#13 Tech-Nostalgia

The stream of computers that came into the home I grew up in started around the time my mother went back to work in the early 90s. She needed something to word process on, so she got some sort of cut-down early-days laptop with a basic LCD display that made gameboys look flashy. All it did was typing, and saving of documents... I THINK we could save on to 3 1/2" disks, though I think there were limitations. It was, in essence, an 80s word processing machine without the built-in printing capacity. I think that was when old mini-gun-whirring dot-matrix came into the picture.

The next couple of computers were hand-me-downs from my richy tech-head uncle (visits to his computer 'nook' always prompted lots of silent gawking at the bell's n whistles). The first one of them enabled my brothers and I to cut our teeth a bit with basic DOS commands. Figuring out what executables were, learning how to copy files between drives, and using the blessed 'dir' command to see what wonders were held within. As it turned out, it was Q-bert. Other stuff was there, but I think I got a gameboy not long afterwards, whereafter I was trapped in Wario Land for quite some time.

The second computer eventually became my baby, mainly after the family's first Pentium was purchased around '98. As time went by, I scrounged up some second hand bits to add to my jerry-rigged Doom and X-Com beast (ahem). Parts of it are actually still chugging away in the room of a housemate of mine. Admittedly, only the case and power-supply, but living in denial never hurt anyone (irony). It continued to be my pet, going through at least a couple of 3D cards, until a couple of years ago (2004 actually) when I jumped on the 'good enough to play pretty things' band wagon, receiving a brand spanking new computer for my birthday. Although I still insisted on building the damn thing myself.

Not alot has changed in the system since then. The RAM's doubled, the cooling system is now able to keep the damn thing below 90 degrees (c), and the DVD drive has changed. Most of what I've learnt about computers has been trial and error - if, when my adolescence lead me to techy dissection, it didn't explode... I ran with it. Not too much has changed. I read the manuals a bit more these days, but I often get a bit impatient, jump right in, then kick something later. I'm astonished at what I was able to accomplish way back when, considering all that. For a time, I managed to network 4 computers in my parents place (this is around 1999-2000, I think), all tapping into the same 33.6kbps dial-up modem. Hmmmn... snail. Then, a few years later, I networked 7 computers in a uni share-house, nearly all of them having different versions of windows. Um, yeah... though, truth be told, I just wanted an excuse to force people to play Doom when they came over for 'dinner'.

God, I'm sad.