Post your comments and questions for A Guru's World #27: Nearly 20 Years Seems Like Such A Long Time...

__________________
ActiveTuning - Partner & Director Of Sales & Marketing

Nice article jonny

I really liked the inside into a world I've never known. Being that I was born 20 years ago, I missed some of those experiences. Add to that that my first computer ever was a P166, and you get the picture of how much of it I missed seeing first hand.

I really like "Those were the times" things, seeing someone's insight about how they perceived a time long since past is fun. Kinda like a lesson in ancient history

Just kidding

__________________
§

inspired by the latest AGW column... here's our next poll....


http://www.slcentral.com/boards/sho...=&threadid=2169


we want feedback!

__________________
HAHAHA, Work's fun.
Then you put in 65 hours in 5 days. What the hell was I thinking?

Man, I have to admit I miss "Gateway to Apshai" (or so it was called on the C-64 my sister and I fought over back in the days). That, and other greats like "Raid on Bungeling Bay" (Broderbund, you ruled for making that title) "Impossible Mission" (nods to Epyx who made killer games back then) and the like.
Then the BBS days...my USR Sportster 14.4k/FAX external cost $200.00 and that was a good deal back then. Now, my USR Courier V.Everything sits idle as the lights blink on my RCA cable modem. There were about 50 boards up on any given day in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and at least 20 of them were worth calling, running everything from Telegard to Renegade to WildCat or MAJOR.
I do agree with the "I've been doing this xx number of years" statement. The 386DX/20 that was the first system I ever built (not the first I ever owned, which was a PB 10MHz XT with 640k, CGA and a 35GB HDD, and then a 386SX/25 after that) is a far cry from my current box (see sig for details). I've also seen folks who have managed to stumble their way through 5-10 years of tech work, rather than get by on expertise and learning about every new thing coming along. I've been wrong once or twice myself (I didn't realize for one, that if you had an internal ISDN modem and your computer was shut off, phones connected to it wouldn't work...of course, this was five years ago). Fortunately, someone else at work at the time did. It's all about knowing you could be wrong, and listening to others in your field. If you're right about something, it's great...just realize that you won't be all of the time.

__________________
AMD Athlon XP 2000+ aircooled
ASUS A7V8X-RAID mobo, Enet, SATA, 1394, USB2.0, all dat junk
512MB Crucial DDR
AOpen HX-08 case, Enermax 430wPS
80GB WD Spedial Edition 8MB cache
(all SCSI) Plextor 40x CD, Yamaha 8x4x24 CDRW, Seagate DDS2 DAT
Visiontek Geforce3 Ti200
Adaptec 2930U2 SCSI
ATI TV Wonder
SB Audigy MP3+

god
this is the oddest thing here to read. I'm 22. Sometimes I don't know what to expect here. There are times I feel like I'm so old around computers its not funny, then there are times that I'm like such a n00b its pathetic. My first computer.... A 'Laser' brand 286-12 MHz when they were brand spankin new. I had 1MB RAM (yes I had Expanded memory!) and a 20MB (yep count them there MB's) HDD. oh, god. It served me well until the first major incident, a lightning strike :-/


the HDD controller and drive got zapped and the video card toasted. So I had to get it replaced

My dad had a 210MB SCSI HDD installed in it along with a 256K (yeah count them KiloBytes) video card in it. Wing commander 1 and 2 never looked so good after that

The modem? I remember begging for a 9600 baud modem when they were on sale for 99$ or something.... oh, god.... anyone who spends 99( on a modem now is either an idiot or buying somethign you can't find anyplace else anymore. *sigh* Those were the days.

__________________
HAHAHA, Work's fun.
Then you put in 65 hours in 5 days. What the hell was I thinking?

What does what you had 15 years ago help today?

Many things but probably more on the software side than the Hardware side.
On hardware if you help people correct problems than it is very helpful because people always forget the same things (turn on the computer AND the moniter, check the cables, and check the cables again .
Software is different. The perspective that you develop and the history that you end up knowing about a piece of software that you have used since version .0 helps you find out what is broken this time (or still broken 3 trys later).
I started out on a laser 128 apple 2 clone and with the little TI machine that used a cassette machine for storage all of these machines are still working and I have broken out my laser and played necronomican in the last year. Any way what I learned from these machine is a way of looking at things when a PC goes down that makes it easier for me to fix it or find out if it is dead. While I don't have a certificate or actually "work" in a PC field I end up doing the work on my companies PC's and I am very good at getting it working enough to get the work out that we need today then I take it home and fix it that night. I also love my athalon and radeon based main pc and am about to build a new PC and redo this one based more on entertainment to take the place of a TV and Stereo in my bedroom. (I remember when I first wished there was some way to combine the machines maybe because on the Apple clone I could and can use a color TV for the moniter). One of my favorite columns in Byte magazine was when they would take a person or a company and tell their stories and show how what they did 15 or 20 or 10 years ago changed things in the PC we used njow. Sorry this is so long.

Excellent article man.. hehe.. I work doing internet tech support, so I often get people along the same lines.. "well.. I've been on the internet since it started.. and *insert the i-know-all statement here*.. "..

Then again.. i would probably be thinking the same way if I were in their position.. and didn't have the experience/knowledge I did..

Ryan

As always, good work Jonny!

This message reminds me of one thing that I don't understand about people (not intended as an offense to you, because it's not an observation about you).
All these people that call and say "I know ALL about computers" before you get a chance to help them...the thought that always clicks in my mind is "Well, if you know ALL about them, why are you calling me? To brag you already fixed your machine/solved your problem?"
I'll sometimes tell someone I've been in the business for awhile (if it's to first-tier support for a company, so they'll talk tech to me instead of in small words), but the biggest problem is the people that use that observation as arrogance (i.e., "there's NO WAY I could be doing it wrong, even though I'm calling you because my hardware isn't working right, because I know ALL about this stuff...and since I do know it all, I didn't even bother to double check my work). I've assembled an entire machine once in awhile to find I put a cable on backwards...that's why I double check my work when I'm done. Maybe I was thinking about a hot date I had at the time, or was on a hairy tech support phone call while doing a build or something...
People who think they know it all in the IT field are fun to mess with. I usually tell them "Gee, that's really cool, maybe I can learn from you, because I've been doing this seven years and I don't think I'll EVER know all there is to know about it."

__________________
AMD Athlon XP 2000+ aircooled
ASUS A7V8X-RAID mobo, Enet, SATA, 1394, USB2.0, all dat junk
512MB Crucial DDR
AOpen HX-08 case, Enermax 430wPS
80GB WD Spedial Edition 8MB cache
(all SCSI) Plextor 40x CD, Yamaha 8x4x24 CDRW, Seagate DDS2 DAT
Visiontek Geforce3 Ti200
Adaptec 2930U2 SCSI
ATI TV Wonder
SB Audigy MP3+

Lonewolf... That's just like what I was talking about in my "Be A Better Tech". When I managed a bike shop, it was a rule of thumb that if a kid came in and said "I know everything about bikes. Hire me!" that was someone you would NOT hire.

You or I will never know everything about anything.... including ourselves.

__________________
Hey. What kind of party is this? There's no booze and only one hooker. -- Bender (Futurama)

This says much...moreso when I apply it to my understanding of women.

I believe the appropriate statement there is "We will never know ANYTHING about women."

__________________
HAHAHA, Work's fun.
Then you put in 65 hours in 5 days. What the hell was I thinking?

sure in 15 years your computer is 1000 times better, but what about your car? in 100 years, those haven't had anything great, its tiem for my car to becoem 1000 times better.

I agree with Adler!

__________________
ActiveTuning - Partner & Director Of Sales & Marketing

Phewy! I've got a 20 year old Volkswagen Rabbit and I'm happy. Cars have become something I can't fix with a regular set of tools, so I don't WANT a new one.

__________________
Hey. What kind of party is this? There's no booze and only one hooker. -- Bender (Futurama)