Reminiscing Moments in ICT

[Netwacky87]

Just sitting here thinking about old school times and things popped into my head, such as,

 

Netscape Navigator...used to use this in my ICT lessons (used to love the logo tbf!) we had a star trek based intranet! Thought it was amazing when I was 7!

Playing Quake 2 on the LAN, Was a brilliant game!

Hanging around a science classroom browsing through Network Neighbourhood (Windows NT) ! Going through the Tech's C: drive because he hadnt setup the security right...

 

Ahhhh Happy Days! Anybody got anything they would like to reminisce about?

[rich_tech]

using my old compuserve account (lol when it was account numbers e.g. 111398972 - predating email addresses), to download a copy of doom (shareware) on a 19.2k modem, via a "local" access point of cardiff at the time - took about 4 hours going flat out. (god I feel old now)

 

I can even remember spry mosaic as a browser

[Netwacky87]

Ohhhh Compuserve, I always remember having a 19.2k modem and whenever you launched the Compuserve browser there was a woman's voice that said "Welcome To Compuserve!" ahhhhh!

[laserblazer]

I can remember using infonet in 1990 with a 300 baud modem. I then got a 1200/300 modem and no longer had time to make a cuppa whilst a page downloaded. I had a list of numbers around the world that I could dial into. Then I got a laptop with a builtin 2.4k modem. Someone told me that was the fastest practical speed a telephone line could handle.

[X-13]

Someone told me that was the fastest practical speed a telephone line could handle.

 

So, as usual, the sales team make up "facts".

 

 

god I feel old now

 

You're making me feel young. Really, really young.

 

 

And it's not nice. So, stop it.

Edited March 13, 2012 by X-13

[TechMonkey]

Installing Quake on to our college network from 13 floppy disks. Much fun had after that! Ohh and editing someone elses background to have a yellow submarine as he was soooo proud of his Quicksilver background he had 'hacked' on to the system

 

Earlier was that lander game on the Acorn's that no one knew what you had to do (if anything) and hardly anyone could control.

 

Even earlier was Grannies Garden

[synaesthesia]

REmember compuserve, but not fondly!

ICQ'98! Wow - I think i remember my ICQ number still!

Quake 2 at school? Damn you youngsters Wolf 3d all the way here! Although in the last year we did more Virtual Pool than Turbo Pascal

Started Quakeworld (Quake1 online) in 1996 at home.

 

A few months ago I had a clearout of old stuff. I found an old, golden coloured CDR. One speed. Handily marked "Stuff." It hadn't seen the light of day for years, so I popped it in the drive.

Savegames. Carmageddon. Quake 2 (and config files for it). Grand Prix 2. A version of redhat linux so old it was in a folder called "FDD version". It was in fact one of the very first CD's I had burned, back when a single CDR disc cost a tenner and the drive (a twin speed, I hasten to add! No re-write though ) was a shade under £250!

 

Other than that, I remember paying the ICT technician (also the teacher) at school 20 pence for 10 minutes of surfing via the schools only connection, a 24.4k modem

 

At Junior school was first exposure to computers. They had two (and were well off for it) - an RM Nimbus which replaced a Cub half way through it's life, and an Acorn of some description.

[X-13]

Installing Quake on to our college network from 13 floppy disks.

 

 

Diskworld. 26 disks. [iIRC]

 

 

I think I still have it knocking around indoors.

[synaesthesia]

No wonder it was called diskworld

[X-13]

No wonder it was called diskworld

 

I didn't even play it.

 

Also, it was on a Tiny Computer.

 

 

Which was obsolete as we took it home. I think it cost around £1000. But, I'm not sure.

 

 

Also, you forgot your coat.

 

 

he had 'hacked' on to the system

 

 

I found and edited the Windows 98 animation to be Tux. [i totally didn't read your post properly... Hence, the fragmented replies.]

Edited March 13, 2012 by X-13

[Sirbendy]

Audio coupler modems and rotary dial phones. One knock and it's bye-bye data integrity.

 

8inch floppy disks and drives like twin tubs. Reel to Reel tape drives with the "suction tubes". Line at a time impact printers with acoustic shielding. ST-506 MFM/RLL drives with stepper motors that got out of alignment at certain temperatures leading to no boot. "Big red power switches" on IBMs.

 

MDA/CGA/EGA adapter cards, full length ISA..haha...memories..RAM ISA expanders with individual 16 leg chips in banks...

 

Oh dear, oh dear...I still have an MDA card in a cabinet somewhere..

[X-13]

8inch floppy disks

 

Show off.

 

 

Reel to Reel tape drives with the "suction tubes".

 

 

[/Frankie_Howerd]

 

 

[sonofsanta]

I remember Netscape 4.2... and then a few years later, I remember trying to code CSS for it, and now I have only bitter hatred towards it.

 

I remember going into the old computer lab running Win3.1 to program random games in QBasic at lunch. No way to save the work once you were done so it was a new game every day.

 

Swapping copied floppies in the playground at school for my Amiga, despite being told

(not that I saw that until years later online, but still, any excuse to drop it in)

[X-13]

From the sounds of it, I was born too late for shenanigans.

 

And too early for awesome tech like replicators and teleporters.

 

 

#BornIn1988Problems

[Andrew_C]

Becoming "Elite". You have to be old enough to understand...

[tech_guy]

I must be sad as I came across this the other day and went all nostalgic:

 

[sonofsanta]

I must be sad as I came across this the other day and went all nostalgic:

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]13314[/ATTACH]

 

I might change my background for old time's sake

 

 

@X-13... there is no way I am ever getting into a teleporter, knowing how they work. I'm all for assisted suicide and voluntary euthanasia, but only when I'm actually terminally ill, not just when I can't be bothered to drive the hour to work :/

[sted]

all the screaming awful faxesq noises frm loading a tape game on a sectrum (not mine had an acorn electron).

Games like turrican 2 on the amiga

dragging a pc (p120) to the pub on a wednesday evening to play lan games with friends mainly duke nukem (i think i spent more time making levels than playing it lol) or command and conquer

colege introduced te new win98 and did a poor job of locking it down so using ie renamed sage acounts on al pcs to sage and onion

 

remembe playing a lot of virtual pool as well

[X-13]

@X-13... there is no way I am ever getting into a teleporter, knowing how they work. I'm all for assisted suicide and voluntary euthanasia, but only when I'm actually terminally ill, not just when I can't be bothered to drive the hour to work :/

 

 

The whole "destroy, transmit, re-create" creeping you out?

 

Don't worry. We'll test it on the French first. Make sure you keep your memories and what-not.

[HarryMonkey]

Whilst I've been working in IT since the 70s (on ICL 1903T running GEO III),I got my first PC in the mid 80s, an Amstrad 1640 with a huuuuge 20 meg hard drive and a GEM interface. (Although I had previously had a CPC 6128 running CP/M).

 

Many happy evenings spent with Leisure Suit Larry, Police Quest and Space Quest.

[Dos_Box]

Rex lies in wait! (really showing my age here).

Spending a fortune on a Voodoo 2 card then playing Quake II and never looking back.

Getting my first CD burner and watching the stack of failed disks grow higher and higher. I don't know what failed more, the burner or Win 98. All hail CD writer buffer technologies!

Playing Star Raiders on a friends Atari 400.

[6Foot2]

When I was doing my 'O' Levels our Biology teacher built his own computer. This pre BBC Master days and so, as I recall, it was our first experience of seeing a computer up close. He wrote a program to run on it that gave the user the task of navigating a maze [viewed from the users' perspective at 'ground level]

 

The graphics resolution was very low and mono. Despite this we were suitably impressed by his computing prowess.

[sonofsanta]

The whole "destroy, transmit, re-create" creeping you out?

 

Don't worry. We'll test it on the French first. Make sure you keep your memories and what-not.

 

Have you read Kraken by China Mieville? It has a rather creepy demonstration of the whole "being atomised every time and hoping your new clone continues in a manner you would be happy with" angle.

 

 

Duke Nukem 3D's Build editor was brilliant... that and tinkering with rules.ini in Red Alert probably occupied a couple of years of my life. It's almost sad that I am so spoilt for choice with great games these days and can't devote myself utterly to a game like that anymore.

 

 

And Elite - did he ever actually release the algorithm that seeded the Universe for that? One of my favourite examples of efficient programming that, absolute genius.

 

Enough of this reminiscing! I have switch statistics to be collating. Wonder why I'm so easily distracted from such an exciting job...

[shenley]

Audio coupler modems and rotary dial phones. One knock and it's bye-bye data integrity.

 

8inch floppy disks and drives like twin tubs. Reel to Reel tape drives with the "suction tubes". "Big red power switches" on IBMs.

 

.

 

Oh dear, oh dear...I still have an MDA card in a cabinet somewhere..

 

I have a load stuff that I used in the big iron days. I still have a box of 8 inch floppy disks, and they are the expensive double sided, double density disks too (500kB). They date from when I worked on IBM System 34s, back in the 1980s. I have an 1200 foot reel of tape too, although a lot of it has gone. It's great for tying plants in the garden. I also have a Lace card, an IBM flowchart template and my most prized possession, an IBM System/360 Green Card. There is a PDP/8 programmers manual on my book self too.

[Oaktech]

being shown how to reset the platter and heads on a 100mb bull enterprise hard drive (about the size of an old school vertical spin dryer) following a head crash, i was 13 and on work experience!

 

Playing with some wierd cartridge storage things (about 8" square and about 2" thick) that went into a drive that looked like a beige toaster... still have no idea what they were.