Normal, mainstream software expected users to run DOS commands and edit autoexec.bat/config.sys files, and installing new hardware often involved configuring motherboard DIP switches and trying to figure out what “IRQ” and “DMA” means. There is no equivalent to that today. Plug it in, turn it on, and you’re done. 9 times out of 10 you don’t even need to install a driver, your OS already has it. Where does the door to learning and discovery present itself? With plug and play systems and walled garden app stores, everywhere a user could possibly come across some more advanced concepts has been muted and decorated over with pretty conveniences. Computers are toasters now.
Eh, if you’re into computers, you’ll find your way. My first “programming” adventures were writing batch/vb scripts and putting them in the startup folder and watching the teacher lose their shit when when their computer turned off after five seconds. Or watching all of the classroom open and close the CD drives 50 times when we were the first to have an IT class that day.
and installing new hardware often involved configuring motherboard DIP switches and trying to figure out what “IRQ” and “DMA” means.
That part is about IBM PC architecture more than it is about computers in general, including personal computers of that time.
EDIT: I wonder, why all the downvotes, this is just true, look at Macs of that time. I’m not saying interrupts themselves are or a concept of DMA itself is.
Normal, mainstream software expected users to run DOS commands and edit autoexec.bat/config.sys files, and installing new hardware often involved configuring motherboard DIP switches and trying to figure out what “IRQ” and “DMA” means. There is no equivalent to that today. Plug it in, turn it on, and you’re done. 9 times out of 10 you don’t even need to install a driver, your OS already has it. Where does the door to learning and discovery present itself? With plug and play systems and walled garden app stores, everywhere a user could possibly come across some more advanced concepts has been muted and decorated over with pretty conveniences. Computers are toasters now.
Eh, if you’re into computers, you’ll find your way. My first “programming” adventures were writing batch/vb scripts and putting them in the startup folder and watching the teacher lose their shit when when their computer turned off after five seconds. Or watching all of the classroom open and close the CD drives 50 times when we were the first to have an IT class that day.
That part is about IBM PC architecture more than it is about computers in general, including personal computers of that time.
EDIT: I wonder, why all the downvotes, this is just true, look at Macs of that time. I’m not saying interrupts themselves are or a concept of DMA itself is.