1986 film - messaging on computers in high school

amdublin · 27-04-2014 10:03AM #1

So I am watching Pretty in Pink on netflix

It's 1986 and they they are in the "computer lab" messaging each other on their computers.

I did "computers" in school in first year in 1990. And what did we do?
Typing!
A typing program!

Any of y'all do anything decent/exciting on computers in schools???
Pre-1998 please!
I am hoping things have got better since then....

27-04-2014 10:09AM

Mavis Beacon was the shiz.

Molester Stallone · 27-04-2014 10:11AM

Played a lot of Frogger

CiDeRmAn · 27-04-2014 10:11AM

I was in Kevin St college in 89 and got to use their computer lab for a year.
No Internet as we'd know it but the BBS was cool, though mostly full of Star Wars/Trek nerds.

roadsmart · 27-04-2014 10:17AM

Around 1976 CBS in Swords was the first school in the country to get its own computer. Feckin thing was huge. From what I remember they took half the tuck shop to enlarge the room behind so it would fit. Binary code was the only way to instruct it. I feckin hated binary code. "This'll never catch on", I thought to myself.

TheNumpty · 27-04-2014 10:21AM

Making designs in Logo on the BBC micro computers

Titzon Toast · 27-04-2014 10:23AM

1989/90 I think it would have been for me. Something called logos or something similar, where you drew pictures by giving commands to a little icon on the screen telling in to "turn 90 degrees and move forward ten steps and then stop" to draw yourself a little house.
Exciting times!

amdublin · 27-04-2014 10:24AM

It's just so mad to think about commodore64's and "loading" the games i.e. letting a tape play for about 15 minutes. And half way it just crashed...solution: rewind, start again!
You and your friends just sitting there watching a lines on your computer while it loaded :pac:

If you were lucky some of your games were on a cartridge

vicwatson · 27-04-2014 10:25AM

Sinclair zx81 - ah the memories! BASIC language, great fun.

DEFTLEFTHAND · 27-04-2014 10:27AM

I was in sec school from 2002-2007 and our computer classes consisted of going online and basic functions. The classes ceased after Junior cycle and were replaced with 'Careers'. Poor clowns who couldn't even type were sent off for Arts degrees when the careers 'advisor' asked them, What do you want to do with your life? They said 'Dunno'

galwayrush · 27-04-2014 10:30AM

GOTO 10

Zamboni · 27-04-2014 10:33AM

Titzon Toast wrote: »

1989/90 I think it would have been for me. Something called logos or something similar, where you drew pictures by giving commands to a little icon on the screen telling in to "turn 90 degrees and move forward ten steps and then stop" to draw yourself a little house.
Exciting times!

That little house with the dog!
Anyone see this online please post a link

conorhal · 27-04-2014 10:36AM

Only this morning I was sitting with a bra on my head in front of my laptop waiting for Kelly LeBrock to appear, still nothing!

27-04-2014 10:36AM

Our first "school computer" wasn't even in the school, it wasn't networked either.

We had to write instructions on a piece of paper in assembler and give them to the teacher who sent them to the county council head office that was "lending" processor time to the schools.

They then typed in the instructions for each one of us and posted back the results.

A week later yo get back a piece of paper with a number on it or an error.

Debugging code was slow!

wilser · 27-04-2014 10:37AM

galwayrush wrote: »

GOTO 10

10 print "wilser "
20 goto 10
Run

Hours of fun

27-04-2014 10:38AM

galwayrush wrote: »

GOTO 10

MOV AX, 47104
MOV DS, AX
MOV [3998], 36
INT 32

Zamboni · 27-04-2014 10:40AM

I remember there was a promotion in the late eighties were all the students had to collect thousands of tokens (cereal boxes or supermarkets - can't remember) and our school got 1 apple computer.
All the classes were marched in one by one to see this amazing device!
It was never used for anything

keithclancy · 27-04-2014 10:42AM

Creating stuff on Bannermania and then waiting 45 minutes for it to come out of the dot matrix printer

Maphisto · 27-04-2014 10:45AM

Around 1973/74 we had access to a university's comp. We had to spend hours punching out Fortran cards. It was so boring. You needed hundreds of them to get it to do the most insignificant thing. That was until some wag discovered that a certain command (I forget, it's a long time ago) would make the thing spew out 100 sheets of paper. Only got to do that once after which computing was replaced with a free period.

27-04-2014 10:46AM

keithclancy wrote: »

Creating stuff on Bannermania and then waiting 45 minutes for it to come out of the dot matrix printer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTLuHLj3CbM

SaveOurLyric · 27-04-2014 10:54AM

wilser wrote: »

10 print "wilser "
20 goto 10
Run

Hours of fun

Hours of run.

Wishiwasa Littlebitaller · 27-04-2014 01:00PM

Around '83 I hacked into the school's computer with my girlfriend to change our exam grades, but I got a little carried away and hacked into an American military site and started messing around with what I thought was just a nuclear war simulator, which in turn inadvertently almost caused WWIII. You'd think I'd have leaned my lesson, but then a couple of years later I hacked into the school's computer again, this time in an attempt to 'adjust' my attendance records, but the fecking principle decided to come to my house and.. ah, it's a long story but turns out car odometers don't backwards when a car's driven in reverse.

Birroc · 27-04-2014 01:04PM

wilser wrote: »

10 print "wilser "
20 goto 10
Run

Hours of fun

Why did you need an alias back then?

It was more like this;

10 PRINT "You are a poohead"
20 GOTO 10
<You called your sister into the room>
RUN

The Diabolical Monocle · 27-04-2014 01:07PM

They had a computer program for us in the slow class but I can't remember what it was.

JuliusCaesar · 27-04-2014 01:09PM

First laid eyes on a computer in 1980 in the basement of UCD - a huge thing that looked nothing like computers now. Our tutors were useless, and most of us gave up after a couple of tries. We were offered courses in Cobol and Fortran at lunchtime, but most of us preferred to have lunch. If only we'd known!

BBDBB · 27-04-2014 01:12PM

would anyone like a go on my Jet Set Willy?

WoollyRedHat · 27-04-2014 01:34PM

Got control of the teacher's computer through remote control because they were all connected to a network, and opened word and typed crude messages. His computer was hooked up to the projector behind him, so everyone could see.

Risky business, we sure were living the crazy life.

Bipolar Joe · 27-04-2014 03:36PM

I've only realised in recent years how privileged my childhood self was. My Pop worked for Microsoft (Nothing big, just a translator or some shit) so we always had a computer in the house for as long as I can remember. I didn't know how it worked, but I knew it could do amazing things, so I'd sit at it for hours and figure it out. We had an Internet connection and everything, which was rare I think. I used it to meet other computer technicians online, learn what things did what, why they did them and how. When I had to move to England, my Mom got another PC, so I kept it up. After a while I learned you can make computers do things they're not really supposed to, and learned about security. I was a bona fide nerd. There's some stories in it, but the one I liked doing most was making all the computers in the I.T lab in secondary school play Yankee Doodle MIDI over and over and locking the techs out. They were useless and ended up just resetting everything.

Good times.

Arthur Beesley · 27-04-2014 03:41PM

Wishiwasa Littlebitaller wrote: »

Around '83 I hacked into the school's computer with my girlfriend to change our exam grades, but I got a little carried away and hacked into an American military site and started messing around with what I thought was just a nuclear war simulator, which in turn inadvertently almost caused WWIII. You'd think I'd have leaned my lesson, but then a couple of years later I hacked into the school's computer again, this time in an attempt to 'adjust' my attendance records, but the fecking principle decided to come to my house and.. ah, it's a long story but turns out car odometers don't backwards when a car's driven in reverse.

Do you even have a modulator demodulator, bro?

Ruu · 27-04-2014 03:46PM

Creating football club banners with Bannermania as well.

They were networked with Thinwire T-connectors (co-ax).

pow wow · 27-04-2014 03:53PM

Our first computer in school was around 1992 - we were all trooped down class-by-class to view it in the library. It was a big magnolia coloured thing with black keys, except for the top row of keys which were orange. One teacher was in charge of it and guarded it with her life.

She was trying to show us how to do something that involved holding down two keys simultaneously (kinda like CTRL P to print, CTRL C to copy etc.) but it didn't occur to her that you could actually hold either both down together or hold one down first and then the other. So instead, she was like a kamikaze darting in from all sides frantically trying to lightly tap and release both of them at the same time, getting more and more frustrated by the fact that her timing was off and she could never get both of them down at exactly the same time. In the end she told us it was 'broken' and marched us off back to class

We weren't allowed near it from then on. I don't think she was either come to think of it.

1986 film - messaging on computers in high school

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