Have you ever rebought your first computer?

Like...the same model you first used when you where a kid or teen for nostalgia reasons?

It's not the exact model as mine had a 40 GB hard drive and came out earlier, but I recently bought a Compaq Presario sr1820nx at a yard sale, which has the exact same case my first computer used. Offered $40 for it as I'd been contemplating buying a similar computer on Ebay and this one looked practically brand new, so I really wanted it badly. And it works like brand new, with it's windows XP operating system still installed and everything, even came with the information stickers still attached. The only modification they did to it was double the ram from 512 MB to 1024 MB ram.

I did however add an old Nivida GT 730 I had laying around, which is more graphical power than this computer needs, but it has a 30 watt power draw and the computer has a 300 watt psu, no 80+ rating. I suspect that's because it either didn't exist or wasn't as prevalent back in early 2006.

As a result I didn't want to use a more period correct graphics card that'll get me less power with a higher watt requirement, plus I don't want to spend a lot more on this computer anyhow since I'm just aiming to use it for mid-range pre-2008 gaming at the most and thus don't need to do a lot to the hardware. Might add a bit more ram later on, but that's it, not going to go dual core or over-clocking.

@blazepanzer24: I did something similiar but it wasnt for nostalgia reasons, just saw a cheap factory asus m32 series on sale used at a local tech shop. They kept dropping the price to the point they were practically giving it away, I watched them go from $170 down to $50, they even threw in a decent hp monitor with it for 20 extra bucks, I put my old 750ti in it and the thing is a little beast tbh. I lucked out because the 750ti is basically the best card its 300w can handle.

I gave it to my gf, (now she has her own desktop and doesnt hop on mine all the time, she doesnt game much anyway just stuff like stardew, binding of issac) it has a small ssd, 1 tb hd 2, 8 gigs of ram, and an i3. The CPU is definently its weakest link but hell it can run Photoshop and illustrator well and plays older games (like 360 ps3 era) extremely well. Dota 2 and csgo runs great on it.

For 70 bucks it was one he'll of an investment

@blazepanzer24: I did something similiar but it wasnt for nostalgia reasons, just saw a cheap factory asus m32 series on sale used at a local tech shop. They kept dropping the price to the point they were practically giving it away, I watched them go from $170 down to $50, they even threw in a decent hp monitor with it for 20 extra bucks, I put my old 750ti in it and the thing is a little beast tbh. I lucked out because the 750ti is basically the best card its 300w can handle.

I gave it to my gf, (now she has her own desktop and doesnt hop on mine all the time, she doesnt game much anyway just stuff like stardew, binding of issac) it has a small ssd, 1 tb hd 2, 8 gigs of ram, and an i3. The CPU is definently its weakest link but hell it can run Photoshop and illustrator well and plays older games (like 360 ps3 era) extremely well. Dota 2 and csgo runs great on it.

For 70 bucks it was one hell of an investment

I used PCs for many years at other people's houses and school prior to buying my own. The first one I ever owned was a 486 DX2/66mhz with 8MB of RAM. It was beastly for the time, but then the Pentium came out and things started evolving quickly and it became shit. I have no desire to re-buy it because I would never use it.

IBF oldster talks about how hard it would be to find a UNIVAC system on eBay blah blah blah.

Nope. The first PC that I bought was terribly bad, since I knew nothing about PC's but I thought I got it all figured out. It might be nice to play some old Sega games like Sonic 2 or Mortal Combat 3, but bad graphics would probably be a major turnoff. I remember reinstalling Populous 3 after 10+ years and it looked so bad my eyes couldn't bare it.

@blazepanzer24: I purchase the Amiga Forever emulation package after I sold/exchange my Amiga 500 and 3000 in the early 1990s

Got a Pentium 1 for an op shop once, which is a bit before my time. Installed Dos and realized how grateful I am for GUI. Also had a commodore 64 with a tape drive. I will never complain about loading times after using that. But I grew up with 95. Just had to remember to turn it off. I've installed on VM but I don't think I'd purchase it. First PC I built was only 12 years ago so no real point for me to build it again.

I wish I still had it, but stopped short of ordering another one of it.

If I had a man cave in a basement I totally would. But as it stands it would be an awkward space hog in my living space. I love the idea though

@blazepanzer24: Holy crap I had that system, it was the first PC that I had that was my own back in 2006 as oppose to it being "the family PC". I remember wanting to run games like Roller Coaster Tycoon 3, Far Cry and Half Life 2. It ran those games fairly well considering I was running the onboard GFX. Thanks to these forums I bought a Geforce 7600GT and increased the RAM to 1GB. That allowed me to run those games maxed out or close to max. Then I bought games like FEAR, Oblivion and Call of Duty 2 and Doom 3 and whilst I had to limit myself to medium or medium/high settings, it gave me a very playable experience. That system was kind of my entry into PC gaming