My weird old tech childhood story cause Im bored and I was thinking about it

[TOSaunders]

Well, I'm bored tonight so let's all gather round the camp fire and sing a camp... hmf, I mean tell a story.

 

My tech career is kind of a weird one. I never had a current generation device until about 4 years ago when I got my PC, and only a year and a half ago for my console. I started generations behind and somehow got here.

 

When I was younger, my parents never had money. Dad was bad with it, Mom kept us a float, you know that story. but i always loved electronics. I remember being real young, like 7ish and being amazed at my cousins N64 and i only ever played Pokemon. Never owned anything for myself, just kind of observed everyone else's. I didn't have many friends, and the ones I did have were basically in the same boat a me, except the one girl whos mom was a doctor, but girls don't game lol...

 

My first "computer" would have been around 2006, when I was 8. It was the Comadore 64. We got it free off the side of the road, it was the same one as my dads from when he was younger. I was just amazed because it had like three storage containers of floppys full of games. I swear every day I was trying something new. Then about 6 months later came the NES. My dad plugged it into a 1980's cabinet tube tv and I would play Duck hunt and Mario for hours, mostly because the other games were weird off spin ones that were just being thrown away. A little while later I had a game boy colour my dad bought as a pair and a flea market for $10. That did me for a while until my dad picked my up an old desktop that was on the side of the road. Tube monitor, desktop, mouse, keyboard. That was my setup in my room. We would pick up $1 games at the thrift store and I would just plug away. Then, magically, I accidentally got into the bios and screwed it all up. Don't ask how, I can't remember. So then came the next one from the road, and the next. I started tinkering with these old pcs I found and create these weird franken computers that sometimes worked. Around this time by grandfather gave my an old shoulder top camera from like the 80's/90's that he found in his basement that I could only see my recordings on a tube tv, so I recorded random things and just watch them in the living room. Still have that thing kicking around. When I got the grade 7/8, my dad got me and my brother a PS2. It was my first game station that would play anything relevant anymore. Everyone else had a PS 3 and we bought it on clearance at Walmart with a couple games, but hey, we had fun. That did me for a while. My first phone was grade 8. It was a flip phone with $5 on it so I could call for a ride after practice. My dad took it back after a while because I didn't need it anymore and I didn't get another until grade 10 (cheap old samsung). In grade 9 I got my first laptop. A netbook on sale at Walmart, they got it for me for Christmas. It was my first real computer in my mind because it would actually connect to the internet. I broke the screen in my backpack when I kid pushed my and I dropped the bag a year later. In grade 11 I got into a live broadcasting class that produced a daily show in the morning for the school instead of standard announcements. It was thanks to that class that I got a basic understanding of editing, shooting, lighting, the works. I learned quickly to the point where I taught younger student for a new teacher that had come in the year after (another story on its own). Come grade 12 I had a job and saved up, bought a decent laptop. 17" HP with an I5 and I think a crappy graphics card. I would love to tell you how happy I was to have that thing I paid over a grand for with my saved work money... but less then a year later someone stole it from my bag during a rugby practice, with most of the schools yearbook photos that western uploaded  yet, because I was the stupid editor... It was a rough year. Later that year I bought a desktop on sale for $1200 and a 27" dell monitor. A little after that, another laptop Dell XPS 13. Sad story, that monitor broke after a broom fell on it in my dorm room when I was studying in Ireland. Sucked balls. Bought an XBOX One in 2016, university blocked it on the wifi. Now, I'm rebuilding my PC before heading to another university for my second year of Architecture. Yeah. Crappy story, wierd story, but as I said. I was bored so why not. I went from 20 year old Comadore as a kid to everyone's fucking tech support that could literally be solved by a fucking google got damn it. Anyways, yeah. Now I'm addicted to tech and I blame that broadcasting class and the game boys for my addiction. I have a thousand fucking XLR cables and adapters just cause I can and rant on message boards.

[Jurrunio]

I dont think you will buy any more laptops, right? None of them ended up well.

 

[D13H4RD]

Welcome to my life.

 

Started out on some ancient desktop running Windows 98, then to another running Windows XP. Then got a half-decent PC which had a dual-core Pentium and a GeForce graphics processor.

 

Also had a PlayStation, PS2, PS3, PSP and Xbox 360 for gaming.

 

Had a MacBook Pro (which I still use in some occasions) which served fine for basic tasks and video editing but was woefully underpowered for gaming after 2 years due to its 9400M iGPU. The Lenovo IdeaPad Y410P with the Core i7 4700MQ and GT 750M GPU came next and it was much better fit for gaming, but its display was a slight downgrade.

 

And now, the present day, with my ASUS GL502VM that’s practically a significant upgrade in nearly every area compared to the 2 and complimented by an iPad Pro and Moto Z. I had an iPod touch that got stolen at a counselor’s office and some Android phones in between.

[Imbellis]

12 minutes ago, TOSaunders said:

I went from 20 year old Comadore as a kid to everyone's fucking tech support that could literally be solved by a fucking google got damn it. Anyways, yeah. Now I'm addicted to tech and I blame that broadcasting class and the game boys for my addiction.

1

Feel you there, man.

[Freezanator]

So much feels in this topic. I feel ya mate. Around 90% of tech enthusiasts like you and me all started out as poor bastards who couldn't really afford the best of the best when we were young and ended up with the cheap stuff. I bet the majority of those who get into tech literally started by Googling "How to improve FPS/performance in games" or something like that, since we didn't have such high-end tech to play around with. Good times... 

[GoblinRum]

14 minutes ago, D13H4RD2L1V3 said:

Welcome to my life.

 

Started out on some ancient desktop running Windows 98, then to another running Windows XP. Then got a half-decent PC which had a dual-core Pentium and a GeForce graphics processor.

 

Also had a PlayStation, PS2, PS3, PSP and Xbox 360 for gaming.

 

Had a MacBook Pro (which I still use in some occasions) which served fine for basic tasks and video editing but was woefully underpowered for gaming after 2 years due to its 9400M iGPU. The Lenovo IdeaPad Y410P with the Core i7 4700MQ and GT 750M GPU came next and it was much better fit for gaming, but its display was a slight downgrade.

 

And now, the present day, with my ASUS GL502VM that’s practically a significant upgrade in nearly every area compared to the 2 and complimented by an iPad Pro and Moto Z. I had an iPod touch that got stolen at a counselor’s office and some Android phones in between.

Same here. Had a old celeron rig running W95 with some 128MB ram and I was using it in 2004. In 2006 I got a laptop with AMD Turion 64, running XP, which burned up and died a 4 years later. During this time I was also using my Dad's Pentium 4 rig. Got a x5660 and HD7970 2 years after they released, and never moved. Not in the near future either. Never had a console. Was on a flip phone for quite a while(almost 10 years, prepaid with 30 bucks a year), just got a smartphone 2 weeks ago. 

[rtpb5642]

5 minutes ago, Freezanator said:

So much feels in this topic. I feel ya mate. Around 90% of tech enthusiasts like you and me all started out as poor bastards who couldn't really afford the best of the best when we were young and ended up with the cheap stuff. I bet the majority of those who get into tech literally started by Googling "How to improve FPS/performance in games" or something like that, since we didn't have such high-end tech to play around with. Good times... 

That was so true. My first PC was an IBM amptiva 350mhz pentium with a 6GB HDD.... then some shitty toshiba laptop then a macbook then i realized macs were shit and my pc interest was pegged from there. Now I work as an IT consultant

[JoeCoke]

Really interesting story, I had a similar story, not QUITE as bad, but still pretty bleh. Back in 2006 as a kid I got my first PC, it was a 566mhz celeron running Windows ME. I had been interested in computers my whole life and was super excited to have my own finally. Hours and hours were spent making horrible cringy MS paint animations in WMM and playing Moto Racer. I was stuck with that PC till early 2010 when I got a slight upgrade to a 700mhz piii with Windows XP. It's not like we were broke then, it's just that having a computer was not that huge of a priority in my parent's eyes, and hell, my eyes either. Later that year my cousin gave me my first laptop which was a 1.6ghz athlon ECS desknote with no battery running Windows XP which was a MASSIVE leap for me. I didn't have a keyboard though, so I had to lug an external one around. But hey, I could watch Youtube in 360p and play Project 64, so I was a happy camper! That laptop "died" a year later (it was something so minor that I fixed later for shits and giggles, but so much later that it didn't matter anymore) and in early 2011 I saved up and my parents threw in some and I got my first okayish PC, it was a Dell Inspiron 15 inch laptop. It was horrible. I was amazed by how fast it was at first but within two months it was already having major issues and by the end of that year it was so unusable that I retreated back to my 700mhz Piii. Those were the shitty times. We were super broke and I didn't have a job yet. I slowly learned how to upgrade and fix computers out of desperation. I got a 1ghz piii PC and added a PCI graphics card and soundblaster to it, along with 512mb of RAM and while it was better than my old 700mhz one, it was still shit. In midish 2012 after months of off and on fooling with PCs and slowly learning, I finally got something that POSTed. It was a frankenstein built from a broken PC my uncle gave me and my mother's old broken PC. It was a Athlon 64 3000+ which was running at a whopping 1.8ghz. It had 1.5gb of RAM, a 9600 pro and a 1TB HDD. I felt like I was on top of the damn world. That feeling when the PC speaker beeped was the most amazing fucking rush. I played so much TF2 on that PC.

 

The next frankenstein PC I built like a year later was a Core 2 Duo and 9800gt running WIndows 7. Jesus fucking christ that thing was a beast to me back then. I could run Dolphin! I later got into overclocking (my core 2 duo and 9800gt were amazing OCers), and then I started upgrading part by part till I got where I am now. Now I'm in the process of saving up for a completely new Ryzen rig with a 1070, 1080 or maybe even a 1080ti, haven't decided yet.

 

Don't know exactly why I decided to share my story also, but yeh. Sitting here in front of my mechanical keyboard, 4 monitors and okayish custom PC just makes me realize how far I've come.

[Guest lilbman]

6 minutes ago, 2Buck said:

The next frankenstein PC I built like a year later was a Core 2 Duo and 9800gt running WIndows 7. Jesus fucking christ that thing was a beast to me back then. I could run Dolphin! I later got into overclocking (my core 2 duo and 9800gt were amazing OCers)

I still have my 9800GT+ and Q6600 system.  At one point I once thought it beastly, being able to play BF:BC2 and BF3 at reasonable settings pretty smoothly.  

 

It now sits in my basement, gathering dust.

[mr moose]

2006 was yesterday.  I was only 31.