A Geek’s Memories
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?
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I remember Rise of the Triads
I remember the original Civ
I remember how awsome Norton Commander was
I remember ftp.cdrom.com
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I remember 30 pin RAM
I remember large, meaningful boxes with nothing but 2 floppies and a bit of paper
I remember Compuserve
I remember Oxyd
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I remember seeing my first video game whilst on holiday in the US - pong !!
I remember my first 1200/75 baud modem - I remember using an acoustic coupler
I remember thinking in 68000 machine code
I remember typing in pages and pages of code printed in magazines such as Byte etc only to find that there was a mistake in the code or they had printed the pages in the wrong order then spending countless hours (days) trying to get the program to run
I remember coming home from school and starting to load Elite (from tape) and having to sit down for dinner before it had loaded... At least I got to play after dinner.
I remember being Elite !
I feel old now...
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I remember networking with a parallel cable
I remember my old CompuServe ID
I remember my second ISP giving ALL USERS the same username and pw
I remember 'Homepages'
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I hated Parity Errors on my Olivetti (8088 cpu by Siemens)
Still have those Turbo Pascal 5.5 disks in my shelf
I remember 5?-inch DS, DD disk (360kb)
I remember Ms-Dos 3.3 and World Games by Epix (PC Boot-Disk)
I remember when a VGA-card with 256kb RAM was cool
I remember buying a 2x CD-Rom drive for ~ 100? (that was cheap)
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I remember being a SysOp and CoSysop
I remember OS/2
I remember ASCII Codes
I remember all the talk about having to put out cash for a Math-Co processor (DX Rock!)
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I remember copying files from A:\ to B:\
I remember using 1 monitor
I remember 'Webcrawler'
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I remember Karatica
I remember dialing out to "the mainframe"
I remember when BASIC was just that
I remember keyboards that made a distinctive KER-Chink sound when typing
I remember Hayes above-boards
I remember when Gopher would revolutionize how we got information
I remember when an Internal 14.4K modem was drool-worth
I remember saying '540Meg, How will I ever fill that hard drive?'
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I remember when ICQ first came out and they assigned numbers... I think. I was 2198434 , I wonder if it still would work. I also remember Prodigy when it was an actual program like AOL. Our email address was a random mix of numbers and letters, with the envelope in the lower right corner to tell if you have mail. Wow it was the most pathetic thing ever. Yeah I'm not that old.
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I remember when certain parts of Compuserve were "walled off" premium content for which my parents would get billed by the hour
I remember waiting all night for a 100KB download off of a BBS, only to find out it was for something called "Windows" that I didn't have
I remember programming in GW-Basic
I remember when we got our first mouse, for nearly $200, that connected to the serial port, and only worked with one application we had, GeoWorks
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I remember Prodigy.
I remember when Amazon.com was a book store.
I remember when Cnet was a TV show.
I remember when TechTV had interesting programs.
I remember when it was fun to send & receive 'joke' email.
I remember my first Packard Bell PC (and I'll never forgive them).
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I remember paper tape and punch cards.
I remember when 5 1/4" floppys meant no more paper tape or punch cards.
I remember playing Star Trek on a printer, as in on paper. +K+
I remember programming in Fortran and Cobol.
I remember when a 300 baud modem was a big thing.
It's been so long, I probably don't remember anymore..............
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I remember Secret Of Monkey Island
and photocopies of the game solutions.
I remember Maniac Mansion's codes table and red acetate sheet.
I remeber DOS Shell
I remember WaR3z sites.
My parents remember phone invoices.
I remember Mandy B/W porn video on a 3'15 floopy disk.
I remember wp51.exe
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* I remember ultrix, VAX/VMS and DOS 2.20
* I remember when Ctrl-Alt-Del would reboot
* I remember AirTrax
* I remember upgrading from 1200 to 14.4k baud and thinking "...that sounds weird."
* I remember when caps lock would click down into place
* I remember Turtle, and drawing squares, circles and triangles
* I remember is was spelled Apple][ (you posers)
* I remember WWII BBS
* I remember when eBay's primary server (singular) was Cayman
* I remember Netscape 1.0, progressive download of graphics, and thinking "WOW!"
* I remember my first cross over cable
* I remember token ring...nevevr did get that working
* I remember typing in PC Computing articles, they were buggy as heck
* I remember being told to "...write 1000 times I will not...", and instead writing a FOR loop and printing to LPT1 (that worked exactly once)
* I remember my fax modem, that was SOOO cool (BGFax 4 ever!)
* I remember buying hardware from that weird guy in the basement of a strip mall
* I remember the Compaq "portable" computer (suitcase sized)
* I remember "defraging" my parents machine, got bored, rebooted...D'OH
* I remember thinking "What's GOSUB?"
* I remember thinking that all of this would be SOOO cool if I could only do it as a job...
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* I remember my Lazer computer (IBM compatible)
* I remember looking at a Mac and thinking "How cute, but useless" (nothing has changed)
* I remember two phone lines (they became four at one point)
* I remember replacing the ribbon on my printer
* I remember when TurboTax would print out a form "Not Approved By The IRS"
* I remember horsefun.jpg
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- I remember saving my first program on 2 punch cards.
- I remember spending hours typing a BASIC program from Creative Computing Magazine into the Commodore PET
- I remember CLOAD
- I remember the Trash 80
- I remember computer terminals with paper output instead of a CRT
- I remember Choplifer on the Apple II
- I remember the sound the hard drive would make when my Apple //e would boot up. (chuka-chuka-chuka)
- I VERY fondly remember Beagle Brothers
- I remember acoustic coupler modems at 300 baud.
- I remember how getting 10 5.25 inch blank floppies for $15 was a killer deal
- and then using a hole punch to make them "double-sided"
Jeez I'm old...
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I remember Pool of Radiance and having to flip those eight 5.25" disks
I remember getting my PS/1 and having the "big" hard drive. 40 MB.
I remember my 2400 baud modem and my sister picking up the phone during a BBS download.
I remember playing multiplayer (TWO PEOPLE) Doom using a serial cable and realizing that I suck against a real person.
I remember emailing my girlfriend in BC when she want to university without sending pictures.
I remember phone rates of 28 cents a minute, but only after MIDNIGHT.
I remember that Pentium 233 MHz were fast machines.
I remember having to zip files across 5+ floppy disks.
I remember using Autocad with the text based command interpreter.
I remember playing my first choppy 150x80 video on my computer and being amazed.
We've come a long way...
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I remember ZORK and Leather Goddesses of Phobos
I remember my friends mocking me when I bought a 486DX66 PC with an 810MB hard drive, telling me I'll never use that much drive space...
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I remember Telnet.
I remember FIDOnet.
I remember the orgininal THE WELL.
I remember Boardwatch magazine.
I remember KERMIT.
I remember modem strings (AT&F1&D2&S10...)
I remember video game fanzines.
I remember long distance bills for "good" BBS.
I remember my first CD-ROM/soundblaster kit and being wowed by all the free Creative and Kai Power tools included.
I remember USRobotics before the Palm Pilot.
I remember Apple Newton.
I remember writing batch scripts with DOS Editor.
I remember Commander Keen.
I remember Shareware of the Month Club.
I remember Miner 2049er.
I remember compiling BASIC on my Texas Instruments 99/4A.
I remember figuring out in Novell how to send a one line "from administrator" text message to every teacher, every student, and every computer in the school district.
I remember Netwars.
I remember Dune 2.
I remember PASCAL.
I remembe