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Computers

Current Gaming PC

I updated my gaming rig in January of '09 to get better performance in iRacing.com:

Current General Use PC

History

Back in High School (~1982) computers became a hobby when I earned enough money from my paper route to purchase an Atari 400. With a touch-sensitive membrane keyboard and 32k of RAM, I recall spending hours typing in basic code and saving it to a cassette tape drive in front of the TV in my parents' bedroom. That was fun (and torture), but the console also accepted game cartridges, which explains my root motivation.

Gaming has always been at the core of my computer hobby. As new games come out they require faster computers. As faster computers come out they allow for better games. It's a vicious cycle as a consumer because it's like hooking an I.V. to your wallet. Just to give you an idea: At the time of this writing I'm on my 18th computer system and my favorite racing game is on it's 6th generation.

In the early days in order to get the PC to run a game you would have to use DOS to create a boot-disk that properly configured the computer and it's memory settings. Often, each game required the creation of its own boot-disk, with an autoexec.bat and config.sys tweaked just for that game. In some cases, it was impossible to run a game without knowing how to do it. Fortunately Windows has made things a lot easier, but the fact is, Windows (pre-2000/XP) wasn't that stable and still required a high level of knowledge to gain optimum performance and avoid glitches.

In the earlier Windows days, the emphasis shifted from tweaking the computers start-up files to tweaking it's hardware in an effort to attain higher "framerates". The processor, and soon after the video card, would be manipulated (AKA Overclocked) to to provide a smoother, higher quality visual appearance. Why? The human eye can discern if there are less that 30 frames per second being shown. When this happens the animation can seem choppy. Once you're above 30 fps the display is much smoother.

Today I have my fingers in quite a few different computer-related hobbies. I'm still doing the gaming (both Sim Racing and battling) and building my own PCs, but I've also branched out and fiddle with other related activities. Windows isn't the only OS I can work with. Linux ran our home server here for quite some time. I code all the HTML, CSS and create all the site graphics and visual designs for BobBeltrami.com and MountainWest Motorsports and am slowly learning Javascript. This is the part where I point out that it's just a hobby and I'm completely self taught (I have not taken a computer course since High School). I hold no illusions that any of it is "Professional" quality. At best, I'm a jack of all trades, master of none.

Computer systems / processors I've owned or built up:

* The PCs with an asterisk were built from scratch. It's less expensive to build my own than buy a pre-assembled PC. I get to choose the optimal parts that I want in the computer without compromising because of limited offerings by vendors. When upgrade time comes I only have to purchase a few items instead of a whole PC. It just makes sense, it's fun and I always learn something.

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