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A Geek’s Memories

dos By David Ponce

I’m sitting here, and for whatever reason, I’m taking a little walk down memory lane. If you’re not in the mood, please skip ahead.

I’m a child of the 80′s, and first started playing with computers around 1987. And you know something, I remember a bunch of stuff. And it’s crazy, just how much has gone down in the last 20 years. Here’s what’s stayed with me, for whatever reason, and anyone that has anything to add feel free to do it in the comments.

I remember DOS.
I remember 8 character filenames with three character extensions.
I remember my first 286 with 512kB of RAM.
I remember monochrome monitors.
I remember Commodore 64 and Lunar Landers.
I remember when Macs were used in schools.
I remember dot matrix printers.
I remember bauds.
I remember my first 7,200 baud modem.
I remember “Z Protocol”.
I remember BBSes and first hearing about this crazy thing called the Internet.
I remember waiting ten minutes to download a fuzzy picture of Cindy Crawford of a BBS.
And another two to get the system to display it.
I remember being fascinated at the idea of multitasking.
I remember Windows 3.11.
I remember Wolfenstein 3D.
I remember Doom.
I remember Duke Nukem 3D even more.
Anything 3D was cool in those days.
Why?
I remember wearing a heavy VR helmet.
And hating it.
I remember Hotmail before it belonged to Microsoft.
I remember Hotmail when it had 2MB of space.
Hey, that wasn’t even so long ago.
I remember Yahoo! before there were any graphics on it.

Eh, I’m bored with this. Anyone want to keep adding stuff?


  • Egon

    I remember when OS/2 ran Windows 3.1 embedded faster than Windows 3.1 ran native
    I remember OS/2 Warp (still have the discs)
    I remember when 3.5″ floppies became popular
    I remember hours playing with FRACTINT
    I remember actually looking forward to checking my email and sending them
    I remember when spam was either a meat product or a Monty Python sketch
    I remember when personal websites were ‘home pages’, not ‘blogs’
    I remember Sabre Wulf
    I remember being blown away that Elite on the BBC Micro split the screen and used two different graphics modes (hires B/W and low res color) at the same time!

  • Anonymous

    I remember:
    ADKFA and ADDQD
    being uber impressed with windows 95
    When computer mice had two wheels instead of a ball underneath (and I know a school that still uses them)

  • OlliHD

    I remember Altavista being the top search engine
    I remember when warez groups would post their own BBS numbers on their releases
    I remember hearing my first .wav (2unlimited song) 20seconds

  • Old ‘Un

    PEEK and POKE commands
    SET and RESET commends
    Typing programs from magazines
    Hunt the Wumpus and ASCII Star Trek
    Black plastic cassette recorders to save/load data
    The Turbo button
    How cool daisywheel printers were (and the ‘soundproof’ boxes you had to keep them in)
    Really floppy 8″ disks
    the DEC Rainbow
    the TRS/80
    BASIC
    COBOL
    PASCAL
    GANDALF boxes
    Green Bar fanfold paper
    Turning the keyclick sound on/off
    Punch cards
    Open reel tape storage
    Hard wired circuitry in the mainframe

  • Elaine

    I remember:

    Intellivision
    the FIRST TRS80 Model 1 with keyboard, monochrome screen and cassette deck.
    The TRS80 Model II and III
    Zork and Star Trek
    Writing stupid repeater text in BASIC
    the TRS80 PORTABLE!
    Kings Quest
    D-Base
    EcoNet BBS
    Printers with Daisy Wheels and Ribbons!
    Thermal paper fax machines
    “Heavy Duty” copy machines that took up entire rooms (and all they did was staple and duplex)
    Rotary Dial Phones
    When MTV played music
    When I first got CABLE TV
    The first time I saw “Netscape” when it was brand new!
    Transitioning from DOS to Windows!
    When WordPerfect could do TABLES!!
    When making a word bold in a word processor required a CODE like HTML.
    Using waxing machines, tape lines and an Xacto knife to layout a newspaper
    Using Ventura
    When VOICEMAIL started at work!

    Gee…imagine how many things I’ve forgotten!

  • z00z0

    I remember going to the school library searching for the meaning of the word “emulator”.
    I remember sys 64738 and LOAD”*”,8,1.
    I remember using a screwdriver to change the position of the tape’s head in a C64 tape player and using 64KLOADER.
    I remember the first time i saw a small Mac icon with “x” at his eye on a Mac Plus.
    I remember trying to make a wheel of fortune game in Excel (maybe in 4.0).
    I remember trying the same in HyperCard, but created only a shooter where my teacher’s face could melt to bits.
    I remember using ducttape to fix my QuickShot 2.
    I remember buying a 20 GB hard drive and everyone was laughing: what will you use that big place for?
    I also remember my first 20 MB external hard drive which was bigger than a scanner, and I tried to fill it up from SyQuest discs.
    I remember watching Operation Wolf, and saying: whoa, this is sooo lifelike.

  • kng863

    I remember…

    -Forced to play Carmen Sandiego on the Apple Mac at elementary school. I liked Oregon Trail better.
    -Printer cartridges that used tape and printer paper with those perforated track holes on the margins.
    -Winter Olympics, Spy VS Spy, Mario Bros on the Commodore/IBM
    -386 was the hottest thing
    -Windows 3.1\MS-Dos
    -14.4k and 56k Modems and the sounds they made
    -Prodigy,CompuServe
    -Doom, Duke Nukem, Lemmings, Quake, Jane’s USAF using joystick, ChessMaster 8000 (forgot how high it got)
    -Bringing my desktop over to my cousins to network first generation PC games. Dune, C&C, X-Wing VS Tie Fighter (how so many hours was spent on this), Need for Speed, Warcraft 1, Star Wars Dark Forces.
    -Figuring out what all those networking things IPX, COM Ports, Baud Rates, Not really understanding what we did, but we eventually got it to work.
    -Original gaming companies – Microprose (X-Com is #1 all time), Bull-Frog, Info-games, Sierra, Original EA, Lucas Arts. There are probably older ones, but I don’t recall or not in my generation.
    -Small software shops where u had to go to the store and get software/peripherals – Egghead software, Electronics Boutique (store dedicated to PC games only and shelf real-estate was abundant. Now u go to EB, and u see is 1 rack of PC games all compacted)
    -High end VGA games on 8 floppy disks! Expensive power strips.
    -When pc subwoofers came out.
    -Taking forever to figure out Leisure Larry Lounge Lizards with all those typing commands. Scumm games.
    -CorelDraw
    -10/100 Network Cards, Co-Axial Cables with those metal terminators

  • hebe

    Hebe, I remember Mandy porn B/W video also!
    Do you still have it? I was searching for it soo long. email me at lonpny@yahoo.com

  • lonypny

    Sorry I typed it wrong! my nick is lonypny and the email is lonypny@yahoo.com
    Please send mandy to me!

  • http://www.facebook.com/gjbaggy George John A. See

    haha i remember mandy too! does anyone have a copy of it?

  • http://www.facebook.com/gjbaggy George John A. See

    haha i remember mandy too! does anyone have a copy of it?

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Gary-Morris/100000147440465 Gary Morris

    I've been playing BRE on an old BBS using a telnet connection. If I accidentally type the wrong thing, I cannot get the backspace, delete, arrow keys or anything to work. I'm stuck timing out or buying 100,000 soldiers or whatever. Anybody know if there is a resolution to this?

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Gary-Morris/100000147440465 Gary Morris

    Never mind. I discovered Ctrl-h!