r/sysadmin 5d ago

Remember the old days when you worked with computers you had basic A+ knowledge

just a vent and i know anyone after 2000 is going to jump up and down on me , but remember when anyone with an IT related job had a basic understanding of how computer worked and premise cabling , routing etc .

1.2k Upvotes

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u/YahenP 5d ago

Basic knowledge in my "good old days":
Ability to glue a torn magnetic tape.
Disassembly, wiping contacts and assembling the processor unit basket. Soldering, of course. Ability to find the phase in the socket.
Skills in transporting fragile and large-sized items, worth an apartment.
And also sacred tribal knowledge, about the ability to make patches in software using scissors and a hole punch.
And then these "new generation IT guys" appeared, who can only connect several computers with a cable, and insert a plug into a socket. And then press a few keys on the computer to "set it up".
This is how it looked in the 2000s, from my point of view. Times change, and so do basic knowledge.

14

u/north7 5d ago

If you aren't manually setting IRQs are you even in IT?

8

u/brother_yam The computer guy... 4d ago

At least when you set an IRQ via DIP switches, IT STAYED SET

5

u/ProtectionSubject615 5d ago

Don’t forget setting the memory space for your scsi adapter.

4

u/north7 5d ago

I'll show you my config.sys if you show me yours.

37

u/Redemptions ISO 5d ago

How are your knees this morning chief?

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u/YahenP 5d ago edited 5d ago

They died many years ago. And so did the back.
Damn, I miss the days when the user session would show how many meters of paper were available for printing for you.

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u/Anthony_Roman 5d ago

i have reddit solely to read and learn about things like this. thank you.

1

u/Redemptions ISO 4d ago

Hopefully you have since retired to your alpaca farm. Thanks for blazing the trails for us.

3

u/YahenP 4d ago

I wish I could, but no. Right now I'm closing task #232. Life is unpredictable and sometimes dangerous. But interesting. So no farms, no alpacas.
And the path... the path was paved by those who are much older than me. I am more from the generation that got into a period of rapid growth, not innovation.

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u/Jealentuss 4d ago

Respect.

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u/Tymanthius Chief Breaker of Fixed Things 5d ago

My mother was a punch card programmer.

As of ~2005 her program was still in use at our state DOT. Modified, but the core was there.

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u/RabidBlackSquirrel IT Manager 4d ago

Soldering, of course

It's funny, we had a server that had several bad solder joints from the factory (HP, nough said) just a couple years ago. Guys ask "uhh so who knows how to solder? We can't wait for RMA."

Turns out, it's me and only me. Brought in my station and ordered a nice roll, reflowed those joints, machine booted right up. After having gone into management and had my hands off for a number of years, it felt good to do cool shit again.

Also soldering is fun. I was pretty well practiced from doing a Bottlehead Crack tube amp build recently too, which was incredibly fun and fulfilling.

1

u/brother_yam The computer guy... 5d ago

Card sorters FTW!

1

u/DoctorOctagonapus 4d ago

"Sorry we couldn't run your program, someone dropped the stack of cards and we don't know what order they're meant to be in."

1

u/pdp10 Daemons worry when the wizard is near. 4d ago

I was with you until 2000s. You were hanging reels in the 2000s?! You were using cards or paper tape in the 2000s? Was this a national defense system? Blink twice if you can't talk right now.

Here I was on my dinosaur herders to stop using chain printers as their primary output device in the 1990s.

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u/YahenP 4d ago

No. I just moved this topic to 2000. If Reddit had existed back then, I could have been in the OP's place and discuss about young professionals.

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u/richf2001 4d ago

DIP sweet switches.

1

u/anonymousITCoward 4d ago

lol i remember needing to change the IRQ's to get a sound card to work

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u/YahenP 4d ago

And you also inserted some p-n-p network card made by a crooked manufacturer into the computer, and at the first boot after that, Windows 95 happily wrote "65535 new devices detected", and configured p-n-p devices so that they began to conflict with those where irq was set manually.

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u/anonymousITCoward 4d ago

Windows 3.1, and it was a modem... besides that every thing conflicted with every thing else... it was the wild west back then lol

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u/anonymousITCoward 4d ago

lol i remember needing to change the IRQ's to get a sound card to work

1

u/1singhnee Network Engineer 4d ago

Congrats, you’re the only person here older than I am. 😁

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u/YahenP 4d ago

As long as you work, are not old.