Comments on: Old Computer Ads

By: Paul

Paul — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 00:31:00 +0000

My first computer was an Apple ][ plus — I still have it, though I doubt that it will boot up from its 2 system floppy disks. I had learned Basic on Commodore Pet 2000 computers (with tape drives for saving your work — conventional cassette tapes were the media!) back in high school (early 80′s).

I also remember programming in Basic on an old Sinclair PC. 100k of RAM. Basically (so to speak), your code had to fit on the visible screen — anything that scrolled off the top was lost forever…

Even earlier than that, I took beginner Basic lessons at the Lawrence Hall Of Science in Berkeley after school when I was in grade school. We used teletype machines that were connected to a mainframe. We saved and loaded our code from paper tape — kind of like punch cards Jack Kerouac style. I even remember when LHS got a few of the very first touch-screen computer terminals — I think they were called “Xeno” or something.

Ah, the good, old days…

By: Chris Higgins

Chris Higgins — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 18:31:00 +0000

Shasta — we had that game for the PC! Decathlon. Crazy. In my memory, the stick figure was *amazingly* well animated. I wonder what I’d think if I saw it today. :)

By: Shasta

Shasta — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 18:21:00 +0000

I’m loving this comments section! Our first computer was an Apple IIe. Sagey, above, mentions the Olympics decathlon game. It was AWESOME! Whenever the Summer Olympics roll around, I flash back to days in front of the old Apple trying to make the stick figure run really fast across the screen by pressing two buttons, then hitting the space bar to make it jump. When I think about what games are like nowadays compared to that, it blows my mind.

By: D. Allen

D. Allen — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 04:39:00 +0000

I was somewhere between 5-6 when I got my hands on a VIC 20. I’ve later had a C-64 and then an Atari 65XE. That was my main source of games which were copied from code in COMPUTE! Magazine. I used a tape drive mostly since cassettes were more readily available than diskettes.

By: Steve

Steve — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 13:14:00 +0000

Beyond early video game systems, my first exposure to a computer-ish thing didn’t come until the Brother word processor that my parents bought me for Christmas back in 1991 for my final semester of undergrad schooling and grad school. That was also the year that one of my roomies had an Apple IIE on which I played a whole lot of Wizardry and some outer space smuggler game….

By: John

John — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 23:22:00 +0000

A TRS-80 (“Trash 80″) with twin 8″ floppy drives, playing Infocom’s “Zork” – where you have to pick up the lamp and light it before being eaten by a Grue!

By: Michelle

Michelle — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 21:57:00 +0000

I have two IBM PC-XTs, recovered from other folks’ trash. They take so long to complete the POST that at first I thought they were dead. These cost about $5000 in 1983 dollars (quality stuff) and just might still be running when I can recover quad cores from the trash to replace them…

By: Anthony

Anthony — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 18:06:00 +0000

My Dad worked for Texas Instruments, so when they got out of the home computer business, he picked up every piece of peripheral equipment (floppy drive, memory expansion, RS-232 interface) that existed for a TI 99-4A, plus pretty much every program ever released for it (and a bunch that never were), plus every book that taught you how to program the thing. I did some low level programming, lost interest, and added a TV tuner to the color monitor and watched TV on it.

By: Josh

Josh — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 16:20:00 +0000

I had an Apple IIgs was back in the mid 80s. It was high-tech, top-of-the-line. I used to play all those old Sierra games…

and I had AppleLink, which became AmericaOnline. It was awesome to dial in (2400bps) and post on message boards and chat. I had NO IDEA how big that would become, but I was hooked from the beginning. (Oh, not to mention that when it got a busy signal, it called a different number… sometimes not a local one. My parents were less than thrilled with THOSE phone bills)

Recaptcha: an oddly poetic ‘circling clock’

By: Sagey

Sagey — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 16:04:00 +0000

That is hysterical. We were just talking to our kids about old computers last night and how the originals took up an entire building! We were way ahead of the curve too when I was a kid, I think we got our first Apple in 77 or 78. Does anyone remember that Olympic Decathlon Game?