Talk of XT-AT era computer software & hardware

[jdkmunch]

lol 

[bob in phx]

as a side note, my younger brother's main home and gaming machine (state of the art) is housed in a slant front IBM AT case. He changes out the guts about every 6 months, yep he is nuts...... older folks always freak out when they see it... same question all the time, "wow does it still work???". the younger folks always ask where is the computer??? so my younger bother spins a tale about computers and software companies conspiracies etc and then claims he has the secret to never having to buy a new computer ... always good for a laugh....

[StatFreak]

I always built my own PCs until the cost of the parts exceeded the cost of a complete system. You used to have to use jumpers to create the LED digits displayed when turbo and non-turbo modes were selected. The numbers (or weird symbols  ) displayed had nothing to do with the clock speed on the board, they just displayed whatever LED segments you set them to display.

The terms "turbo" and "normal"were misleading. They should have called them "normal" and "throttled" modes. 
Of course, that wouldn't have sold as well, although I can't fathom why!    

[stayouttadabunker]

I used to buy all kinds of computer components and loved making my own computers.
Now I cannot get half the parts I used to get pricewise - I agree with you Stat...
It's much cheaper nowadays by just going out and
buying a brand new computer stocked and loaded with all the goodies.
I loved going to those trade shows at the Meadowlands in N.J. and
grabbing plastic bags full of hard drives, motherboards, and CPU's off of cafeteria tables fulla stuff!!!
At that time, you could also take a ride into Brooklyn,NY and see what "fell offa the truck"....LOL

[reho33]

Yes, went to lots of computer shows in those days Market pro, Tri-state fairs, etc. KGP did shows here on the East coast and then went out of business. I think that all computer shows will dissappear at some point like pay phones did.

[rickhunter]

Gotta love the old school write protect mechanism on the old 5 1/4 and 8 inch floppies.  I use to use spare ones to block out eprom windows.

I still build out my PC's, just because sometimes you get the manufacturers that don't update bios for newer processors.  I just buy the stuff when the next gen stuff is released, so I get the benefit of the price breaks.  I just bought a new x48 chipset board for about $100.00 (my old socket 775 board died last month), this thing sold for over $300 a year or so ago before the Socket 1366 stuff came out.  It's the top of the line Socket 775 chipset out, and the only one "officially" specked at 1600Mhz FSB for the Extreme processors.  I don't really like that intel has 3 concurrent sockets going on, though I believe they will probably maintain the 1156 (AKA Socket H) for mainstream and 1366 (AKA socket B) for the high end to further differentiate the thing.  I didn't really want to invest on a socket 1156 until intel figures out if they are going to offer the 6 core processors on it, so far, it's only a 1366 socket processor.

[jay]

I have heard that Microsoft is against this. They license a lot of their software by the processor and multi-core technology steals revenue since you can hyper-thread SQL and similar and run with fewer licenses.
This is sort of like IGT bullying JCM into not releasing the new colored $5's for the S+.
I thought they had learned their lesson when they came out with the Irridum procesor and said that was the only way to do 64bit and backwards compatiability with 32bit was a pipe dream
Its just a  matter of time. They have to move forward otherwise AMD and others will be nipping at their heals rather than feasting on crumbs. I( am sure they are just scheming how to take the market in a proprietary direction in which they hold all the patents. This is why I think BlueRay will be short lived. Sony holds the patents and everyone from the hardware manufacturers to the studios pays Sony a license fee.

[jdkmunch]

I found a keyboard for $40 on eBay so I went for it.

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/c7scsphmch8&rel=0" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/c7scsphmch8&rel=0</a>

[StatFreak]

Gotta love the old school write protect mechanism on the old 5 1/4 and 8 inch floppies.  I use to use spare ones to block out eprom windows.

I still build out my PC's, just because sometimes you get the manufacturers that don't update bios for newer processors.  I just buy the stuff when the next gen stuff is released, so I get the benefit of the price breaks.  I just bought a new x48 chipset board for about $100.00 (my old socket 775 board died last month), this thing sold for over $300 a year or so ago before the Socket 1366 stuff came out.  It's the top of the line Socket 775 chipset out, and the only one "officially" specked at 1600Mhz FSB for the Extreme processors.  I don't really like that intel has 3 concurrent sockets going on, though I believe they will probably maintain the 1156 (AKA Socket H) for mainstream and 1366 (AKA socket B) for the high end to further differentiate the thing.  I didn't really want to invest on a socket 1156 until intel figures out if they are going to offer the 6 core processors on it, so far, it's only a 1366 socket processor.

Rick, can you be more specific? What brand and model board did you buy? Did you get it at Frys?

[rickhunter]

Bought this when there was a 10% bing cashback and a combo discount of $75.00 when purchased with certain CPU's (I bought a Core2Quad 8400 for $149 at the same time that I used to upgrade my parents old core2 E4300) around the "Black Friday" timeframe.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128331

You can buy the MSI Platinum X48 from tiger direct right now for $120.00.  I don't think there's sales tax in CA from Tiger Direct.  If you use bing cashback you get an extra 8% off.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3747315&CatId=3646

[StatFreak]

Bought this when there was a 10% bing cashback and a combo discount of $75.00 when purchased with certain CPU's (I bought a Core2Quad 8400 for $149 at the same time that I used to upgrade my parents old core2 E4300) around the "Black Friday" timeframe.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128331

You can buy the MSI Platinum X48 from tiger direct right now for $120.00.  I don't think there's sales tax in CA from Tiger Direct.  If you use bing cashback you get an extra 8% off.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3747315&CatId=3646

Thanks Rick.