Ian Builds His Own Computer

~ Laura

For the past couple of weeks, Ian has been using his birthday gifts — Amazon gift cards — to buy computer parts. Yesterday, Steve and Ian went to the super geeky computer parts company to get the last couple of components. Then Ian spent five hours putting it together.

He has taught himself computer repair from YouTube videos and a simulation game on Steam. He is almost done. He had to order some more screws from Amazon last night, so he can finish the project and see if it works. Fingers crossed.

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Published by Laura

4 thoughts on “Ian Builds His Own Computer”

  1. Nice project. Does he also work with raspberry pis? My son made me a magic mirror (from internet plans) a few years ago that shows the weather. I have it near the coat closet.

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  2. Raspberry pis? I had to google that. The computer school? No, Ian taught himself how to do everything by watching YouTube videos and by playing a computer game simulation on STEAM.

    He’s mostly done. There was something going on about the graphics card in his monitor last night. Not sure if that problem was solved.

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  3. Fun self learning! There’s a lot of self-teaching videos like that for Raspberry pi, too, which was invented to teach and learn circuit boards through experiment. They are expensive and kind of unavailable right now, but should come down in price towards the end of the year.

    Debugging is part of the process, so something not working the first time is all good!

    Seems like a project a mentor/helper might be able to help with. A lot of computer tinkerers are self taught these days (lots of info in those videos) and formal classes aren’t the right place for them.

    I’ve recently been thinking about how I could improve some of my skills (data visualization, for example, or photo processing/graphic design). I’m self taught to the point of being pretty advanced, but also don’t know some of the basics (for example, just discovered a second method of accessing selection tools in Photoshop, from a video, but it required fast-forwarding through a bunch of irrelevant stuff, which I hate — I’m not a video learner). But it’s hard to find a class where I would have to sit through a lot I already know.

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