My Childhood: Computers

In my last post I told you about building toys in my childhood. Now it's time to begin with computers. My dad is an electrical engineer and has been into computers since he was in high school (Apple IIs FTW!), so he's half the reason I love computers so much. In 1992, he bought our first computer, 3 years before I was born. It was a custom-built computer he got at a shop. It was an MS-DOS computer (don't ask me which version, he doesn't remember), but if I was able to remember that time, I wouldn't have cared. In 1995 or 96, he got it upgraded to Windows 95 (BEST OS EVER, MAC FANBOYS CAN SHUT UP). This is where my childhood really kicked in. Now, this computer was slower than you can imagine, since, after all, can you expect much from a '92 computer? Anyway, it was slow, but I loved it anyway. At the age of 3 as far back as I can remember, the thing I loved most on it was playing games. Oh yes, you know what I'm saying next. I know you do. If you don't, shame on you! Take a guess. No, seriously, take a guess what is coming next. If you have been living under a rock for about a year now if you're following my YouTube, you should know this. It was...

If you didn't see that coming, I pity you. HE was everything when I was a kid. I'd go to school and the only thing I'd look forward to was popping in a HE game. I can't remember the first one I played, but I can tell you the first few games I had.

Pictured above is the Humongous Classics Collection. It included HE's first three games: Putt-Putt Joins the Parade, Fatty Bear's Birthday Surprise, and Putt-Putt Goes to the Moon. Here's another CD I remember having:

Here's a rare 4-game disk that includes Putt-Putt Joins the Parade (I kid you not, I have two), Putt-Putt and Fatty Bear's Activity Pack, Let's Explore the Farm with Buzzy, and Freddi Fish and the Case of the Missing Kelp Seeds. The only other one I remember having as far back as I can remember is Spy Fox in "Dry Cereal". I had opened Freddi Fish 3 for Christmas 1998 (And I have it taped too), I bought Pajama Sam 2 somewhere, then I got Putt-Putt Enters the Race, then I got Putt-Putt Travels Through Time and Balloon-o-Rama at some store (Dang I played BoR a ton), I got Spy Fox 2 and Pajama Sam 1 for my fourth birthday (Got it taped too), then I got Putt-Putt Saves the Zoo, then I got Pajama Sam 3 (I distinctly remember my dad running out of the store with it because we were in a hurry), then I got Putt-Putt Joins the Circus, then Spy Fox 3, then Freddi Fish 5, and finally Freddi Fish 4. I had every Jr. Adventure as a kid except Freddi Fish 2. I'm not kidding, I was such a spoiled child. Now, HE wasn't the only company that I got games from. I also played a few Living Books games, Tonka games, and Jump Start games. For the crappy computer it was, it sure stood the test of time when it was still alive. Since my dad is an electrical engineer, I've had plenty of laptop computers as well. Here's one I've shown to my YouTube subscribers:

That's right, the good ol' HP Omnibook 800CT. This thing is from 1997, and is still alive and well. When I was young that computer wasn't his work computer; his work computer was an IBM Thinkpad, booted with Windows 98, my personal favorite from that time. He also had a Windows NT 4.0 (again, an IBM laptop) but that one was useless IMO. His Windows 98 played all the games that didn't run on my childhood computer or my HP Omnibook. But after we moved to our third house, his company made him upgrade it to a Windows 2000, eventually becoming our home computer. Why? Well, our previous home computer's monitor died. When we moved, we set the whole thing back up. The computer, keyboard, mouse, speakers, EVERYTHING was working properly except the monitor. The thing was just pitch black and refused to do anything. We couldn't just go out and buy another monitor; I wasn't rich, you know! So that pretty much marked the end of that computer. The Omnibook was our "new" computer until my dad had to give up his Windows 2000. This was our first computer to go on the internet, but it didn't really matter. Why? Let me explain this in one sentence: THAT COMPUTER WAS A PILE OF CRAP. Yes, I may have said that my childhood computer was bad, but it was usable. This one on the other hand...totally unusable. The keyboard was delayed in most programs, making it impossible to play pinball, the battery back up didn't work, so if you unplugged it, it died instantly no matter how long it was plugged in, half my PC game collection didn't work...ugh, there was so much bad about it. It just simply wasn't usable. And to add insult to injury, I WAS STUCK WITH IT UNTIL 2005. My dad couldn't figure out that I hated it so much, so he waited way too long to replace it. It was 2005, and we finally got a new one, and it's the one I use now. It's an HP Pavillion a1250n. It's booted with Windows XP Media Center Edition. It's been highly useful to this day, and still does everything I need it to. Microsoft has not-so-secret plans to get rid of it once and for all, but I assure you XP will stand the test of time. My dad has had several other computers over time: He's had a Dell Latitude PP01S booted with Windows 2000, which is still alive and well, but the screen isn't that great and it takes 15 minutes to boot up. Another one he had for the longest time was another Windows 2000 and was the same model as his NT 4.0 (but wasn't the same thing as it was originally booted with XP, and was downgraded since his company didn't like how unsecure XP was). The one he has now used to be a Vista, but a few weeks before writing this, it was upgraded to 7 (and I don't know if you will believe me, but it got worse). The only remains I have from all of these computers are my childhood computer, my Omnibook, the HP Pavillion, the Windows 7, and the Dell Latitude. The rest have died or gone away. (I hope to never see my old home computer again, or the same model for that matter. Those are the kinds of memories I don't want to bring back) I don't know if I have said this before, but my computers are one of the few things that survived when I moved to my current home. When I moved from my third house, I did the dumbest thing I could ever do - we didn't have enough closet space for all of the stuff we had, so we had to drop quite a few things. I dropped every childhood memory of mine - my computer games, my stuffed animals (one survived), my non-Lego and Thomas building toys, my Hot Wheels cars, my Happy Meal Toys, you name it. The only computer games to survive were my Lego ones and a few others. I felt stupidest about HE games, so a couple of years later, nostalgia came back to hit me hard, and I started recollecting a bunch of them. I now am back to having all of the ones I had as a kid, and now I have more. But I'll never be able to recollect some of those things. Who knows if I'll ever come across that Putt-Putt plushie ever again. If you have childhood memories, DON'T DROP THEM. It will be for your own good not to do that. Thanks for reading this post, and I'll see you next time!