Most awsome hardware you ever had for its time!

[Pilotasso]

The good old times!

 

Me, it was the year 1995 and one of those shiny new Pentium PRO 200's fell on my lap for something arround 1000$ for the CPU alone. It would last for 6 whole years and have its GFX changed 4 times and 2 sperate 3D dedicated accelerators: PowerVR and 3DFX voodoo2. Memory was uped twice, from 16 to 64 MB of EDO RAM, this at the times Upgrades were worth the money (or else buy a whole new system twice in that period of time) those were the times. :D

 

I started by playing strike commander and Wing commander 3 on it (oh boy did it ran fast then!) and my last Games were Red alert2, Falcon4 and F-22TAW

[Groove]

Amiga 500 Ram upgrade

[Kuky]

I think getting the Cougar and moding it was the best purchase I made. I think I have it for over 4 years now... and wonder how many years more will it be of use for me :D The way it's going I estimate at least 10 years more and it'll probably be as good as when I first got it modded.

 

TrackIR would probably be the second place... any other PC hardware just comes and goes...

[VMFA-Blaze]

Kuky: Yes I agree with you, my Cougar was and still is my most treasured piece of flight sim hardware... And then it was IJ's NXT mod that really brought this stick into focus.. Mine is about 4 years old as well but it looks almost as good as the day I pulled it out of the box... But the Simped pedals and Track IR are running a close second...

 

I think that's its very sad that the gentleman that produces the simpeds has cancer, Even though hes sick he's still producing these wonderful pedals in a workshop in back of his house in Bavaria ... What courage !!!!

 

~S~

 

Blaze

[G3]

for me several things come to mind, some new some old.

 

getting a 1541 disk drive for my c64 was heaven compared to the tape drive :)

 

getting a mouse :D, i learnt to navigate windows 3.1 without one :D

 

first entering the world of ever improving pc graphics:

4mb pci voodoo1 monster 3d accelerator :) piggy backed off a virge s3 2d.

then onto the original sli 2x voodoo2 12mb, and finally a 3dfx 5500 dual gpu :) arhh the good ol days, now its laughable.

 

imput device:

built my own gameport wheel and pedals from wood in the early 90's with pots, must find and upload a pic, classic stuff.

and recently built a 6 speed usb shifter, which doubles as a landing gear lever :)

 

my current pc setup would have to be my favourite:

ch/sfs hotas controls,wheel/pedals/usb shifter, trackir, triplehead2go, projector, (touchbuddy, virtual panel and lockon fc) along with a dual core a64 x2 and being able to set affinity, all the above put together would be my ultimate hardware for its time, and that time is now :), and doesn't hardware get old quick :) haha.

 

remember adaptec scsi adapter 2940uw :) and accesories like zip drives, hdd and cdroms.

 

first m/b with an agp slot, that was a huge step up.

 

finding decent psu's like antec etc, over those nasty generic case psu's :)

countless pc's have been let down or killed by a cheap psu.

 

removing my 14.4 modem and getting a 33.6 then 56kflex, then forgetting all that and plugging in my cable modem, that was a memorable moment.

 

then discovering routers and sharing the net without configuring it thru ICS.

 

i will stop now, they're just a few of the great moments in hardware i can think of, no doubt everyone has a story or 3 to tell.

 

look forward to hearing others:thumbup:, good one pilotasso.

[thereminqblank]

1. 1990 - IBM compatible 386SX - the first PC we ever owned.

 

35MHz - with turbo button to take it up to the lightning speed of 55Mhz.

5.25" and 3.5" floppy drives.

1MB of RAM

8MB hard drive capacity.

 

 

2. Around '94/'95ish - the first component upgrade I ever purchased - Adrenaline Voodoo Rush 8MB video card. AUS$450 of pure crud.

 

3. TrackIR. I couldn't believe that such a thing had been made when I first saw it. I bought it feeling sceptical about its effectiveness. I was pleasantly surprised!!

[Ven]

Two things comes to my mind. They're racing sim related rather than flight sim but...

 

First is not really a hardware but a bill. I can't even remember the year but sometime mid 1990's, Papyrus was doing a beta testing for their NASCAR racing online called Hawaii. Wasn't really online like today's internet. People had to call Papyrus' server located in Boston with my modem. I was in California and was shocked when I got the $2000 phone bill. But that's when I got hooked on online simulation. Thankfully, soon after that first month, those 10 cents a minute long distance deals got popular.

 

Second is ECCI steering wheel at $1200. That's when Thrustmaster T2 just came out for under $200. ECCI was like a Rolls Royce. Costly but heck, it was only half the cost of my phone bill.

[Gunja]

My first 3d accelerator, voodo card.

The difference that i saw can not be compared to anything after that.

 

My first analogue joystick, thrustmaster's replica of F16 stick (forgot it's name). To be able to gradually roll or pitch was a dream come true.

 

Next was TIR, just a perfect piece of hardware. Now i know that it would be easier to fly without a joystick, than without TIR.

[G3]

1. 1990 - IBM compatible 386SX - the first PC we ever owned.

 

35MHz - with turbo button to take it up to the lightning speed of 55Mhz.

5.25" and 3.5" floppy drives.

1MB of RAM

8MB hard drive capacity.

 

 

hey not bad, you had a hdd...:), the first ibm compatible i remember was my mates C.A.T. clone.

it had no hdd from memory, you had to load things up from disk everytime.

and i used to say how crap it was and how much better the old commodore was :D

 

Ven:,

papyrus- not hardware but a worthy mention all the same,

never paticipated in hawaii, but remember hearing about it, papyrus games were the best for sim racing in my opinion, loved em from the first lap of laguna seca using indycar 1, till the end of an era with nr2003 and all the associated mods and addons, a great pity it all came to a sad end, many fun hours were had racing mates at lans etc, lugging all your hardware to a single location just to join up with coax 10base, remember those terminator resistors :)

rfactor seems to have taken over nicely though for myself and my fellow race sim fans, so many mods and great community and developer support from isi.

and the ecci wheels, that was pure unobtainium.

 

gunja:

good to hear, another voodoo fan :D, it was an amazing difference.

 

hehehe.

[Ven]

Yea, I believe Papyrus was one who kick started all these online gaming. At the time, racing online with 30+ player was unthinkable.

 

And everyone's mentioning Voodoo but anyone had Rendition? That was my very first non-pixelated gaming experience for me. Unfortunate that 3dfx crushed them.

 

Now that I had more time to think, more gadgets comes to my mind. My first sound card... not SoundBlaster but Adlip card. Again, unfortunate CreativeLabs crushed them... seems like every peripheral I choose goes obsolete lol.

[Pilotasso]

My first 3d accelerator, voodo card.

The difference that i saw can not be compared to anything after that.

 

My first analogue joystick, thrustmaster's replica of F16 stick (forgot it's name). To be able to gradually roll or pitch was a dream come true.

 

Next was TIR, just a perfect piece of hardware. Now i know that it would be easier to fly without a joystick, than without TIR.

 

 

Speaking of wich...my first stick make me jump of joy when I bought it. It was digital. It was only when I tried it that I realized digital didnt mean it was more advanced than the analogue ones, it only meant every imput I made the plane snaped at maximum turn rate ROFL. Foul :D

[Kuky]

Two things comes to my mind. They're racing sim related rather than flight sim but...

 

First is not really a hardware but a bill. I can't even remember the year but sometime mid 1990's, Papyrus was doing a beta testing for their NASCAR racing online called Hawaii. Wasn't really online like today's internet. People had to call Papyrus' server located in Boston with my modem. I was in California and was shocked when I got the $2000 phone bill. But that's when I got hooked on online simulation. Thankfully, soon after that first month, those 10 cents a minute long distance deals got popular.

 

Second is ECCI steering wheel at $1200. That's when Thrustmaster T2 just came out for under $200. ECCI was like a Rolls Royce. Costly but heck, it was only half the cost of my phone bill.

 

lol:megalol:

[PaddyTB]

Most impressive.

1991

When I dropped a Maths coprocessor in my 386 DX 25.

The jump in CAD performance was amazing.

 

Most Fun.

Getting a second Voodoo2 for $50 and running higher res SLI for Janes F-18

 

Cool thread

:thumbup: