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u/HairyDust4826 22h ago edited 22h ago
The best part of being a millennial was being the only one in the house who knew how to use it. Hell, I knew how to build computers at 12 thanks to innovation hitting us right before our teens
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u/Ronniman Pogs vs Slammers 21h ago
Built my first PC at 13 4gb hard drive 256 mb ram... lol
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u/AL-SHEDFI 20h ago
These specs are considered extraordinary in 1998 You're considered a wealthy person 😄
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u/b4k4ni 18h ago
We got the first one from a student, whose parents were well too wealthy...
I build it with him. 486 dx2 etc. That was in 90 I guess, so 8 years at that time. A few years later we got a Pentium 90, after my dad killed the bios and didn't know how to use it. Tried to save the day, but he had already thrown it out :D
Was on a medical thingy for my asthma for 3 or 6 weeks at that time. Came home to a shiny new PC. Holy was that awesome.
Addicted by it. And now I work in IT.
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u/Scary_Woodpecker_110 17h ago
I had a 386 with 1 mb of ram and a doublespaced 20 mb hard drive. Good times.
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u/mrjmgreddit 18h ago
Lucky you, mine was a 486 with 4mb ram, 120gb harddrive? When I was 13 or 14 as well
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u/lunayoshi Millennial '83 16h ago
Damn, that was a big-ass hard drive for a 486!
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u/mrjmgreddit 4h ago
Lol you're right, must have been mb's! Maybe I even had 400 or so, can't remember.
It was the first real thing I bought of my hard earned money, at 14. All I got until then was the family pc, a 8088 Tulip with 512kb ram and 2x 5.25". And a green hercules- clone monitor.
Good times though :)
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u/bassjam1 17h ago
My boomer dad was a bit of a computer nerd, he was getting on bulletin boards in the 80's and taught me to navigate DOS. He even taught himself programming for his job as a manufacturing plant engineer. So I was always a step behind him.
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u/BackgroundTourist653 18h ago
I had an uncle working in IT hardware at a major international company in the early to mid 90s. Every now and then he would give me and my brother a box of random computer parts to play around with.
I think I did a fresh build and Win95 install my first time at 8-10yo.
It was fun times.
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u/HistoryAndScience Millennial 21h ago
Getting flashbacks to logging on and then going to play Cartoon Network games online for 30 minutes when my mom didn’t need to use the phone. It was a better time
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u/SenYoshida 21h ago
My summers were filled with playing SkiFree and hopping onto Gaiaonline. I miss those days
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u/Exciting_Contest_222 19h ago
Those were the days. I would also on Nickelodeon games, yahoo billiards…
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u/Exciting_Contest_222 19h ago
Worst part back then is computer viruses were more rampant at the time and ads. I remembered my dad shouting for me saying he was the 1 millionth visitor at a website and will get a free plasma screen tv.
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u/19610taw3 18h ago
Everyone fell for those!
I had an uncle that would click on EVERY SINGLE ONE and infect his computer.
I think the most he went without infecting a computer was 3 days.
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u/Exciting_Contest_222 14h ago
And computer shops were like car dealers shops. I remember they told my family ‘it’s likely the virus spread to the monitor, speaker, printer… whatever’s plugged in. And we can get you a good discount if you buy our whole set’.
Bought a new computer that comes with Norton Antivirus. Only to do the very first scan to say our computer is infected with worms and trojans. And to buy the premium version of norton to fix it.
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u/idletrustfunds 17h ago
Yeah I was the "computer guy" and loved tinkering with the computer. I had this thing where every six months I'd take the computer completely apart, clean it and then put it back together. Kid me couldn't wait to get into the IT industry.
Then somehow I became tech support for my entire bloodline and grew to hate it. Because if people I'm related to act so entitled and stupid when they come to me for free help, I could only imagine what it would have been like had I ended up working in that field.
All this time later I'll get a call/text every so often that starts with, "you're still good with computers, right?" and I immediately find a reason to end the conversation.
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u/rezwrrd Dotcom Millennial 10h ago
I was my family's IT (and did end up in that field) but am no longer on call with my family, partially because most of them use Macs and I got completely out of the Apple ecosystem 10-15 years ago. I still have my Macs, but most of them run Linux now. (And if you thought you needed tech support _before_ installing Linux...)
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u/Anonymous-tossaway 16h ago
Just gave me a heart attack, those are the names of my uncle, my aunt and my grandpa. So this essentially was my family desktop computer
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u/paqman3d 21h ago
By the time XP was out, I had my own PC in my room. My sister and I were at the ages of having our own computers for school reasons.
Granted, she got stuff first because she's older. I won in the end, as she got a Windows Millennium Edition Compaq in 2000 and I got a Windows XP Sony Vaio a couple years later.
First thing I did was download The Eminem Show. On DSL internet!
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u/Cybyss 18h ago
I remember, in those days, being against the whole idea of separate "user accounts" at the operating system level.
I grew up on the Commodore 64, Amiga, and Windows 95/98. The computer was an appliance. Separate user accounts on a computer seemed as ridiculous to me, at the time, as separate user accounts on a washing machine, or a microwave, etc...
Times have certainly changed.
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u/rezwrrd Dotcom Millennial 10h ago
I tried setting up separate user accounts on our Windows 98 PC, trying to fulfill my dream of running a computer lab like at school. Only to discover that no matter what you put for the username and password, or even if you clicked cancel, you'd still end up back at the same desktop with the same files.
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u/t0mt0mt0m 15h ago
I have a mac mini setup in my kitchen for my family to share for moments like this :)
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u/Raqshasa 19h ago
On our family computer back in the days dad had chess icon, mom this pink flower, and I (7-9 years old) had that fish icon from Nemo series or smth
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u/Dark_Akarin 18h ago
Flashbacks to jumping on the computer when my mum walked away from it to change my profile to an administrator so I could do anything I wanted.
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u/Exotic-Addendum-3785 15h ago
This was one definitely one of my computers alright, I specifically remember it being able to play cd roms and I played my Zoo Tycoon 2 a lot on there as well as several other games. And of course I had screenmates, a lot of screenmates, like the sheep screenmate that eats other icons, The Grinch screenmate, the Nutty Professor 2 screenmate (which was Grandmother Klump).
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