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OLDER crowd (20+)? WTF?
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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... 
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.
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.
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.
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.
couldnt the mods compile all the data used ofr registration? just a though lol might be too much work
This would be useful only if you think everyone reveals their personal information accurately when signing up.
wow dude, you just brought back some fond memories...
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! here is a good link back to nostalgia.. http://computermuseum.50megs.com/collection.htm
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?
I am thinking my first keyboard was attached to a Tandy TRS-80. The blinking green curser drew me in.
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!
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.
another codger
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.
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.
Whiskerville BBS?????
I was a Whiskerville regular! I havent come across anyone from there since back in the day (circa '94-'96ish).
I was a Whiskerville regular! I havent come across anyone from there since back in the day (circa '94-'96ish).
I'm 23 years old and I've used computers since I was 4. My father had one of those old Windows Command based PCs.
In elementary school we went to the computer lab twice a month to play educational games.
At the age of 5 I was fortunate that my father got a PC with windows 95. Since then, I've been actively using computers.
In elementary school we went to the computer lab twice a month to play educational games.
At the age of 5 I was fortunate that my father got a PC with windows 95. Since then, I've been actively using computers.
I'm 22 years old. I remember in elementary school we went to computer lab to play the old school oregon trail game and some other educational games.
In high school we had 2 paths to choose from: Technical path and College path. I switched to the Technical path (although I still went to college) which required a typing and C++ class to graduate.
My high school was and still is underfunded so even while I was a student there (graduated in '09). Some classes like the typing class had newer Dell computers while the C++ class had like old PC's with monitors matched with other brands of towers. Everything was mismatched.
In high school we had 2 paths to choose from: Technical path and College path. I switched to the Technical path (although I still went to college) which required a typing and C++ class to graduate.
My high school was and still is underfunded so even while I was a student there (graduated in '09). Some classes like the typing class had newer Dell computers while the C++ class had like old PC's with monitors matched with other brands of towers. Everything was mismatched.
Nothing like bringing a thread back from a 5 year old death. Way to stay current boys.
I wish I was 20 years older than I am.
My high school education consisted of pentium 3s running windows XP! Never learned any programming! We did basic web design, macromedia packages and office.
Everything is too easy with technology now, you don't have to educate yourself to have access to the Internet where I imagine it was a lot harder back at the start.
I think consumer tech will become more "stupid" - ie the user doesn't have to know anything about computers to get it working. Although, I had to teach my 50 year old father in law how to sync his iPod the other day so I'm sure it's got a while to go!
My high school education consisted of pentium 3s running windows XP! Never learned any programming! We did basic web design, macromedia packages and office.
Everything is too easy with technology now, you don't have to educate yourself to have access to the Internet where I imagine it was a lot harder back at the start.
I think consumer tech will become more "stupid" - ie the user doesn't have to know anything about computers to get it working. Although, I had to teach my 50 year old father in law how to sync his iPod the other day so I'm sure it's got a while to go!
I wish that my high school offered programming courses I probably would have ended up studying computer science.
I probably would have ended up studying computer science.
I'm 48 and I remember my first computer a TRS-80 color computer. I quickly moved on to an IBM PC and at some point picked up a Macintosh SE/30.
I recall working as computer operator working with punch cards and 6250 tapes - old school
The one thing that I recall that is missing now, is the young eager excitement of computers and what they may be able to do. If there wasn't an app, you could wright one. I remember writing a rudimentary word processor because I couldn't afford what was out there back in the day
I recall working as computer operator working with punch cards and 6250 tapes - old school
The one thing that I recall that is missing now, is the young eager excitement of computers and what they may be able to do. If there wasn't an app, you could wright one. I remember writing a rudimentary word processor because I couldn't afford what was out there back in the day
I'll be 61 in May. There were no PC's around when I was in school. From what I remember, the closest thing to a PC was this mechanical calculator called the Magic Brain. I wish I still had one of these...
Magic Brain
Magic Brain
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I'm old enough to remember lively discussions of the politics of Harry Truman (not to mention his international counterparts) around the dinner table at my grandparents' house as World War II ended and I was still a kid too young to be trusted to help clear the dishes away after we ate.
So later on of course, my first real "computer" wasn't mine at all, it was some big ol' mainframe located up in Connecticut, and we, working in NYC, just bought time off it. Communication was via teletype machine. If you don't think patching COBOL and FORTRAN source code with a teletype was a PITA, you have not done it. Kinda like keypunching cards, only you don't have the deck with you.
I don't mean to sound totally ungrateful for computing advances even at that point. After all, I had done math and science homework with a slide rule, and crunched the numbers for an economic statistics term paper using one of those 12x12-button Frieden calculators.
Those had been my choices until after I had graduated college, for making calculations: a slide rule or a 144-key "adding" machine. Or an abacus. But hey, any of those still beat stuff like using a pile of stones to keep track of exactly how many sheep came back to the pens at nightfall, when having any stones left over meant trudging off to find the missing critters...
Anyway that time-share on mainframes experience began in 1967. My next zillion computers were all mainframes in huge rooms full of blinking lights, tape drives, clattering 1403 printers... we users were supplicants at the windows and countertops of the I/O control group, submitting decks of cards and waiting 24 hours to find out if we had a compile error, never mind actually try to execute the programs, which had to be written in callable segments no bigger than 32k in order to fit into user-available memory.
Go ahead, ask me if it seemed like a long, LONG time before the 80s and personal computing for the masses rolled around.
My first PC was a Compaq luggable (barely!) with two floppy disk drives. It cost me more than I had paid for my first used Volkswagen, I believe. I know it cost almost as much as two of my most recent Apple laptops.
Got a Mac 512k in 1985 and never really looked back, although I did get some DOS laptop that ran an early version of Windows. I think it still works. The 512k Mac definitely still works.
(On software advances: You could ask what I think about bloated word processing programs today, when one of my favorite Mac text processors was the shareware McSink that ran in 20k and would handle huge text files without complaint. I would be censored here if I answered honestly. I grew up in an era when pictures might have been worth a thousand words, but computers stuck to numbers and words and expressed them, preferably, in plaintext. I think I'm still sorta there when it comes to personal preferences, so keep those fancy presentations and just give me the bottom line. The bottom line generated from an app that runs in 20k is probably an unattainable dream today when even end users command gigabytes of free cloud storage... you give us a inch, we all take a mile).
All time favorite Apple laptop has to be the G4 12" powerbook, for the small footprint, sturdiness, reliability. Among my favorite iPods: the 2nd gen nano, since the ones I have seem indestructible.
Most memorable Apple product launch: the first iPod shuffle, the little white one that looks like a USB flash drive and has really top-end audio quality.
You can probably understand the amazement of someone my age coming to grips with the idea that I could cart around hours worth of music on something the size of a cigarette lighter, or later on, the size of a postage stamp. After all, when I was a kid, music was either live in a concert hall (or on the back porch) or else it had been recorded on 78rpm discs that were played from consoles that could weigh more than a mini-refrigerator.
"Portable" music was a violin, flute or guitar, etc., when I was a child.
Even today I think that my all time favorite iPods, notwithstanding the incredible computing power of our smart devices, might be the low-end shuffles, for their size, price, durability, basic functionality. They remind me how fortunate I am to have been born during a time when technological advances really began to empower ordinary people in so many ways.
So later on of course, my first real "computer" wasn't mine at all, it was some big ol' mainframe located up in Connecticut, and we, working in NYC, just bought time off it. Communication was via teletype machine. If you don't think patching COBOL and FORTRAN source code with a teletype was a PITA, you have not done it. Kinda like keypunching cards, only you don't have the deck with you.
I don't mean to sound totally ungrateful for computing advances even at that point. After all, I had done math and science homework with a slide rule, and crunched the numbers for an economic statistics term paper using one of those 12x12-button Frieden calculators.
Those had been my choices until after I had graduated college, for making calculations: a slide rule or a 144-key "adding" machine. Or an abacus. But hey, any of those still beat stuff like using a pile of stones to keep track of exactly how many sheep came back to the pens at nightfall, when having any stones left over meant trudging off to find the missing critters...
Anyway that time-share on mainframes experience began in 1967. My next zillion computers were all mainframes in huge rooms full of blinking lights, tape drives, clattering 1403 printers... we users were supplicants at the windows and countertops of the I/O control group, submitting decks of cards and waiting 24 hours to find out if we had a compile error, never mind actually try to execute the programs, which had to be written in callable segments no bigger than 32k in order to fit into user-available memory.
Go ahead, ask me if it seemed like a long, LONG time before the 80s and personal computing for the masses rolled around.
My first PC was a Compaq luggable (barely!) with two floppy disk drives. It cost me more than I had paid for my first used Volkswagen, I believe. I know it cost almost as much as two of my most recent Apple laptops.
Got a Mac 512k in 1985 and never really looked back, although I did get some DOS laptop that ran an early version of Windows. I think it still works. The 512k Mac definitely still works.
(On software advances: You could ask what I think about bloated word processing programs today, when one of my favorite Mac text processors was the shareware McSink that ran in 20k and would handle huge text files without complaint. I would be censored here if I answered honestly. I grew up in an era when pictures might have been worth a thousand words, but computers stuck to numbers and words and expressed them, preferably, in plaintext. I think I'm still sorta there when it comes to personal preferences, so keep those fancy presentations and just give me the bottom line. The bottom line generated from an app that runs in 20k is probably an unattainable dream today when even end users command gigabytes of free cloud storage... you give us a inch, we all take a mile).
All time favorite Apple laptop has to be the G4 12" powerbook, for the small footprint, sturdiness, reliability. Among my favorite iPods: the 2nd gen nano, since the ones I have seem indestructible.
Most memorable Apple product launch: the first iPod shuffle, the little white one that looks like a USB flash drive and has really top-end audio quality.
You can probably understand the amazement of someone my age coming to grips with the idea that I could cart around hours worth of music on something the size of a cigarette lighter, or later on, the size of a postage stamp. After all, when I was a kid, music was either live in a concert hall (or on the back porch) or else it had been recorded on 78rpm discs that were played from consoles that could weigh more than a mini-refrigerator.
"Portable" music was a violin, flute or guitar, etc., when I was a child.
Even today I think that my all time favorite iPods, notwithstanding the incredible computing power of our smart devices, might be the low-end shuffles, for their size, price, durability, basic functionality. They remind me how fortunate I am to have been born during a time when technological advances really began to empower ordinary people in so many ways.