Ancient Computing

OMG...I used to love to play Oregon Trail. We had computer/typing class in school...and we would occasionally be allowed to take the huge floppy disks out and play it!! ;D :D

OMG...I used to love to play Oregon Trail. We had computer/typing class in school...and we would occasionally be allowed to take the huge floppy disks out and play it!! ;D :D


Oregon Trail is still a great game. I'd love to find a (free) version of it for Windows XP.

I barely remember the first computer I had - it came with a programming book (maybe basic or C language???) and had no disks to back up my work, so it was really lame.

The first real computers (aside from Atari/Odyssey/Coleco consoles) I was exposed to was Apple II. I remember playing this ninja game circa 1985, as well as "Where In The World Is Carmen San Diego?" with an almanac (?) - jeez it's been so long ago...

Ant

I think the very first computer I ever used was an Apple II-e, back in 1988, when I was in the 3rd grade. I played some simple math-oriented games on it, such as "Piece Of Cake Math." I also learned how to do LOGO programming, where you'd instruct the "turtle" to move this way, that way, a certain number of steps, and use "PU" to tell him not to draw when he moves, "PD" to begin drawing lines again, and "PE" to begin erasing. That was kinda fun.

I had (and still do have) a Commodore Vic-20 that I got for Christmas in 1982.  The game cartridges fit into the back of the keyboard, and if you didn't pop in the game and turn it on, you'd have to type in a command to get the game going

The Vic-20 used these POKE commands that let you do all kinds of then neat things like make ascii symbols look like a flying bird.  Thing was that in order to make a simple little ascii symbol move, you had to type in this lengthy code LOL

You could even type things out, and print them off on a dot matrix printer, which was sold separately (I never had) but what was sold separately that I did have was the cassette deck that came with these tapes that had like learning lessons on them like History, etc.  I don't remember how they worked, but you plugged the take deck into the keyboard, and the tapes interacted with the computer

I used Windows 3.1 many years ago when I was pretty small. I used Apple IIgs computers and old macintoshes early in school. I remember making things with Print Shop Deluxe and Kid Pix circa 1994. The first computer I had at home was a Mac Quadra 610 which I got for Christmas in 1993. I remember it had an early CD-Rom drive, that was like pretty new technology in that era from what I remember, and the CDs would go in this plastic case thing then you would insert that into the computer...it was odd. I still have many of the floppy disks and cds that I used with that computer.

OMG...I used to love to play Oregon Trail. We had computer/typing class in school...and we would occasionally be allowed to take the huge floppy disks out and play it!! ;D :D


Oh yes I remember when we used to play Oregon Train in school, it's been so long since I played it.

On old Dos based (and Windows 3.1) computers, I used to play this real cool game called 'Scorched Earth'.  The premise of this game had these little tanks sitting on a mountain.  The idea was to angle the turret and try to blow the other tanks away.  You got cool weapons such as this large nuke that wiped out half the screen almost.  I remember on slow computers, it sometimes took about 5 minutes for the nuke to finish exploding ;D

http://www.xscorch.org/screenshots/napalm1.png


The NUKE in action ...

http://img149.imageshack.us/img149/8971/scorch3largeal4.png

The first computer I used was my brothers Sinclair ZX 80 in1980.  You had to program it using machine code or a form of BASIC.  You could save the program on a cassete tape.  I helped him program a graph drawing program which worked really well when we finally got the code correct.  I know there were other programs we used (probably games) but I can't remember that far back!

The next computer I used was a BBC B in 1982.  I did a short course on computer programming in BASIC at school.  We were also allowed to use a Research Machines RML 380Z (I think that's the name).

The BBC was a great machine.  You could do stuff on that years before IBM sorted out interfacing.

When I started work (1986) we had two computers in the teaching labs for doing data analysis.  The program was loaded from a cassette.  We also did a short course on hex programming!

At uni I used a BBC machine for various different experiments in the Physics lab.  Timing things mostly.  This would be in about 1988/89.

I first used the internet/web in about 1991/92.  I remember a colleague showing me how to search for information for a quiz I was doing.  I looked at a website at Cardiff University that had information on various films - similar to IMDB.com I guess!

Other "early" computers I can remember using were Apple II-C (in early 1993, for QBASIC programming, which I kinda sucked at at the time) and an Apple II-GS computer (in late 1992), both of which I used in school. On the Apple II-GS, I used a program called PrintShop, where I could create all kinds of things, such as greeting cards, calendars, etc.... but the kind of printer used was a noisy dot-matrix printer, which prints out everything, pixel by pixel, line by line. Oh, and in mid-1991 is when I first had experience using a computer with a mouse; it was one of them black-and-white Macintoshes in my dad's office. A couple years later, I discovered that two of the fonts on his computer consisted of cutesy little symbols and pictures.

Our Family had a Commodore 64.  I played Frogger, Q-bert, Threshhold (kind of like a space invaders but they wouldn't get lower just kept going across the screen or the same pattern), Seahorse Hide n Seek, and some crazy Barbie game. 

On old Dos based (and Windows 3.1) computers, I used to play this real cool game called 'Scorched Earth'.  The premise of this game had these little tanks sitting on a mountain.  The idea was to angle the turret and try to blow the other tanks away.  You got cool weapons such as this large nuke that wiped out half the screen almost.  I remember on slow computers, it sometimes took about 5 minutes for the nuke to finish exploding ;D

http://www.xscorch.org/screenshots/napalm1.png


The NUKE in action ...

http://img149.imageshack.us/img149/8971/scorch3largeal4.png


oh my god I remember something like that for my old MacIntosh that I had back in 94-96.  It was cannons, but it was black and white, and it would take forever to do anything but it was still a pretty cool game! 

My first computer was an Atari 130XE.  I recently found one on Ebay and even a couple games I used to have.  I plugged it in and attempted to play it...so slow...so boring.  But I loved it back then, and it's got priceless nostalgic value for me.  I remember the smell of it when I took it out of the box.  There is something about the smell of new electronics that reminds me of being a kid, and of Christmas :)  I know, I'm weird.

OMG...I used to love to play Oregon Trail. We had computer/typing class in school...and we would occasionally be allowed to take the huge floppy disks out and play it!! ;D :D



I loooooooved oregon trail.
we used it in the wchool where i worked.

I forgot to mention, the very first computer we had in our home was a Macintosh Performa, which got obsolete rather quickly. Given to us by my grandparents on my birthday in 1993, we basically used it to type things, such as reports. It also came with a Scrabble game, which I would spend hours playing.

Has anyone have experience with pre-Windows 95 computers?


Let's see a hand raise - who out there had a Commodore 64?  I did, I did!  ;D

Seriously, software is my field of work.  So I began studying programming in the late 70's.  Can anyone say punch cards?!  :o

Anyway, I guess despite the punch cards (and the all-nighters demanded by my computer labs) I decided I really liked this computer programming stuff.  So I pursued it.

At my first full time job in 1980, I had occasion to work on a computer terminal.  This was a "dumb terminal" - it was tied to law enforcement computers, where I could submit queries.  (Don't ask.)  Being young and more computer literate than many of my older peers, I got good at using it (it seemed no one else in the office liked to touch it) which helped convince me to return to school and pursue a computer-related field.  Back in the early 1980s, there were indeed PCs around, but they were a far cry from what we know now.  Punch cards were still being used, too, for many college courses.  However, I had "seen the light" in the form of a new networked computer system - Digital Equipment Corporation's fabulous PDP-11 system (which was used with a DOS-like interface).  As I returned to school I made my mind up to pursue a Co-op work-study arrangement with an area corporation and had the wonderful fortune of being hired by none other than Digital Equipment Corporation!  Woo-hoo!  8)  I learned to use the VAX, which in the early-mid 80's was state of the art.  It was quite a superior system, at least into the end of the 80's.  The DOS-like interface wasn't so user friendly, so it was used mostly by geeks, although compared to other systems out then, it was the best IMO.  It wasn't long until Unix systems came out in the mid 80's and gave the VAX a run for the money, although they were happily co-existent for a long time.

When PC's took over with their whiz-bang GUIs and buggy applications, geeks like me weren't real impressed.  They have come a long way from the Windows 95 days - but there's a lot I still miss about the robust old systems...  :-\\

I remember we once had a Commodore 128 back in 1985 or 1986, but I didn't get to use it too much since my mother got the computer for work purposes. In 1994, I got a Packard Bell computer with Windows 3.1 and would use that for the next 5 or 6 years.