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This is precisely why "we" know it and neither our parents or children do. We were forced to do it just to make it work the way we wanted. It was necessary.

This is precisely why "we" know it and neither our parents or children do. We were forced to do it just to make it work the way we wanted. It was necessary. Hell, even semi-regular routine of formatting [the hard-drive] and reinstalling Windows because it was getting slow; taught a lot of people the simple basics. All of that is lost today. Factory reset -> input email & password -> sit back while everything reinstalls. What do you learn from that other then to make sure you had a backup of your data.

sigg3 5y ago
Reinstalling windows was domain knowledge on a per PC basis, in my experience. I had a draft UDMA/66 port on which I wanted my MASTER IDE (for performance), but Windows would not install on anything above UDMA/33. It would run fine once installed, however. The procedure was straight forward, but IDEs didn't announce its presence, instead there were manual MASTER/SLAVE jumpers on the drive themselves that would have to line up with the manually configured BIOS settings. Once Windows was installed, everything had to be physically pulled out, ports and cables changed, jumpers and BIOS checked or configured, enabling UDMA/66 (and thus disabling the 2nd IDE port, but not 3 and 4) and you could start using the OS. And Windows installation would BSOD with the network card in, so that would have to be added later but before downloading the necessary WaReZ. I also got into Linux at the very end of the 2.4 line, and vividly recall how everything changed to be more user-friendly with the 2.6 series of kernels.
DigitallyFidget 5y ago
Automobiles were very much the same. When they first started coming out, you really had to be a mechanic to own one. Autoshops/garages weren't a thing in the beginning. PCs were the same way. These days there's tons of auto shops and PC repair shops. You don't need to know a single thing about how a car or PC operates, you just take it to a shop when it has problems and have someone else fix it. If an individual wants to learn, they only need to pop the hood, look inside the machine, and check out tutorials and videos on youtube. Plenty of people grew up with computers and never learned a thing about how they worked, they'd just have someone else who knew about them fix their problems. We weren't forced to learn about them or had to, we chose to. That choice applies today as much as it did 25 years ago when I had to have my dad fix my computer for me. I just happened to want to learn how he did it and how to do it myself.

sigg3 5y ago

Reinstalling windows was domain knowledge on a per PC basis, in my experience. I had a draft UDMA/66 port on which I wanted my MASTER IDE (for performance), but Windows would not install on anything above UDMA/33. It would run fine once installed, however. The procedure was straight forward, but IDEs didn't announce its presence, instead there were manual MASTER/SLAVE jumpers on the drive themselves that would have to line up with the manually configured BIOS settings. Once Windows was installed, everything had to be physically pulled out, ports and cables changed, jumpers and BIOS checked or configured, enabling UDMA/66 (and thus disabling the 2nd IDE port, but not 3 and 4) and you could start using the OS. And Windows installation would BSOD with the network card in, so that would have to be added later but before downloading the necessary WaReZ. I also got into Linux at the very end of the 2.4 line, and vividly recall how everything changed to be more user-friendly with the 2.6 series of kernels.

DigitallyFidget 5y ago

Automobiles were very much the same. When they first started coming out, you really had to be a mechanic to own one. Autoshops/garages weren't a thing in the beginning. PCs were the same way. These days there's tons of auto shops and PC repair shops. You don't need to know a single thing about how a car or PC operates, you just take it to a shop when it has problems and have someone else fix it. If an individual wants to learn, they only need to pop the hood, look inside the machine, and check out tutorials and videos on youtube. Plenty of people grew up with computers and never learned a thing about how they worked, they'd just have someone else who knew about them fix their problems. We weren't forced to learn about them or had to, we chose to. That choice applies today as much as it did 25 years ago when I had to have my dad fix my computer for me. I just happened to want to learn how he did it and how to do it myself.