Ok, I'll bite. I occasionally suffer from thinking I'm more or less
interesting than I actually am so if I ramble on at length feel free to
ignore me. This is one of those moments I think I'm less interesting...
I'm 20 years old and am the sysadmin for Geoworks' (yes, that Geoworks)
Seattle design centre. I spent two years at uni but tired of the
academic attitude and puerile students so I dropped out to admin full
time. I may go back one day, but I can't forsee yet what day it'll be.
My first taste of computers came when I was four; my dad bought a TRS-80
Model III with 48k, a disk drive, and an Epson MX80 Graftrax printer that
he kept for probably a lot longer than he should have. I could make it
load SCRIPSIT and LOSTDUTC and demonstrate the more basic BASIC skills and
that was about it. I used it so much I wore the silver colouring off the
plastic bezel in front of the keyboard.
I received my own computer the following Christmas: a 16k CoCo 2 with a
cassette player which frustrated me enough that it didn't bug me that my
little brother broke it shortly thereafter. I learned to speak LOGO and
explored BASIC a little bit further with it, but mostly I played games. I
dismantled it when I was in junior high to use the logic board as a 'high
tech' decoration for a project some friends and I were working on (Odyssey
of the Mind, if anybody's familiar with it).
Anyway, these were my primary computers until about 1990 when my father
and I went halves on a used XT clone a friend of mine was selling. The
TRS-80 got put in a closet since we had a 'real computer' now and was
eventually given away. Unfortunately. This computer came with an Avatex
1200 bps modem and was my first introduction to the BBS.. I never looked
back. (:
A couple years later we went halves again on a used Leading Edge D2 (286)
until a few more years passed and I'd decided I'd had enough of sharing
and bought my own PC. Up until this point, I'd been known as a 'computer
geek' primarily because I had one in my house and I could drive one fairly
well. I really didn't know all that much about them, though.
Then I started adding on to the PC. I was 15, I think. I started saving
money for parts: a SoundBlaster (which I'd always wanted), an FPU, RAM, a
24 bit video card, SCSI.. and eventually a new motherboard and case.
I continued saving for parts and 'trading up' using Relaynet mail echoes
on a local BBS. I remember downloading Linux .99pl6 at 9600 bps from a
local BBS over the course of a week or so---knowing absolutely nothing
about it---only to wipe out 80 floppy disks to make the installset, made
it wrong, did it again, and then found out my SCSI card was completely
unsupported. I was pretty irritated. I remember reading the WD7000 card
was supported so I vowed then to get that one one day. I eventually did,
when I beta'd OS/2 Warp, because my SCSI card wasn't generic enough to
work with Warp, either. It was a UNISYS card, of all things... every
'upgrade' has been an adventure. For this reason I'm thankful for the PC
paradigm, as if it'd all been too easy, I never would've learned anything.
(:
At any rate, I eventually went off to uni with a fairly moby 486. I found
an Amiga 500 for sale in a local newsgroup, and since several of my
friends had jumped on the Amiga bandwagon in junior high, I picked it up.
It was cool enough.. but then my 486 died. I needed a machine to finish
out the academic year with, so I dug up a Mac SE/30 from another local
newsgroup...
I haven't stopped yet. Each machine I've gotten for a reason, and kept it
whether it fulfilled the expectations or not (thinking specifically of the
Apollo).
Currently I have 16 machines in my collection, althouhg not all of them
are classics. Mostly I've got machines I used at school or at work or that
my friends had or machines related to them somehow... I'm not that active
in searching at this point in my life, as I haven't a car, but I have a
tolerating (if reluctantly so) roommate so it all works out.
Amiga 500, 3000
Apollo DN5500
Apple ][plus
Convergent Technologies CP-001/8
Macintosh 128k, Plus, SE/30
NeXTcube, NeXTstation (with Daydream ROM box)
SGI Indy R4600
TI-99/4A
TRS-80 Model III
I also have the requisite several PCs: a Compaq Deskpro 286, my old 486
which is almost ridiculously configured (64 MB RAM and 11 GB of disk), and
a half of a dual Pentium 133 which is a very nice box. It helps that it's
running NEXTSTEP. This PC and my Indy are the two daily-use boxes.
Oh, and I've got a VAX VMS5.3 CD distribution that is begging for a
machine to run it on..
I'm slowly documenting my collection and trying to write interesting text
for each. I'm not very finished at this point but it's available for
viewing as it stands at
http://www.lycanthrope.org/~red/behind/tech.html
It's been great reading all the replies to this thread...
ok
r.
Received on Mon Mar 02 1998 - 17:25:20 GMT