Building my childhood dream PC

May 1, 2025 Building my childhood dream PC In 1993, I was 14 and already passionate about computers[1]. That year my mother managed to buy a PC for the household. That was quite an effort for a single mother. My brother Aurelien and I spent every waking hour on this machine, staying up all night on weekends. Discovering the architecture of the PC, learning to program it, exploring how to manage its memory with CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT , installing isa cards, drawing with Deluxe Paint, and of course playing games like Dune II, Syndicate, or Day of the Tentacle was so much fun. That time period sets us both on a trajectory towards prolific engineering careers. One year later we found out the Conforama salesman had tricked us. The Cyrix 486SLC-25Mhz he sold us was just a 386 which could barely run games like DOOM and Strike Commander in stamp size at minimal details level. Of course the neighbor had an IBM PS/1 2168 486DX2-66Mhz where these games ran butter-smooth at 25fps. That I ... Read full article.