I had a somewhat outdated system back in '99, but I was only 5-6 years old at the time so I didn't really care. 🤣 Anyhow, the specs it had (as far as I could remember) were

- a 133MHz Pentium (possibly an MMX but I can't really remember)
- 24MB of EDO RAM
- some random 2D video card
- a 1GB hard drive
- a ridiculously fast CDROM drive that had bad stuttering issues 😜
- a SoundBlaster 16 (this card is THE epitome of retro PC gaming hardware, in my opinion)

I remember my dad saying that it actually started out as a Pentium 75MHz with 8MB of RAM back when he bought it in '96, but over time the CPU, RAM, CDROM drive, and even the motherboard ended up being upgraded.

I was on my year-in-industry University placement in 1999, so I had disposable income... I got myself the following:

Gigabyte GA6BXD 440BX
SIngle P3-450 Katmai processor
256 then quickly upgraded to 512MB
80GB HDD
Creative DXR3 DVD decoder and DVD drive
Diamond Viper V770 Ultra TNT2
Soundblaster 16
I was running Win98 + Linux, then later on Win2k + Linux on it.

At some point down the line (~2000 or so) I bought and fitted a second P3-450 cpu and that dual cpu setup lasted me through the rest of University.

Still have the motherboard and processors - it was a very reliable and stable system; hardly anything in the way of tuning though!

In 1999 I had a:

Abit 440BX based mobo with an Intel Slot 1 P3-450.
512MB RAM
120GB HDD
3DFX VooDoo 3
Creative Labs Live!
Windows 98SE
19" ViewSonic CRT SVGA monitor

In 2000 I ugraded the CPU to a P3-800. I have many fond memories of that box. It was also the fist time I had broadband internet. That came in early 2000. I lived only a few blocks from the main cable office, so we got it first.

I still use this system to this day. I've done quite a few modifications to it over the years, like replacing the hard drive with a compact flash based one, and switching to a Dual VooDoo 2 and GeForce 2 combo. I keep this machine around so I can still play some Windows 9x and 3Dfx only stuff that just does not run optimum on modern hardware. See my "Puters" page on my website for the current specs.

A P2 400 with a Matrox G100 + Monster 3d and an Awe64.

I still have this computer in my pile.

I'm not absolutely sure, but I believe I remember the general configuration. My dad and I built it from a mix of parts handed down from our recently upgraded family multimedia PC. (which was being used as a DVD player, game machine, and general purpose PC)

FIC-503A (may have been 503+ that later got replaced)
K6-2/300
128 MB PC-100 SDRAM (eventually 256 MB, not sure when)
Rage Pro PCI with 8 MB and composite/s-video (at one point, using the unofficial beta driver for DVD playback)
Windows 95 (later 98SE)
Mediavision Pro Audio spectrum 16-bit
DVD-ROM drive and external CD-changer. (though some games didn't like the multiple drives, or the CD changer)

Not sure about the HDD, but at some point it was running both IDE and SCSI.

At some point the K6-2 300 was upgraded to a 550 (not +), and some time after I retired it, it was repurposed as a low-end utility PC running win2000 and switched to using onboard sound (FIC-503A) and got a wireless network card added. It ended up in the garaged, intended for automotive diagnostics, but it never got much use in that role. (it's still in the garage now, still working too . . . I've been considering playing around with it again too, as a retro gaming box and/or for some other things)

I bought my first PC in 1999 from my girlfriend's brother's start-up PC company. I got a good discount but that meant it was delivered in parts and I had never owned let alone assembled a PC before. But the motherboard manual was helpful and a friend and I somehow managed to put it together without breaking anything.
The only thing we couldn't figure out was how the floppy drive eject button on the faceplate was supposed to attach to the one on the floppy drive. I ended up throwing the faceplate away. I thought the case looked kind of cool without it.

ASUS P2B
Pentium II 350
128MB RAM
Riva TNT AGP 16MB
Realtek 8139A PCI NIC
IIRC it came with a crappy ESS PCI sound card which I quickly sold or traded for a 2nd hand AWE32. I think I also may have had one of the Ensoniq PCI Soundblasters at one time.
10GB hard drive, some generic CD drive
17" AOC CRT

Later I bought a bundled Acard SCSI PCI card + SCSI CD burner.
Nobody else I knew could burn CDs and actually use their computer at the same time!

At the end of its time with me it had a S370 600MHz Katmai PIII in an ASUS slotket, a 32MB Geforce 256, an SBLive and a DVD drive.

I wasn't even thinking about building a new system at this time, but since my K6-200 system turned out to be an unstable lemon I had to take some action. If memory is correct, 1999 was when the PII became affordable.

-Abit BX6 R2
-PII 400 OEM
-128MB PC100 SDRAM
-Voodoo3 3000AGP
-Realtek 8139A PCI NIC
-AWE 64 Gold
-Quantum Fireball KA 9.1GB (first 7200RPM ATA drive)
-Panasonic 32X ATAPI CD-ROM
-Adaptec AVA-2906 + Yamaha 16x6x4 CD-RW SCSI drive
-19" Viewsonic PF790 CRT

Originally I was dual-booting Windows 98 and NT4 (I spent most of my time in NT), I quickly switched to Windows 2000.

I didn't know much about computers at that time but I think I had a Cyrix cpu in the beginning of 1998 (even though everyone tried to tell me it was a Pentium.

I went to one of those computer fairs where you could buy stuff at cheap prices and got myself a Celeron 300a with ABIT BH6. It sounded like a good deal to me at the time but did not know how good that deal actually was.
It was build into my case by someone else and equipped with 64MB ram.
I had an S3 pci videocard in it (TrioV64 I think) and a Creative Soundblaster (again not sure, but I think it was a 16 Value).
My harddrive was a Quantum Bigfoot of 1.2GB, a floppy drive and an 8 speed cd-rom drive accompanied it.

And offcourse, I had a 14" ADI Provista monitor.

i had the family computer at that time. It was outdated and I was working hard as a 15 year old to get enough money for a new system. Thefamily computer is the compaq system I am now using as my retromachine (but with some upgrades).

Intel MMX 166
s3 2MB Trio 64v+
Voodoo2 12mb
32mb SDRAM
2.1 + 6.4 gb harddrives
ESS 1888 Audiodrive

In January 2000 I bought my first computer that was my own, a Celeron 400 on a ABit BE-6 II, 128 mb ram, TNT2 32mb Ultra, 13gb harddrive, Soundblaster Live.

I had an IBM PS/1 with a monochrome screen and a Commodore 64, complete with Atari cartridge slot and tape drive. (This was at my grandmother's house, I just borrowed them.) My mom and dad didn't actually buy us a computer for ourselves until I started college the following January of 2000. Then it was an HP Pavilion with the dreaded Windows Millenium, 1Ghz processor, SB Live!, NVidia GeForce 2 MX 200 AGP, and 128MB RAM.

My system specs in 1999:

ASUS P3B-F v1.04 Motherboard
Pentium III 450Mhz [overclocked to 558Mhz; dunno how I did it but I did it and it was stable!]
128mb PC-100 RAM
Voodoo 3 3500TV
Sound Blaster 64 Gold
2x 8gb HDD's for a total of 16GB
Sony Trinitron Monitor
Windows 98SE

jmrydholm wrote:

My mom and dad didn't actually buy us a computer for ourselves until I started college the following January of 2000. Then it was an HP Pavilion with the dreaded Windows Millenium, 1Ghz processor, SB Live!, NVidia GeForce 2 MX 200 AGP, and 128MB RAM.

Sure about that date? 1 ghz Athlon and P3 didnt hit stores until march 2000, and the Geforce 2 MX didn come out until June that year.

I'm pretty sure my Packard Bell Pentium 150 overclocked to 200mhz was nearing the end of it's life then. It was some time in 2000 that I got my Compaq K6-2 533mhz system because I had discovered Everquest by then and the old machine was too far below specs to play so that sounds about right to me. I had been using that P150 box since around 1997. It was on clearance to make room for the new P-II systems that were coming in. I overclocked it only in the last few months I had it to make it last until I could afford to upgrade again.

hmmm let's see. Minor/major upgrades happened regularly back then but it probably looked something like this:

Abit VT6 or VA6, slot 1/agp x2
64 to 128mb PC100 SDram [can't be sure, maybe a bit more?]
Celeron 300A @ 450 - that was the bomb...
GPU1: Diamond 3D-2000 Pro/4mb [2D workhorse]
GPU2: Diamond Voodoo 2/12mb
SBLive! [don't think I was still using the onboard Yamaha audio by then]
22gb or so between several EIDE HDs [10+8.4+3.3]
CDR/floppy
Iomega zip?
Micron Millenia MME case /PS [a new P200mmx system from '97]
Win98se

EDIT: upon further reflection I don't think it was an SBLive - that didn't come until a year or two later. Audio was probably a Turtle Beach Montego I - a nice lttle card I still use in my glide retro box. I had an MX300 at the time but was appauled at how much cpu it soaked up and quickly opted for the TBM..

This basic armature would support further ugrades in storage, 256mb ram, CD-RW, a P2-800 [on a slotket], and a Voodoo 5500. All these are now in retro service..

Until summer of '99 I was using an overclocked Celeron 300A (who wasn't at that time?) - cannot remember board or RAM anymore, but I sure had a Diamond Viper V770 Ultra (which I chose because I would not wait another four weeks after my pre-ordered Hercules TNT2 Ultra got delayed again and again).

In September I bought a brand new system basis which I thought (naively =)) would accompany through my university time. It was an Athlon 600 along with an MSI-Irongate Mainboard.

I had to share a computer with my older brother back in 1999. It was pretty shitty.
Pentium 1 133Mhz
32MB RAM
S3 Virge probably
2GB (?) HDD
Windows 98

That was probably it, I got that machine a year later (my first computer!) when my brother got a new PC (Pentium 3 733 with a TNT2 which he soon replaced with a GeForce2 MX) and increased the RAM to 64MB.

Nice thread topic!

Towards the end of 1998, my 486 was beginning to feel a bit on the slow side, even though it was PCI-based and ran an AMD X5-133ADZ. I used this 486 for 2 years, from Jan 1997 until Dec. 1998. I had tolerated the 486 for so long because I was never a game player and websites weren't too bloated yet. By Dec. 1998, I was the last one in my group of friends who was still routinely using a 486; they all had at least a Pentium 166 or 233 MMX by then. However, they were nice enough to keep me well in the geek loop, albeit because I was the only guy in town with a CD writer drive in 1997. Yes, I used a SCSI 2x/6x CD-RW drive on my 486 and never had any issues.

By the end of 1998, everyone was playing mp3s on their computer, but on a 486, I had to put the music in mono mode just to keep it from skipping. I figured it was about time for an upgrade. I was going to go all out on my next computer purchase, with the intent of not needing to upgrade the system for at least 5-10 years. I had skimped in Jan of 1997 when I bought a 486 instead of a Pentium 166/200 and didn't want to make this mistake again.

In December of 1998, I put in a custom order to Dell for a Precision Workstation 410. The PW410 was based off the Intel 440BX chipset. It housed dual Pentium II-400 CPUs. Not including the Xeons, the fastest commercial Intel chip at the time was a PII-450, but the cost difference just wasn't worth it compared to the 400's. Standard RAM for this machine was 64 MB, so I upped my order to 128 MB (ECC, PC100). I remember that upgrade alone being around $150.

Dell at this time was quite respectable for their business machines. This workstation came with onboard Ultra2-LVD SCSI (80 MB/s) and a 9.1 GB Seagate SCSI hard disk. It also came with a 32X SCSI narrow CD-ROM drive and onboard 10/100 ethernet. The graphics card was a Diamond Permedia 2, AGP 2X and always felt a little crummy; The monitor was a Dell UltraScan 17" flat screen CRT. The purchase also came standard with Harman/Kardon speakers and a 3-button Dell PS/2 mouse, both of which I still use today. The keyboard is long gone.

I still have the original sales invoice. The total after tax was $4017. This was a lot of money for me, but it turned out to be worth it. I kept those dual PII-400 working until 2007, at which point I upgraded them to dual PIII-850's and added 1 GB of RAM. I had upgraded to 512 MB of RAM earlier, but don't recall the year. I also had plopped in an ATI Radeon 8500DV card in 2003. It now has a $10 NVIDIA GeForce 6200 chugging away. To this day, this is still my main computer I use for nearly all web surfing and running all my programs (I still use my 486 for e-mail, light web browsing, and HTTP/FTP servers). Given the current rate of website bloating, I think I can probably live with the Dell PW410 for another 5 years.

Other upgrades have included a 73 GB Ultra160 SCSI drive, which is used as the system/swap drive, a SATA controller with over 2.5 TB worth of hard drive storage, DVD-burner, Yamaha Waveforce 192XG, a USB 2.0 card, and a white 17" LCD.

My only complaint is when the 3.5" diskette drive broke. It is a Dell-specific slim drive that I had to pay $35 + $15 shipping. Being a dual processor setup, I was stuck with Windows NT 4.0 until W2K came out, but I ended up using NT 4.0 until 2003 as I had no need for USB support. I used W2K from mid-2003 until 2008, and XP Pro thereafter.

The year 1999 was the only year that I was really up-to-date in terms of computer hardware used.

The image was found online from google images and is an accurate depection of the computer I still use (minus the case stickers).

feipoa wrote:

(stuff)

This.. this is madness..

Stull wrote:

This.. this is madness.. http://i.imgur.com/OBY4W.gif […]
Show full quote

feipoa wrote:

(stuff)

This.. this is madness..

This...is...SPARTA...!!!!

I guess Feipoa won the thread :p

Props for using the same box since then.