486DX-33 with 4MB RAM was my first self build upgrading from a Tandy 386SX-25 with 2MB RAM and 512K video RAM around 1993. I really wanted the 486DX2-66, but much too expensive.
You guys ever seen anyone that just kept all their stuff in a rackmount unit?
I'm.... actually considering doing that in the future. Get a nice rack or build one. And just get a bunch of whatever U units I need to house various computers (when you can find them cheap). Get a big ass KVM and call it a day
That would make a cool retro build I think
wrote:wrote:From there the builds and upgrades just kept coming.
Yeah, there was a period of my life (in my early to mid twenties) when I started making decent money and had very few financial responsibilities that I was upgrading faster than I can remember. Motherboards maybe once a year, cpus maybe 2-3 times a year, graphics cards probably 4x a year, etc. In the DOS days, I'd buy a graphics card just to benchmark it. If it was really bad, I would return it. If it was decent, I would keep it.
That's kind of what I'm doing now to an extent. Recently bought an RX 470 (using store bonus points + a little bit of cash, from a PC hardware store I buy most of my - and my clients / business / family / friends parts from) witch is brilliant for what it costs - hands down the best overall card in it's price range - at least in my country where some RX 470's are priced in between top GTX 1050ti and budget GTX 1060 3GB cards. I don't really spend money on them tough. I configure and build high end graphics workstations in my spare time - usually refurbished units with 3-5 years warranty. Right now I'm working on setting up two HP Z820's and one HP Z620 dual xeon rigs. Out of this I'm getting a little bit of cash from the client and a free RX 480 (Gigabyte Gaming 4GB version) witch I plan to play around with.
The RX 470 is in my "guest gaming PC" - an aging overclocked Phenom II X6 1090T BE - and it suits the machine pretty well. After benching the 480, I'll probably stick it in my guest gaming PC (if the performance difference is big enough) and sticking the 470 in my living room PC or selling it to get some retro and not so retro parts.
I've been kind of getting into gathering 2009+ hardware - just recently I got video cards really really cheap - a MSI R9 280X (85$), a HD 7950(45$), a GTX 760(55$) and soon I'll come into possession of a GTX 470. This is because I have 95% of the retro hardware I want right now - and what's left to collect is either extremely rare, or too expensive.
It's interesting to see that lots of people had intel builds in 1997-1999. Up until '98 I think I was still rocking a 586 socket 3 machine, and when I could finally afford and upgrade (well, my folks were able to provide one since I was in my early teens back then) I could not touch a pentium, or celeron for that matter because of how expensive the CPUs and the motherboards were. In fact in that time frame I only saw a couple of slot 1 builds, and that's very very few considering I was working part-time repairing computers for the only IT hardware reseller in my city. They were just a bad investment, plain and simple. Most computers sold were second hadn, and in 1998 and even 1999 socket 7 machines were still going strong - regular socket 7, not super 7 boards. Entry level machines were cheap socket 7 or super 7 boards, sporting a Cyrix or AMD K6(1) CPU, in some cases a pentium 1, usually second hand. Mid-level machines were super 7 + AMD K6-2, and high-end machines were usually cheap chinese no-name slot 1 + celeron CPUs. But even those boards cost TWICE as much as a super 7 - add to that the fact that a 350MHz celeron cost 50% more then a 350MHz K6-2, while offering only 20% more gaming performance increase, you will see why people went with non-intel alternatives.
