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This page tells the story of me, myself and my computers:
My first contact with computers was at the age of 9 or 10, that means in the year 1981 or 1982. It was an Atari 400 with a MOS Technology 6502 processor (9,000 transistors, ca. 0.25 MIPS), originally 16 kB RAM, later extended to 48 kB. It was mainly used for playing games like Space Invaders, Pole Position or Basketball, but also for starting first BASIC-programming attempts. My brother coded some sort of flight simulation / air traffic control-kind-of-game that, in its final versions, had to be shortened, due to the 48 kB RAM limit. If we succeeded loading it from the ultra-high-speed datasette, you had to wait about fifteen minutes for the data transfer from the cassette to the RAM having all the time the sinewy beeep-beeep of the speaker buzzing around you.
The years went by and the Atari 400 no longer was the cracker of my childhood.
In early 1986, my dad again went to the dealer and brought
with him an 
ST 520+. This is a machine with 1 MB of RAM running an 68000 processor from
Motorola (68,000 transistors; probably that's the origin of the name, 0.8 MIPS) at 8 MHz.
Additional equipment was the b/w-Monitor SM 124
(640x400 Pixels), a double-sided 3.5inch 720 kB disc-drive. Later we (in fact my daddy)
invested more money in a printer and a 5.25-inch floppy (due to the price of 3.5 discs).
Click to see a screenshot of the
Atari ST Desktop.
After connecting the ST with the TV as color monitor, an
enormous world of computer games was to be explored by me. My most-played
game was the Formula One Grand Prix by Microprose of 1991. In 1990, I first learned to
know what a modem is and at that time I was proud of being able to transfer
data from and to mailboxes at 2400 Baud.
As my daddy occupied the 520ST+ by running his packet radio applications and as I needed more RAM for my LP/CD-database, I bought a used MegaST 4 in early 1994. It had 4 MB of RAM ran also at 8 MHz, but had a blitter for accelerated video output.
In the late year 1994, I heard for the first time of PowerPC processors of the A-I-M trio (Apple, IBM, Motorola). More and more, I had to face the fact that the nearly ten year old AtariST-series was no longer up-to-date. In March of the year 1995, my daddy and I, we both lightened our bank accounts and purchased a Apple Power Macintosh 6100 running a PowerPC 601 processor at 66 MHz (1,600,000 transistors, 124 MIPS). Disregarding our dislike to the Wintel stuff, we bought the one with the 486DX2-66-DOS-card (1,200,000 transistors, 54 MIPS). The 15"-Apple-Multisync, additional 16 MB to the original 8 MB and since Xmas '95 a Syquest EZ135 completed quite an attractive package for that time. In July 96, I bought a 16MB-Simm for the DOS-card and since then the 80486 processor behaved like it should. In late summer 96, I finally needed a printer, the Epson Stylus Color 500. The new year 1997 brought me a 2GB HP SCSI-hard drive and enabled me to install MkLinuX. Later in 1997, I could speed up my temporary internet link by purchasing a used US Robotics Sportster 28.800 modem.
Finally, Apple Germany was able to satisfy my needs. After six weeks of waiting, the Power Macintosh G3 is on my desk since the 3rd of February 1998. It has a PowerPC 750 processor (6,350,000 transistors + cache onchip) running at 233MHz and a total amount of 64MB in it. I connected the 10BaseT plug with a cross-over cable to the transceiver that I attached to my 6100, but the network performance was still to be optimized. With the G3, a new monitor came onto my desk as well. An Iiyama Vision Master Pro 17 allows to use screen resolutions up to 1600 pixels and finally enables me to use the extra palettes that some applications encourage you to take advantage of. In June, I maxed out the memory capacity of my older PPC 6100 and installed two 32MB EDO-SIMMS summing up the real memory to 72 MB. Finally there is no need for virtual memory anymore. The next thing was a 3dfx card that I installed in my G3: Yes, it works! Simply install a "Diamond Monster 3D" originally intended for PCs and get the Mac system extensions either from www.techworks.com or from a 3dfx game. I tell you, the 3dfx-version of "Carmageddon" is really blasting. In order to take use of the ISDN-capabilities in the house, I bought an external ISDN-adapter "Lasat unique 1280i a/b" that works great with OT/PPP (no more configuration than telephone number, login and password necessary!!!). I had hoped this box would help me to reduce telephone costs. Since August, I hopefully will never again see the warning that there is not enough memory installed in my computer: With a new 64 MB SD-DIMM in my G3, the total installed memory summs up to 128 MB. Another problem will hopefully be cured by an Allnet Ether H9+ hub that should prevent the OS from switching the networking port from ethernet to printer port, when the second computer is not running. In summer '98, I've been playing with my new Formac ProTV-card. It allows not only to watch tv, but also record small quicktime movies. In October '98, a new 4.5GB Seagate ST34520N hard drive gave me room for MkLinux PR3 on my G3 as well. In late October'98, Apple released MacOS 8.5 and I had hoped that this could solve my ISDN connection problems that appeared in September. Sadly, it did not help, but miraculously I can reliably establish connections again since christmas '98. The next computer equipment expense was a Yamaha 400t CD-writer, that reads with 6x and writes with 4x speed. In May '99, the special priced PC compatibility card came across my way. It is a whole PC including a Cyrix PR166 CPU, 16MB RAM soldered, 256kB 2nd level cache, an ATI mach64 graphics chip and a Soundblaster all on one 12"-PCI card. June '99 saw my 27th birthday and I decided to plug a 32MB DIMM into the PC compatibility card that lets Win95 run quite nicely with a RAM total of 48MB. Finally, I made a long-desired wish come true. The Okipage 12i/n is a postscript capable laser printer that I could hook up to my little ethernet. In October '99, I could no longer withstand replacing the Diamond Monster Voodoo1 card by an STB Voodoo3 2000 PCI card. It is a combined 3D-accelerator and 2D graphics card. Though the beta Mac-drivers can't set free all performance that's in the card, it is the fastest graphics card on the Mac market. In November, I had the opportunity to get a used Belinea 10 50 60 15-inch monitor that is now hooked up to the onboard graphics card of my G3. Christmas '99 passed and I needed a lil' pressie for myself, so I got me a CD-ROM drive: Plextor PX-40TSI. Due to the slow SCSI-controller of the Mac, the drive is not always allowed to show its performance, but the Plextor drive can read any CD format (Q-codes, ISRC-codes,...). Due to Apple not supporting non-Apple drives, I had to hack the CD-ROM driver a little with the result that even the CD-writer can mount volumes without any further driver. In February '00, I thought I could need a larger hard drive, so I bought the Maxtor 92041U4, which is a 5400rpm 20 GB IDE-harddrive. I guess I won't suffer from a real lack of hard drive space for quite some time, even if I install Linux and several MacOSes at the same time.
A new chapter has to be started for an old computer: I could get my fingers on a used PeeCee. It's pretty old, but I hope it is still usable for some tasks. It has an Asus PI/P55 TP4XE motherboard with a Pentium 133 inserted. The amount of RAM is not quite decided yet, as the board accepts PS/2-Simms and I have to see which ones will stay in this machine. There is an ATI Mach64 GT-B graphics chip on a PCI card seated in the first PCI slot. The second slot is filled with my old Voodoo1 card already mentioned above. The third PCI slot received a no name sound card Asound Express. The lowest ISA slot is filled with the ethernet adapter SMC EtherCard Plus Elite 16 8013 EP which is connected via its BNC port to the hub. As CD-ROM drive I use the Apple/Matsushita 24x IDE drive and as hard drive I use the Apple/Quantum 4GB IDE drive - both devices were originally built in my G3. As monitor, I use the old Belinea monitor that was hooked to the onboard graphics card of the G3. This system is still pretty unstable, but probably this is just because it's a Wintel machine ;-). Meanwhile, I reduced the clock rate to 120 MHz and now the system is somewhat more stable. A Ultra-SCSI-controller Advance 2911U is moving from this old PC to the G3 and back since I bought it. Thanks to ebay, I could have 64MB in the old PC AND in the PPC6100, as I bought another two pieces of 32 MB PS/2 SIMMs. A little switcheroo of CD-ROM drives was initiated by the Mac OS X Public Beta: As it refused to install on the G3 with the Plextor 40x SCSI drive, I had to take the 24x IDE Matsushita drive from the old PC back in the G3, build the 2x SCSI-Sony drive originally from the PPC6100 into the old PC and buy a Plextor 12x SCSI CD ROM at ebay.
The year 2000 brought another old computer: In autumn 2000, I won an auction at ebay for an Apple Macintosh Colour Classic. It is already fully equipped with 10MB RAM, a 500MB hard disk, 512kB VRAM and a processor upgrade boosting the original 16MHz with a replaced CPU to unbelievable 33MHz. The Colour Classic is hooked up to my little LAN via a Cabletron EA 419 SCSI-to-Ethernet adapter, that I was able to dig out at ebay as well.
Finally, as Apple was unable to offer a product that meets my requirements and possibilities concerning performance and price, I had to do the long and feared move towards a PC system in early February 2001: It is an AMD Duron 800 MHz in an Epox EP-8KTA+ mainboard that carries a 128MB RAM SDRAM DIMM and features sound onboard. Drives are a Maxtor 40.9GB 34098H4 hard drive and a LiteOn LTD122 DVD-ROM. Video card is a OEM card with GeForce2 MX chip and including TV-out, supported by the Formac ProTV card used as video-in, that I originally bought in '98 for the G3. During a visit at a component dealer, I could not withstand to buy a 128 MB 133MHz SDRAM DIMM that is now installed in the G3 summing its memory up to 224 MB. In early August of 2001, a German food discounter offered very cheap LCD displays: I took the chance and bought a Natcomp @screen x14, which is a 14-inch model. Its default resolution is 1024by768, but it can also display the 800by600 and 640by480 resolutions, however only interpolated. The LCD is attached to the Duron-PC.
Another Mac found its way on my desk: I found a PowerMac 4400 at ebay for a reasonable price and saw an opportunity to finally run the Compatibility Card in the machine it was intended for. The machine runs a PowerPC 603ev CPU at 200MHz. The hard drive was the original 2GB model, but I need more space, so I rotated the 20GB Maxtor drive from the G3 into the 4400 and bought a new Maxtor 80GB drive and plugged that one into the G3. Soon afterwards I upgraded the memory of the G3 with two 256 MB DIMMs to 576MB and that of the PowerMac 4400 by 64MB to 96MB. During christmas time, I bought some 100Mbit PCI-Ethernet cards that are plugged into the Duron-PC, the G3 and the 4400. The G3 received another extension: The PC Compatibility card moved over to the 4400 and the freed slot was filled by a OrangeMicro 620, which is another Compatibility Card. This time not from Apple, equipped with an AMD K6-2 running currently at 375MHz, supplied with128MB of SDRAM, a grpahics controller that shares an adjustable amount of the system's RAM. The card integrates just as smooth into the Mac as my previous DOS and PC Compatibility cards did. As I moved into my own apartment, I decided to upgrade my network slightly with the 100Mbit network adapters, but they would be of no use, if had not bought a Netgear FS 108, which is a 10/100Mbit 8-port switch.
The new year 2002 encouraged me to give money to Apple again. But as there was still no sight of the much desired G5's, I ordered an iPod. The iPod is a mp3-player equipped not only with 32MB of memory, but more importantly with a 5 GB hard drive. The hard drive is filled via a FireWire connection from a Mac and can be used not only as a container for mp3's and other files, but can be used as a startup disk for the Mac as well. The iPod is said to have a battery lifetime of up to 11 hours and the batteries can be recharged over the FireWire connection while mp3's are loaded into the iPod. As none of my computers had the necessary FireWire interface, I had to purchase a FireWire card as well. I decided for the Cherri1394 LMP 6900, which is a combo card with one internal and two external FireWire ports and two external USB ports (USB 1.1 that is). The card does not require individual drivers, but runs with a plain MacOS. I plugged the card into the 4400 and removed the 100Mbit card instead. In March, I decided that burning CDs faster than with my Yamaha 400 CD-R was necessary. So I got me a Sanyo / Brainwave / Nichimen CRD-BP5N, which is a SCSI drive that can handle CDs at 24x/10x/40x speeds. ebay offered a AV-card for my old PowerMac 6100 for a reasonable price, so I took the chance. As my Seti performance was not as good as it could be, I decided to upgrade my PC a little. I got me a Duron 1.2GHz, an additional 128 MB SDRAM and a stronger, dual-fanned power supply Enermax 353W. For my birthday, my friends gave me a Logitech QuickCam 3000 Pro, which is a USB- camera, that can run connected to a Mac as well as in conjunction with a PC. This cam gives me fluent CIF videos and low-frame rate PAL movies as well as PAL images.
Finally, I could not wait any longer: The new Mac is here. In early October of 2002, I bought a PowerMac G4. This computer is driven by 2 CPUs, both running at 867MHz. The DDR-RAM sums up to 768MB. The machine features FireWire, USB, Gigabit Ethernet, Audio In, Audio Out, Video Out ports for 2 monitors. The machine perfectly integrates with my new Apple 17"-TFT Studio Display and the Apple Pro Speakers. Since the default mouse of the G4 was too slow and since I was keen on a scroll wheel, I bought a Logitech Cordless MouseMan Optical. In April, I could no longer withstand and had to get me a wheel for playing my favourite racing games. I ordered a Logitech Momo Racing Force Feedback Wheel and 80GB Maxtor hard drive for archiving music, films and snippets. At the end of April of 2003, Apple delivered the replacement power supply and the casing fan. After installing these parts, the G4 is much more silent than before. Now you can hear the hard drivers spinning and seeking, which was not possible before.
Weekend mobility caused me to have a closer look at the ebay auctions for a portable Mac. Possible models differed from low-end PPC-equipped PowerBooks up to current iBook models. Finally, I found my first portable computer in the middle: I bought a PowerBook G3 of the "bronze keyboard" series, how it was called officially. The name it is more known for is its codename "Lombard". This neat gadget runs at 333MHz and sports a G3 CPU. It is equipped with a lot of 320MB RAM. The previous owner added a FireWire adapter for the PC card slot that allows to attach the iPod or whatever FireWire device to the machine. A larger hard drive was necessary to run both MacOS X and MacOS 9, so I replaced the original 4GB Toshiba model by a more current 40GB Hitachi model. In contrast to what I expected, the battery still can run the machine for quite some time, depending on the application, but it should be more than an hour.
Meanwhile some new equipment came along my way: The PowerMac 6100 received an upgrade in the form of a Sonnet Crescendo G3 processor running at 233 MHz. The Colour Classic was speeded up dramatically from 16MHz to 33MHz by the Sonnet Presto Plus Upgrade. This upgrade not only replaces the original MC60030 processor with 16MHz by a MC 68040 with 33MHz, but also lifts the 10MByte RAM barrier to 32MByte and adds an 10BaseT-port to the motherboard. Recently, adding a 4GB SCSI harddrive to the CC opened some storage space: Wow! OS8.1 on a Colour Classic!! The PC received a Samsung SyncMaster 959NF 19" CRT display. I could not withstand to buy an Atari Portfolio including some 32kB Memory cards, a serial interface and a parallel interface, but I did not have the time to test these. The Lombard Powerbook is now equipped with a PCMCIA-Orinoco Gold WLAN card that could enable me to do some wardriving, if only I had the time. With dropping prices, it seemed reasonable to me to upgrade the LAN partly to Gigabit ethernet. That means I bought a no name switch and an Intel PCI network card for the PC. As the hard discs in my G4 from time to time are full, I opted for a larger drive and bought a 160Gig Hitachi drive and a new Superdrive Pioneer DVR109 as backup drive. After iLife '04 last year, iLife '05 and Tiger went from DVD to my hard drives. Nothing beats the discount on Apple software in their education online store!
Summer 2005 lead me to the decision to get a new PC: I assembled a MSI K8T Neo2 motherboard, an AMD Athlon64 3000+, some 512MB RAM, an ATI Radeon 9600, a DVD-ROM drive and a power supply with large but quiet fans together to a comfortable and noiseless system in order to have something like a current PC system.
In November 2005, I had to face the fact that the nearly 8 year old Lombard Powerbook was not fast enough to do a simple slideshow under MacOS X, so I monitored several ebay auctions for a more recent model, before I started bidding. Finally, I bought a PowerBook G4 12-inch model with a 1.33 GHz CPU, 768MB of RAM, built-in Airport Extreme, built-in Bluetooth, USB 2.0 ports for USB hard drives, FireWire for the iPod and the possibility to hook it up to a tv set. The machine is a little more than 12 months old and the package included Harman-Kardon SoundSticks.
During 2006, my damn-old scanner was replaced by a used AGFA SnapScan 1212 USB scanner, that performs much better than the old one. The G4 received a memory upgrade to a total of 1.75 GB of RAM and I installed a USB 2.0 compatible PCI-adapter. In spring 2007, the G3 machine received an Sonnet Encore ZIF G3 upgrade card that speeds the system up to 500MHz. Summer 2007 saw me winning the auction for a PowerMac G4 Cube at ebay. It is running at 450MHz and was equipped with a CDRW drive and an 32MB graphics card. As the graphics cards fan was noisy, I replaced it with a slightly less performant, but fanless 16MB ATI Rage 128 Pro. To be able to play DVDs and to be able to install the DVD-only 10.4, I bought an external LaCie DVD-RW drive with FireWire interface. Watching satellite tv on the Mac was something I was keen on doing, so I bought a used El Gato EyeTV 310 S. With it, I can not only watch TV on a Mac, but multicast the video stream into the LAN and decode it on every machine that is fast enough.
Autumn of 2007 was finally the time to get my first Intel Mac. My previous Macs were all the cheapest Pro model, this one is the first consumer machine; as I did not make any upgrades to the 2002er PowerMac besides an USB 2.0 card, RAM and hard drives, I decided that I did not need to consider the possibility of extensive extentability. Therefore I got me an iMac. 2.4GHz Core2Duo CPU, the max of 4GB of RAM, a 320 GB hard drive, all in a 20" screen case. The new flat keyboard and as an extra a wireless Mighty Mouse. With it came an iPod nano 4GB in grey. The saved price difference to the MacPro enabled me to get Office and the VMWare package that lets me try if I can get along without a real PC at all. With the year 2008, I became more and more aware of the fact that the Cube offers not enough performance for a living room media center. So I watched out for something better. Finally, at the end of March, I could get hold of a Mac mini with G4 CPU running at 1.25 GHz and with 1GB of RAM. The device is quiet still and can handle the flat panel tv in full resolution. Up to now, I have not seen that its performance limit comes in too early like it was with the Cube. Besides, the mini is my 10th Mac in the 13th year of using computers produced by Apple. In April, an auction at ebay for a Sonnet G3 CPU upgrade allowed me to have the 4400 as the last PowerMac equipped with a CPU upgrade. This one clocks at 300 MHz.
