Introduce Yourself

[GavinO]

So, who is everyone? A lot of us know each other from other forums, but I'm sure there's a few newcomers as well.

 

I'm Gavin Olson, 18, from Connecticut, USA. My current system is an Athlon Thunderbird 1200, with lots of low-speed high-capacity components (1gig of PC100, an 80-gig PATA RAID array) though most of my day to day computing is on my laptop (stock IBM T40). I'm a college student majoring in Computer Science. My other random computer interest is 3D modelling and animation; I primarily use 3d Studio MAX, with the Brazil R/S renderer when I can get access to it.

[excaliber]

Im Zach Tong, 16, from Southern Ohio (right above the Riot city ;) ), USA. I have an AMD Athlon XP 2000+, 512mb PC2100, Radeon 9500 softmodded to 9700 NP.

 

Im a sophomore in High School, taking lots of math and computer science while its still free. Hope to major in Computer Science in College.

[VolteFace]

I'm Simon, 16, from Southern Ontario, Canada. Currently I'm in 11th grade. I'm taking all the computer courses I can, but unfortunately, many of them have been dropped due to lack of interest. Luckily I got into a computer engineering class this year.

 

My comp right now consists of:

• AOpen AK75 Motherboard
  
• AMD Athlon 1800+ Processor
  
• 512MB of DDR 233
  
• 80GB HDD and 40GB HDD
  
• 16x/48x DVD/CD-ROM
  
• Primary display: GeForce 3 Ti200 Video Card / 19" TTX Flat Screen Monitor
  
• Secondary display: S3 ViRGE DX / 17" KDS Flat Screen Monitor

[AWS]

I'm Bob Schwarz, Sr. I was the founder and owner of http://visualbasicforum.com and http://dotnetforums.net up until I sold them both in November 2003. Running the backend for 2 large programming forums was getting to be too big of a job for one person. After the transfer of ownership I found I had a lot of free time on my hands so I started an off topic forum, http://whatpissesyouoff.com, to have something to do.

A couple weeks later I got the idea to start a technical news site and forum. I bought http://extremetechsupport.com, http://extremetechsupport.net and http://extremetechsupport.org.

My son Brandon, who is a member here used to tell me that I should start a tech site. I took him up on it and created Free PC Help Forum.

With this site I am more in my element, troubleshooting, building and maintaining systems.

I live in Western Illinois. I'm married and have 5 children, 3 boys and 2 girls. Ages from 19 to 24. The youngest daughter, she is 22, is married and hopefully in the near future will make a young grandfather. My 2 oldest sons and oldest daughter live with their mother, my first wife. My youngest son lives with my wife and I.

I started out with computer when I was 17. My school had an IBM mainframe and on that I learned to program in Fortran. I picked up a Commodore 64 in early 1980 and while I was working to get my Amatuer Radio license I programmed a morse code generator in Basic to help me learn the code. After I passed the license tests I coded a few other Ham related programs. Right around 1985 I got my first taste of Unix. Had a Sun box running AIX. I ported my previous programs to run on it in C. I also ran a bbs off it. In the old days there was no such thing as an ISP. You connected to other peoples computers that ran a bbs service. I also had an IBM 3086 with Dos 6 installed and later that year I upgraded it to Windows 3.1 so my family could use it. They didn't like the command line as much as I did. A couple years after that I discovered a service called Q-Link, later to become AOL. This was much better than the old bbs that were popular ways to get and exchange info. All the premium service were pay by the minute, still it was much better than bbs. My family got a lot of enjoyment out of it and it was a way to exchange software with other Ham Radio nuts. It was much easier trading a program I made to get another program that I needed. Saved a lot of coding.

I was away from computers for a few years and din't get back into it until I got married a second time. I had let my kids keep my computers after I was divorced.

My wife, Pat, had a HP 4086 with Windows 3.1. We upgraded it to Windows 95 as soon as it was released. By this time the net was in full swing and I was like a kid in a candy store. So much knowledge and information and I couldn't get enough of it. I set up a website on my ISP server. A ham radio site off course. It was a good learning experience. We gave the old HP to Brandon and bought a new Packard Bell Pentium 233. After a few months we realized we needed another computer. My wife and I were both active online and we just couldn't find an easy way to split the time on the computer. We bought here a Celeron 500 box. It was about this time that we realized we could build a box for half the price. This realization came after we upgraded the processor on my wifes box to a 1Gig P3. I had an AMD T-Bird 700 with a bad motherboard. We went to a computer show and bought a new board and I rebuilt it. Soon after we were hooked. We build a number of computers for relatives and friends and all the servers that run this site and used to run ExVBF and EDN. My wife does most of the building now. She is a hands on person and the arguments we used to get in when building just wasn't worth it so I let her build and then I install all the software.

In my garage we have 20 or so computers. Someday we'll get them all repaired and put them for sale.

Right now we have 7 or so computers hooked up in the house. 3 servers, my workstation, my wifes box and Brandons workstation and game server. My wife also has 2 laptops. He builds his own now and if it comes to overclocking and modding he is the man to talk to. Maybe I'll ask him to post up a few tutorials and a few pics of some of the mods he did.

 

That's enough for now. Later on I'll post an article detailing the server specs complete with pics.

[Chris00]

I'm Chris, 16, from Northeast Ohio (about 15 miles west of cleveland). I'm a Sophomore (10th) in High School, I'm trying to take all the computer classes I can but since I'm going to a rather small high school (about 1100 students) there aren't any upperlevel computer classes (it doesn't get much past MS Office). I'm probably going to study Computer Science in college.

 

Most of the things I know about computers I have thought my self or learned from my dad. I got my first computer when I was about 3 or so, my dad was getting a new one and thought it would be a good learning tool for me to have the old one.

 

My newest computer is a P4 2.56 512MB RAM 60GB HD 128MB Radeon 9000, primary use for the computer is for gaming. I have 2 other desktops, one being used as a server (HTTP, IRC, FTP and Mail) while the other is my main workstation, and a laptop (old AST P100) that I use. Currently there are 15 or so machines running on our Windows and Novell Network.

 

EDIT: Noticed a mistake and added some info

[SuBX3r0]

I'm Brandon, 19 from the Chicago area

 

Bob is my step dad, and i'm glad he decided to start a forum like this up, finally a place i can help him out with. Most of my computer knowledge i gain from bob, other forums, and trial an error. I've burned up a lot of perfectly good hardware by trial and error, so i try to see how others did it first nowadays. My main area of knowledge would have to be hardware, specifically video. I'm also a big time gamer, love playing MOH:AA and now i have CoD to mess around with.

 

Any how i'm still young so not much to say. However i will be starting an apprenticeship in the local carpenters in a few months. Woodworking is my other hobby/"expertise"

 

btw, if there's any moh gamers out there, i run a dedicated team dm server.

 

IP: 64.36.29.178

 

runs 24/7 usually gets 100-200 hits a day, so stop by some time.

[MikeJ]

I'm Michael Redding (Though I go by Mike), 15 years, 8 months, from Houston, TX. I'm a 7th generation Texan, dating back to before the Battle of the Alamo. I currently have a Dell (I know, I know... but it's pretty good actually), with a Pentium IV, 2659 mHz, 256 MB GeForce FX, with 512 MB of RAM (soon to be 1 GB :D), two CD drives (on CD, one CD-RW), one DVD/DVD-RW (which can double as a CD/CD-RW), with WinXP SP1. (However I still have our old 486 with a tape drive, 5" floppy, 3.5" floppy, and serial CD drive...)

 

I was first introduced to the world of computers when I was 2, in fact, I have a picture of me with our old 386. Both my parents were into computers, my father was a programmer, and my mother was a system analyst. Then when I was 7, I was introduced to QBasic/FoxPro, when my dad & I were starting to make a game based on the monarchies of Europe. When he passed away when I was 11, the game was put on permanent hiatus, and so was my interest in programming. When I was 13, I got VB6, and started in again with earnest.

 

My interests in computers are mostly with web design at the moment, especially with a little pet project that I'm partnering with Adam (PlenoJure) which offers design, hosting, and maintenance. However, I know VB6 (mostly general knowledge, though I specialize in databases), and am trying VS.Net (C# & VB.Net), though without much success :(.

 

That's about it for now I guess...

[Twan]

My name is Tony Chuinard from Evergreen Park, Illinois. I believe I live near Bob but never met him. I got into game programming one day seeing someone make an awesome game, just by himself. I thought it was great and if I could do that I'd feel so proud. I'm 12 years old, started coding when 11. I'm more into DX7 now as it's easiest for me. When I got Visual Basic I was terrible. I even one time asked the person who got me into programming if the game he made was in HTML. I know a somewhat amount of C++, but not anything complicated. I'm a VB person and I think I'll stick with it for years to come.

[vbFace]

Hi. I'm Joe and I live in NJ. I am 31 and I am an insane PC gamer by night...oh, and VB programmer by day. I am now self-teaching myself ASP.NET. I first used a computer in 6th grade, a Tandy TRS80 (Trash80 LOL). Ever since, I loved computers mainly because of the games. But I developed my love of PCs into a career. I will have to re-install MOH:AA now and check out Brandon's server. Do you play BF1942 Brandon?

 

My gaming rig is:

Athlon XP 2400+

Asus A7V8X MoBo

1GB PC2100

ATI Radeon 9800 Pro

SB Live! 5.1 (still using this thing hehehe)

Some WD HDDs in there

DVD R+ R- 4X

19" Envision Flat Panel Monitor - black

Klipsch 4.1 400W speakers :D

 

Got a nice Sony Laptop a while ago:

Athlon 1GHz

512 RAM

Wireless 802.11g

 

Got a Duron 700 running W2K Server for files

 

PC for the wife, my old Athlon T-Bird 1Gig

[excaliber]

Meh. Everyone else was posting these huge replies, and mine felt kinda short. Heres an extended edition.

 

Rig:

AMD Athlon XP 2000+ (slight OC to 1.8Ghz)

512mb PC2100 Kingston RAM

Syntax SV266M (VIA KM266[NB] & VT8235 [sB] Chipsets)

Radeon 9500 NP Softmodded to 9700 NP

23" Gateway2000 Vivitron CRT Monitor

 

 

Like I said earlier, Im a sophomore in High School. Im taking Computer science 3 (Visual C++ 6) and AP Computer Science (Java) next year. I know a variety of languages, ranging from web to app. I know NQC (Not quite C) for the Lego mindstorms RCX, which is the first 'language' I ever learned. I moved onto Visual Basic and have spent alot of time there. I consider myself god to very good at VB. I know PHP fairly well, and am continuing to enjoy the language. It is very easy to learn new and better things in PHP that make it such a great language. Im at the moment learning VC++6, and want to move onto .Net afterwards.

 

Im an avid soccer player, playing for Cincinatti United Premier (CUP). We go all year round, indoor and out, traveling to Florida and Georgia for tournaments, among other places. Im big on music as well. Know how to play the Piano and trumpet, going to learn Guitar this summer in between High School soccer conditioning (3 hours of running hell 3 times a week).

 

Into distributed computing. Currently am running Distributed Particle Accelerator, but have run Folding@home, Seti@home and Distributed Folding. I crunch for Free-DC. Am going to put together a DC farm this summer out of older computers, and learn more about *nix networking at the same time. My last year's science project was about Distributed Computing, made a project to find Emirps (type of prime).

 

Hmmm..what else. Have two dogs, Murphy and Skylar. Am following in the footsteps of Bob and have taken up web forum ownership. PlenoJure is hosting InTheory, a forum about Game Theory and design. Im also starting the Freeware Review, where we review freeware apps and rank them (if any want a spot as an editor, let me know ;) ).

 

My dad, me and my brother do websites on the side. We have done a few for my high school soccer team, my old soccer coach's startup business, Power of the Pen. Im currently redesigning my driver ed's site, and am doing a PHP/mySQL web managed database system for a church pantry (for community service, so I can get into National Honors Society).

 

Well, thats about it. Not going to bore you anymore with useless details of my life ;)

[Kitaiko]

I'm chris, im 17, I was a member of bobs old vb forum for many years and being unable to check them myself, I heard about hes shenanigans over msn.

 

Although I know very little about tech support and stuff, I am determined to turn over a new leaf on these forums, and oneday force bob to give them to me.

 

I know I have had problems with bobs mod staff before, but im hopping we can just leave all the power hungriness behind on these new utopian forums.

[wildfire1982]

There seems to be one or two by the same name, but... Im Chris, 21, Southampton UK. Im currently on my 3rd year at Uni doing computer science and have to do an Internship thing this year so i decided to go and work in Germany for the year.

 

I only fairly recently started Using VB and then .net and found EVB and dotnetforums.net a perfect place for a programmer to get information when learning a new language (Cheers Bob). And so these led me here as I knew i must be onto a winner if i came to this site.

 

Im not actually sure what im going to make of myself whether it be software engineer or whatever but i have to admit I prefer to be fiddling with hardware then making software. Anyways, im sure this site will do well with all the people keeping it like the other sites. Keep Up the good work! See you folks around.

[00100b]

Many of you may know me from the ExtremeVB forums, but for those who don't...

 

I'm Ron (aka 4b, aka #4, aka forby, plus a few other variations). I'm 35, live in Elk River, Minnesota and am a Sr. Software Engineer for the Minneapolis Star Tribune's Manufacturing Systems group.

 

My current system is a bit old (Thunderbird 1GHz on an ABIT KT7 mobo) but as soon as the tax refund clears the bank, I'm planning on giving it a good overhaul.

 

Been a fan of ABIT/AMD ever since I built an old 200MHz system and up until now have been very happy with Matrox vid cards (although I think I'm going to get an ATI for the new box).

[AWS]

Welcome to the forum Ron. Nice to some of the ExVBF people popping in.

[Squirm]

I'm Paul, 20, living just inside greater London and am currently midway through a study gap year on a CS course. I work as a fulltime barman and will continue to until May when I jet off for a round-the-world trip. So I'm having to save as much as I can, meaning any significant PC mods will need to wait until I go back to uni.

 

Like Ron, I'm from ExVBF so when I'm at the PC this takes up a fair chunk of my time. I'm also an IRC-oholic, I help maintain this forum's IRC server. PC time not spent doing either of these is directed at programming, usually a mix of small simple tools and demos written in VB and larger projects in C++.

 

Time for some specs:

AMD Athlon 2100+ 1.73GHz

512Mb

ATI Radeon 9000 (IF) Pro 64Mb GFX

76Gb (IBM?) HD

Samsung DVD

Samsung CD-R/CD-RW

Lexmark Z65 printer

Windows XP Pro SP1

 

DELL Axim X5 PDA (Intel XScale PXA255 400MHz, 64Mb RAM, 48Mb ROM)

Microsoft PocketPC 4

 

My take on the whole modification idea is noise. I'm a bit of a noise-freak, having altered or upgraded quite a few of my bits for quieter running. Slow CPU fans with huge heatsink, large slow case fans, drive enclosures, and so forth. The difference is astounding and well worth it. The only noisy bits I have left are the HD which needs replacing and the CD/DVD when they are active. I plan on getting a new quieter case at some point.

 

Well, thats about all. :)

[sseller]

Hi

My name is Steve and I'm an electronics engineer who now spends most of his time writing test software for an EMC testing lab. I found my way here from ExVBF, and I'm sure that this forum will be as good and as useful as that one is. I have to deal with a variety of PCs and laptops, of various vintages. I'm pretty sure that most people don't consider tech support until disaster occurs, so I'm hoping to learn stuff here that will make those occurances less frequent!

[Logical_1]

I'm Logical One, 27, from Houston, TX (there seem to be several from here). I got into computers at about 8 yrs old programming games for myself on an old Atari 800 system. I moved on to programming in Basic on an Apple IIGS, then finally moved up to a IBM 286 system. It's been a faster move from there and I'm currently using a 2.4Ghz P4 with 1GB RAM and two Fujitsu MAS3367's in RAID0 on a LSI 21320-IS U320 SCSI Raid0 controller, an AGP ATI 8500DV AIW and PCI ATI Radeon 7500, Audigy, 100GB Western Digital, 80GB Maxtor, Pioneer DVD-R/W, and MSI DVD drive. I also have a Compaq server that has been upgraded (Proliant ML350) and my old box that is now a server (Dual P3-866).

 

I'm active on the forums at:

TheHelper.net

Storage Review

2CPU.com

[AWS]

Welcome. I'm a poster at 2CPU and Storage Review also and I know TheHelper.

[Logical_1]

Welcome. I'm a poster at 2CPU and Storage Review also and I know TheHelper.

 

Under what name do you post on those forums? I know the helper since he only works a couple blocks from me and have been also on "The Group" site with him for about 6 years now.

[The Helper]

My father was a computer programmer back in the mainframe days then he switched to micros. When I was 10 I had the joy of playing Adventure and Super Star Trek on his PDP-11. I got addicted to computer games before anyone outside of universities had really played on the computer.

 

After Junior high I took a long break from computers not getting back into them until I was about 24. My first PC was an 8088 that my dad gave me which I learned to program Assembly language and played old games like Liesure Suit Larrry. I became an apprentice programmer at my dad's shop doing Cobol projects. I also learned C then I kind of found my niche as an MS Access/VB developer ever since.

 

During my tenure at my dad's I discovered the Blizzard Official Tech Support forums where I became "The Helper" and started my own tech support site and forum. Been doing the Helping thing ever since. I know Bob from the dmoz thing, known Logical forever as we used to hang out in the Blizzard Open Tech Support channel and he does actually work only a few blocks from me. Rapmaster has been administrator of my thehelper.net forums almost since the beginning and he is also a Microsoft MVP. So that is me in a nutshell.

[BigMontana]

I'm Michael, 46, from Detroit, father of 4 daughters, the twins, Rosemary and Sharonda are 20, Shanti' is 23 and Nicole 24. I work as a Project Manager for a very large law fim in Detroit. I started out working for Burroughs Corp (Unisys now) back in '77 as a mainframe operator - IBM 360/30 - later moving up to programming - assembler, cobol, fortran and rpg 3 - before switching over to PC's in '93. My first PC was a Heathkit that I paid $700 for back in '77, and s the name implies you had to assemble it, including everything on the board(wasn't very good then at soldering, so I was surprised it actually worked). My first "modern" PC was a Tandy Sensation (which happened to be the last PC I bought as I build my own now). My current rig is:

 

AMD Athlon XP 2200+

Gigabyte 7VRXP

1.5 GB DDR PC2700

1 IBM 30GB HDD

1 WD 120GB Special Editions in a RAID 0

GeForce FX 5950 Ultra

Audigy 2 ZS Platinum Pro

Lian Li PC 60 case

Minolta PagePro 1350W Laser printer

Epson Stylus R800

 

My laptop is an IBM X40

1.2 Ghz Centrino

40GB HDD

12.1" XGA display

WiFi a/b/g

Ultrabay

Combo drive

7hr extended life battery

A light 2.5lbs and .5" thick

[AWS]

Heathkits. I know them well. Built a few Ham receivers and transmitters in my younger days. Part of the learning experience when I was studying to get my Amatuer Radio and class A licenses.

Welcome to the forum.