Archaic tech: Making old things fun

Your unusable skills could make a great hobby

When I was growing up in southern Ohio, my family had a few computers. Early on I inherited my grandmother’s Commodore 64, which I kept through at least middle school. Other than that, my dad had a habit of bringing work home with him from time to time, and we had a handful of temporary computers in the house, starting with a classic Mac (I think it was an SE or an SE/30, but that’s not important to the story.) I spent a lot of time figuring out things (and sometimes breaking things) on these old computers.

We eventually got a more permanent family computer (a Macintosh LC II) and I built PCs in high school, mostly for games and maintaining my on-again, off-again web presence on various free website providers like GeoCities or Tripod.

It was around that time that I figured out I was pretty good at solving computer problems, and made a bit of money here and there doing that, which turned into a work study program in college, and several jobs over the years.

Now, in 2021, technology has greatly changed. Some of the support needs are the same (things break. A lot.) Even so, I’ve made my way in the world supporting the people who support people, so a lot of reading and understanding the latest technology is crucial.

What’s to be done, then, about the technology of my youth?