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In the past week now, I have learned a lot about computers. I'm not saying that I now know everything, but I know a lot more than I once did. In fact, this time a week and a half ago, I wouldn't even know what a ribbon cable is, and now, I know that plus much, much more. Its very quickly become a major hobbie of mine to work inside computers. (Don't worry, I still play my piano). Anyway, I was wondering if anyone here shares such hobbies. I am on one of the computers that I'm working on right now. So far, I've formated the hard drive, re-installed Windows 95 (This particular computer can handle 98, but it would be a lot slower than with 95), put in a new CD Rom and floppy disk drive, and doubled its memory (ram) from 16 mb to 32 mb. I have learned all this from a couple of friends of mine who are also heavy into computers. I still need to install a few things though. Hardware, that is. A sound card, and a better video card, and a faster modem. I'm on a 28k right now. And possibly add even more ram to it. I also want to install a bigger hard drive, and put the one thats in here now (a 1.18 gb) into my good computer as a secondary hard drive. When I'm done with this computer, I'm going to sell it and start over on another computer that I will acquire somehow. I got this one from a neighbor for free. Also, there are a few good web sites that I should share with anyone whos interested in this kind of thing: www.pricewatch.com (where you can buy computer related things online for cheap. You can even find rare/hard to find stuff). The other is: www.driverguide.com (where you can download the drivers you need for any hardware for free). Anyway, if any of you share this kind of interest, please share your experience. I'd like to hear. Thanks for listening through all this (if you even made it this far. Must be pretty boring for most. Sorry about that. Hope I didn't sound too self absorbed).

I've bought only one computer. My first one. It was a 286 with 20 MB hard drive and 8 Megs of RAM. I think it ran at a blistering 12 MHz. All the computers I've had since then I built. My current one has dual 650 MHz PIII processors, 256 Mb RAM and 38 MB hard drive (getting a bit long in the tooth actually). All components are good quality. My monitor is a 21" flat screen Sony Trinitron. I always have leaned toward the high end on monitors. What good is a fast computer if you have to stare into a dinky little screen. I have not saved a dime by building my own but I know what I have and have what I want.

jgoo, I am not the geek in the family, my husband is with 4 laptops and 4 or 5 others around, one is our own server fondly called "tower of Power" (we could heat the house from it!) Doing what you are is just what my husband did as a kid starting by taking TV's apart. He learned more than the schools offered at the time and it is now his career (the software side) as it is for all his siblings.

As you live near "the evil empire", perhaps there is a hardware flea market. There is one here near MIT once a month and I know lots of the guys go there to pick up cheap components.

Good luck on your new hobby, or perhaps the start of a new vocation?

Well, it seems the more computers advance, the less I know.

My first PC (not counting the Vic 20, Commodore 64, Apple IIe) was a 386sx. I upgraded the hard drive on it myself. Later I replaced the whole motherboard and procesor when I went to a screaming 486-66. When the time came to go Pentium (almost 5 years later) I decided nothing was useable from my current set up. It was just as cheap to buy a completely assembled Pentium 166 as to buy all the parts and do it myself. That PC served me well until the advent of the internet made it too slow and too unstable. I recently (after almost another 5 years) purchased a P4 1.8 and again found it easier to buy complete than to asemble myself. However, I made the mistake of buying a very poor modem. I did a lot of experimenting with the hardware and software, and finally replaced the modem with a "better" one. Even then I struggled with the software until finding a new driver on the mfg's website that seemed to work. Some of the software problems may have been due to my purchase of the XP operating system. I know some people are not big supporters of it. I bought it (XP) because it was new and I usually keep my PCs a long time. Usually, when I think of changing operating sytems it's time for a whole new PC.

I now have a DVD and CD-RW. I'm still figuring out how all the software works for them. (When I pause the DVD it seems to not be able to un-pause without restarting the whole DVD...go figure.) As I said in the beginning, the more advanced the computer gets, the less I seem to know!

Oh, but, Diana Krall sure looks good on a high res monitor! Love that DVD!

Yikes! Where do you find room to store anything with only 38 MB? Why not go out and get a 5 gig or better hard drive? Or, if you don't store a whole lot, possibly 2-5 gigs. But 38 MB?!?!?

My mistake. I meant 38 GB! Sometimes the brain gets stuck on old terms.

21" flat screen with a whopping 38 mb hard-drive. Whew, that's quite a set up!

For some reason the only 'thing' I prefer smaller rather than larger, are monitors. I have a 17" LCD which I like very much.

The BEST investment I ever made in my computer was DSL hook-up. Talk about fast! Last night I downloaded mp3's at 200 kb/second. The best I ever achieved on a 56K modem was 12 kb/second.

Yep, I love to fiddle. Especially with software.
And it's even safe to do so on XP as there is nothing I've done that I couldn't recover from.

Derick

Now THATS more like it. Makes a lot more scense, too.

And, talk about ancient, I also have a third computer. I upgraded it from windows 3.1 to windows 95 (after formating the hard drive) and it took almost 3 hours to do! Why? Because it only has 8 megs of ram in it! And it 32 pin ram, too! Difficult to find since they stopped making it long ago. The hard drive on it is only 836.6 MB and it isn't even in a tower case. Talk about ancient! I've already got a buyer lined up the the Packard Bell (the computer I reffered to in my first post). Although we haven't yet negotiated a price, I gave him two options. He can either pay me a set amount to buy it as is (whatever price we negotiate later) or he can pay that plus a bit extra in exchange that I keep working on it and upgrading it for him, which includes a bigger and better monitor, possibly more ram, a bigger hard drive, a faster modem, a better video card, a sound card, etc. I think that if he buys it as is, maybe somewhere between $50-100 and if he decides to pay the extra somewhere from $150-200. Its actually a good price for what I've got there. He could go to RE-PC (a place here in Seattle where recycled computers are sold) and buy an as-is computer of the same build for $200+, so, he'll be saving money going through me, too. I hope to use the money to buy another computer for my next project. Then, I can find someone to sell that to as well. I'll be making small profits on each deal, and I'll have something to keep me busy over the summer as well.

I wonder what people actually do with these old computers.

I usually upgrade my computers whenever a change in software (typically Quickbooks) demands it. These new software programs use so much hard drive space and take so much processing power to operate that they just won't run on anything less than a Pentium with a 1 gig+ hard drive. The situation is going to get worse as Win 95/98 are phased out. There does not seem to be much cost benefit in upgrading the old ones, not with new 1.3 Mhz computers selling new for less than $600.

I have an older computer here that I am thinking about setting up in my daughter's bedroom. It is a Pentium 200 (or maybe a 100 - I can't remember), 2 gig hard drive. I can network it to the other computers so she can use it on the net with DSL. It is fast enough to run Word for homework, but I wonder if it is fast enough to use on the net. I know the hard drive is not large enough to store much music, so at best it will probably be an interim step. Given the market I might as well try it, otherwise it will end up in the trash.

JGOO - if you put an ad in your local ad paper you can probably get all of the computers you need to work on for free. Something like "Starving student needs your old computer for school project. Will pick up". I have put several computers in the trash over the years and would much rather have given to someone who wanted them.

I used to do the same thing with washers and dryers and you would be surprised what kind of stuff you end up with for free. You might get enough computers that you can mix and match the parts.

Steve Miller: If its a Pentium 200, your okay. I just have a couple of questions for you, though. First off, what operating system is on it? How many Mhz is on it? How much RAM? You can find out this by either going into the system bios at startup, or, you can right click on My Computer on the desktop and click on properties and find out there. AND, it is totally possible to get a bigger hard drive for the thing. You can get a 5 gig for about $10-20 depending on where you go. Don't pay anything over $25, some places will try to rip you off. This advice I got from my friends who taught me all about this stuff. Its not difficult to install, either. You can even keep the 2 gig hard drive as a secondary drive to add more space to your computer!!! If you don't know how to do that, ask me, and, even though I'm a horrible teacher, I try my best to walk you through the steps.
And thanks for the want ad advice! I'd never thought of that, and its a good idea! I think that I'll start with the Yahoo Classifieds first, because its free, whereas in a paper, you have to pay a fee. But once I get some money, I'll pay for either a Little Nickle ad or an ad in the Seattle Times and PI.

Well, it looks like I can't even post an ad on yahoo for free anymore. I've done so before, but now they want me to pay! ARGH!

Well, in just a little while I'm going to be at RE-PC to drop off some stuff and look for some other stuff. I have an extreamly old compter that I need to get rid of. It runs off of MS dos, has no hard drive (so everything runs off of floppies) and has really old keyboard and mouse ports. I don't think I'll get anything for it, but it will be nice to have it gone. I'm also taking an old black and white monitor with me, an old 28k external modem, and possibly the 8meg ram computer.