Why I Like Computers, Part 2: When My Computer Started Connecting to the Outside World
From a 56K modem, Sanook, Thaiware, and Google to Overclockzone, Ragnarok Online, and replacing a graphics card so KOTOR could run.
When I was in Grade 3, my father bought a new Pentium III computer. Not long after that, we connected our home to the internet.
It was still the age of the 56K modem.
Before I could open a website, I had to wait for the modem to dial out while it made a series of strange noises. Anyone who used the internet back then probably remembers the sound.
The speed was exactly what you would expect from the time.
Slow.
Two of the websites I visited most often at first were Sanook.com and Thaiware.com.
Sanook was like a gateway for seeing what was on the internet. Thaiware was interesting for a different reason: it was full of software to download.
Finding new software to try was already part of using a computer.
If I wanted a program, I searched for it, downloaded it, and installed it.
If I did not like it, I removed it.
If Windows broke, I would deal with that later.
Then I found Google
Later, I began using Google.
Before that, if I wanted to learn something about computers, I first needed a book that covered the subject.
With a search engine, I no longer had to know where the answer was. I only needed some idea of what words to search for.
If a program had a problem, if I wanted to know what a piece of software did, or if I came across something I did not understand, I could start looking for the answer online.
That did not mean I found the answer every time.
Back then, searching for an answer could sometimes take longer than fixing the actual problem.
But compared with waiting for a new computer book, the world had become much larger.
From software to hardware
At some point, I began visiting Overclockzone.com.
That was probably the website where I learned the most about hardware.
How one CPU model differed from another
What a graphics card did
What kinds of RAM there were
Which chipset a motherboard used
What had actually changed when a new model came out
When I was in Grade 4, I really wanted a Pentium 4.
I never bought one.
The same Pentium III stayed with me for several more years.
Even without replacing the CPU, wanting a new computer pushed me to keep reading about hardware.
This was very different from how I had thought about the 80486.
When I was younger, a "computer" was almost a single box to me. I turned it on and used it.
After I began reading hardware websites, I started to see that the box contained many separate parts. Each part had its own models, capabilities, and limitations.
Those limitations were not just numbers on a specification sheet.
Sometimes they meant that a game I wanted to play would not start at all.
The internet was more than websites
Another change was the arrival of online games.
The one I remember most clearly is Ragnarok Online.
Before that, most of the games I played kept their entire world on my computer.
Whether it was The Sims, SimCity, Theme Hospital, or Age of Empires, the game ran in front of me. I played alone, and everything ended there.
Ragnarok was different.
I was not the only person in its world.
There were other players inside it.
The internet was no longer just a place for opening websites, reading things, or downloading software. It had become a place where people could be together.
For a child who had only discovered the internet through a 56K modem a few years earlier, that felt quite strange.
The same computer sitting in my house could now open into a world with other people in it.
The same computer, newer games
The games I played kept changing.
There was Max Payne, Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, and Command & Conquer: Generals.
I was still using the same Pentium III.
Then one game made me run directly into the limits of its hardware:
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, or KOTOR.
I really wanted to play it, but it would not run.
I traced the problem and found that reinstalling Windows would not fix it. It was not only a driver problem, and there was no option in Settings that I could click to make it go away.
My graphics card was a RIVA TNT2 Model 64. It did not support Hardware Transform and Lighting, or Hardware T&L, which KOTOR required.
This time, software could not fix the problem.
I had to change the hardware.
I replaced the card with an XFX GeForce FX 5200.
The reason was straightforward:
The game I wanted to play would not run.
So I replaced the graphics card.
After that, I could play the first KOTOR and, later, KOTOR II: The Sith Lords.
I remember that graphics card upgrade more clearly than many upgrades I made later in life. Terms such as GPU, DirectX, and Hardware T&L were no longer just specifications I had read on websites.
They now determined whether a program would run on my computer at all.
From one book to thousands of websites
At first, if I wanted to make something in HTML, I needed an HTML book.
If I wanted to use JavaScript, I bought a JavaScript book.
If I wanted to learn ASP, I bought an ASP book.
I knew whatever was in that book.
The internet gradually changed this.
I moved from Sanook and Thaiware to Google.
I went from opening websites to see what I might find to searching for something I specifically wanted to know.
I went from using a computer without thinking about what was inside it to reading about CPUs, GPUs, and hardware on Overclockzone.
What I read began to connect with the machine in front of me, from the individual parts inside it to KOTOR refusing to run because of the graphics card.
By then, I had already made homepages, JavaScript experiments, ASP pages, and small programs of my own. Most of them still ran on my own computer.
The internet meant I no longer had to wait for the next book to contain exactly what I wanted to know. I could find answers shared by other people and immediately try them on the machine in front of me.
And as I continued working through examples from books, I began to encounter things I wanted to make for which there was no exact example left to copy.