Diamond MonsterSound. Thanks for keeping me away from Aureal driver horrors, constipated faces! (also I didn't have good experiences with their earlier WSS-based offering)

- Early Oak or any Realtek based VGA card
- SmartMedia flash memory
- Matrox G100 (I borrowed one to test before buying)
- JTS hard drives

Back in the 90s, I didn't buy those (as in: new)..

- Creative Sound Blaster cards. Okay, maybe a bit provocational. But I was a happy PAS16 user, really. No trouble with SB settings, as others had experienced it.
Needless to say that I got real SBs later in life. But I had a PAS16 in the 90s instead.
To this day, I'm still telling my father that I'm glad he got me a PAS16 for my PC, rather than a Sound Blaster. It has become sort of a running gag.

- 32-Bit PCs. Kind of. I had started with a 286 as my main PC and thus never had to fiddle with anything but himem.sys for a long time.
No V86 headache, no QEMM, MemMaker etc. Real-Mode DOS all the time.
I've rather learnt to use smaller freeware utilities as replacement for DOS drivers.
Windows 3.1 ran in Standard-Mode, which was rather stable in retrospect.
I had 4MB of RAM installed in my 286, because it was necessary (no swap file available).

Anything pentium 4

Well definitely the first generation of P4... and I have to qualify my "never bought" as never got within 5 years of release, but only when it was curb pickup or super cheap later in life, since I almost get one of everything eventually. i.e. never paid "real money" for it and had expectations of it's performance at the time.

So yeah, glad I never bought Willamette P4 in the day. Any P4... hmmm well I got hold of a Dell Dimension with a respin Prescott in it 3.2Ghz I think it was originally, and that was when they were still somewhat current, though I guess core was just out. Anyway, for 3 or 4 years it was quite useable, only got frustrating for it's Dell damaged upgrade problems. Anyway, so bought it, it was sorta okay. No regrets about avoiding pre-fix prescotts etc.

Now there's a bunch of GPUs, starting around the Radeon 9700 and going up to about 2010, that everyone should be glad they never bought new for top dollar when they were current even though they are high priced and sought after now. You know why, because it was like rolling a pair of dice for a double 6 that yours kept working long enough to have got your value out of it. That's the why of why they are rare, they died frequently and easily and many people were greatly out of pocket for replacing cards just out of warranty when they thought they could get maybe 3 years. So you should be glad you didn't buy one, you are way more likely to have lost money than it get up to collector pricing and even then they're not really as expensive yet as they were at retail, so a third or half your investment back. (And you still gotta keep rolling double 6es, they could die any moment.)

Don't regret not jumping into a low speed 386SX when they were first available, they are not particularly good for anything vs prev fast 286, just too slow on 32bit stuff. Not sure if I am glad I never bought 486SX though, there were a lot of bullets to dodge, some machines may not have had a useable socket for later/cheaper upgrades, so I'm glad I didn't buy one of those, buy an SX25 get stuck with SX25 through the whole 90s. Whereas if you got one with a proper socket at the right time, you weren't really hurting for performance until 1994 and could swap a DX2 or even dx4 in and keep it going another couple of years.

I can't think of any hardware I'm glad I haven't bought. If it's something I've never used, I have no idea of whether I would have regretted it or not.

I've also found that some hardware may have poor reputations (such as Pentium 4 processors mentioned above), but in practice those reputations may not be deserved.

Those ugly early-mid 2000 small towers from Dell, HP, and the likes. The ones with stupid CPUs and no drives except for some card reader crap with 10 slots on the case front. I guess I can extend this to thin clients and all PCs that just don't look fun because they can't fit anything useful for gaming or real production work.

Shponglefan wrote on 2025-03-22, 16:56:

I've also found that some hardware may have poor reputations (such as Pentium 4 processors mentioned above), but in practice those reputations may not be deserved.

A lot depends on the rest of the system. My ex-BiL had a P4 system that was horribly sluggish and never felt like it performed anywhere near as well as it should. Most of the P4 office desktops I used back in the day were the same.

At the same time an ex-Gf had a P4 in a decent sized Dell tower running on an BTX mobo that always felt pretty slick so was clearly a better balanced system component wise.

I never bought one of those "all in one" PCs, where the screen & PC are in a single unit. At times they were marked down in price, sometimes looked ok and seems practical in space terms - but i knew they would tend to be under-specced, difficult to upgrade and go out of date quickly as a result. Still, i'm sure some were good and they could actually make nice vintage options now if cheap enough.

More generally i'm glad i haven't been buying new stuff in general

I just largely stopped buying things new for myself about 15-20 years ago, no regrets as i just don't need it. I'm fine with a small number of win 10 and linux mint PCs for online (and if i dont get anything new then soon it'll be linux mint only for online). I'm fine with a frankly excessive mount of pc stuff mostly free, old or used for games and other things. my only new purchase a few years ago was a gt1030 card, purists would argue for others - but its fine, plays gta5 and other early 2010's games on 1600x900 just fine on a fast 2 core machine from 2014

gerry wrote on 2025-03-24, 10:12:

I never bought one of those "all in one" PCs, where the screen & PC are in a single unit. At times they were marked down in price, sometimes looked ok and seems practical in space terms - but i knew they would tend to be under-specced, difficult to upgrade and go out of date quickly as a result. Still, i'm sure some were good and they could actually make nice vintage options now if cheap enough.

I was sitting here wondering about the question, thinking only of gaming consoles, high end graphics cards and TVs in the general sense, when this one hit the money.

These all in one systems are basically highly proprietary laptops with large not-particularly-great screens. And they are mostly ridiculously slow.

st31276a wrote on 2025-03-25, 09:29:

gerry wrote on 2025-03-24, 10:12:

I never bought one of those "all in one" PCs, where the screen & PC are in a single unit. At times they were marked down in price, sometimes looked ok and seems practical in space terms - but i knew they would tend to be under-specced, difficult to upgrade and go out of date quickly as a result. Still, i'm sure some were good and they could actually make nice vintage options now if cheap enough.

I was sitting here wondering about the question, thinking only of gaming consoles, high end graphics cards and TVs in the general sense, when this one hit the money.

These all in one systems are basically highly proprietary laptops with large not-particularly-great screens. And they are mostly ridiculously slow.

I think same. What's positive, though, they had extended life of Windows XP.
Microsoft continued to support sellers in their decision to use XP for netbooks and nettops.
Computers such as the Asus Eee PC line of mini notebooks (my dad had one).

Lack of memory was a problem, though. Gratefully, many models allowed adding a memory module.
There also was a mini PCIe slot that could be used to install wifi cards or an MPEG 4 decoder chip (Broadcom sold such a thing).

That was also the time the Momentus XT SSHD came out.
Which was a slow HDD with a tiny bit of SSD storage.
A learning algorithm was caching often accessed sectors.
So after multiple reboots or lauching programs, their related sectors on HDD would be cached by the SSD.
HDD defragmentation would undo this, of course.

A BenQ display- for many years until now... Seen them around, seemed like overpriced crap and steered clear. Had to replace a Dell 16:10 display after years of loyal service, and after having been severely disappointed by by EIZO (panel performance and fit and finish) and several cheaper brands (Samsung, LG) I ended up stuck with the most expensive of the bunch, a BenQ that I cannot return. Really poor features / osd (Engrish spelling mistakes in an expensive designer display don't exactly instill confidence), creacky and uneven bezel and buttons, flashlighting and edge bleed like crazy. Only good thing is the panel itself, which is arguably the important thing. It's just waaaaaay overpriced for what you get.

If anyone has a tip for a 1920x1200 display that accepts DVI and can do in-aspect scaling I'm down. I found almost no modern displays have a global (or even resolution specific) setting to 'aspect scale' *all* resolutions. Almost all refuse to let me let 16:9 be letterboxed and 4:3 and 5:3 pillarboxed.

LCD monitors - never liked them in terms of (motion) picture quality and never bought one new.
I hung onto my 17" CRT until it died in early 2007. Following that, I started using my parent's PC (which did have an LCD monitor) for a few years. Then I eventually became competent enough in electronics repair and got that old 17" CRT running. But because I was still novice in electronics repair and didn't fully trust my skills, I decided to get another monitor. That's when I found out about the free section on Craigslist, and coincidentally, this was in the late 2000's / early 2010's when people were trying to get rid of their CRT monitors left and right. So instead of looking for a used LCD, I started hoarding CRT monitors and saved up a nice collection. Yes, they are bigger and bulkier, but I already had a big desk that was mostly unused... so no biggie.
I eventually started picking up LCD monitors too, when they were either free (especially with issues, to have something "fun" to troubleshoot) or under $10. But compared to CRTs, I just don't care about them as much. Despite using LCD monitors more often now that I do CRTs, I still consider LCD monitors as "disposable" / everyday use device. When it comes to gaming, though - especially any game I really care about - it has to be on a CRT!

So anyways, I'm glad I skipped the LCD monitor "craze" in the early-mid 2000's and that I kept my CRTs. Absolutely everyone I know around me either laughed at me or thought I was crazy for keeping/collecting CRTs. Super glad I didn't listen and did what I felt was right. I actually knew they would become collectible / sought after one day simply because I knew they wouldn't be made anymore... and I was right!

sndwv wrote on 2025-03-25, 10:34:

A BenQ display- for many years until now... Seen them around, seemed like overpriced crap and steered clear. Had to replace a Dell 16:10 display after years of loyal service, and after having been severely disappointed by by EIZO (panel performance and fit and finish) and several cheaper brands (Samsung, LG) I ended up stuck with the most expensive of the bunch, a BenQ that I cannot return. Really poor features / osd (Engrish spelling mistakes in an expensive designer display don't exactly instill confidence), creacky and uneven bezel and buttons, flashlighting and edge bleed like crazy. Only good thing is the panel itself, which is arguably the important thing. It's just waaaaaay overpriced for what you get.

If anyone has a tip for a 1920x1200 display that accepts DVI and can do in-aspect scaling I'm down. I found almost no modern displays have a global (or even resolution specific) setting to 'aspect scale' *all* resolutions. Almost all refuse to let me let 16:9 be letterboxed and 4:3 and 5:3 pillarboxed.

The Philips 252B9 might be an option, but I believe the panel use FRC and has an oddly textured look on some uniform color areas when running at native resolution AND >60Hz. Its scaler can force any resolution to display pillarboxed as 4:3, even non square pixel ones. AFAICR, it displays 16:9 properly letterboxed as well (in auto aspect mode), but I use mine in in forced 4:3 mode exclusively.

darry wrote on 2025-03-25, 17:05:

The Philips 252B9 might be an option, but I believe the panel use FRC and has an oddly textured look on some uniform color areas when running at native resolution AND >60Hz. Its scaler can force any resolution to display pillarboxed as 4:3, even non square pixel ones. AFAICR, it displays 16:9 properly letterboxed as well (in auto aspect mode), but I use mine in in forced 4:3 mode exclusively.

Thanks for the tip, I'll check the display out! The 'textured look' I have noticed on several other panels as well, can be pretty distracting, but if the doesn't happen st 60Hz I'm fine with it.

sndwv wrote on 2025-03-26, 12:21:

darry wrote on 2025-03-25, 17:05:

The Philips 252B9 might be an option, but I believe the panel use FRC and has an oddly textured look on some uniform color areas when running at native resolution AND >60Hz. Its scaler can force any resolution to display pillarboxed as 4:3, even non square pixel ones. AFAICR, it displays 16:9 properly letterboxed as well (in auto aspect mode), but I use mine in in forced 4:3 mode exclusively.

Thanks for the tip, I'll check the display out! The 'textured look' I have noticed on several other panels as well, can be pretty distracting, but if the doesn't happen st 60Hz I'm fine with it.

I also have an Acer LCD panel with an IPS panel that I once believed might be the same as the one in the Philips (not that sure anymore). The Acer has that textured look on a specific light blue gradient, but only, AFAICR, starting at 55ish Hz refresh rate and going upward (I experimented).

I suspect that this is might be down to these possibly being 6-bit + FRC panels, with the symptom being due to differing FRC implementation, but I could be wrong.

EDIT: Assuming this us due to FRC, I wonder if 8-bit + FRC panels have similar visually detectable issues.

Never bought any Intel CPU!!! Only AMD (from first 386sx 33 - to last R7 5800X3D) CPUs were in my house. If it means something, in my life i did make more than 1000 AMD CPU PCs (have my own Computer service for almost 20 Years), and maybe 10 Intels, but i asked my customers to buy CPU and other things somewhere else. Crazy Fanboy!!!
But now, when Intel is in deep $hit, i am thinking about it! Always been a fan of Robin Hood (Lood - in my language lood | lud | means crazy)...

By "never bought", there are quite a few items I skipped for one reason for another when they were new or relevant, but have messed with at a much later date, long after they were obsolete.

- ZIP Drives: Always considered one, just never did it. Didn't really see myself having a need for them. Would have been a waste of money.
- OEM x86 PC: Every x86 I've ever owned, I built myself. I've never bought an OEM system new. It was much cheaper where I grew up to build than buy.
- Apple Computers: While I really liked the Apple II line, I never bought one new, just too expensive. Anything after Apple II, was never a fan.
- Laptops: I've never bought a new laptop. Every one I've ever owned was used and well past their prime. I just never had a need for one. Too expensive vs desktops for their much more limited capabilities.

darry wrote on 2025-03-26, 12:38:

I also have an Acer LCD panel with an IPS panel that I once believed might be the same as the one in the Philips (not that sure anymore). The Acer has that textured look on a specific light blue gradient, but only, AFAICR, starting at 55ish Hz refresh rate and going upward (I experimented).

I suspect that this is might be down to these possibly being 6-bit + FRC panels, with the symptom being due to differing FRC implementation, but I could be wrong.

EDIT: Assuming this us due to FRC, I wonder if 8-bit + FRC panels have similar visually detectable issues.

I know the issue, I used to have a 6 bit HP ZR24W that also textured light blues (and grays) at >= 59Hz. Guess it's all the same thing?