F
7

Rant: First computer I ever worked on had a turbo button - kid I was training last month had never seen one

Three years ago I was the new guy. Last week I had to explain what an ISA slot does to someone born in 1999. Felt old. That machine ran DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.11. He asked if it was a toaster. Anyone else running into young techs who don't know basic hardware history?
3 comments

Log in to join the discussion

Log In
3 Comments
pat_moore
pat_moore12d ago
You ever actually stop to think how much those old machines taught us? I used to roll my eyes at people complaining about "kids these days" not knowing hardware history. Figured it was just nostalgia getting in the way. But after watching a guy try to jam a SATA cable into a floppy connector, I get it now. Those weird quirks and buttons forced you to actually understand what was going on under the hood. Modern stuff is too easy to just plug in and hope it works.
8
robert659
robert65912d ago
Took me back to messing with jumpers on old IDE drives.
7
gavin365
gavin36512d ago
Right there with you man, that IDE jumper stuff was like a rite of passage. @robert659 wasn't kidding, remembering master and slave settings on a drive you just swapped was its own little puzzle. It's wild how those old quirks actually taught you to troubleshoot instead of just swapping parts. I gotta admit watching someone try to force a SATA cable into a floppy port gave me a good laugh though, pure panic on their face lol.
7