I started in September 2014, being 17 at the time, not knowing the difference between PCI and PCIe, quite a bit late, I know, but I was also lucky to have a wacky, but friendly neighbour who likes to collect old junk of all kinds, that decided the computer stuff would be better off in my hands. I got my first P2 and P3 hardware thanks to him. Then I discovered the magic of flea markets where I got my first Socket 7 hardware for cheap, found out a few friends of mine also had old stuff they wanted to get rid of and ended up having plenty of SB Live!, 3 Voodoo cards, and even a Socket 423 motherboard for free, and then some!
I'm not anywhere close to wealthy, just lucky, I know that. Not everyone is that lucky, obviously, and not everyone can afford the stuff I've found/been given for free. Honestly, if I had just started now, I probably wouldn't have found jack, or all I would see would be prohibitively priced crap that probably wouldn't work to begin with, which could have completely discouraged me from this hobby. And then I see gatekeeping (of course, not everywhere), which could totally kill it, or make it even more inaccessible in the long run, considering it keeps people out of something that they could potentially enjoy, and naturally, the people in said hobby could die one day (life is short, and especially now, it can be even shorter), without anyone to pass the torch to, and all that stuff would end up either in the landfill, or being sold at extreme prices that could probably cover the cost of an entire house + a car.
vetz wrote on 2020-09-20, 17:35:
Thread has been cleaned by the mod team and alot of posts deleted.
Absolute last warning. Any other snarky replies to other people calling them troll or newbie will be met with a temp ban and closure of this thread. We set the line here now
Now, get back on topic. Further off-topic posts regarding this derailment will be deleted.
I asked "What about not calling people trolls just because their opinion happens to be unpopular?" and all I got was my post edited censored. Talk about lousy, which brings me to the final part of my rant: Hypocrisy! You let things escalate just so you could come and present yourselves as "The Great White Knights In Shining Armor, Come To Purge The Great Forums From The Evil Trolls", delete posts, threaten members and then pat yourselves in the back like you're heroes or something. You didn't even bother to say something like "Hey Tetrium, maybe don't accuse Miphee of being a troll please". You also did something similar to "Eco-Warriors To The Rescue!" You didn't bother to tell people to keep it civil, you just let that thread devolve into a shit-flinging contest, so you could once again stroke your egos... Seriously, talk about overinflated ego, coupled with unwillingness to actually moderate, rather than just lock/censor topics and threaten/ban people! I expected better, instead all I saw was you guys acting like American cops have been rather notorious to act like lately. Truly disgusting, I'll be too busy vomiting to even notice you banned me by the time you read this...