Computers Now and Then

[xfactor9]

Originally Posted By: Quattro Pete

I've got an Amiga 500 still sitting in my parents' basement, too. Coming from an Atari 800XL, the Amiga was a huge step up in audio and video capabilities. I used to record various audio tunes (from games and demos) on cassette tapes to listen to. Good old times.

You dared to defect from the Atari to the Commies? If you mentioned that on a BBS, you would have been skewered alive.

 

[Garak]

Originally Posted By: Win
Tandy made really good stuff. Mine probably still does as well, although the hard drive needs some work - best as I recall I couldn't get the green light last time I spun it up.

I wasn't rich; no hard drive.

In any case, their word processing was way ahead of its time. I had Scripsit, which was no more than a glorified text editor. But, then I got SuperScriptsit, which had proportional spacing and everything. It took many years to run across a word processor matching those features.

 

[Quattro Pete]

Originally Posted By: xfactor9
Originally Posted By: Quattro Pete

I've got an Amiga 500 still sitting in my parents' basement, too. Coming from an Atari 800XL, the Amiga was a huge step up in audio and video capabilities. I used to record various audio tunes (from games and demos) on cassette tapes to listen to. Good old times.

You dared to defect from the Atari to the Commies? If you mentioned that on a BBS, you would have been skewered alive.

Yeah, back then I did not know BBS existed. Most of my friends had Amigas, so I jumped on the bandwagon. But I do regret selling the Atari.

 

[daves87rs]

Gee guys, thanks for making me feel like the young one here...

Our first computer was a Gateway 2000 in the early 90s....then another one before the decade was out.

Of course, I remember the imacs in college.....

 

[Garak]

Originally Posted By: Quattro Pete
Yeah, back then I did not know BBS existed. Most of my friends had Amigas, so I jumped on the bandwagon. But I do regret selling the Atari.

I started with the BBSes in around 1985. I was able to avoid acoustic couplers, but just barely. I had a 300 baud direct connect modem to start. I had to manual dial. Only occasionally did I have the "fun" of having to call something at 110 baud.

 

[OVERKILL]

Originally Posted By: Garak
Originally Posted By: Quattro Pete
Yeah, back then I did not know BBS existed. Most of my friends had Amigas, so I jumped on the bandwagon. But I do regret selling the Atari.

I started with the BBSes in around 1985. I was able to avoid acoustic couplers, but just barely. I had a 300 baud direct connect modem to start. I had to manual dial. Only occasionally did I have the "fun" of having to call something at 110 baud.


I had a 2400 baud, dialed into the local Uni's VAX to "surf the internet" in its primitive form. Dad had e-mail through there as well. I used to frequent BBS's as well, the most common one being YakYak's.

 

[Andrew1972]

I recall a UNIX program that allowed in 1990 I guess instant chat. You'd both login at same time and could see each other's typing. A really hot girl I met over summer who was physics dork. We'd flirt/sext essentially on a monochrome vt-100 terminal. Good memories unfortunately it went no where.

My first "social" experience with computer. We had pine to email each other but not as fun as that other typing thing.

 

[Garak]

Originally Posted By: OVERKILL
I had a 2400 baud, dialed into the local Uni's VAX to "surf the internet" in its primitive form. Dad had e-mail through there as well. I used to frequent BBS's as well, the most common one being YakYak's.

I remember spending $600 on my first 1200 baud modem, and half that for the 2400. The 300 and 1200 were Radio Shack stuff, and when I went to the Amiga, I got a 2400. The Radio Shack modems had a fairly inscrutable command set, and rather weird protocols for getting it to obey, so autodialing telecommunications programs didn't even bother with Radio Shack protocols. Unless you were using a modem with the AT command set, you were not using the built in directory.

One BBS I used to frequent was completely RAM based on a C64 at 300 baud. He kept it running (obviously with different hardware) for many years, including into the telnet era. It survived sometime into the 2000s on telnet, with the sysop having moved to Alberta.

I do miss FidoNet. Yes, it still exists, technically, but it's not the same. Some of the bigger BBSes here in the day did have a UUCP gateway to internet email, which was pretty handy.

 

[lewdwig]

My first and only college computer science class was Fortran 77 using a key punch machine on a Sperry/Univac mainframe. Most times took hours to get the results of your program. My first personal computer was a Windows ME machine. My job treated me to an Excel 2002 class.