Fun >> Tell your computer live story

ronthai

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OK, this thread is just for fun reading and sharing your personal "travels" through the computer world, from the first ever computer you owned (or at school learned if you are younger).

I hope not, but my guess is that I am a bit older than most here.
When I went to school, in Holland (Netherlands, I am Dutch), no such thing as computers (and I am not even retired yet:roflmao:).

Well, my story. I will try to keep it lite and fun reading.

My first ever computer I bought (and used) was an Amiga 500+ (1987-88, yes, I am old, I told you)
Got home, unpacked it and well now what. AHH, it has a manual, great.
OK, do this do that, following the instructions in the manual and then it said "Press Return",
well glancing at the keyboard, sorry I have no return key (I actually still used the word button at that time).
You figure it, of course it was the ENTER key, HOW would I know as somebody with no computer experience.

Well that is how I started, when most of you educated great helpful people here, weren't even born yet. Everything I know about computers is self taught, which is not much, but then in my surroundings many older people come to me for help with computer problems, so I guess I know more then most elder people. Which is nothing compared to many people here.

OK, my history:
Amiga 500+
Amiga 1000
Amiga 2000
First PC:
W95
W98
XP (longest run ever, my original CD is PRE service pack 1). What year is that?
W7 started 2014, just because MicroSoft canceled updates for XP
and now since a few weeks a new computer with W8.1 (My first ever "off the shelf" computer AND MY LAST, my next computer I will have custom built again).

Well got the idea of writing a short story, not my life story.

If you got this far, THANKS for reading, Ron
 
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Got my first PC in '92 with MS-DOS 5 and Windows 3.1 on an AMD 386-40MHz computer with 4MB RAM and 120MB HDD. It had WordPerfect for Windows 5.1, took a DOS and WP class at the college community education. Retired a couple years later and a week after that went to work in a computer shop, all 2 months before turning 55. Been at it ever since, now doing the Win10TP trial and just installed the Office 2016 Preview. For a change Office 2016 gets it right, the suite is numbered 2016 and the applications within it are version 16, at least if someone has to shortcut the number it'll be easier to work with.
 
In 1984 I was promoted to a management position at IBM. We had a single IBM 5150 PC that was shared between 3 managers. I had never touched a PC before so never used it. One of the managers got Lotus 1-2-3 which required 256K of RAM but our PC had only 128K. I went to the parts department and got the RAM chips needed to upgrade to 256K but he didn't want me to touch the expensive PC and wanted to call in a CE to install the RAM. I told him I had been a manager for only a few weeks but had worked as a technician for the previous 12 years, just had never touched a PC before. He still forbid me to install the RAM. After he left for the day, I tore open the PC and installed the new RAM, then set the switches on the mobo to indicate the machine now had a whopping 256K of RAM.

After that I taught myself DOS (v2.1), then Lotus 1-2-3. I discovered I had a knack for writing 1-2-3 macros which in turn got me interested in programming so I bought a 5150 PC for my home (4.88Mhz 8088 cpu, 256K RAM, 2 360K floppy drives) and then enrolled in a C programming class at the local community college. I then applied and got accepted to a programmer training program at IBM which was an intense, 40+ hours per week, 6 month course learning programming using 370 Assembler language (mainframe). There were 27 of us that started the course but only 9 graduated. That was in 1986 and I've worked as a programmer/software engineer since.

Around the same time, I also built my first computer, a clone of an IBM XT with an 8Mhz 8088cpu, 640K RAM, 1 360K floppy and 20MB hdd. I've built dozens more since then for myself, family and friends.
 
The first job I had with a computer was in 1984 in the Field Artillery using a BCS(Battery Computer System) a component of TACFIRE. In my first unit our section was called Digital Destruction.
 
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