What's your most memorable moment related to computers?

[Arcade]

For me they all had to do with apple computers. Now I understand why deep down inside I had a love for apple computers all these years.

In 1988 when I was in junior high school my science teacher plugged in a thermometer to a apple II to show the students the current weather.

In 1995 was when I first saw the performa 630CD in the martinettis bring home a computer. This is when I wanted a Mac soo bad but I couldn't afford it at the time.

Then again in 1995 when I saw the net when sandra bullock ordered pizza online. The first time I ordered pizza online was in 2001 from dominos pizza they were first one in my area to have online ordering.

 

[lclev]

1986 - I was teaching computers and I connected a Hayes modem in an IBM PC to connect to the internet to show my students what all you could do. At that time it wasn't much as most was just text on a screen but I found a science news bulletin board that was spewing out all kinds of data. I understood from reading that a bunch of scientists were seeing alarming levels of radiation in the atmosphere. I asked our chemistry teacher to look at the data and he just could not believe what he was seeing or how it could be real.

We later found out about the nuclear accident in Chernobyl. While it had occurred on a Saturday the full spewing plume of radiation was moving and increasing for days. Russia was very closed mouthed about what was happening in the early days of the accident.

That was the first time I realized just how powerful the internet could become.

 

[glenthompson]

Because of my interest in photography and movies, in an advanced computer graphics class circa 1974, I made a computer generated animation. Wireframe images only but awesome to see my programming live on the screen. Was also taking a cinematography course and used the movie as my project for both classes.

 

[LizKat]

Hah. Easy. The day I miscoded a print command in a rush job and caused an IBM 1403 line printer to lose its **** trying to follow my bollixed directions and so try to print a 1500-line report on 1500 pages of greenbar paper.

The job was special, and destined for the CEO's desk by 8am, so I was inside the hallowed halls of the mainframes room in the wee hours waiting for the damn job to finally run and print.

Right so I was sitting in the operator's lounge drinking their terrible coffee at three a.m., having reluctantly turned down an offer of one of the beers they kept cold in sixpacks under the false floor, when one of the ops on duty screamed at me from out on the floor "LIZKAT! get out here and clean up this crap, W T F ??" I went out and saw most of a box of greenbar spilling out into the room like a giant snail just as the printer gave it up, screeched to a halt and raised its cover skyward.

Oy. They never let me forget it. I was buying brews for that crew for the rest of the time I worked there, any tine we ended up in the same pub. "Oh there she is, the line-a-page girl. Listen up guys, this is special..."

 

[eyoungren]

There are no specific memories. But I can say that the day I realized I could connect my Commodore 64 to a BBS, using a 300bps modem, my world expanded.

The BBS enabled me to leave the confines of my own local space and interact with people far away. For a 13 year old kid stuck in a rural town with nowhere to go and nothing to do this was freedom.

 

[I7guy]

Hah. Easy. The day I miscoded a print command in a rush job and caused an IBM 1403 line printer to lose its **** trying to follow my bollixed directions and so try to print a 1500-line report on 1500 pages of greenbar paper.

The job was special, and destined for the CEO's desk by 8am, so I was inside the hallowed halls of the mainframes room in the wee hours waiting for the damn job to finally run and print.

Right so I was sitting in the operator's lounge drinking their terrible coffee at three a.m., having reluctantly turned down an offer of one of the beers they kept cold in sixpacks under the false floor, when one of the ops on duty screamed at me from out on the floor "LIZKAT! get out here and clean up this crap, W T F ??" I went out and saw most of a box of greenbar spilling out into the room like a giant snail just as the printer gave it up, screeched to a halt and raised its cover skyward.

Oy. They never let me forget it. I was buying brews for that crew for the rest of the time I worked there, any tine we ended up in the same pub. "Oh there she is, the line-a-page girl. Listen up guys, this is special..."

This happened frequently. Sometimes errors in cobol programs would cause high speed printers to spit out a box of paper. When I heard stories about that, I also heard operators were not laughing. HaHa!

 

[laptech]

My memory? Being amazed at seeing how small a computer had become when laying my eyes on a Spectrum ZX81. When I was at school there was no computers for pupils to use, only teachers had access to a computer which was used for school admin related stuff. One of the science teachers was into technology and persuaded the headmaster to buy a couple of Commodore PET computers so he could run a computer class. For a year that is all we used but then one day the science teacher said he had a surprise for the class and took us into a side room where the teachers setup all projects and stuff prior to moving them to the main class room. Anyway he had setup this other computer up and all of us kids were amazed when we saw how small it was compared to the PET's we had been using. I was completely blown away at how something so small could behave in the same manner as the Commodore PET. That's when my love of computers started.

 

[Scepticalscribe]

Hah. Easy. The day I miscoded a print command in a rush job and caused an IBM 1403 line printer to lose its **** trying to follow my bollixed directions and so try to print a 1500-line report on 1500 pages of greenbar paper.

The job was special, and destined for the CEO's desk by 8am, so I was inside the hallowed halls of the mainframes room in the wee hours waiting for the damn job to finally run and print.

Right so I was sitting in the operator's lounge drinking their terrible coffee at three a.m., having reluctantly turned down an offer of one of the beers they kept cold in sixpacks under the false floor, when one of the ops on duty screamed at me from out on the floor "LIZKAT! get out here and clean up this crap, W T F ??" I went out and saw most of a box of greenbar spilling out into the room like a giant snail just as the printer gave it up, screeched to a halt and raised its cover skyward.

Oy. They never let me forget it. I was buying brews for that crew for the rest of the time I worked there, any tine we ended up in the same pub. "Oh there she is, the line-a-page girl. Listen up guys, this is special..."

This is laugh out loud hilarious, but obviously, wasn't anything of the sort at the time.

 

[LizKat]

This is laugh out loud hilarious, but obviously, wasn't anything of the sort at the time.

Yeah I was under the gun to get that report done and checked out so... smh, of all times to get careless.

But I did have to laugh after I hauled the scrap paper over to the shredder... and fixed the code and had one of their beers waiting for the re-run. A beer for a breakfast preview seemed like the better half of another of the perfectly dreadful operators' lounge coffees at that point in my life, for sure. I dropped the report on the CEO's secretary's desk around 6 am and went home happy.

My other and purely joyful memory of early computing experiences was after booting the first Apple computer I ever bought, a 512k Macintosh in 1985. When that smiling face appeared on the screen and I was not presented by a C prompt after that, rather some file folder icons, and after I had fooled around with MacPaint for about two minutes, wow. I was all in, and even a nice Toshiba laptop I got in the early 90s fell by the wayside rapidly once my workplace went to Macs and especially after the Powerbooks came out.

 

[MattG]

The day I bought my first Mac, an iMac G4 15". I remember being blown away by the attention to detail, before even turning it on; even the packaging was amazing. I knew just from opening the box that I'd be a forever fan.

 

[1042686]

The day I learned

LOAD”*”,8,1

 

[chrono1081]

For me it's hard to pin point because I was never exposed to a computer in school or at home for years (I lived in rural PA where technology was shunned). The first time I remember seeing one is when my parents finally decided to get one for us (it was used) and we went to these peoples house to pick it up and they had a brand new "multi-media computer" that was in color, it had hot air balloons as the background, and it was amazing!

And the one we picked up was an IBM compatible running DOS that could do very little. It was outdated big time but we could play a few games on it, it wasn't terribly exciting.

I was hooked though, I'd beg for computer magazines that I could read and when the internet started to gain traction in the early 90s I begged and begged for a computer but wouldn't get one until the very end of the 90s.

 

[Mousse]

Back in 1980, the first time I wandered around in the dark and got eaten by a Grue. I learned to bring a light source everywhere I went from then on. Of course, no torch beyond the Smelly Room.

 

[0128672]

Back in 1980, the first time I wandered around in the dark and got eaten by a Grue. I learned to bring a light source everywhere I went from then on. Of course, no torch beyond the Smelly Room.

Hahaha, I still have a Zorkmid that came with the game.

 

[AngerDanger]

It's also one of my earliest memories. When I was a toddler, my mom was finishing college, and she had to take a multimedia graphics course. I have this vivid memory of being sat on her lap as she completed one of the inbuilt tutorials on Macromedia Flash 4, particularly the part where you're introduced to motion guides.

Inspired by this thread, I fired up a VM and had quite a nostalgia trip. It was originally on Win95/98, but this'll do.

I remember being so amazed that my mom made the little bee move across the screen.

When I was nine, I found the Flash 4 installation disk in a drawer and taught myself a little about animation. A couple years later, I'd join a tech news forum and sometimes post stupid animations I'd made. Then I'd start working there a decade later. Small world, eh?

 

[compwiz1202]

Back in 1980, the first time I wandered around in the dark and got eaten by a Grue. I learned to bring a light source everywhere I went from then on. Of course, no torch beyond the Smelly Room.

Yes always beelined for the torch then extinguish lamp

 

[NT1440]

I always took apart things as a kid. I distinctly remember taking apart an old compaq as a kid and being fascinated by the motherboard, all the traces. There was an alien logo etched in to the motherboard and I’ll never forget that.

 

[LizKat]

I always took apart things as a kid. I distinctly remember taking apart an old compaq as a kid and being fascinated by the motherboard, all the traces. There was an alien logo etched in to the motherboard and I’ll never forget that.

lol i did not know that.. [trying not to rummage for the luggable still up in a closet]

 

[TrevorR90]

Mines actually very recent. I purchased the 2019 Mac Pro earlier this year and this was my first new Mac Desktop machine and first expensive PC purchase.

 

[daimos]

When i graduated with the degree in mid 90s, i knew it was up and coming industry. Now, it’s becoming somewhat of a blue-collar, where all IT departments try to ship your job to the cheapest labor. “We are follow-the-sun”, the IT dept. would say, but behind that cool jargon, it’s an excuse to find the cheapest.

 

[Ericdjensen]

I was born in ‘95 and the earliest OS I remember using is Windows 2000. Then XP, then Vista. I suppose the best memory for me is just switching from Windows to MacOS in 2010. Nothing exciting

 

[Apple_Robert]

Getting my first PC (which I actually built myself). And then getting my first Mac. Good times indeed. I am glad I was from the darkness to the light with Macs.

 

[laptech]

Another memorable moment was not long after I started my first job in the late 80's. For a few years I would go to the local computer fair which was set up in the main hall of a local hotel. There would be tables and tables of all sorts of electronic parts and computer parts. I was in awe at all the things I saw. One of the tables was full of computer related books and one caught my eye 'How to build your own 486 computer'. I bought the book and for the next few weeks I read it intensively whilst saving up to buy the individual parts myself. With the help of that book I was able to build my own 486 computer. Your sitting there with baited breath, finger pausing over the power on button, heart beating faster and faster, scared to press the power button for fear that you have forgotten to do something but also the adrenaline pumping at the prospect that everything is OK. You press the power button, you hear fans turning, you wait to see some response from the monitor but nothing. Then dread consumes you that you have killed the motherboard or the CPU or the memory and it's money down the drain BUT you preserve, look at the motherboard manual again and realise you've set the clock speed jumpers wrong. Wipe the sweat from your brow, start the power on procedure all over again, waiting to see something on the monitor and then come the whoops of joy when you see the words MS DOS 6.2 appear on the screen.

Building your very first computer from scratch has to be up there as one of the most memorable computer moment

 

[1042686]

Oh there’s a memory from the past. It was 1993, I was a sophomore in highschool still rocking my c64 & for Christmas Pop bought me all the guts to build a 486 dos box.

Lost that box to a flooded storage unit in 2000.

 

[laptech]

Oh there’s a memory from the past. It was 1993, I was a sophomore in highschool still rocking my c64 & for Christmas Pop bought me all the guts to build a 486 dos box.

Lost that box to a flooded storage unit in 2000.

I would have to put this down as worst memorable computer memory. When moving to a smaller place, I made the worst decision of throwing out ALL of my old computer parts that I had collected over the years, 286's, 386's, 486's, memory, 5 1/4 in hard drives, cases (mini, tower and full tower), power supplies, monitors, mice, keyboards...i think you get the picture. Only thing I kept was an NEC CDR-c251 4x4 cd changer. I kept that because I wanted to learn how to write device drivers so I could get it to work with unsupported windows version. Bought the pro version of Visual basic 6 but then did nothing with it. Might have a go one of these days to see if I can write a driver to get it to work with windows 10

But your loss to a flood made me think of my loss (of my own doing )