If memory serves me,

I had a Dual PII-300 system:

Dual Klamath PII-300's
Tyan S1682D (Tahoe2-ATX) Motherboard
I think I had 128MB of EDO RAM
No clue what HDD I had.
ATAPI CD-ROM, but can't remember which.
ATI Xpert@Play PCI video w/ ATI TV Wonder add-on ISA board (for watching basic analog cable)
SB AWE 32 (SB3990)
3Com 3c905 ISA NIC
USR Courier Dual Standard V.Everything external modem
Iiyama 17" VisionMaster Pro CRT

I do remember that I ran GRUB as a boot loader so I could tri-boot between Linux, WinNT 4.0, and Windows 98.
I would play games and watch TV in Win98, but I'd do my work in either Linux or WinNT so I could take advantage of the second CPU in SMP mode.

In winter 1999 i buildt a new PC because my old one was a B-AT and the world changed to ATX. Upgrading the old PC seemed to be useless.
The B-AT rig was an AMD K6-233 on an Shuttle HOT-603 with 1 MB L2 cache,
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/socket-7- … oards,31-4.html,
Ati 2D and my Orchid 3dfx Voodoo1, 64 MB RAM, 4,8 GB Fujitsu HDD and Win95. It was really quick and reliable.

And the new PC was really expensive and made me poor, but it had to be a dual processing board: Abit BP6.
I inserted two Celeron 366 which were oced to 550 MHz.
Furthermore 160 MB RAM, a very quick 15 GB Maxtor, a Matrox G400 MAX, an SCSI CD burner and CD.
All built in in an old Palo Alto case, which was very similar to Dell Cases this time.
This Rig was very fast for this time and resides now in the next room waiting for booting BeOS 5 - each time, i want to play with BeOS, this machine is my friend. In 1999 i spent much time working with BeOS.
But the main OS was NT4 (until Windows 2000 came) and for gaming i used Win 98 FE.

Both machines are, with very few changes, still living here.

In 1999 I was still using my first machine, an IBM ValuePoint 6381 which Comet got rid of during an upgrade.

IBM 386SLC - 25 MHz
8192KB RAM (Proprietary)
500MB Hard Drive (IDE)
1.44MB 3.5" Floppy
Cirrus GD5422 (Onboard)
MS-DOS 6.22 with Windows 3.10 (non-Workgroups version)

I do not remember if I had yet installed the OPTi 82c930 audio card at that time... Using that machine was like watching paint dry, it is slow even for a 386. It runs stuff like Keen just fine though and has some WEP and Atari Arcade titles installed that were there when I got it. It passed the time when my dad was using the Pentium to troll AOL chatrooms anyway.

The history of my "main rig" systems is strange; 386SLC (1997) > Cx6x86 PR266 (Mid 2000, Briefly) > (2001) Pentium 166 MMX > Duron 750 (Late 2001? With incremental upgrades) > Back to the Pentium for a while, then the 386SLC again (2004 somewhere) > Athlon XP 2600+ (2004, several) > Athlon 64 X2 3200 (2004, briefly) > Almost the dual P3 or a 386DX > 486-33 (Late 2004/Early 2005, whilst a PC was required for my video editing course) > Pentium D 920 (2005) > Dual Pentium III-1000 (2014, nominally at 750MHz)

Feels a bit crap running a machine that displays a 1998-1999 copyright date in 2015.

I have always had more systems than other people would consider normal. From jun 2000 and forward I had a night time job that paid very well but even before that when I still was in school I earned well helping people with their computers and building custom gaming rigs (and other systems). I have always been able to buy just about anything I wanted (well within reason).

I used a K7 rig as main system with a multiplier changed slot A Athlon running at close to 1GHz.
Late 2000 I bought a socket A system with a Thunderbird 1 GHz, I still have all parts of this system.

Some other systems I used at the time.

An Abit BP6 system with Dual celeron 300A @ 504 Mhz .
An Epox KP6 system with Dual Celeron 333@500 on slotkets.
An Abit BH6 system with different CPUs
The Super Socket 7 system with a PC Chips motherboard in my signature.
I used a Fujitsu Siemens Coppermine 800 system intended for my parents for a while just to see how it compared to my Athlon system. I still have this system.

1999 was a nice year. I already had a PC at my dad, but since I didn't live with him, I only got to play with it on weekends... but in 1999 my mom managed to buy a computer for us!

Dad's PC:
Pentium MMX 233
24 MB RAM (I've only seen the PC open once, and I don't think it used pairs of sticks, so they were probably PC66 DIMMs)
Unknown 1MB vídeo card (I was 10, don't really remember)
56K PCI modem
It had sound, I just don't remember what it was
2 GB IDE HDD
14" CRT

"My" PC at home:
Cyrix MII PR333 (the seller told my mom it performed like a Pentium II - 300 MHz.... I don't know if he was just ignorant or conciously misleading her)
PCChips (probably Super) Socket 7 board. The manual had PC100 on the front
Onboard 4MB vídeo card (that probably had some sort of 3D acceleration, as I managed to run a Lego game this PC shouldn't have been able to run otherwise... at least according to the system requirements printed on the box... for cheapness sake I'd guess a Virge, since even that would be a step up from software mode on Cyrix'es weak FPU). I vividly remember the manual claiming the onboard IGP to be on an AGP bus, but the MoBo didn't have an AGP slot.
6GB IDE HDD (which eventually broke and got replaced by a 20GB one)
56K PCI modem
Onboard sound
32MB RAM, upgraded to 160 (128+32) MB later
15" CRT

The Cyrix actually felt snappier and newer than the MMX, specially once the RAM was increased. Most of the games I ran on it were DOS-based anyway, and the ones I played the most were Warcraft II and gameboy emulators (Pokémon Yellow FTW). I THINK I accidentally OCed it once, much later on its lifetime, I noticed it wasn't running at 333MHz. But I also remember I just set stuff in the BIOS and never messed with jumpers, and I don't think this whole Jumper-free thing existed in SS7 back then, at least not on cheap PCChips boards. The board was crap, and started having intermitent issues (PC not starting and beeping like crazy... if I kept turning it off and on it would eventually start) and this PC eventually got replaced by a 800MHz Duron.

1999 was the year of many fun LAN matches in QuakeI/II.
Like many I had the low budget speed solution - a celeron300A@450 on a good BX board. If I remember correctly I had a second CeleronA/BX box at a friends house for net purposes.
Both had a TNT with 16MByte ram.
Buddy of mine whom also befell the Celeron "plague" had his running at 464 Mhz.

CPU: AMD K6-2 400 running at 450MHz (4.5 x 100)
MB: Lucky Star P5MVP4 (VIA MVP4 / AT form factor, on-board sound and video, 5xPCI 3xISA 2xUSB) - no AGP slot.
RAM: 128MB SDR
Video: Trident Blade 3D on board with 8MB shared (ran Quake II just fine)
3DFX Voodoo 2 (Creative 3D Blaster II - CT6670)
Audio: Genius Soundmaker Value (Yamaha OPL3-SAx based)
HDD: 4.3GB Samsung
ODD: 48x Samsung
Case: generic beige AT case with 250W PSU
Monitor: 17" AOC CRT

Played a lot of games on the thing... Quake II, Quake III, NFS Proche, Homeworld, Homeworld Cataclysm, SiN, Kingpin, Half-Life and many others.

-Celeron 300A at 463MHz (103*4.5)
-Abit BH6
-started with 64MB RAM, added soon another 128M for 196M total;
-started with ATI Rage Pro (ATI Xpert@Play AGP 8MB), upgraded to TNT2 M64 (Guillemot) then Geforce3 Ti-200 and eventually to Geforce4 Ti-4200 (of course not in 1999)
-6GB Maxtor HDD initially, soon added another Seagate 15GB and eventually replaced both with another one 30GB
-a number of IDE CD/CDRW/DVD drives, must have been about 10 of them over the years
-external serial modem - required to connect in Linux, because PCI winmodems wouldn't work under it
-sound Ensoniq AudioPCI (ES1371) aka soundblaster PCI
-for a while I had in it a Sigma Designs DVD/MPEG2 decoder card which could painfully be hacked to work in Linux as well.
-Windows 98 running alongside with a variety of Linux distributions, mostly Slackware (3.5 to 7)
-Advansys ABP-930 SCSI card, initially used with a Plextor CDRW drive, then also with a Seagate HDD I forget how big (40GB or so) and internal SCSI Zip drive (what a POS that was)

The CPU was eventually upgraded to a Coppermine Celeron on a Slotket adapter, I think it was 700 MHz, and then to a Tualatin Celeron at 1100MHz on a hacked adapter (required by the voltages of the Tualatin)

I ran this system in its various configurations from 1998 till about 2002 or 2003 when I was seduced by the dark side and upgraded to a Athlon XP PR2200+ system. My desktops have been AMD-based since then, currently ASUS M5A99FX Pro/AMD FX-8350/Radeon 7970/16GB.

At the same time I was also using a Thinkpad 755CX laptop (pentium 75, 8M RAM soldered on-board, upgradable to max 40MB with a proprietary memory card, 1024x768 TFT LCD, Mwave modem/sound card, 800MB HDD, Windows 95 OSR1 which came on 26 floppy disks) which I have owned since 1996; I still have it and it still works though several keys are broken. I tried a couple of years ago to replace the keyboard with one I had found advertised as NOS but I think the replacement keyboard is bad as when I install it the right half of it doesn't work. Doesn't have a CD drive, but I got for it a Panasonic KXL-D745 external SCSI CD drive complete with PCMCIA SCSI/sound card which joyfully collided with the internal mwave sound in a horrible and insolvable labyrinth of IRQ and I/O address conflicts. As a result when I was using the CDROM I would usually be unable to play sound.

I have a lot of nostalgia for my rig in 1999, but I do remember being a bit frustrated by its performance in FPS games. I kept wishing that I'd bought a Celeron 300A instead (to overclock to 450 MHz).

FIC VA-503+
AMD K6-2 350
3dfx Banshee (Diamond)
Turtle Beach Montego (Vortex 1)

The FIC let me use my old RAM, which is why I went with SS7. I finished Quake 2, FF7, Half-Life, and Baldur's Gate 2 on it. Couldn't get Unreal to run at an acceptable framerate, though, and never got far into it.

Just this summer, I bought a K6-3+ 450 for the VA-503+. The original coin battery still keeps good time! I added a GF2 MX, Voodoo 3 PCI, Vortex 2, an AWE32 (3900), and my old GUS Ace. It's now my daily driver.

Well it's the start was at the start of 2000, I hope it count.
Intel Pentium 3 1GHz, ATI Radeon 7200 64mb ago, 384mb ram, 40gb hdd and a 19" crt monitor

Hmm

I built a new system to replace my Pentium 233MMX (my first computer that I bought).

Based on information from Anandtech and watching a video he made back then (remember those?) I chose a Celeron 300A, Abit BH6, 128MB RAM, cannot remember hard drive size, a giant full tower Super Micro Case, and my original Gateway 2000 17" monitor. I am trying to remember what sound card I had. Probably a Sound Blaster Live!. I know at one time I had Voodoo2 SLI and Hercules Riva TNT2 Ultra video card. I had to special order the TNT2 Ultra and I remember thinking it was never going to come in.

squareguy wrote:

...I chose a Celeron 300A....

and did you overclock it to 450 like you were supposed to?....😀

Of course! Sorry I forgot to mention that part 😉 Eventually went to 504-MHz with it!

good man.

Oi! My 300A was not stable enough at 504MHz in Linux, was good enough for games in Windows at that speed but eventually I got tired to go into the bios and change the speeds every time I booted another OS so I kept it at a stable and cool 463MHz most of the time.

At my dad's:

CPU: Pentium MMX 233 MHz
RAM: 24MB SDRAM
HDD: 2GB IDE drive
ODD: CD drive (can't remember the speed)
Other: internal modem for dial-up internet
Can't remember more details. By the end of 1999 I was a 10 year old child, and this system soon got replaced by a Pentium III (of which I have lots of memories)

At home/my mom's:

CPU: Cyrix MII-PR333
RAM: 32MB PC100, later upgraded to 160MB
MOBO: PCChips M571 (presumed) with onboard vídeo and audio
HDD: 6GB IDE drive, later upgraded to a 20GB one
ODD: CD drive (I think a higher speed one for the time)
Other: Intenal modem (I think it had a Realtek chip)

stamasd wrote:

Oi! My 300A was not stable enough at 504MHz in Linux, was good enough for games in Windows at that speed but eventually I got tired to go into the bios and change the speeds every time I booted another OS so I kept it at a stable and cool 463MHz most of the time.

but it was rock solid at 450. It was the bees knees at the time - like cheatin' the devil...

boxpressed wrote:

I have a lot of nostalgia for my rig in 1999, but I do remember being a bit frustrated by its performance in FPS games. I kept wishing that I'd bought a Celeron 300A instead

I had a similar configuration and NEVER had problems running 3D games. I even finished homeworld and homeworld cataclysm on that K6 - two games witch are at times extremly taxing even for modern machines. I did OC the CPU to 450, even 500 when needed (5x100 @ 2.4V), but never had any real performance problems outside heavy battle scenes in homeworld.

Even Quake 3 ran great on my K6.

I remember I had a Pentium 233 MMX which I upgraded from my original 166 MMX.
I can't remember the HDD capacity anymore but, I think it had 64 MB RAM (I seem to recall I also started out with 32 MB).
Originally, it had a S3 Virge but, in 1999 I already upgraded it to a Creative 3D Blaster Banshee card.
No CD writer back then (just CD-ROM) and I used my AWE64 for sound (which I bought in 1997 as I recall).
EDIT: Just remembered now that I actually upgraded the above system in middle of 1999 to a Celeron 366.
I carried over some of the parts.

Another one with a P233 MMX, running at 66x4=266MHz
Oh, and a Voodoo1 which still haunts me 😀