[agumonkey]

I can relate a bit. Even though assembling components was a thing until early 2K, it's barely not anymore. Only gamer or very demanding people picks the pieces. Any laptop will do now, and even though I love my ThinkPad, I miss the physical interaction with wires and cards. It's not rare to feel that way, we like to sense, so miniaturization is taking something away from us. Also, even in the 90s, assembling a computer wasn't the same as in the 80s, the interfaces were complex and it was transitioning between DIY to plug'n'play so you didn't understand a lot of what was happening. Not the same as really controlling all the pieces with your own code.

[freehunter]

I like assembling my own stuff as in micro-controllers and breadboards and things where complexity can be removed by looking at a wiring schematic. I absolutely hate assembling my own stuff as in plugging in an AMD R9 270 and fitting an Intel Core i7 and finding RAM that's compatible with your motherboard and plugging in SATA cables and making sure your case fans are blowing the right way to get proper airflow and figuring out how much of a power supply you need. The only challenge that offers is in selecting compatible parts, and the only reward is having something exactly the same as the person next to you who bought his pre-built.

I'm not surprised to see PC building going away. It's a high risk, low reward enterprise, especially considering that modern games haven't push the minimum spec envelope much further than what you can play on a Macbook Air. Building a PC is like Lego, where the pieces only fit together in one specific way, and each piece costs $250. The good part doesn't start until the building is done and you get into the software.

But there will always be a place for actual hardware tinkerers, the ones who need multimeters and solder and flux. Even if it is a niche.

[agumonkey]

Hehe, you're already far above the average joe level. As a teen I'd never have been able to really follow schematics, so just Lego playing with PCI cards and such was fun. That said, pre-built configs are never really what you want, I could keep using my old p2 350 because I had opportunity to pick nice enough video, sound cards and drives to improve dataflow in the system. Most on the shelf configs were 'HIGH SPEED CPU + crippled bottleneck coprocessors'.

ps: in the wintel world, I wouldn't call software a good part, unless you enjoy removing windows and drivers crapware, but you probably had clean distributable ghost images of some kind.

[freehunter]

What I meant by that was getting to launch your game. The fun part is when you see the Quake 3 launch window.

[agumonkey]

Hehe, personally I was fond of 3DMark for showing off then Half Life 2 for the stress.

[rconti]

Don't forget IRQ conflicts and the early days of Plug 'N Pray which somehow managed to make things even WORSE.

[MetaCosm]

I just had a flashback to my PB and the combined sound card / modem -- that sometimes almost worked.