you KNOW you'll be making one in 2017??? LMFAO

Well, it'll be around late 2016 early 2017. Don't know when I'll get the upgrade bug exactly.

heh, if I did that I'd have to throw in a mess of W2K ones I made for myself and family/friends.
No 8 in this house so far, though there are a couple 7s (and XPs that don't have the speed/memory to make 7 practical much less 8 ...)

Some of the parts from my old computers go to make upgrades for my Mom's computer.

HA! You just had to bring that up!
While my first computer was a TRS-80 (voided the 90 warranty - just 'had' to look inside! ) my first PC was a 386-2- with 2 megs of ram mono screen and single 5 1/4 drive (was ONLY $1500!) Next one was a homemade 386-40 SVGA 40m hd 4m ram. slowly upgraded it to a 486-40. Christmas was rolling around and I had most of the parts to make the 386-40 a second system, but another idea came up instead. Called my brothers to see if they wanted to chip in and give our mom a PC for Xmas. All was good for a while, then my mom called to say the PC wasn't working ... next time I was there I fired it up, and yeah, even the post was dragging its ass. It was at this time I made a 'small' blunder. I said, "Oh wait - this is the 386." My mom's eyes lit up and she said, "You mean it can go faster?" Mom had more 'mad' money than I did, so for a while she had a faster computer! (a 486-100, which up until last year my dad was still using to do his books - it's still works, it's dad that's having issues. )

My family's first computer was an old IBM PC (here http://www.old-computers.com/museum.....uter.asp?c=274 ) that was given to my Mom by our pastor at the time to run her business, around 1994-1995. The hard drive died or BIOS died (I guess got corrupted) when my brother tried installing a game from Wal-Mart on it. Don't remember how much RAM it had, but it did have a 10MB hard drive.

The next computer was one I got from a college excess property auction in 1997, an old IBM PC XT (here http://www.old-computers.com/museum.....uter.asp?c=286 ) along with a Kaypro IV (here http://www.old-computers.com/museum.....st=1&c=549 ). The XT had 640K of RAM and a 20MB hard drive.

Then of course, it wasn't until 1999 did I start building my own computers with a pre-assembled kit from Tigerdirect, that included the case, motherboard (Soyo 5EMA+), video card (SiS 6326 8MB APG 8x video card), CD-ROM, floppy and power suppy. Added that Cyrix MII CPU, the 3GB hard drive and initially, 32MB of PC66 SDRAM running Windows 98.

Oh, I forgot to say that the IBM PC would display "Non System Disc or Disc Error" on boot after checking RAM. Even if you had a bootable DOS floppy in the floppy drive (those old computers always checked the floppy drive first), it would display that. I think the same thing happened to the PC XT as well, but I don't quite remember.

I'm still trying to get a workable image burning program, so I can burn off my WinXP .iso file and get that installed on my laptop. I'm honestly fed up with Win7, I just want to go back to WinXP.

I actually liked Windows 7, as much as I did XP. But with the newer computers with the UEFI BIOS, you kind of have to run Windows 8 (though Windows 7 will run, you just lose some functionality that Windows 8 and UEFI Bios's have like fast and super fast boot)

I hate Win7 because the damn 'compatibility' function didn't work. I clicked on the compatibility tab, and all the choices were greyed out. I tried going through the troubleshooter, but that never worked either. And honestly, I'm tired of not being able to play my older games.

Could you recommend a good image burner? Astroburn Light doesn't work for me. It starts to burn the image, then says it was unable to burn the file.

They were grayed out because you didn't have administrator access to that. I always made sure my account was always the administrator account.

I use AShampoo Burning Studio to burn my DVDs (its tons better than Nero), and I've used it for many years. https://www.ashampoo.com/en/usd/pin.....ning-Studio-14

My account is the only account on here, and they've always been greyed out. And yes, I'm the Administrator. I also constantly get the 'ask your administrator for permission' bullshit on things, even though this is an administrator account and it's the only account here. Win7 has always done this to me. Aside from it having a slightly better look to the start button, it's inferior to WinXP to me. At least with WinXP the compatibility function actually worked, and I didn't have problems running any of my older games.

Uh, I wanted a good 'image' burning program, not just a good DVD burning one. I can use RealPlayer Pro for that, or Media Player. I'm just looking for a program I can use to burn my WinXP.iso to a DVD so I can install it on my laptop.

Dunno what was wrong with your Windows 7 system, the compatibility function always worked for me on Win 7. Also, Ashampoo burns ISO's as well, so that will work for you. (You can mount an ISO in Windows 7 and 8, I don't remember, but I think you could in Windows XP too, also, all three could burn an ISO to a DVD)

I don't know either, but as far as I can remember it's never worked for me. And I looked at the description for Ashampoo on that site, and I didn't see anything about image burning, yet in the link you just gave me I can see it in there. :/ ~shrugs~ Oh well, I have Astroburn Pro now, so there's that.

Here's a screenshot of the program's ISO capability https://www.dropbox.com/s/sv8uqcw47.....or/ABS-ISO.png

Actually I just got Astroburn Pro, so now all I need is an external DVD-RW drive (the one on my laptop apparently doesn't want to burn anything for some reason).

you average a new system about every 14 months

If you count by just when I got a different motherboard, its a little less than every 17 months. Not a huge amount of difference, of course. (April 99 to Sept 2014, about 185 months, and motherboard changes 11 times)

OMG you had a Smelleron?? You poor thing.

LOL, I still have it, currently using it right now.

lol
I think I read some where that the Celeron chip was actually a beefed up 486 DX/4 chip. Can't remember when or where I read that. But wouldn't be the first time they went backwards in technology in order to bring something affordable, price wise, to the table.

I read the original Celeron was the same thing as the Pentium, just with the cache disabled/removed. Today's Celerons are just slower in general than their performance counterparts.

You're probable right. I might be thinking of something else.
My old 486DX/4 was an awesome machine and did everything the newer Pentiums were doing. Wish I kept that computer. But I upgraded it to a Pentium 4, way back in the day.

Oh, that computer I found by the trash last year, it has a Celeron (1999 copyright on the BIOS)

Pulled the CPU, the code is:
FV524RX366
128 SL36C
L9158303-0626

Oooolllddddah

Computer also has 64MB of PC100 SDRAM and a 4GB Maxtor drive (it has the occasional problem of head parking when it was cold)

I started with a 286 in 1990 unless you want to include the Timex-Sinclair ZX81 I had in 1980

My family used to have an old beige box running Windows 98 SE and one time I was using one of those, the computer froze and the sound it was playing sounded like a broken record player. Good old memories!

By the way, have you thought about upgrading to Windows 10 or it its not worth it?

I am running Windows 10. All the computers my family has are running Windows 10. You kind of have to with newer UEFI based hardware.

Did that nagging to upgrade from Microsoft get to you or it was fine? By the way, I am using a 5 year old Mac-book on this, and I have Windows 10 on another partition.

No, it wasn't particularly that. Aside from the fact it was a free upgrade. And I prefer to keep up to date with software (I ran Windows XP from 2001 to 2009, as you see up there)

FYI: Learn to use the "reply to this post"

Alright, I almost forgot about that. Sorry.