hello

[BCL_WA]

I'm Brian...into tech. Older guy started with an Apple II plus- still have it. Been using mobile devices since the Sharp Wizard. I'm partially posting this meet the 10 post requirements so that I can include links.

 

[RumoredNow]

Welcome Brian. Hope you enjoy your stay. I see you've found the Surface 4 forum and it looks like you can add early adopter of tech to your resume.

 

[worldspy99]

Welcome to WindowsCentral forums Brian. Thank you for the introduction and your honesty about the 10 post requirement. You will fit right in with other fellow enthusiasts around here.

 

[Ed Boland]

Welcome to the forums Brian!

 

[rhapdog]

I'm Brian...into tech. Older guy started with an Apple II plus- still have it. Been using mobile devices since the Sharp Wizard. I'm partially posting this meet the 10 post requirements so that I can include links.

Where are my manners? And where have I been? Welcome, Brian, to the forums!

Still have your Apple II plus? Don't you think it's time for an upgrade? LOL I remember playing with those myself. I also remember playing with the Commodore 64, TI99-4A, Timex Sinclair, and a host of other play things back in the day. I, too, remember my old Sharp Wizard and how awesome I thought it was.

Always great to have more people here that I can relate to time-wise as opposed to these who were born in what seems like the last few days sometimes.

 

[Ed Boland]

Where are my manners? And where have I been? Welcome, Brian, to the forums!

Still have your Apple II plus? Don't you think it's time for an upgrade? LOL I remember playing with those myself. I also remember playing with the Commodore 64, TI99-4A, Timex Sinclair, and a host of other play things back in the day. I, too, remember my old Sharp Wizard and how awesome I thought it was.

Always great to have more people here that I can relate to time-wise as opposed to these who were born in what seems like the last few days sometimes.

I hear ya.. most of these young'ns these days have no idea what it was like back in the days before the Internet. Before the days where the only place in town where you could buy a computer was Radio Shack. I remember my parents bringing home the TRS-80 and that warm and fuzzy feeling the first time I saw it boot up... it was in COLOR! We also had an 8088 with a monochrome monitor. A friend down the street had the Commodore 64. Our PCs through the 80's gradually evolved at our house; 286, 386, and I remember thinking at the time "it can't get any better than this - a 486DX 100Mhz with DOS 6.22" when I was hosting my BBS over a 14.4k modem. Then Pentiums happened, the Internet (anyone remember EarthLink, or the "browser war" between Netscape Navigator and MS' Internet Explorer?), and Windows... Ok, I could go on, but I'll stop here.

Anyway Brian, like rhapdog said, it's always great to have more people here that were alive during the dawn of the PC era as we were, and not just born into it. It surely makes us appreciate what we have today.

 

[AndyCalling]

If you haven't used punched paper tape to load your programmes, you weren't there. ~

Computers should only be operated whilst wearing the appropriate apparel, white lab coat. Keep one by your PC for that authentic look. Thinking of adding a nice large tape backup drive to my PC case (with proper raised bubble flashing lights) so that it has that 'computer' feeling that modern devices just can't muster these days. So it gets the proper respect.

 

[rhapdog]

and I remember thinking at the time "it can't get any better than this - a 486DX 100Mhz with DOS 6.22" when I was hosting my BBS over a 14.4k modem.

I was hosting a BBS back in 1988-1989 on a US Robotics 9600 baud modem, on a 80386SX running at 20MHz. Had a 200MB Hard Drive, which was rather large back in that day. I ran the largest BBS in the Dallas-Fort Worth area at the time. The Diskonnection. Yeah, I was even bad into puns back then. If you don't get it, don't worry, it will hit you some time next week. I had the largest HDD storage of any BBS in the metropolitan area at the time. Yeah, I know. 200MB was larger than anything in existence in a large, metropolitan BBS? Yep. Sure was. It was about a $1500 HDD at at the time, too. 5-1/4", double-height. If you don't know what that means, it means it was large enough to take up 2 full-height DVD-ROM bays in a tower case. I had a 20MB HDD that size as well. Now I've got a 128GB microSD card. SMH. My, how times have changed. I also remember using an accoustic coupler modem that ran at 110 baud. Dialed up NASA with that bad boy. Yeah, just like in the movie War Games, except I wasn't a teenager. I was the adult. Feeling old now.

 

[Ed Boland]

I was hosting a BBS back in 1988-1989 on a US Robotics 9600 baud modem, on a 80386SX running at 20MHz. Had a 200MB Hard Drive, which was rather large back in that day. I ran the largest BBS in the Dallas-Fort Worth area at the time. The Diskonnection. Yeah, I was even bad into puns back then. If you don't get it, don't worry, it will hit you some time next week. I had the largest HDD storage of any BBS in the metropolitan area at the time. Yeah, I know. 200MB was larger than anything in existence in a large, metropolitan BBS? Yep. Sure was. It was about a $1500 HDD at at the time, too. 5-1/4", double-height. If you don't know what that means, it means it was large enough to take up 2 full-height DVD-ROM bays in a tower case. I had a 20MB HDD that size as well. Now I've got a 128GB microSD card. SMH. My, how times have changed. I also remember using an accoustic coupler modem that ran at 110 baud. Dialed up NASA with that bad boy. Yeah, just like in the movie War Games, except I wasn't a teenager. I was the adult. Feeling old now.

"The Diskonnection" ... I get it! *slow clap*

9600 baud? (dang you ARE old!) lol j/k

So you were one of those BBS that we'd get "dis-connected" from while in the middle of a 30 minute long download of a single BMP or GIF picture.. And end up with only half of a picture! (yes kids, it was amazing to download a picture back then! lol)

 

[rhapdog]

Yeah, and after 30 minutes of downloading a photo, we'd be amazed at the quality of that EGA photograph, how they were able to dither the 16 colors to make the models look so real, or 256 colors with VGA (using lower resolution, of course). Now we see that quality of pic and we be like, "uh, dude, that's a very grainy postage stamp." Amazing how things have changed.

 

[ven07]

Well this thread gives me a reminiscing vibe xd In other news, I'm here to welcome Brian,so.... Welcome to the forums Brian hehe

 

[AndyCalling]

Ah yes, the heady days of Fortran, before Cobol came along to spoil the party with its evilness. So it wasn't all fun.

Still...

VAX forever!

 

[worldspy99]

Ah yes, the heady days of Fortran, before Cobol came along to spoil the party with its evilness. So it wasn't all fun.

Still...

VAX forever!

Welcome to the forums! As someone who quit programming in 1988 I do understand the various languages you are mentioning in your posts. I used to write and play games on my Sinclair ZX Spectrum and BBC Micro computers. Back then I think I used Fortran, BASIC, Cobol and a bit of C/C++. I dabbled in HTML a bit in 1996 as well.

 

[RumoredNow]

Welcome to the forums! As someone who quit programming in 1988 I do understand the various languages you are mentioning in your posts. I used to write and play games on my Sinclair ZX Spectrum and BBC Micro computers. Back then I think I used Fortran, BASIC, Cobol and a bit of C/C++. I dabbled in HTML a bit in 1996 as well.

AndyCalling has been with us for 2 1/2 years...

This is Brian's Intro thread.

I'm Brian...into tech. Older guy started with an Apple II plus- still have it. Been using mobile devices since the Sharp Wizard. I'm partially posting this meet the 10 post requirements so that I can include links.

Brian, I apologize for the derailment.


:grin:

 

[rhapdog]

Brian, I apologize for the derailment.

Are you saying you don't like when I drive the train? Okay, disembarking from the train.

What do you expect? Us old guys get confused and off-topic easily.

 

[Ed Boland]

Yeah, sorry Brian...

 

[worldspy99]

AndyCalling has been with us for 2 1/2 years...

This is Brian's Intro thread.




Brian, I apologize for the derailment.


:grin:

Not enough coffee for me today in the AM, I guess...

 

[RumoredNow]

Not enough coffee for me today in the AM, I guess...

No worries, the Ambassadors are all chipping in to send you a gift.

 

[AndyCalling]

AndyCalling has been with us for 2 1/2 years...

This is Brian's Intro thread.




Brian, I apologize for the derailment.


:grin:

Yea, sorry, once a thread starts going down the reminiscence track the Ancients all come out. We can't help it, but we're easily distracted with tea and biscuits so you have a way out.

 

[AndyCalling]

Welcome to the forums! As someone who quit programming in 1988 I do understand the various languages you are mentioning in your posts. I used to write and play games on my Sinclair ZX Spectrum and BBC Micro computers. Back then I think I used Fortran, BASIC, Cobol and a bit of C/C++. I dabbled in HTML a bit in 1996 as well.

Zilog Z80, the chip of dreams. Such fun to push to the max. Actually, language wise, I ended up using more ADA than anything else (not through choice, but it was OK). Fortran was just so much fun though when compared to machine code mnemonics. When I were a lad... (Help! Nurse! He's doing it again...).