Old Farts Using Linux

[egurski]

Ok... I'll admit that I am 55 (almost) and using Linux. I have been involved with computers since 1969 (a lot of you were not even born yet).!!!!

A bit of history.. I learned the IBM 402 punch card programming (a slab with wires). I graduated from there to a Univac 1050 (8 K of memory) running the Console exec (my memory fades here a bit - I know there were three execs). The programming was similar to ALGOL but then we graduated to the Uniivac 9300 with 32K of memorry (heaven!!!!) and a 360 assembler like language. I developed what we called RORI (roll-in roll-out programming --- today it's called paging)

In 1972 I started working on IBM 360/65's and 165's (256K memory) and the IBM 360 assembler language which we upgraded to Assembler "G" ( University of Waterloo -- the first cooperative CS and separate CS faculty -- 1965).

Although I loved assembly language and writing macros, I knew that higher level languages were emerging -- Cobol, PL/1, PL/S, Pascal and C). My lust for machine control led me into the micro computer world in 1976. There I excelled in process control systems (writing your own OS and commands) and learning the breadth of computers. In the 80's I had my own consulting firm and supported many financial customers in the Systems Programming area and make-shift priogramming.

I learned basic on my first PC, a Compaq Deskpro (v80 chip), and developed my billing application using basic.

My son used my PC to setup his first BBS in 1984!!! I then moved on to OS/2 and some windows but leaned more towards OS/2...

Since I had some Unix like experience (DG 8/40, 2/10, Varian v66's ) I was sent to learn AIX admin in 1995 but at that time Windows 3.5 was emergng and I was transferred to suuport this OS. In 1998 (still ruinning OS/2 at home --- Merlin), I was assigned to a project running on Solaris 8. I embraced this project and re-discovered my love for Unix-like OS's.

Since then I have tried Mandrake 8.0, Suse, RedHat 8.0and 9.0 and finally Fedora FC1.

I currently run 3 FC1's at home, one being my Firewall, one a multi-purpose using Vmware and the other my DNS, DHCP, Squid, Apache, Samba, NTP, etc...server.

I still write scripts and I have developed a D/R set of scripts for our Solaris systems which can be found at: http://www/gurski.com/Netbackup , I have also ported these scripts to Windows ...alas Unix/linux rules in scripting.

At work I not only function as a Windows administrator (200+) but also Solaris (9 servers) and Fedora (4 servers plus my laptop).

I am curious as to how many other Old farts are using linux and enjoying it....

Ed

[Picomp314]

I began my computer usage probably at the age of 4 or 5, My family has had a computer for as long as I can remember. Our first one was a Macintosh IIci, with a 100MB HD, and a 740 MB external SCSI drive, as a child I remember playing children's games that ran on MacOS 7.5 (or was it 7.4.6??)

Several Years later we then moved up to a Macintosh 7500 PowerMac with a 68040 processor, this computer served us well for probably 4 years, I learned alot despite it being a Mac... I taught myself basic applescripting and other such things...

My Father had grown tired of Macintoshes, and finally decided to purchase a PC with a 1.2 Ghz processor, this was now at the very beginning of my freshman year of High School. With the New PC i gained a rapid learning curve, and soon surpassed 90% of my school. I longed to experiment with other operating systems, Linux in particular. I began running LiveCD Linux distributions on the PC and experimented with Linux more and more...

I decided that I needed my own computer and asked for one in the winter months of my Sophomore year of High School. I built the computer with an Athlon XP 2200+, and so began my journey into the world of Linux...

I initially installed Red Hat 8.0 and my high speed of my learning continued I soon surpassed probably 99% of my school... Eventually I discovered Fedora Core 1 and Installed it, and I recently upgraded that to Fedora Core 2 Test 3; There are probably only two People I know that have skills that are comparable to mine.

Some find it hard to believe that I have only had an x86 based computer for < 3 years, yet I have much more ability than many people who have been using computers for much longer than I have been alive.

I am 16 years old and will turn 17 on the 28th of this month.

[crackers]

I guess I qualify since, when answering surveys, I find myself checking the "45+" option. Who came up with that dubious distinction anyway?

Started in 1973 with a Hewlett-Packard 9810A (desktop calculator and used RPN as a programming "language" - blech!), then on to Watfive (Fortran V) on an Amdahl 470V6, etc. My first "real" job (with a grand total of 1 hour of college CS) in 1982 turned me into a Unix weenie and, despite having had to suffer through a period of all-Windows-no-Unix using, I've generally stayed a Unix weenie.

I started using Linux with kernel version 0.99something (good ol' Slack on floppy disks downloaded over a 2400 baud modem). I started using RH at around 5.0 and, despite flirtations with other distros, have stayed pretty close to home.

And, just to blow my own horn, I have a nice little hacking "HowTo" up on Fedoranews.org (http://fedoranews.org/contributors/e_a_graham_jr/ndis/)

[ewdi]

woah, u all have great experiences, as for me i did not start computing until i was 14 years old which is around 1993 :p

so i'm still in dos era however did not went into classic computing :p

I only started using linux since 1998 which i tried with enthusiasm and failed to install right actually (i did not know that i need to install boot loader to boot sector :p)

after that i've started to like linux and use it a lot at school and home for school work (i'm in computer science major)

i never use other hardware platform beside x86 since i compute.

i did use computer when i was 6 years old i think with TYAN 8088 System where it give u electric shock everytime you turn them on from the side of the system :p but i only use it to play game called DIGGER, so dont call it computing :p

[crackers]

Originally posted by tux
woah, u all have great experiences

Heck, I lost count of how many different systems, OSs and languages I've used. I just consider myself fortunate (and old enough) to have seen the rise of computing from monstrous main-frames to PDAs. (Did I mention the Amdahl's 2Mb core memory?)

As egurski would probably confrim, if you stick with it long enough, you'll end up with plenty of "great experinces" yourself. The trick is to keep learning and poking your nose into places that look interesting...

I can just see it now: in 20 years, telling the kids about how you remember when a computer took up more space than a box of tissues!

[Ug]

My first comouter was an Amiga 600+ at the age of 8.

[mark]

Yeah, I qualify -I turned 50 in January (and got my first mail from AARP 2 days later!).

Started fiddling with small computers in the late '70s (an S100-based Godbout CompuPro 8080), kept trying to get it to do something useful but never developed any real "feel" for programming. However, when I discovered Boolean logic, things started to fall into place and I began to understand (I think!) some of the magic that was going on inside these nondescript boxes.

Went to work in the early '80s for a major small printer manufacturer that decided to get into small computers by offereing an alternative to "the Evil Empire" (IBM/Microsoft) - anybody remember the QX-10 and Valdocs? Nice idea, lousy execution - but the QX was still one of the best d**n CP/M machines I ever used.

I was transferred from my native Atlanta to southern California in late 1986 and was promptly given the task of setting up a call-tracking system for our Tech Support center. With no network, next-to-no budget and just the (by that time) PCs on everybody's desk. The consultant that had been hired to do it spent about a week on it and then returned his fee. So I wound up setting up a XENIX host running a DataFLEX database app I cobbled together, connecting the PCs via RS232 serial cable, running some DOS pop-up TSR terminal emulator. And it all worked...somehow.

Thus began my love/hate relationship with various *nix flavors. It came to a head when I purchased a spiffy new Sony VAIO laptop last year and discovered that I really, really could not stand Windows XP.

So here I am...

[Ug]

I feel so young...

[Lindy]

Originally posted by egurski
Ok... I'll admit that I am 55 (almost) and using Linux. I have been involved with computers since 1969 (a lot of you were not even born yet).!!!!



I still had baseball cards flapping in the spokes of my bicycle in '69, so the question I have to ask myself is "am I an old fart?"... Well, erm, ahh, hmm... Yea. I probably am, or atleast slouching in that direction anyway.

My first exposure to Linux was with Slackware 3.3. Fortunately for my sanity I found Redhat soon there after. :D

[sailor]

46 years old here...I am lovign my FC1...I use it more than WinXP now...
I started back in late 70's with a old IBM 8088...it was owned by a friend of mine who got it from work (don't ask)...we got newer equipment as the years went by...we were so impressed when he got his 286 with vga graphics...whoowhoo...hehe
I used to sell Commadore 64's and 300's at a little office supply I worked at...I couldn't afford to buy my own computer till the mid 90's...
I guess the first OS I first used was DOS 3.0...i think...
I dont miss those days...but then again it was fun when thats all we had...

[EnnisMac]

44 years old here ....

My first computer was some kind of mini-computer at my high school in 1977. I learned basic and wrote a tick tac toe program that was unbeatable, you could tie it, but not beat it.

From there I went on to Prime mini com puter in the early 1980's, and some Windows PC's.

I learned Solaris in 1989 and have been with it ever since.

I've also learned Linux, Red Hat, SuSE, and now Fedora ..

I like Linux the best ...

Ennis

[crackers]

Since I forgot to mention my first personal computer, it was an Apple //e - with a whopping 128Kb (swapped, of course) memory and one of the absolute gawd-awful pieces of crap ever invented by mankind: the DuoDisk (two 1/2-height 5.25" floppy drives in one enclosure). It spent more time in the shop than it did connected to the computer. Oh, and I bought a 300-baud (non-acoustic!) modem for it, too.

Oh, and my first e-mail address was a "bang-path" address. :D

[mark]

Originally posted by crackers
...Oh, and my first e-mail address was a "bang-path" address. :D

Yeah, mine was one of those impossible-to-remember Compuserve/CIS thingies - something like 72354,1431. And my first modem was a 300-baud acoustic coupler....

[jcstille]

I had a nice old pc. I am talking first pc produced by IBM. Then I upgraded, and threw os2/warp on there. Had a text only browser. Ah the good ole days.

[Avon]

Being a young slip of a lad, my first computer at age 10: BBC Micro model B. Don't think it was ever popular in the States, which is too bad because it was a hell of a good machine at the time. I still have it, in storage currently, but I bet it still works. Just need to modify it slightly to work with a US power supply :)

First encountered Unix (in the form of Dynix on a Sequent Symmetry) at university in 1990; I only wanted access to email but it came with a shell account. I eventually stumbled across the man command and the rest is history :)

[jcstille]

haha, theall knowing man command.

Well I forget to mention my first Unix encounter. 3 Years ago, when I first got involved in opensource development, can't remember what system though.

[proAIX]

I am 52 and have been using Redhat linux since version 5.1. At home I currently use Fedora Core 2. At work I support 7 AIX servers, 3 SuSE servers, and 1 Redhat server. I have tried Redhat, SuSE, Mandrake, even Aroura on SPARC. My favorite is still RedHat, ie. Fedora Core.

My history...
When I started working, it was on the hardware side. The latest and greatest thing was the 4004 CPU. All four bits of it!! If we had 16 Meg of memory, we were loaded. Programs were written tight, and was very memory conscious
My how things have changed! Most programmers today don't know how to write code to conserve memory, let alone know how to tell how much memory their code is using.

Ok... I'll admit that I am 55 (almost) and using Linux. I have been involved with computers since 1969 (a lot of you were not even born yet).!!!!

A bit of history.. I learned the IBM 402 punch card programming (a slab with wires). I graduated from there to a Univac 1050 (8 K of memory) running the Console exec (my memory fades here a bit - I know there were three execs). The programming was similar to ALGOL but then we graduated to the Uniivac 9300 with 32K of memorry (heaven!!!!) and a 360 assembler like language. I developed what we called RORI (roll-in roll-out programming --- today it's called paging)

In 1972 I started working on IBM 360/65's and 165's (256K memory) and the IBM 360 assembler language which we upgraded to Assembler "G" ( University of Waterloo -- the first cooperative CS and separate CS faculty -- 1965).

Although I loved assembly language and writing macros, I knew that higher level languages were emerging -- Cobol, PL/1, PL/S, Pascal and C). My lust for machine control led me into the micro computer world in 1976. There I excelled in process control systems (writing your own OS and commands) and learning the breadth of computers. In the 80's I had my own consulting firm and supported many financial customers in the Systems Programming area and make-shift priogramming.

I learned basic on my first PC, a Compaq Deskpro (v80 chip), and developed my billing application using basic.

My son used my PC to setup his first BBS in 1984!!! I then moved on to OS/2 and some windows but leaned more towards OS/2...

Since I had some Unix like experience (DG 8/40, 2/10, Varian v66's ) I was sent to learn AIX admin in 1995 but at that time Windows 3.5 was emergng and I was transferred to suuport this OS. In 1998 (still ruinning OS/2 at home --- Merlin), I was assigned to a project running on Solaris 8. I embraced this project and re-discovered my love for Unix-like OS's.

Since then I have tried Mandrake 8.0, Suse, RedHat 8.0and 9.0 and finally Fedora FC1.

I currently run 3 FC1's at home, one being my Firewall, one a multi-purpose using Vmware and the other my DNS, DHCP, Squid, Apache, Samba, NTP, etc...server.

I still write scripts and I have developed a D/R set of scripts for our Solaris systems which can be found at: http://www/gurski.com/Netbackup , I have also ported these scripts to Windows ...alas Unix/linux rules in scripting.

At work I not only function as a Windows administrator (200+) but also Solaris (9 servers) and Fedora (4 servers plus my laptop).

I am curious as to how many other Old farts are using linux and enjoying it....

Ed

[egurski]

I tend to agree with ProAix, I remember writting assembler code for a Univac 9300. We called the program RoRi (roll-in roll-out memory). Of course this was the precurser to paging and swapping. We only had 32K of memory and needed to quiesce all I/O before we could roll out the currently running program and roll-in a new program. Each program had a time-slice (I/O activity) after which it was rolled out and the previous or new program rolled in.

We really needed to know a lot about the internals of the OS and how much memory we had. We also needed to learn how to write disk channel programs (Does anyone remember TIC and what is stands for in Disk I/O).

I'm rambling but then again I am an old fart....

Ed

BTW: My laptop and 1 desktop at work are now FC2. At home my firwewall and 1 desktop are FC2...I'm cautious on the third since this is my major DNS, Squid, Dhcp, Samba, Cups, NTP etc... server) Just love FC2...

:)

[Scoob_E]

Can't quite say I am an old fart (only 21), but my parents had the foresight to plant me infront of a computer (in one form or another) since I was knee high to a grass hopper. My first computer was a Texas Instrument that was cartridge driven and plugged into the back of a TV. It was less of a computer and more of an atari mixed with a word processor, but I remember my dad writing some program on it, I think. The next box I had was the families 386. If i remeber correctly it had a whopping 100mb hard disk (or was it bigger, I can't remember) and 8 megs of ram. The sales person told us that it was more than we would ever need. My mom was hired as the computer teacher at my elementary school. I think her lab had 10 apple IIe's. This is where I had my first experience programming (in logo writer) . In the 7th grade I saw hackers and it blew me away... (seems silly now, but when i first saw it I must have replayed it 100 times) That christmas I got a 75mhz pentium with 16mb of ram. I installed linux on it (don't know which distro, I got a command line and thought I was hot $h*t. I've dabbled with linux since then and only recently kissed windows goodbye.

Currently I work for an internet travel agency where I started as they're webmaster when we only had 3 computers in the office and the office had one email address. Now I am 'head ' of IT (mostly a joke, I am a department of one) incharge of 20 odd windows workstations and 3 windows servers (soon to be only 2) and am working on migrating the office to open source solutions (ultimatly to running linux 99%).

Thats my story, sorry if I got long winded.
scoob

[crackers]

We all have to start somewhere. Us "old-pharts" do have the dubious distinction of being exposed to the hardware of our time, so we kinda got to watch and experience the growth from the mainframes to desktops that would out-perform the old Crays.

I kinda miss the revolutionary changes, though - it was pretty exciting. These days, the boxes aren't revolutionary, they're "only" evolutionary. Although, I am lusting after a dual CPU rig... if my wife would ever really let me. :(

[mark]

Although, I am lusting after a dual CPU rig... if my wife would ever really let me. :("But, dear, at least it's an inanimate object..." :D

[crackers]

"But, dear, at least it's an inanimate object..." :D
I don't even get that far... I just even mention it and she deflates the notion with a single word:

"Why?"

*sigh*

[mark]

I don't even get that far... I just even mention it and she deflates the notion with a single word:

"Why?"

*sigh*Ah, yes - one of, if not the deadliest words in any language.

[AliOop]

Just had to jump in and add my two cents. So far, at 56, I think I'm the oldest one to post so far. Not that that will win me any prizes. I don't have the back ground like the others here but, like most folks, I've been using a PC for years,as a tool, Nothing more. My familly has had a PC since the early 90s but because it accessed the internet via dial-up (AOL) it never grabbed me. I mostly left it alone. That all changed in '99 when a Gateway 1.3 Hz P4 was purchased along with DSL service. What a revelation! I didn't have time to get a cup of coffee while the page loaded anymore. Pages rendered in a blink of an eye. At that time the coumputer bug started to nibble at me. Then I came across something called Linux and I looked into it. The deeper I delved into it, the more that bug dug in. I guess I researched for about a year before I took the plunge. I've been a Linux advocate since. While the familly are Windows fans, I use linux (FC2) exclusive. Although I don't have the training the others here have I hope to learn and expand my horizons when it comes to linux. While my system doesn't do all I want, it does give me a feeling of empowerment. What a joy to have something work after lots of digging, gnashing of teeth, and hair pulling. No, it doesn't come fully configured right out of the "box" but I do so love it. After all these years, I still consider myself some what a newbie. But as time goes by and I learn more, I feel more at easy. Damn I'm glad we have Linux!

[egurski]

I too would like to get a dual processor ... However, even though my wife would say "Why" she did conceed that I might be able to get a Sun Ultra Sparc... :)

[cmoore18]

57 here. My first was C64. I've been I started writing programs with Ashton-Tate D-base III. Moved to Unix, Sun Microsystems, about 8 years ago. Been foolin' with Linux since RedHat 5.2. Running FC1 on my Toshiba laptop. I also user SuSe at work for our mailserver.

[huh?]

at 60, I feel old :), first computer was an TRS-80. Lost that one to the kids when they found they could play chess on it :(....then dropped out completely for close to 30 years (work)..retired from the Coast Guard and got into truck driving...finally had time to play with my original hobby, Ham Radio...that lead to a small IBM 286 processor for radio teletype..been downhill every since. Now running a 2600 Mhz, smp, and ham radio stuff..just recently bought a book on the C language...
where will it end ? ;)

[Scoob_E]

It never ends.... but thats what great about it, there is always something new to learn.

scoob

[wbrown33]

OK - I'm now 23 (for the third time). I started with analog computers in 1956 and graduated to digital computers with an IBM 709 in 1959. I worked for IBM on 1401's, 1620's, 7094's. I worked for Control Data on 6600's, 7600's, Cyber 7x's, etc. Had an Osborne 1, PCJr., 286, 386, 486, and now various Pentiums at home. Today I keep busy tending 7 servers and 300 workstations at work and 3 hobby systems at home. Most of my recent programming has been in C for Unix/Linux or in Visual Basic for Windows at work.

[raluke]

I just turned 43. I got started programming BASIC on a timeshare mainframe at Southern Methodist University (in Dallas) in the summer of 1977. There was an ASCII game called "Star Trek" that I thought was just the coollest thing ever - but then I was only sixteen years old and could not have imagined Doom in my wildest dreams then. I've been programming at college and as an engineer after graduation ever since. I bought my first home PC relatively late, in 1991, at the age of 30. I started using Linux (Red Hat 5.0, natch) in early 1998.

[mark]

Had an Osborne 1, PCJr., 286, 386, 486, and now various Pentiums at home. Oh, yeah - the Osborne was neat. Remember the Kaypro? "Industrial hideous" in luggable computer design...

[crackers]

Ouch! I just got a hernia from the memory of those things!

[rjl]

I'm 57 and started with a "no name " PC running DOS in my office. At that time there were not any business Apps for the Mac and I stuck with Windows until about 6 months ago. Since then I have tried about 5 flavors of linux and to date FC2 with a Gnome desktop is by far my favorite.

I am still feeling my way, but this site is a great help.

Bob

[mick]

I'm a 48 year old newb, but I remember messin' about on a TSR-80 when I worked at a RadioShack in '79. 'Never even got close to a computer again until four years ago - then I went to seminary and had to 'type' a lot of papers; word processing looked much better than getting covered head to foot in Wite-Out. But a friend had the presense of mind to try to tell me "...the best way to learn how to work on a computer is try to break it, and then try to fix it." So, I took him at his word, and have been trying to break them ever since...

Played with Win95, then '98, XP and Server, and have tried each one of the better part of thirty Linux distros in a drawer. First Linux was RH9 about a year ago, but switched to Fedora when it dawned on me that RH was going commercial. Have FC1 on all the computers at the church now, and am looking forward to working with FC2 enough to be able to upgrade soon. Sure, we still have to run XP as well, but this too shall pass. I'm running FC2 exclusively on my box at home, and have my 17 year old born-and-bred-Windows-only son asking me to help put FC2 on his brand new Dell P4. Hmmm, a convert...

So, I guess I'm a 'young fart' at heart! :D

[chili555]

Just a kid at 61! Bought my daughter a TRS-80 years ago and probably messed with it more than her. Built all 3 computers we use now from scratch. One is a headless node dedicated to Folding@Home. Used linux since Mandrake 8.0. Although my wife uses Winblows XP (gotta have someplace to do the taxes!), I scrubbed my last Winblows partition some time ago.

I use a slide-out tray for my HDD's and experiment with FC2, Mandrake 10 Official and Slackware 10.0. My favorite is whichever one I'm using at the moment. My every day email, write letters, surf the web, box is FC2.

Looking forward to FC3...and then 4 and 5!

[mdynac]

46 year old geek here....
started out on a Commodore 64 , with cassette data storage....
then i got that HUGE 5-1/4" disk drive....

had various other 8088, 286, 386, pentiums...
been running linux since Red Hat 4.0 and never looked back.

Yes I still have a doze 98 box, just for compatibilty reasons with a device programmer and
Atmel AVR developement stuff that I do.

I even have a 386 box running WFW, which is kinda fun to get online with occasionally.

However Linux is my first choice, always...

[bob]

59 in a very few days. I've only had about 12yrs in-home experience although did a couple of Pascal courses back in '80. My first box was a 486 repo (ran a loan company) running windows 3.1 with a 14.4 modem 256 meg HD and 4 megs of ram, which I got so my wife could play solitaire. A decade later, I'm retired and am running 2 boxes dual-booting with XP and either SuSE 9.0 or FC2. My wife is still playing solitaire on our 3rd box, asking for help whenever the mail crashes.....along with everyone else in our family and in the neighborhood. Meanwhile, I've fallen in love with command line and looking forward to finding a home for my recently downloaded Slackware 10 distro.

[imdeemvp]

I feel so young...

one thing about being so young its also being so immature, no offense! :D

and trust me enjoy while you can time goes very fast now.....i few years ago i felt young when i was 30 now almost 37 and still young and learning but very mature now! :D

about the topic i started using computers in 1995 using linux since rh8 no school what so ever just reading and messing with pc's....

the funny thing is the one of my bosses said to me in 1995 "you should buy a computer" and i replied "i am afraid to use them....but i got one for christmas of '96 and it was a compaq presario" and now i built them.....repair them and break'em up too.! :eek:

i now know network setup too....just by reading books...never certified :D
i learn how to write programs one of this days...

[Picomp314]

i first got a pc 3 years ago
you people have been doing this for a long time
i get the feeling that my knowledge isnt too far behind...

[crackers]

Depends on what you gauge as "knowledge." Do I know the ins and outs of the kernel drivers? By no means! Do I know what it takes to write drivers? You betcha! Do I want to write drivers? Heck no!

What "knowledge" you gain from longevity is proportional to the effort involved. Me, if I don't have a problem, I don't go looking for them. OS's are complex beasts - I'll stick to Java enterprise applications, thanks... ;)

[Picomp314]

i do go looking for problems, because i like to fix stuff
i am no programmer by any means, i don't have enough patience at this age i think...
i need to start experimenting with some other oses, but i think i found my niche in linux

[tamilian]

I am 96 years old and want to become a RHCE. I am learning lots of Linux now.

Please pray that I could make it up.

[crackers]

i do go looking for problems, because i like to fix stuff
If you like to break things, then I'd suggest a career in QA (quality assurance) - of course, some of those "test-monkeys" (not derogatory, but more an affectionate term - really!) don't have much of a sense of humor.

Them: "It's broken when I do this!"
Me: "Well, then don't do that!"

i am no programmer by any means, i don't have enough patience at this age i think...
Actually, with programming you can get almost instant gratification when something works. But, yes, the patience comes in handy when your program doesn't work. :(

[Picomp314]

the difference is they only find the problems
i find then diagnose then fix

[desipher]

WOW !!!! You guys are old

[blochbob]

In 1981 while working as an IBMer, the first PCs started showing up in the office of privileged employees (not me). There were only a handful of apps provided: mortgage repayment schedule and MUSIC were among the most popular. As i walked thru the hallowed halls of IBM listening to music playing on the new expensive PCs, i figured they were just toys for bored employees to play with during working hours. Was i right ?

[crackers]

Not quite - now they're for managers to send requests for status updates every 20 minutes via e-mail...

[NeilO]

:o If you lot are 'Old Farts', wotdaellduzdatmaykme?.... 61!
Started in Numerical Progaming (Robotics).
Believe it or not, I could 'read' those punch tapes then. No big thing at the time.
Been running (trying to) Linux for 5yrs. now an' still know nuthin.
I love it, especially the ETHICS.

Cheers.

[grnchile]

There are a lot more old farts here than I would have believed from seeing that age survey with the "45+" category.

I'm 51. I started in the 60s with BASIC on paper tape and an ASR-33 teletype dialing out at a screaming 110 bps to a UNIVAC. Painful doesn't describe it (I was the one screaming). I could go on, but my head hurts just thinking about just this part. I do remember that at one point in grad school I was proud of knowing more computer languages than I was years old. I'm afraid that those days are behind me.

My wife is about to turn 54. I've put various versions of Redhat/Fedora on all of her machines (dual boot), but she still does most of her work in that other OS. I did convince her to teach her OS last class using Linux as a base, though. Progress.

The dog still likes windows and refused to wear a fedora. I need to work on that.

[oxman]

57 and I have been living in the back woods for 25 years. Half of that time was off the power grid. Finally got a computer in the mid 90's :eek: and have been enjoying it ever since. Here's our little nook in the world:
http://www.singingfalls.com

Being the radically independent sort I immediately gravitated toward linux. I started with rh 5.3( ?could have been 5.2? - senior moment:rolleyes: ) , then 6.1, then 7.3, 9 and now FC2. I still use one or two "other OS" apps but 95% of the time it's linux (for my wife also). She publishes and I do computer graphics. I can't say how grateful I am to the FOSS community. Really couldn't do it without them.

reg. linux user #199890

Stanley

[crackers]

I wish y'all hadn't mentioned the paper tape - I can still feel those ***-*****, ******-******* dots crawling into my ***. They got everywhere!

[cavedweller]

I haven't had the AARP send me anything yet just Social Security letting me no what I won't be getting. I actually got into the whole computer thing as a fluke. I have always like to take things apart to see how they worked. For Alot of people that would spell desaster for me it just means a learning curve.

I was working in a lumber mill running the trimsaws and barrowed an 8086 running dos 5.0 from my former mother in law. I had had it for two days and curiosity got the better of me and the hard drive. I had no disk with it so I bought an upgrade edition of dos and a new hard drive and spent the next 2 weeks learning. I finally got it running again and promptly gave it back.

I couldn't afford a new system so I bought used parts and kept the upgading thing going. I stayed with dos for quite awhile 1believe it was late 96 before I ever ran windows. I ran dos with an old program called power menu right through the windows 3 erra. Ran 95 and later 98 for a couple of years.

I was building systems for a little extra money and still working in a mill (I did twenty years in different mills).
At one point in 2000 I had even got a CCNA but at that point it was just to say I had a cert.....that was about it. Finally in 2003 the owner of the mill where I was working as a supervisor had a falling out. I made a couple of calls and found myself working for a small for an individual as a jack of all trades tech making mor than I ever had in a mill.

I have been messing with linux since RedHat 5.2 I still have the books somewhere. I was looking for something different I thought MS had gotten to big and there had to be something else to use. I was a mill worker and not member of the county club so MAC wasn't an option. My honest feeling was there just wasn't that much software for MAC to justify the cost of owning one. I basically still feel that way. I went to a small computer store in my town and bought RH 5.2. I would like to say it was a breeze to install, but as I remeber my computer was down for 3 days. It was enough however to start a love hate relationship.

I didn't have the luxury of an extensive computing background all I had had ws MS exposure. At that time it seemed like the linux community was filled with the biggest bunch of tight lipped people you ever saw. It seemed like it took for ever to find out how to do anything and what you did find was generally written by someone writing in the secret linux elitest code. That only the elite had a key to decifer. I remeber there was some program I wanted it came in a tar file. It took me like a week of searching to figure out how to configure and install it.

It has been intresting watching linux grow. I have people asking me all the time why I use linux. My answer is always the same I work on MS systems all day when I go home I want mine to run hassle free.

[stanmc]

Just started getting Social Security at 62. Been using computers since 1969. Learned Cobol. Bought a Commodore 64 in the 80s then an Apple IIc. My first PC was an AST 16MHz i386. Eventually installed a Cyrix 486 upgrade making it 32MHz. Very powerful. :D

In 1981 I got the IBM Tech Ref manual for the "new" PC and started installing them. I eventually had five small Novell networks. As well as an optical scanning system to archive applications and handle payments for a government agency. The PC was never supposed to sell more than 300,00 total and no one would use more than 64KB. Then Bill Gates estimated 640KB would be the max after he started writing "bloated" code.

My first Linux was 5.2. I have had 6.0, 6.1, 7.0 and 7.2. I bought 7.3 from Linux Systems Lab, but downloaded 8 before I got 7.3 installed. Anyone need old install disks?? ;) I'm now on FC2. Linux is so stable. Occasionally it gives me headaches. For example, recently I installed a tape drive and the hardware browser told me the address was /dev/hdd. Instead of doing a search on the web, I went through the manual for Mondo (the backup program I use) and then the Mondo Forum and finally Fedora Forum. Discovered a reference to another Linux user having trouble with his drive at ht0 and to my amazement the address of my unit was /dev/ht0. When I searched on that term I found all the info I needed. Sure wish some things were better documented. Or, wish Linux would give the "correct" address before you work your ass off. :rolleyes:

Can't wait for FC3.

[GreyGeek]

I just turned 63. But, I'd rather be 36 and knowing what I know now.

I got into computers fresh out of highschool when I enrolled at Barnes School of Business (Denver) and learned how to 'program' the 402 tabulator, 540 gang punch, etc... Just as I compeleted the course work there was news from IBM about a transistorised computer on the horizon- the 1400 series, IIRC. I began looking for work but at 19 I looked like I was 14 and too young to be working fulltime. After a few months of fruitless job hunting I heard of an opportunity for a board scholarship at a midwest college and jumped at it. At 28 I graduated with an MS in Biochemistry, major hours in Physics, Math, Chemistry, Biology and General Science.

Back in the early 60's 'computer science' was called Numerical Analysis and envolved teaching a CDC660 or Honeywell 200 how to solve quadratic equations using Fortran 64 code that was laboriously typed onto yellow roles of punchtape with a 10cps keyboard terminal. Make one typo and you had to start all over. It took an entire semester to write solutions to four math equations. Over the years I've used Fortran, Apple II Basic, Forth, C, C++, Advanced Revelation, PowerBuilder, VB, and VFP. Recently I've used bash, tcl/tk and Python/Boa_constructor, which is my current favorite GUI RAD dev tool, because its source is totally ascii and cross platform.

I taught for 18 years (10 at the HS level and 8 at the college level) and had my own computer consulting business for 15 years, with 8 years of it overlapping with college teaching. I also did criminal forensics as part of that consulting, using CAD tools and MathCad.

On December 29th 1996 I purchased a brand new Sony VAIO computer that had Win95 installed, along with something called "MediKit", which was a layer between BIOS and Win95 that attempted to keep Win95 from doing too much havoc on the files and system. It failed. During the next 3-4 months I had to reinstall Win95 FIVE times. On my previous box I had used OS/2 with excellent results but kept running into Microsoft's tweeks of Win3.x designed to prevent OS/2 from running Win3.x software and 3rd party apps. IBM could never reverse engineer the tweeks as fast as MS could generate them. I was forced into using Win3.x in order to keep bread on the table. After the 5th crash I began looking around for another OS and while at a bookstore I saw "Learn Linux in 24 Hours" by Bill Brush. The book had a RH5.0 CD in back. I installed it on my Sony. The crashing, which I always thought was caused by hardware problems, ceased immediately. It took me about 30 hrs to learn Linux using the book! :D The Sony was actually very stable and reliable and never crashed once running RH. In September of 1997 I tried SUSE 5.3 and loved it and stayed with SUSE until Mandrake 8.2 came out. I stayed with Mandrake until 10.0, when I switched to SUSE 9.0 for a while, then to FC2. I gradually began staying on my Linux side more and more and realized that I rarely used my Windows side, so I wiped Windows off and I switched to Linux 100% on January 1, 2000. My home PCs have never seen Windows since then.

I retired my consulting business in 1995, at my wife's request, because it began requiring too much travel from her POV, and after a client asked me to program fulltime for them and made an offer I couldn't refuse! I program mainly with JDev/PLSQL/Oracle, VFP6.0, and Python/Boa_constructor/PostgreSQL 7.4, I have a Win2K box on a DELL GX260, dual booted with FC2. I may be using KDevelop some more because FC2's version is very nice and allows for an extensive selection of languages. OpenOffice has some nice features, too. A couple of days ago I painted a form, against a table on the PostgreSQL 7.4 database residing on our RHEL3 server, in under a minute, then created a PDF of it to email to some other staff members with whom I was discussing the reasons why OpenOffice could replace MS Office, WP, etc.

I love to program, and as long as I am able, AND HAVING FUN, I'll continue to do so, at least until I am 70, and as long as my 'SomeTimers' hasn't morphed to Altzheimers, then I'll see how things are then. I know one thing for sure: if where I am working 'upgrades' to LongHorn then I'll retire.

[sandy_mcclintoc]

I have a similar time in the business starting with IBM-360 in 1968 (it had 64 Kb Core!)
-> ICL1900 -> DEC20 -> MAC -> PC/WinXX -> Opteron
Really I am a quantitative geneticist but need to use tools

[Finalzone]

Experienced old farts are really valuable in this community. :) I found that I have learned more with them in this topic.

[greatscot]

I am currently 42 years old and I started my "computer life" on a Timex Sinclair in 1985 and went on to a Vic 20. I "upgraded" to an apple IIe and fell in love with text mode adventure games. I also bought TI 99/4A, made by Texas Instruments. I had a friend who was programming his own graphical games on a Commodore 64, so I bought one and learned how to make my own games - I remember having several hundred 5 1/4 floppy disks full of my inventions. I forget which language it was but each line had a series of numbers and letters which started with "ff". I liked the Commodore 64 because it was bundled together with GEOS, my first GUI, and I bought a cassette tape drive - I could reduce my hundreds of 5 1/4 floppies to a dozen or so cassettes. From there I went on with a Commodore 64/128, this one had a switch that you could push while booting to cause the machine to go into 128k memory mode instead of 64k memory.

I was given an 80286 for Christmas one year and was shocked at the OS - Windows 3.0 - with its, well, "windows". I must have spent close to a thousand dollars for software for that thing and learned how to write lots of programs in Basic (I think it was QBASIC or Quick Basic, I can't remember). My favourite games were the King's Quest series, although I wrote many of my own in Basic, and I remember playing KQ1 for 23 straight hours without noticing how much time was flying by.

I went on to a 386 and then a 486, both of which had Windows on them. When Windows 95 came out, I hated the interface and wondered why on earth anyone would create something with such a drastic change in the UI. I went on to Windows 98 and then Windows 2000 and Windows ME (which is when I learned how to write apps in Visual Basic and Visual C++) and could see that this Windows OS was going straight down the toilet. That's when a friend told me to switch to another OS. I had no idea any other OS existed until he invited me over and we played on his computer, which was running Slackware - he also told me that my C++ skills could be used in Linux. He taught me some commands and other things to be able to get work done, I even wrote my very first C++ app on a Linux machine, but I thought this "Linux thing" was too difficult to learn.

I was introduced to the internet and ran across something called Fedora Core. I saw some screenshots and had to have it, so, I went and found some books about FC - the books included FC1 on CD's. So, I went home, backed up all of my personal files and emailed them to myself and took the plunge. After a few hours, and several phone calls to some new Linux friends, I had FC1 up and running. I checked my email and retreived my backups and was very happy with my new OS. I was sad to learn that my vast Visual Basic knowledge was of no use in Linux, but that was ok, I learned VB and I can learn something else.

From there I went on to try Slackware, Debian, Mandrakelinux, and several other distros, but I always came back to Fedora - I guess it's fate. Thank you Red Hat!

I am very thankful for the "experienced old farts", for without them, I wouldn't be using the best OS I have ever seen.

[crackers]

I am very thankful for the "experienced old farts", for without them, I wouldn't be using the best OS I have ever seen.
Not directly responsible, of course. Heck, Linus hasn't even turned 40 yet (I don't think). Us "old pharts" didn't have the time to build an OS - we were already working steady jobs... :rolleyes:

[JordanN]

at 60, I feel old :), first computer was an TRS-80. Lost that one to the kids when they found they could play chess on it :(....then dropped out completely for close to 30 years (work)..retired from the Coast Guard and got into truck driving...finally had time to play with my original hobby, Ham Radio...that lead to a small IBM 286 processor for radio teletype..been downhill every since. Now running a 2600 Mhz, smp, and ham radio stuff..just recently bought a book on the C language...
where will it end ? ;)
Ham Radio: the hobby most closely related to Linux!

[radu5er]

Ham Radio: the hobby most closely related to Linux!

Indeed my son, indeed!

"Morse code...the ORIGINAL binary code."

dit dit

:D

[JordanN]

All of my life has revolved around computers. We have always had a computer in the home. My father even ran a BBS.

I have always been a "take it apart to see how it works" type of person. Generally, putting it back together is my biggest issue.

My father ran a computer consulting company which, though it never really took off, had enough customers that there were always old computer parts sitting around his office. Because they couldn't really afford baby sitters, we spent quite a few hours in the office with him, and because we had nothing better to do, we sometimes put computers together out of the spare parts.

I think the first computer us kids had was a 286, which ran DOS. We enjoyed playing old basic games and experimenting with the office software of the day. We thought hard drives were the coolest things when they came out!!!

Eventually, we setup a coax network at the house, and we exchanged files. We also played Descent over the LAN, it was awesome! We must've been some of the first people ever to play LAN games together as a family.

My father, my two older brothers, and I are all licensed amateur radio operators, as well.

I began to learn QBasic via a kids book my parents had for us. It demonstrated some simple Basic programs. Though they were primarily written for the Apple, enough of the programs worked to keep me interested. Since then, I have learned to program in Visual Basic pretty well. I took a class in HS a couple of years ago, and I can now do simple programming in C++.

I started using Linux a couple of years ago, when I found out that there really was an operating system that was cheaper than MS Windows. My father brought SUSE 7.1 home from the store, and most of us experimented with it. My computer at the time couldn't handle it very well, so I wiped it from my system soon afterwards, because I wasn't having any fun with it. Later on, I installed Mandrake 8.0?. Then, my father discovered the Fedora project, and I soon installed FC2 on my system instead of Mandrake.

Now, I am 18 and running FC3, and who knows what is going to happen in the future?

[james_in_denver]

LOL, somewhere they screwed up the age on my driver's license, got some numbers transposed or somthing, cause I feel like i'm getting close to my 24th birthday?!!!!!

ROFLMAO, I can remember a Honeywell 66 from a friends house a few years back. You know, they have these boxes you can connect your phone handset to and then you are actually TALKING to a computer at 300bps!!!!

That's faster than anybody I knew could type!!! and the computer was talking over the phone line to a terminal!!!

And at school, there were these teletypes, and instead of saving your program onto a hardisk on the (32k) mainframe, you could just have it saved to a paper punch machine that would spew out dozens of feet of paper tape with all these holes punched out. (make GREAT confetti!!!!).

And when the teacher realized we were sneaking into school after hours, he locked up all of the paper for the teletypes!...Oh that was good, 'cause the janitor gave us spools of paper towels that worked just fine! (kinda hard to read though!).

THen when I got into college, that was BIG time, (http://www.columbia.edu/acis/history/1403.jpg) IBM360's and punch-cards, and even a few lucky CRT terminals......(lord have mercy on your soul if you dropped a stack of punchcards with a 2-4 thousand line WATFOR program on it!.)

Then, wonders of wonders, a real minicomputer, a PDP11-70 running a TIME SHARING system, where more than one person could use a computer at THE SAME TIME!!!!....

After that, DEC VAX/VMS 11/780's, with 128 Meg, and (gasp) nearly 500 meg of disk....(why that's TWO WHOLE BYTES for every person in the COUNTRY!, on one computer!!!!!).

Then about the time I saw Digital starting to "bite the dust" some silly Finish professor wrote an OS called "Minix", and that was that.....Minix, Xenix, then Linux....

PS: Vax/VMS is in my opinion the BEST operating system ever written, security, performance, networking, clustering, storage management, memory/swap/disk management, finest tuned performance and security you can imagine....

And you can run it under Linux now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
http://simh.trailing-edge.com/simh_faq.txt ( a vax system running at 50+ vups at home!!! I am indeed a rich man).
YEEHAAWWWWW..........

[owakroeger]

I'm 62 going on 30. I built my first 286 with just a mother board, 100 meg hd, b&w converted tv for a monitor, and it all sat in a card-board box..... cool! My experience with computers has been almost entirely using them to fix Xerox machines. Learning new stuff has always been fun for me. I spent my youth in the library or in the garage, learning how to 'smoke' stuff, and then 'smokin' it. ....and I don't mean the things with the twisted ends.
I finally got pissed off enough with Windows in the fall of 2003, I decided to try linux. I had had some exposure to unix at work, and the thought of computing with white-on-black-screen was pretty scarey. I called around, looking for linux. Most places didn't even know what I was talking about. One place had RedHat9 and some other distribution. I chose RedHat solely because the only box left of the other one.... for the life of me, I can't remember the name of it..... anyway, the only box left was crushed. So, I took RedHat9 home with me, and this journey began.
I dual-booted, at first, with Win98SE and RH9. Last July, I moved to Fedora Core 2, and bought Win4Lin. Wine sorta worked for most windows apps, but kept changing every couple of months. Win4Lin works great... The ms Word and Excel stuff I still have to exchange with the rest of the world gets buggered up by OO and although I can read and use things altered by OO, if I convert them back to ms format and send them out, folks who received them couldn't use them... thus Win4Lin. I guess only about 15% of my work is done with it, but I can still exchange documents with the rest of the world.
I'm having a ball, playin around with FC. I have FC3 (2.6.10) adapted for W4L. I have FC3 (2.6.11.4) to tinker around with. And I'm downloading FC4-test1 for my next project.
62 going on 30.
owa

[Reindeer]

42 years old, so I guess I'm a middle aged "ph4rt". Mentally, I'm still somewhere in my 20s. Isn't everyone?
I became strapped to the karmic wheel of computing when I stepped into a HeathKit store (later Heath/Zenith and then Zenith Data systems), and was offered a sales job. The Fates decided on my life path right then and there, on that bright sunny California saturday morning. My manager looked and acted exactly like Harry Dean Stanton, and he was just as "intense" as the Repo Man himself.

My first OS was CP/M, and later CP/M 86 for the 8086.
I got lucky, living in Silicon Valley in 1980, because I got to chat with programmers at Xerox Parc, Apple, and HP, who would come into the store just to see what was new. It seemed like every week it was something new to check out, and I was the guy who got to unwrap anything new and set it up.
In those days, a floppy drive was truly floppy at 8 inches, and the first hard drive the store used was a Corvus with a whopping 6 meg disk, which promptly crashed in a very loud way, and had to be replaced. What a racket!
A computer system back then came without any sort of a GUI (Until Windows 1.0 beta, which I got to play with - slow and super buggy), and a daisywheel printer if you could afford it. Hayes sold a 300 baud modem that cost $1500.
A complete system could set you back more than $6500.
Most people were there to purchase the venerable Heathkit VT Terminal.
We sold the TI 99/4a and the PC Junior (Ha!) and we even had the Timex Sinclair.
One woman was a secretary, and showed me that she could type faster than the computer could handle (130 WPM). She fill up the 8-bit WordStar buffer in less than 20 seconds and it crashed the machine!
Those were the days. :p

I used the money that I made from that job to purchase my first computer, an Apple //, from the then one and only MIS director of Apple. I had to ask him what MIS meant, and when he told me, I thought that he was making it up. :D
My mother said "what the heck are you gonna do with that thing?". Heh.
When I got an A on the next paper that I wrote using AppleWriter, she began to understand.

I immediately fell in love with Applesoft Basic, and wrote my own program for text formatting so that my lowly Epson printer could do both upper and lower case in the same document. I too had a huge stack of 5 1/2 disks, and a regular account at a local BBS run by the lead technician at HeathKit. I later got a Compuserve account, and the world got bigger. I was likely one of the only people who had a "personal" computer in their home in Redwood City at the time. Now, I doubt that you would find too many homes without at least one. My home has it's own network now.

From there, I went off to University of Oregon, where I used a Digital PDP/1170 (which I learned to be very patient with) and the VAX, which I loved. VMS ruled my world, and I was hooked. Fell in love with a cute computer science student and she gave me total access to the VAX whenever I wanted to use it. The best of both worlds! What more could a young geek want? :)
During that time, the Mac OS ruled the desktop, and many of the decent programmers went to that platform to code.
I wrote my first lengthy college paper with a Fat Mac, and found that editing a paper with a GUI was the way to go, given my rate of errors. :p Thank you to whoever invented the I beam cursor.
HP had a decent IBM clone desktop machine, and the Macintosh LISA was the coolest box to have on your desk (but you wouldn't have any room for anything else once it got there).
Both were ridiculously expensive. The LISA had a hard drive as an option.
If I could only get back all the time that I lost waiting for a floppy to load a program...

I later went back to work selling computers in Boston, selling Macs at the time of the 68030 & 68040 and the "IBM clone wars", circa Windows 3.oh! and the GEM GUI.
I became a beta tester for a product named "Applelink Personal Edition", which later became AOL. If I had known what it would become, I would have become an investor. Hindsight.
I bought a Mac SE, and used that happily until my wife obtained an Intel 486/66 for her work.
I became a consultant, and wrote mulitmedia titles for kiosks and training programs for financial companies around Boston. Became a master of Novell and IBM networking, and had my first exposure to Sun workstations and SunOS. It reminded me of CP/M in some ways.
Worked on Siemens/Nixdorf Unix and then later SCO Unix (which was by far the *worst* OS I have ever used in my life!).
Created databases (if you can call a flat file a database) in Lotus Notes on OS/2, the best of breed of the desktop OSes at the time.
I went to Voice Processing Corp., a speech recognition software company, writing test programs in C on Windows NT beta, and tested it on a beta version of the Pentium 6 (It's official title). Of course, nothing worked! VPC had Sun servers connected to Next cubes running NextStep. THAT was cool. I got to work on a bit of everything while I was there.

After being immersed in the Windows world for awhile, I went to work for Sun Microsystems.
Our group created Solaris Web Start (which is now the standard installation method), and we ported WinNT to Solaris as a VM, called the "PC Netlink" project. I was a beta tester for KDE 1.0, which I found to be far superior to CDE, Sun and HP's favorite clunky interface. I learned Java, Perl, TCL/TK and Expect while at Sun. A great company that has gone the way of Digital Equipment, alas. Dinosaurs killed by the same kind of meteor. We created the Enterprise 450 and 250. I'm quite proud of that.
Solaris is still the best commercial OS I have ever used, and I was happy to see that Sun decided to open some of the source, if in a limited way. They waited WAY too long to support Solaris on Intel. A major misstep, IMO. One of many.
At Sun, I met many people who could not afford (even with an employee discount) to bring home a Sun box, so they used Linux on Intel, and some even did putbacks.
When I left Sun in 2000, I no longer needed my Windows 2K box for writing tests (and I was tired of the lack of any real security). I looked for an alternative because an employee of Microsoft had explained to me that Win2K was going to be end of lived soon, sometime in the next year. I had had it with Winblows. I was done.
I remembered Linux, and how much I had longed to have a more stable OS like Solaris.
I began using Linux in 2000 with Redhat 6.2, and have used every version since, and am now on Fedora Core 3, and looking carefully at FC4 Test 1, although I am not keen to be on the bleeding edge at this point. If I had another box, I wouldn't hesitate.
I have tried to use other distros, but my system is an Intel prototype that has some serious compatibility problems with FreeBSD and Gentoo. I have never used Suse, but I would have tried it, had they not been bought and gone commercial.

Windows 2003 Server is just okay. It has the same security flaws that they all have. Too numerous to mention here. I can work with it, but locking it down is a major time cosuming hassle. Once thing that Unix has that Windows will never have is an uptime meter. Think about it.

Having coded for 25 years now, I just can't be locked in. I will always want to look at the source and fix bugs when I can. I have nothing against proprietary code, as I have made my living by it.
My lady has a Mac iBook running OS X, which is very nice also, but running X on Darwin is slow, buggy and not well supported, and there are just sometimes when only a command line will do. Other than that, I have to tip my hat to Apple for reinventing itself after all these years as a custom variant of BSD.
It's pretty solid for being so new. The networking layer needs some work though.

Oh, and I do have a sense of humor, even though I am a QA Engineer, contrary to popular myth. :D
...These two developers and a QA guy go into FUDcon...

[dmccarne]

I have been around computers all of my life, I am second generation. My father (may he rest in peace) was a computer geek, he introduced me to programming when I was 13 years old (1963).

Then it was board and wires, later large rooms that you had to wear parkas to enter.
I worked summers at whatever company my father worked for(hughes,librascope,ford aerospace,etc). Early programming was assembly. After college went to work for Honeywell then Tandem then Oracle.

Out of the 5 systems I have two that run Fedora core, one is a webserver (family pictures, etc) running FC3, the other is a crash and burn system that I am currently trying to install FC4 on.

Languages go from assembler to RPG to C to Cobol to PL/SQL to Java ,
and many in between those (ada,pl1,fortran,etc)

[Reindeer]

dMcCarne wrote:
"...the other is a crash and burn system that I am currently trying to install FC4 on."

Have you read this thread on FC4?
http://www.fedoraforum.org/forum/showthread.php?t=47711

[dmccarne]

Yes I have , thanks.

[The Mekon]

I am a young 67 year old. Way back in 1953 I began a student traning scheme with EMI Electronics in the UK and in the late 50's worked on a valve based digital computer EMIDEC which, I believe, became the first computer installed in a commercial environment.

Later in 1964 I got involved with the first digital computer installed in the Australian Defence Force. Itwas designated the AN/UYK3 and actually used transistors.

In 1969 we got a small in house IBM computer and programmed it in Fortran to manage the company records.

By 1974 we installed a ruggedised computer (ROLM1601 then 3) in a Sonar sytem we were developing. It used TTL logic.

I bought my first home computer in 1974, an Exidy Sorcerer, and programmed it in Z80 assembler code.

At work we developed our own system based on the Motorala 6800 eight bit processor and put a few systems into service with the Australian Navy but by 1983 the PC revolution put an end to that and we joined the club.

Since then I have had a succession of PCs and noow we have three quite nice machines scattered around the house.

One is a pure Linux Box running Fedora FC3. One of the others has XP Home and and the latest XP Professional.

I still write some software Using Xbasic on the XP machines and C, which I first learnt in 1983 using Kernigan and Richies book, on the Linux box.

I ended my career managing a Defence Computing Centre carrying out real time simulation using Silicon Graphics machines.

I find that this is a great way to keep the mind in shape.

My other interests are touring cycling and carpentry so even retired old farts can live a full and interesting life.


The Mekon (from the Eagle Comics of the 1950's)

AKA

Brian Edwards

[ltam]

This is a very interesting thread and fun to read everyone's war stories. My is a simpler one. I just turned 40. I guess in the world of technology timelines, I'm a dinosaur. Giving my age already reveals the things that I would have been exposed to. My first interaction with a computer was on a timeshare system using punch cards in highschool using BASIC. It was like second nature to me; thrilled to get things done but bored because I couldn't see the potential. Reconnected with computers in college while studying numerical analysis using the Northstars on CP/M. At that time, we had text based internet. Graphical internet and media streaming was a dream. It seems dreams do come true. Got bored again. Reconnected with computers in university while studying engineering. Self taught C developer using TurboC and used to do simulation research. The rest is history.

It's amazing to see the advancements of PCs and its availability to the everyday folk. Many people bash Bill Gates but the fact that Windows was an implied standard made it easy to quickly bring the PC to the casual home user. If we had many Os's, it would take a heck of a lot longer to stablize this market place and to the current state of maturity.

Watching the advancements in technology is like watching the evolution of transportation; going from horse drawn carriages to the amazing speeds of the Farrari. My 4 year old palm pilot is really a miniature 80386 machine. :rolleyes:

[Shadow Skill]

Well I am only 19 years old so I have not been able to really see the same level of change some of the other posters in this thread have seen, but just seven years ago when I really started using computers 450mhz was considered powerful. Looking back on this period of less than a decade I don't know how I ever did anything with such a Compaq running windows 98. [XP is waaaaaaaaaaaaaay better.] I can only imagine what I will be thinking about current machines by the time I am thirty let alone forty, fifty, or even sixty years old.

When I was going through grade school especially junior high the CD player was king I could never have concieved of portable hard drive players that used compressed digital formats like mp3 and ogg. Now when I browse DAP related boards I hear about high school kids sporting these things, and I think to myself "how times have changed."

I really only got into Linux within the last year when I started college and got a laptop which allowed me to begin experimenting with Linux, I hovered between mandrake 10 suse 9 Debian, then finall Fedora core 2 which is where I have learned the most about Linux [Thanks alot guys..gives everyone a hug :D] and most recently Gentoo [Only because I didn't want to wait for fc4 to become stable and rpm was starting to annoy me.] I can't wait to see what the next few years bring to the world of computing!

[canckaer]

Hi, I'm 43 and slowly but surely qualifying for the old fats section I presume :-)
I started using computers at the end of the 70's, when I learned to program in Basic on a Commodore64, which I still find a good machine to this day. I started using PC's as soon as the first IBM PC came out, and have gone through the whole cycle of DOS, Windows 3.1(1), Windows95 and so on. I was one of the first people in Belgium to have an Internet connection in '91 thanks to my use of OS/2 and a subscription with IBM. Amazing, running on a 14.4 modem, and it was fast.
I've been using Linux since Redhat 5.0 and have tried many distributions to date, but now I'm sticking with FC3, which is very much to my liking - at home that is. In my job, I have no choice as to use the Windows-platform (for now). Today, I'm developing systems like Visual Planners for a service department, database and Intranet-applications, administer the company websites for Belgium. The technologies I use daily are C#.NET, ASP, VB6 (I know...) and MySQL/PHP (introduced in the company by me).

Very nice to read all the other stories in this thread.

Oh, I met my wife over the Internet. I always said it, a PC can be a life-changing experience :-)

[OberonKenObi]

Only 39 so Im a relative baby (on this thread anyways!)

1st computer was a sega sc 3000, repleate with a soft touch keyboard!
Dunno what memory it had (I think it was in the commadore 64 era 64K??) but it had no permanent storage so everytime it turned off I had to retype every line of the BASIC programs I wrote for it.
Mostly they were character/monster generating programs for Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. Nothing flash but it saved alot of time generating them for random encounters.

LOL I gave up because I got sick of retyping all the code, didnt realise you could get a cassette type semi permanent storage, no one else in area had an interest and I had not heard of any users groups. dang if only i hadda kept it up...

Early 90's Restarted with a 12mhz 286 with win3.1 that had one game. A motorcycle racing game that just rocked! Well for the time it did :+) Repeatedly tried to load the old Sega games into it until i realised all versions of BASIC were not created equal. More retyping sheesh...

1996ish on was a P111 450mhz with Win95/98 for Games (EverQuest, damn you Sony/Verant!!) and on other slide in HDD was RH Linux 7.2 for playing with php/apache/mySQL. Dont like dual booting.

Now of course still have a WinBox (WinXP, still got EverQuestitus Jan 2000 - now best value for money game I have ever played) and a second with FC2 as gateway/development etc.

Currently looking to try a CD bootable (liveCD?) version of Linux for my parents to try. Ubuntu sounds good, but Im gonna live with it first for a couple of weeks.

Regards

Allan

[8128davidh]

I am 55, using FC3, FC2, FC1 and RH9 on 5 or so machines (I tend to leave something once it's installed and upgrading FC is a risky pain in arse). I teach C++ and Java at a UK university and now do ALL of it with FC with about 300 lab PCs and several servers. Didn't get into programming (Lisp and Prolog, then C) until my 30s around 1984 having been into hardware and networks more before that. Had some Sun System V experience in late 80's using Macs on the front of Oracle, then the truly terribly Windows3.1 happened and it was downhill from then on. Made my bid for freedom and sanity about 3 years ago into RH6, then Suse8, RH9 and now FC. Life is now much more fun - when not teaching I am now setting up all the fabulous sound recording capabilities with Alsa, Tascam usx2y, ecasound etc.

[fc_jeff]

This is a cool thread. It's nice to know there are "old farts" using Linux.

I'm 40. Not quite as much of an old fart as many others here on this thread, but pretty darn old nonetheless. :)

I've been in IT professionally for 7 years, doing programming with VB, C, C++, ASP, HTML, JavaScript, and Java, and interfacing with Oracle, SQL Server, DB2, Sybase, MySQL, etc, and interfacing with JDEdwards and SAP ERP software, and interfacing with other non Windows platforms like Unix, Linux, IBM Mainframes, and AS400. The software my company makes specializes in wireless data collection. I also do training and support, as well as system administration.

I've been using Linux for a little over 3 years. I've used RH 7.3, RH 9.0, Mandrake 10, Mepis, Ubuntu, Knoppix, SuSE live CD, and Fedora Core 2.

[CWireless49]

Hello All,

First of all I'm 56 years young! Not old as the title indicates!

I have been using computers and programming since 1972. My career has taken me through working on a long distant network switching system where we changed words in memory with a switch panel to writing code in C/C++ and even doing Unix shell to accomplish major tasks.

I have a degree in Computer Science and use my skills daily in engineering major systems used to process cellular phone calls. When I retired from the US Army in 1988 I decided to get my degree and went full time working on it while also working.

I started out with a Commodore 64 and progressed to a Tandy 1000 which had 128K of memory. I currently have three computers of my own at home, with my newest being a Sony Vaio VGN-A690 laptop and yes I like others with FC3 did not have sound but I wouldnt stop messing with it and found the fix was ALSA-1.0.8 or higher.

I now have the same computer with three OS's on it, Windows XP Home, FC4 and FC3. Guess what sound works in all three!!!!!!!! Yeah!!!!!!!!!!!!! :)

There is one more thing I want to get working on the Linus configurations on that and that is the Sony has an A/V docking bay. Sound does NOT work in that. I think its something to do with USB cause I found a distrobution that it did work in my playing around. Think it was Mandrake 10.2 but that had a reboot issue that made me scrub it.

Well, Ive rambled on now for several minutes!! Happy Linuxing!!!!!!!!!! :cool: :cool: :cool:

[hickey]

I'm 75. Retired IBM'er. Running a pc (IBM NetVista, of course) currently with FC4, FC3, SUSE 9.1, Mandrake 10.2 and WIN/XP Home. Boot any of them from the NT loader with no problems at all.

All systems are current with their supplied maintenance.

FC3 is the system up most of the time and I'm working on FC4 to get all the applications reinstalled. Just finished reinstalling Xine. Will work on JAVA next. Sure beats watching TV!

[dwflo]

I am 56, been using pc's since 1994. My first was an Intel 486DX, 32k ram, Windows 3.0, Dos 5.0, and a 350MB hard drive. Could not get any help from the seller, when it crashed...about every ohter day. So I started reading and diving in to how the darn thing worked. Eventually, I taught myself how to install, fix, repair and troubleshoot. I have built Windows machines for my friends, that are still up and running today.

In 1996 I got OS\2 Warp3 and installed it on a dual boot. I thought OS/2 was great, never crashed, all my hardware was supported and had some great software available. Used Warp3 until Warp4 was released, so I upgraded. I was very dissapointed, as some of my harware was not being supported. Seems like IBM shifted direction with it, so I went back to Windows, darn!!!

In 2000, I attempted to install Linux...don't remember the distro, and got totally lost with the console mode...did not know any commands!!! Thought it would be easy like Windows or DOS, boy was I suprised.

So, I gave Linux up until May of 2004. After being frustrated with Windows, for the past ten years, plus all the "security" updates and patches, I finally had it. Decided I would give Linux another try.

Found a distro called Mepis, a live CD. I gave it a try and after running off the CD a couple of times, I installed it. Everything went perfect, dual boot with XP, and stuck with it until I recently upgraded to an AMD64.
Then I found a 64bit distro called CentOS, had a gui install. Gave it a try for a month, but it had too many problems and I did not like their yum update. Seemed there was a new update every time I booted up. So I started looking again.

Now I have Fedora 4 x64 and I love it. Not perfect, but I works and runs very good., could not ask for anything more. Now I hardly boot to Windows. Been using Fedora for 2 weeks and plane on keeping it.

The big plus for me is, I am learning something now that I could not comprehend 38 years ago. I'm not a programmer or career computer guru, but I know how to figure things out buy reading and paying attention to what others say, write or do.

I have had every version of Windows from 3.0 to XP 64bit, two versions of OS\2 and now three versions of Linux. I love trying something new, hate re-runs...know what I mean?

Dave

[Axel Harvey]

Started in 1973 with a Hewlett-Packard 9810A (desktop calculator and used RPN as a programming "language" - blech!)...
Like this early poster I first programmed in RPN on an HP 9810, around 1970 -- but what's the matter with RPN? It's the only way to go. Now I program in Forth.

I am 65. The first box I owned was a Cromemco Z2 (Modified) which came with its proprietary operating system, CDOS, a simple precursor of CP/M. It also came with "Cromemco 32K Structured Basic" (labels instead of line numbers, wow!), which I used for a while before finding Forth and returning to my beloved RPN. This was in 1980. Around 1982 the Osborne-1 came along, and I used it with OTERM as an intelligent terminal for the Cromemco.

The Cromemco, which is still in my possession, came in a double-length S100 chassis the size of a small ocean liner trunk. It has a fan that sounds like an old vacuum cleaner and there is a sticker on the back that says "Approved Los Angeles Fire Department". The sides are thick steel plates. It is now in mothballs inside its own (real) trunk, and I can imagine my grandchildren opening the trunk, knocking on the steel sides, and saying, "Wow, they sure knew how to build 'em in those days!"

I didn't like the Cromemco graphics on the front plate, so I sanded it down and sprayed it with four coats of Chrysler Starlight Blue Sunfire, which gives it a dark and mysterious futurististic look....

But I don't understand this business about old farts. Is it that anyone over 30 is supposed to like Microsoft, or something?

[radu5er]

But I don't understand this business about old farts. Is it that anyone over 30 is supposed to like Microsoft, or something?

Naw... Us old farts are the one who were messing with computers before there was any Microsoft! ;)

[lesliek]

Sixty here.

I started with Linux earlier in the year, just for fun. I've had some.

My earliest computer experience was in the early 80s, using C/PM as an OS (at least I think that was what it was called). It came on a one piece unit, monitor, keyboard and box all in one, which looked like someone's idea of a futuristic device from the 50s, when I used to see Captain Video serials on Saturday afternoons at the local movie house.

[GarySaved]

Would 42 qualify me here?
My first computer was a Timex. It had all of 2k memory, which I upgraded with a 5k memory pack.
I went to Commodore 64, then the ultimate system: A Comodore 128. That was where computers peaked.
My first taste of Linux was Red Hat. I don't even remember what version it was. I just remember it came on a stack of 3 1/2" disks around 5 inches deep.

Remember the old 'Please insert the next disk' prompt?

Gary

[mick]

Remember the old 'Please insert the next disk' prompt?

Sure do - but I can't quite get it right in the newer Microsoft offerings...

Mick

[GarySaved]

Oh ... I found a good use for any Windows CDs you might have around!

Take two CDs, and superglue them label sides in. Tie a fishing-line to it, and hang it by a window or door. The flashing it creates while moving to the breeze keeps flies away! (It really does!)

Gary

[sgtbob]

Here is an old fart and an old retired USAF Sergeant who has been trying to fathom Linux for a year or so. I started with Red Hat, switched to Mandrake, dabbled in a number of others and finally have settled into Fedora Core (presently Version 4). Its most daunting at any age and I am thoroughly enjoying every minute of it - although when I hit a wall, I get frustrated, but keep asking questions and trying various angles to solve the issue. Since I'm retired, it is a great hobby to try to make it work - hope it helps in delaying the onset of Alzheimers!. I've been involved with computing since back in the 50's (the old UNIVAC 1050 mainframe), but never got a PC until the 90's - but have become a fan - so who is older than 72 on this message?

Old Fart and Old Sgt :-)

[sgtbob]

No desipher - we're just chronologically challenged! :-)

Bob

[ieuuk]

im loving that pic mick... even tho i am a youngen

[Shoes]

Ok... I'll admit that I am 55 (almost) and using Linux. I have been involved with computers since 1969 (a lot of you were not even born yet).!!!!

A bit of history.. I learned the IBM 402 punch card programming (a slab with wires). I graduated from there to a Univac 1050 (8 K of memory) running the Console exec (my memory fades here a bit - I know there were three execs). The programming was similar to ALGOL but then we graduated to the Uniivac 9300 with 32K of memorry (heaven!!!!) and a 360 assembler like language. I developed what we called RORI (roll-in roll-out programming --- today it's called paging)

In 1972 I started working on IBM 360/65's and 165's (256K memory) and the IBM 360 assembler language which we upgraded to Assembler "G" ( University of Waterloo -- the first cooperative CS and separate CS faculty -- 1965).

Although I loved assembly language and writing macros, I knew that higher level languages were emerging -- Cobol, PL/1, PL/S, Pascal and C). My lust for machine control led me into the micro computer world in 1976. There I excelled in process control systems (writing your own OS and commands) and learning the breadth of computers. In the 80's I had my own consulting firm and supported many financial customers in the Systems Programming area and make-shift priogramming.

I learned basic on my first PC, a Compaq Deskpro (v80 chip), and developed my billing application using basic.

My son used my PC to setup his first BBS in 1984!!! I then moved on to OS/2 and some windows but leaned more towards OS/2...

Since I had some Unix like experience (DG 8/40, 2/10, Varian v66's ) I was sent to learn AIX admin in 1995 but at that time Windows 3.5 was emergng and I was transferred to suuport this OS. In 1998 (still ruinning OS/2 at home --- Merlin), I was assigned to a project running on Solaris 8. I embraced this project and re-discovered my love for Unix-like OS's.

Since then I have tried Mandrake 8.0, Suse, RedHat 8.0and 9.0 and finally Fedora FC1.

I currently run 3 FC1's at home, one being my Firewall, one a multi-purpose using Vmware and the other my DNS, DHCP, Squid, Apache, Samba, NTP, etc...server.

I still write scripts and I have developed a D/R set of scripts for our Solaris systems which can be found at: http://www/gurski.com/Netbackup , I have also ported these scripts to Windows ...alas Unix/linux rules in scripting.

At work I not only function as a Windows administrator (200+) but also Solaris (9 servers) and Fedora (4 servers plus my laptop).

I am curious as to how many other Old farts are using linux and enjoying it....

Ed
I am 75. Just installed FC4 on own PC. Getting familiar. Started using Vector Graphic PC in 1975 (OS was 'CPM'). First exposure was in late 50s on a Bendix G15, tube type computer with 2K memory.

[smfinley]

Stan (http://stanton-finley.net/fedora_core_4_installation_notes.html)'s age ≥ age of dirt.

[bunsen]

i am not nearly as old as most of you (just 32 years... *shame*:D), but i started with computers already in 1984. but i am far far away from being a geek.

well, what i actually wanted to say is: i think it is great that we have older members on this board with that big insight to computing. you enrich our community and make it even friendlier. i hope you all continue to stay her for a long long time. :)

[parish]

<snip...> Although, I am lusting after a dual CPU rig... if my wife would ever really let me. :(
I once argued to my wife that a faster processor would mean I could get my work done faster and as a result be able to spend more time with her, and it worked...

once! :rolleyes:

Although I used computers as part of my work/education prior to this, the first computer I ever owned was a Commodore 64; bought it to type out my thesis. It was kind of weird to see one in the Smithsonian during a recent vacation.

Daniel

[bitrain]

Sure do - but I can't quite get it right in the newer Microsoft offerings...

MickMy newest pc didn't have an A: drive, how should I solve the problem? :p

I only started using linux about 1 year ago, and computers about 3 to 4 years, good to read what I have missed (or not).

[fpoole]

Dave, you've got a great history. Me --started on old Mac and Win95 boxes, got my own Win98 in 98, installed RHL7.3 somewhere around 00. Lost the password, loved the OS, but wasn't too skillful and didn't want to install again. Just recently got Fedora for my AMD64 and love it. Only I'm bound to Windows/Mac by my love of composing music...--for now. ;)

[dwflo]

Dave, you've got a great history. Me --started on old Mac and Win95 boxes, got my own Win98 in 98, installed RHL7.3 somewhere around 00. Lost the password, loved the OS, but wasn't too skillful and didn't want to install again. Just recently got Fedora for my AMD64 and love it. Only I'm bound to Windows/Mac by my love of composing music...--for now. ;)

There are some very good composers for Linux, on I remember was pretty sofisticated. I will try to find the names for them, just will take me some time to rack my brain, if you know what I mean! :D
Maybe someone can help shake an old mans memory. :p

Dave

[dwflo]

@fpoole
Found one reference, planet ccrma. Do a Google and check it out.

Dave

[learninlinux]

New member here! 48 years young.

[dishawjp]

I guess that I qualify as an "old fart" here, but unlike many of you I'm no computer guru. I first experienced computers in the mid-80's when I had to use an old DOS PC at work. I got my first home PC, a Packard Bell 8086 a short time later. Then at work I had to learn SunOS and got my first taste of Unix and liked it. Then I got a separate account on a VAX and really liked VMS.

My first home experience, setting up and administering a Unix type OS on a PC was with Coherent on a 286, but I slid back into DOS/Windows for several (dark) years. By about 2000 or so, Linux was maturing and I dove back into it with RedHat 6.2 and then it was on to RH8 and etc. and now my main home computer is a dual boot FC3/FC4 box.

The best news is that my employer is finally getting to move away from MSWindows on the server side and they are looking for volunteers to run NLD (Novell Linux Desktop) workstations. I didn't need a whole lot of convincing.

Anyway, just thought I'd add my name to the list of Fedora-using old farts.

[Omega Blue]

Currently I work for an internet travel agency where I started as they're webmaster when we only had 3 computers in the office and the office had one email address. Now I am 'head ' of IT (mostly a joke, I am a department of one) incharge of 20 odd windows workstations and 3 windows servers (soon to be only 2) and am working on migrating the office to open source solutions (ultimatly to running linux 99%).


Cool! I am in the process of conducting such a migration (in fact my first) and just about able to wrap it up. There are loads of pitfalls you need to watch out for, in particular people's inertia.

[Omega Blue]

Not quite an old fart yet :D

The first "computer" I used was actually just a printer terminal at my high school connected to some remote mainframe with an attached optical card reader. The first language I learned was MNF (something like that), a variant of Fortran 66. We wrote our prorgams on paper, then pencil coded these cards to be fed to the mainframe. Most of the time it would be error messages, but on occasion, after much sweating and swearing, we could get some programs to work.

The second one was a TRS-80 Model I Level II with Expansion Interface with a whopping total of 48K of memory and a cassette recorder for mass storage, also bought by my high school (it was quite a decent one). No need to fill in bubbles and no need to share the computer with people whom I even didn't know. Wow! I think the screen resolution was something like 96x48? The screen was b&w and we had these blocks that passed for pixels. :lol: Though people had ingenious ways of using these "graphics." This is the computer I had the most fun with, because it was all new, very mythical, and doing things on it were adventures. We also had great utilities such as SuperZap. I remember reading Creative Computing, Byte, and other such magazines. I was lucky to be caught in the Microcomputer Revolution and I still could feel the excitement after all this time.

The third one was a CoCo, a Radio Shack Color Computer which is built around the very elegant 6809E. I didn't have much experience with it unfortunately, because I was graduating by the time.

The one after that was called WIJET (Waterloo Intelligent Job Entry Terminal). As you can tell these are not real computers but just dumb terminals that is just one step above the card punches and readers the lesser souls (in the general stream instead of the honour stream) used in the terminal rooms. Fortunately soon after that I acquired access to some Atari computers. They were very advanced for their time, with an entire chipset decicated for what now known as multimedia (video and audio). M.U.L.E. is the best game ever.

Things became sort of a blur after that, that's because the PClones weren't exciting. Sure, Windows 3.0 was fun for awhile. Still, it wasn't exciting. During the period 1989-1998, programs were getting progressively bloated, but people didn't care because the little computers kept up in speed and capacity.

It was not till late 1998 when I had my first contact with Linux. It was RedHat 5.2 IIRC. Still quite primitive, but I was already getting quite anti-Microsoft during those days. I applauded when the USDOJ brought the anti-trust suit against the Redmond Beast.

Right now, I am doing Linux migration at work, which is almost complete. And we are using Fedora Core 3 at the desktops here ;)

[Raafi]

47 here

Went to Polytechnic Institute of Tech in NY, for Mechanical Engineering. We had to take a computer class (Fortran with the little punchcards) From that day I hated computers

I didnt buy my first computer until 200 (after the Y2K scam)

Anyway, if i had my druthers, I would start school as a computer programmer and learn this linux stuff inside out, I truly believe it is the "wave of the future"

So here i sit, pretty computer illiterate, living vicariously off of you techies

[wizard]

<-- 48 :)

Let's see. First "computer" was a Mattel Aquarius - have an Aquarius emulator on my PC and still play Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. 4k RAM, chiclet keyboard but it did have pretty cool keyboard overlays with game commands. Cassette data storage.

Next? Atari 800XL. Didn't like C64 or Apple, and this was my first experience with overclocking. When I returned from a tour in Germany with the Army I learned that Eurospec 800XLs will run at about a 12% overclock if you modify them to run on good old USA juice. 2.217 Mhz :D

That Atari eventually had 192k of RAM and a few of us learned that you could double the floppy drive's capacity by copying the drive's ROM into system RAM, changing a couple bits and then setting a pointer to point to the modified instruction set. You could also add commands to Atari DOS fairly easily. At the very end my dad (who worked at Seagate) gave me a 20mb(!) hard drive and told me I could have it if we could figure out some way to make the thing run with an 800XL. Well, I don't know much about electronics but the local Atari usergroup had the thing running in about two weeks. You couldn't boot from it but you could store programs on it :D

Then came a succession of Windows machines, and then this quad-boot Win 3.1-Win95-OS/2-Yggdrasil Linux monstrosity that eventually convinced me that people with multiboot machines have too much time on their hands. After that, I toyed with SuSE for awhile and then settled on RedHat.

First dedicated Linux box I built was when I decided to host my own domain from my home office and built a RH 7.2 box and have followed distributions through to the FC4 box that runs mail, mysql, irc and web services now.

[nlippincott]

45 here - but will be 46 in a few weeks

First computer I used was a Univac in college (Ed, who started this thread mentioned Univac). We uses teletype terminals (anyone remember the good ol' DecWriter?), and had to dial up to the Univac at 110 baud because the machine was in another building across the street.

Upon graduating, moved on to DEC machines, which I used for about the first 15 years of my career. These machines were running various operating systems including RSX-11M, RSX-11D, RSTS, VAX/VMS, and a few varieties of UNIX. So I go back quite a few years with UNIX-based OS's. Later I moved on to development of client-server applications with Windows-based clients and HP-UX on the backend. I was more the backend specialist, so UNIX again!

These days I'm almost exclusively Fedora. I keep one copy of Windows around at home just so that I can test my web-based development projects.

Career-wise, to transitioned into full-time teaching at the college level. My office machine is Windows-based, just because that's what our IT department supports. I'm running VMWare on it, and I spend most of my time in a virtual machine running Fedora. I do manage the one LInux-based computer lab on campus.

[Iron_Mike]

I'm looking for a linux powered rascal motorized power chair. I'm getting up in years (49) and figured I better get one now before I'm put out to pasture or sen to the glue factory.

[perry753]

Heh, I'm 13. :)

[Raafi]

Just had to jump in and add my two cents. So far, at 56, I think I'm the oldest one to post so far. Not that that will win me any prizes. I don't have the back ground like the others here but, like most folks, I've been using a PC for years,as a tool, Nothing more. My familly has had a PC since the early 90s but because it accessed the internet via dial-up (AOL) it never grabbed me. I mostly left it alone. That all changed in '99 when a Gateway 1.3 Hz P4 was purchased along with DSL service. What a revelation! I didn't have time to get a cup of coffee while the page loaded anymore. Pages rendered in a blink of an eye. At that time the coumputer bug started to nibble at me. Then I came across something called Linux and I looked into it. The deeper I delved into it, the more that bug dug in. I guess I researched for about a year before I took the plunge. I've been a Linux advocate since. While the familly are Windows fans, I use linux (FC2) exclusive. Although I don't have the training the others here have I hope to learn and expand my horizons when it comes to linux. While my system doesn't do all I want, it does give me a feeling of empowerment. What a joy to have something work after lots of digging, gnashing of teeth, and hair pulling. No, it doesn't come fully configured right out of the "box" but I do so love it. After all these years, I still consider myself some what a newbie. But as time goes by and I learn more, I feel more at easy. Damn I'm glad we have Linux!
my sentiments exactly, from the beginning to the end, you could have written my input

this has been one of the most interesting (not informative) threads (for me anyway) on the forum

Thanks everyone for sharing their stories

[masterswim]

I definitely qualify. I'm 62 and started using a Univax Solid State 80. I still believe the solid state was the cabinet. Went to a IBM 360 and I thought I was in heaven with Fortran. Did some fortran programming off and on until PC's became popular. Used basic after that. My first Machine was an Apple II. Both boys learned off the Apple and later a IPM PC XT. Both later went on and graduated with degrees in Computer Science. To them a computer is the same as a tool to be used.

I decided to begin using Linux out of curiosity about 1-1/2 ago. Slow going but I'm making small forward steps. Biggest problem is getting FC4 and sound to work but I will do it.

[jimbruun]

I qualify. Born 1938 - Yeah that makes me 67. Started with hand coding in Octal on Univac machines (30 bit architecture) in 1970.
Was teaching assembly language programming when a student showed me 4004 chip. I think that was 1971. Built my first homebrew Motorola 6800 box in 1978. 16K of memory. Built my first homebrew CRT monitor at the same time (16 lines by 64 characters, green screen.) Fiddled with HPUX, but never learned it. Am falling in love with Core 4.

[Spats]

Yeah I qualify just turned 62

Started with Windows 95 then thru Windows 98 and XP but started dabbling in Linux about
2000. It has been a very steep learning curve especially when everyone around me was saying I was mad and would not be able to handle Linux .

I have used Mandrake/Mandriva, Lindows/Linspire but found Fedora core 4 some months back and am running it on both Laptop and Desktop . If ever there was one distro then FC4 is the one . I have left XP on the desktop but don't use it now as when I last opened it there were so many updates that I switched it off .. FC4 was easy to install has an extremely nice feel about it and I really love 'YUM' . It also picked up all my ancilliary equipment except the printer but I installed 'Turboprint' to take care of that .

:)

[PiP...]

I'm not an old fart ether, I'm an student studying computer engineering and I think Linux is pretty much compulsary for an IT student. Shame I can't manage to install it. I really don't like partitions. And hardware is my strongpoint.

[canckaer]

Hi PiP,
If you can't partition your disk, just let the Linux installer do it for you. Installing Linux is easier than installing Windows these days, a child can do it.

Chris

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Fedora Core 4, kernel 2.6.14-2, Xfce desktop - Works like a charm!

[PiP...]

Hi PiP,
If you can't partition your disk, just let the Linux installer do it for you. Installing Linux is easier than installing Windows these days, a child can do it.

Chris

------------------------------------------------
Fedora Core 4, kernel 2.6.14-2, Xfce desktop - Works like a charm!

I used the partitioner in fedora's installer (which worked fine). If I let the installer handle it it will kill Windows XP, which would be a good thing if i didn't need it.

[mneptok]

40 here.

My first experience with computers was c1979 when my high school bought some TRS-80s. There was a console Star Trek game that I kinda liked, but had some problems. That was my first experience tinkering with source code to get it to behave the way I wished.

A year or two later I switched private schools and started attending a boarding school in Massachusetts. Now, my family was not overly wealthy. I didn't have the discretionary cash a lot of my classmates did. But I did have some rudimentary programming experience, so I wrote a hockey simulator program on the school's PDP11/40 and started a "league." Classmates bought teams and took wagers on their performance. I took a cut, and augmented my wallet. :)

Since then I've used Big Blue iron, a variety of minis. and just about every PC (this includes Mac) operating system under the sun. I've worked for Fortune 500 companies, universities, and small software start-ups. I haven't seen the evolution some of the 50+ crowd has, but computing has come a long way since I began.

These days I'm a FC4 and CentOS user, GNOME Foundation sysadmin, and semi-contributor to some OSS projects. Still in the ring. This is one arena in which age is your friend, as long as you keep on top of technology and trends. Don't think you can coast. The world will pass you by.

And I'm firmly with my peers when telling you young 'uns to stick to it, learn and experiment, and enjoy watching the landscape change. After all, change is the only constant.

Never take yourself too seriously. Know when to listen. Never compromise your principles. And most importantly, when it stops being fun, it's time to stop.

[ieuuk]

I used the partitioner in fedora's installer (which worked fine). If I let the installer handle it it will kill Windows XP, which would be a good thing if i didn't need it.

you need to make your xp partition smaller leaving you with some unpartitioned space... this will then leave fedora something to play with and will then detect that you have xp installed as well and create a dual booting comp.

use partition magic or somethng to adjust the size of your xp partition or reinstall it

[PiP...]

is there a free version of partition magic?

[mneptok]

Try the free System Rescue CD (http://www.sysresccd.org). This will allow you to partition unused space.

Just be sure to defragment your NTFS filesystem first.

[JN4OldSchool]

I'm not as advanced as some of y'all but I thought I'd throw this in. I have a live CD of Point and Click MEPIS 3.2 or 3.3 (not sure which). In and of itself it is a great OS, but I found SuSE and FC4 much better. However the MEPIS CD has QTParted on it and nice desktop icons for all your partitions. I have found that you can pop this CD into ANY computer with ANY os and bring up all the partitions and whats in them even if they are password secured. This CD has rescued data from a locked XP computer already. The QTParted is also very easy to use, it is the best partitioning tool I have yet tried. No matter what type OS I am formatting for I will use this CD to partition the drive first.

This tool will also re-partition a drive with an existing OS already on it (of course). It also allows you to reinstall another GRUB in the MBR in a seperate step which can be convienent when multi-booting. To the best of my knowledge it can NOT make an ISO image or mirror a drive, but thats why I like Linux. An app should do just the one job it was intended for and do it well. Not 20 other jobs also.

[PiP...]

Try the free System Rescue CD (http://www.sysresccd.org). This will allow you to partition unused space.

Just be sure to defragment your NTFS filesystem first.

Thanks for that, it worked like a charm. I freed up 10Gb and let anaconda (the fedora installer) make the needed partitions for me, but it couldn't :confused: ?

plese reply to this in my post in the installation help bit.

cheers,
Bracken

[mneptok]

IIRC, Disk Druid's automatic partition creation routines only work on unpartitioned space. So what you want is 10GB of free, unpartitioned space. Not a blank partition.

[kona0197]

So one would have to use Fdisk and setup a partition?

[prosen]

no .. u can use disk druid's manual partition method . In fact I find it even more useful and proper to use manual rather than auto disk druid . Just specify a swap , a /boot (optional) and a / (compulsory) ..
U can delete a empty (free space) win/fat32/ntfs partition from manual disk druid and then use it to create new partitions.
I do it in this order .. 1st /boot , then / and then swap ..
oh .. btw .. I am myself studying Comp. Sc. Engg. and am in final yr now ..

[kornelix]

I was born in 1943.
I studied physics and learned programming on the job.
Programming history:
IBM 1620 assy and fortran, 1965. < 0.1 mips. machine tool programs.
IBM 1401, 1410, assy, 1966. business apps.
IBM 7080, assy, 1967. war simulation (army draftee).
IBM 7090 7094, assy, fortran, 1968. war simulation.
GE 635, assy, fortran, 1968, 1969. operating system.
TI 960, assy, 1970-74. operating system, machine control.
IBM 1800 and plug compatibles, assy, fortran, 1970-1983, mfg. and eng. systems for IC fab
VAX VMS (the best), 1984-95, fortran, C, mfg. and eng. systems for IC fab
PC, Windows, C++, 1992-present, hobby programs
retired since 2003
PC, Linux, C++, hobby programs, just getting started (old dog trying to learn new tricks)

[mwette]

I am 45. I started programming in high-school in mid-70's with timeshare. We would phone in with a modem that you would put the handset in -- don't remember the baud rate -- maybe 1200. Anyway we would store our BASIC programs on paper tape.

Started hacking more in grad school in the mid 80's. Our Univ was a big UNIX shop. I remember when we had thunderstorms they would run into the machine room to shut down the computers. Our Sun 2's had a habit of blowing memory boards during thunderstorms. (Our Sun 2's had those huge 100Meg disk drives too!).

When I went to work 1989 at a NASA site I was control system engineer but knew how to run the Sun boxes better than the PC admins so I did a lot of work to set up SunOS 4 then Solaris on our network of ~50 workstations w/ 200 users. Also did lots of VxWorks hacking in the 90's.

Now I'm more management so I have to deal with Windows. Man, MS Word is real crap. I really miss writing engineering memos in LaTeX.

I have a network of 5 PCs at home. wife + 2 daughters run WinXP, I run FC4 and have our home network server running FC4. I am getting my kids into Freeware/Linux through GIMP and GAIM. 13-year-old daughter is asking about me setting up her PC for dual-boot :).

[KimInWis]

Yep, I qualify! I'm so old I can't even remember all the systems/os's I worked on.
I do remember I started in about 1981 for the Army. Went to school for COBOL and they sent me to
a post where they programmed in something called SIRCUS. We programmed using 80/80 punch cards (which we had to type up ourselves), then sent the program (sometimes in boxes the length of your arm) to another area on post to be processed on something housed in a huge semi-trailer. We then picked up the output the next morning. One time I was testing a program, and sent note along with my program to the operator to KILL the program if it printed over 10 pages. Next morning we went to pickup our run and there were 25 BOXES OF 1 PART PAPER, all of which was my "test" program output ..accckk! We then graduated to an IBM 360 where we could actually use a dumb terminal and keyboard to input our program, then just sent tapes out to be processed.
Somewhere along the way I got involved in Solaris, then HP Unix and somewhere in there I got involved in Linux. Have used mostly RedHat versions until recently when I switched from RHEL to FC4... and I think I'm here to stay!

[jwspring]

I'm 56. My first pc had a 86 based processor, this was about 1980. 8k , thats right 8k of ram and two 180k floppies. at the San Francisco computer show I bought a wopping 10Meg HD. This was realy big time. At work in 197677 we had a dec1140 with unix release 1 or 2. E-mail was possible then if you knew the path from your system to where you wanted to send.

[skoal]

I was alive when Hollywood and the CIA faked the landing on the moon back in '69, so I guess I qualify for this thread. I took my selenium capsules with my breakfast this morning so I can remember way back yonder when my neigbour first got a Comodore PET. I liked visiting their house and just staring at the glowing green phosphor tube all day. It was relaxing to me, like hot shower water beating down against my neck. Anyways, our family was too poor back then, so all I had to play with was a rusty typewriter I had hooked up to some battery cables in the backyard.

Well, I got some Unix loving in the 80s at college, tinkered with Linux in the early 90s, and here I am today. I'm still waiting for linux to market a 90% share of the desktop. Wake me when it's all over...

[kona0197]

A bit off topic but I hope that was a joke. Moon landings were real. :)

[JN4OldSchool]

A bit off topic but I hope that was a joke. Moon landings were real. :)

lol! You have a lot more restraint than I do! I was just chomping at the bit to make a smart reply but decided against it. Each to their own I guess...

[Raafi]

there are many amongst those who were alive at that time, who still do not believe the moon landing was real. you guys can swear it up and down, but you wont change the mindset of people who have a bit of skepticism about uncle sam

[kona0197]

I guess so. Interesting that he thinks the moon landings were fake.

[JN4OldSchool]

I dont want to get off topic, and I COULD write a 5 pager on why the moon landings couldnt possibly have been faked, but I will just leave you with one thought:

How many people would have had to been involved in a conspiracy? Never mind the thousands of NASA and civilian techs, but just look at the astronauts themselves. These guys were not the kind of people to live a lie even if the government tried to force them. These guys were military pilots who excelled at their profession. They were/are all extremly intelligent, honest, moral, upright, grade A citizens. The cream of the crop. How can you suppose not even just one of them would stop and say this is wrong tricking the public, living a lie, making believe they are something they are not? You can micro-analyze all your supposed evidence all you like; the fluttering flag, the shadow of the photographer, the fake footprints...All these things have been explained time and time again. It is simply ludicrous to think a cover up involving that many people is even possible.

My Dad was a civilian tech working for RCA/Patrick Air Force Base during John Glenn's orbit in Friendship 7. He was aboard the Air Force tracking ship Roseknot. He worked in the radio shack and has a reel to reel tape of the communications during that orbit. I can assure you it was not faked.

[Nighthawk4]

I am 52. My first computer was at College - an ICL mainframe (with punched cards and an OS called George) and a PDP11 (with a teletype and a very early CAD package).

I also had a Spectrum (does that count?) and an Amstrad PC1512.

I was using the Internet in the old days - with textmode - long before WWW was invented.

I stil work in Computing (Network Support) and use computers at Home most of the time when not at work. I must spend well over 12 hours a day in front of a computer every day.

I also remember the Moon landings. For me, Apollo 13 was a real life drama, long before it was a film. (Still a good film though). I love the comment at the end about Ken Mattingley never having caught measles. :)

I am sure the Moon Landings were genuine - otherwise Armstrong's fluffed line would have been retaken. It was the Mars landing by Capricorn One which was faked. Another good film.

Incidentally, I even remember Sputnik 1 - the birth of the Space Age. ;)

[Hotmamma]

Thirty-something year old here feeling like an old fart. And just starting to learn!

[dnar]

Another old fart here, well getting there (42).

My first computer was one that I built in 1977 around the National Semiconductor SC/MP 8-bit micro. Looking like a cut-down PDP it had 12 address switches, 8 data switches and leds. Programs were loaded by hand on the front panel (after being converted from Op code to binary in your head!). 256 bytes or RAM, yes folks 256! The CPU clocked at just on 1Mhz and used a crystal oscillator (flash!). feel-the-power....

My next set of computers included the C64, several beasty looking CP/M systems with 8" drives.

I started working with Xenix in the early 90's and have since worked with many Unix's (inc. SCO Unixware - ****!!!!). I have 15 computers at home, 3 with the kids downstairs. Only 2 run M$ systems - my dual-boot lappy and Amy's PC. I have 2 kids happily running FC4, the wife still doesnt know how to turn a computer on.

Over the past 15 years I have developed a lot of products and applications, written in Pascal, 8x51 & Z80 Assembler, x86 Assembler and various shell langauges.

[dnar]

There was an ASCII game called "Star Trek" that I thought was just the coollest thing ever - but then I was only sixteen years old and could not have imagined Doom in my wildest dreams then.
LOL.

I remember playing "Adventure" on a CP/M system, thinking "that secret password XYZZY is really cool"...

[w5set]

Yeah--amazing how far in equipment we have come in 30+ years isn't it?
Personally I am glad I am sitting at a newer, faster computer now...Those old ones were slooowwwww.
Now I am sloooww..instead.

[JN4OldSchool]

I had (still have and it still works!) a TRS-80 model 3. A whopping 16K of RAM with a cassett tape for storage. Not even a hard drive. I was a whiz at basic (for a kid anyway), the flying walloons, road race...I remember working months writing a Hobbit adventure game that was just a series of "if a$= x then goto" loops. You had to continually load the next segment from the tape. It is hard to believe how far we have come in 20 or so years.

[heffo_j]

G'day all,
Yep I guess I qaulify as an old fart. My first computer was a CPM-80 Atrona Attache "luggable". (CPM-80 was really quite quick compared with what followed). I used it as a linguist working with indigenous languages in remote outback of Australia. WordStar was the bee's knees back then. Before copmputers "cut and paste" was literally how one edited corrections in a document for publications. When WordStar allowed me to cut and paste text over an error it was publishing heaven. In the newer age, I moved to my first DOS machine and ran Word Perfect 4.2. This allowed me cutom dictionaries and an editing tool to access and modifiy them (unlike MSWord of the day). For a lingusit this was fantastic. But we all know what happened next, with bundled (infereior) software that drove good programs like Word Perfect from the scene. It was called a "good marketing strategy" at the time; now we call it a monopoly.

Ah well; now back to my afternoon nap.

Regards
John

PS what this about a moon landing?

[LarryJ]

I'll bet I'm the only one here that has (in my basement) an IBM Transporable (luggable) PC. Paid, as I recall about $2300 for that in the early 1980s. It never was a hit like the luggable KayPro. I ran Bruce Artwick's Flight Simulator on it's green (monochrome) screen .

Now I would like a lunch box case to build my next PC in. Too bad they aren't very popular.

[dnar]

G'day all,
Yep I guess I qaulify as an old fart. My first computer was a CPM-80 Atrona Attache "luggable". (CPM-80 was really quite quick compared with what followed). I used it as a linguist working with indigenous languages in remote outback of Australia. WordStar was the bee's knees back then. Before copmputers "cut and paste" was literally how one edited corrections in a document for publications. When WordStar allowed me to cut and paste text over an error it was publishing heaven.
Ah WordStar... Ctl-X etc and "dot" formatting... Heaven! I loved it when the app and the document fit on a floppy! Remember CalcStar?

[dnar]

I'll bet I'm the only one here that has (in my basement) an IBM Transporable (luggable) PC. Paid, as I recall about $2300 for that in the early 1980s. It never was a hit like the luggable KayPro. I ran Bruce Artwick's Flight Simulator on it's green (monochrome) screen .

Now I would like a lunch box case to build my next PC in. Too bad they aren't very popular.
I still have a functioning Bondwell 14 luggable. 5 1/4" floppies, 4Mhz Z80, 128kB RAM, voice synth, 5" orange screen, wicked in it's time! Looks and feels like a bloody sewing machine though!

[heffo_j]

Yep,I had the Z80 in my Atrona. Wow 128K RAM!! That was a LOT in those days.

Cheers mate,
John

[dnar]

Yep,I had the Z80 in my Atrona. Wow 128K RAM!! That was a LOT in those days.

Cheers mate,
John
Yeah, not sure how they implemented the extra 64K with the Z80, I figure it must be paged. That Bondwell still runs, I should set it up and take some photos with WordStar running.

Bondwell screwed the vectored interrupts on that model however, the poor old serial port would only function by polling the Rx holding register. Interrupt service routines simply did not work...

[txcrittr]

At 46 yrs, I've been playing with computers for almost 30 yrs. My first in the lat 70's or early 80's was a TI 99-4a, that lasted about a year. Then I got an Apple 2+. 64k onboard memory - but 16 was ROM. I used the Apple for a word processor and played a few text adventure games. After that I had an XT IBM compatible that ran DOS. I had a 386 that had a whopping 840M HD in it and 4m RAM I think. I had a couple of 486's and then a Pentium. I ran DOS and Win 3.11 until Win 95 came out. I got win 98 somewhere along the line. The Pentium I had was custom built. It had a 2 gig hard drive - just about the biggest you could get - and 32 megs of RAM. Cost me almost $4,000. Had NT 3.51 on it. I upgraded that to NT 4.0. After that, I got a P2 and stayed with NT4.0, til about a year and a half or 2 yrs ago, when I built my current desktop. Abit KV8 Max3 motherboard, ATI radeon 9800 Pro AGP vid card, 120gig Maxtor HD, 512M PC3200 memory, Win2k OS. Even though I always installed my own software and did most of my own configurations, I was still a PC user. Not a programmer or admin. In 1998 I got into a COBOL programming. I discovered I knew more about PCs than most of mainframe guys did. The PC programmers ran circles around me. I stayed in COBOL til 2002 - when my job got sent to India and I didn't get invited to go with it. I just started using Linux about a month ago because my Win2k installation was dieing and I'm sick of MS baloney. I hope to be a Linux admin within 2 years.

[ltam]

I'll bet I'm the only one here that has (in my basement) an IBM Transporable (luggable) PC. Paid, as I recall about $2300 for that in the early 1980s.

I had a Columbia Transportable with two 5.25" drives. The thing weighed about 45 lbs. You couldn't carry it very far before your arm felt like it was coming off its socket. It had a green monochrome screen. It was a piece of crap. It crashed more then it was up. Nevertheless, the crashing made me try to learn what I can do to make it not crash. :rolleyes:

[Firewing1]

At 46 yrs, I've been playing with computers for almost 30 yrs. My first in the lat 70's or early 80's was a TI 99-4a, that lasted about a year. Then I got an Apple 2+. 64k onboard memory - but 16 was ROM. I used the Apple for a word processor and played a few text adventure games. After that I had an XT IBM compatible that ran DOS. I had a 386 that had a whopping 840M HD in it and 4m RAM I think. I had a couple of 486's and then a Pentium. I ran DOS and Win 3.11 until Win 95 came out. I got win 98 somewhere along the line. The Pentium I had was custom built. It had a 2 gig hard drive - just about the biggest you could get - and 32 megs of RAM. Cost me almost $4,000. Had NT 3.51 on it. I upgraded that to NT 4.0. After that, I got a P2 and stayed with NT4.0, til about a year and a half or 2 yrs ago, when I built my current desktop. Abit KV8 Max3 motherboard, ATI radeon 9800 Pro AGP vid card, 120gig Maxtor HD, 512M PC3200 memory, Win2k OS. Even though I always installed my own software and did most of my own configurations, I was still a PC user. Not a programmer or admin. In 1998 I got into a COBOL programming. I discovered I knew more about PCs than most of mainframe guys did. The PC programmers ran circles around me. I stayed in COBOL til 2002 - when my job got sent to India and I didn't get invited to go with it. I just started using Linux about a month ago because my Win2k installation was dieing and I'm sick of MS baloney. I hope to be a Linux admin within 2 years.
Heh.... Funny, eh how fast technology goes? One week it's brand new, the next it's already obsolete...
it's funny too -- Speed, memory -- It doesn't increase as time goes on, it multiplies :p. Before we know it, we'll be having 8 GB ram on our home PC's...
Firewing1

[fire-fly]

47 here, my firt computer, motorola 6802 dev. kit set. the mpu has 128 bytes of build in (big deal). Save some money buy 2 k byte of additional memory, add some ciruitry buid an eprom programmer out of it.
My first unix , tetronix development. is all just history.
Good to know alot old farts still strong and rubbering should with young farts in the IT world, good encouragement.

[franklee]

for ten years.

I first encountered computers in the form of the Commodore Vic 20 and Spectrum ZX80, before our family bought a C64 and then an Amstrad PCW8256 followed closely by an Olivetti 8088 Pc, an IBM 286 and then one of the first Pentium grade PC's in New Zealand. Its been a long road through Assembler, C and C++, Pascal and Turbo, VB and finally Php...to where I am today, a systems admin and self employed BSD networking specialist, at the ripe young age of 31.

Hiss and Rant.

[ltam]

Heh.... Funny, eh how fast technology goes? One week it's brand new, the next it's already obsolete...
it's funny too -- Speed, memory -- It doesn't increase as time goes on, it multiplies :p. Before we know it, we'll be having 8 GB ram on our home PC's...
Firewing1

A buddy in the office just bought a 2 TB NAS server to host all his home video and sound files. :D

[Mutt]

G'day,

I'm 45, does that qualify as a OF?

I started in the early 80's with a Sega SC-3000, I still remember the joy of lying on the floor in front of the TV typing in 8 pages of basic from a computer magazine, getting to the last 6 or so lines and the Mrs buzzed passed with the vacuum cleaner and knocked the power supply out of the wall. And of course there was the cassette drive which took 30 or so minutes to load a game and if the fridge motor turned on during loading everything would corrupt. And the disk drive I bought for it that cost $900 and it took 3 inch disks that were $10 each...ahhh the good ole days.

Moved from that to a Commodore 64 (probably my favourite ever computer). Then a Amiga 500 and then worked my way through a 386, 2 x 486, PI, PII and now a AMD64 3000.

John

[canckaer]

I'll bet I'm the only one here that has (in my basement) an IBM Transporable (luggable) PC. Paid, as I recall about $2300 for that in the early 1980s. It never was a hit like the luggable KayPro. I ran Bruce Artwick's Flight Simulator on it's green (monochrome) screen .

I used to write programs for work on one of those 'transportable' IBM PC's. They were also virtually indistructable, I accidentaly left it out in the rain once, and water was seeping out of every opening in the case. I just put the thing on the heating for a couple of hours, and after that it worked just as fine as before. Still used it for over a year without any problems after that happened. Amazes me to this day!