Computers & Electronics

I simply love computers.

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  • May 24th, 2015 4:10 pm
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Deal Addict
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Aug 15, 2013
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I simply love computers.

I was a late bloomer, at first, computers scared me with their complexity, I didn't understand them, I used to write school paper by hand and use a cellphone with Yellow Pages as the only way to talk to a world, when everyone else were on Yahoo and ICQ.

Then something clicked, I gave in to the mysterious machines, I spent days and nights on college computers, if I wasn't at school I went to a public library, if my hours were up and staff would kick me, I would drive to another library. The first machine I bought, was a used Pentium III box, it was slow for the time, but I didn't care, got my online dating profile going. Then was a Pentium 4 Compaq Presario, the most expensive one at Best Buy, it was billed as 'everything you need for multimedia and games' except it didn't even have an AGP slot.

Eventually I mastered the hardware and software and started building my own.

Fast forward to a present time and I'm the guy who types "x part release date" in Google and then adjusts the results by "past week" in hope of a new rumour leak. My computer costs more than my car. I mark my calendar for all release dates, I read hardware forums religiously, benchmarks, reviews, 14nm, 10nm, 21:9, Pascal, throw everything at me! There's something unexplainably alluring about the closed circuit technology.
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Penalty Box
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Apr 25, 2013
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Cool story for HBO ...LoL
My PC use to cost me $5000, now they cost me $20 and my pen costs me more than my PC !

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014 ... ine-typing

Love ads like this, that is why I collect copies of 50's and 60's National Geographic just for these ads. Find me an ad for a laptop that is as compelling !
[IMG]http://www.estilograficas.org/imagenes/ ... tip-Ad.jpg[/IMG]
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Aug 15, 2013
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C'mon RFD, there's gotta be more enthusiasts over here.
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Gee wrote: We all have our own story.

I started on an Apple ][
Would you share with us why you love computers in 2015?
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Aug 2, 2004
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TruBrush wrote: Would you share with us why you love computers in 2015?
I'm old school. Started out on 6502 Assembler, moved to 8088 and MS DOS

My stories would bore you.

But I've seen the technology evolve from monochrome screens to 4 colours, to where we are today.

I remember buying my first mouse for $100, it was a Genius mouse and it used ball bearings to help it roll. I bought it just to use Windows Version 1.0
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TheRed wrote: I simply love girls
I don't know how, but I manage to maintain both, an active dating life and technology craze. In the last 15 years most of my dates came from online websites, waaay before Tinder and POF became mainstream.

Surprisingly girls like my what they call a "neon lights" computer. "You built it yourself?? I knew your were a genius", I never thought to advertise my hobby, but it turned out to be one of my selling points before bedding a gal.
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Oct 6, 2005
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TruBrush wrote: My computer costs more than my car.
What kind of rust bucket do you drive :D
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Jan 19, 2005
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Gee wrote: I'm old school. Started out on 6502 Assembler, moved to 8088 and MS DOS
I started 6502 assembler on the C=64. I've been programming for fun and profit for close to 30 years. My job right now is mainly a C++ developer. After entering university, I realized that I can actually make good money doing something I love doing which is programming. :cheesygri
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TruBrush wrote: Last edited by TruBrush; May 15th, 2015 at 04:29 AM. Reason: grammar
This is after corrections?
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Aug 14, 2007
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Gee wrote: We all have our own story.

I started on an Apple ][
Windows 3.1 and jazzball for me... I hope someone here remembers it!

OP I'm guessing you dont have a nice car really since your pc is worth more than it... I'm just joking around.

I built mine about 5 years ago for $2500, a little outdated now but it still crushes new games no problem. I'll do a decent upgrade if VR struggles with it but I've tried a few things so far with the oculus DK2 my friend has and it ran perfectly... It was incredible to say the least.

The only upgrade I did was go from a radeon 5850 to a GTX 770 4GB. Best upgrade I could have done
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TruBrush wrote: I don't know how, but I manage to maintain both, an active dating life and technology craze. In the last 15 years most of my dates came from online websites, waaay before Tinder and POF became mainstream.

Surprisingly girls like my what they call a "neon lights" computer. "You built it yourself?? I knew your were a genius", I never thought to advertise my hobby, but it turned out to be one of my selling points before bedding a gal.
I was always referred to as a nerd, it's funny to see those that were jerks to me in high school many years later working cash at Walmart or Tim hortons. I'm not rich or anything but I'm doing better than all of my friends

As for that online dating, it does work, and is how I met my now wife.
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Luxury! (to quote Monty Python) I started programming in IBM 1130 assembler on punched cards when I was a little kid and my Dad was taking a course to become an IBM SE. Drop the box of cards on the floor and your program got scrambled.

But it did teach me about computers. I got kicked off my first network for hacking the master admin password in elementary school. By the time I got to university I could secretly take over the university's computing centre whenever I wanted to give my lab project priority (only in the middle of the night of course to avoid drawing attention). And I wasn't even taking Computer Science... but now I'm a responsible adult and I don't do those things any more. :)

As for the hardware, it's not as much fun as it used to be in the early days when you could re-wire boards and write your own drivers from the chip documentation. Now everything is highly-integrated surface-mount stuff that gets replaced at the board level, and the drivers are all written in C with no source code provided, making it too tedious to hack them.
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XtremeModder wrote: I was always referred to as a nerd, it's funny to see those that were jerks to me in high school many years later working cash at Walmart or Tim hortons. I'm not rich or anything but I'm doing better than all of my friends

As for that online dating, it does work, and is how I met my now wife.
The best thing about being a nerd is the ability to absorb a vast amount of knowledge. I have deconstructed what a society considers a highly desired person and engineered my social skills and appearance around it, it all comes down to math, it's almost scary how mechanical the human interaction is once you see the repeating behavioural patterns.
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JamesA1 wrote: Luxury! I started programming in IBM 1130 assembler on punched cards when I was a little kid and my Dad was taking a course to learn how to become an IBM SE. Drop the box of cards on the floor and your program got scrambled.

I got kicked off my first network for hacking the master admin password in elementary school. By the time I got to university I could secretly take over the university's computing centre whenever I wanted to give my lab project priority (only in the middle of the night to avoid drawing attention). And I wasn't even taking Computer Science... but now I'm a responsible adult and I don't do those things any more. :)

As for the hardware, it's not as much fun as it used to be in the early days when you could re-wire boards and write your own drivers from the chip documentation. Now everything is highly-integrated surface-mount stuff that gets replaced at the board level, and the drivers are all written in C with no source code provided, making it too tedious to hack them.
Ah my occupation is not related to a computer science, so my story was more from a user perspective. To me, the fun is now, mainly because of accessibility. Although I dislike the move to UEFI, what kind of overclocker you are if you are being hand held through the pretty automatic options.
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My first PC that I played with (was a kid at the time) was the Osborne running CP/M on Floppy Disks. I used software called Wordstar and Supercalc.

http://oldcomputers.net/osborne.html

After that, I have used more computers then I can recall and it surprises me how Technology has evolved in the last 40 years. Back in the day, one had to spend countless hours at a library look thru card catalogues and on Microfiche to fine old articles and research items. Now, one just uses Google on their smartphone, tablet, etc. and gets the entire history on their fingertips.

The first PC I purchased from Future Shop when they first entered Canada was a Sanyo PC which was an XT with a 20 Meg Hard Drive, a Star NX1000 9 Pin Printer, Monochrome TTX monitor and a GVC 2400 BPS modem. At the time, I was considered DA MAN for having this stuff :lol: .

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