Your best 5 hardware purchases ever

Discussion in 'General Hardware' started by moab600, Nov 8, 2013.

  1. ArgonV

    ArgonV Master Guru

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    3xASUS PA248Q monitors in surround/Eyefinity config + XFX Triple Monitor Stand
     
  2. Veteran

    Veteran Ancient Guru

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    Very hard to answer because some would be equal to others for the time they were released. I may prefer my 690 to a voodoo 2 but at the time the voodoo was amazing to the point that it was actually better than the 690 for its time in its day so the 2 cards cancel each other out. Impossible to answer for me im afraid.:)

    However 5 off the top of my head are...
    Zx Spectrum+2
    C64
    CBM Amiga 500
    GVP Impact II hardrive
    Neo Geo
    PC Engine

    Well 6 then, infact even when i think of all the other stuff i could probably scub that list and start again.
     
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  3. Deathchild

    Deathchild Ancient Guru

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    Haha lol yeah man. :D I was just trolling you anyways but thanks for the answer. :)

    I'm sure it was hard to pick out the 5 best lol.
     
  4. ---TK---

    ---TK--- Guest

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    I picked like 10 anyways myself
     

  5. CrazY_Milojko

    CrazY_Milojko Ancient Guru

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    Most of us "old age" geeks from that time were in some kind of war backthen: ZX Spectrum fans vs. Commodore fans ...and we hated eachother badly. Amstrad/Schneider CPC fans also existed but they were in minority compared to large ZX vs C= community.
    Vet, guess you've started with ZX Spectrum and later switched to Commodore club...
    For all Commodore fans here is something to remind them on good old times, hide emotions if you can:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRI7hHwiRxk

    I had a really bad experience with 3DFx Voodoo Banshee in games because of unpolished drivers. :(
     
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  6. Veteran

    Veteran Ancient Guru

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    Yeah i had literally all the computers from the 80s/90s at some point, as well as extra hardware like hardisks, extra ram modules, video toaster etc and much more.

    Yeah i remember those wars fondly, just like it is today with AMD and Nvidia. The best wars were the ST and Amiga, although the ST came first and had a massive amount of software the Amiga slowly caught up and overtook it. The wars that raged in computer magazines at the time were Legendary and very much from this era is know computer folklore. Things like Zzap 64 and the industry Legends Julian "Jazzer" Rignall along with Gary Penn and Steve Jarrett. The list goes on...

    Rignall was quite good at 2d shooting games and entered many competitons and won. Zzap 64 used to have a section to do with High scores of the month on computer and on the Arcade. He then got a job at Zzap 64 as a reviewer and was spot on with his reviews. He then managed to find is way to work for Virgin interative in US. A proper rags to riches story. The reviewers were vital as there was no youtube in those days or internet for that fact. You had to seek out and do your own research which was part of the fun. If you had something imported on Grey Import you felt like you had something not many people had out of the whole country. You felt special and it felt Good!

    Gary Penn was another going from Rags to Riches, he started at Zzap 64 and ended up writing the book for the Block buster movie The Book of Eli with Denzil Washington.

    I still have 100s of magazines to this day all ranging from around 1981 to late 90s and beyond (EDGE). I actually threw away a small fortune at one time by discarding 8 or 9 black bin bags full of magazines.



    It wasnt till i looked on the internet that many were rare and sought after and cost quite alot of money. I was gutted, but i still have alot of rare and sought after magazines. I would never sell them cause they remind me of good old days long gone...the halcyon/heady days. No such thing as a troll in those days which is why i dont believe in that stupid belief today. Good times indeed!

    I cant wait for this to come out....
    http://www.frombedroomstobillions.com/

    You can see Rignall in the Outakes movie chatting about the heady days which was literally the Prehistoric Caveman era of Video games. Look at what it has become today, The biggest Engrossing Entertainment medium in the whole world. Literally from the Bedroom programmer to the Multi Billion Dollar corporate Business that it is today. I remember the days when EA games were founded and were literally just 1 man in his Bedroom working from his Bedroom at his moms house, know look at them!
     
    Last edited: Nov 12, 2013
  7. CrazY_Milojko

    CrazY_Milojko Ancient Guru

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    Video Toaster! I wasn't rich enough backthen to buy A2000 + Video Toaster, that thing was not made for my A500 :( Most of local TV stations here started with A2000 + Video Toaster, it was such a nice piece of hardware...

    Only war that Atari ST was winning against Amiga was great MIDI interface/support and audio software for professional musicians. On all other fronts Amiga was unbeatable.

    I keep all magazines from '83, only God knows how many of them are in basement of my house. Sometimes I take a small chair, open one of those magazines and read them in basement while drinkin cofee and laughing loud like a child when I see something that reminds me on my childhood, nice old memories :)
     
    Last edited: Nov 12, 2013
  8. CrazY_Milojko

    CrazY_Milojko Ancient Guru

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    May I ask how old are you Vet? It seems to me that you are maybe year or two older than me ('74)...
     
  9. Veteran

    Veteran Ancient Guru

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    Im 38, i started in this game very very young. Around 4 or 5 or even younger than that as my relatives were lucky to actually own in there house An Original Space Invaders machine, An Asteroids machine and full size Pub Pool table! I was in heaven as i could play them all for free. I also had access to an original Atari 2600 from 1978 when they were in there prime, i was around 3 or 4 years old and i can still remember playing Combat from way back then.

    Oh yeah My Dad used the Video toaster for Video rendering and stuff like that. Remember the Chart show on TV? That was done with an Amiga and Video toaster!!

    From 1989
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3ta9nObRIg
    Pretty impressive for a 16bit machine although the Video toaster did most of the work.
     
    Last edited: Nov 12, 2013
  10. Violentum

    Violentum Guest

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    haha....
     

  11. moab600

    moab600 Ancient Guru

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    Impressive, 38 old and have such rich gaming xp, always good to hear :D i gonna give u easier or harder choices veteran, in my next survey which will be the opposite of it, should get intersting.
    As off topic, when i was young around 11(25 atm) i played a lot of MK and Battletoads+DD with my friend, and Flinstones man those games were THE THING and of course wwf95 and primal rage, heck i was undefeated and gain money back then, my youtube channel if full of videos about those games.
     
  12. Violentum

    Violentum Guest

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    I am 42 so not much older. I had an original Atari 2600 back when it was all the rage. Back then my parents could only afford one game and so I played it over and over and over. I remember one of my friends from grade school had all the latest stuff as his parents were really well off. He had an Intellevision, colecovision, and if I remember all the games for it at that time.

    For me I have been a "gamer" since the early 80's and a PC gamer since 1995-1996. As a kid I used to go to the arcades in downtown Toronto and spend my paper route money LOL
     
  13. boodikon

    boodikon Ancient Guru

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    Did you ever use your money to play paperboy in the acade :) computer and videogames was my favourite mag which used to have games to type in on your zx spectrum ect, before the 2600 I had a binaton bat and ball type console before the 2600 came out , I had a few conversations back in the day with Julian rignall, jason Kingsley, and the brothers who started mastertronic, nice lads. Cant think of any console I never had, also I had a few vectrex games that were never releasede, friends dad was a director at mb games. God I wished I kept them all, never mind a least I enjoyed them and we all going to the grave one day. :)
     
  14. anticupidon

    anticupidon Ancient Guru

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    AMD Athlon 64 3200+ - Venice
    my first OC cpu,i lapped it and overclocked it on a Asus A8NE one of the best budget Nvidia chipset motherboards.

    Nvidia 6600GT i was so thrilled,i was able to play the first Farcry with maxed graphics.


    I7 860 still going strong,was bought at half price from Microcenter for me by a forum member

    Lenovo Thinkpad x200s
    for me it is my favourite gadget,enterprise class laptop,with amazing features,runs GNU Linux KDE installed on s Sandisk SSD.

    Sapphire HD 5850 Extreme was on sale for 120 eu (was seller's mistake),bought one ,still going strong for my gaming needs.
     
  15. Fender178

    Fender178 Ancient Guru

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    Mine would be

    1 Chaintech Geforce Fx 5700 Ultra (my first dual fan card)
    2. Leadtek Geforce 6800 (Played alot of Doom 3 with this card)
    3. GIGABYTE GA-EP45T-UD3LR Motherboard (my 1st 3rd party Mobo and it turned out to be a very good purchase.
    4. My Asus 23in LED back-lit HDMI monitor
    5. Cyrux Pr 233 233mhz Man an x86 processor that was good that wasn't AMD or Intel. (Wasn't purchased but still was in my possession)
     

  16. slickric21

    slickric21 Guest

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    1) Galaxy Galcier 6800 GT - allowed me my first real eye candy gaming, Farcry
    2) OCZ Vertex SSD 60gb - first gen SSD, wow did it seem fast compared to HDD
    3) XFX 8800 Ultra OC - allowed my my 2nd big eye candy game, Crysis
    4) MSI 7970 Lightining - allowed my 3rd big eye candy game, Metro 2033
    5) I7 4770k - Just a monster cpu
     
  17. CrazY_Milojko

    CrazY_Milojko Ancient Guru

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    You lucky bastard! :) Back in late '70 and early '80 my parents had started to build a new house (it was expencive and huge) so I was just a poor preteenage kid with not enough money in pockets to play games in arcades every day, most of the time I was just watching other kids playing arcades. Money parents had gave me for food in school I was collecting in secret so I could play few games in arcades once or twice a week. After comming from school (read: arcades after school) I was hungry like a wolf, my granny always told me something like this when she saw how I was eating food: "...good Good little fella, you are eating food for two adult people, parent must give you more money for food in school..." and really they raised that money for "food" later after she told them few times about that. Of course I didn't bought any food for that money, all money has gone to arcades... :) Until one day mom caught me playing games in arcade after school, you may guess what happened after that... :(
    My first contact with personal computers was in (rich) neighbours house somewhere in early '80: almighty ZX Spectrum 48K. I was so jealous at him because of that, but not long after that my dad had bought me C-64, after that I was No.1 kid in neighbourhood :)

    That explains everything. My dad was/is electrical engeneer but he always prefered old pen and paper method for calculations and printed board circuit design. Back in '90 I had tried to force him to finaly start using software like Electronics Workbench for calculations, electronics simulations and PCB desing, I' had even buld him a PC just for that but he had refused me every time. I guess he didn't want to look stupid in front of his young son.... :(


    Good to see people like my age here :) About 6 months form now I'm going to step into 5th decade of my life (I'm still 39 y.o.), still gaming when I have free time and strenght. I have (for now, thinking about more later) 3 kids, all three of them have their own gaming rigs. Older son (12.5 y.o.) is a gamer from early age, he started to play games when he was just 3 y.o. (Sega Dreamcast, Sony PlayStation 2...) and now he is some kind of gaming beast I can't match with in games like Crysis 2 mp, Crysis 3 mp, BF3, Warface... reflexes like a ninja (C-64 Last Ninja 2 :) ), he was accepted to first gamig clan (Flawless Victory, short: Fvic ...I think SLI-756 remembers them from Crysis 2 multiplayer) when he was just 10.5 y.o...etc. Young son (6.5) is one that I can match against in multiplayer games, sometimes he beats me in BF3, Crysis 2 mp... and sometimes I'm a winner. His twin-sister plays different games (Minecraft, Sims 3...) so I don't have nothing to fear about her gaming skills. :)

    Maybe some of us old gamers should start new topic here on Guru3D, something like: "old farts blast from the past" :)
     
    Last edited: Nov 12, 2013
  18. nico1981

    nico1981 Guest

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    logitech G500
    ATI 5850
    DFI P45-TRS2
    Altec lansing
    samsung bx2331
     
  19. Veteran

    Veteran Ancient Guru

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    Hehe cool man:)

    Reading that was nice, i too remember walking around Arcades with no money constantly watching games in attract mode. The Last Ninja 1 and 2 showed what the c64 was really about for graphic and sound. System 3's OPUS by Marc cale, John Twiddy and Mev Dinc (funny how the names stick in your head after 26 years)Once this game came out the king of the 8 bits was officially confirmed and everyone no matter what computer they owned wanted to play it. It was so good it was even better than the 16bit versions! This truely was the Crysis of today with the sounds to match. Did you ever use a PCB Supergun? They were quite good before MAME came on the scene.
     
  20. CrazY_Milojko

    CrazY_Milojko Ancient Guru

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    "Your worst 5 hardware purchases ever" ?


    Hehehe man, I admit I've forgot those names from System 3 crew, nice to see someone like you from that period who still remember names of those people.
    Did you played Turrican 1 & 2 or Myth on C-64? Great games, fantastic graphic in Turrican 1 & 2, good music, HUGE sprites, some bosses at the end of levels in Turrican 1 & 2 were few screens high, only few 16bit acrade games had something like that! All those games were quite hard to finish (same as Last Ninja 1 & 2) and backthen there was no save game of course, thank God (and my wallet) I had enough money to buy Final Cartridge II so I could freeze C-64 and dump whole 64KB from C-64 memory to tape or 5.25" FDD, go to sleep till tomorrow and then load and continue game from freeze point. That freezing-dumping-loading-continuing was my first and last "cheat" in my gaming career, all my kids know what I'm thinking about cheating in games and last thought in their minds is to try to use any kind of cheat, trainer or something like that while gaming singleplayer or multiplayer. Play fair or drop dead while playing :)

    I've heard about Supergun long time ago but never had a chance to try something like that by my own. Tried MAME and CCS64, VICE... and most of them were working perfect or almost perfect, I've found every single game I had played when I was a kid but that's not the "real thing". I'm missing that feeling of standing next to real arcade machine, holding real arcade stick in my hand, sitting on the floor with my brother, frends from childhood and C-64 with game tapes and 5.25" FDD discs all around us on floor in front of B/W TV with tired half-closed eyes after 10, 15 hours of playing :) That's why I'm keeping everything I can and buying (almost) every HW from that period of my life when I find a good deal. Nothing can match the feeling of a real thing... :)

    Now I understand that picture of yours I saw about 6 months ago on Guru3D where you are standing in front of arcade :)

    Cheers Vet, thanks for nice conversation, it's late now and time to dedicate some of my time or at least some part of my body to my wife ;)
     
    Last edited: Nov 13, 2013

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