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#11
You don't have to be rich just be single and starting to buy computers a long time ago. I bought my first computer a TRS-80 Model I in 1979. Looking back now it was crazy what I spent on it with upgrades. I must have spent $7000 on it. I didn't buy my first PC compatible computer until January 1995. It cost me $1800.
You also have to remember that back then computer technology changed much faster than it does now. You ended up buying or building a new computer every few years to keep from getting too far behind.
BTW, I still have the desktops that I built in 2002, 2004, 2009, 2011, and 2017. They all received upgrades for a few years after they were built. The two oldest (2002, 2004) are only good running Windows XP. I am in the process of retiring them. The three newest (2009, 2011, and 2017) all have Windows 10 on them. Two of the computers ( 2009, 2011) also have Windows 7 on them. Only the newest one (2017) is able to play all my game well. Note all these games are 5 to 15 years old.
I also have laptops that I bought in 2004, 2018, and 2022. The 2004 laptop just died a couple days ago. The 2018 laptop has hardware and software problems that a Windows 10 reinstall did not fix. I am only using it as a backup. That is the reason I bought a new laptop a couple months ago.
Ohh let me see...
Athlon X2 64 6000
Phenom II 925
Phenom II 955
Intel i7 920
AMD FX-8350
Ryzen 7 2700X
Ryzen 7 5800X
I don't have the depth of old machines like some of you guys do but I am pleased to say that I still have 5 of the PCs for various uses around the house (servers, backup machines).
What can I say? I'm a packrat.
I assume that was a desktop because the laptop I bought in 2004 had an Athlon64 3400+ but failed in an attempt to install Windows 10 in 2020 or 2021. It booted up but half the hardware in Device Manager had red Xs. I had no luck finding drivers that worked with it and Windows 10. Maybe if I had started with an older release of Windows 10 I would have had better luck. After I gave up I went back to Windows 7 which worked fine.
BTW, that doesn't even matter any more because a few days ago the video chip for the laptop started displaying a scrambled image so I gave up on ever using it again. Note no image showed on the laptop display even in the BIOS but I got a scrambled image when I hooked up an external monitor.
OK, I go back a fair way.
Acorn Electron
Amiga 500 Plus with Switchable 1.3 and 2 Workbench booting
Amiga A1200 with 80 MEG hard drive.
HP PC 133 Mhz Pentium Win 95
HP PC with 200Mhz Pentium
350 Mhz PII with 128 mb ran Win 95 and NT 4
800Mhz Athlon with 256Mb and TNT 2 win98 NT4
1200Mhz Athlon with 256Mb and TNT2
Athlon 3000 running XP Pro with 3Gb ram
Athlon 640 '' '' '' 4Gb ram
Phenom 955BE Windows 7 64 bit 8gb ram
Phenon 1100T Windows 7 64 bit 8gb
FX8350 32Gb Ram Windows 7 64bit.
Ryzen 7 2700X 32Gb 980Ti Windows 10+
Ryzen 7 3800X 64Gb 2060 12Gb
Ryzen 9 5950X 64Gb 980Ti
I have been upgrading my main PC every 4-5 years from the beginning.
My old PC then replaces the second office PC.
And I used to demote the old 2nd office PC to use as a server of sorts (put a bunch of older small hard drives in it and store archive files).
But today with the gi-normous HDDs available the need for the 'server' has past. Now I sell off the parts. It's amazing to me how marketable an 8 year old motherboard is today.