How old is your brain?

[lynchmob]

Computer brain,that is.
I got this idea from reading a thread where someone said they were "only 4 years old in computer knowledge".
That's about the same for me,for pcs.I used to have an old Mac that I wrote astronomy scripts using Hypertalk.I copied most of these from Jean Meese's excellent "Astronomical Algorythms" I did this for a few years before I got a pc.
Before that,I took a week of basic Fortran(college circa-1982)but dropped it because all we did was make punch cards for the instructor.
Now I have an A+,Network+ and am studying for as yet undecided upon Linux cert.
Feel free to comment or just vote.This is just to give us all an idea about the range of knowledge and experience here at TIMO
I looked around to see if this poll had been done before,but didnt see anything.
lynch

[robin801]

i have had a computer since 1995 but all i knew then was how to surf the web and read e-mail.

i didn't learn that i could do more than this until i stumbled across sysopt about 2 years ago.

my knowledge in computers is slowly growing. you guys and gals here have had me doing things with my system that i never imagined that i could do.

like building my own
playing music
burning music
watching movies
having high speed connection
networking
overclocking


if i read it on the forums i give it a try.

also learned how to write a long winded reply. lol

robin

[brandon184]

Wow... I started using a computer about 12 years ago, and actually started to know the advanced stuff about 10 years ago.

HOW TIME FLIES!!!

Brandon
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[SickPup404]

me = 33
computer brain = 20-ish

Started tinkering on Timex Sinclair's and Commodore Vic-20's. Been trying to get them right ever since!

[Warthog]

Ok....when I started to really pick up speed with learning comps, it was 4 1/2 years ago when we got a comp in '97 with Win95 so it was finally "user friendly" and could play games, etc. Before that it was Win 3.1 which you couldn't do much on

But we had a computer before then......

Actually we've had a computer my entire life, sooooo....and I played some Castle game and Space Wars game on DOS when I was 5-6 years old....used apple comps all through elementary school and mac comps in middle school, then we got an up to date PC @ home.....I dunno what to vote so I didn't

Warthog

[Chooco]

1-2

didn't get internet till november 2000 so i didn't have a way of finding stuff out.

Well, we had an IBM 1407 (filled an entire room, with blinking lights) in my Engineering School and I remember using punched cards to write programs in FORTRAN and FORTRAN77 way back in 1975/76.

In 1981 at IIT, Chicago, we used PRIME 500 and VAX mini computers. We could dial in to these computers using a modem where you placed the phone earpiece onto the modem. Had a rubber thingy to hold it in place.

1992-DOS and windows 3 changed everything. Rest is history and everyone knows how PCs progressed.

But in 1975/76, carring 10 pounds of punched cards back to the dorm and bringing them back to the computer center was a chore. Even as late as 1983 I remember using punched cards at IIT.

The 10 pounds of cards were handed to the Computer Center where they were processed and the results printed on large size papers using high speed dot matrix printers. Sometimes, when you had an error like an infinite loop, the printer would spew out like 8 pounds of blank paper. We used these sheets for making notes.

These PRIME and VAX computers were also used for "complex" calculations in Finite Elements, CAD/CAM, and for generating dot-matrix printer images- I remember one kid wrote a program to print out a portrait of JFK. Very neat 20 years ago. Cave Man technology today.

Those were the days PacMan games had just arrived and were extremely popular in game parlours.

Ah, nostalgia!!

[Knothead]

How old in computer learning?
What time is it now?

A friend told me about working at Litton, I guess about 15 or 20 years ago, anyway, they built the world's most advanced computer--it took a four-story building to house it, an UNBELIEVABLE air conditioning system... it went obsolete after a time, and they dismantled it.

Well, a lot of this computer went to the Smithsonian, and a whole huge chunk of it was bought by a Hollywood "prop" house...and it became the deck background in the "Star Trek" movies!

The punchline: After telling me about this, he pointed to his '98 Compaq, and stated that it had far more computing power than that Litton monster!

[DVNT1]

I started having an interest in computers when DOOM came out... ~1994. Doom is what got me started with computers and networking; so we could play Doom together

I became serious about computers in 1996.

DVNT how old are you? just curious