Old Tech Nostalgia

In order to keep from splitting the sneaking into pools thread any further, let's post here all the old tech nostalgia (those of us not afraid of dating ourselves, that is).

First computer I ever laid hands on was a Radio Shack Pocket Computer in 1980 or 81, while at summer camp somewhere in Ontario. One of my bunk mates bought it for, as I recall $200 Canadian. It had less than 2 kylobytes RAM, the display was three lines tall and monochrome LCD. It displayed only text and ASCII characters. You could program it in BASIC, believe it or not, and it could use a cassette recorder, also sold at Radio Shack, for data storage.

Cassette recorders are not to be despised. The same guy got himself an ATARI 400 computer some years later. It was actually capable of doing multimedia using the recorder. I recall a program he bought called "Invitation to programming," which taught the basics of BASIC. The recorder was part data, part recorded sound. So the lessons were played out with the audio from the recorder synchronized to the action on the screen. it was pretty good.

Actually the ATARI computers of the era (early 80s) were very good. They had slots for easy RAM expansion to, I think, 256 KB, and had superior sound synthesizers. A later model, the ATARI 1200, was as good as IBM PCs of that time (late 80s early 90s). What kept it from being a hit, aside the fact that home computers were seen as expensive tech toys, was the name ATARI. Parents would pay a thousand bucks for a computer, yes, but ATARI was known for its videogame, the ATARI 2600, and no amount of arguing could convince a parent the ATARI computers were not merely videogames.

Oh, well. I also recall having a black and white TV and an open reel tape recorder at some point.

This was my first computer, the Sinclair 1000:



I think I got it for a birthday gift in 80 or 81. As I recall, it had 1K of memory (not a typo!). A program could only run about 20 lines. You can add a memory pack to bring it up to 16K, but the slightest movement would cause it to disengage from the leads, and you'd lose all your work. To save anything you had to conect it to a tape recorder. Man, what a POS that was!

More information.

I remember lots of ads for the Sinclair. It was sold as a kit, right? You had to assemble it yourself.

My first computer was a Radio Shack Color Computer, with 4K RAM and a tape recorder. It also had a cartridge port for games. I don't recall doing anything remotely useful with it.

No, I think the Sinclair was sold ready to use. You just had to hook it up to your own TV screen. The only thing I remember doing with mine was making a "choose your own adventure" kind of game, like the books of the same name.

My last year of University was 1970 and I took the most advanced undergrad computer course available then. As alluded to earlier the university had an IBM 360 in the basement of the engineering building that we never went near. Our input was via punchcards. We programmed with Fortran IV and it was hell troubleshooting your programs. We would hand in our cards and get a print-out the next day. If you had any kind of error either in program design or syntax the program would stop and you would get your print-out back with an error message at the point where the program stopped. We were allowed a total of 3 minutes of computer time for a full 8 month course. No additional time available. Our final exam consisted of programming a standard solitare game that would autorun until you won or ran out of moves.

The first computer I actually owned was a KayPro II. I purchased it with part of the proceeds of a consulting job in 1982. I primarily used it for word processing and some engineering models using the included spreadsheet software. I didn't bother trying to learn a programming language that would run on the machine. It ran the CP/M operating system. Years later, I gave the carcass to a colleague to use as part of an art project.



After the KayPro, I bought an IBM "Portable" PC in about 1985. My physique at the time was close to the minimum required to make either this computer or the KayPro actually portable. Each machine had two 5.25" floppy disk drives but no hard drive. The KayPro drives had 191kB capacity per disk -- don't recall for the IBM. I later added a 20MB hard drive to the IBM.

After that machine, I moved to Macintosh and have never returned to the dark side.

Quote: kenarman

... 3 minutes of computer time for a full 8 month course. ...

Yes, back then "computer time" was the big thing, and it got leased out, bought and sold for vast sums of money supposedly. Yet students paying thousands of dollars in tuition were given millions of dollars worth of this time. I was quite suspicious of these claims.

Quote: Wizard

No, I think the Sinclair was sold ready to use. You just had to hook it up to your own TV screen. The only thing I remember doing with mine was making a "choose your own adventure" kind of game, like the books of the same name.

According to the link you provided, the Sinclair was sold both assembled and as a kit.

BTW By the mid 80s a friend and I tried to write a text-based adventure game, like Zork. He would write the software and I'd do the adventure, characters, etc. It took us two months to realize we really had no idea what we were doing :)

That was the kind of thing I liked to do too. I also made mostly text based story games for the Apple II. Apple II games like Sherwood Forest and Odyssey were the kind of games I was trying to make myself, but never came up with anything good.

My first computer was the first commercially produced computer for the consumer market.
The TRS-80 Model I, Level 1. 4K Ram. Cassette tape, no disks.


I later upgraded to Level 2, 48K and two disk drives.

Then I heard that a Radio Shack Computer Center was opening near my house. I found the guy who would be the manager, working at another Radio Shack until the new store was ready. I interviewed with him. My attitude during the interview was that he already hired me, and that this was more like a second interview. Yeah, he hired me by the end of the meeting. I was 19 at the time.

A few months later the store opened. A few months after that, we were the number 1 store for sales in the Radio Shack chain.

A few months after that, I got a Model III, and, with no reason to keep the Model I, I opened it up and put it in a display case in the store, running some silly graphics thing. It was still in the display case, running, when I quit a couple years later.

Quote: Wizard

That was the kind of thing I liked to do too. I also made mostly text based story games for the Apple II. Apple II games like Sherwood Forest and Odyssey were the kind of games I was trying to make myself, but never came up with anything good.

I came up with a time travel adventure loosely based on Asimov's "The End Of Eternity." I forget the details, but essentially the hero had to find eight pieces of a machine scattered all over Time. He would then assemble the pieces into a machine that could travel in Physiotime (this makes no sense if you haven't read the novel), in order to successfully end Eternity.

But really it was nowhere near as good as the novel.

I think I remember Sherwood Forest. It was a partly graphic text adventure about Robin Hood, right?

But my favorite games for the Apple II were Lode Runner and Karateka.

That sounds like a good book to read.

Yes, Sherwood Forest was a graphic adventure where you gave simple text commands about what you wanted to go and do. Like of like the Leisure Suit Larry games. However, Sherwood Forest was very hard. At some points you had to put in commands that I would have never thought of. I only know this from getting hints from other players. I don't know of anybody who has ever finished the game.

I did all the levels in Lode Runner, as well as the Windows game. Kareteka I have not heard of.

Quote: Wizard

That sounds like a good book to read.

Oh, it is. It's Asimov's best novel

Quote:

Yes, Sherwood Forest was a graphic adventure where you gave simple text commands about what you wanted to go and do. Like of like the Leisure Suit Larry games. However, Sherwood Forest was very hard. At some points you had to put in commands that I would have never thought of. I only know this from getting hints from other players. I don't know of anybody who has ever finished the game.

I played it only briefly. I do recall a point in the game where you had to torch a bale of hay to find a needle. But many games of that time were like that. My friends and I would play Zork and other Infocom games for hours, but we only made real progress when we bought the clue books and maps. About the only one where I could make progress on my own was The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and then only because I knew the odd things that happened in the novel (like what to do with a towel, or a babel fish.

Early in the PC era I found a large collection of Infocom games for PC, complete with clue books and maps. I wonder where I put those disks.

Quote:

I did all the levels in Lode Runner, as well as the Windows game. Kareteka I have not heard of.

My version of Lode Runner had a level editor. My brother came up with a lot of interesting new levels.

Karateka was a simple karate-based game. You'd face progressively harder opponents, until you got to the top bad guy. Once you managed to defeat him, you' rescued the princess and she'd kiss your character. Even then you had to do it right, though. If your character ran up to the princess, she'd kick you and kill your pixelated man :)

Quote: Nareed

I do recall a point in the game where you had to torch a bale of hay to find a needle.

Yes! I have not thought about burning that bale of hay to find the needle in almost 30 years. If you searched the burnt hay a second time, didn't you find something else? Burning the hay was one of those things I never thought to do on my own, somebody else gave me the hint.

My brother and I made lots of levels on Lode Runner and played each other's levels. My son and I did that with the Windows Lode Runner as well, which is a darn good game.

Quote: Wizard

Yes! I have not thought about burning that bale of hay to find the needle in almost 30 years. If you searched the burnt hay a second time, didn't you find something else? Burning the hay was one of those things I never thought to do on my own, somebody else gave me the hint.

That sounds right, but I wouldn't swear to it. But burning it the first time wasn't an easy determination to make. In Zork at one point you find yourself at a dead-end room with a mirror on a wall. You're supposed to rub the mirror (?), which teleports you to another mirror room elsewhere in the maze. How the hell are you supposed to even try that?

If you broke the mirror, though, the game told you you'd earned 7 years bad luck :)

Quote:

My brother and I made lots of levels on Lode Runner and played each other's levels. My son and I did that with the Windows Lode Runner as well, which is a darn good game.

I didn't know there was a windows version. I'll have to look it up.

The first computer I had was a Heathkit H8. Had to put it together yourself. It had no monitor, only a 1 line, 8 number LED display, and also had no hard drive / long-term memory. Once you unplugged it, everything was lost. It had to be programmed in Octal. I spent an entire Saturday punching in assembly language code to play a miniature version of Battleship (one ship on each side) that I had spent about 3 months writing to begin with. I played the game one time, turned off the H8.

Interestingly, my dad later used the H8 for a short time as a security system for his house.

After that, I got an H89. Had an actual monitor!

The first computer I remember using was the AppleIIe. The best thing about computer lab was the last 5 minutes when we got to play Oregon Trail. Best game ever -- I might have to see if I can find a simulator online.

Anyone else still try to play the old games that only run on DOS? I have an ancient computer that I keep around to play one game I can't quite seem to totally tire of.

You can play old games on your new PC with an emulator like DOSBOX. It lets you control the speed and refresh rate so the game doesn't run on turbo...