Anonymous Freak
Veteran Member
I've been lurking around here for a month or so, started posting a week or so ago, so I guess I should probably post an actual introduction.
Hi, my name is Ed, and I'm a computer-holic. I hail from Portland, Oregon; went to college in Prescott, Arizona, then returned to Portland. I am presently 31 years old, with a wife, 13-year old stepson, and 3 year old daughter. I run (and am the lead technician of) an on-site computer consulting company here in Portland.
It all started back in 1985, when my dad decided that replacing our old 1967 Dodge Dart was less important than getting one of these newfangled "computers". He bought a Leading Edge model 'D', 8088 with a 4.7/8 MHz toggle switch, 640 KB RAM, dual 5.25" 360 KB floppies, and onboard CGA. Within a month, he also bought a Microsoft Mouse (second generation, not the green one,) that came with Paintbrush. Most of the software I got early on was shareware (that we almost never paid for,) the only two bits of commercial software I can recall were Chuck Yeager's Advanced Flight Trainer and Bill Budge's Pinball Construction Set (what was it with "xxx's" games back then?) A couple other favorites were Alley Cat and a game that I remember being called "Jumpman", but all references to "Jumpman" I can find aren't the same game.
A year or two later, my dad got a job working in the computer department at his work, and brought home an IBM PC/XT, 640 KB RAM, dual 360 KB floppies, 32 MB hard drive, MDA adapter (not even a serial port!) At about this time, I started ripping open the Leading Edge, adding, among other things, a 20 MB Hard Card, and a 1200 baud modem.
At about that time, I entered high school, and discovered the Macintosh. My school had a lab full of SEs as the main computer lab, and the drafting department had a lab of SEs and a lab of 386 PS/2s. I promptly began "hacking" the PS/2s at every opportunity. Of course, I joined the high school computer club (the "Aadvarks", so they would always be first in the club list, of course.) But mine was no normal high school, it was a 'technical' high school. The captain of the football team was also the president of the computer club!
During high school, my mom brought home both a Compaq Portable II, and an IBM PS/2 model P70 from her work, and my dad brought home a 286 PS/2. Then, my senior year, we bought a 486 (I remember getting into a debate over whose 486 was faster, my DX2/66 or my friend's DX/50,) also a Leading Edge. So even when I was in high school, I already had 6 computers in the house. Upon graduation, it got even worse. A Pentium/90, Cyrix 6x86/P120+, Pentium II 333, Celeron 466, Athlon XP 1700+, then back to Macs with an eMac. On the mobile side, I got a used 386 laptop, then a PowerBook 5300c, then a Sony PictureBook C1X, then a 12" PowerBook G4, then a MacBook Pro. And those are just my "main" computers, not even counting the "collection".
I started collecting back in 1999, after I came home from college, lived with the parents for a few months, then moved out. I rented a spare bedroom in a house a friend was living in, and this house had a big basement. My friend was a big Linux nut, and had a couple computers in the basement running Linux. I had a couple of my old computers at the time, and set them up in the basement, too. Then a family member offered me a couple old Macs his work was throwing away. I couldn't let them go to waste, could I?
By 2001, I had about 30 old Macs, some purchased at garage sales or thrift stores for $5, some given away to me by businesses that would have just thrown them away, some bought on (shudder,) eBay for as much as $100. Today, I'm up to over 50 old Macs.
A couple months or so ago, I recalled my high school days when OS/2 2.0 first came out, how I had bought a 386 upgrade for my 286 PS/2 just so I could run OS/2 on it. (I believe the system, *WITH* the upgrade, only just barely met OS/2 2.0's minimum specs, 386SX/16, 4 MB RAM, 20 MB HD, VGA.) Well, nostalgia had been biting me for a couple years, running old versions of DOS and Windows inside Virtual PC (and later Parallels,) so I figured I wanted to go find an old PS/2 to run OS/2 on.
The addiction has returned. I had gone a year or so since my last purchase of an old piece of Apple hardware, but now I'm buying up IBM gear like it's going out of style. In the past month, I've gotten an AT, PS/2 model 77, and my "crown jewel", a Power Series 440 (aka "Personal Computer, PowerPC", IBM's attempt at making a PowerPC "personal computer," it came with Windows NT 4.0 on it, and I managed to acquire a copy of OS/2 for PowerPC, and have been struggling to get it installed ever since; fighting with a bad floppy drive, and flaky disk images.) I've also gotten OS/2 2.0, 2.1, and 3.0 Warp; PC-DOS 6.1 and 7.0. (The PS/2 came with PC-DOS 6.3 installed, with disk images of the PC-DOS 6.3 install floppies in a directory, but unfortunately, floppy 1's disk image is bad!)
Hi, my name is Ed, and I'm a computer-holic. I hail from Portland, Oregon; went to college in Prescott, Arizona, then returned to Portland. I am presently 31 years old, with a wife, 13-year old stepson, and 3 year old daughter. I run (and am the lead technician of) an on-site computer consulting company here in Portland.
It all started back in 1985, when my dad decided that replacing our old 1967 Dodge Dart was less important than getting one of these newfangled "computers". He bought a Leading Edge model 'D', 8088 with a 4.7/8 MHz toggle switch, 640 KB RAM, dual 5.25" 360 KB floppies, and onboard CGA. Within a month, he also bought a Microsoft Mouse (second generation, not the green one,) that came with Paintbrush. Most of the software I got early on was shareware (that we almost never paid for,) the only two bits of commercial software I can recall were Chuck Yeager's Advanced Flight Trainer and Bill Budge's Pinball Construction Set (what was it with "xxx's" games back then?) A couple other favorites were Alley Cat and a game that I remember being called "Jumpman", but all references to "Jumpman" I can find aren't the same game.
A year or two later, my dad got a job working in the computer department at his work, and brought home an IBM PC/XT, 640 KB RAM, dual 360 KB floppies, 32 MB hard drive, MDA adapter (not even a serial port!) At about this time, I started ripping open the Leading Edge, adding, among other things, a 20 MB Hard Card, and a 1200 baud modem.
At about that time, I entered high school, and discovered the Macintosh. My school had a lab full of SEs as the main computer lab, and the drafting department had a lab of SEs and a lab of 386 PS/2s. I promptly began "hacking" the PS/2s at every opportunity. Of course, I joined the high school computer club (the "Aadvarks", so they would always be first in the club list, of course.) But mine was no normal high school, it was a 'technical' high school. The captain of the football team was also the president of the computer club!
During high school, my mom brought home both a Compaq Portable II, and an IBM PS/2 model P70 from her work, and my dad brought home a 286 PS/2. Then, my senior year, we bought a 486 (I remember getting into a debate over whose 486 was faster, my DX2/66 or my friend's DX/50,) also a Leading Edge. So even when I was in high school, I already had 6 computers in the house. Upon graduation, it got even worse. A Pentium/90, Cyrix 6x86/P120+, Pentium II 333, Celeron 466, Athlon XP 1700+, then back to Macs with an eMac. On the mobile side, I got a used 386 laptop, then a PowerBook 5300c, then a Sony PictureBook C1X, then a 12" PowerBook G4, then a MacBook Pro. And those are just my "main" computers, not even counting the "collection".
I started collecting back in 1999, after I came home from college, lived with the parents for a few months, then moved out. I rented a spare bedroom in a house a friend was living in, and this house had a big basement. My friend was a big Linux nut, and had a couple computers in the basement running Linux. I had a couple of my old computers at the time, and set them up in the basement, too. Then a family member offered me a couple old Macs his work was throwing away. I couldn't let them go to waste, could I?
By 2001, I had about 30 old Macs, some purchased at garage sales or thrift stores for $5, some given away to me by businesses that would have just thrown them away, some bought on (shudder,) eBay for as much as $100. Today, I'm up to over 50 old Macs.
A couple months or so ago, I recalled my high school days when OS/2 2.0 first came out, how I had bought a 386 upgrade for my 286 PS/2 just so I could run OS/2 on it. (I believe the system, *WITH* the upgrade, only just barely met OS/2 2.0's minimum specs, 386SX/16, 4 MB RAM, 20 MB HD, VGA.) Well, nostalgia had been biting me for a couple years, running old versions of DOS and Windows inside Virtual PC (and later Parallels,) so I figured I wanted to go find an old PS/2 to run OS/2 on.
The addiction has returned. I had gone a year or so since my last purchase of an old piece of Apple hardware, but now I'm buying up IBM gear like it's going out of style. In the past month, I've gotten an AT, PS/2 model 77, and my "crown jewel", a Power Series 440 (aka "Personal Computer, PowerPC", IBM's attempt at making a PowerPC "personal computer," it came with Windows NT 4.0 on it, and I managed to acquire a copy of OS/2 for PowerPC, and have been struggling to get it installed ever since; fighting with a bad floppy drive, and flaky disk images.) I've also gotten OS/2 2.0, 2.1, and 3.0 Warp; PC-DOS 6.1 and 7.0. (The PS/2 came with PC-DOS 6.3 installed, with disk images of the PC-DOS 6.3 install floppies in a directory, but unfortunately, floppy 1's disk image is bad!)
