How Did You Become Interested in Computers?

OmegaWolf747 · 2025-01-25T00:57:04+00:00

For me, my true love affair with computers began 31 years ago in my tenth grade touch typing class, when the clunky old IBM electric typewriters we'd been using were spirited away over Christmas vacation and replaced with a LAN of IBM PS/2 Model 25s. To a modern person, those machines are clunky old beige boxes with less processing power than a modern smartwatch, but to my teenage self, those things were space age!

ZZZZZZZ

Never wanted a PC but around 2000 I realized my stock brokers weren't doing me any favors with my money,so broke down and got one to personally take care of my investments.

While waiting for the iternet to be installed,I learnt all the functions and options of my W98.....then thankfully found 2 lncredible sites when connected.....Wilders and DSLR.....both sites had great helpful members with my many Qs. 🙂

Now we have 2 desktops,2 laptops and 2 phones connected. lol
What a setup. 🙂

Today. 😜

HooRU

I don't really LOVE computers, I like using them. They are devices. But mine started with a mechanical computer as a young guy and my first job as a young adult (I had had other jobs before) was in robotics in the very early days.

Computers are just man amplifiers and I wouldn't describe loving them. Enjoying what I can do on them, yes. Loving is more for my wife and kids.

dave

HooRU

Well, that much is true. I am no longer particularly interested in computers. I used to be, when computers were interesting, but every since the x86 and its bastard offspring achieved world domination, they're not.

I am however still immensely interested in computer programming.

Splitpair

My first computer was a machine a business set out back to get rid of it, the machine consisted of three parts which had to be powered up one by one or a breaker would trip, the largest part had a keyboard and probably some drives in it ,when powering up it sounded like a small jet engine spooling up, the second unit contained a printer and a paper punch tape reader with a loop of yellow oily smelling paper tape looped through it and the third unit has two disk drop in disc pack about 24" across.

Once all powered up at the chicken beak I typed in what was on a note taped above the key board, the tape would run then a menu would come up where a loan amount, the interest rate, plus the length of the loan would be entered followed by pressing enter.

After about 30 seconds or so the printer would start up and print out a number of pages detailing the month by month payments amounts as applied to interest and principal.

And that was all it would do for me, I had no idea how to program it or how to get it to punch a blank tape, it was a IBM machine and probably cost someone a small fortune.

Early the following year I hauled it down to the Miami Hamfest and sold it for something like $300

Splitpair

The second machine I purchased was a Radio Shack CoCo, I set it up as a weather monitoring system, once an hour it would read the data from a weather station I had built behind my home and from that I could build daily or monthly reports, in time I was able to link it with others who had built similar systems using a low band channel of 27.490 MHz which provided us with a network of stations from Miami to West Palm Beach.

At first it was a mess to sort out as each person had a slightly to totally different way of parsing their data but eventually we agreed on a common method and it worked really well.

I held the FCC Part 90 license so we only needed one for all to use the system.

Comicbookguy

The first computer I used was in School the famous Apple II. Little did I know it was 1977 tech there but it felt futuristic for me even though I was born in 1982. Then in last year of elementary school we used a Macintosh Performa the all in one system. That was my first experience with internet. I wasn't really interested in the internet then it looked boring to me. Then skip about 4 years later the family decided on getting a computer. Well my brother in law worked for a hospital and they were selling their old stuff. Got an IBM ps/2 value point system for $175 it had a 486 sx cpu 25MHz with 8mb ram and 127mb drive. Even then it was too much for that system. But it paid off when I learned how they worked which started in 1997. Then in 1999 my sister showed my mom internet and MSN chat. She just had to have it. She thought it was fun way to spend time. So we tried it on that clunky system found out it wouldn't load since it was Windows 3.1 and the requirement was Windows 95. So we bought another pc not knowing any better about the different processors. We got a $100 computer that was barely better than the one we had. But it had Windows 95. It only lasted one year until my uncle sold us a Acer Acros Pentium 75Mhz system with Windows 95 on it for $50. That thing was a speed demon compared to the 486 systems we had plus it had a full duplex sound card. We hanged around on Hearme.com or also known as Mplayer and MSN chat and learned how emails work. Well that system taught me more stuff that I didn't know like PnP devices. But it didn't have a USB port and we wanted to check out the web cameras. Well we got another computer foolishly it was a Cyrix MII at 266MHz real clock speed but was PR333 with Windows ME. That system really sucked and I decided to buy my own stuff and build them for now on. Tried my luck on a Tekram p5t30-b4 with a Pentium 166MHz which did circles around the Cyrix MII cpu. Learned about overclocking and pushed the Pentium 166 to 225MHz. Added a Geforce MX 200 pci card to it. Then threw in a free K6-2 500MHz cpu in it but it would only run at 450MHz due to no 100MHz FSB. Then that system I ran Windows XP on it in the SP1 days and applied the SP2 when it came out. Then that system started to BSOD at random. Then a guy on the internet sent for free an ASUS a7V with an Athlon 800MHz cpu. That sucker was FAST and I was able to play postal 2 and the games at full speed that wouldn't run on that poor k6-2 system. Then graduated from that system to a Pentium 4 2GHz cpu. That worked great for awhile. Then wounded up with an MSI neo platinum 865pe with a 3.2 Pentium 4. Used that until 2009. Then built a duo core 2 E7500 2.93GHz system with 8800GTX on p5q deluxe. That blew my mind when counter strike source was hitting 280FPS. Which I never seen over 40 fps before. Then upgraded from that to a Q6600 and Q9550 cpu and 470GTX card. Ran windows 7 for awhile on that. Then went to AMD FX 8320 on a 990FX R2.0 board with 16GB ram and a 680 GTX card. Ran ok for the 5 years I had it. Then finally broke down in 2019 and built my current system an Ryzen 3900x 32GB ram and 1660 ti card. I have built and repaired all kinds of systems in that time for friends and family. I still like it. My first time with Linux was back in 2004 with Slaxware. I thought it was funny and cool the entire O/s loaded from CD without installing it. But I got annoyed with it since I tried the Ubuntu and it wouldn't remember the screen size and hz on every reboot. Later I learned during the bootup it would query the monitor for the capabilities and use that setting and it would totally ignore what I had it set at if that information was missing. But I did replace the monitor and have tinkered with Linux off and on. They have come a long way from those days.

Splitpair

Comicbookguy The first computer I used was in School the famous Apple II.

Haven't times changed, used to be the students would bring the teacher a apple, now the apples are for the sudents.

takeahike

Splitpair Haven't times changed, used to be the students would bring the teacher a apple, now the apples are for the students.

Yeah, well the rich used to have cars and the poor had horses but now it's the other way around.

Comicbookguy

Splitpair I think they don't bring anything at all anymore. Those days are long gone now. The schools ditched Apple and went with Chrome Books or Windows computer's now. I remember the days the teachers would say you will never carry a calculator in your pocket everyday. Well the Cell phone does that and I always have it on me but I don't stare at it 24/7. I also have Google do the hard math's now and be 100% correct.

Sparkchaser

Comicbookguy went with Chrome Books or Windows computer's now

My niece is in supervisor of IT in a school in Delaware. She was saying that they didn't know what to do about getting Chrome Books because of the possible price increase if tariffs are imposed. They have a certain amount of money but what will it buy,

Sparkchaser

Comicbookguy The schools ditched Apple and went with Chrome Books or Windows computer's now.

Every student I know around here has a Chrome Book.

dfrandin

In my case I kind of fell into it. After leaving the Army in 1978, I putzed around for a couple of years until a friend told that a large defense contractor in San Diego was hiring. I applied and was hired as a component-level electronics tech. That job lasted nearly 5 years, when they had a large layoff due to several contracts coming to an end. Needing a job, a friend who was the manager of a local Radio Shack told me the local Radio Shack Computer shop was hiring. I applied and, was hired. My only experience was the fact I owned the first TRS-80 Model 1 sold in the Yuma AZ Radio Shack store. I worked there for about a year, and moved on a small company that built IBM-PC/XT clones, from locally sourced parts, and sold the completed systems to one large customer and many small ones. One day I came to work, about a year after being hired, and the door was locked. Turns out the company had lost the contract to supply these systems to that LARGE customer and the owners of the company decided to close the doors. I had to contact the state labor board to get my last paycheck. Along with building/installing these XT systems, I began learning networking, starting with Novell 2.X running on a Compaq desktop system and an ArcNet topology. Moved on to another company in 1990, that was a Novell 3.11/WindowsforWorkgroups shop, and stayed there till 1995, when the wife and I decided to move to Las Vegas. I continued in IT support in Las Vegas until my retirement in 2010.

OmegaWolf747

I just won this beauty on an eBay auction. Even if it doesn’t boot, it’ll feel great just to have one of these babies again.

urbanriot

For me it was the games. Back in the mid to late 70s I was at an accounting firm and I saw one guy in the corner doing something that looked like it was some kind of exploration or attacking or something, very minimal graphics with a lot of text but it looked like he was exploring something and it was fascinating to me.

Then the Atari 2600 came out, and then the Atari 400 (which I later upgraded to an Atari 800XL) and programming games from Compute! magazine became a hobby, trying to fix the bugs, trying to fix accidentally entered bugs, and of course trying to modify or ‘hack’ the game to do different things.

Everything changed in the late 80s and early 90s when you had the majestic beauty of games like Kings Quest V or The Quest for Monkey Island and I was locked into computer gaming, trying to squeeze every ounce of performance from my PC and I suppose at that point I became a ‘tech’ person. There was a time when I upgraded the RAM chips of my Vesa Local Bus controller card to increase buffering speeds between the motherboard and the hard drive.

ugly95

urbanriot Kings Quest V

I had that one. I think it was like a Sierra ‘best of’ type title and had the full voice acting. That owl was annoying.

I don’t think I ever beat it. I think a lot of those Sierra adventure games were intentionally obtuse.

There was something a little charming about playing PC games in the 90s and early 2000s, where you had to try to do anything you could to squeeze out extra performance (or even just to get the game to work). It’s strange, but I actually get some enjoyment using Linux now with trying to get those games to work again. Even that is super easy sometimes, but sometimes you have to do some extra work to get it working right.

urbanriot

ugly95

I don’t think I ever beat it.

I didn’t either lol! In true Sierra fashion there was a puzzle that was a spot with a puzzle that was too obtuse to figure out. I had a stoppage with almost every single Kings Question game and one that stumped me forever in Hero’s Quest until I found a book at the library of all places that explained how to get around it.

ugly95

urbanriot I didn’t either lol! In true Sierra fashion there was a puzzle that was a spot with a puzzle that was too obtuse to figure out. I had a stoppage with almost every single Kings Question game and one that stumped me forever in Hero’s Quest until I found a book at the library of all places that explained how to get around it.

Yup. I think I had a three pack with KQV, and Quest for Glory IV (I think they eventually had to change the name from Hero’s Quest because of the board game). Sadly for me, the QfG IV CD had an error early on and crashed my game. It was the voice version with John Rhys-Davies doing the narrator.

I also had a non-Sierra game, Ringworld. And same thing. Got to a point that I couldn’t figure out (or couldn’t complete the pixel hunt).

I did revisit some of those games later. They did a couple nice unofficial remakes of the originals:
AGD Interactive

But, by then there were walkthroughs, so I don’t think I ever actually beat them on my own.

OmegaWolf747

My PS/2 arrived! According to the eBay description, it boots to a 301 keyboard error, which Gemini and I deduced was most likely due to using a modern keyboard with an adapter. I have an IBM Model M keyboard en route. After I receive it, is it safe to use a power cord from a modern PC and just flip the switch?

antdude

ugly95 https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2025/05/sierra-made-the-games-of-my-childhood-are-they-still-fun-to-play/ for those old school Sierra adventure gamers.

Donoreo

For me it was the possibilities. I never cared for games, still do not, waste of resources. I worked for a game developer for a while so I do have a video game credit.

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