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Your historic IT moments...

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MD Draco:
I'm sure this has been done before, but I was just thinking to myself (I know I know, you knew you could smell something burning!!) about my own personal history in computers, and why I ended up working in IT being both Mac and Microsoft certified, along with a plethora of other Q's along the lines to do with fixing everything IT related... so, I figured I'd share my earliest memories of IT gear, as I suspect my parents getting me a computer before I could read / write properly had a lot to do with my career progression (thanks parents!!), so for one reason or another, here are my most memorable setups...

1. Atari 400 (Candy) (first machine I ever owned... thanks parents for getting me into computers so young!!!)
2. Acorn Electron (with tape drive... wasn't flash enough for the 5&1/4" disk drive)
3. Commodore C64 (again with tape drive... no cartridges or disks for me!!)
4. Commodore Amiga 600 (w00t... first disk drive... 3.5" & first machine I ever paid for on my own)
5. First PC: P100 with 16mb of RAM and a 1mb graphics card, 16 bit sound, CD ROM drive, and a 1gb HDD (my first modern (!?!) PC sporting Windows 3.11, later upgraded to 95, then 98)
6. First person I knew to get a P3: 1ghz P3 with 256mb of RAM, can't remember the graphics, this had a DVD RW Drive in it (they cost a pretty penny when they were released)
7. Second laptop, and first one to show any real character, my mom inherited this off me, and nearly 8 years past its purchase date, it finally died a slow death shortly after Christmas this year: Dual Core 1.6ghz Sony Vaio with 1gb of RAM, 120gb hdd, can't really remember the rest... but it was a nice computer!!
8. This beastie exploded after 3 years of abuse, but it was another goodie: Acer Aspire 6920G, Core 2 Duo T8100 2.1GHz, 2GB RAM (later upgraded to 4) , 320GB (later upgraded to 1tb), Blu-ray RW, Vista Home Premium (downgraded to XP, then upgraded to 7)
and finally my current build:
9. Apple Macbook Pro (15inch), 2.2ghz quad core i7 (Sandy Bridge), 4gb RAM, AMD Radeon HD 6750M with 1gb RAM, 750gb hdd... My first venture to Apple products, and it's a good one :) ... I still use Windows on it as well though from time to time, and have been known in the past to have linux on there, though not at present.

I never owned a console until the release of the playstation, (my parents wouldn't allow it, they wanted me to learn how the computers I used did what they did) and even then, I got a second gen Playstation (the one that only had mono out, oh the woe!). I somehow got a Playstation 2 as part of a debt I was owed, and traded that for an Xbox because hey, I love the Halo games... Since then, it's been Xbox all the way!! Currently on my 5th Xbox (First RROD'd, Second got upgraded to an Elite, which got sold when I moved to NZ, couldn't live without so ended up buying another after a 3 month dry patch!! 4th got sold when the slim with kinect came out, and that's what I'm currently using).

I remember the dying days of the arcade throughout my youth (yes, I am an 80's child), and I always wondered what made them tick, and wondered how different they were to the machines I had at home, in fact; I remember always wanting to see what's inside just as much as I wanted to play the games, so if the tech was there, I'd be over his shoulder in a heartbeat! Probably explains my career choices, and why I'm on this forum building my first arcade machine!! Just wondered about everyone else... What makes you tick, what got you into computers, and what were your most memorable systems? :)

EssexMame:
I've led a similar path it seems!

1. Acorn Electron (also tape only, did get the plus one for Joystick/Rom cartridges very late on)
2. ZX Spectrum 48k (late in its life, wondered what I'd missed by getting the Electron A: not much. The games were fun, but I think the Electron has aged better)
3. Commodore Amiga 500 (got a second drive, much needed for the ELEVEN disk Monkey Island II)
4. Playstation (one)
5. Playstation 2
6. Nintendo Wii
7. Playstation 3
Coming soon I hope! Mame Arcade cabinet

I've had various PC's - currently 2 desktops, one old banger which I'm using for Mame. AMD FX-60 is my main PC. Dated itself now, upgraded to FX-60 not so long ago via ebay.

I really want to put Electron/Spectrum/Amiga into my cabinet. The Amiga is plausible but Spectrum and especially Electron less so. The keyboards/different joysticks used cause problems but I'm sure I can do it on a limited game list at least. For Electron I was using a BBC Emulator though, Elkulator/Electrem didn't work so well as the tapes didn't seem to be loaded automatically in any way I could see!

J_K_M_A_N:
I am not in the IT field but I mess with computers a lot.

1. Texas Instruments system....not sure which one. Hook it to the TV and use cassette tapes for saving and loading. It was a friends system.
2. Apple ][. Same friends mom was a teacher and she brought one home for summer break.
3. Apple ][+. First computer in our house. Loved it!
4. IBM XT with monochrome monitor. Traded the Apple ][+ with everything for that basic nothing. I didn't have any money and was going to go to school for programming on IBM XT's.
5. 286 then 386 then 486 and so on and so forth. Built many systems after that. I still build them all today. Mostly AMD now.

On the Apple ][+, I broke the space bar and I checked with an Apple store near me and they wanted $85 to fix it. I asked if I could just buy the key and that was only $5.95. So I bought that and took the whole thing apart and de-soldered the old key and soldered in the new one (with a really over sized soldering iron and no solder sucker. Can't believe it didn't fry the whole thing!) and it worked like a champ. That is about when I started taking most everything apart. Still do. I have recently repaired a few LCD monitors (super basic replace the caps type of thing) and that is very fun. And cheap!

J_K_M_A_N

knave:
1. Commodore 64 with the 1541 floppy drive
2. IBM clone AT with 256K and a amber monocrome monitor. (I liked the C64 better)
AT was upgraded several times with hand-me-down parts untill it eventually was an xt with a meg of ram a 20 meg HD, two floppies and color graphics. (I think I hit most of the graphics modes. CGA, EGA, VGA and SVGA.
I got a 1200 baud modem and rocked the local BBS's (Ah...Tradewars...)
3. Was given a NES traded it for a Sega Genisis...that was my only console for 15 years I still take it out once and a while.
 Later...BYOAC encouraged me to build a video out for it so I didn't have to use that dumb switch box.
4. Family got a Pentium 120, with a 1.6 gig HD  a decent graphics card and soundblaster not to mention a 14.4modem later upgraded to a 33.6.
This was an awesome PC for this age. I played games did homework, and browsed the early-web with netscape. We used it for years.
5. a long list of PC's.
6. Playstation
7. Wii
8. Hacked Xbox(XBMC)
9. Xbox 360
10. PS3
(The last four were within the last four-five years.

hypernova:
I thought this would be a thread about the incompetence of your average moron in offices and such.

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