For me. I basically started using computer because I always wanted to play quake 1 lol. So I need to build my computer from parts, since my parents didn't want to invest in a computer at the time Thank God people just threw out their parts.

managed to put togehter a p1 166 Mhz CPU (OCed it to 200 MHZ) and I was able to run quake 1 PLus at the time I had only a Voodoo card LOL, my god that was long ago....(I don't think the Voodoo was in my p1, I had a p3 1 year later) :S

Anyways thats my story. Oh yeah and Need for speed 1!!!!

Bottom line? To play good games!!! I start back in the day when Apple was king!! Anyone remember the Apple II+? Our school had 3 computers when I was a Sophmore and by the next year they had 20!! I remember wanting to play wizardry. My first computer that I bought was a VIC 20!! and then eventually got a C64! Spent more $ on the flopply drive ($250) back then, than I did on the computer! LOL! I then ventured out into the real world and couldn't afford to buy another system until 1997 when I bought a IBM (because Apples were way too much for what you got) Aptevia w/AMD 266mHz CPU, and 8mb Voodoo Banshee GPU!!! Boy the games I played with that. I remember playing the original EQ on it until I upgraded in 1999 to a Compaq (mistake) w/AMD 500mHz CPU. It didn't have a AGP slot (which I didn't know about) so I got stuck with a 16mb Voodoo 2000 PCI GPU. Had that for about 3-4 years before I started to build my own, which I was glad that I did. Now 10-12 PC's later (this includes ones that were built for friends/family) I'm on my current setup, which is listed below. Unfortunately/fortunately I get farmed out to build a friend/family members PC now and then, but I still enjoy going through the process. My biggest process is actually fitting all of the desires/needs into the budget that is given to me. Anyways I think I rambled on enough.

Interesting enough. I haven't posted in a long time and read from time to time.

Well, here it is, I started with an IBM pentium 3 with Windows ME. I know, OUCH! (The worst operating system ever made) My interest in the computer was simply multimedia altogether about 8 years ago (age:16). From serious professional video formatting which I know like the back of my hand, to now, my interest in computer programming. Man, I pounded my fists on that keyboard so many times it was way beyond funny. All because ME is that ****. BUT... IBM has the best stock keyboards if anyone didn't know that. Hehe.

Try playing warcraft 3 on a pentium 3 and 128 mb of ram. Or was it 64 mb? Now that's a headache... LOL!

My first computer was a commodore 64 when I was about 5. Lol. Man that's been a while...my first pc was about 1997. AMD K6 200 mhz and 32 mb of ram. That was almost high end back then I believe. I wanted to play games so mom and dad got me that for Christmas. I got hooked on AMD because of the k6, and I can remember going around when we looked to upgrade and I wanted a few years later to get something faster, we went to microcenter and they wanted 200 bucks for a pentium 2 400 mhz.

I was kinda bummed, but dad had the bright idea of going to best buy where they happened to have a 450 mhz AMD k6-2 in the case for 99 bucks. So we snagged it. Since then, I've been sold on AMD. Though they go through rough times, what can I say, I've always had great luck with their chips, no sense in changing a good thing.

Well the first time i saw Diablo i fell in love. I was 7yr so i was at my parents mercy, when i was 8 or 9 i got my first pc (a Compaq). I got into building my own pc's when i was about 15 because i hated how overpriced everything was.

Gee

It's giving old memory back to me I was start dreaming for my own computer when I saw my friend was able to play porn on his computer (it was P133 at that moment Lol, hahahaha. Nah, actually what was sparked my interest was when I saw my brother did some programming with FORTRAN and DBASE III plus, it's really amazed me at that moment. I thought something like "wow, it's cool, looks really smart, etc". Well, that was back at around 1987(?), I was a child at that moment.

But serioulsly, I was really stunned when I first saw Intel desktop w/ Win95 with all color and graphic, and it can print in color, even playing VCD? Wow, that was so amazing ... Back to the first multimedia pc introduced (around 1996).

My first computer came a year later with Pentium 200MMX, with 64MB RAM. That was pretty decent computer at that moment, just about to be trashed by PII computers a year later But I was using this computer for nearly 7 years It accompanied me well to accomplished my undergraduate study. It blown up right after I finished my final projects lolz ... Really sad experience, since I was planning to keep it for my personal museum Unfortunately she prefer to die with honor

I built several computer later on, for friends, my college labs, my works, and for myself. I was remembering some like: the famous devil Celeron (666MHz), that I built for the girl that I fell in love with (meh, hahaha), and also PIII 500 for another girl. Even until now, the knowledge of computer still attract girls

Darn, now I just can not live without computer

Pre-Ebay, early to mid 90's I was a charter member with a group of dealers who went online to hold weekly online auctions. Absolute Pioneers at online auctioning. Business flourished (Ebay was not even a thought yet). Anyway, just before all this online weekly dealer auctioning happened I had (still have!) a Pentium 1 100MHz system we had bought at Montgomery Ward for like $2500! This was purchased for our REAL business we have been in for the past 20+ years. Dial up era online auctioning was where I was at. Anyway, I had tried to set up a scanner and had problems (Weak specs and MB had 16MB memory onboard and just didn't want to cooperate). Long story short, I asked my neighbor at the time, a mechanical engineer from Denmark if he knew anything about computers? That was all it took. He helped me build my first computer. A 100Mhz Pentium1, 1 GB Fireball HD, 64 MB RAM, Windows 95 screamin machine! I still have it! We took on Ebay head on! The group I was with out of San Francisco was selling air planes to corn flakes shaped like Illinois online! LOL. Finally Ebay won and the company auctioned off their office furniture, computers and finally their server, which cost like 30G back then. I moved over and sold as a dealer when Ebay gave free websites and no sellers fees. I'm out of that business now and concentrate on our family business. Nobody around here knows very much about computers but me. They know how to ask, "can you fix this?"

dad got me my first pc when i was in 4th grade in school(was 10yrs old) in 1996 for educational stuff!!my first computer was a branded machine with a celeron 300mhz cpu mounted on a gigabyte based intel 440zx chipset with slot mounting cpu and an agp port with a 4mb video card(was a voodoo i think) and with 32mb of sdram and a 36x cd rom drive ,4gb seagate harddrive and a 15inch crt monitor,the sound card was made by yamaha.it came with windows 95 and we stepped up to windows 98 later.with my increasing interest in gaming and after routinely opening up the pc and screwing it up the upgrades started coming.finally i ended up putting 192mb of sdram(128+64)a geforce2 mx 440 64mb video card and a 20gb seagate hdd with a sony cd writer.i used this pc till may 2004 till my first self assembled pentium4 prescott took its place.i ran windows xp pro on the old celeron and finished call of duty1 on 640x480 on it.it was a good pc.

A Sinclair ZX81 was my first computer. I couldn't afford a BBC at the time. Hours of typing code to make 'X' chase 'Y'. The horror.
Moved up to an Amstrad CPC with a built in tape deck. I thought it was superb until some f### smashed my mum's car window and stole it on Boxing day. Ruined my Christmas!

My first one was an IBM 300 GL PC i had 32 MB ram which i upgraded o 128 later. 2.5 GB HDD and on board cirrus gfx 200 Mhz. Well i wanted to play delta force 1 and NFS . Until last year it worked perfect.

My first contact with computers was in the late 80 when finishing university. I had some statistical tests to run and it was done one 386. Afterwards, my real interest for computers came when I went back to school and had a lot of CAD to do, by then we were using 486 DX 33. Those were the machines back then at almost 3k each, there were out of reach of most.

3 letters:
DOS

Started writing scripts... and went from there.

well my first ever built was quite "recent"!about 2-3 years ago.when i put a computer together using Celeron D 356 3.33Ghz 2GB 675mhz ram,160gb hdd,7300gt 256mb,akasa eva 120.before i bought this cpu i have reead alot of review saying it easily overclock to 5ghz on air!so thats why i bought it.i got a p945 chipset from gigabyte,forgot what the model number is.but after many attempt cant reach the magic 5gh barrier only got to 4.8ghz.but one day i took it apart to do some cleaning an never put it together again and at the end all the parts end up inb ebay!lol
and today i still got the old case in my room behind me right now.dont know what to do with it now.and i havent build myself another pc since then.and in June 07 i bought myself a laptop!the reason why i bought a laptop is i can stop myself from upgrading!lol but at the end i bought 1 extra hard disk and another gige of ram!because i want to wait until a generation of hardware i feel i want to stick to.

but hopefully wont be too expensive!<=i think im having a dream here!!!lol

It's one of the few hobbies where things are constantly changing. You understand the basics of most hobbies, nothing is really going to change, and if it does it takes a while. With computers, things change monthly if not weekly.