Working with useful computers (was: What's your specialty?)

From: R. D. Davis <rdd(a)rddavis.org> These comments always make me chukkle. OK, always been the programmer and never been network support but... I've had wonderful fun with MS BASIC on many of my classic computers. Hey, PEEK, POKE, USR, and you're in *there*. And later on PCs, function calls into MS's DOSes, the 3.1 SDK, Win32, DirectX, and class calls into MFC, have always been a blast to play with giving easy access to a machine that can be configured, as younger Carl Sagan would say, in "hundreds and hundreds" of ways. Programming earliy on on the PC, I felt that if I didn't hose the machine with some strange code at least once a day, I wasn't working hard enough. These days my nondescript underfed NT4.0 box chuggs away for a long time under programming, server, and internet browsing loads. I, for one, thank you Bill Gates! Meanwhile. In a current thread nearby, I hear alot about the Apple OSes not running very well just on Apple's own hardware.. Hey, only after the Woz! ;) Me, but I wouldn't call it income... But I do make a necessary 'lessened outcome' by trickle selling some classic systems on ebay these days as dogas. Hard work and fun. I add value by combining accumulated finds and (try to) offer more fleshed out, ready to run old systems. I've got some upside control for buyers getting a little silly by being able to usually sweeten the deal with more hardware or software. My 'customers' seem very happy to have their old (or a new) toy with no more effort than winning an auction and making a purchase. ;) - Mike: dogas(a)bellsouth.net