My name is Mike Hader and computers are my passion, my obsession. I started Haderade’s Bits and PCs because I wanted a to do what I love for a living. I enjoy working with computers because there is always a challenge and always something new to learn.

I was first introduced to a computer at age 10. It was an Apple IIe. I played this game where you had to place and position different sections of pipe to get the ball from over here to the can over there.

The first computer that I could call “mine” was an 8088 with two 5 1/4 floppy drives. One of the drives had to have the MS DOS boot disk and the other had whatever program I was running. The monitor was a green monochromatic, like 12 inches or so, big heavy cube. Ancient hardware by the time I got it.

My dad had a 286 computer which ran DOS 6.22, Windows 3.11, and Word Perfect 5.1 for DOS. I can remember when my friends got a 386DX, I was so jealous! It was faster and had more memory that mine. Their computer could play Commander Keen flawlessly while mine was jerky and slow. Ah the good old days!

Since that time I have read books, disassembled, learned, and reassembled many computers, and built many more out of spare parts and junk I had lying around.

The machines listed below are no longer in service, though I still have most, if not all the parts.

1. AMD Athlon64 3200+ (runs at 2.2GHz), 1GB DDR RAM, 120GB SATA drive running Vista Ultimate64, with 2 120GB IDE drives configured with software RAID = 240GB storage, and DVD RW drive.
2. Pentium M 1.8, 2GB Dual Channel DDR2 RAM, 40GB IDE running Vista Ulitmate32, 2 500GB SATA drives with software RAID = 1TB storage, DVD RW.
3. Dual PIII 800Mhz, 393MB RAM, 2 10GB IDE drives running Windows Media Center, WiFi G adaptor, notebook DVD-ROM, Zip100, and a tape drive.
4. AMD Athlon XP 3000+ (runs at 2.19GHz), 512MB RAM, 40GB IDE drive, DVD RW, CD-RW.

Sometimes it can be consuming, but I am always curious to see if maybe this will work or maybe that. I like to see what I can create with the parts I have.

Filed under: General, computer repair