486dx2 System Question

[jnordness]

Good thread. This post is bringing back memories. Someone put it very well, hardware just isn't as exciting anymore. I can remember my first 'modern' computer back in the mid 90's. It was a Tandy 2500/sx 386/33 I bought when I was 14. I can remember the day I bought a sound blaster and a 2x cd-rom for it. I was da man! Later on, I managed to get Win95 running on it, with a total of 10mb of ram. SSSLLLOOOWWW. I remember when I first saw a demo of Quake running with the 3dfx Voodoo card, and I had to have one. I think it was the bi-linear filtering that hooked me, because every other 'accelerator' out there still made everything look blocky. I still think the best CPU I ever had was my K6-233. I found out that the motherboard I had had the 83 mhz bus speed, but it was an early board, so the PCI bus ran at 1/2 of the system bus, so my PCI slots were running at 41.5mhz, and my CPU was running at 250mhz! I used to play Mechwarrior 2: Mercenaries online, and with that setup I was ALWAYS the first to drop into the game, even faster than guys with dual P2-333's and twice the ram. Plus, the Voodoo2 looked killer with everything. Man, I miss the good old days. That K6 is still soldiering on in my mother-in-laws computer, even though I overheated it on many occasions (forgetting to plug the fan back in). OK, I'm done rambling as well.  :-D

Joel

[jnordness]

Ok, not quite done rambling. Doing some reflection on the state of hardware nowadays, I know now why hardware isn't as exciting anymore, at least for x86 hardware. When I got into hardware in the mid-late 90's, there were only a few different types of motherboards. The most popular was the socket 7. Remember when you could get an Intel, AMD, Cyrix, or even IDT winchip or Rise MP6 processors in socket 7 variety? The performance of the processor had to stand on its own merit, because one could test different processors on the SAME motherboard with the same peripherals. Wanted to go to a different processor from a different manufacturer? Just lift the lever, take the old one out, put the new one in, close the lever, and move a few jumpers. Now, one socket is for one manufacturer and one socket is for another. Going to a different processor from a different manufacturer (or heck, even socket. Look at AMD with sockets 754, 939, 940, F, AM2, AM2+, upcoming AM3) requires a change in motherboard. It seems to have divided the consumers (hardware guys), not giving them as much variety as before (or, too much variety, depending on how you look at it). I SWEAR I'm done rambling now!

Joel