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Hello from Oklahoma

Le_Bear

Experienced Member
Joined
Apr 19, 2012
Messages
129
Location
Oklahoma
I have only today seen this forum, it was mentioned on another forum I've been very active in of late, and i see they have very much in common as far as the layout goes. I am also optimistic in believing the two have very much in common as far as the shear number of fine folks who frequent them. I probably should have found this one first, but then it seems i always have done things rather backwards.
I'm not sure if i was late or early in computers (very late i expect), but i do recall schoolmates at radio shack in the late 60s/early 70's? playing with a gadget that used a cassette recorder. I took an entrance exam to the Air Force early 70s to see what they would plan on doing with me, they said i'd be in electronics, but i hated rolling up extension cords(a very frequent part of my summer jobs in construction), so didn't jump on it(they did immediatly change my draft classification from 1-H to 1-A meaning i was good to go) but before i graduated they were pulling out of Nam and trying to get rid of people from what i heard.
Next would have been 80/81 hooking up switches to near every component of an offshore drilling rig i was working on, that all converged in a small box in the rig office, but also had an interactive monitor on the drill floor that gave our drill rotation speed, pump flow and pressure, drill mud levels etc. Then in 86/87, after the mid 80s oilfield bust, i'm working on trucks of a major carrier, hooking up "tattletales" to near every component on the rigs, and installing the main boxes, which when loaded to the main office computer would tell at which rpm/speeds the driver drove, switched gears, idled the truck etc. We installed these "new" "tripmasters" on almost 800 rigs.
Not much from there to 2K, after which i bought my first computer from a mostly sold out Goodwill, and after they couldn't find time to install the CD-ROM it needed for me, but told me how to do it myself, then also had to add a soundcard and modem, then take it back because the (512mb?) hdd was already full. I bought another used one which i tinkered with for a year or so (pentium 90, edo memory) until buying a new compaq on sale from Staples. Then about 2003 during a layoff i started buying junkers from office cleanouts etc, never made any money from it but had fun tinkering, and soon started buying from gov't auctions, many times they came from NASA, and several times i'd tell them they should been paying me to haul this stuff off! I was looking for computers i could fix and sell, and the stack of "clunkers" in the barn grew almost unbearable, altho along the way I accumulated some cool looking parts i never could quite decide what to do with, but put them away in boxes and on shelves. After a shoulder injury in about 05 i considered ITT and went there to discuss it, and while i was being shown around we passed some large glass cases containing old computer parts etc, and i couldn't help but thinking "hek, i've got better stuff than this in my closet". It was just a short while until I moved back home to a small farm in Oklahoma, but in the 4 trips with loaded truck and trailer I did manage to preserve many of the boxes of parts I'd saved. I am afraid however that the motherboards(a small pickup load given to a computer recycler because at that time nobody wanted less than a semi trailer full) and most the old CPUs (which sold so well on ebay for gold) didn't fair so well. Most of what remains are add in cards and memory, all un cataloged, just wrapped up and packed.
Still hoping to someway return some of these to good use.
I hope yall didn't mind my little short story here, anyway, thanks for having me :)
 
Always love hearing how folks got started in the field. Thanks for the read and welcome to the forums! Yup, lots of us are at a few sites lingering around. Sounds like quite a blast getting some of that equipment. The government is always an interesting source for systems that may not have made it elsewhere.
 
Thanks bary, i became mostly attached to SCSI components and peripherals, and SGI MIPS systems(of which i saved a bare minimum, but still a few, parted out at least a dozen of the better INDYs on ebay several years ago)
 
Welcome to the forums! Nice story as I can see. Looks like you've had a long journey in the computer field as well as having fun with interchanging parts and tinkering around.

Enjoy your time here.
 
Thanks DOS :) I also enjoyed collecting hardware drivers, computer operating systems, and whatever manuals i'd run across, of which i have a few, but probably nothing extremely rare or hard to find
 
Hey Le_Bear, welcome to the forum!

Where abouts are you in OK? I'm over in Amarillo, TX, so if you're on the western side of the state, you're not too far away.

Curtis
 
Hey Le_Bear, welcome to the forum!

Where abouts are you in OK? I'm over in Amarillo, TX, so if you're on the western side of the state, you're not too far away.

Curtis

Hey Curtis, I'm in SE Oklahoma, way out in the boonies :) Been a long time since i was out that way, about 25 years i guess. Been through there a few times though, and down around Palo Duro
 
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