How did you gain your technical expertise?

I learned 90% of my knowledge from this website !

tech spot and the internet

I picked up the screwdriver and prayed I wouldn't break my computer (To my surprise, I didn't and haven't unless I intended to...)

I have worked in Electronics and computers for 37 years. I learned TV repair in a trade school in 1968, and I started working with computers (DEC PDP8) in 1975

Nodsu hasn't posted in quite a while.

I hope all is well.

27 years working Information Technology with Federal Govt. Started with mainframes using punch cards, programmed a PDP-11 once, saw the evolution of use of technology in govt, from mainframe to PCs. Administered the first UNIX box that came to our office (an Intergraph workstation) and evolved to managing a 300+ infrastructure of servers (SUN, SGI), PCs, and workstations. Cool stuff and then started a business 4 years ago providing computer services to the local area and now techspot.

Took a random A+ certifcation course in my freshman year of high school, and I caught the bug. Ended up "interning" for the school helping maintain the schools 500 or so PCs by my senior year. That is where I learned most of my hardware repair tricks.

Fast forward a few years and I am a junior in college majoring in Networking and Data Security.

It has been along road but thanks to the great community here I have learned alot and kept my spirits up.

I'm a graphic designer with a lot of curiosity, and I replaced fans, dvd drives, and finally a power supply. After doing that, I decided I could build my own computer. I've also experimented a lot with Windows and Macintosh. My latest computer has Windows and Ubuntu on separate drives. I put gaming cases over economical setups. Lots of fun!

Most of what I know I learned out of curiosity (or trial and error). When Internet became widely available I learned a lot there to, and even more when I discovered Techspot. I've used a lot of time in front of the computer doing useful things, not-very-useful things and waste-off-time things.

It all started back in 1992 when my mother bought an Apple Macintosh LC II, I made her freak out by replacing the boot-logo with a fake password-warning. I even made my own "operating system" with HyperCard (just a program that had menus and looked like an OS, not a real OS, of course).

Then we got a IBM Thinkpad, Cyrix 586 with 8 MB Ram (not really a speed monster), later a Pentium 3, an AMD Athlon 2400+ (my first own computer) and now this Core2Duo laptop.

People around me tend to get a little mad because I always change and tweak their systems to make them work better (especially when I'm not successful). They don't want ANYTHING to look or work different (but if something's not working their happy ask for my help).

So, like most people here, I learned from trial and error.

I built my first PC in '85, of necessity. Before that I had a Color Computer, totally useless thing with 4K of RAM and only a cassette for storage. The parts (including two 360K floppy drives and a full 640 KB of RAM) cost over $700, not including my monitor (16 shades of glorious amber!) Buying a computer pre-assembled, even a no-name clone, would have added another $300 at least. Assembling it was a challenge, since the rock bottom parts I bought (except for the Teac drives) had little or no instructions, there was no Internet for the general public, the small town I lived nearest had no book store, and no one I knew used or owned a computer, much less built one. Everything used jumpers, or DIP switches if you were really lucky. Even the little IBM trick of splitting & twisting the floppy drive cable hadn't become standard. So I really had to dive in and figure out what everything did.

Eventually I added a hard drive (20 MB formatted to 30 MB using an RLL card, which necessitated reformatting every few months), then a multiscanning color monitor and CGA video card, then I built an AT clone. At each step I had to learn the new stuff, but it definitely got easier. (If you can set jumpers on a floppy drive, you can set them on a hard drive.)

Around '90 the company I worked for bought computers and AutoCAD for the engineering department. The initial computers were Compaq, using $1,500 to $2,500 video cards, but as we added computers we couldn't afford to buy new computers and the original tech guy left so I got to build and upgrade clones instead. I fondly remember perusing inch-thick Computer Shopper magazines in search of new parts and new places to buy them. Now it's all about the Egg, and the premium for assembling new computers is so small that it's usually not worth the trouble, but I still build a couple a year.

It's been a long, strange trip but I wouldn't have it any other way.