I remember the day when I declared I would never have "one of those darned computers" in my house! Since then, I've learned never to say never. When my wife decided to apply for a job that would require her to use a computer at home, I realized we would have to go out and get one of those "darned things".

Our first computer was an IBM clone 386 DX 40 with 2 MB of RAM. Nobody in our house knew much more than how to turn it on and play Window's Solitare. My wife claimed she didn't have time to read all those books that came with it. I was getting frustrated by not knowing how to tame the beast. I realized that it was the computer that was in control instead of me. I had a real problem with this so I started reading all the books that came with our new computer. This only lead to more frustrations and unanswered questions. I sought the help of other people who I thought were knowledgeable about computers. Sometimes I would get the right answers, sometimes not.

Finally, after a lot of reading and experimenting, I began to learn to "tame the beast". I still didn't feel all too comfortable trying to talk to DOS, but I was making progress. I added another 2 megabytes of memory to the 386, which at that time seemed like a lot. I tweaked it and tweaked it until it was as good a machine as it could be. It was then, that I realized it was time for something bigger and faster. Besides, I had become addicted to this computer stuff and my wife used the computer for work which limited the time I could have to play with it. I decided to buy the biggest and badest computer I could find at the time.

My new computer was another IBM clone - 486 DX4-100 with 16 MB of RAM. It had a 14.4 bps modem, a 2 speed CD-ROM drive, a 420 MB hard drive, the Sound Blaster card I took from our 386, and a 250 MB internal tape back up.

I eventually decided to upgrade this computer to a Pentium MMX 166MHz. I replaced just about everything inside the case over a period of time. We gave this computer to my wife's aunt and uncle who live in Florida for Christmas and I'm replacing and upgrading it even further for them again next week. When it's completed, it will house a Pentium 166 MHz MMX, 64 MB of SDRAM, Diamond 3D video card, Sound Blaster PCI 128 sound card, 56kbps data-fax-voice modem, Western Digital 10 GB ATA-66 hard drive, 48 X CD-ROM drive. The old desktop case is finally being replaced, too, with a mini-tower case and new power supply.

We gave the old 386 computer to my wife's father and had a new one built for her since she actually uses one for work here in her office. It's a Pentium 233 MHz MMX with 128 MB of SDRAM, Iomega 2GB tape backup drive, 33.6 kbps data-fax-voice modem, Diamond 3D video card, and a Sound Blaster AWE 64 sound card. We added a new 17 inch monitor when the old 15 inch died and some new speakers recently. We have the Hewlett Packard color flatbed scanner with document feeder connected to this computer now since my wife uses it more than I do.

I built my next computer. Visit my page to read about the basics of building a computer or click the following link: My First Home Built Computer Page. It was built around an AMD K-6 200 MHz processor. I have since given this system to my youngest son to use and have moved on to another one.

My present system boasts "No Intel Inside". It is a real monster machine that is very fast. It's built around the new AMD Athlon processor. It has: AMD Athlon 600 MHz, 512 MB PC100-SDRAM, Creative CD-RW 6X-4X-24X CD writeable drive, Creative 6X DVD-ROM drive, 250 MB Iomega ZIP drive, Diamond Supra Express 56 kbps internal data-fax-voice modem, IBM Deskstar 13.5 GB ATA-66 7200 RPM hard drive, Diamond Viper V770 Ultra AGP 32 MB video card.