Building a Better PC

kweaver · Jul 29, 2011

Matt - One link for the Coolermaster case that I sent you the link for was around $50 more at Newegg.

Allen - Stay away from Tiger ... you'll get hooked and there goes the Cub Money !
That unit "sounds" good but with only one review I might have looked around for something with more reviews.
It doesn't say how many memory slots it has but if it has any empty slots I'd put more in and I'd replace what they have in it. They have a slow speed in it. I know that CPU will take higher than the 10600. Since it's got the 64bit OS you can utilize all the memory that you put in. 32bit OS is limited to about 3.5gig NO MATTER how much you put in.

The International Space Station is suppose to de-orbit in 2020. Since at this time Russia has the only thing flying to there they said that they were going to let it fall into the ocean.
We have spent Billions and other countries a lot less BUT Russia is going to let it fall ...
I think we need a brave soul to take a CUB CADET SGT up there and tow it around the Earth a few times and rewind it's orbit.

<font size="-2">I gotta get to bed!</font>

mgonitzke · Jul 29, 2011

Ken-

The one I wound up buying was a penny cheaper at Newegg than Tigerdirect, and was chosen because a couple of my friends had used a similar one and were happy with it.

aschumacher · Jul 29, 2011

Matt + Ken thanks for your observations. New box will probabily be here Monday. Looked at memory strips...just to see what existed...One mfgr had a 24Gig kit! (6x 4gig) $269. Ohoooooo

kweaver · Jul 29, 2011

Allen - Here's some of my past purchases for a price comparison for ya.
Memory sure has got cheaper !

aschumacher · Jul 29, 2011

OK, for my future plans...new PC has a DVD-RW drive. Will that read or write an old fashion CD ? <font size="-2">I suspect not</font>
Note: was digging thru old stuff and found a couple of HD's that I salvaged a bunch of years back. 20 gig! Gonna need a calculator to see how much bigger a 1T drive is.

mgonitzke · Jul 29, 2011

Allen-

Any modern DVD burner also does CDs...I've never seen one that didn't. 1TB = 1000 GB, so your new hard drive is 50 times bigger.

kweaver · Jul 29, 2011

Allen - My first PC which is on a shelf behind me had no HD. My second PC which is under desk #2 has a 210meg HD. I was in "Save File" heaven back then !

My new SSD will be here tomorrow.
My new 1T HD and Winderz 7 will be here Monday.

MOBO = no word yet
8gig memory = backorder
New PS and Internal SSD rack not yet ordered.
Those 4 things are all that's left unless I get a new case and some "other" toys.
1000 dpi optical mouse sounds good. My 12 year old Microsoft optical is about wore out.

dross · Jul 29, 2011

The first computer I was around, you loaded with a cassett deck. Not sorry that got better

aschumacher · Jul 29, 2011

Dave, thats really going back. I remember a few items my company had that loaded off cassettes. I had a few special retail terminals for a while that loaded off punched-paper-tape readers. Until modified some of the readers would poop out because of static discharge as the paper moved along.
Somewhere I still have a 4004 ALU mini-processor chip. A 16 pin job.
Wanna go further back?...anyone remember of the Altair 8080...you loaded programs by flipping toggle switches for each memory location !!

kweaver · Jul 29, 2011

... and to remember which switch you flipped for what , you wrote down the position on your stone tablet.

Allen - ya ever get flipped off ??

aschumacher · Jul 29, 2011

In many places I worked I got 'turned on' more than flipped off...

kweaver · Jul 29, 2011

So you got a "1" instead of a "0"

dross · Jul 30, 2011

The first flight simulator I played on was in dos
Three different ways to play either you did a world war II bi-wing or you could fly, I think, a piper cub, from air port to air port or an F-15 simulator. It was all black screen with white outlines. I worked 2nd shift carrying molten zink in ladels. I'd get home about midnight and fly from midway to moline while I settled down for bed. Sorry just had a decent memory and thought I'd share. My brother built that computer while stationed in Japan in the early 80's.

kide · Jul 31, 2011

The first computer.....IBM 360-30.. 64 K of main memory..5 Meg removable hard drives (remember, this was like 1967..) and this was processing all the business for a pretty good size insurance company. We even go nightly transmissions of data from the California office - they used a keypunch in cali to read the cards there and they were repunched on another keypunch here.. Reams and reams of green bar every night...

Then on to realtime networks, rooms full of disk drives, microwave communications systems......

First PC here at home - Commodore 64 then a build it myself PC 80-86, 5 meg hardcard......amber screen monitor, dot matrix printer and a 300 bps modem for gettin' on the old BBS systems....

kmcconaughey · Jul 31, 2011

Anyone the least bit interested in the development of the PC should watch the 1996 PBS program "Triumph of The Nerds." It's looking a bit dated now but the history in it is worth the watch.

Here's links to the 3 part series, each is about 51 minutes long:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Being the nerd that I am, I got the series on VHS tape shortly after it came out. I've had it in DIVX format for several years on writable DVD. Now I keep a copy of it on a 1TB HD for use with the laptop I use as a HTPC. It's worth watching multiple times.