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Old Nerds Club (all welcome) with poll

Age of a Nerd

  • 25 or below

    Votes: 23 8.6%

  • 26-30

    Votes: 35 13.0%

  • 31-35

    Votes: 53 19.7%

  • 36-40

    Votes: 47 17.5%

  • 41-45

    Votes: 30 11.2%

  • 46-50

    Votes: 23 8.6%

  • 51-55

    Votes: 23 8.6%

  • 56-60

    Votes: 17 6.3%

  • 61 -70

    Votes: 15 5.6%

  • 71+

    Votes: 3 1.1%
  • Total voters
    269
My first computer was a Texas Ti994a Was a piece of crap. Went through all the 386/cyrix/486 crap, that was good at the time, then got a p166, 8mb ram which i upped to 16mb for £100, 2gb hdd, and some video card i cannot remember.
 
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tigger said:
My first computer was a Texas Ti994a Was a piece of crap. Went through all the 386/cyrix/486 crap, that was good at the time, then got a p166, 8mb ram which i upped to 16mb for £100, 2gb hdd, and some video card i cannot remember.
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Sounds like my experiences. I can't remember the rest of the crap either (my brain has plenty of fried sectors), other than my original Voodoo card ;)
 
Very interesting topic.

Turning 39 this coming May. I remember my first pc I had was pentium ll 333 year 2001 then celeron then moved to AMD duron,sempron single core then back to intel Pentium 4 socket 478. I played counter strike and need for speed underground with decent agp GPU back 2003
 
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I'm 37 now.

My first computer was an Apple III (yeah, you Google that shit...). I remember taking days to write myself some programs in BASIC. I also remember pestering my father for days until he agreed to drive me 2 hours away so I could purchase an Apple IIe emulator card. With which, I played "Wasteland" "Wizard's Crown" and of course "Zork".

First PC was years later, some Compaq deal with a Cyrix chip, then on to P3 coppermine, then dual 1.4ghz P3 Tualatins with DDR (that's how I got the username, had custom watercooling blocks machined and one leaked.), then AMD64, to Core to Core 2, to Broadwell. 5775C still does the job today. I still fire up "Wasteland" sometimes.
 
The first computer I used with any regularity was a US Military owned main frame in the mid-1980's. I stood a watch that included changing out vacuum tubes on that beast.
The First PC I built was Intel 386 based.
 
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I speak Vacuum tubes, lol.

I designed and built a lot of stuff that was based around Photomultiplier tubes, and I refurb Vacuum tube based Geiger Counters.

I'd love to have seen a vacuum tube based computer; they're totally impervious to EMP, for one. :)

This was a real thing:

art4-web.jpg


It's tube based audio, on a computer motherboard.

No, I never bought one. :)
 
Grog6 said:
I speak Vacuum tubes, lol.

I designed and built a lot of stuff that was based around Photomultiplier tubes, and I refurb Vacuum tube based Geiger Counters.

I'd love to have seen a vacuum tube based computer; they're totally impervious to EMP, for one. :)

This was a real thing:

art4-web.jpg


It's tube based audio, on a computer motherboard.

No, I never bought one. :)
Click to expand...
I believe it. AOpen tried some weird stuff BITD.
 
I seen one of those for sale here in NZ it was hellishly expensive around the $800 dollar mark but in the end proved to be not worth the money as onboard audio chips caught up and surpassed it pretty quick and it was never quite as good as a dedicated sound card
 
8e6ac0bd9d29ef0cc0e8ebfb152787c8.jpg

This was my second desktop machine. Was powered by a Cyrix 486DX2 66MHz CPU. I actually liked this machine a lot, as it was very space efficient in my 3 person dorm room. Came with Windows 3.11, but with a free upgrade to Windows 95! I eventually upgraded it to an "Evergreen" CPU, which was an AMD CPU running at 133mhz, I believe. Not even a lightning strike could take this baby out--it merely burned up a PS2 port and kept on chugging.
 
lexluthermiester said:
I believe it. AOpen tried some weird stuff BITD.
Click to expand...
And I thought that Asrock had some truly weird boards back in the day :laugh:

My AGP system is a great example; AGP with AM2.
 
Grog6 said:
I speak Vacuum tubes, lol.

I designed and built a lot of stuff that was based around Photomultiplier tubes, and I refurb Vacuum tube based Geiger Counters.

I'd love to have seen a vacuum tube based computer; they're totally impervious to EMP, for one. :)

This was a real thing:

art4-web.jpg


It's tube based audio, on a computer motherboard.

No, I never bought one. :)
Click to expand...


I remember the days when they would use the same chipset heatsink shown here, on GPus. I think my ATi Sapphire 9200SE had one.
 
FreedomEclipse said:
I remember the days when they would use the same chipset heatsink shown here, on GPus. I think my ATi Sapphire 9200SE had one.
Click to expand...
a little bit less tall but yep ... pretty much ....

(took the picture right now for the occasion :D )
IMG_20190728_030726.jpgIMG_20190728_030732.jpg
 
Heh, I haven't check in here in a while... I moved up an age grade... 56-60 now.... and that cyrix powered computer up above is dam cool!
God I'm old.....
 
Darmok N Jalad said:
View attachment 127904
This was my second desktop machine. Was powered by a Cyrix 486DX2 66MHz CPU. I actually liked this machine a lot, as it was very space efficient in my 3 person dorm room. Came with Windows 3.11, but with a free upgrade to Windows 95! I eventually upgraded it to an "Evergreen" CPU, which was an AMD CPU running at 133mhz, I believe. Not even a lightning strike could take this baby out--it merely burned up a PS2 port and kept on chugging.
Click to expand...
johnspack said:
Heh, I haven't check in here in a while... I moved up an age grade... 56-60 now.... and that cyrix powered computer up above is dam cool!
God I'm old.....
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I would have loved to have had one of those, especially with the Evergreen 133mhz CPU upgrade. Very nice!
 
johnspack said:
Heh, I haven't check in here in a while... I moved up an age grade... 56-60 now.... and that cyrix powered computer up above is dam cool!
God I'm old.....
Click to expand...
lexluthermiester said:
I would have loved to have had one of those, especially with the Evergreen 133mhz CPU upgrade. Very nice!
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I'm pretty sure that AIO cost me around $1000. It had a lot going for it though. It came with 8MB RAM when most systems still shipped with 4MB, a 4x CD-ROM drive when most systems were still shipping with 2x. That was a huge deal since many games still ran mostly off the optical drive. The 540MB hard drive couldn't hold very much! I think even the 14.4 modem was more than the average. Oh, and it had a Creative Vibra 16 card! That was a good card, as I moved it on to my next system, and it even worked under NT 4.0.

To give you a clue on my PC NOOB status at the time, it wasn't until months later that I figured out it didn't have "Intel inside" and that's why it didn't come with the sticker!

Edit:
Someone put a video on youtube of a working 4066d!
 
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GreiverBlade said:
a little bit less tall but yep ... pretty much ....

(took the picture right now for the occasion :D )
View attachment 127914View attachment 127915
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I had the exactly same card years ago. Pulled from a Fujitsu-Siemens PC? :)

I removed the stock heatsink and replaced it with a Thermaltake Blue Orb (took it from a broken Hercules Radeon 9500 Pro), overclocked pretty nice after that. Though the 9200SE had to retire since I got a 6800 Ultra to that my 2nd PC :toast:
 
SamirD said:
I love seeing old machines like that working--reminds me that I'm not broken yet either, lol
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I was impressed that he still had it in such good condition. Normally that beige color fades to that ugly brownish-yellow. Looks like he even had the original color-coded mouse and keyboard.
 
Chloe Price said:
I had the exactly same card years ago. Pulled from a Fujitsu-Siemens PC? :)

I removed the stock heatsink and replaced it with a Thermaltake Blue Orb (took it from a broken Hercules Radeon 9500 Pro), overclocked pretty nice after that. Though the 9200SE had to retire since I got a 6800 Ultra to that my 2nd PC :toast:
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nope ... it was from a friend PC which was a prebuilt from a local PC store ... i took the card as payment for a swap for a Leadtek Winfast A350 TDH MyVIVO FX 5900 (quite the nice deal for him, if i might say so ... but since i run a GPU collection ... that was for the greater good )

nonetheless i got the card back a few years later :laugh:
IMG_20190728_211755.jpgIMG_20190728_211802_1.jpg
 
GreiverBlade said:
nope ... it was from a friend PC which was a prebuilt from a local PC store ... i took the card as payment for a swap for a Leadtek Winfast A350 TDH MyVIVO FX 5900 (quite the nice deal for him, if i might say so ... but since i run a GPU collection ... that was for the greater good )

nonetheless i got the card back a few years later :laugh:
View attachment 127940View attachment 127941
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Love those old Leadtek cards, I had a GF4 Ti 4200 & 4600, they also had a backplate which was a hella rare thing back then! :)
 
My first computer experiences goes way back to 1985 when my father bought a Microbee computer and one of my friends parents bought a brand new Commodore C64 and the son of my dad's colleague an Atari AT-2600, this is where my computing adventure begun and to be honest back then I wanted nothing of it :X
It was as if I was wasting time behind some weird screen.

Bu around December of 1992 was when my interest for computers began and the first x-86 system I learned to use was the following:

Cyrix 486 DLC 25Mhz with 33Mhz Turbo Speed
Cyrix 87 DLC Co-Processor
Socket 3 Spacewalker mainboard with 8 Bit & 16 Bit ISA slots PCB date = 9249 meaning it's from Year 1992 week 49.
Trident SVGA 1MB ISA 16Bit
Media Vision Jazz 16 20 voices Sound card 16 Bit ISA
87MB Quantum Fireball HDD
4MB System Ram + 640KB conventional memory Later upgraded to 8MB system ram
Phillips Dual Speed CD Rom Drive
3.5" Floppy Drive & 5x 25" Floppy Drive as Drive B
Sunshine AT Case
Sunshine 101 Keyboard + 3 button Mouse

All I have left of this system is the mainboard with the CPU + Co+Processor with Cache & System ram:
Good for the memory of course :)
486 a.jpg 486 b.jpg
 
Gold Leader said:
My first computer experiences goes way back to 1985 when my father bought a Microbee computer and one of my friends parents bought a brand new Commodore C64 and the son of my dad's colleague an Atari AT-2600, this is where my computing adventure begun and to be honest back then I wanted nothing of it :X
It was as if I was wasting time behind some weird screen.

Bu around December of 1992 was when my interest for computers began and the first x-86 system I learned to use was the following:

Cyrix 486 DLC 25Mhz with 33Mhz Turbo Speed
Cyrix 87 DLC Co-Processor
Socket 3 Spacewalker mainboard with 8 Bit & 16 Bit ISA slots PCB date = 9249 meaning it's from Year 1992 week 49.
Trident SVGA 1MB ISA 16Bit
Media Vision Jazz 16 20 voices Sound card 16 Bit ISA
87MB Quantum Fireball HDD
4MB System Ram + 640KB conventional memory Later upgraded to 8MB system ram
Phillips Dual Speed CD Rom Drive
3.5" Floppy Drive & 5x 25" Floppy Drive as Drive B
Sunshine AT Case
Sunshine 101 Keyboard + 3 button Mouse

All I have left of this system is the mainboard with the CPU + Co+Processor with Cache & System ram:
Good for the memory of course :)
View attachment 130960 View attachment 130961
Click to expand...
I love that you posted this, but hate that it makes me feel so old! LOL!
Haven't seen that CPU with it's match math co-processor in decades. Good grief that take me back...
Does it work?
 
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