• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

First clone you built from scratch?

C

cchaven

Experienced Member
Joined
Jul 31, 2003
Messages
169
Location
Roanoke, VA
What was the first PC clone you all built from the ground up?

Mine was an 80486DX2-80 based system with a PAS-16 soundcard, Adaptec 1522A SCSI controller, IBM 2GB SCSI hard disk, a NEC CD-ROM and an ATI VGAWonder XL24 video board. I built it specifically to run OS/2 Ver 2 For Windows, after seeing how horrific networking was under Windows 3.1.

Up to this time I had used my Tandy machines, and pretty much jumped right over the 80386. I traded it off for one of my Amiga 3000's.

Jeff
 
Last edited:
I was using pre-built brand name in the early days, so my first home built was actually a Pentium II - 350Mhz. Seagate Medalist 4.3Gb (which I still have), can't remember the rest!
 
Good question.. although I came "later" in the game as far as age goes so I did rebuild our family's 486 a few times using parts. The first computer I fully bought with my first job was a state of the art AMD K6-II 350Mhz system in a full tower. It was a budget system and I had landed my first job at AMD right during it's boom in the 90's. None of the prices were too outrageous vs today except the CD burner. That was before burners were popular so it was pretty hot to have during lan parties, etc. It was a Memorex 2x CDRW internal burner. I got it for some sale price of $280 (I think it ended up costing me $330 in all though). Sure enough a few years later burners were going for $80, although my friends had more trouble with certain blank CDRs that mine would handle fine which was a neat perk, albeit you had to have 30-40 minutes free to burn things at my speed.
 
My first home built was based around a TI80486, one of those you plunk into a 386 socket, sucker flew, 40mhz with 8mb ram, i remember specifically because i was able to run windows 95 on it and i had and still have a copy of Real Audio Player Plus. Had a WD Caviar 2850 *still got that drive too* Albeit it runs windows 98 now, 32x CD-Rom which was a later addition, 1.2 and 1.44mb floppy drive, sb 16.
 
A 386DX-40 baby board I put in a full sized 286 desktop case with CDROM, 360K and 1.44 floppies and a FH Maxtor XT-1140 that I RLLed (to I think about 180 mb.) on a WD-1006V-SR2 controller. That used up all five drive bays but with a baby board inside most of that case was still empty space. :) A Sound Blaster, DOS 5.0 and WIN 3.11 rounded it out.
 
Haven't really built one from scratch as such. Gutted the 286 case and put in hand me down 486DX40 mobo. Gutted that and put in a hand-me down Pentium 133 mobo. Seems to have be a recurring theme till a few years ago. Now just get given prefectly usable servicable machines. Of course I now just get older stuff, some I dreamed of having but never the coin to own them at the time they were released.
 
It was around 86 or so and I had asked for a PC for Christmas/Birthday. I had a commodore 128, Apple //c and a coco 1 at the time.
My father came from Atlanta with a box of parts and a case. It was a clone 8088-8 board with 512k and a floppy and a full height 5mb hard drive.
(He had upgraded his own computer.).

I put it together and got it running, and ended up upgrading that machine over and over and over, I think it ended life as a 386sx.

On a side note, my current computer case I bought 10 years ago or more, and It's on it's 5 or 6th board also. (Hey, it's hard to give up a case that holds 9 hard drives.)


Later,
dabone
 
It started as a Turbo XT clone in the late 80s. Not sure how it ended up. This might be the one I sold a classmate. Picture is from 1990 when I think it was a 286 with EGA. I had various PCs during the 80s (PCjr, Corona PC, Tandy 1000EX) but mainly used my Atari ST and Amiga. By the end of the 80s I saw the writing on the wall and started beefing up my PCs, and really liked that I could build my own and mix-n-match parts.

005.jpg
 
I don't know that I've ever built a computer entirely from whole cloth. I believe my current Phenom II X4 computer is the product of an unbroken succession of upgrades from a 486 someone gave me around 1997.
 
I have used PCs ever since my first, a Compaq Deskpro 8086, back in 1988. I've never built one myself, and I have to say, all the home-build ones I have ever come across have been terrible.

I suppose that the satisfaction of 'getting it right' must be the allure for some, but I think there's nothing quite like getting a fully complete system with matched components that have all been tested with each other.
 
Well this really put a stretch on to my memory, but it could have been a 386SX, i had to buy a combo parallel serial card, i bought a special version of AWE32 had some extra DSP and the weird thing allthough the mobo had IDE i beleive i had a 80 MB scsi since earlier tampering with ATARI. So i actually throw in a SCSI card.

Of course i must have bought a 1.44 floppy and a CD probably creative/mitsumi.
I have no idea what motherboard, but it must been cheap.
 
paul.brett said:
I've never built one myself, and I have to say, all the home-build ones I have ever come across have been terrible.
Click to expand...
Sorry to hear that but it sounds like you have come across some real lamers. My experience has been the exact opposite in that all the home-built PCs (including my own) that I am familliar with perform perfectly and have stood the test of time, as well.
 
My first build was an AMD 386DX40 system in the early 1990's. I purchased my Northgate 102 for that system. All parts were ordered from some place in California that was cheap enough I could sell the system a few years later for most of what I paid for it (they didn't have a mail order catalog, you had to call and see what was in stock, probably a main distributor). Its funny but back then you could build a clone of better quality then prebuilts for much less money, these days you can't get parts cheaper then a prebuilt brand name.
 
My first PC was actually a custom built machine by the president of PC Enterprises (a well known PS/2, PCjr, and Tandy 1000 upgrade source). It was a family Christmas gift for 1993 and wasn't cheap.

Specs:
-Target Micro Typhoon 486 VESA motherboard (going by memory and TH99, I remember reading Typhoon in the manual)
-486DX2 66Mhz
-8MB RAM with 256k write back cache
-Cirrus Logic CL-GD5428 2MB VLBus video card
-14.4k modem
-Western Digital AC2340 340MB IDE HD connected to a VLBus I/O card
-ATI Stereo F/X soundcard
-Mitsumi CRMC-LU005S 1X CD-ROM drive connected to the sound card
-3.5" and 5.25" drive
-CTX 15" monitor

My first build that I did with my own hands was a Pentium II based machine which is pretty new and off topic. I was going to build the 486's replacement, but my parents insisted on buying a retail machine instead, a Packard Bell Force 1999CDTW.
 
I remember spending weeks digging through 'Computer Shopper' magazine before figuring out
what to buy....I think this was in 1989


My first self built clone was the following :

386 ADSS motherboard w/64k cache $400
386-25 CPU $200
AMS RLL controller $100
Mitsubishi 65 MB RLL drive $200
4 MB memory at $50/1 MEG SIPP
ATI VGA Wonder video card $250
NEC 3D multisync $650
Soundblaster 1.0 $100
Tower case from JDR Microdevices $200 (yes nice cases actually did cost this much back then)
Northgate OmniKey 102 Keyboard $120
3.5 and 5.25 floppy drives
9600 baud Practical Peripherals external modem


The fact that I can actually remember all this .....with the prices.....is priceless :)
 
Last edited:
The first machine I Can truly say was 100% assembled by me was the GEM ATXT as I called it (ATXT was my own name for my wacky form factor that mixed AT and XT and ATX components).

The machine started off as a 386 DX-20 that was bought from GEM Computer Products in Norcross Georgia in 1988 for $3000 from a Military lawyer...I totally ripped out all the original guts and hot-rodded with with the following......

CASE: 80's Compaq Deskpro clone chassis, full AT, later cut up and modified for micro ATX operation
PSU: Magitronic 220 Watt Full AT PSU, later gutted and Gateway ATX guts installed, big red switch replaced with big red button
MOBO: Addonics AMI motherboard (386), Socket 7 Pentium (P75-P200MMX), Gateway Mobo (Celeron 500), and then Intel Pentium III (667& 1GHz)
CPU(s): i80386 DX-20, AMD P-75, Intel P120, Intel P200MMX, Intel Celeron 500, Intel PIII 667, INtel PIII 1GHz
RAM: 5MB, 32MB, 64MB, 128MB, 384MB, 512MB
FLOPPY: 1.44, 1.2M
HDD: 40MB Seagate MFM, Quantum 244MB, WD 2.1GB, WD 4GB, WD 40GB, WD 80GB
OPT: CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, CD-RW, DVD-RW
VIDEO: Paradise VGA, Trident TGUI9440, Trident 8900 PCI, ATI Rage II PCI 2 & 4MB cards, NVIDIA GeForce MX-400 64MB, NVIDIA GeForce MX-440 256MB
SOUND: Internal Speaker, Diamond TeleCommander 2300, Creative SoundBlaster 16 PCI, SoundBlaster 128, SoundBlaster Live 5.1
NET: 10mb ISA, 10/100MB PCI
O/S: DOS 6.2/Win 3.1, DOS 6.22/WFWG 3.11, Windows 98 SE, Windows 2000 PRofessional, Windows Vista

This thing had a full life for an AT that much is for sure, much of the guts got moved to my current Pentium D 3.4GHz 4GB Tower that I have now....so it lives on in that machine. The case literally fell apart 2 years ago when I tried to set it up for the guts in my PD machine like it was the bluesmobile of old PCs.
 
My first fully-built from scratch machine... wow. Figure back in late '96 or early '97... It was a pentium-90 board, and I sourced most of the parts from a local computer shop where I knew the owner.

Generic case with 250w AT PS - $30 new
Amptron Motherboard with P90 chip - $90 used
2.1gb Maxtor Hard drive - $249.95 new
Mitsumi 4x IDE CD-ROM reader - $25 new
Teac CDR-56s SCSI writer - $52 new (purchased specifically for writing out PCEngine/TG16 CDs, as the format had just been broken at this time and most drives on the market wouldn't write them reliably)
Adaptec AHA-2940U SCSI card - $40 used

The rest of the parts, including my SB Pro 2.0, keyboard, mouse, and monitor all came from upgrades on the previous computer I had, a used purchase of a clone 386DX-25 system. Prior to this, I'd rebuilt and upgraded dozens of machines at school, for myself, and for friends - but never built one completely from scratch.

BTW - I remember model numbers and prices on the parts because of how long it took me to not only find the best prices, but to save up to purchase them. With the exception of the old Amptron board - it had no distinguishing marks for model, etc.
 
Wow, so far it looks like I've got everyone beat ... since mine was the heathkit version of the Z-160 'luggable' -- the HS-161... and like any heathKit, all you got were etched boards and bags of parts. Took a little over a month between my father and I to get it built.... I did all the cards -- he did the CRT, PSU and most of the mechanicals. That would be my first real PC compatible.

NOT that I hadn't built my own computer before that, what with the ELF and the ZX-80.

I kinda laugh when people say "from scratch" these days; buying off the shelf parts and slapping them together pales by comparison.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top