On Sun, 15 Jul 2012 23:09:38 -0400, wrote:



My first PC was a first day ship IBM PC-1 that cost about 2 grand
(employee price) with two 128k diskette drives, a tape recorder "mass
storage" and a whopping 64K of RAM. (Epson dot printer and mono
monitor)


Think I paid $2700 for it, with 2 floppies, maxed mem (256?), and the
mono monitor. 1984. IBM store.
Had a least another grand into it that same year with an AST 6-pack
mem card, and a dot printer. The next year a 20 or 30 meg Winchester
HD for about $500. About 25% of that went bad sector within a year.
Should have put all that money in MS stock. (-:
Getting somewhat back to topic, the clones were already coming out
then. Big thing was amber monitors. Looked cheap to me.
In '92 that PC wouldn't boot, and everything but the printer went in
the trash can.
Bought an IBM PS2 Consultant tower. 486 DX2. Paid about $1800, but a
good HD, and color monitor. Circuit City as I recall.
About '95 I was playing Doom with keyboard on lap, and something in
the game made me flip my chair over backwards.
Hosed the PS2 port tracings and almost yanked the box off the desk.
IBM wanted $1800 for a new MB!
Luckily my brother was working making diagnostic cards and fixed the
tracings at his employer's shop.
I was an IT guy, and always hewed to the "compatible" lines.
"IBM compatible." "Hayes compatible."
Even tried to use IBM OS, but the writing was on the wall.
Never had driver issues until 3Com took over US Robotics.
That was a mess,
About '98 I started making my own for me and family.
I've built about 15 since then.
Even then the savings wasn't much, because I used high end components.
But they were better than the Dells, Compaqs, HP's and whatever, and I
provided support.
Nowadays for common everyday use, a used computer or a new one on sale
is the way to go costwise.
gpsman had the right idea about "bloatware." Wipe the drive, and
install what you want.
The only catch to buying from the major PC makers is to watch for
proprietary stuff, ala that IBM MB I mentioned. Takes some study.
Dell CPU's on some models had a massive heat sink and no fan.
They did that because it reduced fan warranty costs. No big deal
there as far as I know, but something to know.
I don't know if they still do it, but I've repaired HP's and Compaqs
that had proprietary power supply case fittings where you had to use a
drill/Dremel to get an affordable new power supply to fit.
My daughter had a failed HD controller on one of those and they wanted
$400 for a new MB.
I got real lucky in googling and found a text based discussion between
2 company techs talking shop where one mentioned the manufacturer of
the board and the model number. Got it for 100 bucks. Only
difference was the HP or Compaq logo wasn't burned into the BIOS.

--
Vic