The PC hardware fads and fashion thread

[Dos_Box]

Keyboards with lots of buttons and wheels to launch apps and adjust 'things' that you will never, ever, use.

 

[PotNoodleTech]

I was rather fond of some of the old heatsink/fan combos. Zalman's were usually heads and tails above the others - not always in performance but certainly in looks. The Flower was particularly good!

[ATTACH=CONFIG]71848[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]71849[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]71850[/ATTACH]

 

Did you ever try the reserator? That was friggin cool.

[synaesthesia]

Did you ever try the reserator? That was friggin cool.

 

Ah I forgot about that! Those were behemoths. They also did a completely fanless case too, just one giant heatsink basically!

[smurfomatic]

'Right angles' are another two!

 

ETA: And 'where are the plasters?' any time you attempted to work inside of one.

 

Those evil Dell black and grey cases, hinged at the front so you can't really access anything. Razor sharp edges and needed to be a contortionist to change an IDE cable!

[PotNoodleTech]

Ah I forgot about that! Those were behemoths. They also did a completely fanless case too, just one giant heatsink basically!

 

I loved my reserator wish I never got rid of it now - the sound of absolute silence. Very underrated.

 

Yes the case was monumental money if I recall.

[jthompson]

Keyboards with lots of buttons and wheels to launch apps and adjust 'things' that you will never, ever, use.

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]71851[/ATTACH]

 

I'm willing to bet that "ergonomic" got a runout on the branding for that one.

Big, two-tone curves? Check! Silver-coloured plastic oval buttons? Check!

 

Probably about a decade too early for a braided USB cable, though.

[Bedders]

Keyboards with lots of buttons and wheels to launch apps and adjust 'things' that you will never, ever, use.

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]71851[/ATTACH]

 

You can pry my Logitech G15 keyboard out of my cold, dead hands. That tiny little LCD screen at the top was great for Teamspeak/Ventrillo I did have the 2007 version though https://www.everythingusb.com/logitech-g15-gaming-keyboard-13079.html

[Norphy]

There are two keyboards I really regret not having any more:

 

• The Microsoft Internet Keyboard Pro. I've never used a better membrane based keyboard. The sole reason I stopped using it is because I started getting wrist pain and bought one of the bad boys below
  
• Microsoft Ergonomic Keyboard 4000. I was stupid and bought a Microsoft Wireless Sculpt set because I wanted a wireless keyboard. That thing ate batteries like there was no next week.
  

 

After the Sculpt, I swapped it for an Apple keyboard as I gained a taste for them after using MacBooks for a period and after that a Dell lookalike which I've still got as a spare. I currently use the latest Microsoft Ergonomic Keyboard but it's not as good as the 4000. The layout is worse, it doesn't have feet at the back, the keys don't feel as nice and there's no gap between the number and function keys so I still have a habit of whacking F1 when I want to press 1. I wish someone would produce an mechanical ergonomic keyboard the shape as the MS one but all ergonomic mechanical keyboards seem to have really esoteric layouts which I just can't be bothered with.

 

And yes, I like Microsoft hardware I've had MS mice, keyboards and gaming controllers in the past. The MS joysticks and gamepads were amongst the best I'd used.

[dmj]

I had a Lian-Li case, the one closest to it on there was a PC60. It cost me £180 back in 1999 and it was a thing of beauty. I really regretted changing it but I wanted something a tad bigger and the Enlight cases my workplace sold at the time were too tempting to pass on.

 

Same, still have my PC60 Lian-Li. Albeit empty and in the garage.

 

Current keyboard is a tiny 60% mechanical keyboard - for RSI reasons, those 'ergonomic' KB's don't work for me as they are still too big and I find my fingers stretching too much, it's better for me to have a smaller kb with more shortcuts.

Can't beat a logitech MX master mouse

[Chris_Cook]

The microsoft intelimouse trackball was good. Its was years before I found anything close to that, and I was annoyed when mine broke beyond repair. I lost track of the number of times I replaced the microswitches in it.

 

Its a shame MS have stopped doing the hardware like they did in that generation. Intellimice have lasted much longer in our school than anything else.

 

Turbo buttons were cool, but always seemed to stay in turbo mode apart from a few games that based their framerate off of the CPU speed.

 

Also, mouse trails. I still use them because it annoys my co-workers.

[MrEprise]

...Microsoft Ergonomic Keyboard 4000. I was stupid and bought a Microsoft Wireless Sculpt set because I wanted a wireless keyboard. That thing ate batteries like there was no next week...

 

A member of our Student Reception staff has one of these. She'd bought it in some while back asking if I could possibly repair it for her so that she could use it at work. A spare keyboard her husband had lying around from his work (MSP), I soon found out why it needed repair - a beverage of some sort had been spilt over the left-hand side so a number of keys on that side had stopped working! I ended up stripping it down, cleaning it then getting one of those circuit scribe pens (the ones with conductive ink) and drew back in the missing traces on the membrane.

 

3 Years later, she's still using it without any issues.

[MrEprise]

Keyboards with lots of buttons and wheels to launch apps and adjust 'things' that you will never, ever, use.

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]71851[/ATTACH]

 

I had the business version of that. It was all black and they'd omitted 9 of the multimedia buttons at the top. Bit annoying but still a nice enough keyboard.

[Dos_Box]

A favorite of local PC shop beige box builds, the 5.25" bay speaker system!

 

 

All the sound quality of a 1960's transistor radio earpiece.

[synaesthesia]

Its a shame MS have stopped doing the hardware like they did in that generation. Intellimice have lasted much longer in our school than anything else.

 

Turbo buttons were cool, but always seemed to stay in turbo mode apart from a few games that based their framerate off of the CPU speed.

 

 

Turbo buttons are ironic as they actually slow the machine down! (By design)

[Jaan]

These bad boys!

 

[robyholmes]

As someone who very much took part in the mid 2000s scene of PC case modding, water cooling and cold cathode lighting (Shoutout anyone from Gruntville) very much miss those days!

 

But one bit has stayed with me. My Liain Li PC V1000 case. Upgraded to a Ryzen 5 7600X in the last few weeks in fact!

 

I still have a massive Cooler Master Cosmos case as well in storage, custom window installed and powered coated black inside... Why I keep it I don't know. It's far to big to use these days. Ha.

Edited July 10, 2024 by robyholmes

[Rob_D]

I don't know. What with the size of modern GPUs, we see a resurgence in those massive cases.

[Sephiroth]

Those evil Dell black and grey cases, hinged at the front so you can't really access anything. Razor sharp edges and needed to be a contortionist to change an IDE cable!

 

Aaah yes, the wonderful GX series Optiplex tins... We still had over 100 of these when I started in this post in 2013. Purchase date was ~2002, though some of them had been upgraded to gigabit ethernet.

 

The fad that got me was the need to have eleventy-billion tiny case fans on everything. Everyone had to know your PC was awesome by the sound of the jet aircraft on your desk.

[synaesthesia]

Aaah yes, the wonderful GX series Optiplex tins... We still had over 100 of these when I started in this post in 2013. Purchase date was ~2002, though some of them had been upgraded to gigabit ethernet.

 

 

Grey on the outside, brown on the inside from all the exploding capacitors

[CHiLL]

Red motherboards:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]71863[/ATTACH]

[PotNoodleTech]

As someone who very much took part in the mid 2000s scene of PC case modding, water cooling and cold cathode lighting (Shoutout anyone from Gruntville) very much miss those days!

 

But one bit has stayed with me. My Liain Li PC V1000 case. Upgraded to a Ryzen 5 7600X in the last few weeks in fact!

 

I still have a massive Cooler Master Cosmos case as well in storage, custom window installed and powered coated black inside... Why I keep it I don't know. It's far to big to use these days. Ha. [ATTACH]71862[/ATTACH]

 

She is a thing of beauty. Well done for keeping her.

 

Man there's some beauties in here and I think I've had them all at some point. The PCIE blower fan under each 3dfx voodoo 2, the 5.25" speaker.

 

How about the psion series 3/5? I used to think I was the don in 6th form with one of them - and me HP ipaq, and me iomega jazz drive.

 

Oh yes. memories.

[LeMarchand]

How about the psion series 3/5? I used to think I was the don in 6th form with one of them - and me HP ipaq

 

I had the 3 (still have it somewhere), then it was a Handspring Visor, then an iPaq before moving to an early Windows-based phone.

[36Degrees]

I does beg the question, did anyone use them for anything other than ethernet or wifi?

Or, heaven forbid, a dial up modem?

 

Yes. Iomega Clik! drives which could store a massive 40MB on each one

[36Degrees]

HP ipaq

 

I remember killing one of those. A senior member of staff where I worked at the time was having loads of problems with it. On a support call with HP they told me to download this particular file and install it. I did and then it wouldn't work at all so HP had to send us a new one. (Luckily I think it was so unreliable there was nothing important saved to it).

[smurfomatic]

Yes. Iomega Clik! drives which could store a massive 40MB on each one

 

Whenever there was a format war I went the wrong way. LS-120 rather than Zip, for example...