What got you started in PC's Well mine started when I bought a brand new P4 and thought it was the best there was not knowing anything else of cause. I had some ex-army and biking buddies that played Black hawk down and found out they would go on TS and land up playing this game to all hours and playing matches against other people. So I went to the local game shop tried to install the game to find out my PC was not good enough. So i went to the store I bought the PC from and they told me I would have buy a total new PC again. So I was not happy thinking I had an awesome PC only to find out it was a load of c..p. So i let one of my mates know and he then gave me a list of things to buy which I did and instructed me how to put it to together and ever since I have been upgrading my PC's about every 6 months, as well as spending about 4 hours everyday gaming. Played in two different squads since then and played games like Joint Operations Call of Duty 4 etc.
A few of my mates used to organise Unreal Tournament LAN games every few months or so. That got me into PC gaming and as new games came out I needed a more powerful rig and never really stopped upgrading.
My mate got given his Dad's old PCs (386, 496) and we used to stay up late playing games like X-COM and on BBS sites (pre-internet :S). Then I got a job building PCs at a local place, 486s and early Pentiums and got into it myself. I used to love the demo scene (Future Crew, Skaven KFMF etc) and I was sooooo impressed at what they could generate in realtime from such small files. I think Little Green Men is still my favourite. It just carried on from there really, although I've been out of it all pretty much for the last 4 or 5 years, I'm enjoying getting back up to speed with everything
Dad had an 8086 from work (ICL machine) no HDD, dual floppy - the joy of the 80's! As soon as I found out it was a PC it was hogged by me building dos menus etc. Eventually led me to buying a 486 DX4/100 a few years later and the rest is history! Now an IT Manager after working as a network engineer for several years. Its my Dad's fault
Had a vague interest in them stemming from hours spent playing Descent and RA2. My uncle gave me one of his old machines, and it kinda went from there really.
When i was about 3 my dad got a Sinclair Spectrum+. That got me into gaming (manic miner, jet set willy,of dungeons and green men). Had virtually evry console since that time and in 1995/6 my stepdad bought a pc (P166MMX) with a futuristic racing game called POD. The graphics stunned me. Got myself a PC for the first time in 2007 (AthlonX2 4400, X800GT from a mate) and went from there. Did a few courses etc. and since have built awesome machines but never for myself lol
Fascinated me trying to load up Zool (the sonic type game) Then lead on to CompuServe and the inter-web on something link 14.4k. Spent many hours on it. Then came along Quake and Hexen, then Half-Life and mods like Counter-Strike, Science and Industry and the rest. That was the height of my career with gaming as i haven't been a part of any clans or gamed much as of recent. Though would like to there's not enough time in the day.
Shop bought pc died, guy I took it to offered to build me a custom pc. After explaining quite a lot of it to me it got me interested and then that just took off!
I always liked PC's but I didn't get into building them until I was about 20. Poor student and needing something half decent to record music on led me to it! Now I seem to build most my mates rigs for them. Once they use a PC that's not bought off the shelf they all want one
Futuremark.com ran a benchmark on it and then well I ended up swapping everything in my pc on a 6 month basis for the last 10 years lol
I think this thread is a repost. I've been pulling things apart, finding out how they work and fixing them since I was a child. Then I started learning how to use a computer in school. Then we got a computer at home. Through my natural inquisitive nature, I did some reading up on it and pulled that apart too. I upgraded the hard drive and video card whilst I had it apart, then put it back together again and started playing GTA, Red Alert 2, Total Annihilation etc on it. Our family PC was changed in about 2001 and the new one had a Geforce 4 MX 400 in it. That was fast at the time compared to the ATI rage 128 that was in the old one. There hasn't been less than 3 computers in our house since about 2002. The "family PC", my brothers gaming rig (also built by me) and my own gaming rig. I built my first top of the range gaming PC for myself when I was 15. I finished my first case mod when I was 16. The rest is history
I never had a games console when I was young so when my dad bought our first PC, I was hooked on to gaming and then used it for programming and web design as well. Then when it wouldn't run games very well years down the line, I started replacing bits here and there.
ZX Spectrum. We had an Acorn, a 386 and I'm pretty sure a 186 of some description kicking about around the same time, but it was the Spectrum which was specifically bought for us kids. Dad was insistent that I didn't only use it to play games, but also learned a bit about computers... which meant spending all afternoon copying programmes out a book, line for line. No saving though. I'm pretty sure it was possible to save information to tape, but it was just easier to switch the thing off and start over. When I was in secondary school, dad bought me a Cyrix PR233. The family had a P100 at the time, but the Cyrix was mine. Basically I could do anything I wanted with it, but if it broke, I was the only one going to fix it. It must have had some effect because I'm fixing computers for a living. Also, tape loading screens. Turn Volume Down
Played Red Alert 2 with a friend, it looked amazing. Begged parents to buy it for me, installed it on their computer, much win was had. Then they got a new computer, I got their old one and played it without sound (the onboard sound broke) and Runescape became a slight obsession. Eased off a bit when we got a PS2 but then returned when I moved school and the first people I even talked to were PC gamers.
Red ring of death brought me to pc building. I was amazed with graphics quality, even on a 8600gt. I love the pc due to limitless amount of customization and quality. My only irk is portability, moving my pc is a chore. I try to avoid that when I can.
Lol... i've built my own PC's for the last 10 years and none of them.. none.. have been "top of the range".. I'd love to though, after last night's fiasco, i'm on the hunt for a SSD.
Top of the range wasn't that hard to achieve in 2003 though It's much harder and more expensive to do it now than it was back then. I had an Athlon 64 FX CPU in that machine the week after A64 was released. I miss the excitment that brought me, probably much like those who are older than me and have been working with computers much longer miss their ZX Spectrums and BBC Micros
That brings back memories lol It also reminds of the sequel to this which i mentioned 'Jet Set Willy'. The memory is that anyone who played said game will remember a colour code on the screen which you had to input via checking a little book which came in the game case in order to play the game, like a primitive validation code but you had to do it everytime....................................................i had a black and white tv......................
One day (in 1994) my dad had a visit form one of his friends who sold him a brand new PC (AMD486 1 GB Drive space 4 MB RAM), I saw the excitement of my dad with his new toy and he grab me to explain all the wonderful things he could make with it ( I was 10 years old and only saw PC in offices and stuff). That instantly grab my attention and I wanted to learn more, started messing around with the PC and made a course of DOS, my dad had to call his friend's son to fix the PC every now and then because I kept messing with it. What got me into building my own pc was finally when I started gaming on then, I noticed some games didnt run on my dad's pc, then in this pc magazing I start reading some video game reviews and reading the minimum specs I realized my dad's PC was now old. And I think this first frustration is what get all of us into this, because ofc I kept my dad bombarded "dad, upgrade the pc please, dad i want to play this game, dad buy this another, hey dad look DVD player for the pc", things changed when I got my irst Job, since then im now part of this club, upgrading my pc every 6 months, buying games every chance I got, and its just awesome.
