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General discussion

Anyone remember,,

Feb 18, 2006 6:00PM PST

Anyone besides me remember the FIDOnet and BBS's. Was reading an article that kindda triggered fond memories.

Discussion is locked

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I do...
Feb 18, 2006 11:03PM PST

....and I also remember getting busy signals waiting to connect to the message boards cause only one person could connect at a time.

My how times have changed.

But, it was still fun times.

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I definitely do
Feb 18, 2006 11:53PM PST

I remember getting on all the Commodore 64 BBS's in my area. We also would have picnics and get-togethers. Man, such fun times!

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AOL remembered
Feb 19, 2006 4:42AM PST

I remember America Online being one of the few "Mac friendly" BBS type services among all of the Prodigy and CompuServe type ISPs (before they were ISPs). I think Prodigy (and maybe CompuServe) supported the Mac but it wasn't really Mac standard. Whereas AOL's software was closer to what we were used to.

Back in the day, I worked within a mile of the AOL office in Dulles (Sterling) Virginia and it was peculiar watching it explode from a little dial-up service to a gigantic mega-corp with a huge facility in what seemed like just a couple of years.

Then again, my mind tends to stretch and shrink the timescale of events at a completley random rate.

-Kevin S.

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Floppies to CDs
Feb 19, 2006 4:55AM PST

Something I remembered...

With the rise of Mega-AOL, I remember never having to buy another floppy for years leading up to Macs discontinuing them. It seems like I got a new one every week from AOL that I just erased and used for data.

Then along came AOL on CD and all they are good for are party tricks if you turn off the lights, throw it into a microwave for 3 seconds and watch it arc into a web of electricty as it fries the aluminum coating.

-Kevin S.

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Yes!
Feb 19, 2006 5:08AM PST

AOL CD's are great fun. In addition to the ever-fun (albeit bad smelling) trick of microwaved CD's, there are other fun things that my friends and I have engaged in, including, but not limited to:

frisbees (and disc battles)
coasters (I'm using one like that right now)
make art in the form of scratches

What would life be like without AOL?

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Compuserve
Feb 19, 2006 5:26AM PST

Yes, I remember this, and I remember being able to connect to CompuServe without their software -- you'd get a DOS-like menu list, and use that to navigate. There were free areas that didn't charge time, so you could use them as long as you could connect (email was one of those) and there were areas where you were limited or charged time -- they gave you a certain amount each month, I never went over that so I can't remember how it worked.

Then one day and AOL disk appeared in the mail. I remember thinking how easy it was. You didn't have to think, or know anything about how to get your computer to dial a number using the modem, etc., you just put the disk in the machine and poof! it did everything for you. This was on our very first computer -- we had to buy the mouse and Windows separately. First, after you turned it on, you installed DOS. Then we installed the mouse and Windows. When you turned it on, you had to type in WIN to get into Windows. I remember my (now 14 year old) son trying to type WIN on the library's computer (set up to only searh for books using some dedicated software) -- he was only 3 at the time, I thought he was pretty smart.

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Me too
Feb 19, 2006 8:24AM PST

I sure do. I was on Compuserve. I was even a beta tester for AOL. Please don't hit me. Everything they did after launch was definitely *not* my fault. They didn't listen to any of my feedback anyway. Wink

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don't feel bad
Feb 20, 2006 2:30AM PST

I think AOL was really great, at first. I liked it, in the beginning. What ruined it was all the ads that started to be downloaded, and also the spam. Someone actually found a way to redirect spam to make it look like it was coming from my email address. It was a nightmare. AOL actually investigated it and fixed it, though I will never again pick a 4-letter screen name on a common ISP.

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BBS
Feb 20, 2006 12:57AM PST

long live the 300 baud modem!

<ahem>

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first computer
Feb 20, 2006 2:35AM PST

I still remember my brother's first computer. A Leading Edge, that was the brand name. 2 5-1/4 inch floppy drives, no hard drive, just a basic text monitor. It didn't come with a modem, so I went down to the computer store and bought him one for Christmas. It cost around $100 and I think it was 1200 baud, but I could be wrong.

I remember finding a big round styrofoam ball and putting the modem in the bottom of a cardboard box with the styrofoam ball sticking out the top and then wrapping the whole thing. He could not guess what it was!

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First Computer
Feb 20, 2006 9:42AM PST

ya, I remember when hard drives first were really affordable, boy am I dating myself! I stay young as most of my friends are in their early mid20s though! Hard to find people in their 30s nowadays that can keep up =P

My first computer was a Texas Instrument, TI-99/4A, I still remember the Bill Cosby Commercials. Used to program TI-Basic into the wee hours of the morning before my parents caught me.

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I had the TI-99/4A too
Feb 20, 2006 12:27PM PST

Did a bunch of programming and saving games to Maxell cassettes.

Also played a lot of Parsec and TI Invaders.

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TI-99/4A
Feb 20, 2006 10:01PM PST

It was a good little machine, better then the Commodore 64 IMO. I still have my cassettes and that's it. TI-Doom and Parsec were my favorites for games. I went the route of TI-99/4a, Commodore 64, then PC. But it was the machine that got me coding.

A couple years ago, my mother was cleaning the old store room, found my TI, and threw it out. (Thought I collected everything I owned over the years, oops.)Then I told her how much I saw one on eBay go for, so she meekly replied, well I save the Commodore 64? ugh

So now I run an emulator under Mame for both.

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Took the exact same route
Feb 21, 2006 7:36AM PST

Sort of

First computer I ever touched: Apple ][

First computer: TI-99/4A
First second computer: Timex Sinclair
Traded TI for: Commodore 64 with TWO floppy drives
In college bought an IBM PS/2 30286
Out of college bought a Packard-Bell 486DX
Sold that to get: Acer Pentium 100
Sold that to get: Hewlett-Packard Pentium 266
Bought a Compaq AMD 500
Bought a Dell Pentium 1.2 GHZ
Sold Compaq
Bought wife a Titanium PowerBook
Bought a ThinkPad T42

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Computer Route
Feb 21, 2006 10:14PM PST

First machine I ever touched was a Tandy, programmed hangman on it for my teacher, he had the program, it just needed to be typed in, and in exchange we got to play it.

Well if you are talking computer route...

TI-99/4a
Commodore 64, initially one drive, got another when I found out the disk swapping was easier with Ultima4 =)
Then it is clone, clone clone
286-12
386-33
486DX-66
Pentium 300 (then overclocked to 450)
Pentium 1.2
then AMDs since, only my laptop has a brandname attached to it, my Sony Vaio.

Had experiences with Macs as I was a teacher at a College for 6 years and did multimedia there and they are good for that, but sorry to Veronica, I like my PC. I need to be able to take my PC apart and play. Like my old university roommates used to say, if I could figure out a way, I would even connect the toaster to it, so as a dare, I did, long story...

Anyways, long post, good to see there are still TI friends out there.

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My first computer
Feb 20, 2006 1:44PM PST

Was a Commodore VIC 20 .. Oh yeah! Happy

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First paid computer job
Feb 20, 2006 10:04PM PST

ahh, the Vic20. Well if we are talking firsts, my first paid job was to program a flat file database for my school library in Grade 7, and it was on the Vic20. Small library, but nothing holds vasts amount of memory like the Vic20! hehe

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my brother had a Commodore 64
Feb 20, 2006 10:54PM PST

I realized my brother had 2 computers before he was done with college. I didn't get one till after I was married. My brother had a (I think) commodore 64 -- it had a tape drive, used a TV for a monitor. That was when I was in college and he was in high school. Then he got the Leading Edge, a real pc though it didn't have a hard drive.

In college they had DEC Writers. It was hard to find a computer with a monitor. PCs started coming out after I graduated.

My first job that used a PC didn't run Windows (this was pre-Windows 3.1). I forget which version of DOS it was. We used Ventura Publisher, the very first WYSIWYG program I ever saw. They hired me and let me learn how to use it, because it was so new it was impossible to find anyone who knew how to use it. Later they bought some macs so I got to use those -- pre-system 7. Mostly Adobe Illustrator -- great program. I miss it, though now that photoshop-type programs have vectors, I guess they really are the best of both worlds.

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TI Memories...
Feb 21, 2006 2:27AM PST

Yes, Parsec was a favorite. Not to mention the Atari knock-offs: Munch Man & TI Invaders.

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TI Games
Feb 21, 2006 10:07PM PST

Hmm, I had about 10 games, not TI Invaders, I rocked on Munchman, haha. Pretty fuzzy on which ones I had though, TI-Doom stands out, as it was a pretty good little dungeon crawl.

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eWorld?
Feb 20, 2006 6:28AM PST

How about Apple's attempt to be like AOL? I got a chance to be a beta tester for eWorld and dropped it shortly after it went live.

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I remember, but...
Feb 20, 2006 9:51AM PST

but my family wasn't in a position to buy a computer back in those days. I didn't start using a computer seriously until 1996.

Scott