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Are you a Hardware guru ... or a Software guru? or both?

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Defiant1Dave

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There used to be a classification among computer people that seperated the "Hardware" folks from the "Software" gurus. As expected, the hardware guys spent most of their time tinkering with HDDs, memory, and DIPP switch settings..... and only wrote batch files and drivers to make everything work.

The software people spent their days writing and compiling applications to USE the equipment that the hardware guys put together. For some odd reason, each group looked upon the other as the lesser team member.

Nowadays much of that classification has gone away with the newer computers..... BUT with our old collections, and their more challenging clunkiness the distinction can still be made.

So.... here's the question: Do you spend the majority of your Vintage Computing time assembling / repairing vintage hardware? (In which case you are a hardware person) OR do you spend more time working with / writing / compiling / using the software? (in which case you are a software person.)

Me? I'm definately in the Software camp since I build, repair assemble my older machines to support my Compilers and create programs.

What about you?
 
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I'm more of a hardware guy. I like the insides of the PCs. Hard drives, memory, etc... But, I do like to keep a small archive of old software and utilities.
 
I guess I could be considered "Jack of all Trade, Master of None".

Never assume that someone that works in the IT industry is a guru or is even knowledgeable about computers. A neighbor of mine told me he had a good paying job with Computer Associates and considered himself to be computer illiterate.
Over the years I have found that the industry is absolutely riddled with people that don't knw $hit about computers.
 
Bit of both for me, I think laziness has kicked in and I'm probably a hardware guy now adays though. I used to definitely code on each system I had and while I was still a hardware guy, getting it to work, etc I did it so I could use the system. Once it was up I'd play with whatever languages I could find or popular games/apps.

On Chuckster's note it surprised me when I was young how many people didn't know the basics of hardware. At the time knowing your Bus, socket type, motherboard voltages/clock settings (everything) was what all my friends and I all did and memorized. Walking into my first job (intern) at a microprocessor manufacturer, I was surrounded by phd's and folks who would get an extra bonus for inventing the most patents that year yet most of them wouldn't be able to build a computer or if they did probably not know the name of most the components in the system. I was quite surprised, but that was at the time (young) my narrow understanding of the industry.

I think one of the most amazing things about computers, history, etc is how much a device we created is integrated into so many aspects and careers in life. You can specialize in computer hardware but that branches into so many vectors. I can't build a working motherboard from components (wiring) from my hardware understanding of hardware, but then someone who does VLSI design may also not be coherent in what RAM a system would need or what socket motherboard X processor would need.

Software you could specialize in programming one language but not know assembly/ML. You could program the software than runs on PROMs but not know the software the computer uses past your environment. You could be a software integration specialist and deal with hardware i/o from the serial port, etc or even write software inside of another language/environment.

It's so amazing how deep the rabbit hole goes.
 
I think that unless you're in a specialized corner of the trade, say, analog design, that there is vanishingly less and less distinction. Most digital engineers write lots of VHDL or Verilog; how does this differ from the guy who uses a programming language in the traditional way? A lot of what we see today in hardware is largely a combination of reference designs. Not that it's a bad thing--it may be the only way to come out with a new product design in any reasonable amount of time.

I'm sure when ICs were making big inroads, the guys who designed using discrete components thought it was cheating.

And what do programmers do today? It seems to me that much of the employment comes from writing Web scripts, which didn't exist 20 years ago.
 
I don't consider myself a guru in either sphere. In the past it was almost all software, although I was never in the IT industry as such.

These days apart from tweaking the odd piece of HTML and CCS script, I don't program. However, purely through havening to keep my vintage machines going, I have learned quite a bit about old hardware. It's been fun.

Tez
 
After pondering the question and your responses, it seems obvious that one needs to be BOTH software and hardware oriented in order to keep our old machines going.

I consider myself a Software person..... but this week I had to change out an iffy 360k floppy drive, make a 5140 memory expansion cable, and hook up and configure a SCSI system. All of those things are Hardware related.
 
I do about equal work with both, although the hardware work is nothing complex, just cleanup, assembly, and simple troubleshooting. Preference-wise, I like systems where the hardware and software are closely integrated (Amiga!) but if I have to choose I'll go with software.
 
I'm better at hardware, but not on anything older then like 1991, when you really didn't need to solder anything in place and lots of stuff was getting simpler. Never have worked with anything older so I don't know much about it.

The most soldering I've done though is replaced the wire on some speakers, something a 3 year old can do.
 
I'm neither. I just like to tinker around with stuff and, sometimes, I accidently fix something or get a little snippet of code right.

I know where the on switch on my computer is.
 
From an outside perspective I'm a hardware guy. I rattle off obscure Motherboard, Hard Disk, and Expansion Card model numbers and specs with ease, and have a scary capacity to remember the memory addresses of the sound cards on all my computers, however I can't even remember my own darned address, LOL. I've been known to rant about the default 85Hz Refresh rate of a Trident TGUI-9440 PCI Graphics card, or go on endless hours of searching for Mediavision Pro Graphics 1280 drivers (which I've been chasing for 4 years now) for my old 486.

In reality I'm more of a tinkerer with the vintage stuff since I don't really program, I don't waste my time with things like Microsoft Mail for Windows 3.1 or Lotus 1-2-3 when I have Open Office on my modern box. But I love to mess around with the hidden debug modes inside old PC games, and hack the resource files within (and occasionally record the havoc I cause for youtube).

On the majority of the software side though is still continuing what got me into this in the first place - pushing old hardware to do things that modern computers do. It was originally born out of me just wanting a computer with internet access and not being able to afford one, now it's more because when someone says something can't be done with an old PC, I like to challenge that a bit.
 
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