My History with Computers - 2 - Prep School and 6th Grade

I have never been a hardworking student. But have always stepped up to the challenge when there was an important exam that I had to pass. I’d always enter a study camp 3 months before the exam and get good results. And being a kid in Turkey, you certainly get enough exams to worry about. Every stage of education in this country brings you a handful of exams. The relevant ones for this post are the ones I took in 1996 at the end of 5th year: Mid-school entrance exams. Basically these exams secure you a good school from prep class (where you learn a foreign language) up till 8th grade. Then you take high school exams, bla bla.

5th year was ok for me. I wasn’t hardworking at school but I didn’t suck that bad either. I didn’t mind the exams that I was supposed to take at the end of the year. so I was happy playing my computer games on my dad’s 386DX as well as trying to discover what the hell is in c:\win\ folder that makes that damn machine work. But as time passed, I suspended all my other interests and started studying more and more.

Old photo of the school I attended for most of my primary school education. I forgot how modest it used to look at the time.

Of the two exams I had to take: one for private schools and one for state schools, my result for private schools turned out to be much better. There was one school that I wanted to go to The Koç School in Istanbul. But I couldn't get into that by a slim score difference. Instead I got into Işık Highschool in Nişantaşı, Istanbul. An old district which was at the time one of the most upscale neighborhoods in town. Now it sucks but that's a different story.

Some photos of Nişantaşı. It's supposed to be an "awesome" part of town. but i really can't see that anymore. It was what they claim it was during the 90's though

New life in İstanbul (first take)

It was September 1996 and I was starting my studies Işık High School. It was a school which had both boarding and daytime students. My family didn’t want me to go but I insisted. I had a solid plan for my life when I was 11 and going to that school was simply essential. My first year there was the prep year. Which is devoted to learning English properly as well as some simple math and science classes. Learning English is quite hard for Turks because of the differences in almost every aspect of their mother tongue and this alien Indo-European language. So, studies took quite some portion of my time.

The Internet

Through the end of that year, my science teacher noticed that I was really interested in sciences, science fiction and how things work. I think my mid-year assignment, which was writing a small book, helped him a lot. It was about an alien invasion on earth and how humans manage to fight them back (the Independence Day was just out, don’t judge me). So he told me that he'll arrange some time for me in the computer lab so I can use the internet and find out about rockets, Nasa and all of those fun stuff.

One day, during science class towards the end of first year, my science teacher told me to go to the computer lab, so I went. The lab teacher sat me in front of his computer as it was the only one which had internet at that time. That computer was such a great machine. it had a 16 bit sound card and even a CD-ROM drive. Anyway, he logged on to nasa.gov for me and left to teach his class. Which was making quite a noise while I was trying to figure out what the hell I was doing.

I didn’t have great skills in English at the time. I wasn’t able to understand long sentences and my vocabulary was quite limited. coupled with my complete ignorance about what the internet was, I don’t think I managed to do anything even remotely productive at that one hour I had. All I remember is that I was using Netscape Navigator. And I was aware that I was receiving data from some distant location so it took a long time for the computer to display. and my clue for this was the lights moving on the Netscape logo on the top left of the screen.

I clicked around a lot but I wasn’t getting anything that I can use - I didn't know what I was looking for really. but I was hoping to find a diagram of a rocket engine or something similar. After a long period of clicking around and not getting anything useful, I clicked on something and the computer got stuck with a blank white screen with Netscape logo insisting that the computer was receiving data. I was scared to disturb the computer so I waited for a looong while the computer looked at me with a blank page. after that long wait, it started a key hole sized video of a lift-off. I was confused but I watched that 10 or so second video a few times and then I had to leave the class. internet surely was not something easy or fast.

That's all for my first year really. And I didn’t do much during that summer as I spent most of my summer in a camp riding my bike around. Other than the camp, I spent my time listening to Whitney Houston and Bizet and trying to make stuff from lego with electric motors and seriously over voltaging them. Then the summer ended and I went back to my school in Istanbul.

Life in the computer lab

In 1997 I started 6th grade. Everything changed very quickly during that year. My taste in music, how I relate to my friend and the school and my parents, how I use my head… but computers was a constant in all of this mess caused by puberty. And timewise, I had a very strict routine because of the strict rules of my school.

These two albums were released approximately a year apart. And i bought both of them shortly after they were released. I think this can explain the direction of change i went through

Weekdays were almost always similar with studying and hanging out with friends but weekends were all mine. Sometimes I’d leave the school to stay at my parents’ friends’ house but I usually spent my weekends in the school complex with my wonderful friend Ertürk. We would sneak into the computer lab and play computer games all weekend. I loved every minute I spent in that lab. So much that I still feel exhilarated while I’m recalling those days after so many years. I think I’m jealous of that young me.

Doom II

Without a doubt, the game we played most frequently was Doom II. We used to play multiplayer with the lab teacher and some occasionally presented strangers. But I wasn't really interested in that. I wanted to spend time with the AI and advance levels. but I wasn't good enough to advance very far and if I recall correctly, the computers did not have mice. I may be wrong about that but I remember turning around in the scene with arrow keys. Also after a few years, I do remember being surprised that Doom supports mice.

we have got TATATATATA something kinda funny going on

An anecdote: at that time I used to also spend ridiculous amount of time listening to music. My taste changed drastically during that school year but during most of the year we listened to Spice Girls’ first album. They were ridiculously famous at the time. Ertürk used to joke that whenever he hears the band since then, he remembers us shooting creatures in Doom.

 Ertürk, his religion, and the Computer of the firsts

The computers in the lab also had other games but I wasn't interested in most of them. Ertürk was. he would try different games and urge me to also play but my interest wasn’t that diverse. But I do remember playing the first quake and not liking it very much. Doom was better suited for me. But at the end of my time in that school, I discovered Simcity 2000. which is a big story that I’ll come back to.

There was a different stories going on around me. Which I was usually a spectator to. but nevertheless they very important for me as they founded the basis of my interest in computers in the following years to come. First story had to do with that awesome computer that the lab teacher was using.

You can be sure Ertürk saw and read this book

Almost every week the lab teacher had something new that he was doing. he was a young guy who was keenly interested in computers and he loved trying things. he was a great mentor to my friend Ertürk as he had a deep interest in knowing how different software worked. While I was buying general books about science, he'd usually be shopping for those orange books about operating systems and different software. He usually knew how some software worked from the books he read without ever having the chance to use the software on a computer.

So, Ertürk and the lab teacher had a lot to talk about. and I’d usually only had the gist of idea what they are really discussing. but I’d be watching them while they are doing their thing. and I usually felt a bit left out because I didn’t have that connection with the lab teacher whom I loved really. I’d ask questions to them and they would reply but Ertürk would usually keep his answers short. He had his moments during which he shared what he learned or knew very passionately and I loved that but most of the time I’d receive a dose of condescension as he was trying to protect computers from my ignorant hands and mind. Computers were certainly interesting for me I loved them and I was interested in them but for Ertürk, they were sacred, something that he felt responsible to protect and know better and better. I’ll come to this topic in the following installments of this storyline.

That awesome computer at that lab was the first computer that I saw yahoo at. Also Hotmail and AltaVista. it was my first glimpse into a world that has truly shaped me ever since. I still can't forget the lab teacher getting a new Hotmail account. There was a red spinning globe on Hotmail’s first page back then. I was really taken by that spinning animation.

Also that computer was the first machine that I discovered that computers were able to really play music like hi-fis did. which changed the way I looked at them really. I noticed how amazing this feature can be when I first saw Quake II on that machine. The signature soundtrack of that game Quad Machine by sonic mayhem started playing in the first level and I was blown away... a new word was constantly being ringed to my ears: multimedia. Everyone was talking about that at the time. Now I knew what all the fuss was about.

The family computer

There were some other awesome computers that I got the chance to use during that time. One of them belonged to one of my parents’ friends’ who lives in Beşiktaş. They were actually in my life since I was born but I was just getting to know them. Their son Buğra and daughter Tuğba and that family’s life in general had great influence on me during 6th and 7th grade in various ways but I’ll just stick to computers in this storyline.

Part of what I did at their house involved their computer. Buğra mostly played computer games he had a game named Carmageddon. It was basically a car race but the twist is, you were not bounded by a simple race track. Plus you had the chance to cause real harm to your opponents and spectators around. Which meant that you could also win the game by killing everyone and everything around you. I don’t think anyone was interested in winning those races in the traditional manner.

I lied in the paragraph above. When Buğra first showed me the game I had no idea that it was actually a car race. We both thought that you were supposed to kill everything around you. So that was what we did. Plus, the copy he had was a demo so we didn’t get to play that game that much. But keep on reading. Because later Carmageddon will become an essential part of my life.

A typical moment in Carmageddon. That red blob is probably some cow getting slaughtered

The daughter of the house was using a program called ICQ to chat with people. And she was chatting with random people from all over the planet as well as her friends. I didn’t really get the chance use ICQ then but I still got an account for myself. I was really curious about how she met random people online with that program. She had many boyfriends that she met over the internet in the following years. Now she is happily married with a first born and living in Norway with his husband whom she met online:)

7/24-36K

The last awesome computer that I got the chance to use belonged to one of my friends from school named Alper. He was also a boarding student but he used to go to his home during weekends as his family was living in a nearby city named İzmit. There was no ADSL back then so the time anyone spent on the internet was bounded by how big a phone bill they could afford. Alper was really lucky in that respect because they were living in a company complex and their phone was free of charge. He was sort of into hacking, Trojans and viruses. And that’s what we used to talk about most of the time while I was visiting him. I never really got into that side of things but I learned some stuff from him for sure.

Alper and another friend from school named İlker, who was also interested in this kind of computing used to fight about how good they are while Ertürk was usually sitting somewhere watching them, saying nothing even though he knew much more than either of them. İlker used to pick on Ertürk a lot because of this simple fact. There were a lot of other people who were involved in a regular computer chat but these three were the most vocal people. And I’d just ask questions and listen to them talk about what they know. Sometimes I’d ask questions that I know would get them into fights. I just liked that.

Recording stuff

This is Geri Halliwell
90s kids know why she is relevant

I had a friend in 6th grade who was into metal music. He was a science buff so you can imagine how we met. I went to his house only once but it was significant because he used computer for making scientific research. Also he recorded radio shows without ever having the chance to broadcast them. And one last thing, he knew how to reach internet porn. Which means nothing now but then, that was… wooooooooow.

When I was with him we recorded a radio broadcast but he was never able to find where the file was restored. I guess he didn’t know what he was doing either.

SimCity 2000

Last big thing that happened during 6th grade was seeing an older student from school whom I didn’t particularly like play a city building game. This guy was a bully so I was reluctant to ask him what he was doing. But I did anyway. And to my surprise, he first told me then showed me what he was doing. He taught me the game to some degree. I loved the idea of that game but I never really got the chance to play that game. It was the last week of the school year and I was supposed to go back to Ordu for 3 months. Back to my dad’s 386DX.

I forgot the name of the a few days into summer. The name “SimCity” was just too alien for me at the time. Though I have to say that I missed that game that I only saw once or twice.

Looking back now, I certainly had the best experience I could have with computers in ’96 and ’97. I wasn't able to have a computer of my own as a boarding student and I was mostly interested in the feeling they give me rather than what they do. This was the last year of my life during which computers only meant games for me. But looking back, it’s one of those periods I miss the most.