I still have the 286-12 chip from my first PC lying around somewhere... Threw out the Windows 1.0 disks and retained my PC-DOS 7 disks. Now use DR-DOS 7 instead for a 486-DX4-100 slim top that I use for programming radios, eeprom driven machines and such.
What I laugh about most is some of the "cool" games that I had running on my 386-100 for a while. MS Tank Platoon, F117 Stealth Fighter and Hunt for Red October are some of my more favorite oldies.
AH-64 Apache was my most favorite sim game... Combined with my 3Dfx Voodoo and Banshe cards... Those were the days!
In 1971 or so, I was traveling in a VW van with a couple of German students on the way back home from Morocco. We stopped for lunch somewhere in France. There was a PONG game sitting there. I played it a couple of times and was impressed on how computers were taking over instead of just sitting and talking about the weather. Pacman came a bit later and the quarter-eating video game business became what-one-does in every bar. Remember how many times you had to die until you figured out the new game's characteristics? It cost you some real money to find out. I kind of resisted buying games for the home computer from those early encounters.
My kids hadn't had that experience. It doesn't cost anything if you die, today. This was a major improvement by the game industry. The games have become the only thing today's kids talk about. They all know the tweaks, cheats, and where to torrent the patches. We've come a long way since 1971.
I love the SSD. It makes such a huge speed difference. In the past it seemed like after Windows had been installed long enough it just slowed down, with this it doesn't seem that way.
Hi Ben, I expected you to go into the programmer geek direction. What other options are you thinking about?
I was always on the fence between Music and Physics. I think I chose Physics because it was rebellion against my mother's wish for me to become a concert pianist. It provided a much better salary, too. But, having the freedom of traveling and playing gigs along the way was a real temptation.
I don't know, I want to do something in computers, but I've always considered myself more of a hardware guy than programming. And when you look at the list of computer majors, there are a ridiculous amount of choices. It's intimidating.
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Still think I have the old PC Modder mag with my rubbermaid server rack too. Thanks for the memories!
Kinda crazy that AMD was ahead of Intel back then and now it's pretty much the opposite.
How are you guys doing?
What I laugh about most is some of the "cool" games that I had running on my 386-100 for a while. MS Tank Platoon, F117 Stealth Fighter and Hunt for Red October are some of my more favorite oldies.
AH-64 Apache was my most favorite sim game... Combined with my 3Dfx Voodoo and Banshe cards... Those were the days!
There was a PONG game sitting there. I played it a couple of times and was impressed on how computers were taking over instead of just sitting and talking about the weather.
Pacman came a bit later and the quarter-eating video game business became what-one-does in every bar.
Remember how many times you had to die until you figured out the new game's characteristics? It cost you some real money to find out.
I kind of resisted buying games for the home computer from those early encounters.
My kids hadn't had that experience. It doesn't cost anything if you die, today. This was a major improvement by the game industry.
The games have become the only thing today's kids talk about. They all know the tweaks, cheats, and where to torrent the patches.
We've come a long way since 1971.
I expected you to go into the programmer geek direction. What other options are you thinking about?
I was always on the fence between Music and Physics.
I think I chose Physics because it was rebellion against my mother's wish for me to become a concert pianist.
It provided a much better salary, too.
But, having the freedom of traveling and playing gigs along the way was a real temptation.