Old Heads: Tell me bout the good ole days

[MajorFubar]

To some extent, some of it was junk - even then.

My mom (as a computer science teacher) had 12 MC-10 and a Timex Sinclair in the house at one point. Compared to a Commodore 64, or even a VIC-20 at that time, these things WERE junk.

If what you call a Timex Sinclair is what we call a ZX81, it was a £69 B&W starter computer, but probably by the time it hit your shores it was likely overpriced due to the cost of (a) marketing it overseas and (b) taxes imposed by your government to encourage the purchase of locally-produced goods. On these shores its price was totally incomparable to that of especially a C64 which was four or five times the price. Even a VIC-20 was double the price.

 

[eyoungren]

If what you call a Timex Sinclair is what we call a ZX81, it was a £69 B&W starter computer, but probably by the time it hit your shores it was likely overpriced due to the cost of (a) marketing it overseas and (b) taxes imposed by your government to encourage the purchase of locally-produced goods. On these shores its price was totally incomparable to that of especially a C64 which was four or five times the price. Even a VIC-20 was double the price.

Yes, I believe those are the same.

My mother bought one at K-Mart (a discount department store that currently is almost extinct) for the novelty I guess. With something like only 4K of memory (IIRC) it was fairly useless to me. I suppose, I could have tried coding on it, but that wasn't anything I was interested in during my teen years (or now).

 

[MajorFubar]

Yes, I believe those are the same.

My mother bought one at K-Mart (a discount department store that currently is almost extinct) for the novelty I guess. With something like only 4K of memory (IIRC) it was fairly useless to me. I suppose, I could have tried coding on it, but that wasn't anything I was interested in during my teen years (or now).

Yeah you got the luxury version with 4K...ours had 1K unless you bought a plug-in expansion pack with 16K. Mine did have that, but the cost of the computer + the memory pack shoved it very close to VIC-20 prices, however the VIC-20 shipped with only 3.5K. My parents bought the ZX81 to help me learn programming, which is what I used it for. I learned BASIC on it, also Z80 assembler language. Happy days tbh.

 

[Bodhitree]

I remember my days at university studying mechanical engineering in the early 1990’s, it was a very broad course which included some electrical systems, robotics and programming. The coding course was not very challenging back then, you learnt some 68000 Assembler and Turbo Pascal. I remember doing my assignments and being told, it needs more comments — it works but we don’t immediately see how.

But even university systems back then were a lot more primitive. There was a university online backbone, I think it was called Janet, on which you could search for scientific papers from the computers in the university library, and there were various dial-up services to main computers on which you could do work.

For me the programming language I really like is C++, which came along much later when I was looking at Apple’s developer documentation in 1997, it gives you the tools to do very small things like inline assembler for a few instructions, but also tools like classes and namespaces which allow you to tackle large and complex development projects.

Its a thing, when you get introduced to software development at an early age but only much later find out how it all scales up into a million lines of code. If I had come across C, the little cousin of C++, at an earlier age, it might have encouraged me to study computer science instead. Nowadays its all about languages like Python, which are a bit closer to natural language than BASIC which often reads like a math problem, which is not a bad thing for education.

 

[BigMcGuire]

Am I aged/wise enough to write my experience? - if not I can delete (will not be offended). I have thoroughly enjoyed this thread.

When I was a wee little kid, my dad had a KPRO computer that I played the Ps and Os ladder game (green monochrome monitor). By the time I could start typing, it was a 486 computer with an external 14.4k modem - where we used AOL and Netzero to connect to the internet. Kids today will never know what it is like to open the phonebook and try to find local numbers to connect to the internet - praying that it's actually a local number because if not, your parents would be screaming at you later on. Anyone remember Juno - the free email that would dial up to check email? I remember trying to load a few webpages as quick as possible while it checked for email. lol.

Games in the 90s were quite amazing - those click and short animation games were fascinating. (Battlechess, Commander Keen, Spectrum (old tank game), Descent, Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure, Mech Warrior, and then.... Age of Empires). Playing Age of Empires over the LAN was just mind blowing. My first Oregon Trail was the second version on Windows 95. Warcraft II over IPX was awesome too but we preferred Age of Empires I, II. The old chess games - ChessMaster, Fritz, Maurice Ashley Teaches Chess, etc - were absolutely amazing.

I remember the day my dad bought a CPU fan for the 486 - so we could overclock it. Thought that was the craziest thing ever.

The first computer I was allowed to use regularly (as a kid) had a 200MB C:\ partition for Windows 95 - it was a Pentium II - 200Mhz if I remember correctly. I remember deleting every file I could find so I could have room to install games. My dad also encouraged me to learn a little Turbo Pascal as well.

I remember looking through the PC magazines - seeing MMX processors, Pentiums 1-4 and dreaming of the day I'd have my very own computer - which I didn't get till 2007 - and it had the Q6600 processor - 4 cores. And by then of course, that's too new for this thread I think. lol.

The first Mac I ever touched was a MacBook Pro 2008 that was given to me. (Wish I had kept it). I was a solid Windows user at that time so I ended up selling it to a developer who wanted it to develop Mac applications. My first personal Mac was a 2011 11' MBA and it wasn't till 2015 that I switched to Mac completely for my personal computing (with a 2015 13' MBA).

 

[profcutter]

Oh man, the trouble I would have gotten into dialing a long-distance number for a bbs? Whooooa. Living in a sprawling southern city, with no car and no public transit, the BBS was the only way to connect with friends.

 

[Bodhitree]

I think too, expectations are different. Back then, people were patient with solving a game and exploring it. When you and your friend got together and me and my friend got together we enjoyed sharing and exploring.

Yeah, times were certainly different — do you remember by any chance the Choose Your Own Adventure books? I think I remembered them because I came across them in the same time period as I was playing Defender of the Crown. Computer clubs at schools, Dungeons and Dragons with a group of friends afterwards, those were fun times. You could say I was a bit of a nerd.

But I found schools in America a lot more progressive with teaching computing than schools in the Netherlands. I spent some years in the USA around 1983-1986, at a school in Seattle and later near Boston, and they gave me a good grounding in electronics and computing. Schools in the Netherlands were by comparison focussed on a much more classical curriculum, advanced maths, literature, physics.

 

[profcutter]

Choose your own adventure for sure. And all the disc swapping on the Amiga games! Though our schools were pretty underfunded in the computer departments. We had an apple ][ lab, but it was all pretty dated. I learned some basic FORTRAN on some TRS 80s

 

[Mousse]

Oh man, I remember typing in text based games found in Dr. Dobb's magazines so I could play games.

Gawd, it took me days of typing and checking, word by word, character by character to make sure I typed everything exactly like it was written in the article.

>NORTH
YOU ARE IN A MAZE OF TWISTY LITTLE PASSAGES, ALL ALIKE.
>WEST
YOU ARE IN A MAZE OF TWISTY LITTLE PASSAGES, ALL ALIKE.
> F***
SUCH LANGUAGE IN A HIGH CLASS ESTABLISHMENT SUCH AS THIS.*

*Okay, that was from Zork. Heck, most Infocom games really had that quote for those of us fustrated by the puzzles.

 

[profcutter]

Ohhhh the DATA statements…. Ughhh:

 

[eyoungren]

Yeah, times were certainly different — do you remember by any chance the Choose Your Own Adventure books? I think I remembered them because I came across them in the same time period as I was playing Defender of the Crown. Computer clubs at schools, Dungeons and Dragons with a group of friends afterwards, those were fun times. You could say I was a bit of a nerd.

But I found schools in America a lot more progressive with teaching computing than schools in the Netherlands. I spent some years in the USA around 1983-1986, at a school in Seattle and later near Boston, and they gave me a good grounding in electronics and computing. Schools in the Netherlands were by comparison focussed on a much more classical curriculum, advanced maths, literature, physics.

Yes, I recall those books. Read through a few of them. Despite their limitations (how many choices can you cover?) they were decent.

You can still call me a nerd. I got into Dungeons & Dragons in 1983 (I was 13), MechWarrior in 1986 (First Edition) Advanced Dungeons & Dragons in 1989 (Second Edition), ShadowRun in 1990 and Rolemaster in 1994 (also 2nd Edition).

I haven't quit gaming, still have all of my books and I play whenever there is an opportunity. My wife is good with it too. She knew what I was involved in before she married me.

 

[Bodhitree]

I haven't quit gaming, still have all of my books and I play whenever there is an opportunity. My wife is good with it too. She knew what I was involved in before she married me.

I haven’t quit gaming totally, but I got into Buddhism which did make me look at gaming in a new light. After all, if you consider what is wholesome and beneficial for your life overall, gaming is just a further exploration of your desires and imagination, which is a pretty clear definition of samsara, the world of unhappiness. Something to think about.

 

[eyoungren]

I haven’t quit gaming totally, but I got into Buddhism which did make me look at gaming in a new light. After all, if you consider what is wholesome and beneficial for your life overall, gaming is just a further exploration of your desires and imagination, which is a pretty clear definition of samsara, the world of unhappiness. Something to think about.

I'm a Christian, and lived through the era of the 1980s where the church saw AD&D/D&D as demonic (but other games were okay apparently). Your Buddhist take on it is a new one for me though.

 

[hodad66]

My first computer was a Compaq "Portable" and I think that I spent close to 2K
for that beast. NEVER moved it.

 

[stillcrazyman]

Oooohhhh....

ShadowRun from the early 90's.

 

[Silencio]

There were the Scott Adams adventure games with their two word command syntax, which were available for the TRS-80 Model I. You either had to mail order those titles or find that rare Radio Shack branch that carried third party software. I sometimes made my parents drive me the 50 mile round trip to the nearest place to buy games.

Even more revelatory was when I upgraded to an Apple //e and started playing the Infocom adventures, where you could type a full sentence command. The stories and worlds were larger and vastly richer, too.

The TRS-80 Model I actually had viable arcade style games, despite the system's blocky, monochrome graphics. Developers even figured out to synthesize sound and voice effects through the cassette port. There was a company called Big Five Software that published games that were clearly inspired by contemporary arcade games, but added their own unique twists to the gameplay. Scott Adams' company, Adventure International, published a game called Sea Dragon, which was an excellent adaptation of Scramble.

 

[profcutter]

There were the Scott Adams adventure games with their two word command syntax, which were available for the TRS-80 Model I. You either had to mail order those titles or find that rare Radio Shack branch that carried third party software. I sometimes made my parents drive me the 50 mile round trip to the nearest place to buy games.

Even more revelatory was when I upgraded to an Apple //e and started playing the Infocom adventures, where you could type a full sentence command. The stories and worlds were larger and vastly richer, too.

The TRS-80 Model I actually had viable arcade style games, despite the system's blocky, monochrome graphics. Developers even figured out to synthesize sound and voice effects through the cassette port. There was a company called Big Five Software that published games that were clearly inspired by contemporary arcade games, but added their own unique twists to the gameplay. Scott Adams' company, Adventure International, published a game called Sea Dragon, which was an excellent adaptation of Scramble.

Your user avatar, it’s from the Mr. Lunch books, right?

 

[Bodhitree]

I got into Dungeons & Dragons in 1983 (I was 13), MechWarrior in 1986 (First Edition) Advanced Dungeons & Dragons in 1989 (Second Edition), ShadowRun in 1990 and Rolemaster in 1994 (also 2nd Edition).

I can add a few that might evoke some more nostalgia: Car Wars, MERP (Middle Earth Role Playing), Spacemaster and Ars Magica. In the end I ran out of people to play with. I remember Shadow Run with some fondness because we were playing it with my group of school friends just before we broke up for good and everyone went to university.

 

[Bodhitree]

I'm a Christian, and lived through the era of the 1980s where the church saw AD&D/D&D as demonic (but other games were okay apparently). Your Buddhist take on it is a new one for me though.

My parents were more from the New Age side, so didn’t give me any trouble with games.

But buddhism and games is an interesting mix. The Buddha apparently put into the rules for monks that they were forbidden from playing games because its basically a waste of time that could be put towards practicing and gaining enlightenment.

 

[Huntn]

I’ve lived to see the creation of some amazing things.

• Home computers
• portable phones
• microwave ovens
• wifi networks
• microsurgery
• Sophisticated automation
• video games that were inconceivable in 1982.

Apple IIe, 1983ish, expensive, no GUI, but a step into the future, duel floppy drives, green screen monitor as I recall. I was 29 and most intrigued in 1982 with word processors I first saw in the USNavy. Just prior to this I knew people who were building their own home PCs, but that was too much work.

 

[dmr727]

My first computer was a Compaq "Portable" and I think that I spent close to 2K
for that beast. NEVER moved it.





View attachment 1974959

Wow - that brings back some memories! That was the first x86 machine we had in the house, after the TRS-80 CoCo. Used to play a Summer Olympics game on it all the time. What a tank that thing was!

 

[eyoungren]

I can add a few that might evoke some more nostalgia: Car Wars, MERP (Middle Earth Role Playing), Spacemaster and Ars Magica. In the end I ran out of people to play with. I remember Shadow Run with some fondness because we were playing it with my group of school friends just before we broke up for good and everyone went to university.

My friend had MERP. The problem with MERP is that once you go Rolemaster, it's like going back to AD&D.

My group also played SpaceMaster, Legend of the Five Rings, Rage, Cthuluu and Paranoia on occasion. Then there was Star Wars and Super Heroes.

ShadowRun was more played with a group I was with before Rolemaster. I was just starting to get the hang of running it when that group broke up as well.

Honestly, I haven't played much since 2000 when I left California. There's been a few people but it didn't last long.

 

[profcutter]

I remember playing car wars in the cafeteria in 6th grade. We’d rush through the crappy lunch to get to our battles!

 

[whiskersld]

Yes, I believe those are the same.

My mother bought one at K-Mart (a discount department store that currently is almost extinct) for the novelty I guess. With something like only 4K of memory (IIRC) it was fairly useless to me. I suppose, I could have tried coding on it, but that wasn't anything I was interested in during my teen years (or now).

off topic but the local kmart in my area lived up to 2018. My mom even got a mini dv camera from their old stock in 2010-12

 

[Bodhitree]

My friend had MERP. The problem with MERP is that once you go Rolemaster, it's like going back to AD&D.

I remember it well, we came across MERP after we were already playing Rolemaster and so never really gave it a fair try. I remember all the Middle Earth sourcebooks for Rolemaster (I think) and poring over the stats of the Istari and the Balrogs and the Witch King. They did an amazing job fleshing out the stats for the gameworld.

Honestly, I haven't played much since 2000 when I left California. There's been a few people but it didn't last long.

I was looking on Meetup a few years ago for people into table-top RPGs and came across quite a large group of English-speaking expats in Amsterdam who played regularly. I joined on a couple of occasions, but found it tricky to attend consistently, it was a bit too far away and the transport was awkward.