A Tale of Two Computers
Mar. 8th, 2022 08:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
palusbuteoI had started to put this in my profile on here but felt it went a bit long winded and maybe would make a better post.
also: Is there a way to cut text like on LJ?
My Computer Experience:
My first computer experience was an Apple IIe in grade school. We had one of those computer labs where all us kids went to in class blocks and spent time learning Turtle Paint and finding ways to make the turtle program implode by programming infinite loops and shit.
(Ok, technically speaking my very-first computer experience was with palm-sized Radio Shack calculators with solar panels)
A neighbor kid on my street also had a IIe and we spent some time playing various games on it. But he also had a Nintendo (and I think the only kid I knew who had both the Power Glove and the Dance Mat...both broke rather quickly)
Our first home computer was a Commodore C64C and it was fucking awesome. (no seriously, some of my fondest memories and some that still haunt me today are from those days) It also brought us this Internet thing via Quantum Link / Q-Link via a cartridge phone modem.
We then had an IBM with a green monochrome screen and we suffered for a while with shitty games and programs. We then ended up with other, better, 286 and 386 PC towers in the classic age of MS-DOS games. I got addicted to Flight Sims and Flight/Combat games then. Post college I was given my brother's hand-me-down 486 Gateway and used that until the drive broke/stopped working.
I then went to Apple world/cult and got an iMac G5 PowerPC. Then that drive failed around 2013 (and a week before I was planning on buying a backup SSD USB drive, as everyone was saying "holy shit you fools need to start backing up your drive these things may fail unexpectedly!") and I ended up with a refurbed 2010 Macbook Pro...Which ended up being a lemon. I had to send that to Texas to have the motherboard replaced, it ran super-hot, scorched my knee (apple: don't ever call it a "laptop" if it was never meant to sit on human flesh you fucking psychos)...Also a bad sign when you're on the phone & email with Apple support for a solid month and the serial number is not on any of their records, or so they claimed. "It might have been a promotional limited run" was one of the excuses. But I digress.
By 2019-2020 the thing could barely keep up with the pace of the internet, I replaced the HDD with an SSD double the capacity and updated the RAM. It worked great for about 3 months into the fucking pandemic.
By some luck, a friend gave me his old 2015 MBP and that's what I'm currently using. It has a 1TB SSD which still boggles my mind that we've reached that capacity of memory (remember: C64)
During fucking pandemic, I also dusted off the ol' G5 to see if I could possibly restore the drive. By some weirdness it started right up after not being on since 2013. I think I managed to pull about 80% of the data off on my own, But then I made a major error thinking it was "fine", unplugged it to move it to it's new "home", and it never started up properly again. I then finally caved and went to a professional drive saver (which was sketchy AF), paid a stupid amount of money, and managed to get 100% back.
The G5 is now a "dedicated gaming machine" since it cannot access the internet at all because it's so fricken antiquated.
For a few years now too I've also got an iPad 2011. Which is what I happen to be typing this on now.
Also: Worcester's internet is fucking terrible. Even the firm that installed and "services" the system has been caught saying "yeah it's kinda shitty. Oh well. Me go to bank to deposit youre check now"
also: Is there a way to cut text like on LJ?
My Computer Experience:
My first computer experience was an Apple IIe in grade school. We had one of those computer labs where all us kids went to in class blocks and spent time learning Turtle Paint and finding ways to make the turtle program implode by programming infinite loops and shit.
(Ok, technically speaking my very-first computer experience was with palm-sized Radio Shack calculators with solar panels)
A neighbor kid on my street also had a IIe and we spent some time playing various games on it. But he also had a Nintendo (and I think the only kid I knew who had both the Power Glove and the Dance Mat...both broke rather quickly)
Our first home computer was a Commodore C64C and it was fucking awesome. (no seriously, some of my fondest memories and some that still haunt me today are from those days) It also brought us this Internet thing via Quantum Link / Q-Link via a cartridge phone modem.
We then had an IBM with a green monochrome screen and we suffered for a while with shitty games and programs. We then ended up with other, better, 286 and 386 PC towers in the classic age of MS-DOS games. I got addicted to Flight Sims and Flight/Combat games then. Post college I was given my brother's hand-me-down 486 Gateway and used that until the drive broke/stopped working.
I then went to Apple world/cult and got an iMac G5 PowerPC. Then that drive failed around 2013 (and a week before I was planning on buying a backup SSD USB drive, as everyone was saying "holy shit you fools need to start backing up your drive these things may fail unexpectedly!") and I ended up with a refurbed 2010 Macbook Pro...Which ended up being a lemon. I had to send that to Texas to have the motherboard replaced, it ran super-hot, scorched my knee (apple: don't ever call it a "laptop" if it was never meant to sit on human flesh you fucking psychos)...Also a bad sign when you're on the phone & email with Apple support for a solid month and the serial number is not on any of their records, or so they claimed. "It might have been a promotional limited run" was one of the excuses. But I digress.
By 2019-2020 the thing could barely keep up with the pace of the internet, I replaced the HDD with an SSD double the capacity and updated the RAM. It worked great for about 3 months into the fucking pandemic.
By some luck, a friend gave me his old 2015 MBP and that's what I'm currently using. It has a 1TB SSD which still boggles my mind that we've reached that capacity of memory (remember: C64)
During fucking pandemic, I also dusted off the ol' G5 to see if I could possibly restore the drive. By some weirdness it started right up after not being on since 2013. I think I managed to pull about 80% of the data off on my own, But then I made a major error thinking it was "fine", unplugged it to move it to it's new "home", and it never started up properly again. I then finally caved and went to a professional drive saver (which was sketchy AF), paid a stupid amount of money, and managed to get 100% back.
The G5 is now a "dedicated gaming machine" since it cannot access the internet at all because it's so fricken antiquated.
For a few years now too I've also got an iPad 2011. Which is what I happen to be typing this on now.
Also: Worcester's internet is fucking terrible. Even the firm that installed and "services" the system has been caught saying "yeah it's kinda shitty. Oh well. Me go to bank to deposit youre check now"
no subject
Date: 2022-03-08 02:35 pm (UTC)The FAQs are pretty helpful, and a lot of things work like they do on LiveJournal.
https://www.dreamwidth.org/support/faqbrowse?faqid=88&q=cut