Computer Memory Lane

[Bajanne]

As one who became interested from the early days of personal computing (the 80's), I wanted to start a thread concerning those early (now nostalgic) days.  I am making a list of things that those who came in from the 90's might not know about.  Choose any of the following and let us know your experience with it/them:
Commodore 64/128
bulletin boards and sysops
xmodem/ymodem protocol
Basic
typing programmes from computer magazines
Froggie
Galager
GEOS
dot matrix printers
datasette
5 1/4" floppies
(you can add to the list)

[Restorer]

Not me. I came in during the late 80's, and it was Mac all the way. Nostalgia for me is Hypercard, Cosmic Osmo, The Manhole, various text-and-graphic adventures, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Spaceship Warlock, and System 7.

Dot matrix printers are a bit nostalgic, since we used them in the computer lab in elementary school.

[Mizar]

 
  Prodigy  -  our first E-Mail Site.

[tyefly]

  Yes   this is fun to remember......   I had delphi.... and then Prodigy...... boy that was a long time ago.... 
   
       And yes I had a commodore 64....  using Dos Basic commands.....  Had the green monochrome monitor.....  and I was so proud that I could afford to buy a a dot matrix printer...   we all used floppies..... still have some I think..... I remember when we all used aol   at  3.95 per hour.... and then we could buy 10hours for 19.00   or something like that.....   things have certainly changed.....  I could not buy a computer with memory that would keep up with the internet as it was being developed......   I gave up .....   things were changing so fast   well   I could go on vacation and not be able to get online again...... seriously.........

           Remember with Calulators came out...... they were big bucks..... that was exciting......

[YLGuy]

My first experience with computers was storing the programs on paper tape.  The tape was very thin and if it ripped you lost everything.  The punch cards that you stacked were much more durable.  You just had to make sure the were in order.  And then came NEW technology: DOS.

Joshua: Greetings, Professor Falken.
Stephen Falken: Hello, Joshua.
Joshua: A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess?

[Mizar]

I didn't actually have any of these and I'm hope I'm not getting off Subject, but I do Remember, Years and Years and Years Ago, Someone, showing Me a Christmas Craft Project they had made out of IBM Punch Cards!
That's it, I'm Officially Old!

[RichardMEL]

C64/128 - heck remember the Vic-20, with a whole 3K of RAM in it. Oh baby! Loading sprite games up off casette tape would take like 20 minutes (good time to go make noodles or something). I don't just remember 5.25" floppies, but the 8" floppies that came before them that stored something like 360kb on each disk. Now just about everyone has 4Gb memory sticks which is like a million times the capacity. Sweet!
I remember CP/M on a Z80 card in an apple running arcane programs like WordStar (before Microsoft Word). Games like Taipan were cool, and then there was Zork. Who can remember Wizardry?

oh the early 80's were so much fun!

[Jean]

Oh boy, I do remember Word Star. Of course, we got the program at work, but it never did anything the manual said it would.

[Chris]

There are a couple even before the Comadore that you built yourself from a kit off the Popular Science magazine and Radio Shack. Then there was Apple (I, II, IIe, and Mac) which at one point Steve Jobs and Bill Gates worked together and went their different ways due to vision of computing. Heck I remember diskettes larger than the 5.5" version and laser disc that are the precursors to the CD and DVD Roms, but this was in busines computing and not home computing as the topic started off with.

[Bajanne]

Talking about things taking long to load.  Monopoly (on a cassette!) took 17 minutes to load.  I used to go out to the kitchen and do something while waiting.  Even then, sometimes you would get LOAD ERROR and have to start all over again.
Yet, those were great days!  The excitement level was very high!
There were some interesting user groups where we would share programmes, etc. Lovely days!

[RichardMEL]

Remember FidoNet? One of the first large scale international networks of bulletin boards, so you COULD exchange an email message with someone over the oceans, even though it may take quite some time to transit the network over 2400 (and less) baud modem connections from mostly hobbyists who set these things up. That was the early/mid 80's and very cool when you think about what they had to work with back then (not much).

[KICKSTART]

Geeks ! 

[mikey07840]

Remember FidoNet? One of the first large scale international networks of bulletin boards, so you COULD exchange an email message with someone over the oceans, even though it may take quite some time to transit the network over 2400 (and less) baud modem connections from mostly hobbyists who set these things up. That was the early/mid 80's and very cool when you think about what they had to work with back then (not much).

Okay Mr Fancypants, I started using computers in the '80s and first used a 300 baud acoustic coupler. Here are some computers I've owned:
TRS-80 color computer
TI-99
Tandy Model 100 portable computer
AT&T XT type computer
Apple Macintosh SE
Apple Performa 550
Apple Powerbook
Apple Ibook
Acer Aspire One

[RichardMEL]

Why am I Mr fancypants now. Who can see my underwear?!?!? 

btw I remember 110 baud (sadly!!!) and the "trash"-80 :p

[Restorer]

Heh, for once, you're all making me feel young. I started with AOL on a 2400 baud modem, and Prodigy with something even slower, I think. I remember getting a 14400 baud modem and being thrilled that I could download game demos in just a few minutes.

[Chris]

And a year ago a t- 80 sold for $10,000 at auction and it still worked. If I remember correctly this was in PC Magazine, but subscribe to 3 other computer related Magazine/Internet sites and actual paper version.

[silverhead]

I just donated a Hayes 300 baud modem to the local college computer lab as a curiosity item ( still works just fine), as an aside, I remember way back when that occasionally you received a IBM punch-card in the mail that had to be returned with a payment or such, a fun trick to pull on them was to take the card to the ironing board and steam it with the iron, it would cause the "punch holes" to shrink a small amount and could not be read by the machines they were fed into, but unless you had a sophisticated micrometer you could not see anything wrong with the card.
 Just after I purchased my first Apple computer they came out with the "Lisa" model, I just saw one them in a store room of one of my former employers, could not talk them into "donating" it to me......

[dwcrawford]

Funny. I remember rushing down the hallway with three boxes of IBM punched cards (appx 2000 per box) in a specific order for some geographical analysis.  I also remember tripping and falling with 6000 cards around me.  So glad I don't remember picking them up.

I also bought 9 of the very first Compaq Portables (onlly one floppy drive and we called the luggables vs portables) to carry to remote sites for training purposes.  A most delightful memory is of checking one (a real no no) on a late flight home and standing at the bottom of the luggage ramp at Houston Intercontinentlal Airport  (the original name before they renamed it after that Bush dude from Maine)  and watching as the computer came unlocked and parts rolled down the ramp (including the individual keys).

But it was so much fun.

[Mizar]

Ya, this Whole Thread, is starting to make Me a little Sad. We got our First Home Computor, only, Twenty Years Ago. The other Day, My Granddaughter said to Me, "  How did You ever leave Town, without a Laptop? " How did We ever leave Town then, without, a Cell Phone, an IPOD, a Blackberry? Things are changing so fast.

[YLGuy]

How did you ever know where you were and where you were headed without a GPS?  Remember when you had to cash a check at the grocery store because there was no such thing as an ATM and the banks closed at 3:00? 

I know, I am getting off topic. (I thought I could sneak these in because GPS and ATM's use computer technology)

[fc2821]

My first somputer was a TRS-80 color computer II.   I still had it up until about a year ago.  I do not know what I was saving it for.  Remember the mauals?  YLguy I still know to use a map and a compas, so I guess I am old.  I'm so old, I had to learn how to ue a slide rule.  Anyone know what I am talking about?  In college I had to learn how to ue a card sorter and lister for an IBM 370 part of my student work job. 

[Stoday]

I built my own first computer in 1976 from a Z80, eight 2102 1 kbit memory chips and some TTL. All programming in machine language — that's the way to understand everything!

[jennyc]

We had a 'Tandy' (radio shack) brand computer. Kind of like the commodore 64. I used to play 'luna rover patrol' on it. Gosh i loved that game. took ages to load off the cassette.

Also in 83/84 when i broke my arm a friend lent us this dedicated computer game console with a screen that you could play games on, can't remember the name (i was only 5/6). but it had different coloured screen filters that you put over it to make new levels.

[jbeany]

I took a computer programming course in 6th grade - all the
10 GOTO LINE 20 etc. . . .

And those big floppies make good frizbees!

[Chris]

And those big floppies make good frizbees!

Yes, Yes they did, the bigger ones used in business though didn't and the laser disk were bigger than a lp.