VOGONS


what hardware were you using in 1999?

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Reply 200 of 249, by Trevize

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I had the following config back in 1999:

Cyrix 6x86 200+
32 MB EDO RAM
Motherboard: can't remember
1 MB S3 Trio 64+
Some Yamaha OPL3 sound card
1.3 GB HDD

Reply 201 of 249, by PCBONEZ

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I had to think pretty hard to remember. Too many systems since then.

Early in 1999 my 'main rig' was based on an Asus TX-97 with (alternately) a K6-PR233 and an Intel P233-MMX.
I don't recall much else about that one. It probably had W3.11 and W95 as dual-boot.

Late in 1999 my 'main rig' was built on an Epox EP-7KXA with an Athlon 550Mhz - which was soon after upgraded to a 700MHz.
The Epox multi-booted DOS, W98 and NT4. It had a Promise card with the drives in RAID-1.
It eventually got a Voodoo card and an AWE64 but I don't recall if that was during 1999.
This stayed as my main rig until about 2004 but by then NT4 was changed to W2k.

All through 1999 I also had:
A Gateway Solo 9100 Laptop.
An Abit AP-PX5 (with an Intel P233-MMX IIRC) It was only used for burning CDs - 'cause I didn't like waiting for CDs to get done on my main rig.
And an Intel N440BX (Nightshade) with 2x PII 400MHz which I used mostly to teach myself how to set up and run servers. It usually ran NT4.
The N440BX was an early version that does not go past PII-450 CPUs.
The server farms were dumping them in droves in 1999 to upgrade to the P-III capable version.
.

Last edited by PCBONEZ on 2015-12-04, 01:53. Edited 1 time in total.

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Reply 202 of 249, by shamino

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PCBONEZ wrote:

The server farms were dumping them in droves in 1999 to upgrade to the P-III capable version.

It's really amazing how cheap 2nd hand server gear can be when that happens. A ton of identical parts suddenly flood eBay and relatively few people on the buying side of eBay pay attention to server stuff, so the market price just drops like a rock. There's some amazing bargains with that stuff sometimes.

Reply 203 of 249, by PCBONEZ

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shamino wrote:
PCBONEZ wrote:

The server farms were dumping them in droves in 1999 to upgrade to the P-III capable version.

It's really amazing how cheap 2nd hand server gear can be when that happens. A ton of identical parts suddenly flood eBay and relatively few people on the buying side of eBay pay attention to server stuff, so the market price just drops like a rock. There's some amazing bargains with that stuff sometimes.

Yes.
I can remember times both the Pentium Pro's and 1.4GHz P-III-S Tualatins dropping below $3 per CPU, at different times of course.
I've seen socket 771 Xeon dual cores below $10 a pair and bought quad cores for $18 a pair.
If you don't catch it just right the prices go back up quite a bit. Just not usually as high as before the drop.
.

GRUMPY OLD FART - On Hiatus, sort'a
Mann-Made Global Warming. - We should be more concerned about the Intellectual Climate.
You can teach a man to fish and feed him for life, but if he can't handle sushi you must also teach him to cook.

Reply 205 of 249, by kikendo

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Pentium 133 CPU on a Soyo motherboard
32MB RAM
Diamond Stealth 3D 2000 PCI
Crystal SBPro clone
8GB and 2GB hard drives
16x CD-ROM drive

(but I was till running my Amiga 600 on the side until it broke sometime late 1999)

Reply 206 of 249, by wiretap

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In 1999 my family bought a new computer, the eMachines eMonster 550.
550MHz Pentium III (slot 1)
64MB PC100 RAM
Nvidia TNT2 8MB
15GB HDD
8x DVD-ROM

Swapped out the TNT2 for a Voodoo Banshee since it had Glide support, added a Sound Blaster Live, and added a Linksys LNE100TX Ethernet card.

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Reply 207 of 249, by WildW

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For most of the year I was using an IDT Winchip 240MHz with 32MB ram and 4MB ATI Rage Pro. It crashed a lot. I wish I still had it, but I'm not sure why I wish that. It was basically our old 1995 Pentium 75 machine with the CPU and video card upgraded, and it never felt fast.

I turned 21 later that year and my parents bought me a P3 450MHz machine, 64MB ram and 16MB ATI Rage 128. That felt like a good gaming machine. There were times when I thought it would last me forever, particularly later when I was running Windows 2000 on it.

Reply 208 of 249, by imi

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Gigabyte GA-6BXE
Pentium II 300Mhz upgraded to a 400Mhz in 1999
64MB SDR
Matrox G200 8MB + Creative Voodoo2 8MB
(upgrade to Creative TNT2 Ultra 32MB was later than 1999 I think)
Creative Labs Sound Blaster AWE64 CT4520
IBM DHEA-36480 6,4GB
might have upgraded my case to an In-Win S500 in 1999 or maybe 2000
17" CRT

Reply 209 of 249, by BinaryDemon

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In 1999 I was still rocking :

Cyrix P200
48mb ram
4mb Rendition Verite 2100
Sound Blaster 16
540mb hard drive
Win95

In early 2000, I changed to a P2-400, 3dfx banshee, 192mb ram, with Win98.

Check out DOSBox Distro:

https://sites.google.com/site/dosboxdistro/ [*]

a lightweight Linux distro (tinycore) which boots off a usb flash drive and goes straight to DOSBox.

Make your dos retrogaming experience portable!

Reply 210 of 249, by Katmai500

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This was revived from 5 years ago, but I'll play ball.

For most of 1999:
Zeos Pantera 90
Pentium 90 MHz
Intel 430LX Socket 4 motherboard with a Socket 5 adapter
32 MB RAM
3 GB hard drive
2MB Diamond Stealth 64 (S3 Vision964)
Creative AWE32 (CT2670)
24x CD-ROM

December 24, 1999:
Gateway Essential 500
Pentium III 500 MHz Katmai
128MB PC100 RAM
20 GB Hard Drive
8 MB TNT2 Vanta
Creative AudioPCI 128
8x DVD-ROM

Last edited by Katmai500 on 2020-05-05, 15:54. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 211 of 249, by mpe

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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 […]
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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.

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Reply 212 of 249, by Joseph_Joestar

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If memory serves, that was the year I finally switched from my Pentium 133 to this:

  • Celeron 333
  • Chaintech 6BTM
  • 64 MB RAM
  • Trident Blade 8 MB (replaced with a Nvidia TNT2 the following year)
  • Sound Blaster Vibra 16
  • Quantum 4 GB hard disk (not really sure about the capacity)
  • Teac 4x CD-ROM
  • 33600 bps Rockwell modem
  • 15" Phillips CRT Monitor

Wish I kept that computer, had some really good times with it. It was the first time I experienced 3D accelerated games, and I remember being blown away by the visuals, despite the craptastic Trident card.

PC#1: Pentium MMX 166 / Soyo SY-5BT / S3 Trio64V+ / Voodoo1 / YMF719 / AWE64 Gold / SC-155
PC#2: AthlonXP 2100+ / ECS K7VTA3 / Voodoo3 / Audigy2 / Vortex2
PC#3: Athlon64 3400+ / Asus K8V-MX / 5900XT / Audigy2
PC#4: i5-3570K / MSI Z77A-G43 / GTX 970 / X-Fi

Reply 213 of 249, by LewisRaz

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Katmai500 wrote on 2020-04-14, 18:07:
This was revived from 5 years ago, but I'll play ball. […]
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This was revived from 5 years ago, but I'll play ball.

For most of 1999:
Zeos Pantera 90
Pentium 90 MHz
Intel 440LX Socket 4 motherboard with a Socket 5 adapter
32 MB RAM
3 GB hard drive
2MB Diamond Stealth 64 (S3 Vision964)
Creative AWE32 (CT2670)
24x CD-ROM

December 24, 1999:
Gateway Essential 500
Pentium III 500 MHz Katmai
128MB PC100 RAM
20 GB Hard Drive
8 MB TNT2 Vanta
Creative AudioPCI 128
8x DVD-ROM

I did notice the bump but enjoy threads of this type!

I was still using my first pc that was "mine" (My dad had a 386 at some point but I was very young and not really allowed on it)

It was a 486dx4 100
16mb ram
s3 virgeDX 2mb.
1gb HDD
I upraded the 2x CD-ROM to a something faster at some point after the year 2000 in an uneducated attempt at being able to run The sims.. Needless to say it didnt make it work 😜
I also upgraded myself to windows 98 using a CD from a seller at a boot sale of questionable legitimacy.

That lasted me till ~2002 when I was gifted a P2 450mhz that wouldnt turn on but was actually just a broken power button 😀

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Reply 214 of 249, by PC-Engineer

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My PC in 1999 was a Patchwork, upgraded step by step, begin in 1991.

Components in the end of 1999:
- Full AT Tower Housing
- 250W AT PSU
- Gigabyte GA-686BLX Slot1 AT Mainboard
- 256MB PC66 SDRAM - Upgrade from 64MB in 1999
- 466MHz Celeron (via Slotket) - Upgrade from PII 266 in 1999
- Matrox G400 16MB - Upgrade from Diamond V330 PCI in 1999
- Creative SB AWE32 CT3990
- Maxtor D740X 20GB ATA HDD - recieved in 1999
- IBM DCAS 34330 4,3GB SCSI HDD
- Sony CDU 926S CD-R SCSI
- Toshiba XM3501B CD-ROM SCSI
- Toshiba SD-M1201 DVD-ROM SCSI - recieved in 1999
- Tekram DC390U SCSI Controller

Epox 7KXA Slot A / Athlon 950MHz / Voodoo 5 5500 / PowerVR / 512 MB / AWE32 / SCSI - Windows 98SE

Reply 216 of 249, by foil_fresh

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was using our early/mid '96 pc which was a cyrix 120mhz, nfi what sound card or video card it was. 2 or 4 speed cd rom. 1.2gb HDD. probs 16-32mb ram. win95, a 15" monitor and THOSE speakers. the big-ish beige ones that everyone had. you know the ones.

i killed the mobo/psu by flicking the 110/220v switch (had no idea what it did, what a bad lesson learnt that day). months later when the hdd stopped booting i got the blame!

Reply 217 of 249, by darry

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I had just gotten my first real job and was upgrading regularly, so it is difficult to remember everything accurately . Please forgive any anachronisms

Celeron 300A@450MHz
Abit BX6 (first revision)
128MB of RAM
Diamond RIVA TNT (Viper V550 , I believe)
Guillemot Maxi Gamer Voodoo 2
Asus 34x CD-ROM (model eludes me; noisy, vibration-prone bugger )
Panasonic CW-7582-B 4X CD burner
Sound Blaster Live
Gravis Ultrasound PnP with 8MB RAM
Some RTL8029 based PCI Ethernet adapter (sufficient for the speed of broadband at the time )
18GB Western Digital rebranded version of the IBM Deskstar 22GXP (yes it died suddenly within approx. 2 years of purchase)
Promise Ultra66 PC ATA controller
Enlight Endura EN-7237 case with included 250W PSU (at some point upgraded to an Antec 300W unit, possibly a PP303 )

The only part I still have is the Gravis Ultrasound PnP .

Reply 218 of 249, by King_Corduroy

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Well I was 9 and I think had just a single Packard Bell designer tower sporting Windows 95, a 200mhz processor and a 1gb hdd. Couldn't say what the ram was but it didn't have the stock soundcard I know that. It was some kind of Creative labs card like a sound blaster PCI128 or something. Came with a creative music player also. 🤣

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