Before I get into my rant, I have a disclaimer and some background information. Disclaimer: if you've been into computers since about 1990, then you'll feel nostalgia. If you haven't, prepare for a history lesson. Background: right now, as part of the extortion the state's school system is holding over high school seniors' heads (a senior project where one has to write a 6 page thesis, do an activity related to the paper and jump through a few other hoops in order to graduate), I'm currently volunteering at a computer recycling center that also builds computers for its volunteers, which they get after their conscripted service. These are not powerhouse rigs; the baseline specs are ~P200, 96mb RAM in SIMMs, 3gb HD, basic video, modem, sound and 10-baseT NICs, running a custom version of Linux based off of Debian which includes Gnome, Konqueror, OpenOffice, GIMP, and some other apps I can't think of right now. Now I've come to the rant. Just like the topic says, we're spoiled. What, with our cases that WON'T cause lacerations when held with too much force, or that allow easy access to the interior of the computer, or that provide a better cooling solution than "let the power supply take care of it". Let's not forget that we have RAM that clearly looks like it will only go in one direction and does so effortlessly. How about the IDE connectors that are not only keyed, but also have the #1 pin clearly marked on the motherboard? How many of you even know what IRQs and port addresses are, let alone how to change them on a device that you COULDN'T simply drop in and would immediately work? Who here can say they've used a mouse that couldn't be pulled out of the system and put back in without problem (yeah yeah, it's not 100% w/ PS/2, but bear with me)? How about a keyboard that could easily be plugged in to where a microphone should go? It's a wonder computing even advanced, what with all of the systems users pissed at bleeding hands, fried or broken SIMMs, blown motherboards and power supplies (which genius decided both AT connectors would be the same?), destroyed peripheral cards jumpered the wrong way and drives needlessly destroyed being though unoperational but actually put in the wrong way? Of course in about 10 years, I'll be saying similar stuff about ATX, but I doubt it will be as bad (although I do have a pretty big beef with square cornered boards).
whats really funny, is I repair and build these types of sstems for my dad. Domino's Piza has a contrct with National Systems Corporation that screws us over pretty badly. The software to run our store is a DOS based POS piece of code which only works with very specific sets of hardware (most of which is out of production nd can only be bought from NS, thus allowing them to rape us on prices) for example: A 40mhz, 64mb ram, 2.1GB HDD, AT system costs my dad about 1,400. thats exluding the termail type monitors that must be ppurchased at a few hundred a piece. I went through and built my dad a system 50000x better for about a quarter of the price. and now we cant get support from national systems on their software, cuz the didnt build the computer its running on. *******s. well, theres my old POS computer related rant, which is somehow related to your rant. wow. i need sleep.....
Here here! I may have a few faster rigs around, but I still keep a few older ones up and running. Even my P2 350 is a pita to work with compared with my current rig, and it was considered one of the easiest rigs to set up at the time when I built it Kids these days are beginning to lose respect for what it means to build a computer. Yeah, great kid. You started with a barebones, stuck a processor/gfx/hdd in it, and installed windows. It took you all of what, 6 hours max? "I can remember the day when building a computer not only meant physicaly putting the components in the right way, that was in fact the quickest and easiest part of the process. The next stage involved turning your RAM around to face the right direction and turning all your IDE cables around so that your drives are recognised in the bios. Even that was not so hard. The next step was to fudge with the bios and make everything happy, then fdisk and format the drive, then try to get windows boot floppys working..." And I'm only 16!
mmm jumpers tast good..... I built computers like this in StRUT all the time. They are tough old birds i remember being able to shut one off by shorting the mobo and it would still work fine. I also have put in a scratched mobo and all kinds of stuff. Also not having tou use a fan was nice And simms r0x0rs j00 b0x0rs! Hehehehe. The good old days.
The older pc's were easier to fix as well in some respects... had an issue with not installing an ISA card correctly (ie not fully pushed into the socket) which blew the voltage line to ram and ISA/PCI slots... anywho, bit of solder, wire and wax ad the pc is still running strong... in fact its the one i'm going home to on monday <mutter> damn parents nicking me other decent pc </mutter>
Personally I liked working on the older machines much better than the current ones. I mean, it was a challange to get an IBM XT with a whopping 5Meg HDD, CGA graphics, 512k memory, 360k 5.25" to work correctly if it went down. You actually needed to know how to set IRQ's by hand and if you got into trouble, there wasn't a handy dandy feature to automatically set anything. The best tool you could have for any repair job was your brain and if you're lucky, a POST Diagnostic Board. My little rant
There also wasn't that internet thing to get answers from. 99% of problems can now get solved easy-peasy with a 5-minute google.
yay brings me back to my P60 days.... that was a b***ch to work on!!! ah well i still have it.. only a small heatsink on it... no fan the hs was about the same size as the hs on most northbridges now!!! oh yeah.. and a 500MB hard drive...
I know how you feel I built three systems before I was 16... and every time I did It I put the IDE cables hte wrong way round. EVERY FRICKING TIME. When you had 72 pin simms, in edo and normal parity and non parity and they all had to be properly set up otherwise the computer wouldnt boot. Then I had to set the IRQ's for teh soundblaster cards, and set that up in the autoexec so that windows has sound... I spent more time in config.sys and autoexec.bat than anytwhere else on the system... nowadays I spend too much time on the internt, I dont know which is better I could probably tell you evey page of phoenix's 1995 bios off by heart.. I spent a lot of time int ehre with my p100
Good point Pff... Dude, I'm talking about 8088's and 286's. You know, before PCI, before PS/2, when screen resolution was measured in rows and columns and not pixels. When installing memory consisted of a chip puller and actual microchips, not memory modules...
I still have my Apple IIgs - the card slots are wierd though and the power supply is 60W... My fans and lights eat that for breakfeast.
I remember my first PC was an IBM PS2 386DX 40mhz (no fan or heatsink needed!) it weighed a ton because it had a cast metal tower case and I remember buying an isa Soundblaster for it and it would'nt fit into any slots on the motherboard.
Ah good ole Microchannel (MCA) slots.... What a bonner move that was. Good theory with the archetecture, but as with nearly everything IBM did, no marketing killed it big time in the pc market. It's too bad too, I mean they were trying to implement an archecture that would cover everything from PC's to servers and mainframes.
It is sad building a PC these days doesn't have the satisfaction it used to when no one you knew could do it. I havn't been building PC's for as long as a lot of you (about 5 years or so cause im only 18) but I started out building 286's and stuff to get the skills to built my own decent PC that all my cash would go into. I pulled lots of old computers apart and switched them round countless times so I could learn and back then there was quite a few things to learn. I also read a lot of books about computers and usually they were a bit out of date so by the time I started putting my own PC together I had over learnt. Now with modern PC's anyone can build one because its all near idiot proof (well maybe not that near ). Long gone are the days of spending a hour getting the floppy working because you could never be sure which way it went.
I have a working 486, and a pentium 2 which I overclock with jumpersettings. I can also relate to everything in this thread and I am 15.
i'm only 18 and the first pc i upgraded was an amstrad 1512, 512k memory, which my dad and i upped to a whoping 640k and an 8086 cpu, 4mhz i think, i later got an 8088 which was amazing to me as it had vga graphics, 256 colors!!!, and an ibm ps/2. (what was with the long psu down the side of the case?) i've had a 286, a 386, and some 486's, built/re-built them all so i know the troubles you all speak of, but i still much prefer what we have today, i think it's good to be able to compare ATX to ye olde PC and AT specifactaions, and maybe people who cant dont know how lucky they are, but i dont think they're spoiled. plus you couldn't put a window in a desktop case
i remember compuserve and yahoo when it was still yahoo.... instead of the big pile of crap it is now. dont remember when i found out about google though..
Ah yes... I subscribed to Compuserve way back when. Connected to it with a 286 running DOS 5.0 8-bit graphics and a 2400 baud modem When I went 9600, I thought I was in heaven!
i had my old 28k US Robotics voicemodem i gave it to a neighbour along with my p60 who is still using it to surf the net lol
