How many other Computer Nerds are here?
- Thread starter Psychobilly
- Start date
Psychobilly
🧀Muenster
I like how that dude couldn't find what he was looking for so he just built it himself LOL. Linus Torvalds essentially did the same thing with the Linux Kernel, though I do wonder if UC Berkeley had won their case a bit faster, would Linux actually still exist ? AT&T losing essentially put BSD/OS and the 386/BSD port out for everyone with PCs to start messing with, and we ended up with NetBSD, OpenBSD, and FreeBSD, and now like 20 or more forks of all of those?
LOL kind of funny how history happens sometimes; I've always had a strange love and respect for Unix, but I'm biased as fuck about it too; FreeBSD is my "choice" in terms of "I need this running for years without crashing and able to handle loads that would make other OSs crawl" haha.
I'm also sometimes simply amazed that SO many people think MIT is the be all end all of tech schools and these are the same people responsible for ITS.... Meanwhile UC Berkeley took Unix and turned it into something for everyone. Including TCP/IP.
Anyone here ever play the type of games known as "Dungeon Crawlers" ? Dungeoncrawl itself would be one, as would Nethack and a bunch of others.
How about Magic: The Gathering ?
Psychobilly
🧀Muenster
I'm oldschool even though I didn't own a Computer until 1999, so if I was worried about internal temps I ran the thing with the side case off and would blast duster into the case for a quick drop in temp haha. My ex id have a water cooled tower, but she was a fan of AMD and ATI so, probably for the best lol.
Ya I saw the thread 
. I don't want to geek out too much as it would ruin my anonymity. Lol..anyways started playing with PC's in mid/late 80's, building custom PC's and lans (cne) for organizations. Writing games in basic.
Built all of my own PC's from 92 until this year, when I couldn't find all the parts I wanted.
Use to run lan parties at the house in EverQuest. Then warcraft etc.
Mid 90's managed a data center of vax vms machines, and the operational workloads. The tape, and macrofiche cutting for customers etc..
Early 2000 started monitoring and event automation. That got into service lvl mgmt,.Robotics, DevOps and SRE.
Have a new build incoming I'm quite excited about ordered it in Feb...got delayed should be here next Thursday. New monitors and all. It's going to be a beast. Then I can get back to editing the preservation documents ><
New Alienware monitors for my system coming next week
Edited:laptop and info was clear lol ><
. I don't want to geek out too much as it would ruin my anonymity. Lol..anyways started playing with PC's in mid/late 80's, building custom PC's and lans (cne) for organizations. Writing games in basic.Built all of my own PC's from 92 until this year, when I couldn't find all the parts I wanted.
Use to run lan parties at the house in EverQuest. Then warcraft etc.
Mid 90's managed a data center of vax vms machines, and the operational workloads. The tape, and macrofiche cutting for customers etc..
Early 2000 started monitoring and event automation. That got into service lvl mgmt,.Robotics, DevOps and SRE.
Have a new build incoming I'm quite excited about ordered it in Feb...got delayed should be here next Thursday. New monitors and all. It's going to be a beast. Then I can get back to editing the preservation documents ><
New Alienware monitors for my system coming next week
Edited:laptop and info was clear lol ><
Psychobilly
🧀Muenster
You're literally one of the few people I know that actually has used VMS. That's cool as fuck bro! I'm not big on VMS as I'm more into the Snake Oil Ken was talking about (Unix) but not using it was not really a choice as much as "I can't afford a VAX" lol. New system sounds awesomeYa I saw the thread
Built all of my own PC's from 92 until this year, when I couldn't find all the parts I wanted.
Use to run lan parties at the house in EverQuest. Then warcraft etc.
Mid 90's managed a data center of vax vms machines, and the operational workloads. The tape, and macrofiche cutting for customers etc..
Early 2000 started monitoring and event automation. That got into service lvl mgmt,.Robotics, DevOps and SRE.
Have a new build incoming I'm quite excited about ordered it in Feb...got delayed should be here next Thursday. New monitors and all. It's going to be a beast. Then I can get back to editing the preservation documents ><
New Alienware monitors for my system coming next week
Edited:laptop and info was clear lol ><
Meatman
? Master of Meat ?
Idk if this is the right place for this but I’m gonna ask…so my son wants a gaming computer I told him we’d get one for his birthday than discovered there anywhere from $750 to 5 grand I’d like to stay around the $1500 region can any of you guys tell me a good place to start I want one that’s built and ready to go as I know nothing about computers…we have a laptop and a normal computer and let’s just say I don’t even know the passwords to get into them lol thanks for the help
Psychobilly
🧀Muenster
Yeah bro I would recommend AlienWare too; they can easily get pricey but they use top of the line hardware and even have well designed cases to help dissipate heat issues.
Personally for Graphics cards I'm very partial to Nvidia as they were one if the only ones who released drivers for Linux and BSD, which mattered a great deal to me, but that's more personal preference than anything.
I'm with Deebs; AlienWare for the win!
Personally for Graphics cards I'm very partial to Nvidia as they were one if the only ones who released drivers for Linux and BSD, which mattered a great deal to me, but that's more personal preference than anything.
I'm with Deebs; AlienWare for the win!
Meatman
? Master of Meat ?
Well I ordered it it’s the R10 edition with the upgraded mouse and keyboard and than I got him the 32 inch screen…I told him there’s no way in hell he’s getting it cause it’s to expensive lol it’ll be here next week tho haha…so now I’m gonna get him a desk and a gaming chair we have a spare bedroom in our house so the wife agreed we can change it into a gaming room to get the boys games out of our 2 living rooms…thanks for the push to get it guys?
You made me giggle.
Psychobilly
🧀Muenster
He's gonna love that!
Psychobilly
🧀Muenster
Bro I haven't heard someone mention Leisure Suit Larry in SO long! LOL! I never played it but heard about it from other guys around that I knew. I mentioned I didn't even have a Computer until 1999, which is true, and it was an already aging Windows 95 used Computer.
I got my start sitting there every night like, opening up each program, and messing with them until I learned a little about each one as I didn't really have any manuals.
Of course that stopped working as easily as it had been when I got to "MS-DOS Prompt" LOL! There was no "mess around and see how it works" with that, and I'd never used a Command Line before, so I got stumped a little at first, but then I ended up with a friend who had a book on DOS I could read. All the while I was still learning about how everything worked, and then, I started hearing about Viruses, Backdoors, DOS Attacks, DDoS, and Unix.... I think the Unix thing was when I first really started understanding that there was a lot more to a computer than simply writing up text files, or doing homework, and with the viruses still prevalent in those days I of course HAD to start collecting them.... LOL.
That first computer didn't last long; One night after the computer was moved up to my bedroom, I had a floppy disk that I saved my collection on, and I accidentally opened one..... Now, I knew deep down a normal virus simply wasn't capable of any real damage but I managed to of course open the ONE file on that floppy that was nuts!
I still remember hitting the power button as I saw a DOS prompt open, and shut the computer off right away. Didn't help in the slightest.... This was my first and ONLY experience in seeing that software was fully capable of doing real damage to hardware. I legit fucked that computer up so bad it wasn't even funny. At least at the time.. That computer didn't boot anymore, so I thought "OK I'll grab these Floppies and boot from that".... Whatever that thing was, had essentially done something to I'm guessing the BIOS and the Hard Drive itself, as I booted from floppy, and the HD had nothing, the boot record, the boot sector, just nothing.
Even stranger AFTER formatting that HD, it said the HD wasn't big enough for Windows 95 to be installed on it... Strange I thought and overwrote the Master Boot Record. Still nothing. Eventually I tossed it as the only thing that fit on there was an old PC-DOS 6.22 or some shit I had on floppy that my uncle had given me. I know now of course that software can do real damage LOL.
I had a job though already as I was like 17 or 18 years old, so I went and bought a brand new Computer from Best Buy and used that. I still have that one, and "upgraded" the RAM from 128 MBs to like 384, and the original HD is even still in there (42.9 GBs if you're using Windows, 43 GB if it's BSD I think?) and that computer is still usable even though the Graphics card in it is essentially dead.
It's running an old version of Slackware Linux, and starts up SSH and my FTP server when it boots, so I just don't use a monitor on it, and log in over SSH to do whatever I need to on it. It's also got another HD installed as it contains ALL my music and....you know... LOL. Movies, documentaries and whatnot.
For games, even though they were old already, the original DooM and Quake are high up on my list! LOVE those! I also love Unreal Tournament too.
All my computers are really dated, but they're not really slow either since a good chunk of them run either Linux or some flavor of BSD.
Also, if you want to know a way that totally will destroy a piece of hardware without even sitting in the room the computer is in; Login as root on an old version of Linux, or Unix, and as long as the monitor is really old (lacking a safety cutoff switch) you configure the X Window System and set the parameters for the display WAY higher than the monitor can handle, and startx.
If you ever plan on testing that PLEASE have a fire extinguisher handy.
@Deebs - You knowing VMS.... Ever heard of "Hard Drive walking" ? The old full height Hard Drives that when you'd program them to seek back and forth across the disk would literally make them rock and walk across a room ? LOL.
Also, I have some images I can share of historical Computers :
A PDP1!
The VAX 11/780..... Some of the earliest Unix OSs were written with these in mind
And a PDP-8 !
Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie!!!!!!!!! (RIP).
Psychobilly
🧀Muenster
Can you imagine what Ida and Babbage would think of these things today ? Ida being the very first Programmer; She was WAY ahead of her time!
