orangecomputer

Thank god it's not just me! I feel I went about my days the same way you did. I didn't "Get on the 486DX2", I got on "the computer".

I've had so many questions about my story with people saying "I call bullshit because he wasn't able to remember (minor detail X)" etc. It's only through absolutely racking my brains to bits and insane amounts of googling, facebook messages to old friends and such that I've managed to answer a few of these. It's good to know that my memory is not just deteriorating rapidly as I'd initially thought.

Some things stand out more than others. I was suspected of having ADD for a while, then the diagnosis was shifted to Aspergers Syndrome (something they apparently didn't know much about back then, or was not as commonly diagnosed/referred to as it is nowadays), but a potential giveaway for this was that I had an eidetic memory for some things, and a lot of other stuff that should've been important but I didn't care about was instantly discarded. I can remember down to a millimetre what few toys and possessions I owned, and what they looked like, yet I can't remember what my own BEDROOM looked like because it wasn't the bedroom itself, it was what interested me within it. The same went for most of my house, I barely remember what it looks like or what the furniture placement was. I put this down to perhaps some kind of mental block for traumatic memories. The old house appears in my dreams as a very very very large building and often in pitch black darkness so that I cannot really see what it looks like save for an insanely dim and flickering flashlight. I guess the mind has a funny way of dealing with inabilities to recall events.

Yet I can recreate in my head in incredible detail the structure of the school I attended as I spent quite a considerable amount of my time every day there, and I found the absolutely enormous building to be very interesting and different compared to the bland 1970s brick and tan buidings of my primary school years (I actually went on to recreate it in 3d from memory recently and was able to source some photos of it from the school themself).

http://i.imgur.com/eXb430f.jpg http://i.imgur.com/BDpt6wt.jpg

And yet, I can't remember how much RAM my system had, because it wasn't of any interest to me. It was just "the computer" to me at the time, not "the 486 DX2". Any time I would've seen how much memory the system had (I don't recall if I even used the MEM command, assuming it existed in that version of DOS) but if I had, it would've been "Oh I have X amount, okay" and then I probably never checked it again.

I also don't remember what exact games I had installed on the system, as I barely ever played most of them. I remember which ones I'd played at that point, but I do remember I definitely had Rise of the Triad shareware on there as it served as a key inspiration for writing a "3d" raycaster/FPS style engine. Interesting how selective memory can be, and how it will remember utterly useless details and points of information (or worse, remind you of the moments you did something embarassing or stupid) yet when it comes to crucial or vital events, it can draw a blank on something that was so striking to witness that you would think it would burn the image into your head for an eternity.

I'm hearing people recommend I try Python quite a bit. I may very well give it a try. I'm not sure why other than a school friend recommending it, but whenever I think "programming", I always think of C files and CPP files, so my first option was to try the C programming language and then C++.

I heard that the Battlefield 2 engine was written on Python, or perhaps I could be mistaking it for another engine, but it seemed pretty cool knowing of something that was finally written on something else.

I guess it was for two reasons. Looong post ahead but it describes in a fair amount of detail why I eventually was turned off of C programming, and it was not necessarily the language itself.

1) I opted to try and self-teach using tutorials which were highly inconsistent with one-anothers practices instead of learning at an accredited college or doing some type of course. It's also possible the tutorials I used were not that brilliant. I did find some fantastic ones later on around the time I stopped (as I started working full time).

2) I believe my folly also lies in jumping the gun, a lot. With BASIC I was able to just skip around in the commands list and experiment with each command in an afternoon, figure out how it worked and see if it was what I needed. If so, I had learnt what I needed, if not, I had learnt something for use in another day, and another code. It mightn't be the most optimal way to learn, but for me it allowed me to create -exactly- what I had intended, even if the mechanics inside were smoking and banging around, they still did what they needed to.

C was just not quite the same, and I wouldn't expect it to be. It's a much more powerful language from what I've observed.

One of the issues I frequently stumbled into, would be a tutorial that would state to use an external library/header that was never explained nor included on the tutorial page. One might state that I needed to include SDL.H but at no point in the tutorial, did it describe what the contents of it were, or of its purpose / where to get it. Now sure enough, you can google it and find that it refers to the Simple DirectMedia Library but am I wrong to think it's not professional to write in references and sources in a tutorial intended for beginners? "Figure it out / google it" doesn't always strike me as the best way to teach someone, but instead writing down a clear explanation of what is required and where it can be obtained etc.

I also had stumbled upon tutorials where the author had written their own custom headers for use with the code, but the headers themselves were not included for download or reference in that tutorial, nor the contents of them explained, so I'd often have no idea of what to substitute in place of that header or how to recreate that header accordingly.

I also became frequently discouraged by the responses I got when asking for help. It seemed that if I (as well as a LOT of other people, I saw this happen to a tonne of others) was stuck or unsure and made threads anywhere asking for a bit of advice or critique as to where I've gone wrong, I was constantly met with replies of either "If you don't even know the answer then you shouldn't be programming." or "The answer is obvious, programming is not for you." etc. I made a post at one point asking for a bit of advice on building a simple calculator once as one of my first few applications, and was met with responses of "This is a HUGE waste of time, there's already calculator sources out there available for download." which sort of missed the point; I was trying to make one, rather than plagurize someone elses. Getting questioned as to why you're learning to code when you can just steal someone elses seems the wrong way to go.

Perhaps I was in the wrong communities for me, although interestingly enough there was a tech journal article that I had read not too long ago where a senior programmer slammed the sadly all-too-frequent types of these responses due to the fact that it discourages a lot of potentially good novice programmers, with people arguing for and against negative reinforcement. Personally, being told "your code is shit, you're definitely not made to be a coder" isn't really inspiration to me. Being told "You've made an error here, this is what's wrong, this is why it's not working and this is how you fix it. Have another go at it." seems more appropriate. Sure a few people react to being told they're not good enough by thinking "Well fine, I'm going to beat you at that statement and do the BEST DAMN APPLICATION EVER", but to me, I don't like to think of programming as a boot camp, but as learning just as you would if it were photoshop or 3dsmax, and I sure as hell didn't hear people in any 3dsmax class I've attended saying "You're really bad at modeling, you should quit before you waste too much time on this.".

I've finally stumbled upon your post, after reading through all the comments this has gotten.

They definitely don't build 'em like they used to! The Pentium 1 133mhz system I used for a while after leaving is still in top notch shape today. I opened it up last year and there's no dust, rust or corrosion at all (and this is after it sat in a heavily tropical atmosphere for a few years recently). The hard disk is in perfect shape too, the whole thing runs like new.

I wonder how well the Osborne 486 would be running if I still had it, or if someone ever salvaged it out there and is running it today. Kind of a crazy thought but it's a shame to think that it's very likely become part of a landfill.

As the original author of the Imgur post, I agree with this.

Reading about people who have written PHP code on entry-level mobiles in 2005, or other Australians who tapped away on 15 year old systems at their school definitely has put me a lot more at ease. It has made me realize that my situation was not as bad as I'd felt initially, but rather many other people had the same deal growing up.

Contrary to the shock and rejection of belief expressed by a lot of people who have obviously grown up in areas with well funded schools and financially secure parents, this sort of thing happened to quite a lot of people, and it is STILL happening today.

I'd say there is still some kid out in some house out where I used to live, who is sitting in his room, hopefully not under the same oppressive circumstances as myself, but is working with his dads "old Windows 98 system" etc because it's all he has. There's no "right" in Australia to be up to date with the latest and greatest. No kid here has a guaranteed right to a mobile phone and a high powered computer in his bedroom, but is very fortunate to have them.

Thankfully, technology is much more affordable nowadays. In 2004, laptops were multi-thousand dollar items, but you can get a used system with Windows XP (or even 7) for less than a few hundred if you shop around now. I find that incredible.

Indeed after hearing about Windows 2000, I'm under the belief that it wasn't the OS at fault, but rather the horridly outdated and poorly maintained systems that the school was running it on. They never saw a defrag in their life, and took at least 10-15 minutes to book up, and even at that, doing anything was painfully slow. Should you accidentally hit the start button or run something, you were in for another painfully long wait.

I apologise to the Win 2000 fans. I never actually have tried it on a system in much greater health, but from what I've heard in the last few days, I'm sure it's not that bad, and guess I was just a bit mis-lead by the ridiculous systems they ran on.

I'm actually very willing to bet the school is still running those systems today.

I'm certainly reading! And with great interest at that, it's very interesting hearing of the other Australians who were in similar situations. I find it interesting too how a lot of those from America and other countries are quick to criticize the story and are shocked at how "you didn't have a mobile phone at age 13!?" or "I don't believe for a second that he didn't have an ADSL connection in rural Australia in 2002", or even the assumption that all our public schools in the outback of Australia were equipped with the latest in Pentium technology when in fact, some were as far back as 15 years out of date.

Thanks for the invite too. I don't know where I'd start with modern tech. I've been building up more knowledge over the years and started by purchasing each individual part to build my own system in 2009. I'm no whiz but I'd say I have a reasonable degree of literacy nowadays. The one thing I could use help with is getting started in modern programming. My head appears to still be stuck in the idea of using a simple text-editor-style compiler with no additional libraries, headers, (linkers?) etc required. I had a bit of trouble finding good tutorials that actually supplied the relevant libraries, headers etc for the code they were explaining, so it became difficult when they would expect that every new programmer knows straight away what the SDL header is for example, and where it can be acquired from.

Thanks for your comments.

Technically, the naysayers haven't bothered me too much, but a lot of people seem irked (and rightfully) that it was initially mistermed as an Operating System when in fact a simple shell of sorts. I have amended the imgur description since however.

As for what I'm doing at the moment, I'm a Lead Quality Assurance Analyst for a video games company. I love what I do, but as for pay, it's less than half the minimum wage. Goes to show that I REALLY love what I do I suppose, but I would really like to do something more technical someday. Perhaps special effects or something of the like.

I'd say the works were definitely a very important part of my life, although they were not necessarily a technical triumph by any means. I still claim that they're nothing more than a series of cheap hackery and tricks, but hey, even a Magicians work will entertain and amaze, even if it's not "really" happening you know?

My stepfather is still out there, but both time and emphysema will catch him in the end, so I try not to concern myself too much with it. Nature and tobacco will do its work.

That's a very very logical perspective of it, considering it from both sides.

A lot of times, my parents (mother and stepfather) played it off as "he needs to be disciplined etc", although they omitted certain truths when it came time to talk to the police. A punch to the side of the head was a "clip over the ear" etc. The police however seemed not to care, I will never forget hearing their "Ah yeah." reactions to it, but again they face the same thing as mentioned above. Even if you're not legally allowed to hit a child now, it's still seen in some places here as an unwritten omission of law to discipline your child if it is "Reasonable", such as a smack on the bum etc.

Indeed being kept inside the home wasn't really the bad part of it all. I have always been much of a loner, and it was very likely I wouldn't have done much outside of the home. I did sometimes "Run away" for nights, and I would walk through the city or walk out into the country for a very very very long time at night wondering where to go or what to do. Now that I look back on it, I'm actually very surprised albeit greatful that I never was abducted or robbed. But at that point, I didn't really care where I went or what happened because anything seemed better than what was going on at home.

The teachers noticed, and they tried to help at first, but this only resulted in aggressive confrontations with my stepfather. They then wanted absolutely nothing to do with either himself or me.

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/child-death-cover-...

The Department of Community Services was responsible for overseeing cases such as child abuse etc in during that time (or DOCS as we called it). My counsellor spoke in great depth to me about it, but he was not confident that much would be done (as seen above, many many cases are left behind or ignored). He put in a lot of requests to DOCS to look into my situation, and they did only a few of those times, but their methods were shocking and they did absolutely nothing. They interviewed my stepfather once and it more or less consisted of "have you mistreated a minor in your household?" "No?" "Oh okay well thanks anyway, bye". On another occasion, they spoke to me about it. I honestly couldn't remember what we talked about, as I felt a bit too young to fully understand what was really going on. I spoke to so many people about it and no-one was able to help, including the police.

(I'm wondering if the department was understaffed or suffering some other internal crisis? They still are apparently.)

In 1999, I would've been 10 years old, so when I finally left, I was 17 nearing 18 as the new year approached. Goodbye teen years, but it would've been a lot worse if I was a kid. A lot of the physical nasties that occurred stopped as I grew older, perhaps out of the fact that my stepfather was aware I'd be a lot wiser about how to tackle it (ie I could more easily convince police of something going on.). He was very careful to get as close to the border-line of crossing the arrest threshold as he could, without ever actually going over it. He never hit my mother, but he hit us and we were raised by him to believe that getting either choked, kicked in the back etc was "Discipline" rather than abuse.

I'd have to agree on the inadequacy of both child protection and law enforcement here, as it's been shown in the last couple of days with the "terrorist" in sydney, the justice system here is seriously broken. The same man who deprived us of liberty was walking free on around 40-50 other charges, including break and enter, sexual assault of a minor, assault etc, much like the fellow who held up the cafeteria. I don't know where the break down is, but the justice system always seems to "let people off with a warning" or a light sentence. If you assault someone, expect to walk free. If you break into someones house and molest a child as he did, you walk free with a big scary "warning". If you continue, it's another big scary "warning" etc.

He's still out today, and I haven't pursued it, because I know that there is no way he would ever be behind bars, the justice system completely let us down and I wouldn't trust it with my life. One of the first men I rented my first apartment with was exactly the same; multiple charges that should have landed him behind bars, yet he was walking free but with police coming to the door from time to time to "check on him". Of course it wouldn't stop any crook from doing something stupid if they are clever enough not to be caught.

I wrote it up as best as I could in the imgur description, but I'll see if I can summarize it here.

Basically, I was without any modern resources for quite some time. I had a 486, QBASIC and EDIT.com to play with; the rest of the DOS exes etc I didn't want to touch out of fear of buggering up my system as I wasn't very computer literate.

My library had two 1970s books on BASIC which I loaned out (Basic BASIC and Advanced BASIC by James S Coan) and with nothing else to do in the hours after school, I decided to try my hand at it. I played around with it for a bit and built a really primitive "DOS Clone", which relied on a simple series of INPUT's, PRINT's, IF / THEN statements and GOTO. I then also began experimenting with the ASCII Character map which was included in the QBASIC help file, and realized that if I used the correct ASCII codes, I was able to form visualizations on the screen, simple GUIs etc. I combined the two and began adding more and more functionality to it until I eventually named it "OSCI" ("Aussie"). That's pretty much all there was to it.

How: An old 486, QBASIC, and lots of free time

Why: Boredom, curiosity.

Now that would've been more interesting. I never got to experiment with printing or connecting anything to my own system, but it would've been fun to make something like what you've described.

Indeed C was a bit intimidating to me at first. I took up a TAFE games programming course in 2008 to learn it, but our teacher was an ex-banker and didn't seem to really have any enthusiasm for games, and there wasn't really any "games programming" in the course. I left after getting mugged in broad daylight on a busy road (Mount Druitt is absolutely atrocious, never going back there again!)

I had access to two programming books; Basic BASIC and Advanced BASIC by James S Coan which I loaned out (and frequently over-loaned) from my high school library. I searched intensely during lunch periods at the library for other books on anything related to computers and programming, but I don't recall any other notable computer books.

The books I had loaned out however were dated 1977 - 1978 according to a recent google search. Very obsolete for the time. I'm tempted to call the high school library and see if I can buy them, since they'd be even more so useless for any student who wants to get into programming now.

Better yet, it's just given me an idea, if they still haven't updated their books on programming, I might even see if I can buy a few good modern books on C / Python etc and donate them to the library, along with software. Who knows, it might stop someone else from ending up the same way I did.

I haven't seen the movie, but I have read once that he used to sleep to orange lights as he believed humans would sleep better to it after being accustomed to sleeping by the light of a fire for many many years.

I'll have to look into his early years and see, although I was probably nowhere near. I was a very emotionally unstable and unusual kid after the move to the country. I had zero social skills and a lot of post traumatic stress disorder from events at home. My methods to socializing and living in general were very odd.

I hoarded food and possessions as the cupboards at home were often (but not always) padlocked to keep me from picking my own food out. I would hunt around in bins for discarded food or 5 cent coins to save for canteen food and was referred to as a "scab" quite a bit, but I tended to ignore this, even though I was probably seen as one of "Those oddball kids". I had very little value placed on my reputation.

A lot of my possessions were often confiscated, and anything of special value (ie gifts from my dad) were often smashed and broken in front of me. I had a beautiful Carramar Lava Lamp once that he purchased for me which was destroyed by my stepfather to stop me from staying up at night and using it to read. The trait still sticks with me now; I don't hoard general junk, but I am extremely protective of my current possessions.

Not sure if this ties in with Julian Assanges story. Again I'll have to check it out. He sounds like a very intriguing person.

I guess I've answered the threads question in a sense.

Though I wish I'd at least had a basic copy of Windows XP, and a good C++ compiler + some reference books.

It's very hard to say.

Right before leaving for the country, circa 1997-1998, my best friend was trying to get me into C++, as he was a games dev / games fanatic like I was. I had always wanted to get my hands into C++ and start working with it. It never really transpired sadly as I had no idea where to start.

Completely understandable; My modern system has suffered enough hard disk failures to put it in the 2 digit range, and I've gone through around 7 graphics cards. Likely the result of having a computer that is constantly exposed to extremely tropical humidity and sea air. The last graphics card I had to die (only a few nights ago as a matter of fact) has rust on it, and is only a year old.

They don't build em like they used to! The Pentium 1 interior blew me away upon opening it. Not a tad of corrision, rust, or even dust! Also the disks are still in top notch shape and seem to read just fine.

Yep, so far it's just for QBASIC. I can't see much point in resurrecting it or attempting to port it, but if I ever get into C#/C++/another modern language, I will likely focus on writing new and more interesting apps.

I really wish that I had Linux around that time. It's always piqued my curiosity but I fear I wouldn't be able to think of a practical purpose for it (however that probably also stems from a lack of knowledge about Linux itself and what it can do). I have as much knowledge of Linux and its capabilities as a 3 year old would in driving a car.

I'd love to write a larger and more in depth recount of it, and release it alongside the codes someday. I would more than likely release it for free, or if it ever got published, donate a lot of the proceeds to a domestic violence charity.

Indeed, I've re-worked the title to include quotes around the "OS" parts as everyone who states that it is a shell is actually correct. I should've termed it better.

Indeed having no inspiration or having a lot of boredom leaves the mind to create its own entertainment and innovation, however I'd disagree that I'm smart. My code is merely a series of hackery and visual tricks. It technically -does- do what it is supposed to, but it is nowhere near as maintainable, optimized and well written as the code of that of a talented or seasoned programmer.

Thanks for your kind words!

Sadly not as far as I know.

As proven with the recent attack in Sydney (the guy had been walking free with 40 charges against him), my stepfather was in the precise same position. Multiple charges but walking free because the justice system had catastrophically failed.

That's a very good question. I can't actually remember any particular inspiration for using 1995 as a start date, but it was probably just a random year to give it an "Authentic" look as if it had been some old shell system for the TAFE that had been in use for ages (ie much like how most software will have "copyright 1996-2014" to certify the date on which the copyright was filed and what the current year was. It was however, never meant to be an authentic piece of software or have any significant numbers, merely written as a brief demonstration that used a few simple commands to list file and directory structures. 2006 was the year that code would've been made though.

My experience level with computers was minimal; I had basic knowledge of running games from the DOS prompt or a particular type of DOS Shell that my dad had set up on our home computer.

Other than that, I had no knowledge. I didn't know anything about processor power, RAM, etc.

I'm not sure if it's used for anything anymore, but QBASIC is, I believe, freely available on Microsofts legacy FTP. It's a very safe and easy to use environment to learn about putting together some basic programs (hence the name BASIC?). If you learned to say, build a calculator in QBASIC, it wouldn't be hard to take that programming knowledge and move it across to a modern language like C.

I've amended the original imgur post to reflect this. You're 100% correct, it's not an actual OS. but rather a primitive GUI of sorts that is an imitation/representation of what I perceive to be an 80s OS.

Yep, it's more or less a shell. I probably should've clarified it a bit better in the imgur description. It's basically a dos shell representitive of my rendition of a "late 1980s OS".

I know it had 640k extended memory via the startup memory check.

I don't know how much processing power nor memory it had. I had never owned a computer, and my dad left it behind for me after the divorce so I had something to use. I had no idea what was inside.

I'd agree that this would be a very relevant factor if I had programmed a "true" operating system (since most true programmers would probably be knowledgeable with the amount of memory usage going on etc), but to take things a bit more indepth, I suppose I haved't actually coded an operating system, but rather a dos Shell of sorts that is a facsimile of an 80s-style operating system. It merely uses the same commands as dos and interprets them into a visually descriptive feature on the screen (such as a split-screen with directory and file listings for example), as well as a few commands of my own that I added in. My terminology is not fantastic, but I suppose indicative of what I considered to be an OS. A Graphical shell might have been a more accurate term.

I remember the specs of all the systems I've had since then, but with the 486, I didn't spec it out myself, and was merely a kid with a computer at that point.

Exactly what happened to me in 2006 when I left the country. I wanted to catch up on everything; I had Deus Ex, the Quake series, DOOM etc to get through.

Now if I try and code something, there are too many distractions, yet when you're sitting in a silent basement, your ideas tend to fill your head pretty quick (+ many a hot dull afternoon at school).

Today I still have a working Pentium 1 with hard disks in full operating order.

As for the 486, I brought it down to my dads when I moved, and switched to using his much more modern system. It did eventually "die" in 2007-2008. My dad threw it out after the clock chip failed on the motherboard. I was pretty bummed because it sounds like a fairly straightforward fix / such a minor issue, but he's as sentimental as I and referred to it as "an old clunker".

OP here; Technically, I had already played them to death over the 1990s. Dad used to bring home multiple shareware games: Xargon, Jill of the Jungle, Wacky Wheels, Skunny Kart, you name it. I played them until I became tired of them, although I never got sick of Rise of the Triad.

I had a few floppy disks with these titles on them, but again, having played them for so long, I chose to start my own little endeavour to create games instead of playing them, so I eventually removed everything but ROTT for as much disk space as I could get (being my first computer and such, I believed it might've helped performance, was still learning at this point). When I wasn't writing crappy interactive textventures, I was writing up stories in general in EDIT. My reasoning was also that when my stepdad would come into the room, he could never say I was "off playing those bloody games" again in an argument, and that I could argue that I was studying the books I'd picked up from the library.

I did play a lot of ROTT in my spare time. It was an early copy (1.0) which had some features removed from the final game such as alternatively coloured pushpillars and the such, but as my system had no speakers, the pc speaker became more and more annoying over time as well. That much I definitely remember, but since we went through so many shareware games in the 1990s, I don't remember what was ultimately on the system when it was given to me (nor when it was thrown away). I would give everything I owned to get it back, but unless someone chose to salvage and restore it, that system is long gone and crushed up.