Dear Vogons,

I would like to introduce myself, however since this is a public forum, I will keep my real name private (you may PM me if you do need to know 😉). I live in the northern half of The Netherlands, with my wife and kids. Recently I picked up my old hobby of (now retro) computers again. The PCs of the late '90s up to 2002 is what I like the most, for nostalgic reasons.

I have been surrounded by computers, ever since I was very little. My dad had bought a brand new, state of the art MSX computer (with cassette deck), for word processing (he never actually did btw). The MSX was quickly left in the capable hands of the next generation. As kids, we used it well. Mostly for gaming, but also (all of us) we learned to program MSX Basic at some point. This was my first programming language.

In 1992 my father bought a new PC, a 40MHz Am386DX-40, 4MB of ram, a 120MB harddrive and a 256KB Trident SVGA card. It came with MS-DOS 6.0 and MS Windows 3.1. Again, for word processing. For sure, this time we some word processing was done, for school assignments. I remember using Word Perfect and adding blank rectangles to glue in images after printing (our printer was too limited for pictures). But again this computer was mainly used for games.
A year later, we added a Weitek 387DX (my dad got it at a surplus store, for very cheap). And later we added a sound card; a Pro Audio Spectrum, a very awkward card because it was not soundblaster compatible, also our PC only had 4MB of RAM, this often meant choosing between either mouse support or sound, but not both. Years later, after this PC was long decommissioned, I upgraded the RAM to 8MB (purely out of love). It worked so well. Me and my brother even installed Windows 95 on it as an experiment. Man, it took long and it was SLOW, but worth it!
Occasionally, my dad borrowed a 486 laptop from work. We would install doom on it and play deathmatch over the serial port. This was my first multiplayer experience. Man it was intense and so much fun, just me and my 3 brothers, taking turns; when hou got fragged, your turn was over.

In the meanwhile, we still had MSX marathons in the attic. And I played on the PC and the MSX with friends.

My very first own computer, was an 8086 I picked up at a fleamarket (I think around 1996), it lived for about 30 minutes. Because after taking it apart, I reassembled it, with the AT power connector connected the wrong way (grounds to the outside). This immediately fried the motherboard. I kept the case, because it was really awesome and handy; it was an AT desktop, that opened up like the hood of a car and had a big red power flip switch embedded at the rear side. A few days later I build in motherboard with a Harris 286 on board. It was awesome because my younger brother and I would play retal(liator) toghether, using the old 386 using a serial port.

During the late 90's I started picking up obsolete parts everywhere I could (computers progressed so fast, some would become obsolete within as little as a year). As a teenager I serviced/build computers for many people, I got obsolete parts and old PCs this way. Using old parts, I built a lot of "scrapheap" computers, continuously upgrading them with more/better old parts. (I never had money to buy new hardware).
We had a dedicated computer room, and at some point, we had this perpetual LAN party going on, just me and my brothers, and occassionally some friends. Music television playing clips in the background.... The best days of my life, just tinkering, fragging, laughing.

An honorable mention goes to to my younger brother. We were at a flea-market, browsing, when he spotted a nice (bit odd) looking PC. I thought I spotted a brown AGP slot through the backside (indicating a very modern PC at that time), so he bought it (very cheap). When we came home, it turned out, what saw was one of the EISA slots. The machine contained 2 (full length) SCSI cards and was packed with hard drives. It contained a mere 486 processor and 32MB of RAM. The harddisks were fast, very fast. We soon installed an 83Mhz Pentium overdrive and 64MB of 72-pin ram. This machine was able to install Windows 95 in under 15 minutes (install files were on one of other the SCSI drives). It played games up to quake-1 very well. This remained his beloved machine for a long time (named "SCSI bak"), we pimped it out to the max. However one unfortunate day, it suddenly died, due to a loose screw that was lodged under the mainboard, causing a short circuit. RIP SCSI bak.

When my oldest brother went to University (1997), he needed a new PC. So he bought a Pentium-MMX 233 with 32MB of EDO RAM, and 4MB S3 Virge DX, 4GB of harddrive and a 28.8K modem. For the first year, he lived at home, so we would share his PC. When he lived on campus, he would sometimes even take it home for holidays 😀 . We used his PC mainly for gaming and (for the first time) internet.

The next year, my other brother went to university. Also needing a PC, he also lived at home for the first year of his study. He got a (the) Intel Celeron 300A, however on a 440LX motherboard, so it never saw to its full (450Mhz) potential. He ordered a whopping 128MB of SDRAM with it (the computer store guy declared him crazy, since memory was at an astronomical high at the moment). It came with a Creative Soundblaster Vibra and a generic 2D VGA card, which he later swapped out for an Nvidia Riva 128, so he could play UT99 better. The 56K6 modem was not used that much, because we got broadband internet around that time. My parents were tired of being unreachable by phone so often. My brother even setup an old 486 with linux to act as a NAT router. I remember a lot of friends being unable to grasp the principle of routing, and how we could have multiple PC's connected to the internet at the same time.

During my teenage years, we had quite a few LAN parties. The first few organized by my older brothers. Later on, I organized them myself, together with my younger brother. I remember very well, at one of these first LAN parties, I had my first encounter with an actual 3Dfx Voodoo Graphics card. One of the guys actually had this card installed and I saw him running Quake II (one of my favorite games). The graphics were so smooth and beautiful, and that framerate... I got infected with the 3Dfx bug right then and there, and it never left me. I bought my first 3Dfx card, when I could afford it (the Voodoo II already arrived, so the Voodoo Graphics became affordable enough). Around 2005, I bought a Voodoo 5 5500 AGP, that I still own and use occasionally.

On our first LAN parties, we built COAX networks (RJ45 and Hubs/switches were not that common yet). For those who left early the rule was to leave the cables and splitter behind until the end of the LAN party. This was because interrupting the chain would bring down the network and cause most gaming sessions to end. Coaxial LAN parties were infamous for their current leakage on the COAX (I think we had an issue with the earthing). At one occasion I got zapped in the face over a distance of 5cm, in another occasion my fingers clamped down on the splitter so hard, that I had a hard time getting my hand loose 🤣. Later on, we started using RJ45 networks, which were way better.

In 2001 I moved out to study. Before that I worked part of the spring and all summer, because I decided that for one time in my life, I wanted to own the ultimate gaming PC. I spent all my hard earned cash on my dream machine:
An Athlon Thunderbird 1400, 256MB 266Mhz DDR, an Nvidia Geforce 3 with 64MB, a Creative Soundblaster Live! 5.1, a 20GB Quantum Fireball and a decent 19" CRT monitor. It had a ThermalTake Vulcano 7 cooler and a cheap realtek 10/100 NIC (why?). Even though I spent a ton of money that I could have used better, I never regretted this descission. Nor have I ever owned such high end hardware ever again, because I know how futile it is.

I own a modern PC now and I like to play a game every now and then. Also I like Virtual Reallity. VR had been a dream of me, ever since playing Sam'n Max, Hit the Road. In the scene with the VR security system, my mind immediatly saw the potential for such a system, to play Doom. And now I can 😁

In the same room, I have my "millennium" machine. It contains all that I would have ever wanted but never could afford around the year 2000. Also some components are selected, just as a tribute to companies that lost the race.
It is an AMD K7 Athlon Classic 600Mhz on a Gigabyte GA-7IXE, 64MB 3Dfx Voodoo 5 5500 AGP, Turtlebeach Montego II (Aureal Vortex 2), Abit HotRod 100 PCI, 2x Maxtor DiamondMax Plus D740X (40GB) in Stripe Raid, 384MB PC100 of course that cheap old Realtek RTL8139. I would love to have an Abit or Epox motherboard in there, also I would love to have a set of Quantum Fireballs (RIP Quantum). I am very happy with the soundcard, but if I can ever get my hands on the Diamond Monster Sound MX300, then I will not hesitate to replace it.
Unrelated to this machine, I would love to get a functional Quantum Bigfoot in my collection (they are funny, sad and cool at the same time). Also I would love to own a 3Dfx Voodoo Graphics card again (Diamond Monster 3D if possible), I still cannot believe I never saved one of those in the times of plenty.
Sometime over a decade ago, I restored an old MSX-2, and I still occasionally use it for playing games from my early childhood (my kids love that as well), also I still have our childhood MSX-1 (it is pretty worn down, and the cassette deck has died).

I would love to see you around on this forum 😀

kind regards,
Gabriel-LG