Remember When
Quote: JoemanWhat is this "flash memory" you speak of? Our first digital camera at work (ca. 1999) wrote the files to an internal 3.5" floppy!
I still have mine. Sony mavica. I had the first one which I think did not have a zoom. The next year I bought the one with a 10x zoom.
Quote: JoemanWhat is this "flash memory" you speak of? Our first digital camera at work (ca. 1999) wrote the files to an internal 3.5" floppy!
Seriously asking?
No, just trying to be humorous. I guess my voice inflections don't come through very well on internet forum posts!Quote: AZDuffmanSeriously asking?
Favorite and only computer game is 92 was jack nicklas golf. I would play for hours. I can remember the day like yesterday when my parents took me to computer city to buy my new computer. The salesman threw in the deluxe version for free which came with a multimedia setup with speakers and a 4x cd rom. Since we got that free my dad let me buy a new game. I picked the 7th guest which I played endlessly. I never did beat the game. I wonder if I could do it now that I am older.
Quote: GreasyjohnIn 1987, for my work, I bought an IBM 36 computer. It consisted of a tower, 2 monitors and 2 keyboards. No internet, DOS. $17,000.
I got my first VCR in Jan of 83. An RCA with
manual tuning that could record exactly 1
channel. $1200, a huge amount 35 years ago.
Gas was 80 cents a gallon and cigs were
75 cents a pack.
I loved that damned thing. It was the future,
worth every penny. I recorded all of NBC
primetime and FF'd thru the commercials when
I got home from work. You can get VCR's 10
times better now for under $100. Or you could
a couple years ago.
Used it for years, it was indestructable:
Quote: EvenBobI got my first VCR in Jan of 83. An RCA with
manual tuning that could record exactly 1
channel. $1200, a huge amount 35 years ago.
Gas was 80 cents a gallon and cigs were
75 cents a pack.
I loved that damned thing. It was the future,
worth every penny. I recorded all of NBC
primetime and FF'd thru the commercials when
I got home from work. You can get VCR's 10
times better now for under $100. Or you could
a couple years ago.
I doubt anyone is making new VCR’s anymore.
The only VCR that can actually fetch decent money is the first and only VCR/BluRay combo unit, very few were made.
https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.com%2Fulk%2Fitm%2F292436225667
Quote: gamerfreakI doubt anyone is making new VCR’s anymore.
They still make them in combo
with DVD players. People have
thousands of tapes in their
collections.
Quote: GWAESpeaking of www, remember before that, or possibly during it as well. I want to say it was around 94-96 I would use message boards. I would have to log into a dos based server using individual local numbers. I would keep track of what fun stuff I could do at specific numbers.
Favorite and only computer game is 92 was jack nicklas golf. I would play for hours. I can remember the day like yesterday when my parents took me to computer city to buy my new computer. The salesman threw in the deluxe version for free which came with a multimedia setup with speakers and a 4x cd rom. Since we got that free my dad let me buy a new game. I picked the 7th guest which I played endlessly. I never did beat the game. I wonder if I could do it now that I am older.
I also remember playing 7th Guest when it came out. My friend/roommate had just purchased a 17" inch Packard Bell monitor which was bulky, heavy, expensive, and awesome (at the time). We played it on that "huge" screen and were able to complete the game. The sequel to it, 11th Hour, was also fun, but I do not remember completing it.
Quote: MoosetonIm not much of a gamer but i used to love playing the old Sierra games when I was growing up. Now i get to love showing my kids the games like the Kings Quest series or Hero's Quest. agdinteractive.com has done a marvelous job remaking a few of the oldest ones.
There was really a golden age of point and click adventure games in the mid-90’s. I’m not sure what happened, I guess more real-time game mechanics took over.
Quote: KeeneoneI also remember playing 7th Guest when it came out. My friend/roommate had just purchased a 17" inch Packard Bell monitor which was bulky, heavy, expensive, and awesome (at the time). We played it on that "huge" screen and were able to complete the game. The sequel to it, 11th Hour, was also fun, but I do not remember completing it.
I forgot about 11th hour. I did have that too.
Next game in that arena that I loved was phantamasgoria.
Quote: FaceSierra / Papyrus. Damn, what nostalgia. How many hours I spent on my Waffle House livery in NASCAR '94...
Hell I still play that original nascar game at dave and busters.
Quote: GWAESpeaking of www, remember before that, or possibly during it as well. I want to say it was around 94-96 I would use message boards. I would have to log into a dos based server using individual local numbers. I would keep track of what fun stuff I could do at specific numbers.
Favorite and only computer game is 92 was jack nicklas golf. I would play for hours. I can remember the day like yesterday when my parents took me to computer city to buy my new computer. The salesman threw in the deluxe version for free which came with a multimedia setup with speakers and a 4x cd rom. Since we got that free my dad let me buy a new game. I picked the 7th guest which I played endlessly. I never did beat the game. I wonder if I could do it now that I am older.
I was a computer programmer as a teenager from '84 to '88 writing business software in Basic (starting wage, $3/hour) We had top of the line IBM ATs with 8MB ram and a 20 MB internal hard drive. The '286 chips were just coming out.
On a business trip when I was 16, my manager took me on a business trip to a customer in Toronto, staying in a hotel even though it was 45 minute drive from home. He got me drunk on B52s and wrote out a contract for me on the back of one of the printouts of my program: a Radio Shack Tandy 3000 with 8MB ram and a color monitor and about 20 pieces of software budgeting about 10K for the whole deal. He never followed through. When I left the job three years later, I was able to buy the said computer, used, for about $500, including the monitor.
I wrote a program to calculate prime numbers and broke that computer in 4th year university.
Anyway, we had BBS over a 1200 baud modem back then. I remember having email in '88 but only able to access it at school. By '93 in Vancouver we had 28.8kbps which was adequate for booking flights and downloading pictures of naked women.
Good times.
Quote: boymimbo
On a business trip when I was 16, my manager took me on a business trip to a customer in Toronto, staying in a hotel even though it was 45 minute drive from home. He got me drunk on B52s and...
Good times.
Neat. Is that not illegal in Canada?
Quote: boymimboI was a computer programmer as a teenager from '84 to '88 writing business software in Basic (starting wage, $3/hour) We had top of the line IBM ATs with 8MB ram and a 20 MB internal hard drive. The '286 chips were just coming out.
On a business trip when I was 16, my manager took me on a business trip to a customer in Toronto, staying in a hotel even though it was 45 minute drive from home. He got me drunk on B52s and wrote out a contract for me on the back of one of the printouts of my program: a Radio Shack Tandy 3000 with 8MB ram and a color monitor and about 20 pieces of software budgeting about 10K for the whole deal. He never followed through. When I left the job three years later, I was able to buy the said computer, used, for about $500, including the monitor.
I wrote a program to calculate prime numbers and broke that computer in 4th year university.
Anyway, we had BBS over a 1200 baud modem back then. I remember having email in '88 but only able to access it at school. By '93 in Vancouver we had 28.8kbps which was adequate for booking flights and downloading pictures of naked women.
Good times.
Ahh yes BBS, I couldn't remember what they were called.
Now that you reminded me what they were called I had to do a search. Here is a list of my locals. I can remember some of them.
bbslist.textfiles.com
Remember how hard it was to find new ones. It's not like you could do a Google search. I had to either have someone tell me about one or stumble on it somehow.
Quote: GWAE
Remember how hard it was to find new ones. It's not like you could do a Google search. I had to either have someone tell me about one or stumble on it somehow.
We didn't have a modem and if we did my dad would have screamed about tying up the line. But when I saw a BBS at a friend's house I thought it was the neatest thing. Said friend did not know about toll numbers. He got a then-huge $35 phone bill and that cut his access dramatically.
Same said friend found a NCR copy of a credit card receipt on the ground and used it to access a pay site. That worked for about a month until the owner got the charge. Taught me a lesson about destroying those things, a remember when of its own, the card receipt!
Quote: AZDuffmanWe didn't have a modem and if we did my dad would have screamed about tying up the line. But when I saw a BBS at a friend's house I thought it was the neatest thing. Said friend did not know about toll numbers. He got a then-huge $35 phone bill and that cut his access dramatically.
Same said friend found a NCR copy of a credit card receipt on the ground and used it to access a pay site. That worked for about a month until the owner got the charge. Taught me a lesson about destroying those things, a remember when of its own, the card receipt!
haha I had that problem in 94ish with AOL. I could never connect to a Pittsburgh number because it was always busy but I figured out that if I connect to Butler then I could always get on. Well until my mom got the long distance bill that month.
Quote: gamerfreakThere was really a golden age of point and click adventure games in the mid-90’s. I’m not sure what happened, I guess more real-time game mechanics took over.
The first computer game I ever played was Lunar Lander in 1969 on an IBM 1130.
You used the toggle switches on the console to control the amount of fuel going to the rockets. What made it particularly challenging was that there were 16 switches and you were toggling in a binary value.
provider that has long since gone out
of business. Phone modem, $15 a month.
I used to pay in person, those guys were
such geeks in 1992. Like the Lone Gunmen
on X Files.. Arrogant as hell.
Quote: GWAEhaha I had that problem in 94ish with AOL. I could never connect to a Pittsburgh number because it was always busy but I figured out that if I connect to Butler then I could always get on. Well until my mom got the long distance bill that month.
Toll Call? But it's in 412!
Quote: AZDuffmanToll Call? But it's in 412!
If I remember correctly our phone plan had specific exchanges that you could call. It wasn't based on 412 only. I think the better plans could call all of 412 and then outside of 412would be considered long distance.
Quote: GWAEIf I remember correctly our phone plan had specific exchanges that you could call. It wasn't based on 412 only. I think the better plans could call all of 412 and then outside of 412would be considered long distance.
I was kind of joking but it was not so simple. My granparents had a limited service in the city and we had a better one. They would ring once and hang up, then we called back. Thus went on for years and years. In Butler there was an old, independent phone company that gummed it up. I met someone who could call across Butler county and it was local but a toll call to call across the street.
There was "toll" and "long distance." Toll was a charge, just not as much as LD. Outside any area code would be LD IIRC.
I am very old.
Quote: AZDuffmanI was kind of joking but it was not so simple. My granparents had a limited service in the city and we had a better one. They would ring once and hang up, then we called back. Thus went on for years and years. In Butler there was an old, independent phone company that gummed it up. I met someone who could call across Butler county and it was local but a toll call to call across the street.
There was "toll" and "long distance." Toll was a charge, just not as much as LD. Outside any area code would be LD IIRC.
I am very old.
Man this thread brings so many memories back. After you wrote all that I really remember that. I can remember when my parents got a plan that had long distance included.
Quote: GWAEMan this thread brings so many memories back. After you wrote all that I really remember that. I can remember when my parents got a plan that had long distance included.
Speaking of all this, remember when you could tell where someone lived by the exchange?
Quote: TumblingBonesThe first computer game I ever played was Lunar Lander in 1969 on an IBM 1130.
You used the toggle switches on the console to control the amount of fuel going to the rockets. What made it particularly challenging was that there were 16 switches and you were toggling in a binary value.
I haven't seen an old-school IBM 1130 since the one I learned how to program on at the local junior college back in 1974. Ours didn't have a monitor, but it did have the word "NEVER" in old-school Dymo Tape right above the "Emergency Stop" switch (the round red thing on the left side of the panel). This one had Lunar Lander as well, but no toggles needed; values were entered on the keyboard.
The one thing I remember about it was, the FORTRAN compiler wasn't very good at error checking; if you exceeded the bounds of an array, or even the number of entries in a Computed Goto (i.e. something like GOTO (10, 20, 30), N where N > 3), the computer pretty much locked up without any sort of error message.
Quote: gordonm888In Queens, NYC in the 1960s I remember my family having a 2-digit zip code and a 5-digit phone number.
I think you are misremembering.
Before they had zip codes, each neighborhood PO had a designation- mine was 29. Zip codes came in right around the worlds Fair and were always five digits.
I still recall my phone number from living in Queens Village- 212 464-5000 HOllis4-5000
The zip was 11429, although we used to joke about us being 29ers, with our rivals being the 27 gang.
When I moved upstate in the late 1970s, if you called within the town you only needed the last four digits, but everything else needed 1+ Area Code plus seven digits, even in the same area code.
Where in Queens did you live?
I left QV in 74, moved back to Flushing in 90 and then to Jackson Heights a few years later. Lived in Jamaica for two months in the late 80s, but that was transient.
ZIP codes were introduced in 1963 and were always five digits until they introduced the ZIP+4 system. Before ZIP, many cities had zone numbers of one or two digits that helped expedite mail delivery within the city. Mail was addressed with the zone number appearing between the city name and the state, as opposed to the later ZIP codes that are written after the state. ZIP is an acronym for Zone Improvement Plan.Quote: gordonm888In Queens, NYC in the 1960s I remember my family having a 2-digit zip code and a 5-digit phone number.
In the 1950s the phone numbers for everyone in our town (and many others) were just four digits. If you wanted to call outside the town, you had to dial 0 and ask the operator for long distance, which that operator may or may not be able to handle for you herself. I say "herself" because I never was aware of a male telephone operator except during strikes, when managers (always male) might have to handle the switchboards.
In the mid 1950s, our phone numbers were extended to seven characters by adding a prefix to the existing phone numbers. Everyone in our town received the prefix "PR2", which was spoken as "Prescott 2", was sometimes written as "PR(escott)2", and was represented by the numbers 772. There was a short delay while introducing this addition, then we had to start dialing the 2 before the usual four digits. It was a number of years later before we had to dial all seven digits. Even after that, we could not dial long distance without the operator's assistance.
Quote: billryanI think you are misremembering.
Before they had zip codes, each neighborhood PO had a designation- mine was 29. Zip codes came in right around the worlds Fair and were always five digits.
I still recall my phone number from living in Queens Village- 212 464-5000 HOllis4-5000
The zip was 11429, although we used to joke about us being 29ers, with our rivals being the 27 gang.
When I moved upstate in the late 1970s, if you called within the town you only needed the last four digits, but everything else needed 1+ Area Code plus seven digits, even in the same area code.
Where in Queens did you live?
I left QV in 74, moved back to Flushing in 90 and then to Jackson Heights a few years later. Lived in Jamaica for two months in the late 80s, but that was transient.
I lived in Jamaica. Our 2-digit "zip code" was 32, later expanded to 11432.
Our 5 digit phone number was 3-0773, later expanded to JA3-0773, with the JA for Jamaica.
Indeed!Quote: AZDuffmanSpeaking of all this, remember when you could tell where someone lived by the exchange?
In 2014, I moved across town from a house I lived in for 15 years. I wanted to port my (land line) number to the new house, and BellSouth (ATT) said I couldn't because the new address required an new exchange! In 2014? Really?? I told them that this was BS since a company I do business with that was right down the street from my old house (we had the same exchange) moved way across town but kept their number.
They stammered for a bit and said that they could set me up with a repeater/forwarder (not sure if this is the right terminology) and I could keep my number... for an extra $20 a month! I hung up on them knowing that I could call any one of a dozen or so of their competitors and they would be more than happy to port my number. I got Ooma the next day and told BellSouth what they could do with themselves.
We almost never use the land line, but for $3 and change a month, it's nice knowing it's there.
Remember those "TEN CENTS A MINUTE??!!!" commercials? Ugh!Quote: GWAEMan this thread brings so many memories back. After you wrote all that I really remember that. I can remember when my parents got a plan that had long distance included.
There for a while in the late 90's and early 2000's, it was cheaper to call across the country than to the next city.
I remember my freshman year, the teacher setting up phone chains for students. Certain prefixes were in unlimited call areas where you could talk all day for free, but the house across the street would be a message unit call. Message units varied. A unit might be 3 minutes in the afternoon, but stretch to 10 minutes at night or on the weekend.
Quote: DocIf you wanted to call outside the town, you had to dial 0 and ask the operator for long distance, .
In the 50's long distance was only
used for emergencies, like someone
dying. We had codes we used so
it would cost nothing to give someone
a message. Call collect and ask for
a fictitious person and it was code
for something else. Why Ma Bell
let this go on is a mystery, everybody
did it.
Quote: EvenBobWhy Ma Bell
let this go on is a mystery, everybody
did it.
Not a whole lot they could have done. Even if they could, the little return they got would be outweighed by bad publicity.
Tell some of the kids today about the "two rings means you arrived safe and sound" and they will not grasp it.
What?
Quote: billryanDon't touch that dial!
What?
See, that one actually happened with my younger cousin! I mentioned it in passing to another adult and she says loud, "IS THAT WHAT THAT MEANS?!?!"
Same cousin didn't know what a "wind up watch" was when we told her about them. Then when we said you wound it every day (she thought once a month!) boy what a blank look!
Every night, my Mom would call her Mother collect, from some fake name. Each night, like clockwork, it was rejected.
One night, it was accepted. Mom went white.
I forget the details, but some relative had died and Grandma thought we should send flowers or something.
Quote:Every night, my Mom would call her Mother collect, from some fake name. Each night, like clockwork, it was rejected.
One night, it was accepted. Mom went white.
Even god fearing Xtions (the best kind)
played that game. Apparently ripping
off Ma Bell was ok with god. LOL
I only remember ever getting one LD
call that was accepted. My great
grandfather died at 96 in 1962 and
my dad talked under a minute. He
timed it so he didn't get charged for
an extra minute. Nickles and dimes
counted in those days.
Quote: EvenBobNickles and dimes counted in those days.
I remember in 1970 driving around with a bunch of buddies, pulling into a gas station and filling up the tank with only the loose change in our pockets. Gas was going for ~ $0.30/gallon then.
Quote: TumblingBonesI remember in 1970 driving around with a bunch of buddies, pulling into a gas station and filling up the tank with only the loose change in our pockets. Gas was going for ~ $0.30/gallon then.
The whole summer of 1966 it was
19 cents a gallon. But the cars were
gas guzzling pigs. If you take into
account gas mileage per gallon,
20 gallons in 1966 gets you about as
far as 7 gallons does today. But even
with that, 19 cents was damned cheap.
Back whenever they were installing telephones, His Grandmother or whomever didn't want a phone in the house so they ran it to the barn. Thirtysomething years later, they still have a wall phone with a crank and its a party line.
This was less than an hour from Albany.
I have a wind-up Hamilton pocket watch that my great-grandparents gave to my paternal grandfather on his 21st birthday in November 1914. The event is recorded in the inscription engraved inside the back cover. The watch hangs on a little stand in a curio cabinet in my front hall. It still runs rather well for its age (loses about a minute a day), and I wind it and reset it every night except when I am away from home.Quote: AZDuffmanSame cousin didn't know what a "wind up watch" was when we told her about them. Then when we said you wound it every day (she thought once a month!) boy what a blank look!
I always wear a rather nice Citizen Eco-Drive wrist watch that I bought on board a cruise ship in 2007. It keeps time very well, but I am skeptical that it will still be running in 2110 or 2111, when it is as old as that pocket watch is now.
Some old things are nice to keep around, even if just for sentimental reasons.
Quote: gordonm888I remember the first time I heard someone mention something called "Taco Bell." I thought it was the Mexican phone company.
Me too, I thought it was slang for Ma Bell
in the Mexican neighborhood. I didn't
even know it was a restaurant till I saw
ads on TV. I still think it's a stupid name
for a restaurant.
Turns out to be CBS.
Quote: onenickelmiracleAir Wolf used to be a big show. Can't remember who was in it, what it was about, because I don't think I saw it because we never had HBO. It was expensive to produce, I remember hearing that.
I loved that show. The hero, Stringfellow Hawke, flew around in this kick-ass military helicopter that had more upgrades then the Batmobile. It even had a stealth mode where the rotors and engines made no sound so the bad guys wouldn't get any warning before it popped over the hilll and blew them up. I remember the side kick was played by Ernest Bourgnine but I don't recall who played the main character.
