'Ye Old Computing Machines

ScumLord · 24-05-2011 06:38PM

I remember playing labyrinth on the BBC micro and making my own games. Then accidentally deleting the game I spent weeks typing out and not playing any games until the super Nintendo and windows came out.

chin_grin · 24-05-2011 06:39PM

Crosáidí wrote: »

Listening to the radio with a blank tape in the cassette with your finger hovering over the record button, waiting for your favourite song at the time to come on, it did, you banged on the REC button and 10 seconds in the DJ would talk over the track, used to fúcking hate that, piracy was a game of chance for the perfect recording

Tommy Tiernan wants his joke back................:pac:

AgileMyth · 24-05-2011 06:44PM

irish-stew wrote: »

Erm. Dont you still click on the floppy disk to save word documents.

You do. But people under a certain age wouldn't know what it is. We see a floppy disk represtenting the save symbol whilst they only see the save symbol.

stimpson · 24-05-2011 06:48PM

Anyone remember Tomorrows World in the ILAC centre?

The most fun you could have as a 10 year old was going in there and typing:

10 PRINT "boobies"
20 GOTO 10
RUN

And then you would run. Ahhh memories...I remember Google when it was all fields.

24-05-2011 06:52PM

El Weirdo wrote: »

Sharp MZ700 FTW.

I had one of them - ended up soldering wires between it and a crappy casio keyboard to make the worlds most pathetic drum machine:
* 4 drum "sounds"
* dreadful timing
* often misfired
* sequence program (loaded from tape) accepted four strings of 1s and 0s representing ons and offs for the different drum sounds

Happy days...

stimpson · 24-05-2011 06:57PM

InTheTrees wrote: »

Punch cards? You were lucky. We had to prepare sheets of vellum and inscribe our code using exotic inks...

:rolleyes:

Luxury. We had to write all our code using ones and zeros. And during the war there was a shortage of zeros and I had to write an entire operating system using just ones.

Krusader · 24-05-2011 07:03PM

chin_grin wrote: »

Tommy Tiernan wants his joke back................:pac:

Didn't know he had that in his routine, was just a life observation, that the majority of people can relate towards

mudokon · 24-05-2011 07:05PM

nibtrix wrote: »

pfft, floppy disks... We had to load from a casette tape, it took twenty minutes and every time you died in the game you had to rewind back to the beginning and load all over again. Those were the days...

And you had to put up with this noise while it was loading.

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

My name is URL · 24-05-2011 07:09PM

I had an Amstrad 464plus.. used to spend days on end typing thousands of lines of BASIC so I could play games.. worked about 1% of the time.

Still miss it though

7sr2z3fely84g5 · 24-05-2011 07:11PM

Videotapes-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhOb7SogssE

DWCommuter · 24-05-2011 07:14PM

stimpson wrote: »

Anyone remember Tomorrows World in the ILAC centre?

The most fun you could have as a 10 year old was going in there and typing:

10 PRINT "boobies"
20 GOTO 10
RUN

And then you would run. Ahhh memories...I remember Google when it was all fields.

Ahh yes. Used to hit the branch in Dawson street. The Oric was on display. Had to be circa '85. All that typing to make the computer go "beep". I thought I was in an episode of ****ing Star Trek.

DWCommuter · 24-05-2011 07:16PM

mudokon wrote: »

And you had to put up with this noise while it was loading.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlsDmALohQQ

Arcade version of Out Run was epic.

Daith · 24-05-2011 07:26PM

Modifying autoexec.bat to get Monkey Island to work

InTheTrees · 24-05-2011 07:35PM

Daith wrote: »

Modifying autoexec.bat to get Monkey Island to work

LOL

It seemed like once you knew how to mess with the Autoexec.bat and the Config.sys, you could do almost anything..

Show Time · 24-05-2011 07:41PM

nibtrix wrote: »

pfft, floppy disks... We had to load from a casette tape, it took twenty minutes and every time you died in the game you had to rewind back to the beginning and load all over again. Those were the days...

Or get fed up tem minutes into the loading and go out and play football.

Unpossible · 24-05-2011 07:50PM

I used to hate it when the new cogs were not the exact size to the millimeter, Mr Babbage would get angry and call us ignorant commoners.

Irish_Elect_Eng · 24-05-2011 07:54PM

Unpossible wrote: »

I used to hate it when the new cogs were not the exact size to the millimeter, Mr Babbage would get angry and call us ignorant commoners.

Difference Engine Rocks

ednwireland · 24-05-2011 08:36PM

my godson (13) was delighted to play a 1st gen gameboy recently
he had only seen one in a museum

i feel old

BrianD3 · 24-05-2011 08:39PM

I remember collecting caps from Fairy Liquid bottles to help my primary school get an Apple Mac. It was a promotion by Proctor & Gamble who make washing up liquid, toothpaste, washing powder etc. You collected evidence of having purchased their products and after what seemed like ages they'd give you a computer. Big excitement in the school when it arrived.

This would have been late 80s. I seem to remember something similar happening in secondary school in the early 90s but I think it was shop receipts rather than fairy liquid and toothpaste caps that needed to be collected.

Eric Cartman · 24-05-2011 08:50PM

ednwireland wrote: »

my godson (13) was delighted to play a 1st gen gameboy recently
he had only seen one in a museum

i feel old

I had one of those , i feel old now too

the joys these new kids will never know

14.4k modems that were a big metal slate made by US robotics.
5.25 and 3.5 inch floppy disks , including that really reasuring click when you turned the handle on the 5.25" drive to lock the disk in
QBASIC and other BASIC programming systems
hypercard
COBOL (i still have cobol sheets in a book , you used to send them to IBM to be encoded on cards i think)
Zip Drives - how 100mb on a disk was unimaginable
MO (Magneto optical) drives - most people will never have seen these
LS120 - A 120mb floppy disk standard that was optical inside a floppy case , it was madness
when UPC was called CableLink
ISDN being considered fast internet
Dot Matrix Printers

Oafley Jones · 24-05-2011 08:50PM

InTheTrees wrote: »

LOL

It seemed like once you knew how to mess with the Autoexec.bat and the Config.sys, you could do almost anything..

In fairness that's one thing I don't miss... remembers getting pissed off while trying to get Strike Commander to run on Christmas morning.

Krusader · 24-05-2011 09:32PM

My name is URL wrote: »

I had an Amstrad 464plus.. used to spend days on end typing thousands of lines of BASIC so I could play games.. worked about 1% of the time.

Still miss it though

This is the one i had playing games like Hunchback of Notre Dame, Roadburner, Predator etc.

cosmicfart · 24-05-2011 09:41PM

Terminator 2 on the Commodare 64 was class and so was Shinobi, Bad Dudes, Golden Axe, SF 1&2, Bubble Bobble, R-rype, Arkanoid, Robocop, Spy Hunter, Splat!, Operation Wolf, P.O.W, Mortal Combat, Megaman, Double Dragon etc etc

Dravokivich · 24-05-2011 09:50PM

Dean0088 wrote: »

And VHS tapes... I remember the excitement of pushing one into the player and the disappointment when you realised you had to rewind it ALL the way back!!

Anyone else ever miss old technology.

I still use VHS...

AnonoBoy wrote: »

Did you ever play a data cassette in your stereo?

I used to love that squeal.

HAHA, Software piracy back in the day, twin casette stereo player, record from 1 to the other

Duckworth_Luas · 24-05-2011 09:50PM

Unpossible wrote: »

I used to hate it when the new cogs were not the exact size to the millimeter, Mr Babbage would get angry and call us ignorant commoners.

Luxury, I θnce miscalculated my Antikythera device. Everyone was a wεεk late for the Panhellenic Games. Posidonius was mad as fcμk.

InTheTrees · 24-05-2011 10:31PM

Duckworth_Luas wrote: »

Luxury, I θnce miscalculated my Antikythera device. Everyone was a wεεk late for the Panhellenic Games. Posidonius was mad as fcμk.

Oh you high tech modern folk...

I'm still chipping out the number one from my solid granite ogham stone..

El Weirdo · 24-05-2011 10:41PM

InTheTrees wrote: »

Oh you high tech modern folk...

I'm still chipping out the number one from my solid granite ogham stone..

Ug.

24-05-2011 10:50PM

Ah yes, began messing with a 286 PC about 13/14 years ago and caught the bug from there. No getting me away from computers now since I work at repairing the damn things every day.

Have a 22 year old Compaq "laptop" back at my parents' place, still works perfectly too.