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What And When Was Your First Computer Experience?

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Pilsner Panther

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40 is "over the hill" not 30, and I won't soften when I near 40 either. Follow the simple rules or eventually get tossed, it's that simple.

All was quiet for awhile, then two banishments in two days. It's funny how that works.

Ouch! That puts me over the hill, and Rob down in the valley somewhere. Get off my lawn with that baseball bat, you young whippersnapper!

I guess that on the internet, now that practically anyone can have access, you're dealing with a random sample of the population: everyone from nuclear physicists to inbred circus freaks who live in tarpaper shacks... I can walk over to the San Francisco Main Library any day of the week and see grubby street people standing in line to use the computers and check their e-mail. Really.

I'll prove that I am old: I can remember when the web consisted of ARPANET, USENET, and TYMNET, and was limited mainly to government types and computer geeks at Stanford and M.I.T. and U.C. Berkeley. In, say, 1986, there were probably no more than 20,000 people on the whole thing. The word "troll" meant a character in a fairy tale, and nothing more than that.

This is a whole different subject, and maybe I ought to split the topic (I will if anyone's interested in pursuing it). But to make the point succinctly, the democritization of the internet has been exactly that— it's accessible to dimwits and pencil-neck geeks who never would have known it existed, even five years ago.

So, you get the occasional "creative speller" like our most recently banned twerp. They don't pop up with any regularity, but they do pop up— which makes moderating a board kind of like playing Whack-A-Mole!

 ;)

Recent photo of Pils:

 



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Offline Giff me dat fill-em!

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Hey, Pils, I can go back farther than that ... how about using a BBS (bulletin board service) to chat on? That almost pre-dates the internet, or at least was around in the web's "infancy". Heck, I can remember owning and using a 2400bps modem, but I know of folks who used as small as 300bps ones.
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Offline shemps#1

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Let's see, I remember when the internet was called the World Wide Web (hence the www at the beginning of websites, kiddies). My first modem was I believe a 1400bps, and it had Prodigy, which much like AOL came with it's own clunky interface that included a BBS, chat rooms, and a browser which sucked for surfing. It would later be named "Prodigy Classic" once the much simpler Prodigy Internet came out, and became pretty cheap to use until they discontinued it all together.
"Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day; teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime; give a man religion and he will die praying for a fish." - Unknown


Pilsner Panther

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I decided to split this topic off, since it's taken on a life of its own and it's an interesting subject. So, everyone, here's the question: do you remember what your first experience with a computer was? I'm not talking about pumping quarters into a video game, I mean the first time you had a PC or an Apple or whatever, of your own. Commodore or Sinclair, anyone? Now that's going back.

Mine was a TTY (teletype machine, that's what the abbreviation means, and it's still used), hooked up to one of Tymshare, Inc.'s mainframes. There was no screen, just a printout on a roll of paper. The machine itself was a DEC System 10, which was introduced in the mid-1970's; the first time I sat down at the keyboard was in 1980. These machines were about the size of two telephone booths, and were less powerful than the Pentium-based PC I've got on my desk right now. Tymshare is long gone, but their TYMNET, which was set up sometime around 1970, was one of the prototypes for the internet. For the first time, computer users could communicate with one another, but only via text messages.

Oh, and I was very young at the time.

 ;)



CURLYFAN

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I still have my ATARI 800 computer and my INDUS GT floppy drive and all of my 300 or so games and programs and I made many many many games and programs on my own too.




Offline shemps#1

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Well if you're going to talk first computer experience mine would be with the Commodore 64 and the Apple IIe at school. Both were basically video game systems under the guise of computers, but the IIe was (of course) designed for more educational games.

I also had a book with had pages and pages of programming language that you could type into the Commodore to "create" various games. I typed all the language in for one of the games (not a small feat for someone under 10) played the game, got pissed off because the game sucked balls and never picked up that stupid book again.
"Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day; teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime; give a man religion and he will die praying for a fish." - Unknown


Offline JazzBill

I'm on my first computer now, and everyday I usually find something new to do. Now I'm into that "MySpace" site.  I always heard bad things about that site (perverts and such), but I was checking out Pilsners site (music)and its a little gold mine of great stuff. Pils, that Al Duval guy is a great find. I guess if your looking for trouble you can find it any where.
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Pilsner Panther

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I'm on my first computer now, and everyday I usually find something new to do. Now I'm into that "MySpace" site.  I always heard bad things about that site (perverts and such), but I was checking out Pilsners site (music)and its a little gold mine of great stuff. Pils, that Al Duval guy is a great find. I guess if your looking for trouble you can find it any where.

I've got to give credit where it's due, JazzBill, that's a tribute site that was put together by AniLu and Lola. They did it without telling me first, but I don't mind, in fact I'm flattered. Also, it's encouraging that these girls, who are 16 and 19, like the old-timey music. At least they're not all into hip-hop, much to my relief. There's hope for civilization yet!

 ;D

Oh, and I managed to dig up a picture of a DEC System 10, complete with the teletype machine. That was how you communicated with the computer, along with throwing switches on the front panel.  It really looks like it's right out of a 70's sci-fi movie, doesn't it? Those two giant reel-to-reel tape drives on the right had less storage capacity than a modern CD-ROM!

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Offline Waldo Twitchell

That would be the TRS-80 (circa 1982) which Radio Shack made (I think). Then, a friend of mine got a VIC 20 with a tape drive about six months later. I took the plunge in 1984 with the Commodore 64 and upgraded to a disk drive! I bought a book soon afterward called 'Astronomy on Your Computer' loaded with BASIC programs. To this day, I only bothered typing in a handful of them - mostly the short ones!

 


Offline Giff me dat fill-em!

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I would have to go with Shemps#1 and Waldo and say my first experience was with a TRS-80 I "rented" from the local library, but soon after I purchased my only (and all too missed) Commodore 64 with 5 1/4" floppy drive. I can readily say that the Commodore was easier to use than the TRS-80 with its "turtle" interface ... yuck! The Commodore allowed the user to construct (in its application program) "Sprites" that consisted of a a grid of (I think) 16 by 16 squares [or maybe more ... can't remember, just remember drawing a grid while at work one day, and being berated by my boss for "wasting time" when he caught me drawing pictures in a grid pattern] in which you could draw any shape, figure, or Donkey-Kong that you wanted. I remember selling the Commodore, but I now wish I hadden't!! (even though a few keyboard keys didn't work too well, and the external floppy drive was a pain to access). The oldest computer I now am in possesion of is an AT&T XT computer (with the "green screen"). I also have a Tandy 1000, which I'll always treasure.

WAIT!!! I take it all back! My FIRST computer was a (believe it or not) game of PONG ... I played it on a black-and-white TV set ... for hours and hours on end. My ex-wife made me get rid of it (the crumb!).
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Offline Dunrobin

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My first "experience" with a computer was at Brigade HQ at Fort Dix, in 1973, when one of the sergeants there showed me how they "programmed" the daily personnel reports into the post computer system (using a strip of paper with holes punched into it.)  But that doesn't really count, since I didn't use the system myself.

My first computer of my own was a used Commodore Vic-20 that I bought at a used book store in Tucson (along with a spiral-bound book of programs that you could type in and save on an audio cassette tape).  That was back in 1983, and I soon "moved up" to a Commodore 64, which I think is still in a box somewhere down in the basement.

My first actual PC was an Acer 386, with a clock speed of 25 MHz (which could "turbo" up to 50!), 4 MB of RAM, 40 MB hard-drive, and a brand-spanking new 14,400 eternal modem.  I got it from the company I worked for, in exchange for a database program that I wrote in Paradox for DOS to track the company's purchase orders and inventory.

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Offline jrvass

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"Rented": A ??? mainframe at college in 1980 that I couldn't code Fortran into if my life depended on it.

1st owned: An '85 IBM PC-XT with 2 floppy drives and 256K RAM.

Own now: Dell 8600 Inspiron Laptop, docking station, 19" flat panel monitor, and 1.6G RAM. THX surround sound, etc.

But at work I spend most of my day at a Dell desktop something with an electric cupholder(!), programming IDMS/COBOL/JCL on a ??? mainframe. I'm like Tutor the Turtle... "Twizzle twazzle twizzle twome, time for this one to come home. Be what you is, not what you is not, those that do is the happiest lot."

This link seems appropriate for the discussion. The commentary is pretty funny too:

http://www.lileks.com/institute/compupromo/index.html

James

PS. Why do I feel cheated for buying a LED calculator that could only add, subtract, multiply, and divide, in 1975 for $25.00? A couple years later those models were free promo giveaways!
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Offline JazzBill

Looking at those Compu-Promo pictures kind of reminds me of the set for the original Star-Trek TV series. Which makes sense because thats pretty much the same time period.
 
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Offline Dunrobin

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That Compu-Promo site is great, James.  Thanks for the link!

I particularly liked the last line on the final page (which shows a computer system sold to Amtrak back in 1972):

Remember: your iPod has more storage capacity than everything in this room.   ;D


Pilsner Panther

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I love James Lileks' sardonic sense of humor, but not his (Republican) politics. That said, he does a good job of keeping them separate on his website.

This thread wouldn't be complete without a mention and a picture of ENIAC, the first truly electronic computer— all vacuum tubes, thousands of them, to produce the kind of processing power you now get in a $10 pocket calculator. Notice the large ventilating fans in the ceilling; without them, it would have gotten broiling hot in that room!

I'll award one Absolutely Worthless Trivia Point (TM) to anyone who knows what ENIAC was invented for. Hint: the purpose was a military one.

ENIAC was satirized by Kurt Vonnegut in his first novel, "Player Piano," (1952) as "IPECAC," a Godlike machine that supposedly had the answers to everything. Supposedly...

 [no]

That's still a very funny and pertinent book, by the way.

[thumbsup]





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Offline jrvass

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I'll award one Absolutely Worthless Trivia Point (TM) to anyone who knows what ENIAC was invented for. Hint: the purpose was a military one.

I'll byte.  ;)  Calculating bomb shell trajectories.

James
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Offline Dunrobin

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Pretty close.  From Wikipedia: "ENIAC was designed and built to calculate artillery firing tables for the U.S. Army's Ballistics Research Laboratory."

BTW, ENIAC stands for Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer.


Pilsner Panther

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Drat... with all the information that's available online, I can't stump anybody! I guess there's no such thing as an obscure question any more. I'll try a visual instead, so you can't look it up: what is this device?

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Offline Dunrobin

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I'm not sure, but I'll hazard a guess.  Is that part of Charles Babbage's mechanical computer?


Pilsner Panther

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I'm not sure, but I'll hazard a guess.  Is that part of Charles Babbage's mechanical computer?

Absolutely correct, Rob. For that, you get two worthless trivia points. That's an old Scientific American cover, from about ten years ago. I liked the illustration so much that I scanned it and saved it.

A friend of mine who's a true computer geek once joked that if Babbage had been able to build his machine and fire it up, the first thing to come out of the printer would have been:

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Offline jrvass

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It looks like an "undecided" ascii smiley with an afro.  :-\

James
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Because your belly sticks out farther than your Dickey-Do!


Pilsner Panther

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It looks like an "undecided" ascii smiley with an afro.  :-\

James

No, no..! It's supposed to be a 19th-century DOS prompt on antique paper. The first-ever "C" prompt, get it?

Still, your interpretation isn't so bad...

 [duck]



Offline JazzBill

It looks like an "undecided" ascii smiley with an afro.  :-\

James
I agree with you jrvass, Rob & Pils lost me a long time ago .( The Show- offs ) ???
But I do see a smiley face with an afro.
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Offline triso

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Wow!  A real Atari 800.  Keep that for another 25 years and it will be as rare as some of these stooge shorts.  My friends and I are stuck using an emulator for all our vintage machines.  Our consensus is that the best one is at http://atari800.sourceforge.net/ for the Atari 800 series.

Have you considered releasing your games for us folk who use emulators?  It would be interesting to see something other than the commercial stuff.
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Offline FineBari3

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We have an Odyssey system that is going up on Ebay as soon as we make sure it works. It is still in its original box and has lots of games!

I think this thing is from around 1980.....I remember it being pretty impressive next to Pong! 

I remember using the Apple II in elementary school around 1980 or so, and also using a Macintosh around 1984.  My first computer at home was a Mac Classic, with NO hard drive! I also remember finding out about USENET in 1990 and used to read a couple of newsgroups regularly until a year or so ago.
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Offline kinderscenen

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Hmmm....I would say, 1983, on an Apple IIE with a COLOR monitor. For some reason, they let the so-called "smart kids" loose with this thing, while the adults acted like it was both the greatest thing since sliced bread or would burst into flames if they so much as touched a wrong key.  If I recall correctly, we amused ourselves with "Math Blaster" for an hour or two.  It wasn't much, even at 8 years old, I knew computers had to get better than this!

I think I was a senior in high school when I used what would later be (or was already called) the internet.  Even at 17, I knew that the internet just had to get better than playing chess via Prodigy! The teacher was marvelling over the fact that this would be the future.  I think I made a smart-alecky comment that it would be better used for gambling and porn. Too bad I didn't put my comments into action--I could've been a billionaire!  >:D
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Offline Bruckman

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First computer experience: having my name typed out on a piece of teletype paper, in code, when I was 6, at some kind of "open house" night at New England Telephone. (My mother worked in the Dial Bureau, the billing section). Little did I know that 13 years later I'd be working in that very same building as a long-distance operator.

First time on a keyboard: grade 10, when we had to write a program to solve a geometry equation. Don't ask me what language this was in or what kind of equipment I used: all I remember is (1) it took a lot longer than doing it longhand; (2) the keyboard, which was the size of a large electric typewriter mounted on a pedestal, was in one room, the printer, a teletype-looking machine, was in another, and (3) I kept forgetting to space properly, resulting in numerous "!" error messages. This experience so scarred me I wouldn't go near a computer for 15 years and have never made my peace with them. I routinely holler at mine, didn't even acquire an email account until 2000, and still use an old electric typewriter to compose snail mail correspondence. (Not much longer, unfortunately, as you can no longer get ribbon for the machine and several of the keys have lost their caps. I give the machine until the end of the year, if I don't use it much). I still consider email the bastard child of real correspondence, which by rights comes in an envelope and isn't so likely to be monitored by unwanted eyes.

First time on the Internet: 1997.

First post on a forum or message board: 2001, about the time I realized that technology was sweeping away everything I'd familiarized myself with up to that time. (I spent a lot of time in the woods, otherwise this epiphany would've occurred sooner).
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Gorilla Watson

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I had a plain ol' word processor in the early 90's that I hardly remember anything about, except it was all one piece and I think it was a Zenith.