I have finally entered the 21st Century

[Combat Wombat]

Atrocities said:
I am still using my Acer P75 with its 100mhz cpu, 16 megs of ram, 2meg Mytrox Mystic video card, and 800meg hard drive. Its the best damn machine money could buy. I especially love windows 95, the best OS ever made for a pc. This is my work horse PC and if a game won't run on it, then I don't play it.

That was all sarcastic right? The only OS worse than 95 was ME and you couldn't even fit SE4 on that hard drive.

[capnq]

Combat Wombat said: you couldn't even fit SE4 on that hard drive.

Now you're being sarcastic. My SEIV folder is only 566M currently.

[Combat Wombat]

capnq said:

Now you're being sarcastic. My SEIV folder is only 566M currently.

I am sitting at 1.28GB for my install and also keep in mind hes got have room for the OS and stuff too.

[capnq]

Combat Wombat said: I am sitting at 1.28GB for my install and also keep in mind hes got have room for the OS and stuff too.

A minimum install of Win98 is less than 250M; I assume Win95 would be similar in size. An 800M HD would have enough room if you used compression and limited how many mods and shipsets you installed. Granted you couldn't do much else with it, but it's still possible.

[Gandalf Parker]

What happened to the old machine?
You can load Linux to it for free. Since linux needs so much less machine than Windows does, you will get a box at least as powerful as your new one (altho limited to other purposes).

Make a server out of it and you can replace all of your ISP needs for you, family, and friends. No more limits on webspace, email size, ftping. And host domains. And you can host games. And be useful as a beta tester. And you can provide hosting for peoples mods/maps.

Or if you are a programmer then you can play with the power side of it. Especially for really large text applications, databases, spreadsheets, etc.

Or you can automate your house. Lights, temperature, security, all of the things you have seen on any SciFi tv show. You can even give it voice control and give it a name or have it work as if its magical spells. If you want to consider that then visit www.SmartHome.com (WARNING: hand the credit cards to someone else to hold before going there the first time if you have low self-control)

[capnq]

Gandalf Parker said: What happened to the old machine?

I'm still using it for day-to-day Web surfing and gaming, because one thing the new box has is an empty slot where the DSL modem is going to go when I get around to signing up for it.

My friend and I discussed putting a third partition on it with Linux, but I don't really have any projects that I want to do with it. She thought I'd get more use out of the DOS emulator (DOS Box) she put on it. (So far, she's been right. I've been playing Master of Orion (I) on it.)

I may eventually connect the new PC to this one and the other old one in a LAN.

[Edi]

Capnq, you will actually want to buy an external 4-port DLS router/switch if your finances are up to it. A basic model should cost somewhere around $40 to $50 and a WLAN-enabled no more than $100. I work tech support for a major ISP and believe me when I tell you that internal DSL modems are nothing less than bastard hellspawn nightmares.

They're quite fine and dandy as long as there aren't any problems, but the second something manifests, you're up the creek without a paddle because it's usually impossible to tell if the problem is with the modem, with the computer in general or with the actual DSL line unless something in the network is obviously at fault (such as a DSLAM going down or not being reachable from operations).

An external DSL modem uses the network card to connect to the computer to the modem, so from the computer point of view, it acts like any other network connection. Any problems can be easily isolated to either computer, DSL modem, the connecting cables or the actual network (which is the responsibility of the ISP, the rest are on your own head).

I've heard enough about various US ISPs that I guarantee you that if you have an internal DSL modem, they will refuse to give you any tech support whatsoever and will insist that the problem is with your modem and computer until you have it analyzed by some qualified computer repair professionals, out of your own pocket.

As for what kind of a DSL modem you should get, I recommend a Telewell if you can get it. That may be difficult to find in the US, as it's a Finnish company and mainly operates here, but they make really solid products these days, unlike the old days when they were known as Telehell in some tech support circles. Zyxel DSL modems are solid, easily configurable and not liable to give you crap in any way. Stay the hell away from D-Link, though, those boxes are the spawn of everything unholy and then some.

As far as computer specs go, this thread almost embarrasses me. I had a 500 MHz Celeron system up until a year ago when it finally burned out. It survived a lightning strike, a couple of blown capacitors and two burned out coils (literally, the motherboard was scorched around them and the wiring crumbled to dust on touch) which I replaced (and needed a hammer and a nail to actually remove the last bits of the other one so I could solder in the replacement) as well as one CPU socket failure. It was one of the Abit double processor boards and it was a very good computer.

The replacement rig is state of the art as of one year ago, with Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz processor, 2 GB of RAM, a 350 GB HD and an Nvidia 7900GT graphics card. The performance is almost ridiculously over the top for most of the games I play, I can basically amp everything to the max and not see a hit. Except in Dominions 3...

[Herode]

Originally Posted by Combat Wombat

That was all sarcastic right? The only OS worse than 95 was ME

You forgot Vista. I never went to Linux - I am computer-lazy and don't like heavy intall procedures at all - but now I've installed Vista on my new PC & I know... I will soon migrate (to Ubuntu)

Give me baaaaaack my XP