3 ms·

In high school we had a P.C. tech class where we learned how to build computers which were donated to the school from various churches and businesses doing upgr

In high school we had a P.C. tech class where we learned how to build computers which were donated to the school from various churches and businesses doing upgrades in the area. All the hardware was about 3-4 years behind current tech at the time (2001-2002, so computers were from 1998ish), however it was a great way to learn the fundamentals and this was back when you could fry a motherboard by connecting the PSU to it incorrectly. Long story short as one of the exercises we would break workstations that other students would then have to troubleshoot and fix. Some were annoying, pop off keyboard keys and put back in proper positions. Others were simple but annoying when you are learning such as finding the jumpers in the wrong spot on a hard drive. One kid in our class definitely did this 'trick' where they turned the Monitor brightness off. It was the last workstation to finally get fixed that day and this story reminded me of that day I had forgotten about.

acheron 7y ago
this was back when you could fry a motherboard by connecting the PSU to it incorrectly. In 2001? From what I remember, everything was using ATX power by the late 90s, which could only be connected in one direction. I thought the possibility of connecting power incorrectly was more of an XT/AT 80s/early 90s thing. I could totally be misremembering though. In any case, that does sound like a fun class. Kind of stuff I had to learn on my own. Speaking of connecting things incorrectly though: my ongoing issue was that every time I disconnected the ribbon cable to the floppy or hard drive, I would inevitably reattach it backwards, no matter how much I told myself to make a note of the correct direction.
- aphextim 7y ago
  We live in a small town of 8,000 or so. Our electronics were behind the times a few more years. Most of the computers we worked on first year I believe were 486 machines because as people were learning they would ruin them and it wouldn't be a big deal. I remember an entire closet filled with old components/computers stacked on shelves to the ceiling with the yellow cigarette tar faded color on everything. I Googled a 486 motherboard for fun and this is what I remember working on where the PSU had a 2 part connector for the motherboard which if you did wrong you would smell burning pretty fast. https://www.picclickimg.com/d/l400/pict/163311603533_/Vintage-486-Motherboard-PCCHIPS-CHIP-11-with-CPU.jpg https://www.picclickimg.com/d/l400/pict/163311603533_/Vintag... I do remember all of them did not even have an AGP slot for graphics and most of the machines we experimented on were much older than anything we would use for the software side of the class. (Almost all only ran DOS or Windows 3.1 maybe a win 95 outlier) I remember when we went to build 'modern' computers it was much easier than the older machines we were working on because of the dummy proof ATX boards and AGP slots for graphics cards, notched IDE cables etc. I haven't messed with anything that old in a while I just remember a tip my teacher said. "Make sure that the red stripe was on the same side as the PSU connector" When looking at the back of a floppy drive if the power connector is left of the IDE cable slot make sure the red stripe is on the left side. If the power connector is on the right side of the IDE cable slot make the red stripe face right. (Not sure if this works 100% of the time but it was the method I used and it got me through the class). Now everything has dummy notches so at least putting computers together nowadays is as simple as building a Lego house in my opinion. I remember that teacher was amazing, in part probably because of my bias towards liking the class anyway. Teacher notices all kids would play this RPG maker thing in their 30 minutes of free time (2 hours class, 1 hour hardware, 30 minutes test on what you learned, 30 minutes of free time). Assigned a project where everyone in the class had to make a playable RPG and listed components needed such as 5 triggered events, 10 battles etc. We all got to play each others RPG's live in class to show them off. Best RPG was from this one kid who seriously must have spent 80 hours +. It had every person in the class in it, started with the kid waking up at home, going to school with battles on the bus ride. The character attended the PC Tech class with the final battle being fighting Captain (The Teacher) There was even a decent story about the teacher using the students to program a virus that would shut down the entire worlds infrastructure - and the one kid that was the main character of this RPG discovers this fact, eventually takes on the teacher and when it was over the Game Over / Credits screen was a silly little animation symbolizing the protagonist zeroing out all the hard drives. A teacher who sees what the kids are interested in and then ends up creating an assignment based around that is a good teacher.

acheron 7y ago

this was back when you could fry a motherboard by connecting the PSU to it incorrectly. In 2001? From what I remember, everything was using ATX power by the late 90s, which could only be connected in one direction. I thought the possibility of connecting power incorrectly was more of an XT/AT 80s/early 90s thing. I could totally be misremembering though. In any case, that does sound like a fun class. Kind of stuff I had to learn on my own. Speaking of connecting things incorrectly though: my ongoing issue was that every time I disconnected the ribbon cable to the floppy or hard drive, I would inevitably reattach it backwards, no matter how much I told myself to make a note of the correct direction.

aphextim 7y ago
We live in a small town of 8,000 or so. Our electronics were behind the times a few more years. Most of the computers we worked on first year I believe were 486 machines because as people were learning they would ruin them and it wouldn't be a big deal. I remember an entire closet filled with old components/computers stacked on shelves to the ceiling with the yellow cigarette tar faded color on everything. I Googled a 486 motherboard for fun and this is what I remember working on where the PSU had a 2 part connector for the motherboard which if you did wrong you would smell burning pretty fast. https://www.picclickimg.com/d/l400/pict/163311603533_/Vintage-486-Motherboard-PCCHIPS-CHIP-11-with-CPU.jpg https://www.picclickimg.com/d/l400/pict/163311603533_/Vintag... I do remember all of them did not even have an AGP slot for graphics and most of the machines we experimented on were much older than anything we would use for the software side of the class. (Almost all only ran DOS or Windows 3.1 maybe a win 95 outlier) I remember when we went to build 'modern' computers it was much easier than the older machines we were working on because of the dummy proof ATX boards and AGP slots for graphics cards, notched IDE cables etc. I haven't messed with anything that old in a while I just remember a tip my teacher said. "Make sure that the red stripe was on the same side as the PSU connector" When looking at the back of a floppy drive if the power connector is left of the IDE cable slot make sure the red stripe is on the left side. If the power connector is on the right side of the IDE cable slot make the red stripe face right. (Not sure if this works 100% of the time but it was the method I used and it got me through the class). Now everything has dummy notches so at least putting computers together nowadays is as simple as building a Lego house in my opinion. I remember that teacher was amazing, in part probably because of my bias towards liking the class anyway. Teacher notices all kids would play this RPG maker thing in their 30 minutes of free time (2 hours class, 1 hour hardware, 30 minutes test on what you learned, 30 minutes of free time). Assigned a project where everyone in the class had to make a playable RPG and listed components needed such as 5 triggered events, 10 battles etc. We all got to play each others RPG's live in class to show them off. Best RPG was from this one kid who seriously must have spent 80 hours +. It had every person in the class in it, started with the kid waking up at home, going to school with battles on the bus ride. The character attended the PC Tech class with the final battle being fighting Captain (The Teacher) There was even a decent story about the teacher using the students to program a virus that would shut down the entire worlds infrastructure - and the one kid that was the main character of this RPG discovers this fact, eventually takes on the teacher and when it was over the Game Over / Credits screen was a silly little animation symbolizing the protagonist zeroing out all the hard drives. A teacher who sees what the kids are interested in and then ends up creating an assignment based around that is a good teacher.