My father was a pencil, my mother a sparkle bound notebook, I didn’t know what a computer was from Adam. I was interested though, not in what they could do at first but in what made them tick. My first computer was a Korean made Intel based 386-sx 16 mz desktop I bought for $1000. I took it apart before I even learned how to use it. I learned how to add simple peripherals and increase memory and storage. It came with a 30 Megabyte hard drive. I remember saving up $250 dollars for a 100 Meg drive, an enormous drive in those days. The first games I played were actually purchased through the mail on floppy disks. I found the company in the back of a tech mag. The first game I fell in love with was a derivation of Atari’s Combat but it was cooler. It had fabulous ballistics and you could completely control terrain, weapons type and power, angle of fire (think Scorched Earth). Points were given and new weapons, tanks, terrains and abilities could be purchased during the game. Dozens of games were delivered by mail and played including one of the first versions of “Empire” that you could dial into a friend’s computer and play. Or in those days folks would bring their desktops over and you would play head to head with a serial cable connection on your enormous, sparkling new 60-pound 14” VGA monitor. Around that time the first community bulletin boards were available and you could Telnet in (through a modem) and play simple games, download programs and chat. My first modem was 2400 bits and cost $200. The space wars based games took days or weeks to play and you collected planets, built defenses, formed coalitions with other players and attempted to take over the universe. People were devious and would cheat, gathering assets from joined corporations, invading the master Citadel and wiping out their own allies.
In 1994 I built a 486-DX 50 AT tower computer for my business and a close friend turned me onto the first version of DOOM. By late 1994 there were programs available that allowed you to “modify” the game, create your own levels, monsters and world. It was truly the first time I felt a “virtual” experience gaming and it was hugely addictive. It was the first and only time in my life that a game became more important than the world around it and I spent thousands of hours playing. Sadly for me those days were the peak, DOOM II was wonderful but I found DOOM III annoying and complex, it had lost its important and powerful simplicity. (Kind of like Shrek III.)
There was a time when delving into the carcass of those old computers was a magical and mesmerizing addiction, now they seem merely tools and the new processors and upgrades a page turned in the same book. I know many young people that have swallowed today’s technology and wear it internally, truly a part of their being. I think that’s a bit frightening, and is changing the social and political sphere we lived in up to the beginning of this new century. I knew we were close to the end of the world when I saw two young girls texting each other in the mall.
They were 25’ apart.
Yes, they could see each other.
Dan Alvarez is a Sausage Maker from Baltimore who fixes things that don't work in his spare time.
