Combination of video games and early experiences with a PC and the Internet circa the mid-to-late 90s. I was 10 when my parents first bought me an ISP subscription.

No social skills, people bullied me, etc. so I withdrew and gained interest in technology because it was something I could experiment with and learn about on my own, without being around other people.

Video games. Playing shit on a 5.25" floppy.

That and my father. He'd always be interested in at least trying the most recent tech and software.

Messing around with various things on our Packard Bell in the 90's.

After we got a new computer in 2001, I got to take that thing apart as well which was even better.

dad was head IT guy at a school, he first exposed me to linux (i fucking hated it, typical 14 year old)
also started making shitty websites when i was a kid, not sure exactly what prompted that

Console vidya > PC vidya > small electronics > car audio > PC buildan

yep. maybe not in order.

My mom was insanely scared of computers.
Which made me adventurous?
That and me trying to get around AOL parental controls

Uncle

He was the source of my ThinkPad side aswell

dad brought a computer home when i was young. i was hypnotized.

>dad is an electrical engineer
>legos
>internet porn

in order of importance

Electricity and electronics were always magical too me, because it was something no one in my immediate family, friends or even teachers could explain to me. No one knew enough to satisfy me and it was this unique thing that almost no one seemed to understand. Even the computer/typing teachers couldn't really explain it all, but they pointed me in the right direction and I went from there.

my dad gave me an old laptop and a windows 98 install cd and said if you cna make it work its yours

>>20347254
Now that's motivation

Computers had always fascinated me.
Here was the proverbial magic box that could do whatever I wanted to.

I attended a small private school for a few years. In 5th grade I had a teacher who saw my proficiency in computers and taught me HTML in our technology class while the rest of the class learned how to use Microsoft Word.

After that, I started teaching myself Visual Basic and server-side scripting.

And now I browse 4chan, go figure.

>Managed to get an old desktop from the school when they were throwing them out

>>20347254
If I ever have a kid, I'll do this exact thing to them.

In 6th grade I read a java programming book and my dad bought me a 233mhz machine with Win95.

>>20347278
>>20347265
he did give me some basic help but i had learn most every thing on my own

>>20347293
I would just give him/her the computer, disk, and then let them use my computer for internet help.

Got my first PC, was a shithole, was worth $300.
Use to go around during council clean-ups and savage parts from other people's PC's they threw out. Was fun, pci slots in my computer was always full and i managed to obtain a not-so-old video card, had a great time just fiddling with it.. Played tribes erry day.

Commodore 64 BASIC.

When I was 4-5 I was fucking amazed by making my own text loop, with no help from my dad. I just copied the code verbatim from the manual. I couldn't really read at the time even, but I would edit random parts and learn what did what with out even knowing what the words meant.

I dunno, I've always liked taking things apart and seeing how they work. Phones, vacuum cleaners, and other house-hold items that I could get apart with a screwdrivers. Parents say they took it away from me for some time.

Since then my love for technology has grown and I take other stuff apart. Laptops are fun.

I will do this to my child with a Gentoo cd.

>>20347375
fuck, I meant to quote
>>20347254

For me, it was not having a computer.

I have an older sister, she was parents' favorite child. She had a computer in her room, which we were meant to share. But because it was located in her room, I never really got to use it.

So my jealousy or whatever caused me to scrimp and save every last penny so that I could get my own computer. I still remember my 16th birthday present was a 340MB HDD. 18th - some more computer parts. My first 'dream' computer built was a Pentium 133. Overclocked to 166Mhz. Then a Pentium 3, P4, Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad system. Haven't yet upgraded to Core i-series due to life getting in the way.

Warcraft, Quake, and Sim City 2

Anyone besides me have Sim City 2000 + SimCopter + Streets of Sim City?

So many hours...

>>20347435
Simcity 2000, fuck yeah!

My first computer was an Atari 800XL and from there I moved on to use a 286, 386, 486, etc. Back them getting games to run on a PC could be a bit of a challenge when you had to create autoexec.bat files and config.sys files to get them to run. By the time I was 10 I knew more about computers than my dad and my family and extended family came to me to fix their computer problems. I had to keep learning to keep up with how badly they fucked things up.

>>20347435
I used to have the original simcity on our Packard Bell. Later I got SimCity 2000 as well. 3k and 4 also later down the line. I could play those games for hours on end.

>>20347435
I had to wait till I got a 486 to run Simcity 2000 because my 386 couldnt cut it. I had to get Simfarm to tide me over till then.

Having a sibling and sharing a computer in the mid 90s to early 2000s was always trying. In 1994 our family got a new Packard Bell 486 and my brother and I would fight over it until 1998 when we got a 200 MHz Celeron and then we fought over who would use that and who would use the 486. Eventually I got a job in high school to buy a Compaq laptop with a 600 MHz Celeron and a DVD player (big pimpin'). My brother kept having to use that 200 MHz celeron till 2003 when I was using a 3.06 GHz computer, until he bought an eMachine (feel free to laugh).

>>20347471
heres a pic of what that 486 looked like.

My mother tells me that my father would hold me in one arm and played his Commodore 64 with the other when I was newly born.

My first memory is of that blue screen.

My two uncles, one is a computer engineer the other is a computer scientist. Also my dad is a mathematician but he owned a win95 box. Oh, and I started using the internet because of porn, so we should add that too.

>be 11 yrs old
>be christmas 1985
>Radio Shack TANDY 1000
>Insert MS-DOS 5.25" floppy into A:\ dirve
>somehow format A:\, thinking blank was inside!
>back at Radio Shack, sales guy face palms
>manager happily gives us new copy of MS-DOS

>>20347574
>not making a backup of the disks

probably when i got some virus for looking at very shady porn sites back when i was about 11, usin that brand new windows ME LIKE A BOSS

was able to fix it by goin into safe mode and usin system restore. felt real good... then it just took off ever since.

>>20347571
accessing and hiding porn was a skill back in the day. I remember unplugging the internal speaker so I could log onto the internet without the modem making a sound and learning how to delete all the temporary files and logging into AOL and using Internet Explorer for all my surfing so it wouldn't show up on my user profile.

Thinking hackers were cool.

>this is true for 99% of /g/

Hot wheels stunt track driver

Back in high school in the later 90's it seemed like I was the only one on campus that knew how to use computers so the administration usually had me hooking them all up. I was friends with my counselor and he had me in the office running phone lines through the ceiling, putting all the computers together and installing crap. The front desk would hand me the keys to all the classrooms and I got to drive the golf carts around. Fun times.

My dad bought us a modded PS1 when I was in kindergarten (lived in Mexico at the time). It totally fit in with my introvertedness.