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Child Item

The 70's and 80's in Ireland

Kermit.de.frog

What was it like in the 1980's in Ireland?

I have seen pictures, video and my god it looked like a depressing place. :eek:

Grey, delapidated, hopeless.

What was it like? How did you get by without internets, wheelie bins, toilets...?

Would you go back if you could??

*Might as well throw in the 70's too for people of that vintage.

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branie2

The film Wall Street - Greed is good

Edgware

Sardonicat wrote: »

Don't forget your lashings of ginger ale!

That was before you went to the tennis club "hop" and had a chance of a slow set

dasdog

There was life before and after this song. Eight or Nine years old just fascinated by the off beat bass and jazz drumming.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtTsky80XmQ

ohnonotgmail

Sardonicat wrote: »

Don't forget your lashings of ginger ale!

Ginger beer.

[Deleted User]

Enid Blyton is my favourite author.
I've bought nearly everything written by her.
One tip: never buy her books new. Since the mid-80s the language has been toned down which is most unfortunate.
Seek out second hand copies always.
The books reflect the attitudes of the time and should never be amended.

The Five Find Outers are my favourite.
Six Bad Boys is her best book [standalone, cautionary tale about delinquents]
Also love The Adventure series, The Secret series and the Barney mysteries.
The Secret Seven weren't great.

The Famous Five DVD set is well worth a purchase. £17 on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Famous-Five-Complete-Collectors-DVD/dp/B007PQ5002/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1544872144&sr=8-1&keywords=famous+five+dvd
There is a 45 minute discussion with one of the writers, Marcus Harris (Julian), Gary Russell (Dick) and Jennifer Thanisch (Anne). Michelle Gallagher (George) committed suicide in 2000 but gets a mention.

Mam of 4

Grandeeod wrote: »

My granny bought them for me. They are in a book case on the landing with a Disney's Wonderful World of Knowledge set all from the 70s. Worth feck all except for my childhood memories.

The memories are what's priceless , the most important things

Grandeeod

Mam of 4 wrote: »

Loll , I know ,.innocent times though !
Great set of books to have though G , even just for the nostalgia factor

Lemon curd ,.I never liked it

My granny bought them for me. They are in a book case on the landing with a Disney's Wonderful World of Knowledge set all from the 70s. Worth feck all except for my childhood memories.

Sardonicat

Don't forget your lashings of ginger ale!

Mam of 4

Grandeeod wrote: »

I have the full set of books including the secret seven set. Jaysus they are dated. Little G tried reading them, but too much lemon curd Mam.:D

Loll , I know ,.innocent times though !
Great set of books to have though G , even just for the nostalgia factor

Lemon curd ,.I never liked it

WomanSkirtFan8

Grandeeod wrote: »

All together now! Opening and closing credits!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3zjoN6-ddQ

Jaysys remember that so well. One of the many incarnations of the famous five.

WomanSkirtFan8

can only speakl for myself as a kid of the 80s, but from my perspective, it was a pretty good decade.

IT was a decade of great movies, music, film and so on.

In those days you learned to appreciate what you had and we had a lot less
than young people have these days. :cool:

Grandeeod

Mam of 4 wrote: »

Good series , but as good as the books imo .

Then again , I think it's the imagery our own imaginations conjure up that make books special

I have the full set of books including the secret seven set. Jaysus they are dated. Little G tried reading them, but too much lemon curd Mam.:D

Mam of 4

branie2 wrote: »

40 years ago this year, the first TV series of Enid Blyton's The Famous Five appeared on the small screen.

Good series , but not as good as the books imo .

Then again , I think it's the imagery our own imaginations conjure up that make books special

Grandeeod

All together now! Opening and closing credits!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3zjoN6-ddQ

branie2

40 years ago this year, the first TV series of Enid Blyton's The Famous Five appeared on the small screen.

Hotblack Desiato

You're not concentrating hard enough on the game if you can listen to music at the same time :pac:

Buford T. Justice XIX

dasdog wrote: »

We got a second hand Spectrum 16K but for Christmas the same year myself and brother were given a 32K ram pack and a copy of Underwurlde after being tortured not being able to play anything bar a few games.

I went on to work closely with the successor to Ultimate (Rare) for a few years recently which was almost accidental. I was delighted with myself about that.

Awesome game, the music from around then reminds me of playing that with whatever Now cassette I had from the last Christmas.

Hotblack Desiato

I can't remember much about the day of my dad's funeral in 1985, apart from going home and playing this game with my cousin for hours on end

http://www.crashonline.org.uk/13/finders.htm

Finders Keepers, Mastertronic, on Spectrum

It beat going downstairs and listening to the wailing and moaning downstairs from people who wouldn't give him the time of day when he was alive.

Hotblack Desiato

Grandeeod wrote: »

Jaysus! Where do I start with your post?? I went to Tomorrows World in Dawson Street.

Do you mean QTH Computers? On the left hand side as you go from Stephens Green to Nassau St? I could point out the building to you to this day. Great place. Wasn't great for software but was by far the best computer bookshop in Dublin. I bought "The Complete Spectrum ROM Disassembly", and "Programming the Z80" by Rodnay Zaks in there. Peats was the place to go to for electronics and radio books - I'd bought those very limited but educational electronics kits there a couple of years before. The old Peats was on the west side of Parnell St, it moved to a new building on the east side, moved to a newer one on the west side then closed down

Hotblack Desiato

Depends which Commodore you're talking about. I think I can just about remember seeing a late model PET in Tomorrow's World in the Ilac but it would have been on its last legs then. The VIC-20 with its amazingly small memory and poor resolution, only 20 characters wide. I remember seeing ads in Shoot! magazine when they were trying to shift warehouses full of them, "free" tape deck and a load of cartridges all for "only" £199, it was a sh!t heap and the much better Spectrum and C64 were already available to order.

There always seemed to be a funny smell when I walked into that part of the Ilac.. the allure of technology, or maybe the smell of overheating electrical parts, or probably both!

There were BBC Micros on display there too, but you could do f*k all with them, and the only game was Elite. Years later in my physics lab they had.. BBC Micros. At least with disk but they were still crap and the keyboard every reviewer in the early 80s claimed was the gold standard of keyboards, was still sh*te to type on, flat, way too hard and low travel.

The Amigas came later and weren't really Commodore products at all, and the marketing especially in the US was very disjointed. They didn't know how to sell a computer with next generation graphics and sound capability to either business, or the home. In Europe it was a success in the home market but couldn't survive the crash of the US parent a few years later. In the meantime the US parent company had just rehashed old themes with the Commodore 128, they went to amazing lengths to make it compatible with C64 games.

branie2

The Commodore came out in the 80s alright, but I got mine in 1990.

antodeco

Purple Mountain wrote: »

But.. I think Commodore was the 90s though.

Sorry Sir, I'm afraid we're going to have to ask you to leave

dasdog

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

Had a Sinclair Spectrum 16K with rubber keyboard, it was a bit too much for my parents to afford for Xmas so I agreed to go halves with my confirmation money... later got the 32K Ram Pack and it was great finally being able to play all of those 48K games you heard about and could see in Tomorrow's World in the Ilac but couldn't buy. (Actually I did buy a 48K tape, Atic Atac, a while before my birthday when I got the ram pack.. loaded it in just to see the loading screen but it wouldn't play obviously!)

We got a second hand Spectrum 16K but for Christmas the same year myself and brother were given a 32K ram pack and a copy of Underwurlde after being tortured not being able to play anything bar a few games.

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

Bought a few games but got loads through tape swapping in the schoolyard... shhh... liked the Ultimate games the best. Pssst, Jet Pac, Tranz Am, Cookie, Atic Atac, Knight Lore, Alien 8 (thought it was great completing that with a map photocopied out of Sinclair User).

I went on to work closely with the successor to Ultimate (Rare) for a few years recently which was almost accidental. I was delighted with myself about that.

Grandeeod

Purple Mountain wrote: »

But.. I think Commodore was the 90s though.

Absolutely not.

Purple Mountain

But.. I think Commodore was the 90s though.

Purple Mountain

mikemac2 wrote: »

Commodore 64

You loaded your game and it could take 10 minutes or more. If there were multiple games on the cassette you rewound to the start and reset the counter and fast forwarded to the correct location
Games cost 3 to 4 punts so quite cheap. A cartridge which could load instantly cost maybe 15 punts. An Amiga which was a step up used floppy disks but I didn't have that so it was cassettes and loading times for me

There were some great games. I was particular fans of the Dizzy series. Think of an egg with a face and arms and legs and you took him on platform adventures

However the best game of all was Flimbos Quest. The music is still so catchy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiCxXMquPKs

I absolutely loved the cassette tapes for Commodore. I remember Dizzy well.
I also loved CJ in the USA.
You needed the joystick for Terminator.

Grandeeod

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

Had a Sinclair Spectrum 16K with rubber keyboard, it was a bit too much for my parents to afford for Xmas so I agreed to go halves with my confirmation money... later got the 32K Ram Pack and it was great finally being able to play all of those 48K games you heard about and could see in Tomorrow's World in the Ilac but couldn't buy. (Actually I did buy a 48K tape, Atic Atac, a while before my birthday when I got the ram pack.. loaded it in just to see the loading screen but it wouldn't play obviously!)

Bought a few games but got loads through tape swapping in the schoolyard... shhh... liked the Ultimate games the best. Pssst, Jet Pac, Tranz Am, Cookie, Atic Atac, Knight Lore, Alien 8 (thought it was great completing that with a map photocopied out of Sinclair User).

Ocean games were good too, Match Day (by Jon Ritman, who went on to write the excellent Head Over Heels which I had on the 128K and Amiga and I have a Linux port now!), Cobra, Daley Thompson's Decathlon and Super Test.

Other good ones were more or less "one hit wonders" like 3D Tank Attack, or Ant Attack.

Sold the Speccy a couple of years later and got a Sinclair QL (!) which would have been decent if the Microdrives weren't so unreliable and blank cartridges so expensive, because of that there were practically no games or much else for it, learned a lot about programming on it though. (Linus Torvalds was another QL owner... whatever happened to him?) Even before Sinclair had their financial crash it became impossible to get blank Microdrive cartridges, and the ones I had would stretch and eventually become unusable so it had to go.

Got a Spectrum 128K then - the short-lived "proper" Sinclair one before Amstrad took over. Felt like a step back in time (and wish I'd kept my old tapes!) but it had a good sound chip which some games took advantage of, and by this time a lot of the old good Spectrum software was available for half nothing on budget software labels.

Another couple of years after that I got an Amiga 500.. different world altogether. Wish I'd got the dial up modem for it but I never did. But I won't talk about the games because the 80s had only days left to go when I got it

BTW everything including the first year or so of my Amiga ownership (4096 colours) was viewed on a sh!tty B&W portable and the only reason I got that was that my dad got annoyed with me taking over the TV (THE tv, the only one) from school home time until dinner time!

Jaysus! Where do I start with your post?? I went to Tomorrows World in Dawson Street. We literally just hung around the shop.:D Visited the Ilac one the odd time. First feckin computer I saw was the Oric. The first one with its rubber key pad. A rich friend had it. The Oric Atmos followed quickly and we played with that in TW. How quickly the Commodore 64 came around and games became the thing. But my first real computer experience came with designing graphics on a Commodore 128, not mine, but using it as a computer as opposed to a gaming machine. I still have those graphics recorded on Super 8mm film shot off the TV screen.

The Sinclair Spectrum? What can I say. A gaming machine that didn't match the Commodore's??? My next experience was the BBC Micro and then the Amstrad with the built in tape deck. After that it was a case of the Apple and I never looked back. The Apple Performa 450?? I remember the "Windows '95, Apple '89 Ad. I'm now drifting across the Microsoft/Apple platforms to suit the need. Computers for me were always about the "what do they really offer" as opposed to games. The internet was great before Smart Phones.:D

Hotblack Desiato

NewbridgeIR wrote: »

Makes sense - must have imagined it. Actually it's probably other people in school renting the same tape from that video shop and discussing it. The banning is mentioned in Ciaran Carty's Censorship book and also got called out at the debate he put on late 1990s - in the IFI.

I bought that book in the IFI bookshop

https://www.worldcat.org/title/confessions-of-a-sewer-rat-a-personal-history-of-censorship-the-irish-cinema/oclc/34137096

Was a good read but I got annoyed with the ending - he implied censorship was a thing of the past by that time, which of course it wasn't. They'd generally stopped cutting 18's films, but still banned Natural Born Killers.

Hotblack Desiato

Had a Sinclair Spectrum 16K with rubber keyboard, it was a bit too much for my parents to afford for Xmas so I agreed to go halves with my confirmation money... later got the 32K Ram Pack and it was great finally being able to play all of those 48K games you heard about and could see in Tomorrow's World in the Ilac but couldn't buy. (Actually I did buy a 48K tape, Atic Atac, a while before my birthday when I got the ram pack.. loaded it in just to see the loading screen but it wouldn't play obviously!)

Bought a few games but got loads through tape swapping in the schoolyard... shhh... liked the Ultimate games the best. Pssst, Jet Pac, Tranz Am, Cookie, Atic Atac, Knight Lore, Alien 8 (thought it was great completing that with a map photocopied out of Sinclair User).

Ocean games were good too, Match Day (by Jon Ritman, who went on to write the excellent Head Over Heels which I had on the 128K and Amiga and I have a Linux port now!), Cobra, Daley Thompson's Decathlon and Super Test. Edit: OutRun!!! it was absolutely crap compared to the arcade version yet it was still good fun. Side 2 of the tape had the arcade version soundtrack that you could play on your tape deck while playing the game...

Space Harrier was another one which just never should have worked on such an underpowered machine, but somehow did.

Other good ones were more or less "one hit wonders" like 3D Tank Attack, or Ant Attack. Hewson Consultants - NightFlite, 3D Seiddab Attack (yet another game with Attack in the name, video game violence, wha? and Seiddab was Baddies backwards), Avalon which by all accounts was great but I never played it. TT Racer was surprisingly good.

Sold the Speccy a couple of years later and got a Sinclair QL (!) which would have been decent if the Microdrives weren't so unreliable and blank cartridges so expensive, because of that there were practically no games or much else for it, learned a lot about programming on it though. (Linus Torvalds was another QL owner... whatever happened to him?) Even before Sinclair had their financial crash it became impossible to get blank Microdrive cartridges, and the ones I had would stretch and eventually become unusable so it had to go.

Got a Spectrum 128K then - the short-lived "proper" Sinclair one before Amstrad took over. Felt like a step back in time (and wish I'd kept my old tapes!) but it had a good sound chip which some games took advantage of, and by this time a lot of the old good Spectrum software was available for half nothing on budget software labels.

Another couple of years after that I got an Amiga 500.. different world altogether. Wish I'd got the dial up modem for it but I never did. But I won't talk about the games because the 80s had only days left to go when I got it

BTW everything including the first year or so of my Amiga ownership (4096 colours) was viewed on a sh!tty B&W portable and the only reason I got that was that my dad got annoyed with me taking over the TV (THE tv, the only one) from school home time until dinner time!

[Deleted User]

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

No chance. It was still officially banned here in the mid 90s when I saw it in the IFI.

Makes sense - must have imagined it. Actually it's probably other people in school renting the same tape from that video shop and discussing it. The banning is mentioned in Ciaran Carty's Censorship book and also got called out at the debate he put on late 1990s - in the IFI.