🚀 go-pugleaf

On 5/17/2017 10:51 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
> Mid-Month Ramble - May 2017
>
> Ha! You didn't believe me when I wrote that I intended to make this a
> recurring, monthly thing; well, I'm back. I honestly didn't think my
> last maunder was worthy of any responses, but I guess talking about
> the old times hit a chord; I'm not sure this month's blather will have
> the same success. Not that will stop me, of course; blather is my
> middle name...
>
> --------------------------------------
>
> So this month, I'm talking upgrades; specifically, wedging on new bits
> of hardware to make your computer run better. It's on my mind because
> I just got a new video-card. There's a certain joy in getting new
> hardware and watching as your PC - seemingly slow and sluggish - is
> revitalized into a ravenous devourer of framerates. Even more than the
> practical effects, I enjoy the act of the upgrade: the study to
> determine if an upgrade is worth it, the anticipation of how the
> upgrade will reinvigorate the computer, the challenge of the actual
> installation, the worry that you may have fucked something up during
> the installation or wasted your money when performance doesn't
> improve, the joy when you realize performance /has/ improved, and even
> the eventual disappointment that - though framerates are smoother -
> the games are still pretty much the same.
>

I've typically only upgraded when there's something I just can't play at 
all that I really want to.  No support for my ancient computer... Or 
plays in a slideshow even at the lowest settings.

>
> My first upgrade was adding a second hard-drive. No wait, that's not
> true. More correctly, a new hard-drive was the first upgrade to an
> *IBM/PC-compatible*; technically, my first hardware upgrade was adding
> a mouse to my old Apple ][c. Yes, back in the day, a new mouse was
> considered an actual upgrade. I don't even remember why I got the
> mouse; it was probably in response to hype about how mouse-driven
> computing was the new hotness. This was just after the first Macintosh
> computers were released, so Graphic User Interfaces were all the rage
> in tech-magazines and I am just as vulnerable to that sort of
> circumspect advertisement as anyone else. But I can tell you that the
> "disappointment" phase hit pretty quickly and pretty hard; the Apple
> II mouse was a clumsy, uncomfortable soap-bar with almost no
> application support and offered little improvement over the keyboard.
> There had been a vague hope I might use the thing to draw images
> directly in the computer - I'm a bit of scribbler in real life - but
> as anyone who has used MS Paint can tell you, any skill in sketching
> with pen-n-paper translates very poorly to mouse-n-screen. The mouse
> was quickly relegated to a dusty corner of the computer desk and
> rarely used after the first few days.

I don't even remember what my first was if you don't count just buying a 
new computer, though ever since I entered the PC market I've always 
built my own.  I've got a receipt around for a 400MB HD for around $500 
though.  Mine probably was a HD for a real upgrade too.  Or maybe a 
joystick.  Perhaps you could count a notch cutter for 5&1/4" floppies so 
you could use both sides.

Of course being a computer tech I've upgraded more computers than I can 
count, just most of them not mine.
 >
> After that, though, my upgrading days were on pause for a good while;
> the Apple ][c wasn't really meant to be upgraded, as it lacked the
> internal slots for new boards and there was only so much you could
> plug into the serial ports in the back. Oh, there was a printer (an
> ImageWriter II, a cranky beast with terrible output that served me
> well for ten years) and a disappointing joystick that never stayed
> center (a big black-n-red thing, it came with an autofire feature that
> didn't work in any of the games I owned and a little red screwdriver
> used to manually tighten its springs; though the stick is long gone, I
> still own that screwdriver to this day) but that's pretty much it.
>

That reminds me, the first computerish thing I ever fixed, was my mom's 
boyfriend's business' ball-head printer when I was 15.  I don't remember 
what I did, probably saved him $500 to replace it.
>
> I should mention that at the time I was technically inept. I had no
> experience and confidence with electronics; I dreaded working with the
> innards of any machine, much less anything as technical and
> cutting-edge as an early 90s computer! I am also the sort of person
> who invariably manages to touch a live wire, and I've had more than a
> few painful shocks that have made me wary of dealing with anything
> with current (to this day, I always double-, triple- and
> quadruple-check to make sure I've yanked all the power cords from a
> computer before I open it, and even then I might wait a few hours or
> days for the capacitors to drain first. Shock me once, shame on me;
> shock me twenty times, and I'm gonna start being really careful ;-).
>

Funny, with all the computers I've been in, I don't ever remember being 
shocked.  I've been cut by the cases and other sharp points more times 
than I can count, and every single computer I've owned and upgraded. 
I've been mildly burned by overheating components too.

> But even as I grew more comfortable with the art, it became less
> fulfilling, partly because maturing technology made it so much easier.
> Plug-n-play architecture meant I rarely had to worry that some new
> device was going to brick my precious device; better designs made it
> impossible to plug something in the wrong way (I'm still terrified -
> arguably without cause - of applying some inadvertent electro-shock
> therapy however). The sheer technical elegance and capability of
> modern machines also make upgrading less necessary; at the height of
> my fascination, I was probably applying some new upgrade every three
> months or so; these days I can go years before cracking open the case.
> So it's not really the same. Yet even today, when I install some new
> device, I can still recall the same frisson of excitement that has
> thrilled me since those heady days when a second floppy drive or a new
> sound-card was a monumental improvement.
>

It was at least 7 years between my last 2 CPU upgrades, that's a really 
long time difference compared to previously, usually 2-3 years before it 
was hurting enough on new games to really need it.  Those GPUs are still 
getting upgraded like clockwork every 2ish though.

I haven't even bought a sound card in ages, the on board ones have been 
fine for me.

- Justisaur