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If you ... you might be an old geek. (Everyone join in) — Parallax Forums

If you ... you might be an old geek. (Everyone join in)

BeanBean Posts: 8,129
edited 2011-07-12 07:34 in General Discussion
If your first computer used a TV and a cassette player...you might be an old geek.

If you ever spent all day repeatedly trying to get a cassette program to load... you might be an old geek.

If your first computer had 4K of RAM or less... you might be an old geek.

If you ever used a 300 baud modem...you might be an old geek.

Bean
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Comments

  • schillschill Posts: 741
    edited 2011-04-26 18:01
    What if it came with a monitor that was just a converted B&W TV (painted silver)?
    How about 4K or less of RAM?
    Still got my Hayes Smartmodem 300 around somewhere. Very solid piece of hardware. Solidity matches the Epson MX-80 (although mine was a late model III I think - it's still around here somewhere, too).
  • Beau SchwabeBeau Schwabe Posts: 6,568
    edited 2011-04-26 18:11
    Ahhh ...
    - You might be an old geek if you figured out how to boost your 300 baud modem to auto negotiate with other BBS's to a whopping 450 baud!
    - You might be an old geek if you ever wrote a program that turned your modem into a war-dialer, allowing it to run all day while you were at school keeping a log of 'contacts' for you to call back later.

    -You might be an old geek if you ever hacked the Atari joystick ports and used them as OUTPUTs
    -You might be an old geek if you ever decoded Short wave Morse code on an Atari computer so that the message would display in readable text.

    - You might be an old geek if you had a keyboard character printout of Raquel Welch ... sorry had to throw that one in there ;-)

    - You might be an old geek if you are reading any of this stuff. :-)
  • Oldbitcollector (Jeff)Oldbitcollector (Jeff) Posts: 8,091
    edited 2011-04-26 18:16
    You might be an old geek if you waited an hour to download a 5k game from a warez BBS over a 300baud vic modem...

    You might be an old geek if your computer "was" the keyboard...

    You might be an old geek if you can hear the connect negotiation between two modems and "know" the speed...

    You might be an old geek if you know what Trumpet Winsock was...

    You might be an old geek if your favorite hardware device was designed by Chip Gracey back in the 80's.. :)

    OBC
  • mindrobotsmindrobots Posts: 6,506
    edited 2011-04-26 18:24
    Ha! Kids! We had switches and lights and 1K of memory......
    11001011 <load>
    10101111 <load>
    .
    .
    .
    11111111 <load>
    ....you guys were spoiled!!! Don't tell me you........... had a keyboard and BASIC, too???
  • RobotWorkshopRobotWorkshop Posts: 2,307
    edited 2011-04-26 18:30
    Or, if you used a Surplus Teletype machine with a 20mA loop interface connected to the Cassette port of a TRS-80 just to print out assembly listings. I can still hear all the clanking that it made to this day. Also, changing the crystal in the old EPSON MX-80 or MX-100 printers to overclock them and make them print faster.....

    Robert
  • localrogerlocalroger Posts: 3,452
    edited 2011-04-26 18:58
    If you ever used inch wide paper tape as a mass storage medium, and an electric pencil eraser with a reel on the business end to wind it back up when you were finished with it.

    If you ever submitted a program to the computer on Hollerith cards via a service window, and got your results back in a bin with your name on the printout.

    If you ever stayed up to 2 AM playing DECWAR on a 300 baud modem because DECWAR gave you so many advantages to compensate you for 300 baud play that you could smoke the guys playing at 1200 baud, even though you had a 1200 baud modem.

    If you ever connected your computer to the outside world by sticking the telephone handset into a physical box that had a microphone and speaker to couple with its speaker and mic.

    If you thought having an ACTUAL TV TELETYPE was the COOLEST THING EVER.

    If you have any idea at all what magnetic core memory is, or ever used a machine that depended on it for anything.

    If you ever used a Turing complete computer that did not have a single integrated circuit.

    Or even if you ever used a computer that was not based on a microprocessor or bit-slice set.

    Or even if you even know what a bit-slice set is, as opposed to a microprocessor...
  • fstanovichfstanovich Posts: 14
    edited 2011-04-26 18:58
    Ok, used punched cards to program a computer.
  • wjsteelewjsteele Posts: 697
    edited 2011-04-26 19:13
    Ok... I'm not old... just been doing this thing for a long time. :-) My first computer had a z80 and a whopping 1k of ram. I had a 300bps modem... used casettes... a b/w tv and had to build the computer from a kit. But I did it when I was 10!!! :-) Oh yeah... I didn't see anyone mention thermal or dot matrix printers!!!

    My BBS was called "The Cave" and I remember the monumentous day when I upgraded the Atari 400 it was running on to dual 1050 drives and 256k of ram!!! Oh yeah... I also remember swapping out the 300bps modems with Hayes 1200 modems! I had 4 of them puppies at one time!!!

    Bill
  • ElectricAyeElectricAye Posts: 4,561
    edited 2011-04-26 19:14
    Greased my ivory slide rule with mammoth lard melted in the skull cap of a saber-toothed tiger. But I'm not a geek.

    I'm just old.
  • BeanBean Posts: 8,129
    edited 2011-04-26 19:20
    If you ever translated assembly language to hex by hand to input into your computer (must be more than 100 instructions to count).

    If you remember using prodigy (bonus if you ever used compuserve).

    If you ever played the original "prince of persia" on the apple II.

    Bean.
  • Phil Pilgrim (PhiPi)Phil Pilgrim (PhiPi) Posts: 23,514
    edited 2011-04-26 19:20
    My mass storage device was a box of 2000 punch cards. And I played Space War on a PDP7 that had one of those round vector graphics displays -- the more stuff on the screen, the more it flickered. (But it had a totally cool light pen.) I made a computer video once -- one frame at a time, using a Bolex 16mm movie camera in a darkened room aimed at the PDP7 display.

    But those are mere memories -- not even nostalgic ones, really. Screw the past: things are so much better now, and improving constantly. I mean, when was the last time anyone here ordered a datasheet by mail from a manufacturer's rep?

    -Phil
  • Phil Pilgrim (PhiPi)Phil Pilgrim (PhiPi) Posts: 23,514
    edited 2011-04-26 19:30
    ElectricAye wrote:
    Greased my ivory slide rule with mammoth lard melted in the skull cap of a saber-toothed tiger....
    Oh, man! You must have gone to an ivy league school. Where I went, we still had to use allosaurus snot. When it dried -- as it always did at the worst possible moment -- the slide would seize up permanently. It would take a week to carve a new slide rule with just the C and D scales -- forget the fancy stuff.

    -Phil
  • $WMc%$WMc% Posts: 1,884
    edited 2011-04-26 19:57
    I don't feel so old now.
    '
    My first PC was a RadioShack Co.Co.II with 16k of RAM.
    '
    The Color was the coolest thing.(If you had a color TV to hook-it to)
    '
    The best part was BASIC and not DOS.
  • HollyMinkowskiHollyMinkowski Posts: 1,398
    edited 2011-04-26 20:01
    I got to touch an Apple Two once.

    It would not turn on so I didn't get to actually play with it.
    But looking at the 6502 asm language I think it would have
    been a fun machine to work with...albeit pretty slow.


    @$WMc%

    This line in your posts
    "I see why we don't have any water,All of the pipes are full of wires!"

    I know it must be humorous, but I don't get it?
  • Ding-BattyDing-Batty Posts: 302
    edited 2011-04-26 20:43
    If you ever wrote a program in Algol-60, or Snobol, or Modula-2... you might be an old geek.

    If you ever soldered a one-bit-wide static ram on top of another one, to get the extra bit for lower-case characters for the video display logic... you might be an old (hardware) geek.

    If you had one of the original Digi-Comp plastic mechanical computers... you might be an old geek.

    If you ever used Sixbit encoding... you might be an old geek.

    If you ever used a computer with drum memory.. you might be a (very) old geek.

    If you ever used Hollerith constants... you might be an old geek.

    If you ever played music through an AM radio by putting it next the CPU and running special programs... you might be an old geek.

    If you know how the Lisp primitives CAR and CDR were named... you might be an old geek.

    If you still can find your Adventure International cassettes.. you might be an old geek (with a hoarding issue).

    If you ever dumpster-dived for hardware, software, manuals and code listings... you might be an old (very rich) geek.
  • Phil Pilgrim (PhiPi)Phil Pilgrim (PhiPi) Posts: 23,514
    edited 2011-04-26 21:02
    Ding-Batty wrote:
    If you ever wrote a program in Algol-60, or Snobol, or Modula-2... you might be an old geek.
    Wait a minute! Modula-2 isn't old. Is it? IS IT? [size=+2]IS IT?!!![/size]

    -Phil
  • davejamesdavejames Posts: 4,047
    edited 2011-04-26 21:28
    If you ever hand converted the text-based Star Trek game from Intel BASIC-80 to another language...you might be an old geek (that shoulda been working and not goofing off!).

    If you ever thought 256 bits of memory would "be enough", and "what's a Intel 1101 static RAM anyway?"...you might be an old geek.

    DJ
  • ercoerco Posts: 20,259
    edited 2011-04-26 21:29
    ...If you have to Google SWTPC and IMSAI.
  • Phil Pilgrim (PhiPi)Phil Pilgrim (PhiPi) Posts: 23,514
    edited 2011-04-26 21:46
    ... if you've ever pored through a hundred feet of TRS-80 Z80 code disassembly to find ways to hook into (and improve) Level II BASIC:

    attachment.php?attachmentid=80664&d=1303879488

    (I can't believe I've saved that all these years.)

    -Phil
    TRS80_Basic.jpg
    566 x 972 - 81K
  • davidsaundersdavidsaunders Posts: 1,559
    edited 2011-04-26 21:46
    You might be an old geek if you loved the simplicity of your COSMAC ELF
    Bean wrote:
    If you ever translated assembly language to hex by hand to input into your computer (must be more than 100 instructions to count).
    Come on, it took a long time for assemblers to catch on. We have all hand assembled code and used a hex pad to input the result (haven't we [I am young]).
  • Phil Pilgrim (PhiPi)Phil Pilgrim (PhiPi) Posts: 23,514
    edited 2011-04-26 22:04
    ... if you remember when Byte magazine was packed with technical articles (before it became a limp consumer rag):

    attachment.php?attachmentid=80665&d=1303880385

    This issue has over 500 pages and a hardware construction article by Steve Ciarcia!

    -Phil
    byte_9-84.jpg
    800 x 625 - 84K
  • ercoerco Posts: 20,259
    edited 2011-04-26 22:09
    ... if you ever tried to "align the heads" on a Commodore 1541 floppy drive, all 170K worth!
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2011-04-26 22:20
    You might be an old geek if you ever knew how to calculate square roots with a pin wheel calculator: http://www.scientificcollectables.com/page_enlarge254.htm
  • TtailspinTtailspin Posts: 1,326
    edited 2011-04-26 22:36
    No need to go that far back to be an old geek.

    You might be an old geek If You ever made the Snake in Qbasic "NIbbles" game, go faster... =D
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2011-04-26 22:48
    Not so far back, only 1973 for me. Studying numerical analysis. When things got really tough we had a huge main frame to run BASIC on.
    I'm glad I saw the world before the arrival of the microprocessor.
  • HollyMinkowskiHollyMinkowski Posts: 1,398
    edited 2011-04-26 22:56
    Phil, What incredibly narrow printout paper!
    Was there a paper shortage? :-)

    I like asm programming but I sure do hate
    trying to make sense out of disassembly
    listings...uuugghhh
  • HollyMinkowskiHollyMinkowski Posts: 1,398
    edited 2011-04-26 23:02
    Phil Pilgrim (PhiPi) wrote: »

    This issue has over 500 pages and a hardware construction article by Steve Ciarcia!

    Hey, I know who that guy is, I always read his column in Circuit Cellar.
    He's a really smart guy :-)
  • Phil Pilgrim (PhiPi)Phil Pilgrim (PhiPi) Posts: 23,514
    edited 2011-04-27 01:08
    HollyMinkowski wrote:
    Phil, What incredibly narrow printout paper! Was there a paper shortage? :-)
    No, but there was a shortage of hobby-priced printers that could print on wide paper. (Actually, there weren't any.) My first wide-format printer was an IBM Model 75 electronic typewriter, modified to print from my TRS-80. I bought it on credit from IBM and paid them $50 a month for what seemed like forever. It met its demise many years later when I tried to adapt the carriage mechanism to drive an inverted pendulum (a broom). It destroyed itself in spectacular fashion. All that remain are some solenoids and other mechanical parts that I managed to salvage.

    -Phil
  • Phil Pilgrim (PhiPi)Phil Pilgrim (PhiPi) Posts: 23,514
    edited 2011-04-27 01:11
    Holly,

    Steve Ciarcia wrote a column in Byte called "The Circuit Cellar" for several years before Byte forgot its roots and went all consumer. That's when he quit and started his own magazine.

    -Phil
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2011-04-27 02:17
    Phil,
    It met its demise many years later when I tried to adapt the carriage mechanism to drive an inverted pendulum (a broom). It destroyed itself in spectacular fashion
    Brilliant! I really wish you had a video of that experiment.
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