Welcome Guest. Please Login or Register. Feb 9, 2010, 5:39pm
Small Talk
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My own experience in computers has been spotty. I used them (PCs, Apples and Commodores) in the 80s, but didn't have much to do with them from '90 to '99.
When I finally came back, I was surprised by some very basic things. I had used mainly Commodores which had no hard drives--everything had to be saved to tape or disk. So the idea that files could be saved "to the computer" was exciting by itself.
The internet confused me. I sat down at a computer at the community college library and played with Internet Explorer for a while without being substantially enlightened. I could see the forward and back buttons. I could see that I was being taken to various sites. But (in my humble opinion) it seemed they might allow a better means of navigation between sites A and E than having to forward-forward-forward through sites B, C and D. These internet designers, I thought, had a lot to learn about design.
Anyway, having missed most of the formative interval, I wonder if anyone hear has any particular memories of computing in the 90s--old equipment, programs, problems, misunderstandings, etc.
My experience is much the same. I grew up in the 70's and 80's and my dad was a big computer buff. We had the first PC on the block for about a good ten years before anyone else. So while everyone was playing with their Atari, Intelevison, and Coleco, I was playing Puckman on the Apple II. We later got the Commodores and the Apple IIe. Both of my brothers took to programing in DOS and the whole 9 yards. I never got it. I enjoyed playing games, but when it came to 0011100110101 stuff, was lost. I asked my brother one time to help me learn how to program and he handed me three huge binders and said "read these". Obviously I didn't. So I just existed playing Castle Wolfienstien and adventures with no graphics.
My brothers had even set up a bulletin board, in the 80's, which was pre-internet, but where people could connect through a modem and leave messages to each other about this and that. My oldest brother met his first wife that way.
Through the 90's I spent four years in the Marines and when I got out, struggled to raise and support a family. I don't think we went online until the first part of the millennium. I was extremely excited t o be apart of the whole "You got mail" world, but I didn't think it lived up to the hype.
To be honest, other than this site, Itunes, and my online classes, I'm not wired in much. Maybe because there is so much on the web it overwhelms me. I'm pretty anal retentive and I have a tendency of wanting to see or do everything or complete every objective (which is why I shy away from free range games).
i got into computers as a little kid because of my dad. he had a radio shack trs-80 with a cassette drive, and then apples, and then ibm-pc-compatibles, and now back to apples. anyway, at christmas of 1993 (i think) he got me into telecommunications with a 2400bps modem and the phone number of a local bbs.
fast forward a year or so, and i'm the system operator of a late-night-only bbs called 'space madness' to which i summoned just about all of my high school's savvy geeks.
this became much more interesting to me than the factory farm operation of school, and i barely managed to coast over the line for graduation. i've never been quite right since.
and there were old timers when i was a newbie, too! they used to stick the actual phone receiver in a cradle and read things slowly as they appeared on the screen at 300 bits per second. you whippersnappers today with your digital this and wi-fi that, you don't even know what the pioneers suffered—and they liked it, the sick degenerates!
and there were old timers when i was a newbie, too! they used to stick the actual phone receiver in a cradle and read things slowly as they appeared on the screen at 300 bits per second.
I got thrust into PC's and Workstations while working for Exxon, starting late 1990. Prior to that point, I wa PC-less. I made up for it quickly, though. Exxon (and other oil and gas companies) quickly glommed onto more and more powerful PC's and Workstations (Sun UNIX "C" shell systems, and another Workstation that has fallen by the wayside in the last 10 years or so). I had to learn how to use 'em all for various applications.
Since going to work for TGS-NOPEC/A2D Technologies, my Workstation knowledge has fallen off, but I use a high-end Dell PC for petrophysics from home....love having no commute!
I think the first PC I had was a 280 series with amber/black monitor.
Game-wise, I really got into the DOOM game series. The graphics were cool, and it was fun zipping into a room and right back out, and then listening to the bad guys fry each other. The music for some of the levels was awesome, too.
I had those antiquated relics that used something called a "boot disk" to start up computers. They were on these, uh, how would I describe them? Uh....these disks that were floppy. Floppy disks! Some of the ones I used didn't even have a monitor, they attached to those new fangled television sets and had just ONE color!! Before that, all I had was an abacus.
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