I grew up at a time when computers were not the easiest things to use. You needed your DOS boot disk, and you would not get far without knowing console commands. Every game would come with a slip of paper telling you the exact commands to get your game to run. Little me would screw around with everything else on a disk to see what would do what. If a game didn’t work or I broke something on my dad’s PC, it was up to me. He’d show me the basics, and let me learn on my own in terms of making it work. Good times.
The bad thing about those times. The computer prices at the time were kinda outrageous. I believe the Tandy 1000 was around $2000 for the base machine. I’ll have to dig up some old advertisements to show how much simple accessories would cost, but for now you’ll have to trust me. I know I paid $230ish for a 1.2gb drive way back then. Ugh..
Being about ten years old at the time, this presented me with some issues. I really liked my games, but they would not always run well. Buying a new machine for myself was out of the question. I needed information on how to optimize things specifically for gaming performance.
At some point I started to learn the networking side to things. This was fantastic! I could get my PC to call a friends PC and we could play in the same game! Just hope no one calls and 2nd line *beep* doesn’t drop your connection, or someone picks up the line before the PC does. It can be awkward when your friend’s dad picks up the phone late at night. Learning the Hayes command set helped a bit with the odd issues though. It really helped to optimize things.
Shortly after learning the AT commands, I found out about BBS sites. You’d dial into them and were presented with a txt base website. Immediately after that, I learned how much the phone bill was for that month. I think it was about $40 in the mid 80’s. Oops. I suppose this grew the night owl in me because the rates were cheaper late at night. Heh, a ten minute call to California to the Sierra OnLine website was $10 with the night rates. It was worth it $ wise though. They had all the guidebooks on their site that would have been $10+ in the store.
The Prodigy Online network comes into the picture shortly after. Now the BBS sites would have some cool info on things, but with Prodigy, I could get A LOT of cool info on A LOT of things. Naturally, optimizing my games was a priority right away. Special boot disks became a rather useful tool about that time. Why waste memory booting windows up when I can keep it all for the game? It just seemed like a no brainer.
Well then you have that whole internet thing..
I learned computers like a 2nd language in my youth, and I will only consider myself better then average with them. My idea of just what average is may be a bit skewed though. I just realize that so much can go wrong, and I’ve never stopped learning new quirks about specific hardware/software combinations.
Like a brand new game on my brand new personal computer that will crash on startup every time. There was a specific bug for my specific Gateway computer (It was before I built my own) with the gaming port. The game would not run until that port was disabled. They did not explain why, but the fix worked like a charm. I knew then that computers will not always make sense.
Be excellent to each other folks.