On 03/15/15, dream master said the following...
so how did some of you get into modding? who were some of your influences?
Modding is what got me into my IT career. Here's the long story...
I was working as letter carrier for the usps in silicon valley, and at this time I knew nothing about computers. In '89, we had that loma-prietta earthquake. My appartment was out of power for a long time, so I would hang out at my parent's house for extended periods of time. My mom showed me this new computer game she got. She had an 8-bit IBM XT computer because she used it for her tax accounting business. Anyways, she showed me this game "Kings Quest IV: the Perils of Rosella". We played the game all the way through,
and I decided that I needed my own computer so that I can play cool computer games too.
So I spent $1600 at Radio Shack to buy a Tandy 1000 TL/2, with the tandy 16 color monitor. I was having fun playing games and such, but then I started having to pay a monthly mortgage on the computer. I was talking to a friend
of mine at work about how I should be using my computer to *make* money, and
he told me about the shareware concept. We then started selling shareware disks at conventions and such. The way we got the shareware was to download
it from BBSes.
We decided that it cost too much to dial long distance to download the shareware, so we figured we could set up our own BBS and let other people upload the best new shareware to us. And we could charge to have people
access the BBS and let them download shareware.
Well, the BBS software I chose was WWIV. I liked it since I could buy the source code and mod my own. My mom had a copy of Borland Turbo C, so I got
to use that for compiling the code.
So, I took a course or two to learn how to code in C and C++. And I was off
an making mods to my WWIV BBS. I started off by applying many of the various WWIV mods that were floating around out there, then I started writing my own.
This, along with all my sysoping experience, I got myself a job at 3Com in Santa Clara, where I managed their inhouse 32-line TBBS BBS called Cardboard. It was a support site for their network cards and devices. Users could download the updated drivers or read the various support docs. I had to add support docs to the knowledge base all the time. I was also adding the new drivers as well.
That one job led to my next, and my next, etc, etc.
"No matter where you go, there you are!" - Buckaroo Bonzai
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