From DOS to Desktop Disasters

I grew up as the youngest offspring of one particularly tech-savvy individual who among many jobs, initially moved our family from many places like Texas, Florida, North Carolina, and eventually to West Virginia where I was raised as a child. The area in particular that I grew up is very rural, and essentially a decade or more behind modern times. However in our household this was almost uncertainly not the case. Since my father was such a connoisseur of technology, it's basically an inherited trait to me. For a little bit of a backstory, we wound up here as my father was writing assembly language code that would help facilitate the operation of coal power plants. So, naturally we always had the latest and greatest trends.

Because of the available computing power at my fingertips I was often times able to experiment well before I should have with hardware. In our family, my dad would always upgrade his PC almost annually to the next latest and greatest system. One of my very first computers was a 286 processor with 16mhz. This introduced me to the world of the command line. I learned early how to navigate and traverse folders using Disk Operating System (or DOS). I learned the del *.* command at some point. At least one time or two, this got me into trouble. At home, it wasn't as big of a deal. After deleting DOS from my root directory once or twice, my dad decided to install his own standalone operating system for me that never let me reach the command line, instead I could only pick what game to play and it would type the commands for me.

The Tech Hand-Me-Down Dynasty

Our household had its own tech ecosystem, with my dad at the top of the pyramid. He'd get the cutting-edge system, then his previous machine would go to my oldest brother, whose computer would then go to my middle brother, which meant I'd inherit whatever my middle brother was using. Being the youngest in a tech-obsessed family had its perks, even if I was always three generations behind the curve.

When Dad upgraded to his first Pentium running at a mind-blowing 100MHz, it kicked off a beautiful cascade of hand-me-downs: oldest brother got Dad's 486 DX2 with 66MHz, middle brother received the 486DX with 33MHz, and I finally graduated to the 386 with 33MHz. Each time this happened, it felt like Christmas morning, even though I was essentially getting the technological equivalent of my brothers' worn-out sneakers.

Living in a rural West Virginia town where the public schools didn't even connect to the internet until after 2000, our home stood out like a digital oasis in a technological desert. My friends would visit and stare in wonder at our setup. Their jaws would hit the floor when they realized we had dedicated phone lines just for internet—a luxury in the era of dial-up when most families had to choose between making calls or going online.

Dad wasn't just tech-savvy; he ran a dial-up internet service provider. This meant we were always on the cutting edge, while my school was still using computers that might as well have been powered by hamster wheels. I never once experienced the frustration of having someone pick up the phone while I was online—a common trauma for most 90s kids.

DOOM, LAN Parties, and the Cruel Reality of Crashed Map Editors

The mid-90s were the golden age of DOOM, and our basement became command central for epic LAN parties around 1995. Back then, Windows couldn't hold a candle to DOS when it came to gaming performance. We would gather, connect our machines, and blast demons (or each other in deathmatch) for hours on end.

But we weren't just players—we were creators too. The DOOM modding scene was where I cut my teeth on level design, spending countless hours crafting custom maps... only to have my underpowered 386 crash mid-creation, erasing everything I'd done. I can still feel that particular brand of heartbreak that comes from losing hours of creative work to the digital void. Nothing teaches you to save your work like losing an entire afternoon's worth of meticulously placed monsters and secret rooms.

Storage in our house was a sight to behold. We literally had hundreds of 5.25" floppy disks stashed everywhere—loaded with games, programming languages, and applications from computing's early days. These massive, actually-floppy disks are probably still boxed up somewhere in my parents' house, a physical museum of software history.

I still remember the technological disappointment of our first 1x CD-ROM drive. On paper, it could hold way more data than any floppy. In practice? I discovered firsthand that it was often faster to install Windows using 64 separate 1.44" floppy disks than waiting for that sluggish CD to do its thing. The only advantage was being able to start the installation and walk away instead of sitting there feeding in disk after disk like some sort of human vending machine.

The Windows Product Key Savant

Here's a weird party trick I still have: I can recite the Windows 95 and 98 product keys from memory. Seriously. After installing these operating systems dozens of times (usually after breaking something), those alphanumeric sequences are permanently etched into my brain alongside my social security number and childhood phone number.

Was it strictly kosher to use the same key repeatedly? Probably not. But in those days, activation was simpler, and we were just kids excited to get our machines back up and running after whatever catastrophe had befallen them (usually self-inflicted).

Accidental Webmaster and the Great Apache Incident

While most kids were content playing Nintendo, my brothers and I were diving headfirst into the wild west of early web development. We honed our skills on Geocities and AngelFire, painstakingly writing HTML in Notepad and proudly publishing pages that were essentially 99% animated GIFs and "Under Construction" banners.

When Dad discovered our interest, he kicked things up several notches—purchasing us a domain name, setting up a web server, and giving each of us our own subdomain. Suddenly we graduated from Notepad to the "professional-grade" Microsoft FrontPage and were learning about mysterious concepts like FTP and hosting. These were the early days of web development. JavaScript was not nearly as powerful as it has become.

One of my more notorious tech moments came when I accidentally installed Apache on my PC and started hosting a web server without even realizing what I'd done. Dad went into full-on security panic mode, convinced we'd been hacked, only to discover it was just his clueless youngest son experimenting with software he didn't understand. When he demanded to know why I'd done it, I genuinely had no idea what he was talking about—I didn't even know what Apache was! I'd just clicked through some install prompts and suddenly our home network had an unexpected web server. The digital equivalent of accidentally building a shed in the backyard.

Emulation: Console Gaming on PC Terms

While my friends were saving up allowance money for GameBoy cartridges and Super Nintendo games, we were exploring the fascinating world of emulation. Why play Super Mario on a tiny GameBoy screen when you could play it on a computer monitor with the ability to save anywhere and apply cheats without those clunky GameShark devices?

It wasn't that we didn't have consoles—our gaming collection included everything from ancient Ataris and Commodore 64s to Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Genesis, Sega CD, and N64. But the flexibility of emulation gave us superpowers that console gamers could only dream of.

The crown jewel of our portable gaming collection wasn't even a Nintendo product—it was the Sega Nomad, a handheld that played full Genesis cartridges with a backlit screen when that was basically unheard of technology. This thing was truly revolutionary—a fully backlit portable console playing 16-bit games when the GameBoy was still rocking monochrome graphics and requiring external light sources.

Breaking Free: My First Custom Build

Fast forward to my teenage years. I was finally ready to break free from the hand-me-down cycle and build my very first PC from scratch. Spoiler alert: it didn't go smoothly.

My first motherboard purchase ended with the vendor vanishing faster than my motivation to do homework. Still salty about that one, but it taught me an early lesson about researching vendors before handing over cash.

Eventually, I assembled what felt like a supercomputer at the time: a Pentium 4 Dual Core running at 1.2GHz paired with some NVIDIA graphics card whose model number has long since faded from memory. But it ran World of Warcraft on maximum settings, and that's all that mattered to teenage me.

The Brother "Borrowing" Incident

When I moved out west, my computer stayed behind. At some point, my brother decided my PC looked lonely and "borrowed" it without asking (as brothers do). Then Christmas rolled around, and guess what appeared under the tree with my name on it? MY OWN PC. With a blown power supply.

I never did replace that power supply. The PC sat gathering dust, a monument to sibling shenanigans and the importance of surge protectors.

The Corporate Castoff Renaissance

Years later, that same brother (yes, redemption arc incoming) was working at a bank that was throwing out perfectly good Dell Optiplex computers. Their only crime? Slow hard drives. These machines were destined for a landfill until he rescued one and brought one to me.

The transformation was mind-blowing: swapping the old HDD for an SSD made boot time instantaneous. We're talking from "go make a sandwich while Windows loads" to "blink and you'll miss it." These corporate castoffs were treasure in disguise!

I happily used one of these rescued machines for years, only upgrading the video card with something cheap off eBay and naturally the power supply to support it. The best part? Unlike many modern proprietary systems, these old Dells accepted standard parts without too much fuss.

Modern Times: From Prebuilt to Power User

Fast forward to last year. I did something that would make younger me gasp in horror—I bought a prebuilt PC from Walmart. I know, I know! But with component prices being what they were, it was actually a good deal.

Of course, I couldn't leave well enough alone. Soon I was upgrading to a Ryzen 5900X and stuffing it with 4x32GB RAM chips because... reasons? Definitely overkill since I don't even game much anymore. But there's something deeply satisfying about having more RAM than you'll ever need.

When my fiancée moved in, I wanted us to have matching battle stations so we could work/game together. My brilliant plan: use the old Dell Optiplex case as the foundation for a second build.

Cue the comedy of errors:

1. Bought a high-end Radeon 7600XT, only to discover neither of my power supplies could support it.

2. Tried to install the motherboard in the Optiplex case, only to find out it does not support it.

3. Attempted to bench test with my spare PSU, which didn't have the required 8-pin connector.

4. Dismantled my prebuilt setup to test the new motherboard.

5. Got the dreaded amber DRAM light.

6. Finally realized I needed to actually connect a GPU to see anything (rookie mistake).

7. Swapped in the 5900X and... red CPU light. Heart attack moment.

8. Discovered several bent pins on my precious processor.

Ever tried to straighten CPU pins? It's like performing microsurgery with household items. I used a playing card to view each row and a sewing needle for gentle bending. After a significant amount of stress and perhaps some foul language, I managed to somehow, SOMEHOW, fix it without breaking off a single pin. Special thanks to Jayanti for holding the flashlight because I could not see a thing without her.

The Unfinished Symphony

The second PC isn't completed yet, but it's coming. It'll be a fully custom AM4 build featuring some of the best components it will support. Probably not the wisest financial decision, but since when has PC building been about making sensible choices?

Looking back at my journey from that hand-me-down 286 to performing pin surgery on high-end AMD processors, I can't help but marvel at how far both technology and my relationship with it have come. From accidentally formatting drives with del *.* to carefully repairing processors that cost more than my first three computers combined, each disaster and triumph has deepened my understanding of these machines.

My dad's tech obsession became my own, passing down through the generations like some kind of digital inheritance. That rural West Virginia kid with a 286 eventually became someone who could resurrect dead machines and build new ones from scratch. (On a good day)

Would I recommend this hobby to others? Absolutely! Just maybe don't start by accidentally hosting web servers, formatting your boot drive, or lending your PC to siblings.

Thank you for joining me on this nostalgic tech journey! Did you experience the hand-me-down computer cycle, DOOM LAN parties, or GeoCities web design? Share your first computer or gaming memories in the comments—I would love to hear how your path through personal computing compares to mine.