I thought I would start a thread to share photos of really old setups or build you had in the distant past.

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This was my desktop 17 years ago. We can see a lot of the leading edge trends at the time and things that many would not see for years latter.

First on the left we have one screen which is hooked up to a second computer for TV with a built in tv tuner to record shows and other things. We also see that The Screen Savers tv show is on which aired on TechTV at the time.

Below the screen we see a wireless keyboard for controlling the tv computer from a distance. Do not think the monitors are limited to a single input as all three screens have two different inputs each. The center one has this built in and for the other two you can see the blue switch boxes in between them.

RBG may be big now but 17 years ago the neon lighting craze was just starting up as you can see we got the lights because why the hell not.

The desktop mic is the same mic I use today as well as that keyboard, hell I am still using that desk.

Speaking on desk, lets take a look at the desktop:
  • AOL -Holy shit
  • STEAM -forgot it had been around that long (I told you I lost my first steam account and now here is photo proof)
  • CS
  • CSCZ
  • C&C
  • mirc
  • Spybot Search and Destory


Windows UI customization was also becoming a big thing back then. It would still be a few years before Stardock would create WinCustomize. This gives you an idea just how early some of the trends in this photo are. You can see I have the OS UI customized as well as the mouse pointer which was fully animated.

The binary clock that many of us have seen or owned had just come out around this time.

The fingerprint scanner allowed for instant login and worked pretty well. I never really had any problems with it. I do find it funny that it would be over 10 years before this technology would be invented as far as the public is concerned.

Speaking of things ahead of its time check out the flip phone. Now how is a flip phone ahead of its time!? What if I told you that 17 years ago I was already using that phone to play music and it had expandable memory a feature so advanced that some phones today can not even figure out how to use such complex technology. Yea it took a form of micro SD that was physically half the size of a micro sd card from today. You could control the music player without opening the phone and see what was playing etc. The memory limits of the time kept you to about 2 CDs worth of high quality mp3s but hey everyone else was carrying around actual CD players back then. It would also not bee for a few more years that you started to see the rise of portable music players and then cellphones with music players but this cellphone from 17 years ago was already doing it. Oh did I mention that a year later I got a bigger memory card and fit a movie on it. Yea I was watching videos and movies on a cellphone 17 years ago which is strange because Apple told me they invented this only 10 years ago... Also yes this is the rise of the camera phone, this was one of the first phones that could actually take photos and really crappy video. That phone was a tank and I will always remember it as the best flip phone ever made.

Finally you see some CDs on the far right of the desk. But what is that orange thing around the edge of them. Well back then a new product had just come out that would cover the back of your disk with a clear film to protect from scratches. This disk protector worked great and would clip onto the sides of the disk. I always placed them onto new game disks right away.