My Long Journey Through the DIY Universe

My long journey as a DIY gal began out of economic necessity. I needed a computer for my first professional job back in the early 90s.  This was back during the time that Gateway was big, but before their low-end Gateway 2000 PC was available, so I just couldn’t afford to spend several grand on a personal computer.

And why should I? I was a Computer Science graduate was I not? I knew a lot of guys who built their own gaming PCs, so I decided to do the same. But mind you this was before Google, and DIY was not widespread. So my attempts at building a PC  by myself was quite frustrating at first.

What’s a NewsGroup?

Before YouTube, we had Internet forums such as NewsGroups to find out information. I had to search through many of these forums to get the information I needed to build my PC.  Where I lived at that time, the only place to get computer components was at the Fry’s Electronics store near Sunnyvale.  The sales reps were knowledgeable at Fry’s, but I fried quite a few motherboards in the process of building my PC.

Motherboard from a gaming PC I built with the AMD64X2 chip in 2005

DIY for Life

After two fried motherboards and many hours, my PC was finally completed, running and within budget.  I was very proud of my accomplishment because not too many people could build PCs back then and even fewer were women.  From that day forward, I completed hundreds of DIY projects, such as repairing home appliances, installing ceiling fans and simple electrical repairs. Now information is much easier to find for the do-it-yourselfer. I find a lot of information on YouTube, but also use iFixit and free manuals from  SearsPartsDirect for a lot of my DIY projects.

DIY For Life!