My mother, as my family has known for some time, is a bit of a pack rat. Quite possibly a borderline hoarder. That fact became even more apparent after my wife and I had our first daughter a little more than seven years ago. That's when toys I played with as a young child started reappearing at their house for the new grandkid. Toys that I had outgrown long before we moved to that new house when I was 11 or 12, and where my parents have lived for the two dozen years since.
So it wasn't that much of a surprise last week when my bother appeared at my house, manila folder in hand. Its contents: The invoice from the computer they had built for me for my freshman year of college at the University of Florida. In 1997. Pack rat, indeed.
You gotta love these specs, though:
- IBM/Cyrix 200+ 6x86 CPU. That's 200 MHz.
- 16 megabytes of RAM. Megabytes, folks.
- ATI 3D Pro Turbo video card with 4MB of RAM.
- Seagate 2.5 gigabyte hard drive.
- 33.6k modem with full freaking duplex and speakerphone.
- SoundBlaster 16 3D sound card.
- 15-inch Optiquest monitor. (With VGA resolution, if I recall correctly.)
- And Windows 95.
Those were good times. How did those computers even work? (Also: Whoa, I am old.)
The price, however, is almost embarrassing, now that I think about it. $1,500, including all the unnecessary bundled software. That was the last time I had someone build me a machine, however, until I bought my first laptop in December 2009 when I started this job.
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