Chinese Story About Computer in Old Times

What's the first thing you need to do when you enter a computer classroom? If your answer is “put on shoe covers”, then you, like me, have already entered middle age.

In the weekly computer class, whether we were playing solitaire, debugging screensavers, or even secretly playing CS, our feet were covered with blue plastic shoe covers - or in the absence of shoe covers, two swishy plastic bags.

When you play this picture, you must invite your classmates to come and worship you!

 

When one reaches middle age, there are more and more childhood myths. Why did we have to wear shoe covers when we entered the computer classroom?

 

For dust control?

 

There is a saying that wearing shoe covers into the computer classroom is to dustproof the computers.

 

In fact, computers are not as delicate as we think.

 

Even in our elementary and junior high school years, the electronic components of computers were only manufactured and installed with high cleanliness requirements; for areas with dense wiring and susceptible to moisture and short circuits, they have been covered with insulating sealant and will not be affected by dust.

The delicate parts of the motherboard are already encapsulated during manufacturing.

 

Yes, a very dusty environment still has some impact on the use of the computer, such as fans and heat exchangers can accumulate dust, affecting the cooling effect; another example is that we are still using floppy disks as a storage medium, the exposed magnetic tracks may also be worn due to dust accumulation, resulting in data loss.

 

But this is all only if the dust is really big. You know, when we were kids, computer labs were pretty clean, probably cleaner than many people's homes, so the dust on your shoes is really nothing to worry about, and the effect of wearing shoe covers on the computer labs to prevent dust is just better than nothing.

 

To prevent static electricity?

 

Some people say that wearing shoe covers in the computer room is to prevent static electricity.

 

There is no doubt that the static electricity that crackles in the winter when you are dressing and undressing can easily penetrate tightly packed integrated circuits.

But computers are clearly built with this in mind: the desktops in computer classrooms have metal cases that are naturally shielded from static electricity. As long as you don't kill yourself by opening the case and touching the motherboard with your hands, you don't have to worry about static electricity killing your computer.

 

There is a video blogger, with a lighter ignition device (voltage is generally in the 4,000 volts to 6,000 volts, there are tens of thousands of volts, and static electricity is not too much difference) to electrocute the computer's exposed interfaces, slots, capacitors and chips, the results have not been on the computer to cause any damage. This is because the computer motherboard in the design of anti-static measures, including some capacitors and diodes used to suppress static electricity.

 

On the other hand, even if the static electricity will break the computer, the real anti-static shoe covers are made of specialized anti-static fabric, which can effectively channel the static electricity to the ground. The kind of disposable shoe covers we used when we were young, or the plastic bags tied to our feet, not to mention anti-static, not to create more static electricity is even good.

 

Unexpected and Reasonable Reasons

 

After all, why did we wear shoe covers when we used computers in those years?

 

Because computers were expensive, very, very expensive back then!

 

Middle-aged readers, most of you were in elementary school in 2000, right? At that time, the national per capita disposable income of urban residents was 6,280 yuan, and the per capita net income of farmers was 2,253 yuan.

 

Do you know how much a computer cost back then? From the 1980s, when 286 computers were introduced into Chinese households, until the early 21st century, when a variety of assembled computers came on the scene, the price of a computer has been stabilized at 10,000 yuan. In today's world, that's the equivalent of buying a small 100,000 yuan computer.

Do you remember what the expensive computers looked like when you were a kid?

 

Think about it, now dozens of computers worth millions of dollars are put in a classroom, and every day dozens of children are allowed to use them, will you let them wear shoe covers?

 

If I were you, I'd rather have my kids take a shower, change into clean clothes, and memorize the “Code of Conduct for Elementary School Students” before they go in, not to mention shoe covers. It's the same as decades ago, when moms had to knit nice covers for their TVs, refrigerators, and air conditioners: expensive, precious.