Computer Operators Unite! Page 2

With all the computers I've operated over the years, the PC is the only one that I've gotten no credit for! Until lately. I've owned and upgraded my home PC since 1989. It was a 286 with an AMD chip. My first upgrade was to a VGA monitor when my amber one gave up. COLOR! :) Then with the help of a friend (Thanks Lunatic!) I upgraded (and learned a lot) to a 486/80 (another AMD chip) in a full tower case! The next upgrades were a blur... a modem (from 2400 to 9600), a printer (wow, those dot matrix printers were slow and noisy!), Windows 3.11, a 3x CD-ROM, 2 modem upgrades (14400 & 36400?) and many hard drive upgrades. All the hard drives were SCSI because that's what was in my 286 (a 20 megger!). I ended up with 2 SCSI hard drives and the SCSI 3x CD-ROM. Learning how to configure the string of SCSI devices was frustrating at best.

Three years ago I joined the rest of humanity and upgraded my entire system. I bought the following: A new Tyan Trinity 100AT motherboard, an AMD K6/2 350mhz chip, a 48x CD-ROM, a Creative Labs Voodoo 3DFX video card with 16MB, a Soundblaster Live+ soundcard with surround speakers, a Creative CD/RW, 128MB PC100 RAM, a Microsoft USB keyboard and mouse, 56K modem, a 4-port USB hub, a WD 10GB hard drive and another 15GB hard drive, an Epson Stylus 440 ink jet printer, a 19" monitor, a cable modem and WIN98. Putting it all together myself was rewarding and showed me that I had learned something over the years! I know I've really needed to build a NEW computer for the past 2 or 3 years. Read below to find out what happened!

Although I spent about $1300. on hardware for this machine and I probably could have bought one for much less, the experience of putting it together myself and knowing what's inside and how to replace each item is invaluable. I'd have it no other way!



More logos of hardware and/or software that I have experience (good or bad) with. I thank these companies for their products. Without them where would I be?


2005 finally brought me what I needed. I became unemployed, so I used the time to go back to school. I learned all about Office and lots more. My grandfather died, and out of bad things, come good things.

I built my brand new system with some of my grandfathers money! This is what is in my new computer: An Asus K8N-DL motherboard with 2 dual-core AMD Opteron 250 chips and 2GB of DDR2 ram. Coming off the board I have an ATI All-In-Wonder X600 Pro video card attached to my new Samsung 21.3" SyncMaster 213T monitor. I have a 4-disk raid set-up that isn't cooperating, so I bought a single 300GB Seagate hard drive. My CD-Rom & DVD-Rom are both by Plextor, and the case I put it in is an Aspire X-Dreamer II. I added a wireless Logitech keyboard and mouse. Except for the raid, I'm very happy with the results! The total has reached over $5000, so far. I wonder if I'm done!

I Guess I need to add somemore logos, eh? LOL!





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