I loved my C64, so many fun games, Archon, Load Runner, Ultima IV, Wizardry, Masters of Orion... and the games back then were all felt so new, unique and special....
Im so old, I learned Basic programming in a college math class in 1974. We hand wrote the programs we wanted to run, then got time on a punch card machine that we used to type in our program, and then ran them on what I remember was a PDP-4 which was enclosed in its own air conditioned room the size of a small truck, that ran the punch card programs so it could send the output to a dot matrix printer. The box in the post hadnât yet been invented, and wouldnât be for another 10 years.
Ha! CD drives and all that bullshit the kids have these days instead of a 170 kB 5.25" diskette like in the Commodore 64 I had as a kid. Sucks to be you, tape peasants!
Burning CDs for my Discman in the 90s were one of my favourite things growing up. The PC became a shrine of prayer to the CD burner God for a successful burn and nobody were allowed near the PC when people were burning CDs.
Friend had a VIC at first that we used but I got a 64 straight. Not much different, just less RAM on the VIC. Needed a 4 kB expansion to play some games.
Wow a CD drive, and a hard drive that is not compressed? Geesh you must be rich. Although I don't see a Windows 3.11 launch, don't you have the 11 floppy disks? I can lend you them if you need.
GTA 1 had a framerate limiter that you could toggle on and off with a keybinding. I don't think it went directly off the CPU clock per se, but it just generated frames as fast as it could, while the code that determined how far everything moved from one frame to the next implicitly assumed a fixed number of milliseconds between each frame regardless.
No, they bought them from techs that had a clue. However when the same cases were used for early pentium machines, there was often not anything to plug them into. Rare to find turbo header on pentium boards.
My grandpa used to bring those home for me to play with. They used all different colors and they were pretty. I often wondered, what they read, but I never figured it out.
I am just barely young enough to have missed that era, and mostly used actual terminals (ADM, Wyse, DEC, etc.). I did get to see people loading a program via paper tape onto a PDP-11, though most of the time we used the reel-to-reel magtape.
I miss the stability and functionality of Windows XP. Everything after hasnt really improved anything. And the newest AI garbage is just fluff I dont fucking want even installed.
Yep. First household computer was a suitcase computer from HP. Then an Apple IIe. Followed by THIS beast, a 286 12mhz system with a TWENTY MEGABYTE HARDDRIVE!
yup. Older. Like Apple IIe older, well older than that even, but first real 'memories' with computers were loading up games with them floppies on a single drive....
Look at mister fancy white phosphorus over here. The rest of us had colour monitors, and that colour was green. Or amber if you were convinced the green caused eye strain.
My first PC was a HP 486 dx2 50. That means it came with the math coprocessor. It had 4 mb of ram soldered to the board and a single RAM expansion slot that accepted a 4 mb ram upgrade (which cost like $250), for an unheard of total of 8 megs of ram.
I eventually got the Reveal CD-ROM kit for it; this was before CDROMs were considered to "have speeds" (it was effectively a 1.2x).
Of course, that wasn't my first computer, just my first PC.
Mine was a 16mhz 386 with a 8 1mb SIMMs (no DIMMs yet) maxing it out. I saved up and bought used from some company surplus. Had a bunch of files on it (40mb hdd) from the company still, I didn't know what the extensions were or how to open them so I just deleted them to make space. Great data security, guys.
Every now and then there's a coming together or events where you can throw a stupid amount of hardware at a platform never envisioned to run on. I managed to scrape together and install 128 MB into my PC, and it was too much for whatever I was doing on Windows 95 to handle properly. I landed up using most of it as a novelty RAM drive. These days I've been known to use my 64GB.
Lol my daily driver has 48gb, but my big cruncher has 384gb (dual xeon with 6channels/12 slots) and I still max it out so I have a 2tb swapfile on a raid of ssds.
UnattendedDeviant
Even older.
Conz
dx-2 nice. Great system for old dos games.
Rufferstuff
This old.
certainlynotaserialkiller
DorkJedi
Never took pics, but a few builds ago I found a Wang at a garage sale, used that case for my PC.
Lomish
CD drive? kids these days are so spoiled
nik282000
"Insert Disk 2"
iamlegendinjapan
Of the 10 windows recovery floppy discs
bikergeek6249
I'm this old:
RowanUnderwood
Nah I'm more THIS old:
cytherians
That girl looks like his sister.... or his younger brother dressed as a girl. đđ
Kablimey
I am, in fact, this old! We had this exact computer, I remember those pill-shaped buttons and the giant flip switch! Thank you for sharing
Arcanum3000
I'm this old.
DorkJedi
Texas Instruments 4 life
rhuala
I loved my C64, so many fun games, Archon, Load Runner, Ultima IV, Wizardry, Masters of Orion... and the games back then were all felt so new, unique and special....
TheGrumpyOldTroll
a fine vintage.
shigoobee
Remember the turbo button? wild times.
nugscree
166Mhz Let's go!!!
RaxianTheta
that was my first real PC 166mhz Pentium PRO with 32 MB of EDO RAM, with a 2.1 5400 RPM HDD.
drduffer
Im so old, I learned Basic programming in a college math class in 1974. We hand wrote the programs we wanted to run, then got time on a punch card machine that we used to type in our program, and then ran them on what I remember was a PDP-4 which was enclosed in its own air conditioned room the size of a small truck, that ran the punch card programs so it could send the output to a dot matrix printer. The box in the post hadnât yet been invented, and wouldnât be for another 10 years.
cytherians
We had a DEC PDP-8! And in the computer room, most of the terminals were DECwriters. There was just one terminal with a CRT... and if you used that terminal, all of the DECwriters would slow to a crawl... because the PDP-8 couldn't handle the load.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DECwriter#/media/File:DECwriter,_Tektronix,_PDP-11_(192826605).jpg
ImNotActuallyEvilAfterAll
Ha! CD drives and all that bullshit the kids have these days instead of a 170 kB 5.25" diskette like in the Commodore 64 I had as a kid. Sucks to be you, tape peasants!
TheFoodBaby
Burning CDs for my Discman in the 90s were one of my favourite things growing up. The PC became a shrine of prayer to the CD burner God for a successful burn and nobody were allowed near the PC when people were burning CDs.
MoroccanInHalifax
Mine was a VIC 20. After that I got an Amstrad CPC 464, then graduated to an Amiga 500.
ImNotActuallyEvilAfterAll
Friend had a VIC at first that we used but I got a 64 straight. Not much different, just less RAM on the VIC. Needed a 4 kB expansion to play some games.
HoldingAccount
Color display even!
Schaade
CD drive?? Just Try to find a laptop(!) with a CD drive these days.đŚ
wadatahmydamie
Or someone who needs one
ImNotActuallyEvilAfterAll
If someone still needs a disc occasionally you can just use a regular external drive like normal people.
Munchman347
My first was an IBM suitcase model... Learned basic on it...
MeekTechVillain565
Yes
Pulsahr
Wow a CD drive, and a hard drive that is not compressed? Geesh you must be rich.
Although I don't see a Windows 3.11 launch, don't you have the 11 floppy disks? I can lend you them if you need.
tclothingw
I still have those too, lol
ClutterMonkey
We had a Packard Bell 8088 w/ CGA monitor example in an intro to computers class that still worked. It had a turbo button.
greenytali
I mean it was the first computer I ever built.
clotholiver
Call me when it's my turn to play Oregon Trail on the Apple IIe
diezl97
You have pre-emptively died of dysentery.
clotholiver
GenXHippie
My kids are this old.
thedtp
I was there Gandalf.
circlebreaker
PyroGXPilot
MMM AT-Power Supplies
Higure
Remember, the turbo button slowed down the computer so that software that used the CPU clock speed to keep time had one standardized rate to use.
76000BatteryLlamas
Commander Keen was unplayable without a turbo button
WeatherWiz
Shit really? I was lied to?!
Higure
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbo_button I mean, it was probably up to each manufacturer which state counted as "on" with the light shining, but yeah.
insanitypurge
I remember âScorched Earthâ ran off the cpu clock and was impossible to play without a delay. MemoriesâŚ
Higure
GTA 1 had a framerate limiter that you could toggle on and off with a keybinding. I don't think it went directly off the CPU clock per se, but it just generated frames as fast as it could, while the code that determined how far everything moved from one frame to the next implicitly assumed a fixed number of milliseconds between each frame regardless.
jurisdictions
gouranga
REOJackwagon
I worked at a computer store, those things were usually not connected to anything
Higure
So the people here who recall games that were unplayable without the turbo button are just, what? Mandela-effecting?
REOJackwagon
Some companies connected them, a lot of them didn't bother with it. We would see both. Also, the board had to support it for it to be connected
MrStealYourGiF
No, they bought them from techs that had a clue. However when the same cases were used for early pentium machines, there was often not anything to plug them into. Rare to find turbo header on pentium boards.
REOJackwagon
Hence "usually not connected to anything"
lightfoot2
Older
WoeToHice
Older.
ropetopus
16MB of RAM?! What luxury!
nimeton0
I am THIS old!
jridley
Same, my first class was in FORTRAN on punch cards.
gtotherizzle
Dude that is dad level old
DonL9
For many that's Grandpa level old.
hsalonen3000
My grandpa used to bring those home for me to play with. They used all different colors and they were pretty. I often wondered, what they read, but I never figured it out.
OrpheanGlance
Donât forget to number the cards for when the stack gets dropped. Ah, memories.
bloxxing
and the diagonal texta stripe along the card edges for a quicker sort.
umlcat
My programming teachers did learn this ...
ReaperCDN
Yep.
UpNorthAndFreezing
Yup.. programming using first BASIC then moved up to COBOL
beachbum273
What's it like being an unknown vertebrae in the backbone of modern society
bloxxing
i started with fortran.
Sinasohn
45 years in the biz and COBOL still pays my bills.
UpNorthAndFreezing
COBOL and FORTRAN have staying power.. developed, what.. in the 50s.. and still used.
quietwalker
*mixes up the order of your punchards*
diezl97
Always number your punch cards!
nimeton0
We would draw a diagonal line down the side of the stack like this.
wadatahmydamie
Pretty BASIC prank there.
Just add a few extra punches to a card in the middle
imguronefive
I am just barely young enough to have missed that era, and mostly used actual terminals (ADM, Wyse, DEC, etc.). I did get to see people loading a program via paper tape onto a PDP-11, though most of the time we used the reel-to-reel magtape.
bloxxing
me too.
greentoad4m
How about fortran , two from the early nineteen sixties
WiiShaker
From what I understand fom talking with old heads, nobody fucking misses this shit.
ReaperCDN
I miss the stability and functionality of Windows XP. Everything after hasnt really improved anything. And the newest AI garbage is just fluff I dont fucking want even installed.
gtotherizzle
Much older
ifbuffaloscouldfly
Yup
jayman0123
Preach. I've loaded these before:
causationn
Not to bragâŚ. But floppies were 8 â
Malachise
Likewise. Atari 800XL old.
FoamingToad
First computer was a zx81 old.
GrimleyGraves
CP/M operating system baby
CallMeCourierSix
Yep. First household computer was a suitcase computer from HP. Then an Apple IIe. Followed by THIS beast, a 286 12mhz system with a TWENTY MEGABYTE HARDDRIVE!
AtmaDarkwolf
yup. Older. Like Apple IIe older, well older than that even, but first real 'memories' with computers were loading up games with them floppies on a single drive....
marconipenguino
How old can you even be if your monitor starts up with an Energy Star logo?
DJBigTed
I didnât see a colour monitor until I was already a man.
xlr82xs
Look at mister fancy white phosphorus over here. The rest of us had colour monitors, and that colour was green. Or amber if you were convinced the green caused eye strain.
DJBigTed
Iâm going to argue that white is just as much a colour as green (we had the green too, on a 386).
o0Tektite0o
Turbo button old, yes we are
DocZero
Yep. I upgraded my first PC to 512K memory and a 10meg harddrive
o0Tektite0o
omg my first PC was $ 3200...crazy..and it hat 166 mhz
DocZero
yeah, stupid expensive. The 10meg hard drive was something like $3K when it came out. I got mine used from a friend when he upgraded to a 20
savagelem
Did that button actually do anything?!?!? Been a mystery to me for years.
xlr82xs
Slowed the clock speed so things written with timing done by loops instead of sleeps executed correctly.
ChickenSnizort
Read about home built Heath-Kit computers in Popular Science old.
oskiller
same....trs-80 and cassette tape old.....apple }{+ where you put actual memory chips into a card to increase memory old....
SgtPakcrat
TR
SgtPakcrat
Take 2:
Cut my digital teeth on TRS-80 Color Computer 2
BrokenAnimal
Same. Like VIC 20 and Commodore 64 old.
Vengeraxe
Texas Sinclair for the Win!
whatspaulplayingtoday
Same.
Imadethisaccounttopost
Vic-20 same here! 1980
gtotherizzle
Yep
alcaray
Needing-a-boot-disc-to-start-your-computer old.
GroteB
Cassette tapes with games old.
gtotherizzle
We had a Ti computer
AmyBethMegJo
Older than that.
Schlumpfi
ExactlyâŚ.
woozle
play DOOM on it
CrikShore
Its funny bcz my first video game I played was Doom in 95 on a 486 with ms dos.
qshamtech
I worked for Comp USA in one of their callcenters.
RaxianTheta
you have my apologies, I called that center a lot, and was not ... someone I would be proud of today
qshamtech
Ahhh yesâŚyou were that person! I remember! J/K
The mute button on my headset was my best friend. I am also not proud of who I was then.
quietwalker
My first PC was a HP 486 dx2 50. That means it came with the math coprocessor. It had 4 mb of ram soldered to the board and a single RAM expansion slot that accepted a 4 mb ram upgrade (which cost like $250), for an unheard of total of 8 megs of ram.
I eventually got the Reveal CD-ROM kit for it; this was before CDROMs were considered to "have speeds" (it was effectively a 1.2x).
Of course, that wasn't my first computer, just my first PC.
Evenmoreuselessname
Mine was a 16mhz 386 with a 8 1mb SIMMs (no DIMMs yet) maxing it out. I saved up and bought used from some company surplus. Had a bunch of files on it (40mb hdd) from the company still, I didn't know what the extensions were or how to open them so I just deleted them to make space. Great data security, guys.
cytherians
It's crazing to think of how you'd look at memory expansion in single digit megabytes... when now, it's 2 digit gigabytes!
dashers
Every now and then there's a coming together or events where you can throw a stupid amount of hardware at a platform never envisioned to run on. I managed to scrape together and install 128 MB into my PC, and it was too much for whatever I was doing on Windows 95 to handle properly. I landed up using most of it as a novelty RAM drive. These days I've been known to use my 64GB.
cytherians
You use up all of your installed 64Gb of RAM? Crypto mining?
Evenmoreuselessname
Lol my daily driver has 48gb, but my big cruncher has 384gb (dual xeon with 6channels/12 slots) and I still max it out so I have a 2tb swapfile on a raid of ssds.
dashers
Mostly being lazy when doing dev.