The Very First One

Preamble

Actually I wrote about my first computer already back in 2021.

But last year I thought it might be cool to actually rebuild this setup as close as possible to the original: if I’m using as many original parts as possible it would be totally plausible to see the very same first PC to stay alive and kicking to these days.

Hardware

And so I did! Not 100% faithful replica (ordering an original display and era-specific case would be way too expensive) but the core of the system is absolutely on point.

What I was actually able to obtain:

┌─────────────┬──────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ CPU         │ Socket 370 Intel Celeron 633MHz "Coppermine" │
│ Motherboard │ Chaintech 6OJV2 (i815 chipset with IGP)      │
│ Memory      │ 128MB 133MHz SDRAM                           │
│ GPU         │ nVidia GeForce2 MX400 (AGP)                  │
└─────────────┴──────────────────────────────────────────────┘

The computer case is random cheapest one I could possibly find in local store. Bundled modern 450W PSU is clearly an overkill and the power connector had to be gruesomely mutilated to fit into the old motherboard.

The videocard was not listed in my original 2021 nostalgy trip, but at the age of 17 I took my very first “paid” programming job for the local computer store (something with excel, vba and their pricelist export) and I they paid me with hardware - that sweet Geforce2. It was a steep upgrade from the iGPU so I was very happy.

One thing I don’t miss dearly is a piece of gosa modem that I had: usb 56k winmodem that only worked with Windows and couldn’t mute the connecting sound (to no joy of my family when I was going online during the night). I’ve tried to look it up online but searching the web for “56k usb modem” yields mostly fancy US Robotics devices that were way too expensive for us mortals back in early 2000s. Proper good modems used RS-232 and not USB anyway.

Getting the hard drive for this PC turned out to be not easy too: there is not a lot of choice of affordable IDE ‘winchesters’ on ebay, and the only one I was able to order turned out to be a regular 60 gigs SATA, there was a mistake in the original photos/listing. In the end I’m using IDE/SATA adapter for the hard drive and for quick alternative - IDE2CF module that proved to be quite handy itself.

As for main display I was able to obtain a quite nice 19" 1280x1024 LCD that even has a proper DVI! Ofcourse back then I couldn’t even think about working with such a magnificent monitor; 15" and 800x600 was the most comfortable mode for me (though CRT back then could obviously higher resolution the vertical refresh rate fell drastically and eyes/head started hurting after a while, and 800x600 sported amazing 100hz).

Software

To an extent this part is still a work in progress: I’ve roughly recreated my old Windows 2000 system, but as I remember for quite some time in 2002-2003 I was using bundled Windows 98, because w2k had issues with some videogames and obviously it was one of the most important tasks of the household computer.

I clearly remember having MSVC6 and all that but honestly doubt I’ve did more than “hello world” with it; Borland Delphi felt way more accessible and friendly so I (and my friends) used it as a playground for different stuff. Some paper magazines we’ve read also praised Borland ecosystem and ‘indy-components’.

Apart from w2k I have installed quite modern OpenBSD onto the CF card; always thought of it as extremely minimalistic but 128mb RAM is too little to cope with it. On the other hand the box can be easily upgraded to at least 512mb and the Old Computer Challenge proved to lot of people it is quite enough to use computer meaningfully even in modern times.

Photos