Just saying hi!

Hey guys and gals!

Just stopping by to say hi! I was wondering what the average number of years people have working with computers (and helping dopey people like me fix problems they've either encountered or created for themselves)?

I started out in 1972 using a Mainframe via teletype at my high school. Then to the UofH (University of Houston) where I worked on Mainframes, then Minis, and finally Micros as first a help desk person and then an operating system's person. (Helped write bits and pieces of an e-mail system which I like to think helped others to come up with the system we all use today. Showed DEC how to do arrays in their VMS shell scripting language. Manager/System Admin of the first Vax 11/780 at the UofH.) Digicon (operations/security software) was next, followed by Univac (Software conversion, flight simulators), Unisys @ NASA (There for the merger between Univac and PDQ - Space Shuttle software, first shuttle crash), Vericenter (Multi-part systems person), and then M.D. Anderson (Mainly PHP, Javascript, AutoIt, etc.... Where I am now.). I've done robotics, simulations, 2D/3D graphics, and lots of other stuff. Vericenter was a lot of fun because it entailed doing all aspects of the Windows OS (security, programming, networking, etc...). I miss the "Ahhh! The s**t's hit the fan! We've got to do 5,000 systems in two days! Ahhhhhh!". It was a lot of fun.

So what about you? :cool

 

:wavehello and a very warm welcome to the forums :wave:cool

Someone will be along shortly sit tight.....I would have loved to worked with Robotics Im sure you will find lots of people to converse with in the forum about all aspects of the PC,

Maximus.....:major

 

:wave and welcome to MG's..

 

Hello and Welcome :wave

I rely on the kindness of others for my help :-o

 

I used to work for a company that made desktop Unix type turnkey word processors from '77 to '91. My first was some stupid IBM mainframe that wanted punched cards, if it wasn't for that I could have been a programmer. My first PC was a 286 with an EGA monitor. That was luxury in those days of green and amber and CGA uke screens.

 

I started in the early nineties with an AppleIIc. I'm now on a computer that is infinitely faster.

CGA? Oh gods, you had to remind me of CGA. *shudder*

 

Yeah - that brings back memories! (CGA)

I still have a fondness for the old Apple ][+ and //e. Still have a //gs at home. Trying to get all of those 5.25" floppies converted over to either the hard drive or possibly to 3.5" floppies. Of course the copy protected floppies are almost impossible to convert. I never did find a program that would do that. COPY ][+ would copy them to another floppy - but it wouldn't make an image file. So I fear those programs are going to be lost forever. To date I have managed to make copies of over 300 5.25" floppies with their associated games/programs/etc.... Most are almost impossible to run on today's machines. Pacman takes about a second to play and die three times. Luckily, I did finally find an Apple //e emulator which slowed the program back down to a reasonable speed. ("Stop the Madness!" is the program but there aren't any updates to the program. So I'm betting Apple pounced on them for writing the emulator.) I'm now trying to find a program to convert CP/M floppies so I can preserve what I have for future generations. I'd hate to see CP/M disappear completely. :cool

 

I started out with a used IBM PC running DOS 6.22. Armed with my copy of DOS for Dummies I was off and running. No matter where you start, there's always something new to learn. It never ends. Welcome!

 

I'm confused. Are we talking about actually working, as in "getting paid to do it", or the number of years I've been poking and playing around with them?

 

I would guess she's asking about general exposure to computers, not just IT pros.

 

In that case: Not long enough

 

Hah! Any exposure is good exposure!

Which computer captured your heart? Mine was the //e. It never gave me any problems except those I created for myself. (Unlike my exposure to the IBM PC Blue Screen of Death which seemed, in my case, to pop up quite a bit until Windows XP. But then, I did a lot of programming on Windows systems up through 2000 at NASA. I was also one of the few people who could bring SGIs and Linux machines to their knees with my bad memory pointer work. Heh. )

DOS 3.3 under the //e was an excellent way to learn all about low level assembly language and how to read/write to a disk drive. A lot of fun!