My vitae in computers

1st gen, ongoing from a used Highscreen 286/16

1990-1994

Those where the times! This thing had cost 2000DM, and that was cheap, even if it was used!

1994

My first overclocked Machine. In those olden days, you had to go to a electronic store and buy a new oscillator. Sadly, they only had 40Mhz, the 50Mhz i was looking for was out. The Soundcard had cost about 90DM, which was very cheap. And it was a unbelievable crappy soundcard. I loved it!
I installed some kind of RedHat Linux on one of the disk. It came with a 2 side manual, which was all i had when i tried linux the first time. In this olden days, every distribution has had vi as the primary editor. And it startet with just a blank screen. It beeped on most keys and was resilient to ctrl-c and every other keycombo i knew at that time. The manual was sure everyone knows how to use vi, as well as all of the 2 books about linux in the public library. Honestly, for quite some time i had to reboot whenever something startet vi (and that was before ext3 and its journal). After some time i learned about alt-fx, which gave me 5 try and a gracefull reboot :D
That might explain my, say, 'bad feelings' about vi :).

1995

No more overclocking, but plenty of ram and VLB now! I got most of this thing from friends and local flea markets.

2nd gen, based upon a selfbuild Cyrix 5th gen Machine

1996/1998

The base System was a birthday present, bought from Snogard, at that timne the cheapest i know of. I got the VCR1 from a used parts store for 20DM, which was very cheap at the time. The S3 with the shutter goggles where from a sold out and where extremely cheap. And quite fun, even if Descent was the only game that really worked with stereoscopic vision. I bought the CD Burner from Friend, it had a good 2000 CDs burned already.

1998-2000

As i got a cheap Riva128 GPU (they where closing one of the last old fashioned department Stores in Hamburg), i needed a new Board with AGP. At that time, AMD had released their K6-2 Processors, which had an extremely good price/performance rating. So i got one and the cheapest Super7 Board i could find. It turned out to be totally Awesome. The SB AWE was quite a lucky find, i got it for 70DM, which was cheap at that time. The CD Burner had at least 3000 CDs burned now, and only worked when open. In the beginning i had a stone age Big tower for this Machine, silenced with carpet. Later on i build a case from parts of an old Pressboard locker and a water cooler from an piece of high current rail as a water block and a radiator from a broken Golf III.

3d gen, begining with a used Soyo Mainboard / i686 (P2)

2000-09.2001

Fucking big Monitor, got it cheap from a local store. The ugly duckling of a ikea diy case got wings now and flew. Got it to be silent despite of all those SCSI drives. The caching ultra wide SCSI Raid Controller was a shot from a local store for 15DM. X-trme-ly cheap!

09.2001-2005

This one i liked much. Great Mobo, overclocked like hell, silent as something very silent. And quite some great retro Stuff :D

First Laptop. But boy, that was a crappy one. Gericom produced the worst notebook i ever knew. Loud, and because of its epic fail cooling system way to hot. but i got it cheap.

Later i got this one, much better. Extremely silent and low power.

4th gen, build upon AMD stuff from local fleamarkets

2005-2007

This beast was ever changing, so much that i didnt know at evening what i had at morning. Lots of fun, but since every single Mainboard i got was in one or another way crap or defect, the fun was not very much fun.
My first real home server. Build from crap lying around. The hard drives fell off at work, board was from an ages old cheap medion PC.

The Sony lived on. A hinge broke, and was replaced by what might be the last spare part in this city. The other hinge broke too, but there where no parts anymore. Fixed it with a piece of cooper and some 2k.

5th gen, tinkering with this rotten NetBurst stuff

2007-2009

Got most of it from my job and friends, only used it because of the good Mobo, and with my last good (well, usable) AMD Board dying, i hadn't had much of a choice. Dont get me wrong, all the boards wherent bad because of being AMD Boards. They where just cheap and battered. The 1700Mhz Celeron was actually slower than the 1333Mhz Athlon (Dude! The Pipeline was longer than the Trans-Alaska Pipeline! And a tinytiny Cache.)
[img:havisham.jpg:Mrs Havisham]
Around this time i got a used (and flexing) LG for free. It worked with some paper pressing the southbridge down for some time. While i was working on my diploma thesis i had a burrowed IBM. Then the LG again, but it was dying slowly...
When it finaly gave in, i used it as a diskless Client for some time, until it died away.
The Server got wifi. One of the disks died because the ribbon cable from spindle motor fell off. Another drive was bought. A Slot 1 P3 with passive cooling appeared one day.

2009-2010

A gift from a Friend who got a new Machine. Better than the last one, but draws power like a Train. The loudest machine i had for serveral years, even with water cooling.
Then i bought this, a great little thing, runs 6 hours with the big battery. Sadly the hinges where crap and the batterys cost a heck of alot.
The Server got a SATA Controller and a new disk. A usb-ethernert adapter replaced one of the realteks. Too less pci ports.

6th gen, core2

2010-

Finally getting rid of this Netburst crap. Duh, unbelivable this stuff! And also getting rid of heavy Desktop gear. Not much to tinker with, sadly, but movable and pretty and efficient. I especially appreciate the really apart combination of a ancient semi-mechanic Keyboard with a laser mouse.
While extremely cool, the T60 is not the best choice to carry with you at any time. This one is! It replaced the Samsung, mostly because the way better hinges and the Keyboard. Its also a bit faster, but draws a lot more Power (13W at best to 8W).
I kept the P4 for gaming. Then I got a new, powerfull and big GPU for cheap. Really, this beast is monstrous, could be quite good to compensate something if one has a need to. Sadly, CPU as well as GPU are famous for their tremendous power consumption. So, i had to get a new PSU. After assembling, the Mainboard failed finaly (it was suffering some time from dying capacitors), so i got a new Board and Processor. At last, an AMD again. Hell, what a relief after the Netburst. Silent without Water cooling again! Well, i noticed to late that the old Board did not had DDR2 Ram as i thought it had, so i had to buy new ram as well. Wenn assembling the heap again into a stack, the DVD proved to be dead. I had one left over, what a luck :D
I also revoked the LG, by reflow soldering with a heat gun. Did not help with the harddrives, but at least it boots up without a drive in. Again used as a diskless Client. Very usefull, with multiboot as a thin client, media center or stuff.
The Server got a 2.5" drive as the system drive. I also changed the last gentoo system i had to arch.
New Achievment: extremely cute Sony Laptop. It even makes a purring sound when on idle :D