bushwack wrote on 2020-04-15, 04:46:

Abit BX6 REV.2 440BX - $115 Intel Celeron 300A - $85 > clocked 450 GlobalWIN Slot 1 cooler > twin fan 64MB SDRAM PC100 8ns - $86 […]
Show full quote

Abit BX6 REV.2 440BX - $115
Intel Celeron 300A - $85 > clocked 450
GlobalWIN Slot 1 cooler > twin fan
64MB SDRAM PC100 8ns - $86
Voodoo 3 - $190 > picked this up on release day
Diamond Sonic Impact S90 - $27
WD Caviar 10.2GB ATA/66
Promise ATA/66 controller card
HP CD-Wiriter Plus 8100i 4x/2x/24x
Toshiba 2nd Generation DVD/CD-ROM - $54
Enlight Case EN-3237
ADI 17" CRT monitor

Have the invoices for most parts in my BX6 motherboard box which I still have today. The Abit and Celeron packed a great punch for the price once you overclocked to 450 which was effortless with this combo.

I had a similar build but with a Pentium ll 400mhz and an Enlight 7237 case.
Win98se
Riva TNT video card and Aureal audio card.
20-inch Sony CRT.

The Enlight 7237 sure looked nice, but was hot inside . During the summer months I used to remove the u shaped cover to get more air in . Newer versions had removable side panels instead but were still hot . It could have used more intake holes in front .

Back then I mainly used a DEC 3000 AXP Model 400 (Sandpiper), but also had a PC which as I recall was as below:

1. Gigabyte GA-6BXD 440BX AGP chipset Dual Socket 1 motherboard
2. 2 x Intel Pentium III (Katmaï) 600MHz [kC0]
3. 512MB PC-100 (4 x 128MB)
4. S3 Savage 2000 [Diamond Viper II Z200]
5. Adaptec 2940 SCSI Controller
6. 3 x DEC DSP3210 2GB SCSI (or similar)
7. Yamaha CDR-100 CD-RW
8. DEC DE500 PCI Ethernet Network Adapter
9. DEC DEFPA PCI FDDI Network Adapter
10. Sound Blaster AWE64 Gold
11. Windows NT 4.0

I still have it, but over the years it's had a few changes and these days I mainly use it to test the SIV GPU support.

I had a PL297 with a PII 233 and Riva TNT which in '99 got an upgrade with a Creative DVD Encore 5X bundle.

Halfway '00, I boosted the CPU with a Celeron 533 on a Soltek Slocket (still have that) which gave the system a few more years.

Back in 1999 I had this system:
AMD Athlon 600 MHz (Slot A, 100 MHz FSB)
MSI MS-6169 motherboard (original AMD Irongate chipset)
256 MB PC-100 memory
Some PCI ATA-100 controller (don't remember which one)
IBM GXP75 30 GB hdd
Maxtor 20.4 GB hdd I already had
Matrox G400 32 MB dual head video card
Miro PCTV Pro TV tuner card
SoundBlaster Live!
Gravis Ultrasound PNP with 8 MB RAM
An InWin A500 tower case

I still have this system, but it was heavily modified during it's use and a lot of hardware broke along the way:
The Matrox G400 gave up after 4 years, replaced it with a Geforce 2 MX400
The SoundBlaster Live! was a pain in DOS, when I got a faster main machine I replaced it with a SoundBlaster 16 CT1740
The TV Tuner card was also a disappointment quality wise so I gave up watching TV with it
The ATA-100 card also broke along the way, and as hdd's became bad I just stuck with a single CF card for now
I also added a PCI VGA card with a Tseng Labs ET6000 chipset as my BIOS allows chosing between AGP and PCI video card
I also modded the InWin case years ago as that was all the rage back then

My BIOS still shows more or less the original setup:

The case looks a little like this:

The rectangular things are VU meters that indicate hdd (or rather controller) activity. They really work 😊

In 1999 the family had a Packard Bell tower set, a french-conversion package deal we got from an outlet mall in 1998.

Pentium 1 MMX 233
32 MB Ram
2 MB S3 video
Yamaha OPL3-SAX
Win95

We had the matching Keyboard/Mouse/CRT with Speakers as well at the time. We had this until I got my crappy Celeron D box in 2004 or so.

I can't remember whether I was still using my old IBM PS/2 Model 55SX at the time, or if that had died at that point and I was using an old 486 box from my neighbour.

InWin A500 Case
ASUS (Unknown 440LX Slot-1 Motherboard)
Pentium II 300
64MB RAM
ASUS i740 AGP
Diamond Voodoo 2 8MB
CD-ROM
8.4GB HDD (IIRC..)
Windows 98SE/RedHat 5.2

We still had our original 486 clone:
Windows 95
486 DX/2 66
Genoa Cirrus Logic video
Soundblaster 16
8MB of RAM upgraded to 32 MB to run AOL
4.3 and 811 MB hard disks, the 340MB Maxtor died
The original 14.4 modem
15" CTX monitor

Don't ask, I wasn't responsible for the upgrades.

From my notes and forum posts, early in 1999, I was running Windows 98, and I had a P233MMX CPU overclocked to 266, 32MB of memory, a Maxi Gamer Phoenix PCI Banshee 3DFX card video card, and a Creative Ensoniq Audio PCI Sound Card, and I think I might have been using a PAM-0057I or PAM-0058i motherboard, I still have the PDF files I downloaded for them and the file dates are around that time.

Back then I was trying to get the Nintendo N64 emulator Ultrahle running has fast as I could, with that hardware, Mario64 was getting 10 to 30 FPS depending on what was on screen.

In the middle of 1999, I got a used Sony VAIO PCV-210 computer from Geeks.com or compgeeks.com at the time, and I believe it was the just the computer tower, keyboard, and mouse, and you had to add your own CPU and memory, I believe I had a Intel Celeron 266MHz CPU installed and ether 32MB or 64MB of memory, but I have notes that show that by the next year in 2000, I had 64MB of memory and a Pentium II 266 CPU installed in that Sony VAIO PCV-210 computer, BTW the notes also show that I had I had a ATI RAGE PRO TURBO AGP 2X video card installed, and I believe my old Diamond Monster 3D 3DFX video card.

mpe wrote on 2020-04-14, 18:17:

Katmai500 wrote on 2020-04-14, 18:07:

For most of 1999: Zeos Pantera 90 Pentium 90 MHz Intel 440LX Socket 4 motherboard with a Socket 5 adapter […]
Show full quote

For most of 1999:
Zeos Pantera 90
Pentium 90 MHz
Intel 440LX Socket 4 motherboard with a Socket 5 adapter

That's cool. Sounds like you were a vintage collector even back then. Suppose it was 430LX. I'd love to have one of those adapters now.

I was running a custom built PC. Abit BP6 MB with two 366 MHz Celerons overclocked to 550 MHz, Matrox G400 and 19" CRT. I was studying mechanical engineering at that time and this was rocking AutoCAD.

Haha, thanks and yes, 430LX. Actually, I was only 11 years old in 1999. The Zeos Pantera 90 was a birthday present (hand-me-down) from my grandfather in 1997. I recall being very frustrated with that computer all through 1999 because it was too slow to run Sim City 3000. When I got the Gateway PIII for Christmas in '99, I spent an entire week playing SC3000 from morning till night. My computer collecting hobby didn't kick off until a few years later in my teens. At that time, 486's and Pentium systems were a dime a dozen and people would give them to me for free. It was also before computer recycling was really widespread, so I could score old systems right from the curb. Fortunately, I kept the Zeos Pantera 90 and still have it today. I'll be posting a thread about it in the System Specs forum at some point. It's a beast of a machine.

That dual Celeron setup would have been a screamer back in 1999. I'm guessing you ran WIndows NT 4.0 or Linux on it?

In 1999 myself and my friends were still rocking Socket 7 setups. Only one guy from my class had a Pentium II machine with a whopping 64MB of RAM! And a Voodoo II 12 MB!

My PC from 1999:

- an unknown Baby AT case
- FIC VA-502 motherboard
- Pentium MMX 233 MHz
- 32 MB RAM
- S3 Trio
- ESS 1868F

My first PC. I had limited budget. I remember a friend of mine, who was more knowledgeable than me on the issue, helped me deciding on the parts to buy.
I ended up with:
- a Mendocino 333A (which was never overclocked...didn´t know by those years its potential, not that I had the required knowledge either)
- PC Chips board (can´t recall if it was the 741 or 748).
- 1 Dimm 64MB sdram (I believe it was PC66, but could have been PC100 too).
- Seagate 4.3GB HDD
And that´s it. No dedicated graphics (had to bear with the onboard SIS 6326 for a while), onboard sound, whichever it was. Some time later I upgraded to 128MB RAM.
A bit later my friend decided to buy a Voodoo3, so he sold me his Diamond Monster Voodoo2 (which I regret having sold, like 6 years ago).
If I am not mistaken, It was an AT case+PSU with the DIN keyboard connector. One of those with a front cover that can be pushed down and up so to cover the optical and floppy bays.
I believe that build served for a couple of years, then I built something based on the Duron 950, but that´s another story...

Ah 1999 I was in 6th grade.
My parents had a friend that had a computer shop And built us a nice AMD k6-2 400 system.
AMD k6-2 400
128 megs PC 100
Gigabyte Via mpv3 baby at board
4gig hard drive
Intergraph Intense 3d 100 (V1000 based card)
ESS based Isa sound card can't remember the exact chip.
24x CD drive
Windows 98 with Plus!
Nice full size At case with 350watt psu

That was a great system I remember it fondly lots of games were played on it and tons of school work as well. I still have 95%,+ of the parts put away.

We also got our Dreamcast that same year but both the PC and Dreamcast got equal love.

Here's the short version of my story on my 1st Computer, the Tandy 1000 SX.....yep, THAT Is what I had in 1999.

Both my (half) Sisters are from the "Richer" half of the family. In 1987, their dad bought a brand new Tandy 1000 SX for his work from Radio Shack. IT was actually the first computer I ever used in my life. He had Microsoft Adventure for it in the original gray binder. I will never forget that sort of "high tech smell" that everything involving that computer had.

Anyway, in 1991, he bought my sister's an actual house - in a suburban neighborhood - during college. He also bought a 386 for my older sister, and gave the Tandy to my second older sister whom gave me the Tandy in 1997 when she moved out of that house to another town with her new husband.

That Tandy 1000 as my first education in computers.

When I first got it it was a 384K machine with 2 360K Floppy Drives and a Tandy DMP-12 Dot Matrix Printer.

By 1999 tthough, I'd upgraded it too 640K using the actual paper catalog books at Radio Shack and paid a whooping $45 for a 384K to 640K memory upgrade kit for the Tandy in 1998. It involved installing the provided Chips and then pulling a jumper on the motherboard. I did this so I could play Ultima VI: The False Prophet on that thing. God, those catalogs were a hoot - $4000 for a 20MB HDD from Radio Shack in 1998? When for the same price one could buy a friggin PEntium III with a 667MHz CPU, a Gig of RAM, 3D Accelerator, and a 20GB EIDE HDD for the cherry on top.

I'm sure I was the laughing stock of the teacher's lounge. Here comes kids with computer written reports done in Microsoft Word 97' on a Pentium I or II running Windows 9x, in pretty fonts, and then here come's ole' Creeping Net, tearing the pinfeed edges off of his book report as he wanders into class. For them, COmputer Research was an hour online and copypaste into Word - for me, it was borrow an Encyclopedia or go to the LIbrary, jot down my notes, then take it home, type it up in Deskmate, save to 360K Floppy, then print it out.

Either way, my setup was this.....

1987 Tandy 1000 SX - 640K RAM, 2x 360K DSDD Floppy, TGA, Tandy 3-VOice, MS-DOS 3.11 for the Tandy 1000 SX, Deskmate II, with 83 Key Tandy Keyboard, NO mouse, Tandy CM5 Color Monitor, and a Epson printer my mom purloined from work that was miles better than that DMP-12 was before it died.

I had a binder full of floppies, and I had a friend who had big box copies of Ultima V and VI for PC, yet no PC to play them on, and Legacy of the Ancients - all on 360K floppy. I was also taking Auto shop and our shop teacher had an IBM PC 5150 in the shop! I was the only kid who could use that thing. I pirated Tetris, Bugs, and Burger Blaster off him. And with the new Block Scheduling, we had a period at the end of class where I could play my Ultima V savegame in class on that 5150.

I did not get my first Windows PC until 2001 - Creeping Net 1 - a 486 DX-33 Zeos motherboard in a Flight 386 SX branded Kingspao AT chassis, running DOS 5 and Windows 3.1 off a 124MB HDD. That was also my first internet connected PC - I had AOL 3.0 and 4.0 running on it over a 56K modem on a 8250 UART serial port, requiring me to put a glass of water on top of the modem or it would overheat and drop connection! Everyone spent their time bugging me to upgrade to a Pentium 4 with Windows XP back in those days....so I grew a bit of disdain for that platform for awhile as a result.

red-ray wrote on 2020-04-15, 11:26:

Back then I mainly used a DEC 3000 AXP Model 400 (Sandpiper), but also had a PC which as I recall was as below: […]
Show full quote

Back then I mainly used a DEC 3000 AXP Model 400 (Sandpiper), but also had a PC which as I recall was as below:

1. Gigabyte GA-6BXD 440BX AGP chipset Dual Socket 1 motherboard
2. 2 x Intel Pentium III (Katmaï) 600MHz [kC0]

Wow, in 1999 you had two of the 600MHz Katmai that were first released in August? That must have cost a lot

digistorm wrote on 2020-04-15, 12:07:

Back in 1999 I had this system:
AMD Athlon 600 MHz (Slot A, 100 MHz FSB)

Same thoughts, if I'm not mistaken these Ahtlons were also released around the same time (summer 1999), it must have been awesome to have a top cpu when it was just released

I think it was 1999 that I upgraded to a K6-2/500. I don't remember what else was in the system. Until then I had been using a 486 DX33, so it was a huge upgrade.

built in 1998
K6-2/333
LS 5MVP3
64MB Ram
Matrox G200 8M
ESS 1869
4.3GB Seagate + 2.1GB Fujitsu HDDs (this one from old P-166 system)
Teac 24x CD-ROM
AT case
15" Viewsonic G series monitor

in second half of the year 1999
CPU > Pentium 2-300@450 (used OEM from Siemens Workstation)
Mobo > Chaintech 6BTM
RAM > 128M
HDD > i believe it was barracuda 10 GB + old 4.3GB medalist
ODD> bought Teac burner
AT > ATX case

In late summer 1999 had my first Asus P2B and a P2 300Mhz, was still running a lot of scsi stuff for HD's and CDroms.I was one of those early adopters back then....

Well i was using a P133 with a Voodoo 4MB and was playing Half-Life, it was little painful, but manageable. Gameplay was surprisingly ok, but loading times were a bit long.

creepingnet wrote on 2020-10-29, 20:08:

I'm sure I was the laughing stock of the teacher's lounge. Here comes kids with computer written reports done in Microsoft Word 97' on a Pentium I or II running Windows 9x, in pretty fonts, and then here come's ole' Creeping Net, tearing the pinfeed edges off of his book report as he wanders into class.

In '94 I handed in an assignment created on the family Apple IIe and a Star Gemini II 9 Pin Dot Matrix, Cant remember which clip art software I used.
My teacher asked what computer was this created on with genuine interest which is why I can still remember it.
It defiantly stood out against the standard majority of MS Works document printed on ink jets.