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Tech - Yesteryear EQ hardware woes? (1 Viewer)

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Back in like, forevvvvver ago in like 01/02 a friend and I were in Ocean of Tears killing the cyclops for big plats and my eq crashed. it was because logs were on and my 800 meg DEDICATED eq drive was full (had a main windows harddrive of like 1 gig). both hand-me-downs from my dad.

Went to Fry's Electronics in Arizona (i think they're all closed down now), and dropped a very hard-earned ~$100 on a 10 gig hard drive. big flex.

nearly as exciting as when i got that voodoo 5 5500 hand me down. I tell ya tho, I was super disappointed that it didn't make the game run any better, or look any better. We actually installed it on my dad's PC (who wasn't into games/fantasy, but is into computers for flight sims and racing and always had a nicer computer) - made a lvl 1 in everfrost and nearly instantly logged off as it looked like everquest in everfrost.

both seem pretty funny now adays with tech

Does anyone else have funny/disappointing computer upgrade woes from yesteryear or even recent ones?
 
Well, when I Built my most Recent PC I was so excited I didn't research what was coming out when and I spent a Huge Load of cash got a 7700k, 1080ti 64 gigs ram flashy case to.. was like $3500 Cad at the time and top of the line. For 2 weeks then the 8700k launched.. along with the other 8 series intel processors which had more cores for less money. Man Was I PISSED - So I am currently Saving and waiting for The Next Gen launch of Ryzen and Intel before I Upgrade again But I have decided to Move my 7700k Down to my Plex Server and Upgrade my main machine Current Plex server is a Old i3-4130 with 16 gigs ram, not sure what I will do with that.
 
When I got EQ the machine I had was a 200mhz pentium. Used to take me a couple of minutes to zone, old world zones were one thing but kunark zones were ANOTHER level of pain. I had only just upgraded too from a 28.8k modem to a 56.6k which I won from a beta I was in around the same time for a game called Piggyland by OINC. Patching got a little bit better.
 
I built a ridiculous custom water cooled monstrosity a few years back and now regret having to drain and flush it regularly. Also not being able to run it 24/7 sucks. I just ordered the parts for a new pc and aside from an aio cpu cooler it’s not got any liquid at all.

My first x86 based pc was fancy: 512k ram, a giant 10MB hard disk drive and an EGA graphics card. Oh yeah it had a Dallas real-time clock so I didn’t have to type in the date/time every time it booted. It was the envy of all of my nerd friends!
 
When I got EQ the machine I had was a 200mhz pentium. Used to take me a couple of minutes to zone, old world zones were one thing but kunark zones were ANOTHER level of pain. I had only just upgraded too from a 28.8k modem to a 56.6k which I won from a beta I was in around the same time for a game called Piggyland by OINC. Patching got a little bit better.
I used to run an ISP during the 28.8k days. Right around the time that 56.6k came out I told my boss that if he ordered another modem I would strangle him with the cord. I converted us to 56k on using US Robotics total control hubs. Looking back, it was one of the most expensive upgrades I’ve ever done, given our operating budget, but one that produced the most value in terms of client happiness and stress level reduction on our end.
 
I built a ridiculous custom water cooled monstrosity a few years back and now regret having to drain and flush it regularly. Also not being able to run it 24/7 sucks. I just ordered the parts for a new pc and aside from an aio cpu cooler it’s not got any liquid at all.

My first x86 based pc was fancy: 512k ram, a giant 10MB hard disk drive and an EGA graphics card. Oh yeah it had a Dallas real-time clock so I didn’t have to type in the date/time every time it booted. It was the envy of all of my nerd friends!
woah, i've never heard about typing in date/time every time you booted lol
 
I once spent almost 3 grand on a 3d led TV only to have 4k launch shortly after for half the price. Then the 3d market died at about the same time.
 
I once spent almost 3 grand on a 3d led TV only to have 4k launch shortly after for half the price. Then the 3d market died at about the same time.

I am one of the people left who loves watching 3D movies on my 3D tv. I am sad that market died.
 
My first PC I upgraded my RAM I bought 2MB RAM (yes you read that right) for $200 and then I wanted more HDD space right about the time 1GB drives hit the market, unfortunately I could only afford a 540 MB drive that ran me $500. Thank goodness for mass production now.
 
My first PC I upgraded my RAM I bought 2MB RAM (yes you read that right) for $200 and then I wanted more HDD space right about the time 1GB drives hit the market, unfortunately I could only afford a 540 MB drive that ran me $500. Thank goodness for mass production now.
holy moly!
 
Back in 96-97 I used to play Ultima Online...Dialling in from Australia I would have about 800ms ping times...Of course - a Huge part of UO was the PVP game which was impossible for me with these ping times. Just as I'd see an opponet on the screen - he would run around behind me an hit me 10 times! It was just impossible.

When EQ came out - I was so glad it didnt have PVP as a main element. I still miss UO - it was a great game. I was online in UO when we set the world record for the most players online at once. 100,000 Players online...Woohoo

And really showing my age now....The first Hard Drive our business bought - was 5MB, and it set us back $5,000
 
Back in 96-97 I used to play Ultima Online...Dialling in from Australia I would have about 800ms ping times...Of course - a Huge part of UO was the PVP game which was impossible for me with these ping times. Just as I'd see an opponet on the screen - he would run around behind me an hit me 10 times! It was just impossible.

When EQ came out - I was so glad it didnt have PVP as a main element. I still miss UO - it was a great game. I was online in UO when we set the world record for the most players online at once. 100,000 Players online...Woohoo

And really showing my age now....The first Hard Drive our business bought - was 5MB, and it set us back $5,000
Haha, PVP EQ back in the day was like that. He with the fastest connection usually cleaned house. You would get backstabbed a half dozen times before you could even turn around.
 
Oh man. The stories and memories. A lot of my early 2000's time was spent playing Medal of Honor: Allied Assault. Had my PC short out and I had to go to a friend's house to play in a tournament with my team T|w|F (Team Wicked Fury). It was kind of a cool experience, I can't find the recording but they had a 'shoutcaster' do an audio/visual of the match. We made it to the last round and lost to a team called BoRo that went all rocket launcher, ha. The tournament was the OGL league - at the time it was MOHAAOGL.
 
In 1981, after months of convincing my parents what a great idea it was for them to buy me an Apple IIe at age 10, they caved and ended up also getting me the COLOR monitor (not a green screen monstrosity) and two floppy drives. It came standard with 164k of memory and the only way to up it at the time was to add a peripheral attached to a piece of hardware. It took me 4 1/2 years more to save up for the printer which added another 264k of raw horsepower. It was a bit underwhelming after all that but the journey was a blast! The printer was $580 btw, which was a major pain to save up all those paper route pennies. My older sister thought I was straight up insane to have spent that kind of money on a printer. Looking back, I would do it again.
 
I recall buying an Iomega Zip Drive with 250MB discs and thinking I would never need to worry about disk storage space again. !
 
I recall buying an Iomega Zip Drive with 250MB discs and thinking I would never need to worry about disk storage space again. !
hah yeah,

I had a friend's dad who would take me to Fry's Electronics because "I spoke nerd and human". sales guy tried selling him this really crap low tier video card and was hard lying about "top of the line, will be best of the best for at LEAST the next 5 years". it was terrible.
 
I recall buying an Iomega Zip Drive with 250MB discs and thinking I would never need to worry about disk storage space again. !
What a fantastic idea they were. A potential replacement for floppy disks that just went nowhere. I'm curious now where they fell flat. At the time I was so busy at the datacenter level that I never took the time to study the tech as it had no real application for me. If I had to hazard a guess I say they went the way of the sony beta. Great tech that was kept so proprietary that it could not possibly catch on.
 
In 1981 I got a Vic 20. I wore out my arm throwing papers to earn $300 to get it. Then the next year Commodor came out with the C64 and of course I had to find extra work as well as turning in empty bottles To get that one.

Zeb
 
My first computer was a Tandy 1000 TL/3 ; I did not know much about computers at that time, and did not have much input, I had a need and it is the one my family got for me. it served me well for its time. In 1999 when I got EQ I was in college and my main computer for the first time was a laptop. I don't recall the specs at all at this point, but it was more then enough power to handle EQ, I was more of a gamer then then even now (where what I play is mostly the games I played then!) I cannot imagine playing EQ on a laptop screen like I did then now. but I gave it no thought at the time.

it was that following summer I built my first desktop with a couple of friends, we ordered the peace's together and effectively built clone machines for the purpose of our EQ gaming. (Where we lived we where still limited by dial up and would be for a handful of years more).

---

my biggest EQ computer woe was a minor earthquake I was in, I barely felt it, but it somehow nocked out the CPU fan, and the CPU fried. I remember scrambling to get what I needed to get back up and running quickly.
 
What a fantastic idea they were. A potential replacement for floppy disks that just went nowhere. I'm curious now where they fell flat. At the time I was so busy at the datacenter level that I never took the time to study the tech as it had no real application for me. If I had to hazard a guess I say they went the way of the sony beta. Great tech that was kept so proprietary that it could not possibly catch on.

I am guessing the speed at which HDD were growing just phased out the zips
 
first "modern" pc compaq celeron 433 mhz and a whopping 96 megs of ram super fast 10 gig hdd. 1200 usd saved in pocket change. win 98se... first windows pc ever. i had basic and other os's. heart breaking that next week a p2 500 meg with a 12 gig hdd and 128 meg ram was released... 900 usd
 
What a fantastic idea they were. A potential replacement for floppy disks that just went nowhere. I'm curious now where they fell flat. At the time I was so busy at the datacenter level that I never took the time to study the tech as it had no real application for me. If I had to hazard a guess I say they went the way of the sony beta. Great tech that was kept so proprietary that it could not possibly catch on.

I was required to have a ZIP disk for a class I took; and got a drive so I could use my own computer to do the work. I think what really brought about its end was two fold, 1 being proprietary and the 2 the advent of early flash drives that offered more then a floppy's worth of storage even if not at that point reaching the "zips" volume .
 
I was working in the computer lab in college mid 90's and we got a new order of motherboards and CPU's to upgrade some computers and I didn't align the num1 pin correctly in the socket. Powered it up there was a puff of smoke from the board pull the fan off the entire CPU socket was black and melted fried the CPU and the Board LOL.
 
I was working in the computer lab in college mid 90's and we got a new order of motherboards and CPU's to upgrade some computers and I didn't align the num1 pin correctly in the socket. Powered it up there was a puff of smoke from the board pull the fan off the entire CPU socket was black and melted fried the CPU and the Board LOL.
Did you still have that job the next day?
 
I was working in the computer lab in college mid 90's and we got a new order of motherboards and CPU's to upgrade some computers and I didn't align the num1 pin correctly in the socket. Powered it up there was a puff of smoke from the board pull the fan off the entire CPU socket was black and melted fried the CPU and the Board LOL.
We call that the smoke test. The idea being that chips are made of magic smoke and if you let the smoke out they don't work anymore. Seems reasonable to me.
 
I remember buying a semi decent Gateway back in late 98. Hooked up to the internet with Earthlink and my 28k modem. I remember picking up a copy of EQ in march 1999. I remember being so impressed with the game but wanted more "3d" graphics. I picked up a 3DFX video card, plugged it in and was amazed how much better things looked. (I also remember the PITA DirectX and OpenGL conflicted too much)

Damn game has owned me for much too long now :)
 
When I was a kid my brother and I saved up all of our money so that we could buy another floppy drive for our apple iie. Dual 5.4! We were so excited. It and I arrived before he did and when I plugged it in backwards the magic smoke was let out. I had to live with a friend for days as I thought he was going to kill me. Back then the flat cables didn't have the notch making them go only one way. Red wire on the 0 or 1 pin wasn't known by this kid.
 
I was working in the computer lab in college mid 90's and we got a new order of motherboards and CPU's to upgrade some computers and I didn't align the num1 pin correctly in the socket. Powered it up there was a puff of smoke from the board pull the fan off the entire CPU socket was black and melted fried the CPU and the Board LOL.

Ooh that brought back a memory for me of something similar.

Was helping out in the computer lab in school, I was probably around 16 at this stage so late 90's. I was asked to switch over a SCSI interface card from one machine to another, or maybe I wasn't asked but I was doing it anyway to use a scanner on a different machine. I didn't screw the card down onto the case so when someone else went to plug in the scanner the card came loose and there was a bit of a flash bang pop and that was the end of the interface card.

Nobody got too mad, teachers were probably realising that I shouldn't have been let do this in the first place, the only punishment I got was having to walk down to the local hardware shop to collect the replacement which I'm sure at the time was in the 100-200 price range.

This was only the beginning of my school age hardware escapades that ended in disaster in fairness.
 
That time I learned that my 1200 baud modem was actually a 2400 baud modem with a hardware switch. One flip and I doubled my speed.

But with regard to EQ: When my roommates and I moved apartments it took a while to get DSL so we ran 4 computers through a very crappy laptop that dialed into AOL from the free CDs you would get from Walmart. The laptop sat in the hallway with a hub and Cat5 running down the hallway to the rooms.
 
I somehow have never played anything on dialup (lucky me i guess?), but when we did have broadband, my dad got the first wifi setup they had, and i had this TERRIBLE wifi adapter on my pc that would give me 20-30% packet loss every minute or so. I have sad memories about being told to "go solo you necro" and having a terrible time doing so because i would get this packet loss and root would break, or fear wear off, or pet would die.
 
My first PC was a 386DX running Windows 3.11 on DOS 6.2. The hard drive cost $540.00 for 540MB. I was happy to make my brother jealous because all he had was an 8088 with a 40MB hard drive. The thing I remember most and hated about playing games in those days was maximizing conventional memory to play the latest games. I must have had a dozen boot floppies with different things "loaded high" to get them out of the first 640k. The more you could free up of that 640k, the better the games seemed to do. Then came customized batch files to present you with menus on boot, thereby cutting those dozen disks back down to one. Tinkering with configurations and getting the most out of the program - guess that is one of the things I like about MQ2! :)
 
Tech - Yesteryear EQ hardware woes?

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