenstein 3D, lemmings, Jungle strike and a few other games on it. 
we had that system way into the 90's until the point i started highschool as my pappy was a bit tight fisted and said so long as we were able to run stuff like Word, Excel and spreadsheets it was fine. by that time i think Pentium 3's just started to appear. so after much beggin from me and my sister about horrendous boot and program load up times (used to take 1-2mins just to load up word) he very reluctantly got us a P3 system. 

500mhz, 128mb ram, 20gb hdd, Riva TNT2. used it all through school and through most of college and my pappy refused to get a more powerful just so i could play games. So i was still grinding along with a 500mhz rig when most of my college friends were running with 1-2Ghz AMD Athlons and 3D Prophet I/II/III's and Nvidia Geforce 2/3 Ti series GPUs.

So i couldnt play the games they played and spent most of my days playing U.T99 offline against bots on godlike mode. my sister eventually had to go to uni and pappy bought her a new pc so that opened the flood gates on what i could do on the P3 machine -- so i did a lot to it. put new ram. new GPU (Sapphire 9200) and new soundcard (5.1 soundcard made by Genius bought for £15) and this was all while i was studying how to break pcs up and rebuild them back in college.

I ran the same P3 system all the way though college life until i left and got my first job. pappy still wouldnt get me a new rig despite me doing most of the freaking house work for a year, so i told him to shove it and do the goddamn house work himself and used my first big paycheque to build my first pc back in 2001.

By that time I had really raped the P3 rig and pappy didnt want to use it anymore cuz it was so shit slow.

but i was happy because I built my own rig dubbed 'Angel Of Death' after my UT99 tag in my college UT fragfests/tournys (I always came 1st or 2nd but there was only 1 or 2 kills difference when i came 2nd). it was an amazing rig. AMD64 3500+, 1Gb DDR, 2x80gb HDDs. Heavily Oc'd ATi 9600|9700 which was later upgraded to a X850XTPE and i put in a Creative Audigy 2 ZS.

stickin it to the man in style 

.:edit:.

Oh and i studied pc engineering in college for 3years before studying 1 year in IT/Telecommunications.


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## Deleted member 24505 (Apr 6, 2011)

My first pc was a ast advantage 828, a pentium 166(no mmx), 16mb ram and a 2gb hdd, it may have had some sort of video card but i dont remember what it was. I went and bought 2x8mb sticks of ram for it that cost £50 each. It cost me £1899 for the pc.


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## TechnicalFreak (Apr 6, 2011)

Mussels said:


> you had high end. i ran some DOS based OS which was really nothing more than a GUI with shortcuts and a mouse cursor at 320x240



Windows 3.1 and MS DOS in the background.. The days we remember - Quake 1, Descent and so on..


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## Flibolito (Apr 6, 2011)

JrRacinFan said:


> tape drive & commodore 64



Dad snuck it into communist east germany. I bet we were the only people in our city with something like that. He brought tons of games seeing as they were nearly impossible to get (1987 i think in east germany the only electronic people had were TVs and radios made out of wood.) 1991 Siemens hired my dad to come to USA and it started from there. Scorched earth, Oregon Trail, NES, x386 to PII 400MHz the list goes on. In 2007 I built my first ground up custom PC mainly for crysis since I was a huge far cry fan and joined TPU, never looked back.

Fantastic Hobby/People/Industry.
Love you guys!!!


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## inferKNOX (Apr 6, 2011)

I got into it because the PC is the universal platform.
One can play, study, work, watch, listen, build a hobby around & relax, all on the PC.
As I got into it, I realised that using it meant needing to know a degree of it, and well... my knowledge deepend until people were asking me for advice/help, and eventually, after the airline industry crash post 9/11, I decided it's not worth still persuing a career in commercial piloting, so I turned fully to IT.

The rest is history...


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## Virus-j (Apr 6, 2011)

l33tGaMeR said:


> That was also one of the first games I played. Scared the living shit out of me, I cant remember exactly but I was very young when I played it.




Doom, Duke Nukem, Quake, Where stunning in there Time and still are now i think. I reccon most who got into Pc life played those games in that Era. 
My dad asked me to install them back on his pc the other day .........Lol.


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## Bundy (Apr 6, 2011)

I loved the whole concept from my first experience - even though that was somewhat underwhelming by todays standards. As a class at school, we filled out these cards in lead pencil so that they wrote a program in basic. It took about 30 cards to do a simple program. Those got mailed to another school in the city and 2 weeks later I got a print out saying " syntax error" . FFFFFFUUUUUUU!

Anyway, I got over that and got entraced by the new apple II the school had - it had a floppy drive and could play space invaders!!!!

Soon after I bought a Z80 rig and was hooked.

At uni in 85 I got to use instant messaging via some sort of intranet run by Vax computers and linux, it was soo cool to beep on someone elses screen to tell them to FO.

Then I got to know a friend who could buld "clones" woohoo - that was the start of the rot and i've had an interest ever since. fast forward 20 odd years - I never did get into IT as a career but I'm still on the fringes, playin away


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## Flibolito (Apr 6, 2011)

This thread is sooooooooooo win!!! I love reading all these.


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## MoonPig (Apr 6, 2011)

The masses of 1080p porn out there. Realised i needed a better CPU to get 1080p playback, so i built a new machine. Got a decent card in there aswell. 

After i got bored of 'watching' the movies, i decided to try afew games. Whatcha know, i preferred it over consoles


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## majestic12 (Apr 6, 2011)

Still have DOS 6.0 on 5 1/4" floppies in my parents' basement, along with Windows 3.1 (on 3 1/2").  Have the computer it went with as well, but the 130 meg hard drive is long dead unfortunately.  Grew up with an Apple IIe.  It sucked.  Built a 386 while in junior high so I could play games like Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D, Scorched Earth, and eventually Doom (in low detail).  Pressed the parental units for funds so I could get a double speed CD-ROM and a Sound Blaster 16, which together cost more than a lot of computers sold today.  

Times sure have gotten good for the computer nerd.  14" CRT monitors don't cost over $400 now.  A meg of RAM cost over a hundred dollars (US) when I built that computer.  Even a 14.4k fax modem cost me a lot (most computers didn't even have modems yet).


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## Towly (Apr 6, 2011)

I got into pc's when we got our first pc back in '95...Was 10 at that time. It was a 386 and came out with windows 3.1 but replaced it with windows 95 later. From there on i got into gaming...well was mostly dos games back then...badass graphics. Now I custom build my own pc, friends, clients...And have put alot of money into my rig these past years. Playing major titles today. And then you think back and you found a very oooold dos game...and think...damn these graphics are hurting my eyes. We had dial up back then...now i use 3G...How technology has advanced in the few years.


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## Arrakis9 (Apr 6, 2011)

dell tech support

two hours on the phone with them for a jumper setting on an ide hard drive and a wipe and reformat later, made me want to learn


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## Thrackan (Apr 6, 2011)

Arrakis+9 said:


> dell tech support
> 
> two hours on the phone with them for a jumper setting on an ide hard drive and a wipe and reformat later, made me want to learn



I love reading this thread, and this one is an EXCELLENT example of why people should want to learn


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## FreedomEclipse (Apr 6, 2011)

Thrackan said:


> I love reading this thread, and this one is an EXCELLENT example of why people should want to learn



If everyone learnt -- half of us here at TPU would be out of a job. I provide a lot of software & hardware support for a lot of friends and family. Id starve if they all suddenly knew how to fix their own PC's


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## mrw1986 (Apr 6, 2011)

Well, to make a long story short I built my first PC when I was 8 years old (circa 1994) because my father owned a computer shop and taught me A LOT. I started self-teaching myself shortly after and started getting more serious about building PCs. I'm not sure if many people remember this brand, but I was a huge fan of Cyrix CPU's. Then once AMD came out with the XP series I switched to those, then I went Pentium D and never looked back and have been on Intel since.


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## Thrackan (Apr 6, 2011)

FreedomEclipse said:


> If everyone learnt -- half of us here at TPU would be out of a job. I provide a lot of software & hardware support for a lot of friends and family. Id starve if they all suddenly knew how to fix their own PC's



Not everyone, just anyone who has the slightest capacity. That should leave TONS of stupid people


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## Brandenburg (Apr 6, 2011)

i had my 1st experience a with pc's in 1999 .. 

a compaq pI 200mhz w/ 1.96GB HDD.. 

2001.. my grandmother bought a compaq amd k-6 533mhz  w/40gb hdd,512mb ram and a tnt 2 pci vid card in it

2003..i had an amd 1.3 ghz w/768mb ram,40gb hdd, radion 9600 agp

2006..an amd 64 2.2 ghz emachine w/2gb ram,160gb hdd,nvidea 6600 PCIe then a 9800 vid card

2009.. my current setup albiet not modded then...

just need a faster card and all will be good with that setup..  still wont compete with 60% of the TPU croud but it will work for me

to answer the OP's question though.. I originally started messing with computers because of a game...Close Combat 3.. started writting scripts for the mod installer and got very good at it..  built up a good rep ...LOL...also started modding Close Combat 2,3,4,and 5....

decided i would get a degree in programming too.. took 3 years but I achieved that goal..


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## human_error (Apr 6, 2011)

I'm into the "PC life" for the women 



Spoiler



Actually I'm into PCs because of games. When I was 5 I had a master system 2 and loved playing it. I then saw my cousin play dune on his computer when I was 6 and wanted that game sooo much. 

Many years later in 2000 I got my first PC which was a packard bell POS (I loved it at the time - playing games like Sim City 2000 and Sim city 4). Had a 1024x768 CRT, a 700mhz celeron and 32MB of system RAM. It ran windows ME (at the time it didnt seem bad but looking back I do see how bad it was). I then got XP a year later as it was nice and colourful (I hate the damned old skool grey theme for windows).

I didn't get into computers properly until I went to uni - I had spotted that there was a lot  of money in software development and so decided to do that for a degree, and while there I started upgrading my PC with a new graphics card and an athlon 64 x2. I then found TPU a couple of years later and havn't looked back...


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## dom99 (Apr 6, 2011)

My story started 1.5 years ago. My dad bought me a Dell Studio XPS 435MT Core i7 920, 8GB DDR3 RAM, HD4850 GPU, 23" Monitor, it was brilliant.

But there was a problem, whilst my gf was playing the sims 3 it got very hot, loud and crashed every time. This resulted in many fits of wild woman rage, and I had to get it sorted.

There I enetered into the crazy expensive world of computer upgrades, mainly obsessing over my graphics cards because in my opinion that is the most exciting and fastest market.

In 1 year I have owned;
1) ATI HD 4850
2) ATI HD 5850
3) AMD HD 6870
4) AMD HD 6950

I was sooooo close to getting a gtx 580 I had one on preorder to go out the next day but decided last minute thats a bit too expensive lol. I wish my motherboard had 2 PCI-express slots for crossfire but you cant have everything. I am going to upgrade the motherboard and CPU when the next chips after Ivy Bridge get released.

Also to fix the overheating problem I took a circular saw and cut 2 extra fan holes out of the side panel and fixed Noctuas onto them, now its cool and quiet and very very fast.

I also changed out the measly 350W Dell power supply for an Antec TP-750 750W beast.

My next thing is I want to get more monitors for eyefinity!! it never stops lol


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## douglatins (Apr 6, 2011)

TPU and money


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## The Witcher (Apr 6, 2011)

lnd2288 said:


> Basically wanted ppl to share there love passion and story in how they ended up loving in building pc  gaming and etc?
> 
> 
> My story began basically when I was 14 had I think a pentium 4 or less and *just use too use kazaa for downloading*. Pc was really slow had 512ram and about 40gb hard drive. Through the month I felt like downloading movies and music was the best thing on a pc. I felt like an upgrade would bring more too life with a lil faster ram and bigger hard drive space for more storage. never new I would now spend quite a lot of money years and years to come for gaming. I think my first game on a pc was age of empire. From there on there is nothing like gaming and building a gaming pc. What's your story ? Something I had in mind that water to share with TPU....
> ...



I knew it ! porn does have benefits 

My story...hmmmm.......I think it started with Doom, I never played the game, I was watching my brother playing it since I was like 4 or 5. The first PC game I played I think it was Dark Reign. The second thing that influenced me was actually porn, still being caught twice is not a good feeling, but no worries, I'm a Master now, no body can catch me


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## silkstone (Apr 6, 2011)

I started pissing around with the manual for my Amstrad cpc 464 when i was about 7. I made a few programs that would make pretty lines on the screen, and of corse, i wold copy games via hi-speed dubbing on my parents hi-fi. Elite was the first game that i got truly hooked on, i would make (hand-written) spreadsheets  of commodity prices on all the stations and forever be searching for the fabled cloaking device.

I then got a sega mega drive and loved the games on that. My next computer was actually a family 486 66mhz (damn we have come a long way since then). Me and my father started to upgrade that an i became hooked. I remember at my mum's old office they had a room full of old computers that were going to be thrown away. I begged her to let me come into the office and grab some pieces outta them, man i was sooo happy that day... i took all the ram and HDDs outta the computers and took them home only to realize that old 286 hardware wouldn't work with my latest model 486  but i wasn't too fussed, i think the hard disks were around 10mb ea and the ram was 256k. 

I got hold of an old 386 some time around then too, and spent some evenings tinkering with it to see if i could get it back to life. I remember later, upgrading to a Cyrix 586 and later on an AMD version of the pentium,  spray painting my computer case black, going to the local electronics shop to get blue LEDs to switch out on my power button and trying to save enough money to pick up an old radiator from a scrap yard to build a water cooling system (that never panned out). By that time i was a teenager tho, so my memory is a little fuzzy, i was too busy playing football, drinking beer and chasing tail along with 101 things in my spare time.

I also remember being into a lot of other random crap. I remember trying to make a custom fan controller, playing the first ever MMORPG (Worlds Away on Compuserve), 9600 bit modems, downloading porn via the news programs (forget what the hell they were called), Making my own BBS, getting my first hand-hold computer (3 lines of txt), dirty talk to random girls in chat rooms (although thinking about it now they were all prolly 50yr old men called Bob).


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## MatTheCat (Apr 6, 2011)

Bf2.


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## ASRockIQ (Apr 6, 2011)

my first Build was a AMD Socket-A Athlon Thunderbird 1.6GHZ, 80GB HDD, 256MB RAM, and a Powercolor 9600Pro with 256MB DDR1 RAM which was nice @that time


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## GSquadron (Apr 6, 2011)

I am into PC life, because of paint program


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## wydglide (Aug 28, 2011)

wakeing up an old thread

I sit down at a commodore 64 & was instantly Addicted.....the rest is history, although it is a Love /Hate relationship ! ;-)

Glide


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## FordGT90Concept (Aug 28, 2011)

Damn things kept breaking down.  Instead of waiting (and paying) for someone else to fix it, why not fix it myself?


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## de.das.dude (Aug 28, 2011)

i picked it up on my own.

mostly due to my gaming addiction which is no more.


also this thread should be in GN


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## CDdude55 (Aug 28, 2011)

Was an avid video gamer as a kid throughout the 1990's, but i was most only interested in Consoles. It was when i started playing games on my moms Dell PC that i started developing an interest in hardware, i wanted my games to look and run better so i started researching online whats what and which parts do what and from that point on it stuck with me.


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## Shihab (Aug 28, 2011)

Aleksander Dishnica said:


> I am into PC life, because of paint program



Lol, same ere ! That, and Doom and Solitaire. 
My first true experience with PCs was late 90s. I started using them earlier at school. But it was my mother's laptop that I experienced a full -comparing to school's pc- control over a machine. 

I didn't own a computer that I could call my _personal computer_ till 2004. After acing a major exam, me grandmother paid for a machine -brought by my dear father- which had a Pentium 4 and a 512Mbs of RAM + an intel IGP. upgraded to a Club3D ATI all-in-wonder 9200se.
It was this machine that got me hooked up. I kept opening the case and admiring the PCBs. Then I mustered some courage and disassembled/reassembled it alone. I was 15 back then iirc.

Mind you, I would've started earlier, if I wasn't stuck in a third-world country :shadedshu


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## blu3flannel (Aug 28, 2011)

I got into PCs when I went into the basement and found a retired Apple G3 (Yeah, I know. Apple.) sitting on a shelf. I wondered, "How does it work?" I tore that thing open and here I am today.


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## Jegergrim (Aug 28, 2011)

I became interested in PC's right after my PS1 broke, and I managed to figure out a keyboard and a mouse was more comfortable . I cannot remember the specifications of my first pc lol, but it ended up burning, due to a thick layer of dust inside


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## Crap Daddy (Aug 28, 2011)

On and off been interested in this stuff more or less since long time ago. But it became the new drug after I quit drinking four years ago.


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## majestic12 (Aug 28, 2011)

I got into it because of Wolfenstein 3D.  I learned about it because of Doom.


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## Spaceman Spiff (Aug 28, 2011)

My dad had one of those old toshiba "laptops" with the orange screen when we moved to the states in 91 that I think he got from his job. I dunno I was young. It played some old math game where you went through a castle and had to solve increasingly more difficult math problems (made the parents happy). It also played Chuck Yaeger's Air Combat and X-wing (X-wing was on like 12 floppys haha). Those got me into PCs as a kid. My bro was way more into them than I was though. I was more interested in the games. Him and my dad built one a few years later that eventually lead to my bro showing me a mod called counter-strike. My bro is a computer engineer now. The rest, as they say..is history.


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## Syuzeren (Aug 28, 2011)

When i was 4 years old and found out about paint, best day ever. Offcourse i didn't play around with hardware back then


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## GSquadron (Aug 28, 2011)

Syuzeren said:


> When i was 4 years old and found out about paint, best day ever. Offcourse i didn't play around with hardware back then



Lol how could you? I was 4 years old too and found paint 
I remember drawing the moon lol x)


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## m4gicfour (Aug 29, 2011)

My dad had a Commodore 64/128, I can remember playing Army Moves, Alley Cat, Zodiac, Super Huey II, and a bunch more on that thing. The sound of a 1541 read operation still brings back fuzzy feelings. Or how about *Load "*" 8, 1 RUN*

The day the PSU for that thing died was a sad day indeed. If it was still around today I'm 100% sure I could have resurrected it 

I also messed about on my dad's Vendex 286 with BASIC as that was the only interesting program on there 

My dad had a Sega Master System with about 20 games, and when my brother and I got a bit older we pooled our money and bought a Sega Genesis (That's Mega Drive to the Europeans)

As I got older, and my dad kept getting newer PCs to keep his buisiness records and print out contracts, I was the one who always got called when something wasn't working.

I played tech support on a Windows 95 Pentium machine, a PentiumIII WinME machine, and an XP Based Pentium 4 machine, all had been my dad's buisness machines. He'd buy those 18 shareware +1 full discs you could get at the supermarket. So I learned DOS that way, and from messing about with BASIC on the 286 way back when. At one point he bought me X-wing VS TIE Fighter, and as a testament to the effect that had on me, I'm STILL trying to get it running properly in a VM.

At about Grade 9, my dad bought me a Touch Systems S754 Athlon64 3400+ based system with a Radeon 9800 Pro. That was a badass computer for the time. The rest, as they say, is history.




The Witcher said:


> I knew it ! porn does have benefits
> 
> My story...hmmmm.......I think it started with Doom, I never played the game, I was watching my brother playing it since I was like 4 or 5. The first PC game I played I think it was Dark Reign. The second thing that influenced me was actually porn, still being caught twice is not a good feeling, but no worries, I'm a Master now, no body can catch me



Unless of course you post about it on the internet 


At least this isn't facebook with your real name right next to your staement.


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## xBruce88x (Aug 29, 2011)

i think the very first program i used was on a mac at the elementary/primary school i went to when i was in 3rd grade or so. that program was called KidPix. looked something like this







later on in 4th grade i used to watch a lot of magic schoolbus and they had an episode about how computers work. later that year my sister had wanted a comp (she's a few years older than me) so she could play epic pinball so my parents got her a dos machine. later they got her the Sega Gens with the Sega Channel (which was EPIC!) so she no longer had use for the pc and i used it. started putting other dos games i found on it and that's pretty much where it started. she mostly had consloes while i tinkered with the old comps lol. i played a lot of the 2-player games with her though. from the nes, sega, snes, and n64. and so on. 

oh and the movie Hackers helped a little bit lol

in 5th grade they had re-zoned the districts and i ended up going to another school that had all windows PCs instead of macs. i remember one pc in the room never did work right. it kepts saying somthing about a file missing. one day when the teacher wasn't around i reset the bastard and loaded it into safe mode. no it wasn't "fixed" but i was at least able to play math blaster (w/o sound) lol. my sister later got some more dos games and we finally got internet. I found a game called bomber and ultris that i took to school to play. i would have brought chips challenge too but i couldn't get it to fit on one floppy, at least not with the sound too. by this time i had my own pc as well, though it was much older than the school stuff but was enought to keep me busy. it was running win3.11. it survived the whole Y2K scare just fine, just had to re-set the time and date lol. my first real pc was a compaq deskpro with a 486 and what my dad called a skuzzy keyboard that had a built in sound system that kinda acted as a PA system in that you could record stuff by talking into the speaker and was running win95. we later got a Pentium 90 rig with 32mb ram and a 1mb onboard video card. it also had the pinball games, but had a few others as well. it had a 600mb hard drive with 95Plus! and making my own themes was sooo awesome! it had a few more dos games loaded on it, like jazz jackrabbit and raptor call of the shadows, with doom 1 and duke nukem 1. I think i was in 6th grade by the time we got all of that. that PC was the first one i had opened up. I had wanted to put a cd drive in it lol. also messed with the jumpers and got the cpu to run at 120mhz.

but yea that's where i started at  i could list all my pcs from win 95 up till now but that'll be a very long read indeed lol


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## Robert-The-Rambler (Aug 29, 2011)

*A Long Time Ago.......*

In an age where Commodore 64 ruled the world and many a game said cracked by Eaglesoft and a game called Bard's Tale was exposed to a child by an older brother. The denizens of this mystic place assault you without warning. What really was down in the wine cellar? Those are my earliest memories of PC gaming in general and that was my first favorite game. It all started there in the wine cellar.


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## mastrdrver (Aug 29, 2011)

One company: 3Dfx.

I had a sad when I found out they went belly up.

 I still remember the day my dad got a computer from work that they threw out. Nothing like loading programs off of 5.25 floppy drives. Then we got a hard drive. That was unreal.


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## Wrigleyvillain (Aug 29, 2011)

Gaming. I grew up in the 80s with computers and had an Apple IIe (Bards Tale! Summer Games! Wooooo) but never got heavily into this until PC gaming got really good in the late 90s. And that lead me to building and overclocking and such.


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## boomstik360 (Aug 29, 2011)

A buddy of mine got me into computer gaming with the original Day of Defeat and Counter Strike. I never really knew much about computer until then I got very interested. I've Been stuck ever since lol.


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## twilyth (Aug 31, 2011)

I started with fortran in HS and hated it.  Eventually ended up working for a bank.  I spent most of my time writing programs for the HP12C calculator to help other analysts.  

Then I got a timex sinclair computer since it was the cheapest thing on the market at the time.  Wrote a few programs for the bank (since the IT dept couldn't figure some of our shit out) that were eventually translated into COBOL (not by me).  Moved into the IT dept and got to play with brand new IBM AT's (oooooooo, aaaahhhhhh - 8MHz of computing power).

Finally people started making XT clones and I got one of those.  Had a big old Seagate 20MB HDD and 640k of memory.  My life has been hell ever since.  {and yes, I'm an old fart}


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## casual swift (Sep 2, 2011)

Me and my friends in Jr. High really started getting into PC gaming in the Quake, Counter-Strike Era. Took a LONG break playing xbox 360 and recently decided to get back into. Hardware in general is just really interesting to me. I'm always finding new ways to spend my hard earned cash. lol.


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## Jetster (Sep 2, 2011)

A freadns dad gave me an IBM 8088. And I took it apart many time and gamed on it. Use to play California Games

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uanoMRwYlmk


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## Derek12 (Sep 2, 2011)

I was fed up for having to pay so much for repairing PCs, so I learned how to assemble/disassemble a computer and now I can't do it fine,

My first PC dated from 1999 and was branded one, very expensive and we used it until 2006 until I could buy a PC in pieces and choose those that meet our needs without being expensive or very weak one.

Also in my experience it's cheaper and/or more powerful and/or better quality to buy the components and assemble together than buying a branded PC like Dell, compaq, HP...


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## sttubs (Sep 3, 2011)

In '98 I bought a Gateway P2 based computer, what a POS, I called it the Gateway to hell. It did have a nice 3yr warranty on it though. Gateway's support walked me through on how to trouble shoot the computer & they would send out a part & instruct me on how to swap it out. After the warranty lapsed I decided to build my own. I bought the best quality parts after much research and had settled on an AMD XP1800+ with an Asus mb (I don't remember all of the model numbers). I was ecstatic with my new high quality performance beast & I've been hooked since.


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## mastrdrver (Sep 5, 2011)

TechnicalFreak said:


> Windows 3.1 and MS DOS in the background.. The days we remember - Quake 1, Descent and so on..



Ah yes, Descent.....I hated that game. Never could figure out where I was going or what I was suppose to do. 

I told a coworker (who just graduated high school a year ago) about when Duke Nukem came out how it was the shit. He looked up a video of it and commented on how crappy the graphics was. I was like sure, but it was the shit back then. 

FF also sucks because I had to add Nukem to spell check. What kind of fail browser (spell check) doesn't know what or who Nukem of Duke is?! 

Btw, they need to bring this game back.


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## Jetster (Sep 5, 2011)

Descent use to make me dizzy and sick to my stomach. I remember it was on 4 3.5 diskettes


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## v12dock (Sep 5, 2011)

In 2003 I found a perfectly good Pentium 4 machine in the trash... lol

I was into them before that but when I found that computer, my computer passion really took off.


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## ViperXTR (Sep 5, 2011)

my older sister, since she enrolled as a computer science student before the 21st century, she needs to have a PC for that, got really interested and i thought of fiddling with it. 
Today she is still a pc person, and she requested me to quote and assemble her a computer last year: I got her an Intel Core i5 760 with DeepCool Ice Edge 400 FS cooler, MSi H55-E33 board,Kingston 4GB DDR3 1333Mhz Dual channel ram, AMD Radeon HD 6850 1GB GDDR5, 2 x 1TB Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 SATA drives, OCZ Mod X Stream Pro 700W Modular, Thermaltake V4 Chassis, Samsung PX2370 23" LED, Logitech M520 Wireless Keyboard and Mouse... yeah, her system is more superior than mine hehe, and oh shes currently Playing Sims 3, Portal and Diablo 2  .


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