For all of us, there was a beginning, that moment when we crossed the line from mundania into the computer world. Since then, we’ve installed hardware, dealt with software glitches, struggled with Windows, and gained expertise in dealing with our machines. Some may have forgotten what it was like to be a “newbie”.
I’ve never forgotten. When my beloved Apple ][+ was set up (but without a disk drive, as I mentioned way back in In The Beginning), the instructions said to turn on the monitor first.
There is a danger in growing up with television. You turn on the TV, you expect to see something, even if it’s just “snow”. I turned on the monitor, and was met with blackness. Nothing to be seen at all. Maybe it needed to “warm up” first.
So I waited. Five minutes. Ten minutes. Fifteen minutes. Still nothing. Finally, I gathered my courage and turned on the Apple itself. Huzzah! The screen was no longer blank!
Of course, it was also a “Duh” moment, as I realized there wasn’t any need to wait minutes before turning on the computer. But hey, it was the very first time, after all. Just goes to show the perils of watching television! Just as well I don’t do that any more.
Then again, you don’t need to watch TV to make little mistakes. When my brother got his first computer (watch out, world!), he had a problem with a CD. It didn’t seem to be working.
So I said, “Let’s see it. Maybe it’s scratched or something.” The tray slides open. The CD is there. Upside down. I laughed. Heartily. Why would he think the drive on the computer was different from a CD player?
I dunno, but it made me feel a little bit better about that monitor ;)
i guess tech savy just doesn’t run in your family
I continue to be the newbie. I started out on the Atari 800, then learned the Atari ST, Amiga, and Mac Classic. Around 1990 I switched to using the PC mostly, though I had the ability to run 80286 programs in the Amiga previously. I went through a couple versions of DOS, GEM, and ran OS/2 and BeOS at times. Most recently I have started using OS X as my main productivity OS though I still run XP for games. I enjoy learning a new Operating System and it’s nuances.
One DOH! moment that I remember was when I replaced my Atari 800 with a 130XE. The 130XE had built in BASIC, where it was a cartridge on the 800. To bypass the built in BASIC which you needed to do for cassette tape loading games, you had to hold down the Option button while the tape was loading. Anyone who has used such as system knows that it takes a long, long time to load, so I am sitting there holding the Option button down the entire time, my finger turning white from pressing so long. I later found out that you only had to hold it during the tape initialization, not the entire time it was loading.
I know a bit more by now, Ag ;)
Xian, hehe. And with tape yet, too. Good thing you found out about that Option key before your finger fell off.
Not many comments here; do you think others are too embarrassed to admit their newbie mistakes?
My first experience with with MSDOS:
I inserted a WordStar disk someone gave me, waited in vain, typed in Start, Go, Basic, etc. for 5 minutes and then finally tried DIR, saw WS.EXE and ….
Hey, at least you finished Fountain of Dreams…
Go back to Arous, Brain, and take FoD with you ;)
Once upon a time, a young Verbose ran CHKDSK on his shiny, expensive copy of Ultima III and found bad sectors. Panicked, he ran RECOVER, aka Worst DOS Command Ever, and ruined his copy-protected game master disk. I’m sure my parents were relieved that I stopped yammering about the game. Good thing they never figured out what I did to it.
Verb, eeek! That was a bad one, all right. Did you get another copy of the game? Did you ever dare to use CHKDSK again?
GB, at least you didn’t use CHKDSK ;)
never would have…I had read the DOS manual, so I was familiar with the commands & their usage. I just didn’t know how to start a program. Seems that little bit of information was considered something every newb would know. :)
GB, it’s always the obvious that gets overlooked. But I’m glad to know you read the manual ;)
That was the end of my Ultima III adventures. I wasn’t getting anywhere anyway. Too much for my preteen self. And too primitive for today.
As often as various programs and OSes have crashed on me over the years, you bet I still run CHKDSK. It’s a mandatory filesystem fix-it tool under DOS and pre-NT kernel Windows. Even the NTFS filesystem doesn’t always clean up after itself when Windows throws a BSOD or other lockup, so CHKDSK is still around. RECOVER is the really dangerous program, never doing anything but trashing what it’s supposed to fix. It’s right down there with EDLIN for Worst of DOS.
Trivia note: EDLIN and RECOVER are still part of Windows! You can find them in WINNT\SYSTEM32. EDLIN: making vi look good since 1981.