When I was your age ...

OK, so anybody can pull up an internet list of 500 old things and times gone by, or a list of "We never had ... "

But I want this thread to be about Your thoughts, memories, snippets of old-time tech ...that'll maybe spark a bit of tech-nostalgia in someone else, or give a laugh to some young'en.

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Programming with punch cards
My high school upgraded their computer by getting a monitor instead of using the teletype

I upgraded my Compaq DeskPro from 256k to 720k with (32?) memory chips that came in a sleeve that I had to push onto the motherboard:


FreeNet was a free dialin bulletin board run by Universities so you only had to make local (aka free) calls to get "On-Line". And then they started connecting to each other, and providing access to something called The Internet.

Prodigy
America On-Line
Compuserve

....

What are your early tech memories?

'Member having to blow into NES cartridges in order to get them to work?

"Notebook" computers...

Personally, I was a fan of the Commodore 64.

My first video game "console" was Super Pong. It had 4 games AND Removable Controllers!! (still wired, but you could sit back from the console Haha!!)

My parents opened a bank account, We got a computer, and I learned to fly from Flight Simulator loaded from a cassette tape!

My sister got a VIC 20 for her birthday one year. It was a "computer" inasmuch as you got a keyboard with an integrated tape drive (yes...tape drive) that you hooked up to a t.v.



You could basically use it to type things that would show up on the t.v.

A whopping 64k of memory (I think).

After that, my parents got an IBM PCjr. for the family for Christmas. My mom used it for a week to keep recipes on a 5 1/4 floppy and then decided it was easier to use the index cards in the wooden box she'd been using for years.



$1000.00

Not only that, it was a thousand 1983 dollars.

We didn't have a mouse.

I used it to make pictures with symbols and things on the keyboard and then print them on our dot matrix printer. And then throw them away.

One thousand 1983 dollars.

I also was in college the first time I heard of email. And my apartment had a rotary telephone.

Could one of the mods un-quarantine Mankysparrow's post? I think it's #9. They were just posting a pic of their old phone.

The atari with the old pacman game - and combat! Too funny.

Technology has sure come a long way.

Atari was before my time. But I do have one of those crappy Plug-N-Play consoles in the shape of an Atari controller that has about 18 or more games, so that's pretty cool.

Maps. You remember using actual f***ing maps! Or when it was necessary to give clear and consice directions to somewhere. I had a job that involved making and using topography maps back in the day. Fun times.

Or before the internet was everywhere and you can win arguments just by sounding like you knew what you were talking about. I bet I'd do better in a world that i could bulls*** my way through.

Ive recently devolved techwise. At least when it comes to coffee. Used to use the kuerig and thats fine it makes great coffee. Now i use a french press and my coffee game has never been stronger.

Maps..heh.

I also used to keep a phone book in my car in case I was out and needed to find a business or look up a phone number (so I could call from a payphone of course).

I literally forgot about phonebooks lol.