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Posted (edited)

Great thread, I thanked the particular post that had certain, shall me say, resonance with me :D

 

The one I'd pick out though is the volume on the Speccy. Gawd, takes me back! We had the 16k model and a tape deck with a broken play button. Not only did you waste 5 minutes loading Jetpac at the wrong volume - rewind, start again - but once you got the volume set just right, the clothes peg that held the play button down would jump out and fly half way across the room :D

 

 

EDIT: and I miss CRT monitors - fullstop. At college we gave each other pretty big electric shocks by holding the screen in one hand and zapping passers by with the other. The effect was particularly good if you got a chain of people holding hands. Person on one end of the chain touching the screen, person at the other end of the chain resetting pacemakers...

Edited by tmcd35
Posted (edited)
Didn't the turbo button actually under clock the CPU?

 

Yes, it used to clock it down to 8MHz so that software designed for old XTs which were directly tied to the computers clock speed wouldn't run too quickly.

 

I had a friend back in school who worked out how to change the clock speed display on his PC by holding down the reset button and he was convinced that changing it from 80 to 40 (say) would slow the PC down to 50% of the speed. He wouldn't be told otherwise. It was quite funny when he changed the "slow" speed to 80MHz and the real speed to a lower number and left the PC slower :)

Edited by Norphy
  • Thanks 1
Posted (edited)
"Try telling the youngsters of today that - an' they'll not believe you"

 

(can't believe I was the first to post that oldie from MPFC)

 

Floodgates opened... here goes:

 

What is all this new fangled technology?

 

When I started in IT, we had to manually identify the sectors on the mass storage device where you wanted the file to go, and then write the file to the device. These self-indexing floppy disks made is far to easy.

 

Here is a real input device, [ATTACH=CONFIG]17510[/ATTACH]; not of your electronic VDUs. This was back in the days we were "in computing", never "in IT".

 

For the pedantic, this is the actual input device [ATTACH=CONFIG]17511[/ATTACH]

 

 

Input devices? Absolute luxury.

 

It were all ones and zeros in my day. Times were so hard, we ran out of ones and we had to make do with lower case 'L's.

 

But we were 'appy.

 

Edited by jinnantonnixx
  • Thanks 2
Posted (edited)
LAN Parties with 3 mates, your 19" CRT's and Coax network cables!

 

"Have you got any terminators?", "I thought you had them from last time?!"

 

LAN party you say.....? I'm not in this photo but I did take it - and we were using Token Ring....

 

http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4004/4483351661_0e411fdb9e.jpg

 

I am in this one though.

 

http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4035/4483687059_283fab18ff.jpg

Edited by mattx
  • Thanks 1
Posted

Input devices? Absolute luxury.

 

It were all ones and zeros in my day. Times were so hard, we ran out of ones and we had to make do with lower case 'L's.

 

But we were 'appy.

 

 

Lower case L's, spoilt!

 

We had to beat the corner out of a J with a rusty ammer! And it were minus 5 and dark!

Posted
My Fav was IBMDOS.

I still use a 21 inch monitor for my photo work with a degauss button. Some of the youngsters on here won't even know what we are talking about.

 

Place an old CRT upside down for a few hours and see what a newbie technician does :confused: .

Posted

Surprised no-one has talked about changing platters yet!

 

Being called a sad, old fart that is jumping on the bandwagon because I had a 1st gen iPod Mini ... and that Apple kit was for young people. I was only just turned 30!!!

Posted

MY first computer was the Amstrad cpc 464. When I was about 11 I got an Amiga 500 which I loved. I actually got through a few of them but really really wanted the Amiga 1200 which was a 32bit machine.

 

Fondly remember playing endless hours on Rick Dangerous.

Posted

Also when your first taste of real grammer was text adventures.

 

"CLUNK CLICK EVERY TRIP"

 

____ PUT ON THE SEAT BELT.

 

YOU CAN'T DO THAT. "CLUNK CLICK EVERY TRIP"

 

______SIT DOWN AND PUT ON THE SEAT BELT

 

YOU CAN'T DO THAT. "CLUNK CLICK EVERY TRIP"

 

___ PUT ON THE FRIGGIN SEATBELT

 

YOU CAN'T DO THAT. "CLUNK CLICK EVERY TRIP"

Posted (edited)
I remember buying a 450Mb hard drive from bowlers, and playing castle wolfenstein :) Edited by DT2
  • Thanks 1
Posted
Yes, it used to clock it down to 8MHz so that software designed for old XTs which were directly tied to the computers clock speed wouldn't run too quickly.

 

I had a friend back in school who worked out how to change the clock speed display on his PC by holding down the reset button and he was convinced that changing it from 80 to 40 (say) would slow the PC down to 50% of the speed. He wouldn't be told otherwise. It was quite funny when he changed the "slow" speed to 80MHz and the real speed to a lower number and left the PC slower :)

 

My mate once installed Windows 95 on a 486 DX2 66, it took two and a bit days, mainly because he'd accidentally turned the turbo off...

He's still never lived it down. I've seen to that. ;)

  • Thanks 1
Posted
LAN party you say.....? I'm not in this photo but I did take it - and we were using Token Ring....

 

http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4004/4483351661_0e411fdb9e.jpg

 

I am in this one though.

 

http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4035/4483687059_283fab18ff.jpg

 

What game were you playing?

Posted
I remember buying a 450Mb hard drive from bowlers, and playing castle wolfenstein :)

450Mb! Luxury! The first HD I installed was 5Mb and external! (Attached to an Apricot F1)

Posted

I love these threads.

Of course, we had it tough, We had to stick iron filings to cardboard discs with PVA glue and then hold little magnets above it with tweezers to detect the ones and zero's by feeling the deflection AND calculate parity while keeping the disc spinning at exactly 33rpm with only a broken metronome to judge the time by. Young people today don't know their born!

  • Thanks 1
Posted
As promised - The most boring 30 second clip ever - Degaussing my Mitsubishi Diamond Pro 21TX which still works after all these years....... Ignore the kids noise - they were having a nerf gun fight.

 

 

 

 

Pah automatic Degaussing, Where is your degaussing gun youngster? :)

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