I know what punchcards are, but am not old enough to have actually used them.

So any of you former Commie Computer users (Commodore 64) remember the online service, QuantumLink?  I was on there for a few years in the mid to late '80s. Q-Link went on to become AOL -lol-  

I started college in '90, and that's when I got introduced to the Internet. Had a UNIX shell account on the university system. Spent many hours using GOPHER (predecessor to the World Wide Web) hunting down guitar tabs (sheet music), and was a USENET junky. Then there was the WASHU FTP repository, and then the advent of SLIP/PPP communications and the web springing to life in its graphical glory around '93. Sometimes I think my text-based 2400 baud experience was faster than my current Verizon FIOS 15MB down/2MB up :)


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1> Does amiga count?
2-10, 14, 15, 17, 18>  unfortunatley, yes....

and I am only 29.... whats up with that!


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LOL!  Guilty on ALL counts!  

Even had a CPM System with a chip burner... Ah those were the days...

Ozone Rambler wrote:

All this talk of old computer systems made me decide to do a list for old computer geeks. Some thing along Jeff Foxworthy only for computer geeks. So here is the start of the list. Please feel free to add to it if you think of anything new to add.

You might be an old Computer Geek if:

1.   You ever owned a computer by Commodore, Atari, Coleco, or Franklin
2.   You used a game cartridge or cassette tape to load programs for you computer
3.   You thought 16 colors out of a computer were cool
4.   You know what a 300 baud modem is and used one
5.   You know what a bulletin board system is
6.   You know what ANSI graphic are
7.   You know what a tagline is
8.   You had two telephone lines in your house, one for voice and the other for the computer
9.   You used a TV for a computer monitor
10. You know what punch cards are
11. You keypunched cards
12. You remember when mainframes took up whole rooms and only had 64KB of memory
13. You know what a 9 track tape drive is
14. Your first PC was an 8 bit computer
15. You know what EGA is
16. You remember 8 inch floppy drives
17. Your first computer used KB instead of MB for memory size
18. Your first printer was dot matrix

Neonhomer, when did you use an Amiga, which one did you have?  As you may have noticed from my post, I'm still using one.  And I know Amiga users who are getting on the internet using one.

Here's an updated list and I do hope you can add some more.

1.   You ever owned a computer by Commodore, Atari, Coleco, or Franklin
2.   You used a game cartridge or cassette tape to load programs for you computer
3.   You thought 16 colors out of a computer were cool
4.   You know what a 300 baud modem is and used one
5.   You know what a bulletin board system is
6.   You know what ANSI graphic are
7.   You know what a tagline is
8.   You had two telephone lines in your house, one for voice and the other for the computer
9.   You used a TV for a computer monitor
10. You know what punch cards are
11. You keypunched cards
12. You remember when mainframes took up whole rooms and only had 64KB of memory
13. You know what a 9 track tape drive is
14. Your first PC was an 8 bit computer
15. You know what EGA is
16. You remember 8 inch floppy drives
17. Your first computer used KB instead of MB for memory size
18. Your first printer was dot matrix

OhforFive Added
19. You had to buy a clock/calendar board for your first PC.
20. You know what a CPM OS is

Ozone Rambler Added
21. You know what an Apple Lisa is
22. You built your first computer and it wasn’t a PC
23. You know what GWBasic is
24. You consider Windows the Johnny come lately has you owned an Appler Mac or Commodore Amiga in the 80's

Will Added
25. Radio Shack sold their own line of computers (ie TRS-80, Tandy)
26. You know what a Timex Sinclair is



Last edited by Ozone Rambler on Sun Nov 26, 2006 5:08 pm; edited 3 times in total
_________________
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I should have remembered CP/M. I had a Commodore 128 and it ran C64, C128, and CP/M programs all from the same machine. Boy was I aslept on that one. Better go get my mask on.

Frances, and Neonhomer I have an A2000 sitting here on my desk. It still works. I really should find some time to play with it again one of these days.


_________________
Our constitution protects aliens, drunks and U.S. Senators.
Will Rogers (1879 - 1935)

Be thankful we're not getting all the government we're paying for.
Will Rogers (1879 - 1935)

Another one would be, you remember when Radio Shack sold their own line of computers :)

How about the good ol' "TRaSh 80" ... anyone have one of those?  We had a mix of Apple IIe's and TRS 80s in our "computer lab" when I was in middle school in the mid-'80s.  My earliest non-console gaming experience (tying into the other thread) was playing the original Wizardry on some old Tandy a neighbor had.

Here's another one ... Timex Sinclair?  I had a friend whose dad had one of those. It would take like 10 minutes to load a game like "Hangman" from tape.


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A friend of mine has an ancient Tandy 1400HD laptop. It's got a small LCD display, 768k of RAM and a whopping 10 meg hard drive. The drive developed so many bad sectors over the years, he couldn't repair it anymore. Can't find a replacement, either. I think it has an RLL or MFM interface. He was upset when that thing went, he loved it. He ran a program called Deskmate on it, kind of like the Flintstones version of Office.

Here's a funny story; when I was working in that tech shop in '99, a customer brought in an IBM PS/2 desktop that wouldn't boot. I hooked it up, turned it on, and got those weird symbols that looked like an "OK" with the circle and red line through it, followed by what looked like a little book, if I recall correctly. I was stumped. I called one of the other techs over to ask him what that was. He looked at the screen and said to me, completely deadpan, "Whatever it is, it's not OK." We both started laughing hysterically. Found out that a boot disk downloaded from IBM did the trick.


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Ozone Rambler wrote:

All this talk of old computer systems made me decide to do a list for old computer geeks. Some thing along Jeff Foxworthy only for computer geeks. So here is the start of the list. Please feel free to add to it if you think of anything new to add.

You might be an old Computer Geek if:

1.   You ever owned a computer by Commodore, Atari, Coleco, or Franklin
2.   You used a game cartridge or cassette tape to load programs for you computer
3.   You thought 16 colors out of a computer were cool
4.   You know what a 300 baud modem is and used one
5.   You know what a bulletin board system is
6.   You know what ANSI graphic are
7.   You know what a tagline is
8.   You had two telephone lines in your house, one for voice and the other for the computer
9.   You used a TV for a computer monitor
10. You know what punch cards are
11. You keypunched cards
12. You remember when mainframes took up whole rooms and only had 64KB of memory
13. You know what a 9 track tape drive is
14. Your first PC was an 8 bit computer
15. You know what EGA is
16. You remember 8 inch floppy drives
17. Your first computer used KB instead of MB for memory size
18. Your first printer was dot matrix

Hey, I must be a computer geek. I scored 16 out of 18.  I missed on the 9 track tape drive and tagline.

My first computer was a Timex Sinclair with 2K of memory (My current computer has 2GIG of memory!).  I learned to program in Basic on that one. Next a Commodore 64, Commodore 128 then many different PCs.  I currently only use a Dell SPX laptop.


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Will, punchcards were used in Germany as early as 1942,I know I lived there then and was employed as a hollerith data clerk. I again used them in Australia working as a bookkeeper at Chartered Accountants in 1973 I don't remember  what the computer was called but it occupied a large room. From there we updated to a slightly smaller " Data 6000 " You should have seen the back up tapes for this one.

On retirement I started off with a "Tandy 128K colour computer" where the computer is in the keyboard and tapes for memory storage etc.I used to get some
computer magazines in which I found programs of games which I used to enter for my daughter to play.I've still got that one .My next one was Windows 3.1 with very little space, I think 360 k. When that flopped one day I got Windows 97 with a 4gig H.D.the next was an update to 10 gig then a new one with a 40gig HD and 1 gig ram plus XP Home.That was recently  updated to an 80gig H.D. and is used as a spare for my daughter when she visits. 3 month ago a new one was built with 160gig H.D. a 2gig ram and XP professional. and a 19" Screen.

 Yes I am a senior citizen and I am a computer geek and to top it all my partner of 6 years is one too but he builds 'em and gets me out of a lot of trouble when my machine refuses to follow my comands.

To tell the truth the machines keep me alert,the internet keeps me informed and
my MS.Money helps keep our finances in order.  


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Mitzi:

I'm a lot younger than you (62) and am also retired.  I don't know what I would do If I didn't have a computer.  My daughter lives with me and my wife and we all have laptops on a wireless network.  Our printers are in another room and on the network also.  There is so much you can do with a computer.  We have paid all of our bills by computer for over 10 years. We haven't used film cameras for 10 years either.  Digital photography is one of the great modern inventions.  I'm amazed at how the WWW has blossomed since it started.  It's the most amazing source of information that has ever existed.  And of course there's video editing, music, games, etc. The list goes on and on.

I just recently bought a Sony @Reader.  Its an electronic book that I can load from my computer.  It has a new type of display that is electronic ink.  It takes a small amount of power to display a page and the page will stay displayed as long as you want with no power usages.  The specs say you can turn 7500 pages before recharging.  It will hold approx. 80 books with the built-in memory and it takes two types of memory cards.  It also will display photos (B+W) and play audio files.

I LOVE computers.


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Love seeing all the Computer Geeks on the board here. Let me see if I can catch up here.

Will I had Quantum Link on my C64. I really felt like the C64 crowd got deserted when they dumped the service and became AOL. Really took away one of the better national networks for the C64. Here is a great article on the man who invented the use of punch cards for computer and statistical information. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollerith
I also added your two suggestions to the list. As soon as I find time I will update it here.

CatNappin did your friend ever check EBay. Believe it or not they have people over there selling old MFM or RLL drives. He might be able to get his old laptop up and running again. Does he know how to get to the hard drive? I have to agree some of those old systems can be really tough to trouble shoot. It's amazing how many old systems there are out there.

Mitzi and hhopper as of 2004 the fastest growing segment of computer users in the US was senior citizens. The reason. It was the best way for them to keep in touch with their grandchildren. I have to say I really like digital photo as well. I have stayed with the easy to use cameras. Right now I have a Nikon CoolPix L1 which is really easy to use. This maybe a great idea for another topic here. hhoper your cat looks like the one we got. We have a standard issue black cat with medium length fur. Talk about shed all over everything.


_________________
Our constitution protects aliens, drunks and U.S. Senators.
Will Rogers (1879 - 1935)

Be thankful we're not getting all the government we're paying for.
Will Rogers (1879 - 1935)

Ozone Rambler wrote:

CatNappin did your friend ever check EBay. Believe it or not they have people over there selling old MFM or RLL drives. He might be able to get his old laptop up and running again. Does he know how to get to the hard drive? I have to agree some of those old systems can be really tough to trouble shoot. It's amazing how many old systems there are out there.

I don't know if he ever checked eBay, he might have. The last time I remember he looked around was about five years ago, and he did find a refurb somewhere for 200 bucks. He didn't get it, thought it was way too expensive.

Yeah, he's had it apart to check the drive, we're both seasoned field techs. We give each other computer parts and games for birthdays and holidays. I'll look around for one. He'd be thrilled.  


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I guess the first computer I had was an apple 2C.Just remembered I have to repair the power suppy for it Guess I must have put that job off for a long time

Ozone Rambler wrote:

I have to say I really like digital photo as well. I have stayed with the easy to use cameras. Right now I have a Nikon CoolPix L1 which is really easy to use. This maybe a great idea for another topic here. hhoper your cat looks like the one we got. We have a standard issue black cat with medium length fur. Talk about shed all over everything.

I have a Konika/Minolta A1.  It's a little out of date but a really nice camera (8mp).  The cat is a Russian Black.  We also have a Russian White but he's deaf (as are many white cats.) We actually have four cats.  Here they are:


BUDDYWhite BoyClydeStreak


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