I was always playing with the family computer when I was a kid and sometimes screwing it all up. I remember one time when I got Scorched Earth to run on our Windows 95 PC off a floppy disk and somehow it reset the computer's boot sequence and it wouldn't start Windows anymore. It would only boot to the game if the disk was inserted. Neither me or my dad knew anything about the BIOS and setting boot priority so we couldn't fix it. Needless to say my dad was pretty mad. Computers weren't cheap and I just wrecked ours. He took it somewhere and it came back fixed. Can't remember if I was grounded or not...
I had typing classes in elementary school and Jr. High. The elementary school computers ran some kind of Basic and the screens were black with yellow text. The Jr. High ones were modern and sported windows 95 or 98 and we practiced proper typing. I got to be decent. Though not much of it stuck because I still don't type with my hands in the proper positions. I type how is most comfortable to me. I also had a basic computer class where we learned basics of internet and word and common applications.
In Highschool I had a tech class every year, the first year we rebuilt some old Pentium 3's the school had stashed away and I learned how to install windows with a boot floppy and how all the components go together. The following years we learned other programs like Flash and AutoCad.
I once had our old Pentium 3. It was pretty old and useless so I attached all the hardware to a piece of plywood just to see if it would still function and it did, but it was hideous, and big, and as mentioned: useless.
Ha! I found a picture of it.
My dad gave me our Pentium 4 one day. I could finally build something useful. I churned out the "Frankenputer" and gave it back to my dad to use as a media server for his home theater.
It had a good airflow and practically sounded like a jet engine when it was on. I was shorted USB headers by the motherboard so the front USBs didn't work. Didn't realize at the time I could have solved that issue with a USB PCI card.
I didn't put any money into this thing and it worked well for a several years. One day I tried to upgrade the motherboard and CPU to some AMD hardware I scored and I somehow ruined both it and the P4. the Mark 2 Frankenputer was no more. It was while building a replacement for this tower, dubbed "Mk3" that I really started learning from what I was doing. I figured that if I really can build a half-decent computer for almost no cost, then why not?
I will be posting more in the future about my computerey projects I have undertaken including current projects. Most of what I do depends on what I have on hand. All my other hobbies are so expensive I figure I gotta have one that's free.
The End.
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