All:
It's damn good to be here!
I'm a long time computer geek... built my first system in 1992. The specs on that system, which was a reasonably powerful system at the time, included an Intel 386-SX processor, 4MB of RAM, a 10MB hard drive, a blazing-fast 56K modem and Windows 3.0 running on a copy of DR DOS from Digital Research. Shortly thereafter, I took a job with MediaVision, and installed a Pro Audio Spectrum 8-bit ISA audio card and a dual speed CD-ROM connected to the PAS's CD-ROM interface. I became an expert in editing PIF's ("Program Information Files" for those of you to young to have had the pleasure) and tweaking driver configurations to get things to "sorta work". I was always upgrading hardware and software, particularly focused around gamimg performance, which meant a Pro Audio Spectrum 16 sound card, Multimedia Extensions for Windows 3.0 and eventually Windows 3.1 and Win95 with DirectX.
I cut my teeth in gaming by searching bulletin boards for the latest Beta and sometimes pre-Beta releases of games. I downloaded the Doom beta sometime in late 1993 at about 8:00 one evening. After managing to get it running and stable a few hours later, I played for a few minutes, then checked my watch to realize that it was 6:30am.
Its been a very long time since I did an all nighter with my eyes glued to my monitor. Somewhere along the way, I forgot how much fun and how cathartic it was to leave the real world behind and exercise my demons in the digital space. To quote Bruce Buffer,"It's Time!".
I just built a brand new gaming system based on an ROG Crosshair VIII Impact, Ryzen 93900x CPU, EVGA 2070 Super Hybrid GPU and a few other choice bits and pieces. I'm just about to start building a combination racing/flight sim rig to play Assetto Corsa and MSFS 2020. With any luck, I'll get the system OC'd and dialed in so that I can reliably run 3 QHD monitors at high frame rates for hours on end.
Let the games begin.
BDGM
