The good ole days

[gaines_wright]

My first computer was the Texas Instruments ti99/4a. I chose it over the Commodore vic20, because it seemed to have better sound and graphics, and at the time there was more children's educational software available for it than the vic20. Of course, the Commodore 64 was soon to surpass it in every way. The OS was TIBASIC, so I learned to program in BASIC. I was an industrial electrician at the time, and this was sort of the start of my later career as a programmer/integrator. It had 16k of memory, and the only affordable data storage device was a cassette deck. For a monitor one used a color TV and a RF modulator. Ah, those were the good ole days, when things were measured in kilobytes rather than gigabytes, and one had to actually learn a computer language to operate a computer, rather than just click a mouse. “In those days spirits were brave, the stakes were high, men were real men, women were real women and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri.” ― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

[gaines_wright]

  Well, that didn't work.  I tried using the HTML editor as it didn't seem to eat my white space.  Alas, as soon as I posted, all my white space dissapeared.  Here is the message as I meant it to be: 

  My first computer was the Texas Instruments ti99/4a. I chose it over the Commodore vic20, because it seemed to have better sound and graphics, and at the time there was more children's educational software available for it than the vic20. Of course, the Commodore 64 was soon to surpass it in every way.

  The OS was TIBASIC, so I learned to program in BASIC. I was an industrial electrician at the time, and this was sort of the start of my later career as a programmer/integrator.

  It had 16k of memory, and the only affordable data storage device was a cassette deck. For a monitor one used a color TV and a RF modulator.

  Ah, those were the good ole days, when things were measured in kilobytes rather than gigabytes, and one had to actually learn a computer language to operate a computer, rather than just click a mouse.

“In those days spirits were brave, the stakes were high, men were real men, women were real women and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

[GabeU]

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@gaines_wright wrote:

Here is the message as I meant it to be:    

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You can edit any one of your posts.  

[gaines_wright]

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@GabeU wrote:

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@gaines_wright wrote:

Here is the message as I meant it to be:    

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You can edit any one of your posts.  

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  I've noticed posts here that have edits.  How does one do this?

[GabeU]

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@gaines_wright wrote:

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@GabeU wrote:

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@gaines_wright wrote:

Here is the message as I meant it to be:    

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You can edit any one of your posts.  

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  I've noticed posts here that have edits.  How does one do this?

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Click on the three dots to the upper right of your post and click either Edit Message if it's an opening post, or Edit Reply if it's a reply.  Then work on it like you would a normal post and click Post when you're finished.  You can also click Preview above the message body to see what it's going to look like before you actually post it.  I use that often, myself.

[gaines_wright]

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@GabeU wrote:

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Click on the three dots to the upper right of your post.

  Thanks,  I should have known.  Anytime you see three of anything at the upper right, click on it just to see what happens.  

[GabeU]

I had a Commodore Vic 20, then a couple years later a Commodore 64, when I was a kid.  I got jealous when I found out that the neighbor had gotten an Apple IIc, though it's not like I knew what the heck to do with their computer any more than I did my own, which was very little.  

I didn't really know how to do anything with a computer until I started working with a Pentium 166 clone with Windows 95, and the first computer I ever bought myself was an eMachines 366i.  

[gaines_wright]

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@GabeU wrote:

I had a Commodore Vic 20, then a couple years later a Commodore 64, when I was a kid. 

  I guess I'm showing my age,  I was in my late twenties, with a couple of young kids at home.  The kids loved playing with the computer, especially TI's version of space invaders.     I wrote a graphical version of the old card game "concentration" in BASIC  that they liked also.

  After I learned to program in 'C',  I started to hate BASIC.

“For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons.”
― Douglas Adams

[GabeU]

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@gaines_wright wrote:

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@GabeU wrote:

I had a Commodore Vic 20, then a couple years later a Commodore 64, when I was a kid. 

  I guess I'm showing my age,  I was in my late twenties, with a couple of young kids at home.   

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So your current badge is quite apt?   

Sorry, I couldn't resist.  😛

[gaines_wright]

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@GabeU wrote:

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So your current badge is quite apt?   

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  But I don't want to graduate!

[BirdDog]

"Good old days"? Lol, online experience was more like using a teletype machine and high end graphics was a game of pong. Some things are nostalgic but not necessarily good, I like advancement. 

Even if I had an old machine setting in front of me right now I think I'd get bored with it pretty quickly. Even I'm getting up there in years now I like a challenge and learning new things. Measured in kilobytes? No thanks! 

[GabeU]

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@BirdDog wrote:

"Good old days"? Lol, online experience was more like using a teletype machine and high end graphics was a game of pong. Some things are nostalgic but not necessarily good, I like advancement. 

Even if I had an old machine setting in front of me right now I think I'd get bored with it pretty quickly. Even I'm getting up there in years now I like a challenge and learning new things. Measured in kilobytes? No thanks! 

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I don't think regular people could even connect online to anything back then, could they?    

[BirdDog]

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@GabeU wrote:

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@BirdDog wrote:

"Good old days"? Lol, online experience was more like using a teletype machine and high end graphics was a game of pong. Some things are nostalgic but not necessarily good, I like advancement. 

Even if I had an old machine setting in front of me right now I think I'd get bored with it pretty quickly. Even I'm getting up there in years now I like a challenge and learning new things. Measured in kilobytes? No thanks! 

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I don't think regular people could even connect online to anything back then, could they?    

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There were bulletin boards in the mid 80's, I was on a few of them. That's about it for the average person.

[gaines_wright]

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@GabeU wrote:

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I don't think regular people could even connect online to anything back then, could they?    

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  I don't think "online" even existed back then.  Several years later I was dialing in to BBSs with a 1200 baud modem using an IBM PC clone.

[GabeU]

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@gaines_wright wrote:

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@GabeU wrote:

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I don't think regular people could even connect online to anything back then, could they?    

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  I don't think "online" even existed back then.  Several years later I was dialing in to BBSs with a 1200 baud modem using an IBM PC clone.

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I didn't really mean online, as it exists today.  I meant being able to connect to a remote server.  I thought that, back then, only the government, universities and companies had that ability.  

[gaines_wright]

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@BirdDog wrote:

"Good old days"? Lol, online experience was more like using a teletype machine and high end graphics was a game of pong. Some things are nostalgic but not necessarily good, I like advancement. 

  Actually I thought the graphics were pretty good, very klunky to program ( hexadecimal code ) , but good.  Of course it seems like everything in your youth looks better the older you get.  :>)> 

  Well, I like some advancements.  A pet peeve of mine, is the use by MS of robber-baron tactics worthy of Standard Oil to take over the whole computer world.  That's one of the reasons I switched to Linux.

Even if I had an old machine setting in front of me right now I think I'd get bored with it pretty quickly.

  I wish I still had that creaky old ti99/4a, it's probably considered an antique now.  I've read that hobbiests are even working on a version of Linux for it,

[MarkJFine]

You can probably get an emulator somewhere. I have one for my C64 and occasionally play some of the old games:

[GabeU]

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@MarkJFine wrote:

You can probably get an emulator somewhere. I have one for my C64 and occasionally play some of the old games:

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I bet it's a blast playing those games on the C64.  I wish I still had mine.  I love my Raspberry Pi and the games I play on it.  Though I only have about two dozen at present, there are thousands out there.  Some of them I haven't played in well over 30 years.

[MarkJFine]

The best part is playing them on my MacBook using a regular controller. The emulator transposes either of the stick and fire buttons to emulate an old joystick. Unfrtunately, they also emulate how inaccurate/unreliable they were.

[GabeU]

@MarkJFine 

That's one of the things I like about RetroPie on the Raspberry Pi.  You can use just about any controller you like, and it automatically converts the old control inputs to what you have, and if you don't like their conversion you can change it.  I mainly use an SNES like controller, as the latest games I have are SNES games.   A lot of people use PS3 type controllers.  I have both wired and Bluetooth, with the latter being my favorite, as I'm not tied to the machine by a cable.  Still, the controller that came with the case I got is very similar to the original SNES controllers, both in feel and build quality.  It only came with one, and you couldn't buy a second one, but a couple of months ago they started selling them separately.  Much better than the "2 for $14.99" junk, of which I have a set.  😛 

[MarkJFine]

I learned Basic in high school in the mid-70's... on a TTY machine. Someone smart thought it might be a good idea to take it as an "elective". Was good for a lot od ASCII art printouts.

Bought a C64 when they came out so I knew what to do. The real fun came when I got my hands on a Hesmon cartridge and learned 6502/6510 assembler code (long story, but I built my own card and programmed an EPROM). My first 'project' was to build an interface to an FM audio subcarrier (SCA) demodulator/decoder that I built as a home project and the code to display/manipulate the data stream.

The 80's were fun. Been coding on various devices in various languages ever since.