OLDER crowd (20+)? WTF?

[seenett]

This is not an iPhone thread per se, but another thread in this forum got me thinking... (mods please move if appropriate).

So....am I (at age 41) way out of my demo here on MacRumors?? I know this board skews young but....

In high school, there were no computer classes. I believe typing was an elective, however.

In college, I took a class in MS-DOS. The Computer Center had brand spankin' new PC/XTs with monochrome amber displays - huge upgrade from green/black! 1200 baud modems were the latest and greatest . It was a true technological break-thru when I could IM a friend in another building (IF they were logged on to a terminal) via the command prompt. Think "War Games" and Joshua: Want to Play a Game?

[danny_w]

Well I'm 55 and there were no personal computers when I was in college. My first 2 years all computer programming was via punch cards (boxes of them), and my junior year we got to use teletypes with paper tape punches. We got 'glass teletypes' (crt dumb terminals) my last year, and only seniors and graduate students got to use them. How times have changed!

[calvy]

I'm almost 29 and in high school, we had typing and Computers in Business, in which we learned how to use Word and Excel. This and we had a few old Apple compturs which I despised in our Journalism class. This was way before OS X, I think it was OS 8 or so days. And AOL was THE internet provider. But I don't consider myself old, just older than the 14 year olds that crowd most forums.

[Schmoe0013]

I'm almost 29 and in high school...

wow, when do you graduate?





j/k!

[TimothyB]

I'm 27, and even for me, back in Junior High things were similar. Only computer class was typing. Using some Mario type learning software and other apps. Messed with some simple paint program, which printed to a dot matrix printer.

Earlier than that, in elementary school we had old macs, one in a classroom, that all we used for was Oregon Trail.

I did happen to get my hands on digital contact/notes mini computer in Junior High. About the size of a sunglass case, but thinner, and flipped open with a simple text display and keyboard. Had a feature that could flip through note pages insanely fast. So all I did with it was make animations using text characters. I bought it cheap from someone and knew it had to be stolen, and eventually it was stolen from me, the circle of life.

In High School, pretty much recall pagers being around. I can't imagine what life is like as a kid now a days with literally the entire internet in your pocket, camera, music, sms, movies. Just messing with a graphing calculator was the fun thing back then for me. But in High School the computers were much better, still, I recall number munchers out of all things. They had a Sim City 2000 competition once.

And even the internet was new during my time. My first time on the net was 1996 I think, maybe a year earlier. I had a Mac Performa 575, or was it a Power Computing Clone. But all I had was a modem from an earlier computer that was 2.4k speed. Global something it was called. I'd type in a page and leave the computer for 5 minutes. And as the internet was popular for information, back in 2000 I focused my final speech in Speech class at junior college on how e-commerce was going to be huge for buying things on the internet and to not be afraid of your credit being stolen.

I guess when we get older and kids have iphones wired into their brains, we'll be saying: "well in my day, all we had was a single pay phone at school, took things called coins. And if we wanted news about entertainment, politics, video or music, we had to walk miles to the nearest magazine, video or music store, in the snow, barefoot. Oh, and to send a text message, we had to use pencil and paper and wait days for it to arrive"

[albeli]

Yeah, I saw that thread, too. I felt like a fossil. :rolleyes:

I'm almost 39. My oldest child is older than some of the posters here. My first computer class was in college, and I learned how to program simple stuff in DOS. Before that my computer experience was with a Commodore 64, which used programs that played off audio cassettes. :) My dad bought it because he likes to keep up with technology--he was a math major/physics minor.

[seenett]

commodore 64? Sweet! My first computer was a Vic-20.

[MojoWill]

i had an amiga 1200 that i shared with my 2 brothers. I bought my own first computer when i was at Univeristy it had a massive 233Mhz CPU come along way now with my shiny Mac Book Pro. Oh and I'm 25

[dukebound85]

i remember floppy floppy disks. also remember the countless aol disks. also remember when the internet was new. remember thinking computers with color screens were cool

im 23

[gibbz]

I'm 27, and even for me, back in Junior High things were similar. Only computer class was typing.......

I'm 24, and while still really young, can definitely tell a difference between myself and my 18 year old sister in this regard.

I think people in their mid to late 20's are in an interesting generation because we were sort of on the edge of this technology revolution. I too in elementary and junior high had very minimal computer exposure. I remember a couple of educational games in 5th grade (Number Munchers and The Oregon Trail) which were as fancy as it got. Heck, due to cost, my family didn't have a personal computer until I was a sophomore in high school. My senior year in high school I finally took a couple of programming classes (visual basic and C++) and fell in love. Computers were just then taking off in the personal market, with prices becoming quite reasonable. Even then, we were talking floppy drives and such.

In college, and now graduate school, I have become obsessed with technology, namely Apple products. The iPhone is no different. You can see in my signature what machine I have. It is crazy to think how far things have come in my short time since high school. While I may know more than my sister in regards to technology, computers, programming, etc.... they most definitely seem to come to her a bit easier than they did to me. I think perhaps because she has grown up knowing nothing else. It is weird to begin this transition where high schoolers start to think of me as the "older crowd."

[BlueCynicalMoon]

after reading this. I spend more time usually reading the posts here instead of posting myself. Yes, I am 40 (still find it hard to believe on given days). I do feel fortunate. Although they were crap, my high school had TRS-80 Model IV's. My first computer was the TRS 80 Color Computer I. Instead a car, I was more thrilled getting an Apple II e for my 16th birthday. By the time started college in 1985, the computer lab had half Apple II e and half with a computer I still refuse to use today. I still miss my Apple II e. Such is life.

[gandalf18]

I'm 29. At school, typing was an elective - but it still involved electric typewriters. In high school my school did buy macs and I remember the HyperCard classes fondly :) I didn't even hear of email until I got to college.

Like BlueCynicalMoon, I miss my old Apple IIe.

[/dev/toaster]

I am 30 and been into computers since I was like 8 or so.

My first computer was a commodore 64, followed by a 286. First computer I used however was an 8088 XT.

Early on, we had computer "labs" which was mostly Apples IIs. I remember getting booted out of the class in ~4th grade for "hacking". I scared the crap out of the teachers when I started to write code in BASIC.

Another time a teacher made the major mistake of telling me that if I thought I was so smart, why don't I teach the computer class. Take a wild guess what happened. The next day I was teaching the class Pascal.

For the most part, I wasn't allowed near the computers without strong supervision because I more or less scared the entire teaching staff.

One day I tried to figure out the number of hours I have spent in front of a computer. I quickly realized the result would be a rather large depressing number :D

[dukebound85]

One day I tried to figure out the number of hours I have spent in front of a computer. I quickly realized the result would be a rather large depressing number :D

oh god i dont even want to think about it

[paulej69]

commodore 64? Sweet! My first computer was a Vic-20.

Those were the days - typing out programs letter by letter from computer magazines, only to find you had made a mistake somewhere so it wouldn't run...

38 here - no computers at all in High School - I remember my friends dad bringing the first Mac home from work - in an Apple carry bag - was so impressed that this computer was PORTABLE - you could take it anywhere!!

Since when are 20-something s considered "older" anyway (except by 15 year olds) - hell, 40 is not old these days...:)

[TheFam]

This is not an iPhone thread per se, but another thread in this forum got me thinking... (mods please move if appropriate).

So....am I (at age 41) way out of my demo here on MacRumors?? I know this board skews young but....

In high school, there were no computer classes. I believe typing was an elective, however.

In college, I took a class in MS-DOS. The Computer Center had brand spankin' new PC/XTs with monochrome amber displays - huge upgrade from green/black! 1200 baud modems were the latest and greatest . It was a true technological break-thru when I could IM a friend in another building (IF they were logged on to a terminal) via the command prompt. Think "War Games" and Joshua: Want to Play a Game?



Hello everyone, I'm the thread starter of the thread that this one is based off of:)


In my opinion, whether your 2 or 90, learning about tech in general always keeps you in the demographic, because thats what our world depends on everyday. So to the thread starter, no your not out of it at all! :D

[UnixMac]

This is not an iPhone thread per se, but another thread in this forum got me thinking... (mods please move if appropriate).

So....am I (at age 41) way out of my demo here on MacRumors?? I know this board skews young but....

In high school, there were no computer classes. I believe typing was an elective, however.

In college, I took a class in MS-DOS. The Computer Center had brand spankin' new PC/XTs with monochrome amber displays - huge upgrade from green/black! 1200 baud modems were the latest and greatest . It was a true technological break-thru when I could IM a friend in another building (IF they were logged on to a terminal) via the command prompt. Think "War Games" and Joshua: Want to Play a Game?

I had an Apple II back in 1980 at age 11, and graduated into IBM PC/DOS, later windows, then into MAC OS X beta, etc.. I've seen this age come, and go.. I'm 39.. I consider myself "middle, younger age".. ;)

[KauaiBruce]

I am 52. I had one of the first BSCS ( BS in Computer Science) degrees given in 1978. It was the first semester it existed at NAU. As far as I heard at the time only MIT and Berkely also had a BSCS.

My college computer had 98K TOTAL memory. That ran the whole campus. What they called a Personal Computer was $100 and delivered as a box of chips you wired together yourself just to get it to run simple counting programs if you were lucky to get it to work.

I bought the first Macintosh model that came out and I think I was the first consumer in CA to get their hands on the first Mac Hard Drive. I forget the size but I think it was about 2megs and it cost me about $2,000. I had to use connections at Computerland Corporate to get my hands on it. At the time is seemed like all the memory in the world.

I even got one of the first Newtons (like you did not guess :-) )

Now flash forward to the iPhone. I have seen it all and it is the most amazing thing I have ever owned. I used to drag around a cell phone, Ipod, and camera. It does just about everything I would ever need when I am away from home. I did not need to drag a laptop to Europe last summer. I could surf and do all my email from every Hotel Lobby using wifi.

I am excited to get the 3G speeds. I love to use the phone to surf the web while I am waiting for anything when I am out. Now all I need to be totaly content is a decent Texas Holdem card game. :-):cool:

[Michael CM1]

I hope you don't skew young on here. I see to many posts about people buying iPhones and giving the old one to their wives. I'm assuming nobody under 18 is married, so there are plenty of us "old farts."

I'm 30, and I remember thinking an Apple IIe was badass. It had TWO 5.25" floppy disk drives (TWO, dammit!). I think we were ultra-cool with a screen that displayed 8 colors. Somewhere in there was an Atari 600, which had a keyboard and you could write programs on. Then, looking back, came the uber-suckage of Windows. I remember my dad spending $2000 on some clone that had 3.1 along with a 486 processor that ran at 33 megahertz. Oooooh. I guess at the time it wasn't bad, but looking back I want to find that thing and strangle it. That was during Apple's crappy days (the 1990s) and I wouldn't have been able to play any of the games I had. I remember the awesomeness of the Legend of Kyrandia series and the Hardball baseball games (until they effed it up with No. 6).

Taking a typing class in high school (it was an elective) was the SMARTEST THING I EVER DID. I can type 80wpm with very few errors, and I use Quark Xpress to lay out newspaper pages for my peanuts. Typing that fast lets you be VERY lazy on other things since Quark has a ton of keyboard shortcuts. I can also type of the occasional article that I write (got one tomorrow, woot) and the typing class still pays off. However, I only typed 40wpm in that class. The other half of my speed I gained through using IM and chat apps. I used those a lot in college and kept on getting faster and faster. I feel sorry for the kids who think texting is some awesome form of communication. They don't spell half the stuff right and you get charged for it most of the time. Learn how to type right and use IM on a real computer or just call someone! :)

[JBaker122586]

I'm only 21 and can understand what you're talking about to a point.
I remember when the reaches of the Internet were basically whatever you could click to from the AOL home screen.

In middle school I was issued Saturday School for downloading a file from the Internet(which was against school rules). The dean looked at her paperwork to inform me that my story about accidentally clicking something on a page I was browsing couldn't have possibly been true because "the file was 121 kilobytes. I don't know much about computers, but I know something as big as that's not going to download before you can stop it." I just laughed in her face.

[macduke]

I'm only 21 and can understand what you're talking about to a point.
I remember when the reaches of the Internet were basically whatever you could click to from the AOL home screen.

In middle school I was issued Saturday School for downloading a file from the Internet(which was against school rules). The dean looked at her paperwork to inform me that my story about accidentally clicking something on a page I was browsing couldn't have possibly been true because "the file was 121 kilobytes. I don't know much about computers, but I know something as big as that's not going to download before you can stop it." I just laughed in her face.

Middle school...around 1999? 2000? If you were using 56k, it would have taken a little over 15 seconds.

[alFR]

Ah, the old days. My first computer was a Sinclair ZX81 (with 16K ram pack, oh yes). Then a ZX Spectrum, 48k RAM. Commodore 64. Acorn Archimedes 410 (1Mb RAM!!!) - yes, I was there at the dawn of RISC processors. Acorn RISC PC. Various PCs, them MBP. So no, you're not old. :)

[nagromme]

I grew up with misc. Commodores, so I guess that dates me well enough!

[macduke]

Hmmm...my long computer history.

I'm 23 and still in college since I took a hiatus when I was 19. My story might be a little different because my school district always had pretty good funding for technology, and my grandpa worked for a government contractor so he usually had the latest.

I remember when in first grade we were taught how to use the Macs in school. I don't know what kind they were. We were taught how to turn on the switch on the back, how to load the Oregon Trail 5 1/4" floppy disk, etc. Later on I started playing on my grandpa's computer when I was about 5 when Windows 3 was out on his 486. I remember him getting really excited when 3.1 came out. I would draw pictures in paint all day long and he would print them out on his color printer that had tear off dots down both sides to feed it. I remember he got mad at me for printing too many pictures this one time because it was expensive. I printed like 5?

Anyway, so in middle school is when I really started using computers. In 1996 my grandparents bought us a Pentium I MMX 75mhz with 32mb of ram, 4x cdrom, 1.2gb hard drive, 14.4k modem and Windows 95. We didn't get the internet until a few years after that and had a 33.6k modem installed, and finally a 56.6k flex. I also remember my grandpa got one of the early CD-RW's in 1998 and I figured out how to download an nsync song from an ftp and burn it for my little sister for her birthday. Awww...my first pirated cd. It took about 4-5 tries...kept making coasters...because back then they didn't have buffers and we didn't know what was quality media.

In 1996 I remember going online for the first time in middle school. We had to do research on the internet for some native american project. I remember using some gopher search engine that sucked. It was so hard to find info back then. I remember there was this really good native american info site called dickshovel.com and I got in trouble for using that as my source. Hah, wow, I just looked it up and its still online with this funny page (http://www.dickshovel.com/why.html), telling teachers to get their minds out of the gutter!! Wow...so in 7th grade 1997 I started working on GBTV, our middle school's tv program. I was one of the animators and made little flash type animations with Macromedia Director 5 and then 5.5. We would do pretty blatant south park ripoffs and my own created characters, duckman and baconman. One of my friends did a star wars ripoff, monkeywars. We had a lot of fun and got to use the latest computers. We even got digital cameras in 1998. It was crazy. I was in the Creative Arts Academy program in the summer and we got the new Pentium III when it came out. I remember using Bryce 3d to make mountain scenes and we thought it was blazing fast at the time. We also had an ATI TV tuner and could make the wallpaper the tv. It was insane at the time. I also remember in 1999 our teacher said we were the first school to get Windows 2000. I don't know if thats true but thats what she told us. We were apparently a part of some trial program. Windows 2000 was awesome back then. I can't believe Microsoft has screwed up so bad since then.

In highschool I took several classes such as videomedia, programming, office and web design. I remember we got some mac g4s and I could never figure them out. I remember there was this nerdy kid who would always talk about how superior macs are, and he kept bragging as he updated the computer to this thing called os x. I had no idea. I thought they were both weird. I took a lot of computer classes. I remember taking qbasic and pascal, which is funny, because those are both super outdated. I also took visual basic and c++. I remember back in those days we would play a lot of games in class and they would keep blocking the sites we loved. So some of us set up proxy servers to get around it. They also started blocking videos, but we changed the permission script files. I remember this one day the internet was down, so I set up a link with terminal services over the local network across town to the other highschool and was able to bridge their internet so that I was the only one with internet in class. We also setup a network share on the M: drive to swap homework files and nobody was the wiser. I even ended up finding our mid-term exam on the network and posted it to the share for everyone to study. It was a good time back then and we never got into trouble. I also built my first computer in 2001...a 1.5ghz P4 beast.

By my senior year in 2003 we started a newschannel with Comcast...Channel 15, Communication for Education. It was local in KC and several schools in the area participated and got funding for equipment. The main satellite hub was at the highschool across town, so I got to drive over there a lot and goof off with my friends there between classes. I was even interviewed live on the local FOX4 morning show. We got to use a lot of the latest stuff. We were one of the first schools to get G5's. I remember I had this PSA project deadline to meet and Premiere 6 on the PC kept crashing and having memory leaks. Thats when I finally switched over to the mac and never had a problem. We also had G5s when I started into college as a graphics designer, but I didn't have as much money then so I built a 3.7ghz overclocked P4 machine in 2004. Then I got a Dell laptop in 2005 when I went back to college because I had forgotten about my past love with the mac by then. Spring '07 I started dating a girl who had a little white macbook and used that a lot. That rehooked me, along with buying the iPhone, and I finally bought my first mac this spring. So I've now come full circle from starting out using a mac in first grade! Now I'm addicted!!

Wow I can't believe I typed all of that. It was fun though and sentimental. It just felt like every year we were always in some trial and learning the newest thing. My generation was always on the cusp of the breaking technology as it was emerging into new markets. I think we are in between because I'm not on the internet all the time and most people my age aren't as addicted. I've just been on more lately because I am looking for a summer job right now so I have lots of free time. But seriously, people like my sister who is 19 are online a lot more. She is addicted to blogging and to texting and I just don't get all of it. So I've never been able to completely identify myself with one group or the other. I generally don't like how new technology is taking over our lives, although I still enjoy it from time to time. Its so hard to figure it all out. I really agree with the 24 year old guy who was posting about this also. We are stuck in between.

[slapguts]

10 print Radio Shack Sucks
20 goto 10

Yeah, I'm old too.

[harveypooka]

i remember floppy floppy disks.

That's an awesome quote!

One day it'll be the same as "I remember the first motor vehicle"!

[nick9191]

I'm not as old as you lot, but I remember Windows 95 back in School. And even further back I remember the Acorn computers.

[Sonicjay]

...also remember when the internet was new. ..

im 23


I think you mean you remember when the World Wide Web was new. The Internet predates you.

[harveypooka]

I think you mean you remember when the World Wide Web was new. The Internet predates you.

I predate you all. For I am He, The One Who....ahhh, never mind. ;)

[Sonicjay]

I predate you all. For I am He, The One Who....ahhh, never mind. ;)

Haha

Oh, and to the OP, yeah, I laughed when I saw TheFam's statement in that other thread as well! I'm 33, and have 3 kids of my own.

[crees!]

This is not an iPhone thread per se, but another thread in this forum got me thinking... (mods please move if appropriate).

So....am I (at age 41) way out of my demo here on MacRumors?? I know this board skews young but....

In high school, there were no computer classes. I believe typing was an elective, however.

In college, I took a class in MS-DOS. The Computer Center had brand spankin' new PC/XTs with monochrome amber displays - huge upgrade from green/black! 1200 baud modems were the latest and greatest . It was a true technological break-thru when I could IM a friend in another building (IF they were logged on to a terminal) via the command prompt. Think "War Games" and Joshua: Want to Play a Game?
I'm 29 and I'll go for a showing of War Games any day.

[TonyHoyle]

Let's see now.. I'm 38, my first computer was the ZX81, and my first online experience was Micronet running at a fantastic 1200/75 (75 baud upstream! No P2P in those days :p).

I've been programming since then, more or less.. apart from 'Games Tape 1' (none of these newfangled floppy disks here, unless you mean the 8 inch ones in the school IBM terminal) there wasn't a huge amount to do except learn to program it myself.

[question fear]

I'm 27, and still remember how excited my brother and I were the day my dad bought a Packard Bell computer with Windows 3.1!

[WhySoSerious]

This is not an iPhone thread per se, but another thread in this forum got me thinking... (mods please move if appropriate).

So....am I (at age 41) way out of my demo here on MacRumors?? I know this board skews young but....

In high school, there were no computer classes. I believe typing was an elective, however.

In college, I took a class in MS-DOS. The Computer Center had brand spankin' new PC/XTs with monochrome amber displays - huge upgrade from green/black! 1200 baud modems were the latest and greatest . It was a true technological break-thru when I could IM a friend in another building (IF they were logged on to a terminal) via the command prompt. Think "War Games" and Joshua: Want to Play a Game?

are you out of your demographic on MacRumors....? well, look here for the results:

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=501712&highlight=age

i would say......no!

[Wingnut330]

35 with a family here. My story is similar to others - word processing etc in high school and some programming in college...COBOL anyone????

My first PC was a Commodore 64 as well. Brown with chocolate brown keys...NICE! 5.25 Floppy drive, monitor, printer...the works. I was the coolest 7th grader around!

In high school I used my neighbors Mac all the time to play games and type papers. Once I got to college I was a PC person until december of last year. Now I'm back on a Mac and I don't intend on switching again!

[iFerd]

First computer experience ever: programming an IBM 360 with boxes full of cards, in college. Similar stuff in graduate school, although there was some work with a terminal that ran like Selectric typewriter - no display other than a paper record.

First personal computer at home: some Texas Instruments thing, model lost in the mists of my memory. I was out of graduate school and had two kids who are now the age of many of the contributors to this tread.

First computer at work: Apple ][+, about 1981. Apple //e followed there and at home. On to MS-DOS stuff and its various Windows successors since, both at work and at home. Windows XP still at work.

iPhone: One year ago today.

First Mac (at home): about 11 months ago, aluminum iMac.

I don't want to think about my age.

[WhySoSerious]

damn, i actually just read this whole thread and all the replies. i'm quite depressed now.... :(

[skubish]

Its funny when 20+ is considered the older crowd.

I am 35. I remember when there was no internet.
My first computer was a Texas Instruments TI 99/4A. I also had a
Commodore 64 and Amiga. I thought both were great for games!:)

Anyone remember playing Mechwarrior or Warcraft on the internet over dialup? Those were the days.

[PCMacUser]

Ah, the old days. My first computer was a Sinclair ZX81 (with 16K ram pack, oh yes). Then a ZX Spectrum, 48k RAM. Commodore 64. Acorn Archimedes 410 (1Mb RAM!!!) - yes, I was there at the dawn of RISC processors. Acorn RISC PC. Various PCs, them MBP. So no, you're not old. :)

Ahh good times... I followed the Acorn path too.

Mine went:

Acorn BBC Master Compact (6502 CPU)
Acorn Archimedes A3000 (ARM2)
Acorn Archimedes A5000 (ARM3)
PC (Pentium II 350)
PC - (AMD Duron 1.2GHz)
PC - (AMD Athlon XP2100)
PC - (Pentium 4 2.4GHz)
Apple iBook (G4 1.33GHz)
PC - (C2D 3.0GHz)

Next will probably be a Macbook Pro to replace my nearly 3 year old iBook.

[captain kaos]

Primary school, aged about 10, probably about 1984, we had 1 BBC computer.:)

[wolfpackfan]

Well, I think I have you all beat. I'm 58. I got my BS in Computer Science at N.C. State back in 1973. Believe it or not but there were computers then (we had to use punch cards though, remember them). I also got my MS in Computer Studies from State. I'm retired now after having spent 30+ years as an IT manager. My first PC was a Sinclair (I bet not many of you remember that one). I then went thru about everything - Tandy TRS80, Commodore 64, Atari 400, Apple II and any number of IBM compatibles. I have a small computer museum in my home including a Tandy, a Atari 400 and an original IBM AT (which still works). As I've grown older though I've come to appreciate the importance of keeping things simple and that is what attracts me to Apple. I believe anyone could use an iPhone. That's why I also plan to move to Mac whenever my current Compaq laptop dies (where is that hammer by the way :p). Well that's my story.

PS - I just saw someone mentioned programming a System 360. When I was a Freshman, I was at East Carolina University before transferring to State. Our computer was an IBM 1420. The computer was so small, they even let me have a key to the computer room to do testing at night. Came you imagine that happening these days - a Freshman being given a key to the computer room and having sole use of the computer at any university?

[bitslap47]

I am 34

I built my first "computer" from a Heath Kit kit. It was programmed using buttons on a keypad. I believe it was an old H8 8080A from 1977 or 1978... I started to build it with my dad in the early 80s (I built a crystal radio at age 5 or 6 too... burnt myself a lot with the soldering iron though.) I have worked with and designed vacuum tube circuits, used punch card entry systems... tons of old school stuff :D

I wrote my first high level language program in 5th grade on a little black TI (sinclair?) in basic.

I ran several BBSs in the NorthEast way before the WWW existed, and had 9 nodes running which I eventually connected to CompuServe to allow emailing on the internet to others beside local node users and the sysop (me.)

I remember acoustic couplers... I remember buying a 300 baud modem at Radio Shack. I remember when Radio Shack sold enough electronic parts in stores to be able to actually build stuff.

I can code in assembly, write a boot loader, even an OS... and have an electronics background.

I think the major difference between my generation and the younger ones is really understanding the low level components of a modern computer, and how to make them work. Most people now have no idea that each chip has a spec which tells you how to interconnect and "program" it... and that you are sending individual commands to it to have it do what you want, when you want (machine code FTW!!!!.) They also don't care :) It's too old school for them... other people take care of that stuff for them now... they just plunk away in C or C# or objective C.

It doesn't much matter now except I feel more powerful knowing you can hand me just the hardware and give me a ton of alone time with it, and I can make it work and even create my own high level language if I was so motivated :)

A lot of the low level stuff doesn't matter to the majority of programmers anymore.. it has been a wild ride watching it go from needing to be an engineer to write programs, to being schooled only in a high level language. I don't see anything wrong with it, and it doesn't make the new generation of high level only guys lower than me or anything, i just find myself being stared at blankly sometimes when I start to talk about low level under he hood stuff as it pertains to programming :o

Anyone ever program a comtran or bitran 10? I have :D

Now after programming for about 20 years (started pretty young) I know ~10 high level languages, 20+ proprietary scripting languages (automation and robotics industry too), and yes... even machine code and MASM assembly. I also know some mainframe languages and things like RPG for AS/400, as well as PLC ladder logic and Schneider concept PLC languages.

All that being said... I feel like I am probably in a pretty large demographic group here on MacRumors.

[memesmith]

Ah, the old days. My first computer was a Sinclair ZX81 (with 16K ram pack, oh yes). Then a ZX Spectrum, 48k RAM. Commodore 64. Acorn Archimedes 410 (1Mb RAM!!!) - yes, I was there at the dawn of RISC processors. Acorn RISC PC. Various PCs, them MBP. So no, you're not old. :)

I'm surprised the OP had no computers at High school, as I too am 41, and we had computers. But you've reminded me that through the ZX80, 81, Spectrum, and the Acorn BBC micro (not forgetting the classic Memotech MTX512, my own machine of choice - 4MHz CPU - "Memotech users do it four million times a second" said the free bumper sticker) we in the UK were slightly ahead of the US in terms of REALLY CHEAP home computing.

Our school computers though were two big black boxes called Research Machines 380z I believe. A maths teacher also did the one computer studies class, only available in the lower sixth year. And we qualification we took wasn't an O or A level, but a County Diploma, which wasn't worth the paper it was written on, but did at least teach practical programming in BASIC. Then I want to work in a bank for five years, a job filled with mainframes, dumb terminals and just two IBM PCs.

Then to college, for an Art Foundation, where I first met a Mac. University followed and I bought my first Mac (a Classic II) in the second year with my Student Loan.

[animenick65]

God, I remember those giant floppy disks! I'm 22 and remember playing oregon trail on the old school apple comps in elementary school. My first computer was a Packard Bell my family bought at SEARS. It was fast for its time. Think it ran 3.1? Remember trying to dial up AOL and half the time it never worked. Then we finally upgraded to windows 95 which was a massive jump. Then we got cable internet when it was first available in our area. The modem for it was $1000 plus.

[RedTomato]

I'm 32, and my first computer was an Acorn Electron 32K back when I was 8 or so. Several people in my family had Apple II computers when I was a kid.

There are a few people on MR who are well into their 60's, and one very frequent poster, MultiMedia who was a colleague of Steve Wozniak (co-founder of Apple). That's going back quite a few years.

(MultiMedia alas recently fell down a mineshaft and had a tiff with the MR moderators, and no longer posts here).

Also there are a large number of posters here who like me have children. MR is an all-ages forum :)

[thunderclap]

wow, when do you graduate? j/k!

I read that the same way. :D

I'm thirty and my first experience with a computer was the Amiga 1000. In school we had a few Mac's (don't remember the model, but they were the all-in-one monochrome model) but mostly PC's running DOS.

Looking back it really is amazing how the technology has matured in the 12 years since I graduated.

[kaworu1986]

I am 22 and I honestly can't remember a time without my family having a PC.
When I was very little my dad used to have an Amiga (or was it a commodore? Totally can't tell) which we hooked up to the TV as it had no monitor.
The most awesome stuff happened around the time I was 6 or 7, though: my dad got himself a very badass PC (Pentium 100, 16 megs of ram, Sound Blaster 16, Matrox Millennuim 4 mb vram, 1 GB hdd, 4x cd-rom drive and a lovely 17" CRT screen) and I would spend days playing DOS games (Indiana Jones and Day of the Tentacle were my all time favorites) or watching my dad use "the useless os", AKA Windows 3.1.
I also have memories of him having to use a program called "Trumpet" to go on the internet as Windows had no support whatsoever for modems (the first one we had was a 14.4kbps); the browser was Netscape and it still had a lighthouse for icon.
The first time I actually saw a floppy floppy was in 3rd or 4th grade, as my primary school's PCs were horribly outdated.

God I feel old :P

[MrAverage]

I'll be 36 this year and I'm an MR lurker ;). Actually, the only Apple product I own is an iPod Mini and for years would have had nothing to do with any of their products given the choice. I even won the iPod in a charity raffle.

My first experience of computers was actually a Word Processing Unit. my Dad worked in sales for some spin-off company owned by Exxon and would bring this thing home. It consisted of an orange monochrome screen, a HUGE central processing unit and an equally massive line printer. The whole thing would not fit on our dining room table and there were 8 of us in our family! I was hooked.

I remember using a zx81 and attribute my manual dexterity to its wonderful key combinations. At high-school we had BBC Micros, I remember the computer studies class being basically pure maths which put me right off (I was 12!)

From there I was exposed to things like the ICL OPD (One Per Desk) with a built in phone handset, we used to program it to work as an answer phone with some very mechanical synthesised voice! Sid the Snake was *the* game and everything came on miniature tape casettes.

My first real job involved inputting chemical structures into ICI Agrochemicals' Burroughs Mainframe using WLN (Wiswesser Line Notation?).

"Cool" consisted of command line BBS which you could literally dial up to (yes I have used acoustic couplers) leave messages and download programs people had written.

Before long we were all getting excited about this new computer that was all but portable and you could actually *draw* chemical structures into that. It was an Apple IIe. It was great, but quirky.

After that came a Digital VMS system with a VT4200 ? Colour(!) terminal, I somehow managed to get onto an X.25 PAD which told me I was on a network called JANET ;). I could make that VMS system do pretty much whatever I wanted, following a fairly lengthy manual reading session!

Norton Utilites taught me the beauty of reading in HEX.

I remember creating RAM drives which improved the financial simulation runs from about 24 hours to just over 2 hours.

I have programmed in 8086 assembler, BASIC and Pascal (even Turbo Pascal!). I have translated Fortran into C; and made a mockery of all that is sacred by creating applications in Visual Basic. :D

I have been "formally cautioned" for scaring the college tutor beyond all belief by writting a "virus" (I learnt what you could do with an AUTOEXEC.BAT)

I remember the turning point in terms of Internet use being in about 1991 when the small company I worked for agreed to get me a 14,400 modem and using Mosaic I would to connect to FTP sites and download updates for our Netware servers. Come to think of it, that was probably just after the birth of the WWW.

I negotiated 30 free copies of MS Windows for Workgroups on its original release due to an MS administrative error.

I have written internal corporate whitepapers on the potential of ISDN and telecommuting. I have stood next to a DEC Alpha 8400 TurboLaser and stared in awe trying to comprehend how only two of them could run the entire Altavista search engine. My current home PC is now more powerfull.
I remember when AltaVista was synonymous with Internet search!

I feel as though I've been around computing from a very early age - 8, or 9 years old perhaps.

So it's only taken Apple 28 years to produce something that I really want to buy ;) Apple FTW!!!one

[WPB2]

wow, when do you graduate?





j/k!

That was a good one. hahahahahaha

[danny_w]

The University of Texas had a BSCS degree plan at least by 1971. The first graduates may have been '75 or '76.

I am 52. I had one of the first BSCS ( BS in Computer Science) degrees given in 1978. It was the first semester it existed at NAU. As far as I heard at the time only MIT and Berkely also had a BSCS.

My college computer had 98K TOTAL memory. That ran the whole campus. What they called a Personal Computer was $100 and delivered as a box of chips you wired together yourself just to get it to run simple counting programs if you were lucky to get it to work.

I bought the first Macintosh model that came out and I think I was the first consumer in CA to get their hands on the first Mac Hard Drive. I forget the size but I think it was about 2megs and it cost me about $2,000. I had to use connections at Computerland Corporate to get my hands on it. At the time is seemed like all the memory in the world.

I even got one of the first Newtons (like you did not guess :-) )

Now flash forward to the iPhone. I have seen it all and it is the most amazing thing I have ever owned. I used to drag around a cell phone, Ipod, and camera. It does just about everything I would ever need when I am away from home. I did not need to drag a laptop to Europe last summer. I could surf and do all my email from every Hotel Lobby using wifi.

I am excited to get the 3G speeds. I love to use the phone to surf the web while I am waiting for anything when I am out. Now all I need to be totaly content is a decent Texas Holdem card game. :-):cool:

[Stampyhead]

Those were the days - typing out programs letter by letter from computer magazines, only to find you had made a mistake somewhere so it wouldn't run...

Ha ha, I remember that! My Atari 800XL computer with whopping 64k memory, and Family Computing magazine...

[bitslap47]

Ha ha, I remember that! My Atari 800XL computer with whopping 64k memory, and Family Computing magazine...

The best was compute!... Oil Tycoon for the C64. PEEK and POKE FTW

If you couldn't program, you had to wait a month for bug fixes to come out in the next issue... I would get aggravated and fix it myself ;)

[alFR]

I'm surprised the OP had no computers at High school, as I too am 41, and we had computers. But you've reminded me that through the ZX80, 81, Spectrum, and the Acorn BBC micro (not forgetting the classic Memotech MTX512, my own machine of choice - 4MHz CPU - "Memotech users do it four million times a second" said the free bumper sticker) we in the UK were slightly ahead of the US in terms of REALLY CHEAP home computing.

Yep - we should thank Sinclair, Commodore and Acorn because those early machines spawned a whole generation of hobbyists and programmers.

I remember using a zx81 and attribute my manual dexterity to its wonderful key combinations.

Ah, the special keys you needed to press to enter the BASIC keywords. Good times. :)

The thing that amazes me is that we can now carry in our pockets a device that's thousands of times more powerful than those early machines and probably costs less in real terms - the iPhone. Lord knows what we'll have in another 20 years (presuming we don't do something really stupid as a species!).

[wildcardd]

10 print Radio Shack Sucks
20 goto 10

Yeah, I'm old too.

You were the guy that always set the Tandys to say that. I always wondered who that was.

[danny_w]

Yep - we should thank Sinclair, Commodore and Acorn because those early machines spawned a whole generation of hobbyists and programmers...
Yep, and the ones that came before them - MITS (Altair) 1975, SWTP (Southwest Technical Products) 1975, Ohio Scientific 1977?, and a slew of others (including of course Apple in 1976). Of course, the Altair is where Bill Gates got his start with Altair BASIC, and we all know what came out of that.

[fluff]

Anyone remember using Prodigy?

[motulist]

Age distribution is actually amazingly even on this forum. See this poll thread:

Poll: How old are you? (http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=501712)

[WPB2]

I am 26, and have had a mac for 4 months, and love it OS X Leopard. way better than Windows. Don't know y i waited so long to get 1. Now my wife is ready to get rid of her PC and get a MAC. Probably MBP next.

[UnixMac]

I'm only 21 and can understand what you're talking about to a point.
I remember when the reaches of the Internet were basically whatever you could click to from the AOL home screen.


A good relative change analogy.. I too recall when I replaced my IBM PC/XT with a 486 66mhz IBM sometime in 1993.. I got "Internet" access and there was all of 50 websites or something.. it was running at 28K or maybe even 14.4K.. How far we've come in 15 years.. and much how far will we go in 15 more???

My 7 year old son now wouldn't recognize a world where he couldn't google up something (safe mode of course! :D).. and he takes the iphone (Which he plays with all the time) for grated as a "given" in tech.

[sushi]

Age distribution is actually amazingly even on this forum. See this poll thread:

Poll: How old are you? (http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=501712)
Actually, we don't really know.

- Very few members indicated their age in the vote. Small sample size.

- 40+ as one category does not show the distribution of 40+ plus age group.

- The age brackets are every 3 years beginning with 13, then end up with every 5 years until stone age.

It would be fun to see a poll where each age is listed separately, and a larger percentage of the MR community voted (indicated their age).

[viggen61]

Well, I'm no youngster here, at 46. But my high school was pretty advanced for its day. I learned to program in BASIC on a DEC PDP8/M (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDP-8) with a single DECTAPE (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DECtape)drive, and an ASR-33 Teletype (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASR-33) for I/O. Oh - and a whopping 8k (K!!!) words of Core memory (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_memory). We eventually upgraded with a VT-52 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VT-52) and LA-36 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot_matrix_printer) printer. Later, the PDP-8 was put out to pasture, replaced by a PDP-11 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDP-11) with 4 (4!) terminals, all sharing 16k words of memory...

I also dabbled in Fortran and FOCAL (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOCAL_%28programming_language%29)just a little...

My first personal computer was an Apple ][ plus. I eventually moved up to a Mac SE, upgraded that to an SE/30 (they really should have named it the same as the Mac IIx...:p), and even had, at one point, a color external monitor, AND greyscale on the internal SE/30 monitor :D.

The SE/30 gave way to a PowerBook 520c, which was replaced by a PowerMac 8500, then a PowerBook G3, a PowerMac G4 (Digital Audio), and now, my MacBook Pro (2.33 Core 2 Duo).

Over the years, I've used those DECTAPES, 8" floppies, 5 1/4" floppies (including cutting the extra notch to use both sides...), 3 1/2" "floppies" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppy_Disk), Zip disks (100 & 250 MB), Jaz disks, and the occasional SyQuest (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syquest)cartridge.

Now, of course, it's all Gigabyte-range hard drives (at one company, I used to buy 1 gig hard drives for $500...), thumb drives or SD cards with multiple-gig capacities, etc.

Oh - and you know you're old when you can recall saying to your boss: "We should buy more RAM for our Macs now. The price for a 16MB DIMM is under $400" ! :eek:

Have a happy 4th!

:apple::apple:

[viggen61]

Anyone remember using Prodigy?

Or GEnie? or Delphi? or the ORIGINAL CompuServe?

I still have my original AOL handle. There are six letters and NO NUMBERS.

Until I finally dropped it a couple years ago, my Compuserve ID was so old, people didn't recognize it. It was 5 numbers a comma, then two numbers, when most everyone by that time had a 6 & 4 combination...

The original Compuserve was the best. Especially with Compuserve Navigator on the Mac. You could use little monochrome (and later color) icons to represent yourself, and Navigator went online, read your mail, then you replied offline, then it went back and posted your replies in the forums. Compuserve was a really friendly place to be back then (I'm talking late 80s...). Then AOL took it over, and it was all downhill... :(

Have a Happy 4th!

:apple::apple:

[KauaiBruce]

The University of Texas had a BSCS degree plan at least by 1971. The first graduates may have been '75 or '76.

Wow. I am impressed that they started calling it that as early as '71. Until then they had Data Processing Studies in the Business Schools. If I had graduated earlier I would have had an Engineering Degree with Emphasis in CS.

I thought of more fun history. Before the web some of the big computer companies had private email networks and networking. I remember once being mad that a big file was taking 15 minutes to copy and then I was stunned when it hit me I was copying it from Japan. That was a big deal then. Not long before someone would have had to send a big tape.

It was an amazing day when we could suddenly send emails to friends who worked at different computer companies. Then all of a sudden AOL (and others) came out for the public and the whole world changed very fast.

[KauaiBruce]

I still have my original AOL handle. There are six letters and NO NUMBERS.

:apple::apple:

My partner who worked at Computerland back when they had a whole department just to send FAXES to stores for updates (pre email) actually has his NAME as his aol name. He will never give that one up.

[Wingnut330]

Anyone remember playing Mechwarrior or Warcraft on the internet over dialup? Those were the days.

LOL yea! On windows or OS/2 Warp!?!?

[bitslap47]

LOL yea! On windows or OS/2 Warp!?!?

Doom. Point to point dialup.

"OK.. i'm going to call... as soon as i hang up."

Also, remember DeskView?

[viggen61]

My partner who worked at Computerland back when they had a whole department just to send FAXES to stores for updates (pre email) actually has his NAME as his aol name. He will never give that one up.

Same here. First two initials, and last name...

Come to think of it, just like my iTools, er, .MAC, er, Mobile Me account(s)...

:apple::apple:

[bitslap47]

Ahhh... the first days of email...


Pine...wait mutt, no wait mh.

Real men would just telnet :)

I remember PPP vs SLIP protocol, Trumpet WinSock for windows.

Gopher, Archie....SpyGlass

Man o Man!

[Type121]

You were the guy that always set the Tandys to say that. I always wondered who that was.

Not sure where he's located, but I handled those duties for the Cincinnati area!

[danny_w]

Wow. I am impressed that they started calling it that as early as '71. Until then they had Data Processing Studies in the Business Schools. If I had graduated earlier I would have had an Engineering Degree with Emphasis in CS...
Actually I got a BSEE degree with a computer block major from the College of Engineering at UT. The BSCS plan was under the College of Natural Science, although I never understood what was so 'natural' about a man-mad 'science'.

[StoneGaijin]

35 here,

learned computers on an Apple 2e

then went the 286/386 route and was a DOS man until Windows came along.

owned and operated every version of Windows from first to Vista (yes, even Windows ME :( ish ... ) I played MechWarrior over DialUp and SCHOOLED everyone around :)

my iPhone is the only piece of Apple I own.

[magiic]

I think many of you will appreciate this video (http://www2.b3ta.com/heyhey16k/).

[slapguts]

Not sure where he's located, but I handled those duties for the Cincinnati area!

Mostly Tampa Bay and Grand Rapids, Mi. Got myself booted from a couple stores for using language a little less PG than "sucks" a couple times, too.

[danny_w]

I think many of you will appreciate this video (http://www2.b3ta.com/heyhey16k/).
That's great! It just goes to show that you don't need all that memory and bloat. I thought I was really uptown when I finally got the money to upgrade my first home computer (an S100 - remember those?) to a whopping 4K! Wowee!

[UWSpindoctor]

In High School, pretty much recall pagers being around.


I'm 23 and I just got a pager :eek:

[joeshell383]

Or GEnie? or Delphi? or the ORIGINAL CompuServe?

:apple::apple:

or eWorld? :apple:

[Pandora01]

I'm 31. I remember being on the interwebs for the first time around 1991-1992. Magic BBS that was. Man, the hours I wasted on the ol' BBS! Not too shabby compared to the youngsters today, if I do say so myself. Now I'm getting all nostagic for the Classic II we had at home... :)

[thor79]

29 here. Been on computers since I was about 7 or 8. Started on the original Compaq portable with a 1200 baud modem (we still have it in a closet upstairs...still works too). Ran up a $400 phone bill calling BBS's in the early 90's. Played a lot of Trade Wars 2002 back then (yes I know of the web versions out there today) on a BBS named Whiskerville Online.

In grade school we had computer based typing classes.
In high school we had basic learn to use the computer classes (Word, Excel, etc...at a catholic high school).

Spent 3 years of college after high school learning computer science.
Took a break for personal reasons and now I'm studying Computer Security online at Devry. 1 year away from Graduating.

[Requiemm]

Wow, the nostalgia thread. I"ll be 38 in August (iPhone 2 will be an early birthday present) and here's my computer history:

My father ran his gaming company, Gamelords, using 4 TRash-80's and that's where I learned Basic.

I also wrote, entered and played endless games on my C64 that started out with the cassette drive and them evolved to dual floppies and my trusty Okidata dot matrix color printer. (Computes Gazette FTW!)

In 1986 dad brought home the fastest computer on the market, the Mac+ with it's gigantic, never to be filled hard drive of 20MB. BTW, it was $3000 in 1986 dollars!

I ended up owning an 8086 (Green screen rocks), and then moved up the ladder from a 286 to 386 to 486 to a pentium.

I had a prodigy account, a compuserve account and an AOL account when they were hourly.

Lifetime geek!

The sad news is that my basement still holds the 8086, 286, 386, 486 2 C-64's, a Colecovision, an Intellivision and a betamax.

[dukebound85]

Actually, we don't really know.

- Very few members indicated their age in the vote. Small sample size.

- 40+ as one category does not show the distribution of 40+ plus age group.

- The age brackets are every 3 years beginning with 13, then end up with every 5 years until stone age.

It would be fun to see a poll where each age is listed separately, and a larger percentage of the MR community voted (indicated their age).

couldnt the mods compile all the data used ofr registration? just a though lol might be too much work

[iFerd]

couldnt the mods compile all the data used for registration?This would be useful only if you think everyone reveals their personal information accurately when signing up.

[UnixMac]

W
My father ran his gaming company, Gamelords, using 4 TRash-80's and that's where I learned Basic.


wow dude, you just brought back some fond memories... :o the venerable Radio Shack Trash 80... I never had one of them, nor the Commie 64 or the Atari 400/800 series... but I always wanted one of them. And that cassette drive! :eek:


here is a good link back to nostalgia.. http://computermuseum.50megs.com/collection.htm

[pilotError]

Well, I'm no youngster here, at 46. But my high school was pretty advanced for its day. I learned to program in BASIC on a DEC PDP8/M (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDP-8) with a single DECTAPE (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DECtape)drive, and an ASR-33 Teletype (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASR-33) for I/O. Oh - and a whopping 8k (K!!!) words of Core memory (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_memory). We eventually upgraded with a VT-52 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VT-52) and LA-36 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot_matrix_printer) printer. Later, the PDP-8 was put out to pasture, replaced by a PDP-11 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDP-11) with 4 (4!) terminals, all sharing 16k words of memory...


I'm 41 too...

I started the same way. Basic on the PDP 8. We had Commodore PET's in the lab too.

My high school actually went and purchased a Prime 550 running PrimeOS(Dave Cutler - NT designer left DEC to help start Prime).

In college we did mostly DEC, but we had a Hypercube that they would only fire up once a month because the electricity usage / cooling was so expensive.

My first computer was a TI99/4A - Learned Assembler and graphics programming. Had my cassette tape storage!

Got a DEC Rainbow as my first real PC running CP/M and later DOS. Dual diskette drives (ooooohhhh).

Got an IBM PC with dual diskette drives and a 5MB hard drive from a store that had gone on fire and the insurance paid for. I spent a week cleaning off the smoke damage. Got me most of the way through college using Turbo Pascal and Turbo C. Graphics programming was fun on that. Took about 6 hours to compile code and pretty much over night to run a ray trace program to render a scene.

Had just about every major chip architecture since then.

Made the switch to Apple when they made the switch to Intel.

My friend grew up working at the Byte shop (and the other early Mac retail store - forgot the name). I spent years making fun of him. He switched to Windows, I switched to Mac. Funny how things change.

Scary, I actually grew up on all the technologies that everyone talked about. I think the folks coming up in Computer Science today missed a big chunk of the real fun of computing. Hacking the iPhone and Apple TV brings some of that back, but it was a chore just to get something to run back in the day!

Remember when TSR's (Terminate Stay Resident) programming was all the rage?

[3kids]

In college, I took a class in MS-DOS. The Computer Center had brand spankin' new PC/XTs with monochrome amber displays -

I am thinking my first keyboard was attached to a Tandy TRS-80. The blinking green curser drew me in.

[GreenLightJerky]

commodore 64? Sweet! My first computer was a Vic-20.

I had the commodore 64 as well. My friend had the Texas instruments TI 99/4a http://www.old-computers.com/MUSEUM/computer.asp?c=236.

[geekmommy4]

Anyone remember using Prodigy?

I did! Man, was it slow!

[geekmommy4]

I had the commodore 64 as well. My friend had the Texas instruments TI 99/4a http://www.old-computers.com/MUSEUM/computer.asp?c=236.

My first computer was the Vic-20 in college and my first computing job (during a college break) was programming some kind of weight management program for the Commodore 64. The company that I worked for got some awards at the CES...must have been about 1985! We thought we were in heaven when they bought IBM PC's so that we could program in C.

Man, that brings back memories!

[xlii]

I'm 55 and ahem... *back in the day*... there were no hand held electronics except for the transistor radio. We had no computers, we had no calculators... (we had sliderules)... there were no cellphones... there were no water bottles... we drank out of a neighbors hose when we were thirsty or we just sucked it up. Yep... things was tough in those days... however a steak dinner was $3 bucks, gas was 27 cents and a brand new muscle car was about 3 grand.

[icewing]

I'm 47.

First programming class was senior year in high school, using COBOL on punched cards. We didn't have a computer; we had to send the cards to the University of Little Rock to be compiled and run. You got only 3 chances per programming assignment to get it to run correctly to get a grade of 100%!

College in '80, classes in COBOL, RPG II, Fortran, and Basic. College had an IBM System 34 as our 'big iron', plus Apple IIs, Trash-80s with cassette tape players as storage, and Commodore PETs.

Later at Memphis State, to key in your programs there were mutant IBM Selectric typewriters with a form-feed paper carriage attached...and an acoustic modem like this that kept disconnecting just before you saved your work! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Acoustic_coupler_20041015_175456_1.jpg

Fast forward to '86 or so...bought a Mac Plus with 1 meg of ram, eventually maxed it out with 4 meg of ram, an 60 meg hard drive, and an external disk drive. Think the operating system disks that came with it had Finder 1.1. Bought Apple's Assembler and Pascal....

Bought a 300 baud modem, had to search for documentation on the Mac, modem, etc and build my own modem cable!!! Later bought a 300/1200/2400, thought I was running at lightning speed!

Remember the term 'baud'?

Later took a remote Pascal class at SUNY Brockport, you PRAYED that one of their 3, count 'em, 3, 1200 baud modems was available....otherwise you were stuck at 300 baud.