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Found and disassembled my first PC

S

Sehnsucht

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Sep 21, 2008
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Well, technically it was my parent's, but it was the very first PC we had in my house. My parents ordered it in 1996, which was around the same time I was playing Word Muncher on the old Macintoshes at my elementary school. :D

This thing was an old beige NEC tower, and getting everything out took a screw gun and no less than 50 screws. :eek: I know this thing has absolutely no historical significance whatsoever, and was just a cheap crappy PC, but it's still cool in a "look how far we've come" sort of way.

The CPU was a Intel Pentium MMX SL27S, at 233 MHz. :D

DSC03304.jpg


3.2 GB hard drive:

DSC03299.jpg
DSC03302.jpg


RAM: (I have no idea what the speed or density was, probably not much)

DSC03308.jpg


Mobo:

DSC03313.jpg


And I have no idea what this is: (Edit: PCI/ISA riser card, thanks Designer Dale!)

DSC03311.jpg


Anyways, I was just bored and needed to take something apart. :cool:
 
EWWWWW OLD TECHNOLOGY *barfs*

Lol, yeah it's cool to see how far we've come today. I'm guessing you computer had a maxed out RAM of 2 MB ;)

It's pretty cool you did that, 50 screws... Must have been a pain in the a** eh?
 
ikermalli said:
EWWWWW OLD TECHNOLOGY *barfs*

Lol, yeah it's cool to see how far we've come today. I'm guessing you computer had a maxed out RAM of 2 MB ;)

It's pretty cool you did that, 50 screws... Must have been a pain in the a** eh?
Click to expand...

Yes, a definite PITFA. :D What's more is that my parents paid about $2,000 for it in 1996. Ah, the classic days of Windows 95 DLL Hell...:D
 
For what it's worth, that last thing is a PCI slot riser card. It was used in small form factor cases. The card goes in one motherboard slot and PCI and older expansion cards plug into it at a 90 degree angle.

My first computer was an Apple LC II. The cpu ran at 16 mHz. It maxxed out at 8 MB of ram with an 80 MB drive. System 7 would only recognize 6 MB. When I bought the System 7.5 upgrade, it came on 40 separate 3.5 in floppies. The first computer I used was an Apple IIe with 128 K of memory and no HD.

Dale
 
ISA slots. OMG. OLD.

At least it has PCI.

I have a 120 MB hd somewhere. With a game Dad wrote on it.
 
I recall my spectrum...it had no hard drive and 128kb or RAM... I kind of miss the cassette player deck and horrendous screeching sounds it made while loading a game :D

My first proper PC that my parents bought had 16MB of RAM, and a pentium 133mhz processor, can't remember what hard drive it had... but it did have something called a 'CD-ROM' drive which span at x8, and the idea of a 28.8kbps modem was sooooo future proof. As I recall my Dad paid about £2000 for it!

Good times :rolleyes:
 
Sehnsucht said:
Yes, a definite PITFA. :D What's more is that my parents paid about $2,000 for it in 1996. Ah, the classic days of Windows 95 DLL Hell...:D
Click to expand...

:D I just realized I referred to it as a "cheap" PC, although $2,000 really isn't cheap. I guess it was the beige color that threw me off.

Anyone know if there's a way to decode the stickers on the RAM modules? It'd be interesting to see how much (or rather how little) RAM was in it...:)
 
Yeah, I recall my first PC had a 1.2GB hard drive. It's insane to think I can now hold 10x that, in my microSD card that's the size of my fingernail. :D (I'm only 18, and I believe the computer was from '96 or so)
 
I have an old tower in the basement that runs Windows 3.1. I seem to recall we bought it back in the early 90s for about $1,700. It even had a CD drive!!!

I'd open it up, but I have no idea how (I can't find any screws on it!)
 
spaceboots06 said:
Is that old RAM compatible with new machines? If so, you should put them in your computer and see what they are.
Click to expand...

If by 'new machine' you mean a Mac from circa 1995 then by all means go ahead and try it. But you'd have to jam that RAM into a new computer pretty hard to get it to fit nowadays. :D
 
CJS7070 said:
I have an old tower in the basement that runs Windows 3.1. I seem to recall we bought it back in the early 90s for about $1,700. It even had a CD drive!!!

I'd open it up, but I have no idea how (I can't find any screws on it!)
Click to expand...

The very first computer I ever used ran Windows 3.1. I remember playing games like SimCity, Rodent's Revenge, and Doom on it. :D It belonged to my uncle, and he actually still has it and it still works. He refuses to give it up, much less let me take it apart. I will someday... :cool:
 
Sehnsucht said:
The very first computer I ever used ran Windows 3.1. I remember playing games like SimCity, Rodent's Revenge, and Doom on it. :D It belonged to my uncle, and he actually still has it and it still works. He refuses to give it up, much less let me take it apart. I will someday... :cool:
Click to expand...

If you lived local to me then I have an old computer or two that you could have. Dunno of you want to drive all the way to socal to get them though.

I'm sure your local salvation army would have a computer or two for pretty cheap.
 
Sehnsucht said:
...
Anyone know if there's a way to decode the stickers on the RAM modules? It'd be interesting to see how much (or rather how little) RAM was in it...:)
Click to expand...

Circa late-1996 to early-1997, 16MB of RAM (total) was pretty common on the average desktop PC sold w/Win95. Taking a guess, based on the size of the hard drive in yours (somewhat large for its time), its likely your system came with at least 32MB of RAM.
 
We have an old Dell XPS downstairs from around 1997...

$2700
Pentium 200 MMX
64mb RAM (upgraded from 32)
2gb hard drive
2mb 2D video card (can play Half-Life under software rendering pretty well!)
VooDoo2 (added later)
12X CD-ROM

Let me repeat: $2700
 
Pretty cool. But, think of how much fun it would have been to "take it apart" Office Space fax machine style! :D Stress relief at it's best.
 
Oh I love this kind of stuff! We've got a drawer that's stuffed with old drives, cables, graphics cards, modems. I keep thinking I should put them to use and build some kind of low tech media PC or server (as if it could handle 1920x1080 though :D). Inspired by my local PC shop who've had a server PC nicknamed Bumblebee that has been an active server since the mid 90's. Tis bootiful.

Are you going to do anything with your old PC? You totally should.
 
raggedjimmi said:
Oh I love this kind of stuff! We've got a drawer that's stuffed with old drives, cables, graphics cards, modems. I keep thinking I should put them to use and build some kind of low tech media PC or server (as if it could handle 1920x1080 though :D). Inspired by my local PC shop who've had a server PC nicknamed Bumblebee that has been an active server since the mid 90's. Tis bootiful.

Are you going to do anything with your old PC? You totally should.
Click to expand...

Well, I dismantled pretty much everything and didn't save any of the screws, so putting it back together is out of the question. :D Plus it had been in the garage for years, and an ungodly amount of dust has coated everything...I'm pretty sure it's officially dead. The most interesting parts, the RAM modules and CPU, are now in my desk drawer. I also have a "newer" PC, a Dell from 2003, that still works, and still has files that I'd like to keep, but can't be used because the login password was forgotten...:rolleyes: I might see about some file recovery on that one.

I am going to hang on to this stuff for a long time...a 233 MHz CPU will be even more laughable in 20 more years. :eek:
 
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