CompaqGuy1993
Member
- Joined
- Mar 31, 2022
- Messages
- 26
Hi. I'm Nate. I think this is a great forum and have read threads as a ghost for many years until I finally decided to join recently. Vintage computing is a big part of my hobby life. I am in my early 40's, so I am the last of GenX and got to grow up as a kid and teen during some of the most exciting times of personal computing's early history. Although our family didn't own a computer until 1993, I was fortunate enough to attend schools with computer labs and had many friends with computers at home that I was allowed to use quite frequently until our family could afford to buy a Compaq Prolinea 4/33 for Christmas in 1993. I've owned many, many computers over the years, but that old Compaq 486 system I used for 7 years (from middle school to college) is the most special in my memories and I built a clone of it few years ago with all the upgrades I wished I could have had as a kid. I use it regularly for DOS gaming and Win 3.11 productivity applications. It is upgraded to an Evergreen AM5x86-133MHZ CPU, 56MB RAM, ProAudio Spectrum-16 Soundcard, 3Com Etherlink-III network card, Netgear N300 universal WiFi adapter, external USRobotics V.92 56k modem, internal CF to IDE adapter, expansion slot SD card to IDE adapter, external parallel BackPack 32x CD-ROM, and finally a GOTEK floppy emulator in a 5.25 adapter in the bottom slot. It already came from the factory with the excellent integrated VLB Tseng ET4000/W32 1MB video, so with the combination of all the upgrades it's quite capable with most stuff of the DOS era sans Quake or any other software that requires a really strong FPU. For peripherals I use an IBM model-M keyboard, 17" Gateway EV700 CRT w/14pin adapter, classic 4 button Gravis pad, CH Products FlightStick, Thustmaster Charger steering wheel and pedals, SoundBlaster CT38 speakers, Labtec AM-242 Mic. In the future if I can find them for a price I can afford I'd like to upgrade to a 20"+ CRT and a Roland CM32/MT-32.
