Learning on the job back in the olden days.

Posted by tmofee@reddit | talesfromtechsupport | View on Reddit | 18 comments

Many years ago, I was fresh out of school and new to the world of IT. I was basically the computer guy for a small company that sold mainly pcs to people in a small town. This is pre windows xp, so we’re talking long ago. We had a little bit of server work, but it was mainly “my pc is slow, my printer won’t work” kind of jobs.

One day I get a call out for a new customer, my manager took the call, didn’t ask many questions just “hook up the printer to the computer, please and thank you.” We usually didn’t take newer customers that didn’t buy computers off of us, you never knew what was going to come up.

I get to this house and freeze in horror - it was a Mac. Not just any Mac - Mac classic era. With an old LPT style printer. No usb yet! Now this was a time before the return of jobs and not many people had Mac’s - especially in my home town. Also, I had never worked on a Mac at that point in my life. Pre jumping on a smartphone to google search - I could go back to the shop but that would take time, and also annoyance from my boss. So I sat down, and after and hour managed to figure out the basics of Mac OS enough to get the printer running like a champ.

Back at the shop I get an apology and a “atta boy” - he forgot to ask what type of machine it was, just assumed pc. Also the family was rather important in town - while they never bought a pc for the family, their business certainly did…

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menkoy@reddit

Reminds me of a horror task I got the one time I worked at a similar company, that was tough to figure out even WITH Google. We mostly supported local companies, but the owner had a few repeat individuals we'd do work for because they had a good relationship with the owner. This old guy comes in the shop, stumbling with a cane, saying he forgot the password to his laptop. Should be easy enough, we can just boot from a USB and reset it, right? No, because... he forgot the password to the Windows VM on his Mac laptop. He writes down the password for the Mac, but I come to find out that password is wrong, too.

No one else in the shop knew anything about it, as I had apparently replaced the guy who usually handled this particular customer. I messed with it and did some research when I had time, eventually figuring out the Mac's password, but I was getting nowhere on accessing the Windows piece of the puzzle. After a couple days the guy comes back in to the shop to see if it was fixed. Now the owner of the shop is worried, because like I said, this customer is old, slightly senile, and can't walk well. Our shop had some stairs and a bumpy parking lot. We didn't want this guy hurting himself. I cancelled everything else I was doing for the day and finally figured it out - I don't recall how, it honestly may have been from brute forcing password attempts - and left extensive notes on the case for whatever future tech had to deal with this if it happened in the future.

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Ha-Funny-Boy@reddit

Passwords are a necessary evil. I know the advice about writing them down, but my password list consists of 16 pages of 2 column entries of cells. Each cell is about 5 lines of Name, URL, UserID, and cryptic password clue.

Too many to remember.

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Stryker_One@reddit

and left extensive notes on the case for whatever future tech had to deal with this

Cause that future tech, might be you.

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Aware_Stand_8938@reddit

I leave myself semi- cryptic notes on the machines I fix...

You know, to keep future me guessing!!

Ambitious_Rub_2047@reddit

Oh god the times before the let's google that.

A couple of years after I got my first pc (I was 12) I kinda become the family pc-guy, because I learned to install a printer (follow the in english instructions in a non-english country), and one time my services were offered to a neighbor who owned a mac, I didn't even know what a MAC was, it took the better part of an hour to fix the printer, is almost magical how things worked back then.

VikThouGideonVickery@reddit

having grown up on a Tandy Micro MC10, I remember the days before google, spent many hours reading actual printed documentation (when I could get my hands on such wonderous things) to sort out issues

subWoofer_0870@reddit

Try not to confuse Mac (short for Macintosh, as in computer or waterproof jacket) with MAC (Media Access Control - the physical hardware ID of every networkable hardware device like Ethernet adapter, Bluetooth chip, wifi chip).

At the time I knew neither

joe_attaboy@reddit

This is pre windows xp, so we’re talking long ago.

LOL. Hold my beer while I tell you about pre-Windows 286.

the123king-reddit@reddit

I showed a very ancient piece of technology (a PDP-11/23) to a bunch of teenagers. They wondered where you plug the monitor in.

They seemed really confused when i replied "you get a glorified typewriter and you liked it!" whilst using PuTTY to connect via serial.

You may as well have been showing them an ancient table of hieroglyphics.