How did you become a computer geek?

A

AlexStenka

[H]ard|Gawd
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Aug 16, 2004
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I got in to computers after I started to play games on my liitle 1Ghz hp with 128mb ram and then I just needed a new computer so I ended up building one but I was gone get a dell what a bad thing that would of been to do :D
 
i started playing with computers after seeing one of my mothers friends computers (Heavy laptop the size of a full tower with a green screen)

my first computer was an 8088 or 8086 with 1mb of ram and 256k video card and used a 14" color TV as a monitor. Adlib sound card and a 10mb hard drive and 2 5 1/4 floppy drives. Tetris was my first game then i got arkanoid.

ohh...i overclocked it from 8mhz to 12mhz by changing the clock IC
 
It started when I was in 6th grade (circa 1981)...we had a 2 hour class on computers...Commodore PET's with a whopping 16k of ram and a built in casette drive. I was hooked. Took every computer class I could through high school, even played Zork on an Apple ][, those were teh days. Been my passion ever since :)
 
Microsoft invented Windows 95. :D

Although I had owned a computer for over ten years before Win95's release, I wasn't really an enthusiast, but I nosedived Win95 so damned many times that I finally learned it inside and out, and went from there. I learned how to format a hard drive from a Gateway tech over the phone at 3:00AM one morning. No kidding.

A side effect is that I also learned to never trust Microsoft to get it right. Some things you have to do yourself.
 
i lost all hope of having a sucessful social life and this seemed like the logical progression ;)

i kid i kid
 
I started when I moved to North Carolina. My next door neighbor and his dad were always building and playing on computers. He let me play the original Tribes on his computer. Been hooked ever since. To this day I still play that game, plus many others, but that was the game that started it for me. Now I build them, play them, and network them. Thats how I got started.
 
my first comp was a commodore amiga 1000. it was the family computer way back in '89. i was 3-1/2 years old. i have never stopped, and am considering opening a computer company once i graduate from guilford college.
 
i got hooked on computers 2 years ago over my summer vacation, when i used to poke around the innards of my comp and wonder what makes it all work....and now i know how it works..and a lot more.. :D
 
Started off with my good ole 166+ Cyrix IBM. Damn that was a horrid computer. Performs horribly, crashes, memory leak on 95. Basically all the problems and attempts to upgrade it got me into it. Then Tribes came out, and I started playing FPS's, and I was 100% hooked, always trying to get the system to perform better, or learning about new hardware to upgrade to so that I can play the next best FPS.
 
Back around '93 my dad finally got us a computer. A 286, but I can't recall which brand. My brother kept hoging it, so I borrowed a C programming manual and compiler (borland I think) and created my own password program (it was a very very horribly simplistic and ugly program I might add). I then got beaten profusely because of this, but never took it off. The computer then went in my room since I had rendered it useless to the rest of the family who were computer iliterates. Since I had it all to myself, I constantly took it apart, added spare parts from my dad's place of employment, and wrote my own programs. But, I quite programing in C at about age 16 or so and haven't touched the crap since. All [H]ardware here baby!
 
I was around 5 years old and I loved playing lemmings on the 286 my dad brought home from work, but I was mostly into consoles (sega genesis), we got a pentium 100 and that sparked it a little more and I loved the tomb raider games and quake 1/2, then we went to a pentium 2 266 it was still the family computer until I finally worked up enough money to get my pentium 3 750 w/ kyro 2 video card. That was my first taste of overclocking 440 bx powar! Last year was my first taste of pc modding, I bought a premoded case (x dreamer rofl) which I still have now, except I did some sweet mods like replacing just about everything in it including the window w/ a nice aluminum mesh type thing and near perfect wiring. I'm going into watercooling next.
 
i always was a geek at heard, but i hadnt had a comp in years, but when i graduated highschool my mom bought me a computer and the flood gates opened.
 
LoL :D

My neighbour had a Commodore 20 when it was new and we player on it for a ahile and then I met a guy who had a Texas Instrument and I was hooked badly.

So when Commandore released the 64 I got 1 (with a cassette drive) for X-mas it cost about a 1.000 USD then. Later on I got a Atari XE and on both those machines I programmed basic and played.

My first PC was a 486/66 with 16 Mb Ram *gasp*. My father bought that when I started to study electrical engineering. Acctually the P-50 & P-60 had just been released so it wasn't the fastest but I preferred to have a good screen (MAG 15" 72Hz refresh rate 1024:768 - remember this was when when a normal screen was still top 800:600) and a graphics card that could handle that as well the first gen 64-bit GPU that was with a Whopping 2 Mb of ram :rolleyes: . It served me well for a couple of years and during that time I dropped out of school started working as a sys adm. and got some real XP. (Experience Points for all you non-geeks).

Nowdays Im living in Germany (Swedish from start) without a working computer. At home in Stockholm I have a Vapochill XE standing with a broken Athlon XP (cracked the core when installing) and my brother used my 0,4 TB HD:s and my AIW 9800 Pro.

But hopefully Ill be restationed back to Stockholm after X-mas and then Im gonne buy me a X-mas gift. A s939 DFI nF3 with a 90nm A64 and OC the bugger out of it. :D
 
Well i guess I was kinda born into it... family runs a self owned business so Ive seen stacks of PC parts all over the place since I was a kid. It was only natural I suppose =)
 
My family has always been great as far as embracing tech. My dad's friend brought over a Commodore 64 and we started playing games on it. The only thing we knew how to do was play games.

he then brought us over a 386 (speed unknown) which sits in our garage to this day... (the commodore does as well, come to think of it..) And we grew up on games like Sam 'n Max and Commander Keen (i'm fairly young). We upgraded to a P3 350 and before long my dad got tired of us being on the computer all the time, so he bought himself a P3 500 Celeron machine (which was a nice upgrade, at the time) but with little video upgrade path. We eventually started building our own computers after that (Quake I was getting lame).

My brother was the first to fork over the money to build his P4 2.26 (this was a few years ago) and i was next, getting a P4S533, P4 1.8 (-> 2.4) 512 Samsung TCB3 etc. I started reading the [H] when i heard about overclockign (i'd heard about it numerous times before, but it was then i started getting really interested. I guess i've not been a 'nerd' half as long as a lot of you, but i feel at home here. ;D
 
My first computer was a Univac DCT 9000! Courtesay of the U.S. Marine Corps. That was in 1979. I have either been a mainframe operator (IBM S36/38, Burroughs, Speary, Wang, DEC) or a software programmer (from 1985 to present). My first computer was a IBM XT and then AT&T AT Clone, wrote COBOL programs on them. I also used Altos systems with a XENIX operating system. Had a 286 for a long while and upgraded to a 386 in 1991, built my first system in 1994 (CompUSA wanted $350.00 to put in a motherboard). Started playing Wolfenstein and Doom and never looked back. Loved M1 Tank Platoon on my EGA graphics card and smoking 25 MHz 386.
 
I had an Apple 2c that i played oregon trail on.
I started fixing peoples computers, and got hooked.
 
slowly picked things up by fixing peoples computers, then within the last 3-4 months got down and dirty and put some hard time in and learned alot
 
it was my first job. i had an old 17mhz computer at home running dos for a long time, but never really got into it. i was looking around for a computer and a job (i was 16 at the time). i walked into a computer shop and was talking to the owner and he offered me a job there at his store (hey, it beat working at foodworld). so not only did i get my computer with a 10% discount, i got into a field that has kept me employed ever since.
 
My first computer was an IBM 286. I forget what speed it was, but I got it off my aunt. I was about 8 or 9 and I was enamored with pinball games in DOS. After a few years of that, I went and got a Packard Hell. it was a 120MHz Pentium with 32MB ram, 1GB hd, and a 14.4 modem. That was my computer for a good long while surprisingly enough. After that, I got a computer from ABS Tech. By this time I was a few years into my geekdom. After that, I bought a 2200+ with a TI4600 and a Soyo mobo, it was part of a kit, and ever since then I have been dreaming 0's and 1's lol. My first dive into overclocking was with a NF7-S and a 2200+ XP-M. got the sucker to 2.38GHz on stock air cooling.
 
AlexStenka said:
I got in to computers after I started to play games on my liitle 1Ghz hp with 128mb ram and then I just needed a new computer so I ended up building one but I was gone get a dell what a bad thing that would of been to do :D
Click to expand...

wow, i feel old when i read about people saying their first computer was a 1ghz when my first pc had 16mhz, and i know that people started with machines older than me. i didnt get involved with pc's till i was about 12 and it was a ibm ps2, 386/16mhz, 60mb hdd(double spaced to 120 ;) ).
 
Erm, started out in '83 with an Apple IIc, then in '86 got my first modem. In ''89 my mum got a unix account through the state for public school work and I discovered this interweb thingy. Well, it was telnet and gopher. '92 got an internship at a local factory in their IT group where I learned the basics of networking. '93 got a Mac for school and insisted on the ethernet connection, got into internet games with Bolo "Marathon was LAN only and nobody else had a good key). After dropping out of school, didnt do too much until '99 and my friend got this games called Tribes... Had to have a PC for that one, so did my research and built a k6-2 @ 550 machine with a blazing fast V3-3000 AGP. I guess worked with computers since 83, didnt become enthusiast until 99.
 
First computer I saw was a timex sinclair with 4K of memory, no disk drive. First one I bought was a TRS-80.... 16K memory and a tape recorder, second was a Comodore 128, 128K ram and a 5 1/2 inch floppy drive, first actual monitor.... I remember going to software stores where the walls were covered with Comodore software and there was one small rack of IBM titles and none of them were good. I said then, this IBM thing will never catch on...lol, first IBM clone was a Micron 486, followed by a Dell P2, to my present day Dell Inspiron Laptop, P3 800Mhz, my next PC I'll build and it will be a AMD 90nm 3200+ with 1 GB Ram and likely over 200 Gig of Hard drive in a raid 0. My video card will have more ram than my P2 did. Probably still using my Altec Lansing 5.1 surround sound speakers from the P2 though.. they still do a great job. What a long strange trip its been....
 
comps in my family went like this:

sinclair zx80 (last seen at the dump)
tandy trs-80 series iii color computer (still works!)
commodore amiga 1000 (gave to friend for $$$)
dramen professional systems 25mhz 80386, 4mb ram, 80mb hdd (needs new hdd)
packard bell legend 402cd + ram upgrade, 75mhz p1, 16mb ram, ~1gb hdd (gone to dump when rom went flat)
??? 90mhz p1, ???mem, 2x 4gb hdds (still runs, albeit slow as #@!!)
toshiba satellite 133mhz p1, ???mem, ???hdd (had @ same time as 90mhz p1, dead hard drive, cant get rid of due to confidential stuff on drive & mom being comp retarded so she thinks theres a chance data can still be gotten off it)
toshiba satellite 1.8ghz celeron, 256mb pc2100 ram, ~30gb hdd (thats what im using, w/ a targus chillmat and a large fan above me to keep it cool, plus an extra 256mb pc2700 ram stick)
2x eMachines Tgodonlyknowswhat (the christmas deal at bestbuy) 2.5ghz celeron, 512mb ddr sdram, 80gb hdd.
 
My first real machine was a compaq 486 66 with 8 megs of ram, 15 inch screen, like 540 meg hd, and a 2x cdrom. I was 11 at the time. I used it for the internet and games mostly. This was when most accounts for internet gave you like 10 to 15 hours a month. I got into like BB and IRC and have not looked back since. From there I went to a pentium 120, a sparc workstation, and then to a p2. The p2 system I have upgraded over the years as my main rig and nothing is the same on it. Right now I use XP on my main machine and notebook. BSD on my server and I have a apple on my network too running 10.3. Need to get back into the sparc systems though, it's been too long :) I still have some DEC stuff around too. I just don't have the time to work on it. Umm DEC alpha those were the days.
 
starhawk said:
my first comp was a commodore amiga 1000. it was the family computer way back in '89. i was 3-1/2 years old. i have never stopped, and am considering opening a computer company once i graduate from guilford college.
Click to expand...

you ever play smurf hunt on one of those? I had an amiga, used it for playing lots of fun games. Frogger, donkey kong and a bunch of others i can't remember.
 
I'm not a computer geek yet, but I sure am trying! It's just that everyone assumes that I am and then I have to say, no I'm not (sigh). But hopefully with yalls help, those days are behind me. I'm reaching ever deeper levels of geekieness, and I want more. The other day I did autopsy on an xbox and I was inspired to strive for geeky excellence. I made it mom! I'm all right!
 
hm..started when my Dad bought a P2 233MHz PC and he gave me his old computer which was a 80486 33MHz with a turbo button :D

Anyways I played around with the P2...overclocked it to 350MHz, 100 FSB. Kingpin ran smooth....:)
 
First comp I ever had was my commodore Amiga. we have 3 of them actually, 2 are the keyboard based ones (mobo, and everything in a keyboard, and an hdd plugs into side, ill get a pic later; they are set up in my basement) and the other is a desktop kind of thing. 2nd comp was a windows 95 piece of *&(@. Then I had a compaq with an athlon 800. Great comp, lasted a few years. Don't remember what I did with it. Then I got this comp off abspc.com a little over a year ago. Can't really call me a geek before this summer though.
 
It started with games like doom, lemmings, and the Oregon Trail. Man those games were great!
 
I first knew I was a geek when I was getting stoned with a buddy and I started talking about processors, ram, watercooling, peltiers, phase change, and video cards and I looked up and saw this totally blank expression of incomprehension on his face..... of course.... that could have been the weed....
 
I was fortunate in that my father was a computer geek before me. He did his Masters work on Intel's first processors. As far back as I can remember we always had computers. I know we had an Apple II, but the first I remember was a 286. Then the first one I actually started working on was a 386/16 with I believe all of 4megs of RAM. Plus we had a 2400baud modem that I could use to connect to bbs's and such.

I really learned about computers by playing around with the 386, screwing things up and then having to figure out how to fix them before my dad got home from work. After he got a p60 (with an astonishing 64megs of RAM- at a cost of ~$3k just for the RAM) the 386 got thrown in my room. From there I wrote my first lines of C and started playing with hardware.

I first realized I was a true computer geek when I was 16. That was the first time my father turned to me for help with the computer, and I must say it was one of the proudest days of my life.

As an aside, I have a 4year old niece who seems to be picking up the bug at a young age. She is already quite accomplished- even being able to fully install her games without anyone's help (pretty impressive seeing as how she can't read!). She can also open Word, change font size, colors, etc. and it took sometime to convince her that the alphabet didn't start with q.
 
i find it sad people are admitting themselves as "geeks" or "nerds". don't you people know what that means? it means no social life, which is bad!

*ignore my name*
 
im an introvert. not a bad thing... i get to help people like you... tho i might remember you next time you get a goof, thenerd... in which case i wont help you

:p just kidding. tho you ought to try not to offend us introverts. just cuz were only 25% or so of the population doesnt mean theres something wrong with our heads... and keep this in mind: were it not for us geeks, youd be using an abacus and a quill pen right now... or maybe making papyrus and writing on it with a cuneiform stylus.

to be a geek is to be someone who is interested in keeping the world of high tech together. its a good thing.
 
i have found throughout the years that being an introvert seriously depletes your social life. i'm serious.

so whats it gonna be, friends or tech?
 
1) I started out playing oregon trail in elementray school on an apple 2 e.. then we did those typing programs.. and it took off like a rocket from there.. we got a p2 266mhz with 64mb of ram and a 4mb rev 3d video card.. cost us $3000... those were the days...

2) To established friends and aquaintances, i'm very outgoing, etc.. but to people i'm unfamiliar with or don't know at all, i'm very introverted and it's almost embarassing (fear of rejection?).. but that's life and something that hopefully will take care of itself with time...
 
Started for me in the late 70's when i was about 4 and my dad bought the families first comp.
It ran off of floppy tapes (like what you would put into your stereo in the 80's)
I was hooked ever since.

D.
 
Had a 1985 Apple macintosh that i played with in diapers.....then progressed to another mac and finally to Pc in 1999. I used computers for gaming and other stuff for a while, but didn't really become a hardware geek until about a year ago, when I started reading here and a couple other places.....
 
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