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Thread ID: 38621	2003-10-13 02:59:00	How did you learn about computers?	caffy (2665)	Press F1

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
182789	2003-10-14 02:18:00	I was teased by my brothers, saying that the Amiga 500 was my only friend :P Now they come to me with their hands out asking for money, and I just tell them that they should apologise to my friend.	Kame (312)
182790	2003-10-14 02:21:00	Oh no, pompeymike, don't give away too many trade secrets. We'll all be out of jobs.	Kame (312)
182791	2003-10-14 05:40:00	My learning experiences generally follow asking myself "what does this do ... then thinking I can make it run better if only I do this .... BOOM" Seriously (I think), the web and magazines have helped me with computers. A mate a tschool had a VIC 20 we mucked about with for hours after school, typing in lines of BASIC, then he got an Amiga (wow!!), my first PC was a 486 from work that was being thrown out - sort of moved on from there. J :D	Jester (13)
182792	2003-10-15 01:03:00	Started of with a Atari 600XL with a tape drive to play chess and other games on moved on eventually to a 286 then 486DX 66 then a Pentium 166 wow that was considered fast in its day . read lots of books and got a celeron 400 built for me with all the bells and whistles dvd rom and Hollywood plus output card etc got into mp3s and then movies and more games . Went on to internet in the early chello days then upgraded cpu to a P3 450 added more ram HDD s etc . Went on to a Duron then T/Bird 700 and now at a AMD 1.3 GHZ cpu stalled here till more funds become available but have so much stuff to look at cpu speed is no longer is a priority want more HDD space and possibly a dvd burner still learn lots of the net	kiwibeat (304)
182793	2003-10-15 04:22:00	I was taught DOS and Windows 3.1 onboard HMNZS Waikato 1990 for a 6 month far east trip. The private computer was a TP DX 386 8mb ram, the instructors Mike Moore and Speed Harnett, computer geeks extrodinaire. The computer was in the hangar workshop . It was more modern than the ships 286 lol. For 6 months I was either drinking mega piss ashore or learning stuff on the computer. We bought thousands of dollars worth of programs in Malaya like Lotus 123 and Word ver 2 on 5 1/4 fdds. Wouldnt be worth $1 now. I remember seeing a Dick Smith junk mail with the "New 25 mb hard drive more than you will ever need". I think it was before Moores law. I came back from that trip bought a 386 then 486, P1 P111 and now got an AMD 1200. I have found news groups to be the best for computer help and failing that ringing up mates. F1 usually not much help because you are only on page one for 3 hrs and all the big posters are talking to each other. This gets yout bumped to pages no one looks at and you no decent anwsers. Have to laugh when I see the grinning face emiticon and bump were people have tried to get back on page one lol. tedheath	tedheath (537)
182794	2003-10-15 06:45:00	I got my first comp in 2001 (i did not know a lot about comps so i got a rip :( ) got my first PcWorld in 2003-Start of yr then i read all the computer books i could find and know im 13yrs old and the best (or close to it) in my school :P.	Gods-Hitman (1419)
182795	2003-10-15 10:08:00	i bought my first PC, 386sx-25, 2mb ram, 50mb hdd with win31 and works and a color dot matrix printer for almost $4k!	nomad (3693)
182796	2003-10-15 16:50:00	Have been playing around with computers since 1984. In the early days PC World was my bible. I started to lose interest in them when Word 6 first came out. Some alleged journalist , in the same article, was chastising DOS for all the commands he had to type in. key strokes he had to remember. Then he goes on to praise Word for all it's Keyboard "shortcuts". I had in front of me at the time a card that came with word 6 that contained about three times as many short cuts as the total list of all Dos commands. So now I still only know the key strokes that were part of Dos. My last few keyboards have had so-called "Windows keys" on them. I'm still not sure what they do. I honestly believe that ten years ago modems worked faster than they do today. Or at least they accomplished their job faster. The simple answer to the original question is don't even think of trying to learn "all about Computers". Before you get very far it will all be obselete and you will will have to start again. Learn what you need to know by doing, and forget the rest. I see from above I have even forgotten how to spell. Jack	JJJJJ (528)
182797	2003-10-16 01:14:00	I started, believe it or not on a Great British machine called an Elliott 903, which boasted 8K 'words' (I think a word was 15 bits or something weird like that) of memory. No disk; its storage medium outside memory was punched tape; the compiler had to be read in before every compilation, followed by the source-code, and the object code was punched out (or a list of errors, which you "read" on an off-line teletype. This was as part of a University course (1967-70), where I first developed my knowledge of, and interest in, computing. Thence to my first job, programming on a roomful of NCR Century 100 with 32KB of RAM + 4*8MB removable disks. The entire financial suite of a sizeable company (with overseas subsidiaries) fitted on that. Still no screens. I left computing professionally for a while but suffered the ZX-80 experience about that time. The first computer of my own that I learned anything from was a BBC Acorn (display on domestic TV, offline storage casette tape); taught myself BBC Basic (Basic with callable subroutines) and 6502 Assembler out of the manual that came with the machine and a number of purchased books. Above all, expermented, knowing (or trusting) that I couldn't blow the thing up or damage it irreparably, and if I got in a mess all I had to do was switch off and start again. Above all, I learned by doing, which seems to be a consistent message here. My first Real PC was a Digital Rainbow (so called because it had a monochrome screen); I learned how to insert and remove memory and other circuit cards, but precious little else; awful, clunky beast. Thence up the usual x86 chain from a small pre MMX Pentium running Windows 3.1 through all the Windowses up to XP; as I went on I taught myself from manuals and eventually the internet, and from a job which has to do peripherally with computers, about the inside of the machine. Sadly, though, I do less and less actual programming these days, relying sustantially on bought apps and freeware off the net. Did a "mature student" university diploma course in database, languages and a bit of AI in the 90s. I read avidly all the mags within my budget, thick paperback books of "XP Secrets" and the like and even the occasional authorised manual. I have friends and professional computer maintenance people (not to mention Pressf1, of course) to get me out of tight spots. All told, I'm probably pretty typical, but seem to have been doing it a hell of a long time. The depressing thing is how little I learned of one generation/ make of computer helped me with the next (even my 90s univewrsity knowledge is sadly out of date now). I reached a plateau with Windows and am still steeling myself for the Linux Leap. Argus	argus (366)
182798	2003-10-16 05:11:00	Thanks everyone for your replies. When school's over, I'll see if I can get hold of some books - some of my mates have some, so will borrow off them. Also from library. Would also be kewl if i had an old computer lying around to pull that apart and look at the stuff inside...but unfortunately, haven't got one :( But never know I'll end up pulling apart my computer! :D nar I'm sure i wont, just take the case cover off and look at the stuff inside etc etc Thanks again, caffy	caffy (2665)
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