Since you are reading this page, you are probably like me. Spending way too much time playing with these little computers! I have been at it since the days of the Altair's and Imsai's (early to mid 1970's). If you don't know what THEY are, you are no personal computer pioneer. If "swap tech" (SWTP) South West Technical Products rings a bell, then you are a sole mate. In those days everyone was a "hardware" person. Very little software existed! My first real computer (in 1976) was an Imsai 8080. It used what was called the S-100 bus and had a HUGE linear power supply. The power transformer alone must have weighed ten pounds! I was excited when my first 4k of static RAM fired up and passed the memory test. Programming was in Octal or Hex through the front panel switches. Realize, this is before Apple and IBM even thought of getting into the "personal computer" business. Programs were published, not purchased. I moved to a "full house" Atari 800 for awhile. Two drives, modem, etc. Also played around with the early Apple machines and several Apple clones (Franklin). I eventually realized the future was going to be in business use, so I bought an IBM PC1 from 47th St. Photo (gray market) in N.Y.C. It was obvious, IBM would set the standard. Sold the Atari to a neighbor kid to play games. I finally abandoned that first IBM PC1. It was extremely modified and upgraded, but was permanently retired from active duty many years ago. I would "fire it up" from time to time but the hard drive finally died from non-use. It served me well in business as well as fun. I learned Lotus 123 and dBase programming on it. I was going to add an IBM PC Jar.. to the computer table for home use and put the "big" IBM into steady business use. If you remember the Jr., it was a real dud. Somebody spread "Chicklet" gum on a piece of plastic and called it a keyboard. I looked across the computer store and spied the very first 128k Macintosh! Yep, I bought it and lugged it home with very little initial software to run on it. The little floppies were neat. I received the MAC back from my daughter who used it for awhile in college in the early 90's. I had lent it to her after I had made several modifications and upgrades. First to a "fat" MAC (256K) and then to a whopping 512k MAC. It never had a hard drive. The second "BIG" computer was a Gateway2000 486/33 that I also continued to modify through the years. It was upgraded to a 100 MHz (tripler) processor and WIN95. Very few original parts are left in this machine. I "retired" this machine and removed it from my home network many years ago. In 1995 built up a simple 486 DX2 (66MHz) with 16 MEG RAM and a 550 MEG Hard Drive. I used to keep all business records on a Syquest removable hard drive that I could bring home and plug into the Gateway. The Syquest, with constant backups, gave me a feeling of security with important data. No longer needed for business, this machine was "decommissioned" and totally rebuilt into a Pentium II with only the case and power supply remaining from the original. The next computer following the Gateway is a home brew box running a Cyrix 6x86 P166 with 64 Meg of EDO RAM, a 1.2 Gig and 2.1 Gig Hard Drives. (Not very "hot" by today's standards.) It at first ran both WIN98 and an alternate Linux operating system. I then re-configured this machine to Windows 98 2nd Edition (removing Linux) and installing it on my network for wife Gloria to get email and browse the Internet. Gloria used it with her piano students for theory, note and ear (sound) training. It was more than adequate for the tasks it performed. In January 2003 I "retired" this machine and it currently sets unused on my office floor. I tried running RedHat 8.0 on this box but the performance was under whelming. Some time in 1998 I built up the Pentium II box I mentioned earlier. The processor runs at 400 MHz. 64 Meg of RAM and a 5 Gig hard drive were the other main ingredients. Originally intended to run Linux only, it was reloaded with Windows 98 2nd Edition when I discovered (at the time) it was my best machine. I wanted to digitize video and burn CD ROMS so this required the change in operating systems. It moved back to being a dual boot, WIN98se and Linux (Redhat 7.2) box for several years and was the machine I use to "experiment" with. I added another 256 Meg (320 Meg total) RAM and an additional 20 Gig hard drive. It went back to only running Windows 98 se and became my wife's next computer. The 5 Gig HD was trashed so it was pulled when I reconditioned the box for the music room. Since then this box has morphed into my CNC shop computer and is still running Win 98se. Old boxes never need to die. Update - It died when a neighbor drove her car through the garage door and totally wrecked my shop. The computer became a victim and succumb to fatal injuries. The next computer box I built was assembled from parts from about four different sources. Most of them purchased over the Internet. It is a Pentium III "Coppermine" at 600 MHz with a 133MHz FSB and was originally configured with 256 Meg of 133 MHz SDRAM, a 20.4 Gig ATA/66 @ 7200 RPM hard Drive, a S1854 Trinity 400 mother board from Tyan with the VIA Apollo Pro 133 chipset, a Kenwood 72X CDROM, Iomega ZIP 4X CD burner and a 100 MEG internal SCSI ZIP. The OS was at first Windows 98 2nd Edition. Video is a Voodoo 3. In December 2002 this P III machine received an additional 40 MB hard drive, 1.5 Gig of RAM, a 42X TDK CD burner and the Windows XP operating system. A bit later it received dual boot conversion and now has SUSE 10.1 as an alternate OS. It has become the music room computer. I built a new box at the end of June 2003 that is more than 4X faster than the PIII. I used a case called a G-Box that is a SFF (Small Form Factor) that is about 8x8x12 inches in size. But it is a powerhouse. It is a bare bones box but still has a mother board, power supply and a bunch of built in tricks like blue internal LEDs on the processor fan and windows in the sides of the case so you can see the guts. (Must be for the kids to watch??) I added a P4 2.53 GHz processor and a Gig of P2700 memory. Then an ATI Radeon 9600 Video card with 128K RAM. It has one PCI slot so I tucked in a SCCSI card for the scanner and zip drive. I reloaded the Windows XP Pro into this box. For a baby box this machine can do some HARM! This box was later modified to dual boot and is equipped with SUSE 10.1 as an additional OS. The Linux was removed and the hard drive fully formatted with Windows Xp Pro. This machine is now serving shop duty running CNC with my Taig mill. The next to most recent computer is an Apple Mini-MAC. 1 Gig RAM and an 80 Gig HD. The operating system is OSX. It is a cool little machine and runs great! Keyboard and mouse are Bluetooth. I really like the operating system and the very quite operation. It is not the hottest "box" in the house but more than adequate as a home system. Apple has already issued (in less than a year) the Intel dual processor version. Mine has the IBM G4 single processor. The latest and greatest "box" that I have assembled is an AMD 64 X2 Athalon 4400 processor machine. It contains 4 Gig of RAM, an Asus A8N-SLI Premium MB , RAID 0 600 Gig SATA HD, EVGA NVIDIA SLI video. It has more features than I care to explain or you care to know. Now all I have to do is wait until 64 bit software is invented. 64 bits is actually "way overkill" for 90% of practical computer use (today) but it still runs the 32 bit code like nothing else. The AMD64 machine was converted to Vista 32 Bit Supreme Edition OS a few months after Vista was released. I also received the 64 bit OS in the same package but the lack of drivers kept me from installing the 64 bit version at that time. In late '08 I finially installed the 64 bit Vista in a dual boot configuration after adding another 500 Gig Hard Drive. My most useful addition has been my Samsung Syncmaster 244T monitor. A wide screen 24" beauty that continues to knock my socks off. It even runs great with the MAC-Mini. It is a really great monitor. All the computers have a NIC installed and can share files and printers. I use a cable modem hooked to my Linksys Etherfast Cable/DSL wireless router and each machine shares one I.P. address on the Internet. All three machines can access the Internet at the same time and operate independently through the cable modem. The router also acts as a firewall. A Linksys printer server sits on the LAN with its own I.P. and provides printer service for all computers. Three printers are connected to the printer server and it all works very well! Update, July 09: The house and especially my computer system was hit by a lighting strike. All things electronic were wiped out. My Blogs contain the details but all computer equipment in my office has been replaced or repaired (upgraded). The main computer is now an AMD quad 3.2 GHz processor and 8 Gig of RAM. We are again SOTA (State Of The Art) for a week or so... This is a VERY brief rundown of my computer hardware experience. Many, many details have been left out. No mention of the TONS of software that has run through these machines (and my brain <ouch!>) Also the five years of corporate IBM mainframe database hacking (including standard terminals, PC terminals with Irma cards and PC networking (Novell)) experience in Dallas, Texas. If you noticed, I like to build my computers rather than buy them complete. A lot of my time is now spent writing and creating web pages in HTML. My favorite editor used to be HoTMetaL PRO 6.0 (no longer available). I switched to Adobe GoLive CS and Macromedia Dreamweaver. These last two are both owned by Adobe so I thought it would be interesting which one survives.Dreamweaver is the victor I presently run Dreamweaver CS3 and use FLASH as much as possible in my web construction. I use Dreamweaver CS2 at my real job, so we become comfortable with the tools we use the most. I think I need to have stock in Adobe products! I use the Apple Safari , Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox browsers to test my web pages. Safe to say, I do know my way around personal computers... both hardware and software. |