Article
Trashing my childhood
Over Thanksgiving weekend, my dad roped me into helping him sort through my old computer stuff and deciding what to save and what to trash. This was a difficult process for me, and not only because I think old computers are cool (I do have a spray-painted Mac SE on my dresser, after all).
After some reflection, I realized that I spent most of my childhood years with, around or in front of computers — cool old stuff like a Mac LCIII, my Apple eMate and a hand-me-down Powerbook 1400. I spent my formative years writing simple programs, tinkering with graphics and messing around on the internet. After I started writing music, I would use underpowered computers to record and mix my projects.
Pirated software apps, borrowed from friends or downloaded from the internet (mostly IRC channels or Hotline servers), were my favorite toys. I was like a collector, grabbing every audio editor, graphics program or video tool I could find. I only used a few of them, but it was fun to at least play with what the pros were using.
My sporadic computing began to center around graphics, video and audio work toward the end of high school, and I started to use computers to make “real stuff” (like, that people saw and heard). When my interest in engineering as a career began to wane, I fell back on my childhood hobbies and eventually stuck with the one (web development) that fascinates me the most.
So it was with great reluctance that I joined my dad in the Great Trashing of ‘04. After an hour digging through boxes and shelves, my dad loaded up the second 10 years of my life and took it away.
In memory of those great machines that made me who I am today a huge nerd, I present the following highlights:
My family’s Mac LCIII was our first computer with a color monitor — a 14” Sony. Unfortunately, we didn’t have a color printer until a few years later, so the pretty pictures had to stay on screen. This computer had an external 2x CD-ROM drive so we could view the 1993 Grolier’s Multimedia Encyclopedia.
Complete boxed versions of HyperCard 2.2 and FutureBasic II were BIG fun for me around junior high age. I tried to program a game in FBII one time, but it sucked. One Christmas I received an animation add-on to HyperCard and proceeded to make short animated movies.A Power Mac 7100/80 was not only our first computer that could go online, but the first one that was predominately “mine.” I later upgraded it to a 240 MHz G3 processor and added a 1 GB (?) external drive to supplement the 600 MB (?) internal one. I also had an OrangePC card in this box, which allowed me to run Windows 95 and assorted apps at really, really slow speeds. How fun!
My last pre-Jobs Mac was a Power Mac 7500/100 (upgraded to a 300 MHz G3) that I used for a long time. I wouldn’t let my parents trash this one, so I’ll save the memorial for another time.