Tech Isn’t Just My Hobby. It’s My Story.

 

Most people have a living room. I have a basement full of blinking lights, beeping buzzers, and the smell of old plastic. Welcome to my basement

Ever since i was a kid, i’ve been fascinated by tech gadgets: at the age of 4, i used to burn my own CDs, help dad looking for music, mess with dad’s phone settings and whatever.

But the true turning point came when i started elementary school. I was sitting bored at my desk, when I noticed teacher, struggling at playing the DVD that came with the English book. I saw the VLC icon on the teacher’s desktop, so i stood up and told her: “You should use VLC to play the DVD. You see that traffic cone on the desktop?”.
Not even the time to finish talking that she screamed at me: “I AM OLDER THAN YOU I KNOW THINGS BETTER THAN YOU!!!”.
Well, in the end, she ended up using VLC, like i told her.

That was the moment i thought:

“Well I can do something better than the teacher so, why don’t keep doing things better than the teacher”.

I then started to became a sort of an “IT technician” at any school I attended.

Around the same time, grandma (who lives at 1st floor) let me use her basement like i wanted. Imagine what a 6 years old kid can do to a basement. I was so creative, I used to make computers and appliances with cardboard. But, after a few years, these cardboard computers turned into real, something i would have never expected before.
The first computer to enter the basement was a broken HP desktop that dentist gave me: my first approach disassembling a computer on my own. And yes, i broke it further but who cares: I learned how a computer Is made at the age of 7.

No one in family used to be familiar with computers and I felt like in need of a “teacher” to learn even more computer stuff.
That’s where YouTube comes in. I learned everything from a particular creator called MVVBlog, who disassembles computers and does all kinds stuff like that. Believe it or not, at the age of 10 I already knew what I needed to make a RAID of disks.

Talking about being 10 years old, that year my dad brought home this:

It was love at first sight.

And that’s how I started experimenting with old tech (which should, for me its MUST actually, be called “retro”). This Pentium III running Windows 98 brought me into the retro tech world.

Then I discovered iPods (I still daily drive one btw) and built a collection, then Nokia Lumias (built a collection of these too). A cool kid. Wasn’t I?

Then I started to grow a bit, experimenting with computers and stuff bought at local fleas and things like that.

I developed a passion for the HI-FI world too and now I can push dad’s 40 years old Telefunken amp at full volume, enjoying 80’s beats like he used to.

What about now? Well I basically do the same things, except that I bought a domain and started blogging here, just for fun. Now that I have a blog, I can finally have my digital blank canvas like I do in my basement, which will be now renamed to “The Clicky Basement”.

 

I Got Gifted a Toshiba Laptop From the 80s! - Toshiba T1200

 

A kinda working Toshiba T1200 has just got gifted to me by a friend of grandma's. It looks quite nice, and battery is still miraculously holding some minutes of charge.

It is obviously running DOS. HDD is 20mb in size. 
I wonder what cool things can I do with it as I've never had such an old machine in my life.

The only way to currently communicate with it is floppy and, I'd like to know if something like Iomega Zip can work with this machine.The screen sometimes turns orange and backlight shuts off every once in a while. Capacitors need to be replaced ASAP, especially the power supply ones. Also the HDD doesn't always work. This thing is in desperate need of an electronical restoration.

Big shout out to the guy who gave me this! Such a nice person :)

Happy Birthday to the Nokia 3310

 

Before smartphones ruled the world, one device defined durability, simplicity, and style. Happy 25th to the Nokia 3310.

Developed in Denmark, this phone is a legend, a cultural symbol, a timeless icon of the Mobile Phone industry, a synonym of “built to last“.

Let’s dive into!

 

A pocket-sized nearly indestructible piece of art. Monochrome screen with green backlight, no external antenna and bold design. Featuring a simple yet timeless design, the T9 keypad allowed users to type words by pressing each key just once per letter, and the phone would guess the intended word based on a built-in dictionary.

The Nokia Composer is worth a mention as it was a very powerful built-in tool. Users could create their own ringtones for free, just by typing notes on the keypad!

 Thanks to the “Xpress-On” shells, everyone could change their phone’s look and feel whenever they wanted, based on their mood!

 

Forget the charger. With its 900mAh battery, this phone could last up to 11 days or 4 hours of talk time.

Phone could store up to 8 dialed, 8 received, 8 missed calls. Rapid message templates were available too.

Fun facts:

• It could handle three times the size of a standard SMS: 459 characters.
• Nokia 3315, 3320, 3330, 3350, 3360, 3390 and 3395 were different regional variants of the 3310.
• Calculator and stopwatch built in
• Up to 35 ringtones could be stored
• In 2015, Finland chose this phone as one of the first three “National Emojis“
• In 2017 Nokia released a modern version of it, mostly known as “Nokia 3310 4G”.
• Some 4G aftermarket motherboards are available
• About 126 million units were sold

Whether you owned one, borrowed one, still own one, or just admired its charm, the 3310 was more than a phone, safe to say: it defined a generation.