Nostaliga post

[Beezkneez]

Some other posts making get a bit nostaligic. I thought I would run with it.
My first introduction with programming language was Turtle draw.
In high school, the computer lab had 25 Apple IIEs and one IBM that was always the last machine taken as, according to the teacher, 'Those will never take off.'

I learned to touch type on a typewriter. Flashback to the Daisy Wheel.

My first game console was a TRS80.

Now, when my mate's 6 year old comes over he shows me how to unlock the hidden levels in Lego Star Wars on the Playstation.

 

[riaz]

I leart to touch type on a Remington Rand - manual, not electric. My first programming exercise was on an IBM 360 mainframe in the early sixties when I took a summer job in the IT department of a bank in Karachi. Only then it was not an IT department, it was the Computer Division - a profit (actually loss) centre in its own right.

My own first computer was an Amstrad CPC 464 with 64k of memory, a cassette drive and a 7-bit parallel port for the printer. Had great fun tweaking cables and switches to disable the 8th bit so I could print on a dot matrix.

Those were the days, eh?

 

[Patience]

Turtle draw - that certainly rings a bell with me. I seem to recall using it, but my memory is hazy. My dad is quite into technology and stuff like that so it is possible I remember him talking about it. He worked in a school so he used to bring home new educational gadgets etc that they got in school.

One such thing he bought home was called a Roamer. We used to have so much fun in the holidays programming that to navigate our dining room.

We also used an Apple Macintosh Classic II, and and AMSTRAD PC something 230(?) which had a wicked game on it called Head Over Heels, which we could not complete, (We played it like ALL the time when we were 8) but it is now downloadable and finally my brother managed to get into the final room last weekend.

I was late into the gaming world - my first console was a GameCube (and I've been a Nintendo fangirl since) but I also really enjoy some games on the Xbox 360. My other brother for some god unknown reason while I was staying with him (about 8 years ago) went out and bought a SEGA Master System (or maybe a mega drive) from a pawn shop for a fiver - just for the crack - it was fun, fr about half an hour, but I seem to remember it getting utterly trashed by the time the evening was out.

Oh happy days! I am lucky cos my hubby is a gamer too - in fact his best man (in his speech) was amazed that Glen had not only found someone who understood what he was on about when it came to archaeology, but also that he had found someone who would share his love of gaming!

 

[riaz]

Oh happy days! I am lucky cos my hubby is a gamer too - in fact his best man (in his speech) was amazed that Glen had not only found someone who understood what he was on about when it came to archaeology, but also that he had found someone who would share his love of gaming!

You mean you both "dig" each other....
(now that's a nostalgic turn of phrase)

 

[onlyadrafter]

ZX81, even with a 16K RAM pack.

Atari VCS for games (actually still got it, but don't use it!)

 

[Patience]

Thanks Riaz! You never fail where there is a pun to be had!

Continuing the theme - until not so long ago (four or five years, I guess) I was using a PC with 4GB Hard drive, which was faulty, and therefore only ever used two of them. My husbands phone is four times that!

 

[riaz]

My first "real" machine was an Olivetti mini computer with two 8" floppy drives and 64k!! of memory - at least, that is what they sold us with. When it was delivered, we found out that 49k was used by system resources to drive the screen and the floppies. I learned tight programming on that machine. When you have 15k to write a multicurrency accounting software in Olivetti Basic, there is not much wriggle room.

I still have the code somewhere. Pity I can't use it on any other machine, as it was a proprietary version of Basic.

 

[RoryA]

When I had OS2/Warp on my PC with a massive 16MB of RAM, I could run Windows 3.1 and 11 separate DataEase database sessions simultaneously without any problems. Happy days. (and days is what it took to print out our claims database on an Epson dot matrix)

 

[Expiry]

10 PRINT "BIG HAIRY ****"
20 GOTO 10

Oh, the hilarity.

 

[Greg Truby]

I think my typing accuracy has probably gone downhill since I first learned to type on a manual old Smith Corona. Rolling up the paper, erasing and then retyping, oh the fun kids today don't get to have. And heaven forbid you should screw up a second time in the same place! I can remember the first time I ever sat down to a self-correcting typewriter. I could not believe there was such a fantastic technology! Then, of course, I discovered (a) just how quickly one could run through one of those orange bobbins of correction tape if you tried to erase an entire sentence to insert an important word you'd left out and (b) correction tape still could do nothing if you messed up on a multipart form. I haven't looked, can you even still buy carbon paper nowadays? I like to draw and I had a dickens of a time hunting down an old typing eraser the last time I tried.

...When you have 15k to write a multicurrency accounting software in Olivetti Basic, there is not much wriggle room...

Amen to that. I first coded on a Commodore with 8K of RAM, loaded from tape. Even later when I had 32K to play with on a terminal, you still had to keep stuff fairly tight. A multicurrency accounting package down inside 15K? Wow. That must have been some tight code.