Ice Cream Jonsey wrote:Okay, Ben has told me this story before. I would like everyone to hear it. I am not sure if the DJ is taking requests, but I would like to request the story of the time Tdarcos bought Benjamin "Pinback" Parrish's computer!!!
I would also like both pinback and Cmdr Tdarcos's take on the experience. If I get both, I will reveal the REAL NAME of the person who asked about the story (when I asked that person if they had ever heard it).
I'd forgotten about this. It brings back so many memories.
I had an 8086 for many years. At one point I opened the box and discovered it wasn't an 8086, it was a NEC V20, which is basically an 8086 with an 8080 in it too, it can run both instruction sets.
Wolfenstein 3D comes out, which requires at least a 286, so I bought one. I couldn't afford a color monitor at the time so I had to play it in black-and-white. I got a color monitor a while later. So I had that computer for a few years.
As a result of his upgrade path, Ben mentions how he had upgraded his computer so he now had an extra 80386 and wanted to sell it. I think it had 4 meg of memory, or it might have been 8. I forget how much disk space, it might have been around 200 megabytes. He was willing to sell it at the (then bargain) price of $800.
At the time I had only a 286 and DOOM had come out, which I really wanted to play and required at least a 386, which had it not been for Pinback's computer, there was no way I could afford one. At that time a new 386 with the same configuration was something like $1600.
I offered to buy it on one of two conditions: 90 days same as cash, i.e. that I'd have 3 months to come up with the money, or divide the purchase into 4 monthly payments of $200. He accepted the latter offer.
He brings his computer by my house, I'm excitedly carrying it up the stairs,
and I dropped it! Dent the goddamn thing, and I haven't even used it yet! Well, anyway, it's my fault, I still have to pay for it. I think I was worried because it wouldn't start. In deep sorrow, I give Ben the first $200.
I open up the box and discover the memory is loose (so the machine thinks it has no memory at all), and the dent is on the "empty" side; the hard drive and serious components are on the other side. So I reseat the memory, plug it in, and it boots fine. It works okay.
Over the next three months I am very careful to scrape together the $200 and get it to Ben when it was due. I took it as a sense of pride that this bill would be paid on time. Once I had to use Fedex to be sure it was, but I can proudly say that all three payments were received by him on or before the due date.
After the last payment, I called Ben to check, and I thanked him for the opportunity to do business with him.
I kept that computer for quite a while, a few years until I think Duke Nukem 3 came out, which required a 486 minimum. I went a little ahead of the curve, I bought a white box Pentium from a local computer store.
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[quote="Ice Cream Jonsey"]Okay, Ben has told me this story before. I would like everyone to hear it. I am not sure if the DJ is taking requests, but I would like to request [b][i]the story of the time Tdarcos bought Benjamin "Pinback" Parrish's computer!!![/i][/b]
I would also like both pinback and Cmdr Tdarcos's take on the experience. If I get both, I will reveal the REAL NAME of the person who asked about the story (when I asked that person if they had ever heard it).[/quote]
I'd forgotten about this. It brings back so many memories.
I had an 8086 for many years. At one point I opened the box and discovered it wasn't an 8086, it was a NEC V20, which is basically an 8086 with an 8080 in it too, it can run both instruction sets.
Wolfenstein 3D comes out, which requires at least a 286, so I bought one. I couldn't afford a color monitor at the time so I had to play it in black-and-white. I got a color monitor a while later. So I had that computer for a few years.
As a result of his upgrade path, Ben mentions how he had upgraded his computer so he now had an extra 80386 and wanted to sell it. I think it had 4 meg of memory, or it might have been 8. I forget how much disk space, it might have been around 200 megabytes. He was willing to sell it at the (then bargain) price of $800.
At the time I had only a 286 and DOOM had come out, which I really wanted to play and required at least a 386, which had it not been for Pinback's computer, there was no way I could afford one. At that time a new 386 with the same configuration was something like $1600.
I offered to buy it on one of two conditions: 90 days same as cash, i.e. that I'd have 3 months to come up with the money, or divide the purchase into 4 monthly payments of $200. He accepted the latter offer.
He brings his computer by my house, I'm excitedly carrying it up the stairs, [i]and I dropped it[/i]! Dent the goddamn thing, and I haven't even used it yet! Well, anyway, it's my fault, I still have to pay for it. I think I was worried because it wouldn't start. In deep sorrow, I give Ben the first $200.
I open up the box and discover the memory is loose (so the machine thinks it has no memory at all), and the dent is on the "empty" side; the hard drive and serious components are on the other side. So I reseat the memory, plug it in, and it boots fine. It works okay.
Over the next three months I am very careful to scrape together the $200 and get it to Ben when it was due. I took it as a sense of pride that this bill would be paid on time. Once I had to use Fedex to be sure it was, but I can proudly say that all three payments were received by him on or before the due date.
After the last payment, I called Ben to check, and I thanked him for the opportunity to do business with him.
I kept that computer for quite a while, a few years until I think Duke Nukem 3 came out, which required a 486 minimum. I went a little ahead of the curve, I bought a white box Pentium from a local computer store.
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