Topic

Ancient Computer Tales

What is your Computer History?  When did you get the first one, what kind was it, was it yours or did you get it at work or school?  What education did you have, self taught, computer science, adult ed., etc.?

As I am one of the older players here, I will go first.  My first encounter with a computer (not counting calculators of several kinds) was in college.  I majored in Sociology with a concentration in Anthropology.  One of my senior courses in (ahem) 1980 was Statistics for the Social Scientist.  This included SPSS, Statistical Package for the Social Scientist.  The prof. teaching the class had a specialty in Criminal Justice.  He was also a strong believer in "Publish or Perish" so He gave us an assignment to do a CJ survey and use the data to run a program on the college computer.  That computer was one of those old monsters that took up a small room.  We used keypuch to enter data on cards and run SPSS to get a printout of data which would be used in one of the prof's articles for a publication.  The first person to get the program to run would get credit in the article.  I can't say any of us were over enthusiastic but we all went out to collect data.  Our department was allowed access to the computer from 11PM to about 2AM so after a long day of data collections at various locations, we had to go to the computer lab, pinch our cards and turn them in to be run.  The next day we retrieved the data.  it really was interesting though I doubted the results.  Most of us cheated as we had only a couple days to get the data, not enough time.  Also, men were very uncooperative in answering questions.  Most of us had to cheat to get male info.  I, myself lacked about 15 male questionaires so I randomly selected among those I had and created enough to get the required amount. Everyone else did pretty much the same.  Most of us also had to run the cards at least twice.  This experience certainly did not excite me about computers.

I graduated early, in Dec. 1980, but I started working as an archaeologist before then.  At this job I learned to really enjoy computers.  My Boss had a couple of CPM word processors which also ran DBase 2.  He purchased a portable CPM unit to use in the field.  I taught myself Dbase and Wordstar and wrote a UI for the computer which made it easy to enter GPS coordinates and other data.  I had a great time in the field in 1981!   Later that year my Boss purchased his first PC and I learned how to use that.  I was hooked!  That year my dad purchased a Commodore 128 for himself and I helped him learn how to use it.  Everything was downhill from there.  I got my own PC a year or two later and never looked back.  I am self taught.  If I had it to do over, I would have taken courses in Computer Science.  I loved learning the things I taught myself and would have enjoyed doing something with computers as an occupation.  In my next life I will work for Tiny Speck!  Lol!

Posted 17 months ago by Brib Annie Subscriber! | Permalink

Replies

  • Great topic, Brib!

    I don't remember exactly when we got a computer, probably '91 or '92. I also don't remember what kind, because I really didn't care. I and my brother used it for gaming

    That was back in dos days where you had to know how to type the path and what path you wanted to get programs running. A lot I learned from my friends and cousin, who is a computer whiz. Although, from what you're describing, it probably was much easier to learn than the earlier models.

    I remember when we first go internet around 1997 or so. It took a long time to load pages, I remember it being 15-30 minutes, but I didn't time it. I was kinda afraid of the internet at first (what do I do with it? how does it work?), but school forced me to over time. I learned how to do searches and it took off from there.

    In 2004 I had to take a computer programming class, so I am somewhat familiar with coding. I wouldn't know where to get programs though, and the class focused on short animations and games. Was hard work but a lot of fun. I'm sure what I learned has become outdated since then.
    Posted 17 months ago by bored no more Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Awesome topic - I'll have to come back to read people's responses!

    The first computer I ever used was some DOS based thing at my daycare when I was 6ish. I remember it had a floppy disc that was actually floppy. My father purchased a Gateway with Windows 95 a few years later. When I was 11ish, my father (who was a Computer Science major - has great stories about punch card computers) got us a cable internet connection and showed me how to design a webpage with HTML. I was so hooked - within 6 months I had my own domain and website. I'm a CS major now too - in my senior year. I owe so much of my love for computers to my father. I am still surprised though, how few other females there are in my CS courses. Now that I'm in the high level ones often I'm the only woman... more girls need to go into CS! :D
    Posted 17 months ago by Aidee Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Started using computers back in the early 80's, when I was a kid. My dad bought a BBC Micro computer. It was rather large and clunky and the programs went in a tape deck. But to us kids it was magical. My sister and I used to spend hours and hours typing out pages and pages of coding from books in order to make something completely pointless... like a rocket that would sometimes take off and look like a very grainy mess.  
    Hard to imagine nowadays that we'd spend hours and hours typing away for a couple of seconds entertainment lol

    Then in the mid 80's the school I went to had Apple computers and we just did things like Typing Tutor and Oregon Trail.  
    In '86, my handwriting was so bad that my teacher said she'd no longer accept any homework assignments from me unless they were typed, so I got my very own first computer, an IBM (no idea of the model, sorry).
    I was hooked. No internet obviously, but I had so many games to play. "Alley Cat" was my most favorite one, avoiding dogs, jumping up on trash cans, through windows and mouse hunting :D I'd play for hours and hours, until my dad would tell me he'd throw the computer out of the window if I didn't switch it off lol  
    Also the "Where in the World is Carmen SanDiego?" Games.  Then when I was a little older, Leisure Suit Larry games (which back then was considered quite adult, although it seems quite tame looking back lol).   I remember one of them had something ridiculous like 10 different floppy discs to play it xD
    First internet experience was in the mid 90's, at University, using Netscape.  I only ever thought of it as a research tool back then. I didn't know about the online gaming world (Did the online gaming world even exist back then?), anyhow, I'd just used it for research papers. 
    Then, being a poor student, and a reasonably fast typist, I'd charge a small fee for typing up other peoples papers (back then, not all that many had used computers before they got to University age, so they were kind of thrown in and expected to just figure it out for themselves, I was lucky, I'd had a head start on them due to my terrible handwriting in elementary school)  and I'd even type up their dissertations (thesis). 
    Usually it was just a pack of cigarettes I'd ask in return for something that was just a few pages, more if it was something stupidly long. 
    ...unless they were nice looking :D 
    Was actually a good way to hook up with people lol! 
    I'd get them to read out their paper to me (as deciphering people's handwriting was never my strong point). So if it was something insanely long, we'd be stuck together for hours. 
    I'd set up a toaster next to the computer, so we could stop for toast breaks and then carry on typing for as long as it took.  
    Anyhow, it kept me in smokes and toast throughout university :) 
    Posted 17 months ago by Ebil Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Lol, Ebil!  I remember some of that.  I also played "Oregon Trail", "Leisure Suit Larry" and "Carmen san Diego".  I loved the Sierra games and bought several of those.  I the 80s I was on a local BBS where I downloaded some games.  it sometimes took more than two hours to get the simplest games.  I played every "Commander Keene" I could get - loved them!  it wasn't until around 1990 that AOL finally got a local connection and I signed up.  Shortly after that AOL connected to the Internet for the first time.  I remember us all waiting, waiting, waiting.  Are we there yet?  It was not unlike waiting at the Glitch Closed sign.  By then things were a little faster.
    Posted 17 months ago by Brib Annie Subscriber! | Permalink
  • My Dad was an early computer science student at UCD. I grew up with boxes of punch cards in the garage... our first home computer that I remember was an Atari 800. By 6th grade we had a lab at school with a few beat-up Trash 80's. My Mom ran a computer consulting business from home, so we had a pretty sweet 8088 which I got to use at night (mostly to play Tetris while gabbing on the phone with friends). I don't remember when exactly my Mom showed me how to use the 600 baud modem, but the rest was pretty much history...
    Posted 17 months ago by Lilypad Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I got a Commodore 64 as a gift from my parents when I was 3. load "*",8,1

    We had internet access much earlier than most people -- my father was a university professor, so he had an account and could dial in to, as I recall, a VAX server. I could tell you kids a thing or two about trying to do research with Archie or Gopher... we had to walk uphill barefoot in the snow both ways just to use a 300 baud modem! I didn't get web access until around 1997, though -- in between those times I was using telnet to access a unix server directly. 

    On a vaguely related note, I'm so glad that ISPs no longer charge by the hour.  Those rates were brutal, especially in the days of dial-up!

    Edit: I forgot to mention the Apple IIE lab that my school had back in the day (we had a well-funded district!).  Days and days of Oregon Trail, Carmen Sandiego, and my favorite, making turtles move like a spirograph!

    PS Since I know they're hard to see, I did link most of the potentially unfamiliar things.  Click away, glitchlings!
    Posted 17 months ago by Magic Monkey Subscriber! | Permalink
  • When I was 5, my family got an Amiga A600; no hard drive, 1MB RAM, 7.09 MHz CPU, made in Scotland. Those were the days!
    Posted 17 months ago by Vordus Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I got my first computer back in 1977 which is pretty much the earliest point you could have a home computer. It was a Commodore Pet and had a glorious 3k memory as I recall. Not long afterwards the first computer magazine came on the market with some very simple games listed for you to type in each month. Great fun and I've been a gamer ever since.
    Posted 17 months ago by Puzz Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Ebil, the online gaming world definitely existed then!  It was primarily MUDs (MultiUser Dungeons) or variants thereof. I remember there was a big fuss when Meridian 59 came out and I couldn't figure out why anyone would want to play a graphical MUD (known more commonly now as an MMORPG)  when text had so many rich possibilities, especially given the quality issues that 3d graphics had back then.  Well, that, and having to wrestle with dial-up speeds... *shudder*
    Posted 17 months ago by Magic Monkey Subscriber! | Permalink
  • One of the first text games I remember the name of was "Zork".  It was exciting when I finally bought a graphic version.
    Posted 17 months ago by Brib Annie Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I played mostly games like duke nuke'm and commander keen. I also liked Colonel's Bequest, which had a lot of exploration and choices, with different outcomes and percentages discovered. I spent a ton of time on that. I pretty much played everything we had at one point, leaving the more combat oriented ones for my brother while I watched fascinated.

    In 2000, I discovered the Monkey Island game series. I played them out of sequence, but loved the style and humor, especially of the last two. Grim Fandango was another one. I think those were both LucasArt, not Sierra though
    Posted 17 months ago by bored no more Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Oh, that's right, they did release a non-text Zork!  I always meant to play that one, was it any good? At home we had all of the King's Quest, Space Quest, and Quest for Glory games (so much questing!!).  Beyond that it was mostly shareware or text games... until later, when it was Warcraft and Diablo in the days before they had numbers. Castle Wolfenstein was another favorite back in the day.

    Bored, you are correct, both of those were Lucas Arts.  Loom was another great one in the same genre.  If you miss Monkey Island, check out the games Telltale Games is putting out.  I especially love the new Sam and Max games.
    Posted 17 months ago by Magic Monkey Subscriber! | Permalink
  • ZOMG ZORK (and Hitchhiker's Guide!)
    Eliza!
    Joust
    LOGO turtles!
    FROGGER!

    <3 this thread. I'm gonna be overwhelmed by ancestral nostalgia all day!
    Posted 17 months ago by Lilypad Subscriber! | Permalink
  • My first home computer was a TI-99/4A, way back in the early 1980s. :) We lived close to Texas Instruments' manufacturing plant in Lubbock, Texas, and I'm fairly sure my parents bought the computer at the factory, at a deep discount. I had the TI-Extended Basic Solid-state cartridge, and I used it to draw simple sprites and animate them to appear on the screen with song lyrics. The best one I ever programmed was "99 Luftballons" in German, with the red balloon rising up and away at the end of the song.

    Thanks for the trip down Memory Lane! Love this item.
    Posted 17 months ago by MicklePickle Subscriber! | Permalink
  • One of my first computers was an XT.  late 80's memory, sound board, etc. was all one piece, you couldn't upgrade until the next new model came out the 286.  No windows, dos required.  I was able to get on the internet but what a joke 15 - 20 minutes to slowly get answers.  Lol.  My 386 we put in an new huge 10 meg hard drive and then had to install dos.  Loved Norton Commander, a very small program compared to Windows which came out later.  The best part you could see every single program, make as many drives as you liked, move them from one drive to another and erase any excess files you didn't want as hard drive space was very limited.  Oh and yes those great big 5 inch floppy disks before the 1.44 discs came out.  Lots of work but a great sense of accomplishment when things went well.
    Posted 17 months ago by xoxJulie Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Lily, you can still play Hitchhiker's Guide as much as you want! The BBC released a 20th anniversary flash version.  It's here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/hitchhikers/game.shtml

    Ah, and Eliza, how I'll never actually miss her... it's that funny nostalgia where I would never pass up the memories but you would have to pay me to go anywhere near it again.
    Posted 17 months ago by Magic Monkey Subscriber! | Permalink
  • When i was in school my parents bought Pravets 8c. It was an Apple II clone, got 128k RAM, 5inch floppy drive and a green monitor. First months i used it only to play games like Karateka, Diamond Mine, Lode Runner, Aztec. Then i started to learn basic and program.

    I remember that we cut 5 inch diskettes so we can write on the other side too. And when some diskette started to have bad sectors we opened it and try to flip disc in hope it will format good. I remember Stacker which gained me some more megs, but gived me so much headaches. 

    After year or two i bought 286 then Cyrix 386SX, then 486 DX2, then AMD K6-200, Pentium III, Pentium IV. My latest is I3-530.

    My favorite games are still Diamond Mine and Lode Runner Championship which i play with emulator. I really love Monkey Island series and Diablo 2. I managed to get my hands on 2 x Voodoo2 12MB at SLI so have chance to play and see how beautiful is Quake II with Glide.

    It was nice times i sometimes remember the sound that old 5inch floppy made. The sound of modem when it dialed. The grumpy neighbor who came to yell at me to let him do some phone calls. :D 
    Posted 17 months ago by Lilla My Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Magic Monkey - I loved the Zork I bought.  I can't recall the name now but it was a great game with beautiful graphics.  I would still enjoy it.

    I played a lot of FREE platforms, lots of fun!  Can't recall offhand the company that made "Commander Keen" but they made a number of great games so I bought a floppy from them that included several of the games.  That was probably the first games purchase I ever made.
    Posted 17 months ago by Brib Annie Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Got a Mac in 1987, tiny and had to buy a hard drive to make it go.  After two more Macs I switched to PC's, Dells,  and have never looked back.   A friend gave me a Commodore to fool with.  It has big paper floppies and some lame games.  I just ordered an Epson Expression 10000 XL graphic arts scanner.. it has a 12" x 17" bed and I can't wait to use it for art work.
    Posted 17 months ago by napabeth Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I loved when there was good freeware.  I had a program that would actually copy anything to any type of drive, hard, 5 inch or 3 1/2.  I could even copy Windows 5, when they used 1.82 3 1/2 floppy instead of the normal 1.44 floppies.  Fun small footprint games.  
    Posted 17 months ago by xoxJulie Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Interesting topic and it brings back a lot of memories! In 1968 (oh...so long ago) I took a keypunch course and then got a job for the Department of Transportation at Queen's Park, Toronto. After a couple of years I left and went to work in data entry for a Community College in my home town (couldn't stand the hustle and bustle of Toronto any longer). The main computer took up a  whole room and used punch cards. Eventually I moved to Vancouver and worked for the longshoremen pay office. 

    It was there that I met my husband and had 3 children. The first PC we bought was in the late 80's for the kids. I believe it was an xp that booted from floppy. Everyone told us we would never need a hard drive! We told the kids it wasn't for games, just school, but it wasn't long before we started buying the Sierra games. Oh how we all loved the quests.

    Have had so many computers since then that I have lost count. My latest computer I bought in April specifically to play games on. Now my adult children think I'm nuts :-)
    Posted 17 months ago by Breezy Meadow Subscriber! | Permalink
  • On the subject of old-school computer games, I will reveal that I used to go to the library and use the Apple IIe to play games including Little Computer People (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Computer_People ), a really boring game that inspired the Sims. This little dude was stuck all alone in a house with just a dog to keep him company. Sometimes he would get sad and lonely, and you could make a little hand emerge from the wall and pat the dude on his head. It was completely lame, yet totally awesome.
    Posted 17 months ago by katlazam Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Hehe just remember of Lemmings and Fury of the furies. So so fun to suicide lemmings. :)
    Posted 17 months ago by Lilla My Subscriber! | Permalink
  • XOXO Magic Monkey! I know what I'll be doing after Ur closes! :D
    Posted 17 months ago by Lilypad Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Does anyone remember a fish-pond game on the Apple ][, done by the University of Minnesota I think?  You played the role of a fish species and had to learn whether to eat, run away, etc. when other pond residents showed up.  I thought it was pretty great that the most kick-butt fish in the pond was a chick.  (Dolly Varden)
    Posted 17 months ago by Lelu Subscriber! | Permalink
  • started programming video games on a Vic 20 from the back of BYTE magazine back in 1982 at age 8, moved on from there.
    Posted 17 months ago by A Magical Unicorn Subscriber! | Permalink
  • First computer I used was a PET in elementary school. Aaah, endless GOTO statements...looping 'til it crashed... I learned my first bad programming habits very young!

    Then my mom started bringing home an Apple IIe for summer loans from the high school library she worked at. Spent far too much time with Print Shop. Played Zork, HHGTTG, Oregon Trail, Secret Agent, King's Quest (holy crap, someone's re-made them!), eventually Sim City... whatever would play on the different machines she'd bring home each summer. 

    Got to high school, and was utterly baffled by Windows after years of my friendly, smiling Mac. Kinda decided I hated computers. Went home and pretended to push at the boundaries of AOHell anyway.

    And now, far too late but still in the game, I'm a graphic design major, CS minor, with my beloved shiny MBP/DHL. ta-daaaaaa!
    Posted 17 months ago by Jennyanydots Subscriber! | Permalink
  • talked middle school teacher into letting me program code to do my busy work math homework on a TRS-80 instead of doing it with a pencil for countless hours...
    Posted 17 months ago by Artilect Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @ xoxJulie, I think that my first computer was something like your first one. The XT and 286 sound familiar.

    I got my first computer about 1990, it was a used one that I bought from a friend. 

    omgoodness, I remember Leisure Suit Larry, lmao!

    I remember that my friends and I were so excited when 8MB hard drives came out, whooohoooo!! :p
    Posted 17 months ago by PittyPat is sad Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I remember the day I bought a new PC with a 42MG hard drive, "All the space you will ever need!".  Even then I knew it probably wasn't true.  Less than two years later I installed a 100MG slave.
    Posted 17 months ago by Brib Annie Subscriber! | Permalink
  • my first experience with computers was with my grandad's computer. he was always a 'gadget' kind of guy. he was first on the street to have a colour tv, that sort of thing. anyway, he had a Texas instruments TI99 64k. I can't remember when this was exactly, would have been mid eighties I guess. later on he also got a disc drive for it, it was huge! about the size of a microwave. it took big discs, not sure exactly what they were but I remember them being about 6 inches. the Texas instruments also had a cartridge system like the later games consoles would have. so we used to plug in cartridges and play games like pole position and parsec.
    we eventually persuaded my father to get us one of these computers too! it was later replaced by a spectrum 128k. that was it for home computers, never got a pc while living at home with my parents and never had a games console either. I did get a portable atari lynx one Christmas though.
    my first experience with pc's was at university in the mid 90s. I got my own about a year after finishing uni. my first one was made for me by my uncle. the second one I put together myself! by this point windows was becoming a real pain in the ass for me so I switched and bought an iMac. I'm on my second iMac now. I kind of miss messing about and tinkering with pc's though, so I'm considering making myself another one as a secondary 'hobby computer' and trying out Linux as I've yet to try that OS.
    Posted 17 months ago by kid4today Subscriber! | Permalink
  • My first computer was a Colussus ;)
    Posted 17 months ago by Dura Den Subscriber! | Permalink
  • actually, now I think about it, my first computer was my brain! I've had it ever since I was born (mostly).
    Posted 17 months ago by kid4today Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Mid 80-s. ... TRS-80 color computer 2 ... it had 32k of RAM, and it ran on a DOS/Basic platfrom.

    Self taught, using the book that radio shack provided.
    Posted 17 months ago by Sly Hoax Subscriber! | Permalink