I started off in 1989 with a 2nd hand Epson PC, model was PCJ1, no harddisk and only 1 5.25" floppy drive. Booting up is always via floppy disk and swapping the disks around for different applications. RAM is 256kb or 512kb then. Not ready error reading drive A: is the most common error message pop up, followed by Data error reading drive A:. By then the disk is gone with full of circular scratches.
In 1990 finally got my new Datamini XT/AT PC (still remembered the green reflective logo). That one was slightly better, 1mb RAM and 20mb harddisk. Learnt my first language - GWbasic with it. Majority of the time was playing games. RTK1 with the copy protection on the floppy, every few min it'll seek the disk or won't continue. Katong Shopping Center is a weekly hangout to get games. Games manuals are photocopied. Inceasing RAM is interesting, goes by multiple rows of DIP IC chips. Invested in a 8-bit SB soundcard for $220. First time opened casing and installed the card. Didn't know was supposed to connect to external speakers and was wondering why no sound came out from the internal speakers.
Subscribed to Teleview service by Singtel, that's the only national connectivity before the rise of Internet. Modem was a 1200bps ISA card that runs almost 3/4 length of the casing. I still have that antique chucked somewhere. And connecting to BBS was a daily activity, exchanging messages over Fidonet.
1993 upgraded PC to Datamini's Multi-flex series. The mainboard is on a expansion card and their concept was for easy upgrade to a different processor generation. Specs was a 486-DX-33 with a 1.44" and 5,25" floppy drives, 2x cdrom drive, 4mb ram and 120mb harddisk. Cache memory can be upgraded by buying 4 or 5 pieces of DIP IC chips.
These PCs then had a key where my parents could easily locked it to prevent the PC from booting up, effectively preventing any usage. Later learnt that this could be bypassed by using the small black jumper caps to short the pins. Afternoons when no one's home, it's PC time and back to studies in the evenings.
1994 started my first DIY PC from scratch. Bought a motherboard with a onboard AMD 386 processor. Started my first networking by connecting the 2 PCs together using BNC cables. Hub n 10mbps Ethernet cards were out of reach then, not to mention switches. An ISA BNC only NIC costs $60. Started inviting friends over to play network games. Upgraded my modem to a US Robotics 33.6kbps. Friends who were richer and had cash bought the higher end US Robotics Courier 28.8kbps or Zyxel modems. Envy them back then.
And coz of the high speed modems, the 16450 UART chip on the serial I/O card could not handle and causes either dropped calls or errors. Learnt from a friend how to desolder the chip from the card and resolder a new 16550 UART chip as replacements. Picked up my soldering skills here.
early 1995 started getting on the Internet. Subscribed to singnet and has 12 hours free monthly. In no time this quota was exceeded. It was cheaper then to apply for a 2nd account than pay excess charges of $1.95 per hour. End up usage was so huge that I have 2 accounts with Singnet and 1 more with Pacific Internet.
After which I lost track of my upgrades. Upgraded the CPUs to 486DX4-100 and Pentium-90. Both CPUs bought from PK Computer at Funan. don't know if they're still around now.Tried various x86 CPUs from Cyrix, IBM, AMDK6/K6-2 series and Texas Instruments.
Next comes NS and I started losing touch with the race for newer CPUs. After NS, built an AMD Duron system, 650 mhz??? and later upgraded to an Athlon CPU. Stopped there for quite sometime as the technological chase wasn't a priority anymore. The Athlon PC is still working today, that is after replacing a number of capicators that were bloated and leaking electrolyte. Now passed on to my kid to play simple games.
Last built a mid range system few years ago with 8gb DDR2 ram, AMD X3 CPU to host my VOIP setup on VM. Looking back, I've spend a bomb on all these stuffs for the experience, but no real use.
Company provided me with a laptop, so no longer see the need of building another rig for personal use. I have another spare board, salvaged from someone who wanted to discard it and managed to get it working after replacing the capicators, which are a common problem for motherboards in the early 2000s.
The revolution from desktop PCs to portable laptops and tablets cannot be denied. But when talking about processing power and battery lifespan, there are still some hopes for desktops.