How did you become a computer geek?

had a tandy 1000 when i was.. i dunno.. 5? played treasure mountian, math blaster, i LOVED that thing. 4mhz of awesomeness, and win3.0, i think... maybe DOS. then we kept on upgrading and we got my moms old acer.. (pentium 166.. round there) till like 7th grade when my dad bought the athlon 950 gateway for myself and my siblings, this one i could actually open and play with, lol. ive been a hardware/software nut ever since. since windows ME was such a pile of shit, i was constantly troubleshooting problems on it

unfortunatly, my dad used to pitch old pc's so i dont have the tandy or the acer anymore.. :(
 
Rogue4mula said:
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...
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I totally forgot Elementary school... Oregon trail did it for me, too. I remember using those Apples and knowing more 'tricks' to get things to work than the teachers did. I guess i was never really afraid to break anything, which IMO is the biggest thing that got me to where i am today. Where are you from Rogue? I live in Vancouver, but i'm in seattle right now for school
 
It all started at my Grandma and Pa's house, where I was introduced to the commadore 64. The games were pretty sweet at the time, I was pretty little too, but what else was there to do at my Grandma's house then monkey around on the computer, especially since their atari controllers were all broke? After the games got old I read the manual thingy and started doing some simple programs in BASIC lol. After a couple years, we finally got our own computer, a pentium 66mhz, that sucker flew ;)

And gaming was definately the main reason why I got so into computers. They force you to learn about how your computer works, and then you start to fiddle around with settings to get more improvement and you learn some more. Gaming is the answer to all of the computer illiterate people out there!

Although I hate to say it, AOL was another reason. It made being on a computer cool. Probably the biggest hook for me was Unreal Tournament though. If it weren't for me wanting to play that game at a higher fps, I wouldnt have learned to overclock, tweak, etc, build a new computer for cheap.

I just saw someone said something about oregon trail, that was a big one and number munchers if anyone remembers that lol, those were the days.
 
wow i feel young. Everyone starting on commadors n such. My first computer was a PII 400mhz HP back in '98. I will say that I played on some 386's and 486's at a friends house using DOS 6. I think thats what got me started, I would get up early and goto a friends house and play DOS games all day long. It took us forever to beat quake. Jumping back to 1998 I finally convinced my parents to buy us a computer. I was really intrued by them at school, using windows 95. I felt all special becuase i could rename files and my classmates couldn't lmao. Anywase, we finally got a HP, top of the line then, cost us nearly $3000. I forced my mom to buy us a scanner, also HP which cost us $300. I spent countless hours on that thing. I learned the basics, installing programs ect, I broke windows a few times and had to use the "restore" cd that had so many warnings on it I thought M$ was going to come after me if I did it.

Fast forward about 2yrs. I was taking an advacned computer course at my HS when the IT Admin came up and asked my class (3ppl) if we wanted to help him setup some new pcs. Of course I did, by this time I had upgraded my HP from 96mb of ram to 256mb, installed a Sis S3 Diamond Stealt S540 eXtreme video card and CD-RW drive. I learned alot about windows and some about hardware in the next 2yrs. The first computer I took all the way apart and put back together was in that class. I finally told myself I could build my own computer then did so, buying parts of eBay. I picked up a Duron 850mhz, Aopen mainboard, and the other parts all from ebay. It went flawlessly, worked right the first time.

Then in 2002 I wanted to do a school to work program for school because I allready had well enough classes to graduate and figured i'd make money instead. I got real lucky cause i knew some people at the local computer store from buying parts and they hooked me up. I worked there my senior year and have been working there since. I will say, getting that job made me alot smarter with computers. I thought i knew alot when I started there, boy was I wrong.

I don't think the games is what originally got me into it, just begin intriged did it. Playing around in windows, playing with the hardware. It just fasinated me.

Now i've moved up from PC Tech to Network admin and I am taking my CCNA exam this december.
 
When my father brought home a Commodore 64 (not breadbox version) with some games. Wow it was fantastic. I even had a flight sim game on it. I was very young then <7 years. I can also remember drawing lots of ascii art right on the command line. Then it went on to the Amiga 600 with lots of games, programmes etc.. When I started in school me and some friends played with the 33mhz 486 machines there. Got hold of some games. A friend of mine ran a BBS, but I never got to use it because it took some time before my father bought a modem. When I finally got myself a modem, I started chatting on IRC and so. When I bought my own 200MMX and started going to LAN parties (my first was at the start of 1995) I was introduced to overclocking and cooling. Then in 1998 a friend of mine introduced me to the demoscene. And many parties and machines later I have started to calm down. There haven't been that many upgrades lately. Mainly buidling comps for friends, and the last ting modded is my 2nd Xbox.

EDIT: And now I work as an IT Consultant and it almost get too much computer fixing.
 
I have a picture of me sitting on my dad's lap while he was typing away on an Apple II that he had just purchased. I grew up playing games on it such as Pez Man (Original Pac Man) and this wierd game where you would dig holes and creatures would fall into them, then you would fill in the holes and they would fall through the ground and die. Can't remember what it was called but it was hella fun. No HD on that computer, just a 5.25" floppy drive. My dad even spent a bunch of money to buy another 32k of ram for it that came on an expansion card that is about twice as long as a current gen graphics card.

After awhile he finally caved in and bought a new Gateway2000 (it was called Gateway2000 back then) It was a 486/33 with a whopping 4 megs of ram and windows 3.1 running on DOS 5.0. After a year or so he tested an "Overdrive" processor for intel, and they let him keep it. This thing doubled the system to 66 MHZ. I had the fastest machine out of everyone I knew for about six months or so. Then the first pentiums hit and it was all over. I remember getting a CD-ROM for my birthday so I could play Myst, and it didn't even load cause I needed 8 megs of ram. I had to use a program that turned the HD into RAM. Then a few years later got a sound blaster, and purchsed a 28800 baud modem for myself when they where new. That thing cost me about $120 at the time and was made by US Robotics. I played my first online game with that modem through a local dial up BBS. That game was called DOOM. Crazy fun.

Kyle B.
 
Always been a gamer, Pong in 1971 to now, owned every console system, a PC was just another system to try.
 
Well I must acctually disagree here...

About geekiness and social life..

I mean Im pretty much a geek. I cant imagine life wo a computer I play aroung with it tune everything thats tuneable and phase change cool it. (Gonne install water cooliing on chip and GPU next). I was th chairman of the board for the collage Computer socity (sic?) for 4 years. But Ive also been the social secretary and responsible for the freshman welcoming commitee. Ive had my own form (IT consultant) Ive had 2 long relationships. one 6.5 yrs w a swedish model (Im swedish to) and now since 4 yrs w a swedish MBA (who accidently also looks good). In between Iva had 2*2 yrs relationships and a number of casual "commitments".

Im a geek but Im extremly extrovert.

The one thing does NOT exclude the other beeing a geek does not mean HAVING to be introverted, cellar-bound and wearing dirty old jeans and a t-shirt with "There are 10 sorts of ppl in the world. Those who understand binary and those who don't" (Stolen from the reg, If U don't find it funny Ure safe - U're not a geek)

My 0.02 &#8364;
 
Probably some Charlie Brown in the pumpkin patch game that I played back in Kindergarten.

And Chuck Yeager's Air Combat.

I probably got into hardware come fifth grade or so.
 
Being an introvert or extrovert has nothing to do with a predisposition towards things techy. An introvert tends to make fewer but better friends, think one idea through to a conclusion before moving on to another. Not a bad thing, an extrovert tends to make a lot of casual acquaintenances and have 5 or more projects going at the same time most of which are never completed. Not entirely bad either, Leonardo Da Vinci was an extrovert, finished very little of what he started but was an expert on almost everything from art, anatomy, fluid dynamics, geology, to marine biology. Albert Einstein was a introvert, it takes an introvert to look into quantum physics, causality, the philosophy of statistical studies. The man got his first Nobel prize for a paper on the properties of light for gawds sake, an extrovert doesn't consider it beyond hitting the switch.
 
I can remember playing MSDOS games with my great uncle when I was real little. Then I got my first computer, a Tandy with Windows 3.1 at age 9. :D
 
diredesire said:
I totally forgot Elementary school... Oregon trail did it for me, too. I remember using those Apples and knowing more 'tricks' to get things to work than the teachers did. I guess i was never really afraid to break anything, which IMO is the biggest thing that got me to where i am today. Where are you from Rogue? I live in Vancouver, but i'm in seattle right now for school
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I live in snoqualmie and go to school in bellevue (bcc)
 
how to be a geek...dont post this in the motherboard section...lol :D

My first Comp was a HP amd 333 was the shit too..put a Creative Banshee 16mb in it and played Half Life till i Fell asleep
 
My dad is/has been a programmer since before I was born ('83) and so I really didn't have much choice, now did I? I didn't get into hardware until my cousin got me an Abit BP6 w/ DUAL CELLIES! w00t! After that, I was hooked forever more. MUWHAHAHA! :eek:
 
Back in the early eighties, my family took a trip to New York and we got these little handheld games from Japan. You know, mario and donkey kong games. And at about the same time we got a TI-99/4A computer with the cartridges, floppy drive bigger than the computer itself, speech synth...and all the other goodies. I think that got me started more than anything else. Plus I used to take everything apart to see how it worked.
 
It started last Christmas when my sister gave me her old Computer ( See Sig ) It couldn't run any games so a friend of mine that had always told me PC > Console gave me an ATI 8500 and then I got Call of Duty for Christmas and have been playing it non stop since then. I became interested in how to make my PC run faster, then I relized how old the damn thing was and that I needed to buy a new one if I wanted to play games like UT04, Doom 3, etc. I came here for along time and learned a bunch of stuff then I finally got an account here and am fixing to buy a new PC so I can go to my first LAN Party with some geeks from school that I met that turned me from Jock to Geek, lol.
 
Well, i have no idea about the first two, but i can go on after that...

Our first computer was some version of a macintosh...not quite sure, but i know it was old. My mom said I used to just play around on the calculator (more nerdiness)...Anyway, our next computer, again don't know the specs, was an old Packard-Bell P1 which blew horribly...After that we "upgraded" to a Gateway in 2001 with a P3 700MHz, 128MB RAM, possibly an MMX400 graphics card, I don't exactly know, DVD-ROM, 17" CRT Monitor, 20GB HDD, etc...a very nice computer for the times...then after that I got my own computer (2003 or 2004, can't remember) with AMD Athlon XP 2500+, 512MB PC3200 RAM, 80GB HDD, Radeon 9200SE :)( ouchie), A7N8X-X....and with that i've upgraded to a 9800 Pro, soon-to-WORK watercooling, Mushkin Lvl1 PC3200 2x512MB dual-channel kit, and a 17" LCD monitor...(as seen in sig)

Now my family got a new computer (after i cleared the MBR...silly me (on purpose))...P4 3.0GHz, 1GB pc3200 ram, 160gb hdd, dvd+rw, radeon 9550 (nvr heard of it till now...256MB of ram)....

so yeah, i am nowhere near as "old" as most of you, but i'm getting there...just to think, me in 30 years, i'll be looking back on this thinking, "Damn, that was a long time ago." and the p4 will seem like the p1 is now...ah...to quote a good book "So it goes."
 
My family's first computer was a IBM PS1, 386 25mhz which we got in 1991. It had 4mb of ram and an 80mb hard drive, I believe as well as a 1.44mb floppy drive and a 5.25" floppy drive. It had/still has Windows 3.1 on it, you can word process on it, and I have a couple shitty dos games. I wasn't in to it, granted I was only like 4. Then in 1997, my parents decided to get a new machine because my mom wanted the internet. So we bought a used Penitum 1, 200mhz, 32mb ram and 2gb HD from a friend of her's office. I started to look up codes for my super nintendo games on this machine over a 56k connection, as well as chat on msn a bit. Then I got starcraft. And I played that a lot on the old machine. I found it ran slow and badgered my parents to buy a new computer for about a year until we finally got one in 2001. It was a Pentium 4 1.7ghz, 256mb ram with a Radeon 7200 64mb video card. Not to bad, we still have that computer it is the "family" computer. I played many games on it, and I just recently bought my new machine (July 2004) Athlon 64 3000+, 1gb ram, and I salvaged my old 9500pro.

I guess starcraft hooked me into the computer world. But I am starting to fade out of it, I still know some shit, but I'm not as in to it as I was before. The only thing I want to be is a moderately educated user. That will be the extent of my dip into the realm of computers :).
 
hey mojo... i got a 386 needs a new 80mb hdd... trouble is i don't want to mess w/ bios settings. mine was a quantum brand. if yours is the same i'll take it for $10 as soon as i figure out how to do it w/ paypal.
 
hey mojo... i got a 386 needs a new 80mb hdd... trouble is i don't want to mess w/ bios settings. mine was a quantum brand. if yours is the same i'll take it for $10 as soon as i figure out how to do it w/ paypal.
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Read the name of the thread ok man! :D
 
he mentioned he had one... i mentioned i needed it. just good old usa-style trading offer. :D
 
hey mojo... i got a 386 needs a new 80mb hdd... trouble is i don't want to mess w/ bios settings. mine was a quantum brand. if yours is the same i'll take it for $10 as soon as i figure out how to do it w/ paypal.
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Thats one way to get a dman good thread of track so go do it somewhere else please! ;)
 
er... nevermind.

i was going to say something but figured someone would complain.
 
the first game console made, PONG

a pong system graced out house somewhere around 1974 or 5 as best as me and my bro can remember. we got a strombecker race car set around the same time. yes, waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay bak!
 
maybe he didn't mean invented, maybe he meant when he started...just a thought

but i'm surprised no one has said "when i was born, i was a geek"...but that might be gay...

let me check...yeah, that was gay :p
 
i was only 3-1/2 years from being born a geek.

:p or maybe i was and it took me that long to figure it out.
 
i got my first taste at school with a mac...hated them..theve since gotten much better..i now use them in shop(vocational/technical high school) for photoshop, illustrator, web design...id lke a powerbook for home but im broke

first PC was: my dad had rolled $1,200 in PENNYS and cashed them at the bank (weighed a ton...i could carry 20 pounds of them..i was 5 or 6...)

he then bought a 66mhz(90mhz at "turbo" speed) AT computer with windows 3.1...i had fun spending hours in paint scribbling :pP and i got hooked on this after i wanted more SPEED...

after that my uncle gave me a p2 266Mhz computer that had a bad HDD and all i had to do was remove the slave...windows 95..i upgraded to win 98 and put in a belkin USB 1.1 pci card :shocked: :OMFG!:

then that PSU crapped out so my mom didnt wanna wait to get a new one and have me install it...so she got a used HP vectra vl600 with a cd burner, windows 98 SE(upgraded to XP for my iPod) and 256MB of ram

i just recently (i mean in the last 2 months) upgraded to the system in my sig after drooling over other peoples systems...and just think...right after they release a64s :(
 
I'm actually a really varied guy.

I know about guitars, computers, anime, sports, drugs, and chicks. I get a good amount of it all. I must say it's a pretty sweet deal. Most people don't know I know anything about computers. Mainly because I've learned that if people don't care, don't talk about it. Unfortunately, most people probably won't believe what I'm saying :mad:
 
We had a Pong game too, I think it was around 73 or 74.

I've owned alot of computers starting when I was around 15:
Sinclair ZX-80 , this was a kit when it first came out (had to enter basic proggies by hand, until I got a cassette recorder), Timex Sinclair ZX-81
Commodore VIC-20, 64, 128, Amiga 1000, 500, 2000, 3000
Intel 8088, 286, 386, 486, Pentium, Pentium Pro, PII, PIII, P4 (a bunch of diff speeds and machines with all the intel stuff)
 
Rogue4mula said:
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...
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Wow that's looking at a mirror image of myself :eek:

Back when I got my AST P100 in 2000 I didn't think I knew much about it but the first time I took the top off to add a 233mb maxtor hdd it was like second nature to me it was so easy yet I had never been inside a computer before. :D

After I got my 600is emachines 12/00, I started messing with software a lot more and started learning about operating systems to the point where I put together from files a 1.38mb copy of win3.1. :D Later I built a copy of win95A from files that was 29mb in total size. Had it running of a 40mb conner :)
 
I think the 'geek' started back when I was in grade school (sometime between K-3). My father had a few computers for work (he remembers 2x CD-ROM days), none of which were allowed to be touched :) My friend who lived a house away from me had a Pentium 133MHz with around a gig of harddrive. I still remember asking 'what do you do when you run out of space for midi's?' and he laughed, saying it was so big that it'd never run out. Needless to say, I proved to be right on that one :D

Anyway, my first computer that i owned (not used, because i learned alot about computers from friends whos parents had a 'family computer') was a Pentium3 750MHz with 128MB PC133 SDR and a Voodoo5500AGP :) Man that videocard was awesome....dual processors.....anyway, then i started to dabble in Linux (alot of people in my area had the linux bug), and became an avid RedHat fan (dual boot Win98 SE and Redhat 6.2). I purchased my first 'computer upgrade', a 256MB stick of ram, from a Staples about 20 mins from my residence. My friend, not to be bested, had me pick him up so he too, could upgrade his machine. On the way to get him, I totalled my car...so I paid a dear price for that upgrade......dammit. :)

Anyway, I just built my first computer a month or so ago, and it's still in the process. I've built about 5 computers since this machine, but all for other people. And, I'm one of the only people I know that can say they taught themselves how to build a computer :-D Told my sister to buy the parts and I'd assemble it...even got the jumpers figured out within the first or second try.

At least my car insurance record is clear come January.....
 
Doom do I need to say more? First PC game I remember playing no stopping after that. Also with games comes hardware requirements so the status becoming a computer geek is natural when you are a gamer :D
 
At my grade school, we had apple II+'s that we spent an hour on every Thursday, playing lemonade stand and oregon trail. Then my dad brought home a green screen tandy that had been retired from his office, and was getting replaced by a hot new 486. Couldn't even play oregon trail on the damned thing, but I did learn how to use dos, and write papers that I subesquently forgot the location of. Haha, those were the days. :p
*w00t* 64th pizzzooooossssttttt!!!!
 
I'm not a computer; nerd, geek, or junkie. I'm not a computer; nerd, geek, or junkie. I'm not a computer; nerd, geek, or junkie. I'm not a computer; nerd, geek, or junkie. Damn!, back to counseling.. The first "computer", and I use that word loosely, I took apart, was an Atari 800.. Soon I was dissasembling a Vic 128, then a 386, deep breath.. I spiraled out of controll after that. The computer butchery, followed by computer surgery, and then back to butchery has continued to this very day. I hide it well, my wife, what's her name, I forget, don't suspect nothing.. The shame. :D
 
Love of everything fast brought me to racing. Racing brought me to F1. The marriage of F1 racing and high tech turned me into a Car Freak/Computer Geek.
 
Having my old Compaq poop out when gaming...REsearched and built myself my computer and then got addicted I guess... :p
 
i got into computers at the start of my 9th grade. one day i had to do homework on my bros gateway P2 or P3 i guess P2480MHz 128MB comp with a rage something card. i forget. we still have it. ill check it out. i was lookin down the programs menu when i ran into the game tribes. i remember i had played this on our older compaq computer which was around 200MHz i think. give or take a few Hz. i dont remember. but i played tribes in the 6th grade on 28k modem on AOL 4.0. god i lagged like hell. but i still played with 999 ping shooting at an enemy on the screen that would come into view for 5 seconds strait. then i moved to hawaii. n kinda quit the game scene. lived on kauai for 2 years kinda forgot about computers till Star Wars Episode One:phantom Menace came out into game n installed that. played for a bit then forgot about it. moved back to california n thats where i come into where i started. one day i needed to do some homework, saw tribes. decided to play n wham. i played n played on 56k till we decided to upgrade the ram to 300something megs n get cable internet. played tribes for a while Ultra Renegades VX5 mod ^CCCP^ clan. then i needed a better computer n well now ive gone through 2 comps. n im in 12th grade now. anyway done with my computer life story. sorry bout the in depth thoughts
 
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