A history of Techist.

[Software Dev Expert]

We’ll see how many more times this site gets sold ?

 

[Gale W. Marshall]

Trotter i remember when i joined this TF, its really helpful for tech experts.

 

[krazyq]

My life/career would not be where it is today if it weren't for TF.
Great people, great memories, I still have a bookmark saved that I don't want to remove.
Reddit is where people go now, not a bad thing, it's just the evolution I guess.

 

[Ste]

So I know this is a bit of a Necro post. But its certainly not the worst Ive ever done.

So as far as Tech forums history goes I wasn't around for the first few years or so. and then disappeared for awhile because the custom PC or similar career paths.. uh.. had issues/problems. And have resurfaced out of the super deep ends cause, um. being social or whatever, OH AND I was surprised to see this place still hustling and gearing. Goooood Job Guys!!!


Anywhoms.. From the time I joined around 2005 to the time I disappeared ish like 2010/2011 I think?? I remember computer forums and tech forums SUPERNOVA'ING with posts and traffic and readers/un-membered guests because during these years...it really was the "HEY" day of gaming and PC enthusiasm.. And it was in this state of spectacle and who ha because there was such an extreme and wide"r" variety of parts, tech and hardware to literally make gourmet and elite home entertainment + PC gaming setups and configurations.

In addition to that other than a few Fry's electronics and smaller stores even in the USA there wasn't much variety OR availability of component/PC parts in physical stores. And if there were good products you could drive to a store and buy they were WAY over priced from you could even add rush shipping on websites for.

So there was a lot of very good and spirited discussion and not only what to build, and how, and the procedure to do so, but also WHERE to buy from and from not. And how to deal with all those issues or whatever.

So attempting to not be a wall of text incurring Ancient but loved " TL;DR's" I kept reading and coming back to Tech-forums, as well as making the power supply guide thats still not updated yet mostly still true to read the stories and posts of people competing in 3D mark and Folding @ Home + SETI competitions for max scores and shortest protein folding time or how many SETI data projects one could complete in 24 hours. As well as all the sad, infuriating personal opinions and stories that accompenied all those interactions/experiences.



Gooosh willY gee, aren't run on sentences fun sometimes??

Edit: And oh yea.. "' One time at internet meme camp i was encourgaed to get a Q6600 to a 51% overclock on air, room sounded like 3 Grey Hound Buses but I guess it was fun obilierating SETI and F@H projects and being 5th? I wanna say in 3D mark scores on the way to ruining 2-3 sets of RAM and 1-2 Motherboards before I was liek, welll okay maybe a 30% overclock on air is good enough.. I guess - Sad face - "

 

[PP Mguire]

I find myself missing those old days daily. PC gaming and "enthusiasm" has gone so mainstream lately that the core interest and nerdiness to it is simply lost to time. Gaming in itself has gone full money maker mode with 0 passion, catering only to those who buy constant rehashes and remakes. Overclocking and hardware in general is made so easy and consumer friendly that there's no fun in benchmarks or friendly competition. Not when every board out there has your CPU settings on kill mode by default. Every hardware brand out there is too busy copying each other that there's no uniqueness left so pretty much every build winds up looking similar. Consoles have turned into small mid range PCs with the push to try and stick to PC standards in gaming that unless you have a need for a PC there's almost no point. I've all but lost my core interest in the hobby in favor of the server world.

 

[Ste]

I find myself missing those old days daily. PC gaming and "enthusiasm" has gone so mainstream lately that the core interest and nerdiness to it is simply lost to time. Gaming in itself has gone full money maker mode with 0 passion, catering only to those who buy constant rehashes and remakes. Overclocking and hardware in general is made so easy and consumer friendly that there's no fun in benchmarks or friendly competition. Not when every board out there has your CPU settings on kill mode by default. Every hardware brand out there is too busy copying each other that there's no uniqueness left so pretty much every build winds up looking similar. Consoles have turned into small mid range PCs with the push to try and stick to PC standards in gaming that unless you have a need for a PC there's almost no point. I've all but lost my core interest in the hobby in favor of the server world.

Ya.. do you like remember when you actually had to know what your doing with the memory timings and the 15+ motherboard settings in ones BIOS?

Gives me interesting nightmares just trying to not remember those times.

Edit: Now its just candy pop kitty auto tune or 3-4 GUI selector menu's or whatever. Super hard core Gen Z and alpha's. ;?

 

[Joe C]

Today, Nvidia is now bigger than Microsoft and Apple

“We believe over the next year the race to $4 trillion market cap in tech will be front and center between Nvidia, Apple, and Microsoft,” said a note earlier this week from Wedbush Securities.
“Nvidia’s GPU chips are in essence the new gold or oil in the tech sector as more enterprises and consumers quickly head down this path with the 4th Industrial Revolution well underway.”

I'm thinking instead of buying $$$ Nvidia video cards, I should've been buying Nvidia stock instead
Nvidia Becomes World’s Most Valuable Company on Stock Market

 

[Ste]

Today, Nvidia is now bigger than Microsoft and Apple

I'm thinking instead of buying $$$ Nvidia video cards, I should've been buying Nvidia stock instead
Nvidia Becomes World’s Most Valuable Company on Stock Market

If I was smart I would have invested in buying up subsidiaray/aftermarket power supplies brands/ company names and websites. Like for reselling of used or refurbished power supplies, cases, case fans; case, power and cooling related asscessories, mods, nick naks and all in between.

Like seriously my last 4 computer builds have all been in this steal catacombs of a case; Silverstone J05 something. From bless it's deceased soul sundialmicro.com. And thermal paste and PC specialized tool kits ET AL.

but alas I am not smurt and as such I am just a philosopher.

EDIT: oh riiight, I forgot; "One time at internet meme camp; I decided to take carpentry tools to PC hardware and got a Q6600's external layering then called IHS ( do kids still call it that?) to have a literal reflective surface. 400 to 800 to 1200 to 2200 Grit sand paper plus rubbing alcohol applications. So you can imagine my hands shaking when I was inspecting it from maybe 5 feet above a sink. I drop it. The Q6600 bounced around the hard surface and on the third rebound I caught it and Somehow had no PINS bent or any damage. Poped that sucker in and I had to write some memory and motherboard companies letters when those were the only components that couldn't Keep up."

 

[PP Mguire]

Ya.. do you like remember when you actually had to know what your doing with the memory timings and the 15+ motherboard settings in ones BIOS?

Yes and no, as I never really had any trouble until recently with the AM4 platform.

 

[Ste]

Yes and no, as I never really had any trouble until recently with the AM4 platform.

I rememeber in like 2003 or something I was running custom load testing software for a AMD Athlon 3200+ when I determined it could no longer take the 42% overclock on air. So I reset the CPU OC to around 32% or so and restarted. It rebooted, started to run for about 3 seconds and in lovely dark room I saw a nice lightening spark in my case and the PC shut off. I thought about for all of 3 seconds and was like " oohhhh riiiight I needed to decrease the CPU and RAM input voltage after decreasing core total clock at this point".

Well that was a fun way to have to buy 2 new sets of then DDR1 4 GB RAM. That's read, you read your screen correctly The days when 4 individual 1 GB sticks was elite pro fire. AF.