Do you keep a PC lineage?

One of the benefits of Asperger's Syndrome (sadly one which you don't necessarily appreciate when scared to death of being discovered as such when talking to people) is that I keep a mental Rolodex of all the PCs I have ever owned.  This is off the top of my head mostly, so don't expect the strictest of accounts:

0th PC:  Mum's Socket A Machine

• CPU: AMD Athlon XP 2500+ 1833MHz
• Motherboard:  Some Abit model...
• RAM:  I suspect 1GB DDR-266 since it could at least play MOHAA on XP...
• GPU:  Nvidia Geforce 2 MX 64MB
• HDD:  ~80GB EIDE
• Resolution:  1024x768

This PC isn't strictly mine, hence the fact that it's my 0th PC.  While this is the PC that got me into gaming, I could hardly wait to be able to mutter 12-year-old swears about the rangers in Medal of Honor: Allied Assault without my dad browbeating me, having heard me in the same room (taking the computer away was like meta-death to me).

1st PC:  1st PC?...

• CPU:  AMD Athlon XP 1700+ 1467MHz
• Motherboard:  Abit KV7
• RAM:  1GB DDR-333
• GPU:  ATi Radeon 9500 Pro 128MB
• HDD: 80GB EIDE
• Monitor:  Viewsonic VX924 1280x1024

My first PC...  so goddamn old the CPU doesn't even have a sticker on my case's CPU lineage:

Unrelated items:
1)  The Pentium II Xeons were installed when my case allegedly housed one of the PCs rendering Lost in Space.
2)  The central barcode - Apparently scans as 'SEC' o.O
3)  Right items - random stuph that has ended up in my PC over time.

That said, this PC was instrumental in allowing me to graduate from muttering at MOHAA to screaming unspeakable possessed noises at it instead (seriously kids, DON'T attempt MOHAA on hard when you're 12).

Talking about this PC also reminded me of what stuff I also had in it:  for the longest time, or what felt like it, I had an all-copper Cooler Master HSF with the noisiest freaking fan I have ever heard aside from delta fans; combine this with barely-effective dual heatpipes at a time when a 1.6V CPU was considered a "Low Voltage" model (1.75V being the norm for AMD CPUs), and you have a genuine waste of space!  A waste of space that was replaced not before time by a Zalman Flower cooler and suspended 92mm fan ;)

Maximum Overclock:  ~1.8GHz

2nd PC:  SWAG in the proper sense of the word...

• CPU:  AMD Sempron 64 2800+ 1.6GHz
• Motherboard:  Some Socket 754 make
• RAM:  1GB Generic DDR2-667
• GPU:  ATi Radeon X1300 128MB
• HDD:  250GB SATA-1
• Monitor:  Viewsonic VX924 1280x1024

Not a great deal is known about this PC because it was so goddamn poor, plus the fact that at 15 I had pilfered a small trust fund to...  ahem...  fund it.  It spent several months (anything from 3-6 months from memory) stashed in my dad's shed after Maplin refused to return it (lack of receipt ;) ).

Maximum Overclock:  Did Not Attempt

3rd PC:  The Advanced Massive Dominator

• CPU:  AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ 2.2GHz
• Motherboard:  Abit Fatal1ty AN9 32X
• RAM:  Bizarre mismatch of 1GB Generic DDR2-667 and 2GB Super Talent DDR2-800
• GPU:  ATi Radeon X1950 Pro 256MB
• HDD:  250GB SATA-1
• Monitor:  Viewsonic VX924 1280x1024

Now we're getting somewhere!  Definitely a moment of pride for me since I now had a PC that could toast those Netburst heathens!  The defining title for this PC?  Battlefield 2 :P

Some notable facts about this PC:

1. The RAM Mismatch is down to me being completely unable to afford a replacement 4GB or even 3GB kit (DDR2 is still an anomaly of DDR pricing, with DDR2 costing more than either DDR or DDR3); I had to ship it in from the US, as well.
2. The Motherboard had a separate daughter-card for audio output - ostensibly for a cleaner audio signal; It was mounted on an offset PCI-e 1x slot that was also flipped round.  As well as this, 2 x 40mm fans were in the I/O panel, never turned on since they were just too fecking loud!
3. This was the first PC that was housed in my current TDZ 2000 GX1 case, before that it was in some no-name "Gaming" case which didn't even have a single 120mm fan mount, relying on 80mm fans throughout.  I ended it's tenure properly by giving it a puddly, poorly executed gold paint job.

This PC now enjoys a peaceful retirement as my dad's main PC, with the exception of the monitor, but that's another story!

Maximum Overclock:  ~2.6GHz

4th PC:  Defection Part 1

• CPU:  Intel Core 2 Duo E8200 2.66GHz
• Motherboard:  ASUS P5K Premium WIFI-AP
• RAM:  4GB Corsair Dominator DDR2-1066 Dual Channel
• GPU:  ATi Radeon HD 4850 512MB
• Sound Card:  Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi SB0770 OEM
• HDD:  750GB Samsung HD753J
• Monitor:  Dell S2209W 1920x1080

Yep, you read that; I bought Intel for this PC; was definitely impressed with a lowly 65W TDP under the previous 90W TDP, as well as it's increased efficiency in all regards.

This is the point it began to dawn on me that I'm not very lucky when it comes to overclocking - I only managed to squeeze some 600MHz out of this CPU when others were reaching 1GHz increases >:(

Nevertheless, this was the first foray into 1080p and DirectX 10 (I was with ATi so ADD A POINT ONE!!!).  S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky is the game de jour with it's DirectX 10.1 adding sooooo much improvement to it's notorious performance issues; not that this was too much of a celebration since before I discovered how to turn noprefetch on I suffered hourly Blue-screens, sometimes within minutes of startup.

Interesting fact regarding the HD 4850 - I modded it's BIOS to overclock it permanently so that it would remain that way without needing the intervention of Rivatuner.

Following this was a stupid, ill-thought-out attempt to sell these bits in order to upgrade; forgot to account for depreciation and the fact that I used an iCute 600w (now forever rebranded iFryAllYourCircuitry with thanks to Autobot on the Bit-Tech Forum), which I suspect treated the VRMs to under-spec voltages for several years - this caused the motherboard to die on the poor fuck I sold it to, don't ask me how VRMs can "get used to voltages", it's the only theory I've got...

That left me without a PC for 1.5 years...

Maximum Overclock:  ~3.2GHz

5th PC:  Defection Part 2

• CPU:  Intel Core i5 2500K 3.3GHz
• Motherboard:  ASUS P8P67 B3 stepping
• RAM:  8GB Corsair DDR3-2000 (running 1866) Dual Channel (2GB x 4)
• GPU:  Nvidia Geforce GTX 560 1024MB
• Sound Card: ASUS Xonar DG
• HDD:  750GB Samsung HD753J
• Monitors:  Dell S2209W and Viewsonic VX924

And so we come to the end of this carousel of silicon to my current machine:

What can I say?  2 screens is liberating enough to justify 2 desks :)

You know what, fuck it, I'll let you go TMZ on the internals:

A veritable nest of wires can be beheld...

A healthy PSU fan transplant - yes, it is possible!
Thankfully un-furrying a CPU cooler is much easier with an air duster.

Among the car-accident wiring and wholly ineffective sound-deadening foam there's an Air Penetrator in there somewhere...

The collapsed defeat of a Perks For Pocket Change post, will probably just leave it like that TBH.

That Sharkoon 1000 80mm fan really showed off a good shutter; god I love my camera!

This is my current gaming/CAD machine; she runs very well and Windows 7 is remarkably smooth given that it's on a 6-year-old HDD.  The dual-screen setup is odd in that the screen heights are dissimilar both in resolution (1080 vs. 1024) and in physical height - this leads to the pointer seeming to jump vertically when crossing the border.  The best thing about it though is using it in CAD, being able to view both the model and some research material at the same time is such a breeze to say the least; the other thing it's good for is to view a slideshow of railway station pictures during a loading screen, as well as a few gadgets to monitor CPU, Memory and GPU utilization.

Maximum Overclock:  4.6GHz at 1.425V - toasty and risky...

I hope this recollection stirred fond memories in you all, especially if you began in the BBC micro era or similarly early days.  I for one love to tell stories like this and I'm only 22!  Being an OAP suddenly sounds so much more fun...

Unloved...

5th of September since I made my last post; I don't think I would have made a great deal of sense if I kept posting anyway, looking back over my blog really did illuminate how whimsical and silly my choice of words was still is.

To compress events into a nutshell (Why not just say "long story short?", oh yeah, it would be derivative... and dull), I have been job hunting for the past months and have finally landed a Christmas temp job at BHS:  Simply put, I pull trolleys out, stack shelves, retrieve stuph from the stockroom, repeat.  Occasionally there is a customer query or Fitting Room duty where I can stand there and just exist in between dealing with customers; try it sometime, just stand somewhere alone or lie down with your arm over your eyes (my preferred napping method) and let you and your mind just be.

It's an okay job, but I didn't count on how it tires you out - I don't feel as exhausted after a long walk, cycling 10 miles and back to towns you haven't even seen in nearly a decade or even taking the train to Hull...  from Camberley.  It's bizarre to think that raw enthusiasm can dull the weariness from virtually anything you feel passionate about, whereas after a "regular" job your first instinct is to just crash in bed and watch NerdCubed.  Yeah, not a great endorsement there, but there is one major reason why I took it up:  to give my projects a sorely-needed shot-in-the-arm.

Like playing "Engagement Ring Extortion Hunt"!

In all seriousness though, I really need to increase the scope of my work.  Incidentally I completely failed to divulge the business idea my pal DigiShark along with me and another friend went into:  Kryian Cases.  Basically we decided to start a PC Case business and we were all eager to get going, me especially given my sore need for a new PC case.

It may not have cable-routing holes or a even enough width to house my CPU cooler with the side window on the inside, but it has A SHAPEWAYS SPARK!!!

To cut to the chase, we floundered because we were stupid with our money; rather humourously this is resulted in the threat of debt collectors on DigiShark's doorstep since he owes them money for the storage unit we rented.  The point is that I really feel I can take up the gauntlet (famous last words), not necessarily with PC cases but in other fields like my Tawe_TMD Shapeways operation, although my favourite idea of the moment is to develop R/C Aircraft plans and sell them online along with laser-cut wood packs on Ebay (probably through the Tawe_TMD ebay page since it ought to be used for something, right?).

I've run into a bit of a rut with respect to Tawe_TMD, I've discovered that copying plan views of carriages into 3D models for eventual printing is not something I want to be doing as my main source of income - 2 to 6 hours a week is where I'll draw the line since I need to make room for other business operations.  I think it is that I lack an outlet for my creativity in this line of work given that all I need to do is follow a plan.  Designing R/C aircraft will hopefully allow me to express both my imagination and my skills in creating aircraft, and I can finally transition properly from X-Plane 10 to real life; prepare for Eldritch Abominations that somehow fly in spite of their freakish forms!

Whew!  If you've stayed with me through this self-absorbed expulsion of literary gas I'm impressed with you, impressed enough to treat you to the adorable dog Ruby nuzzling under a sofa cover: