The Internet and Hot Rod's

I am one of those ol' graybeards that was dragged kickin' and screamin' into the information highway,,,,let me explain,,

I was happy to not own a computer and could have lived the rest of my life without one because the way I saw things ,,,the computer was a waste of time,,,,I could be workin' on one of my cars and doing something I enjoyed!

I didn't take typing in school and spelling was not my best subject,,,just a couple of more reasons I avoided the computer and the internet.

I was content until one day my daughter was on the computer that I bought for her and she called me over and said she had found some cool cars!

This ol' Graybeard got hooked that very day,,,,,,,she never did finish her homework although she guided me on a strange and sometimes eye opening journey!

Long story short I am now more comfortable with the whole thing after using it for a few years.

The Hamb has been the main focus of my obsession with the internet,,,and to all the guys and gals that I have exchanged ideas with and learned from,,,thanks

My introduction to this technology was timid at first but now I have a hard time starting the day without it,,,,kinda like a fix for a junkie!

I was not born into the age of computers in every home,,,,when I came along there were not too many televisions,,,but I learned how to master the TV fairly quickly,,,,,only a couple of knobs!

I'm proof that ya can teach an ol' dog new tricks,,,he just does em slower!

My question,,,,,when,at what age and how did you learn about computers?,,,,HRP

 

I also resisted. Finally had a young friend build one for me. Two yrs later I managed to get on it . I still have problems, but have a friend that helps me thru. Have had excellent computers ruined by lightning. Still haven't the knack to post pics.

 

4 years ago ....about P/Cs and the internet......I had a heart attack.....and was confined to the house for 10 weeks.........you can only watch ' In the Heat of the Night ' and ' Law and Order ' but so many times. I was bored.......and my wife already had the computer and the internet in our home but.....I had never had any interest in it.......prior to the heart attack. Had previous computer experiences 25 years before .......not favorable....

Keep picking, stumbling and having foul evil thoughts about computer destruction......until I finally got where I could get around the net...a little....


Back in 1967, I went to tech school to be a computer programer...punch cards, Fortran and all that jazz........did not like it...... so I quit about 3/4 of the way thru the 1 year class. The computer was as big as a small garage. Never regreted it leaving it either.....

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My story is similar, I knew these damn things were just a passing fad and I wasn't going to get stuck with one.
I went to my Daughters for Thansgiving about 6 years ago. We arrived at 7:30 so my wife could help with the food. My daughter put me on her computor and brought up ebay.
I went to the bathroom a couple hours later ,scored a plate full of snacks,ate at 1:00 and my wife finally shut it off at 6:00 and made me go home.

Then was the good part , I scored a couple of old computors, because I can build anything right? Weeks later I walked into Best Buy and layed down the money for a new one.

I just wonder how much I could have accomplished if I had worked instead of playing on here.

 

Your story sounds almost identical to mine. I learned what computer skills i have (not many) through my job. Then i found the internet, it could consume all your time if you let it. Damn! now i know why my hair turned grey and fell out. Im going to blaim the computer.

 

We got our first real computer if you don't count a KAYPRO 4-(that's a 4 MB hard drive,kids!)- in about 1992. We've been dragged into the web slowly and screaming. My wife's uncle invented the microchip, but she's more of the Ludite persuasion. Now, with a fast connection, we use it all the time at work where it is indispensible for making appointments,tracking medical records, tracking inventory and business trends and information retrieval. The web is a dangerous place, but a wonderful place to finds friends like the HAMB and information-all of which need to be screened with common sense.

Oh, I guess the answer you wanted was 1992.

 

It was the spring of 1998, I was at a local Flea Market looking at an old square Mobil oil can. Guy said he had a better one on eBay, from then one everyone was saying eBay and that got me thinking. Asked around and NOONE could show me what the internet was! Got real pissed at all the computer sales people wanting two grand for something thay couldn't show me. Finally went to the local library and askes to see what this eBay deal was..............the rest is history. Marriage and the birth of out kids are the only things that outrank the discovery of the internet. Guy I subed out to set me up with an email/AOL account on his office computer and I tought myself how to use it after work at nights. Finally bought my own a few months later. I wish there was an easy way to sell older people on the idea of using the computer. Car stuff is great but I've also learned more about my Dad and the unit he was in in WWII. Computers are advertized wrong in my opinion, NEVER played a vedio game, don't plan to ever put financial data on one, and if I could have the guy that invented "Popups" in a room for 10 minutes I'd be a happy guy.

 

Mid 80's when I purchased my first Franklin computer.

 

the Kaypro 10 was the one with the hard drive (10 mb), the Kaypro 4 only had 2 floppy drives.

I have several Kaypros in my basement, along with about 75 other old computers.

I never had any trouble learning how to use the things, my older brother built his first computer in the mid 70s from parts/pieces. But I never had one until about 1990, then didn't get on the internet till 1995. since then I have sure slowed down building cars, because I waste so damn much time on the computer.

I envy my few old greybeard friends who still have nothing to do with computers...they churn out cars like crazy, and they're 25 years older than me.

 

TI 99/4A bought in 1981 at the tender age of 16.

I'm a geek from way back.

Do I win?

 

Kaypro 10 with the disc drive that was 1982 when I was working for a drainage engineer and was doing my calculations by hand and the magic box could spit it out in 5 mins and tell me how big to make a pond. Then on to autocad R3 DOS version.

My wife hates them and says it's a secret nerd society that just wants to make everyone feel inferior with their secret language

 

I've been around them since the mid 80's or so. I had a cousin that was really into them, I remember the internet when it was nothing but BBS's (bulletin boards). I can't remember the machine he was using, it was a old apple I think, the monitor was monochromatic (green text, black background). To connect to the internet, you set the receiver of the phone onto a cradle, and dialed the BBS you wanted to connect to. I didn't get my own until '98, but I had used another cousin's computer on a regular basis since '96. The internet was quite a bit different back then, but it's not as commercial now as me and my cousin speculated it would be back then. I really like the internet, it's about 90% pure crap, but that last 10% is pure solid gold. There's some truely great information floating around out there, this place is one of the largest groups i've ever found for it.

 

1974...damn that was another lifetime. Used a Burroughs the size of a VW in a programming class. Put in the programs on punch cards. That's old school.

 

my brothers in the living room with the computer, circa 1979? the phone and modem are on the piano, the home brew computer and TV set (monitor) are on the piano bench, they're on the "internet" although back then it was really just a terminal connected over the phone to the university main frame computer.

 

Ahhhh the good ol days...

Punch cards

8 inch floppies

Reel to reel tapes

Monochrome monitors

BASIC, FORTRAN, Pascal, etc

 

I had a computer class in 8th grade, so that was '85 I think. I hated them. I hated them until I got to college and found one of the true loves of my life... the Macintosh... in '89.

Fast forward a couple years, to the end of my junior year. A group of us in my design class decided if we really wanted an edge over our classmates, we were going to have to have our own computers. Plus, no more late nights at the computer labs. We were already helping our professors with their computers. So my first computer that I ever bought was a Mac IIci, a HUGE 16" monitor and a b/w laser printer for... $8000. That's no misprint either.

I never regretted it. It did suck when I donated it to a school cause it wasn't worth more than $500. It helped me get where I am today.

As for the internet, I have been online for almost 10 years.The first few years, it was mainly work related. Then I found the chevelle message board. And I have been addicted ever since. I've met lots of friends, found parts that were otherwise unobtainable. I'd be lost without it.

 

First computer I used was an IBM 360, circa 1978. F'er was the size of a house and it didn't have a screen. You programmed JCL and Fortran onto punchcards, fed the pile into a magnetic card reader and waited for a pimply dweeb behind a counter to give you a printout that listed all your errors.

First PC I used was an '81 IBM with two floppy drives (no hard disk) and 64k of memory. First computer with a hard drive, '83 Teltronix with 5MB (and 10" floppies!). Was on a Macintosh in '84.

Got my first email account in '85, and was on the internet in '86 before it was called the internet (ARPAnet/ BITNET). Used it to remote job submit (on a 300 baud modem) to the Cray clusters at the National Supercomputer Centers at Cornell and UIUC. Heady stuff then, but now my daughter's hand-me-down PC has more computing power than those Crays.

 

Yeah, I had to find out about this EBAY thing. 1999 I think.

They said you can find anything on the net. I needed a curved glass lens for an old SW gauge. It took about an hour but I found the lens and restored the gauge. I made contact through the first itteration of the Jalopy Journal classifieds. I was hooked.

It sure is nice to have a place to go where most of the people understand my passion for old hot rods.

It really is amazing what I've learned in the last few years. Thanks.

 

I have only been on the internet for the last five years. Growing up I never even knew what a computer was or had even seen one. In school they had them but I thought they were only training aids. I didnt even have a TV growing up, I was always doing something outside. It wasnt until highschool for graphic arts class did I find out what a computer really was ( I felt so stupid). I still didnt have a computer until my Fiance and I started dating in 01. She has had a computer since she was 8, so the learing process on my end has been very slow. But I aggree you can find anything on the internet, and the HAMB is like no other place.

Jonney

 

In the mid 80's I worked for Burroughs, then Unisys, doing my job on a computer. Did not surf the internet till the late 90's at a car friends house. I had my own computer (a hand me down) at the time but it was just sitting in a spare room not even connected to electricity. Shortly thereafter a girlfrend moved into my place for abit. She had an AOL account but no computer so we hooked up mine and used her account. I basicly just surfed car message boards and used email back then and pretty much use the internet the same way today.

I do feel the internet has had the greatest impact on my life over anything or anyone else. I've made friends all over the world, I've learned about new car shows and events to travel to and I've gained more hot rod related knowledge and skills because of the internet. The internet is truely amazing and I'm still in awe just thinking about it.

 

I was thrust into it through my intrigue with science fiction.
I still can't get enough of it.
Back in the early 80's when not many computers were found in any home,
I had the opportunity to get involved in robotics at my work.
Some of the first material handling and welding robotic systems in the industry.
I got hooked with the programming of them and I haven't stopped hating computers since.
The internet was never ever anything I had read about in any 60's science fiction book. No one seen this coming..a totally awesome connection of the world.

 

Pretty much same story here, 'cept I was a couple years behind you... maybe 1992-ish when I started messing with Macs in the lab in college. almost a year after I graduated I got my first Mac (a 7200/75 in late '95)... with an extra 32MB memory that cost more than the $1700 computer itself! I only had one computer graphics class in college, but as soon as I got out, I realized I needed to know my way around a Mac to be competitive in the job market. (I don't see how I could do my job [productively] if I had to use Windows...)

Didn't get online till '97... and that was pretty much email only, since the web was hardly worth surfing then... especially at 14400kbps... Didn't have much use for www till around 2000 when I got cable broadband... now I don't know how I ever lived without it!

 

What is so ironic is that we use this advanced technology to study and share ideas on building most of the throw back simple HOT RODS and CUSTOMS that we see on the HAMB,,,,,,, that are as basic as we want or with all the bells and whistles,,

It is amazing that you can ask a simple question you can get almost an instant answer,,,,and help can come from anywhere in the world,,,,,

Can you drive down the interstate in a car that was pieced together from ancient left over parts,,,with an engine that hasn't been made since 1953 and looks like the car was built in the 50's,,,and check out the guy in the car,,,with the shades and sideburns,,,,,,and what's that he is holding in his hand,,,,,,,,,,,is he on a cell phone? HRP

 

that's not a cell phone, it's a "communicator"



(isn't the internet great? I can almost instantly come up with a picture of an object that I remember seeing on TV in my youth!)

 

I also resisted and resisted until 2 years ago {will be 2 in Janurary} a computer was forced into the house. now a constant addict I am hooked on the car forum scene. I also had a touch of ebay-itus which caused me to create hotroddersauctions.com...as of yet less than a week old. I hope some local HAMBers will stop by and register...help me tune it so to speak. A little help from my fellow hotrodders turned internet junkies would make my day!
well over and out my fellow rodders, i have to go look at some engine stuff my buddy wants me to see, but I shall return shortly to my humble online abode to resume the internet chat....to hopefully learn a bit more and help a fellow rodder if possible

 

I had open heart in 99 time on my hands and i decided to retire from work as service manager so i started using the computer my then wife had bought and it soon became my computer been on it ever since...

 

Back about '68 or '69 I had to do a program for an accounting class I was in @ UT Austin. Computer took up whole basementof the business bldg, had to do a whole box of puch cards for one silly little thing. Next day go back find the cards you punched errors on, redo them, resubmit, finally got the few pages you needed to turn in for a grade. Also took a Fortran course. Back in 97 got my daughter a computer for high school graduation, started playing on the internet some. About 5 yrs ago changed jobs now I work off a laptop all day. Around 2002 got back into cars after a long absence, have a 50 Ford F-1 so got on the Ford site, heard what a rude crude bunch of guys there were on that HAMB place, stay away from there, bunch of hoodlums, they even put non Ford engines in Fords -GASP- me being the rebellious non-conformist hoodlum asshole I am came over & checked the HAMB out. Now for the last 3 yrs I get no car work done cause I'm on here instead of out in the shop. But I have a helluva lot of new friends and have a really good time.

 

i got started when i had to produce drawings for my old man
he bought one of the cheapest computers he could find and expected me to deliver and i did
and its been down hill since lol
bill

 

I use the computer since I´m 9 years old...that was 1989. It was very usefull, because I only played adventure & role Playing games in english language...that helped me a lot in school...especially in english lessons Internet came to my home 1996...so quite a long time, too Living without a computer which is online, is like living without a Kustom in the garage The Internet is like everybodies highway to the rest of the world but without big traffic jams! You can talk to everybody, without driving 100s of miles to visit them.