The Official TBR Silliness Thread---2023

[Kamaji]

[Kamaji]

[Idiot]

I remember spending days if not weeks trying to send something over the phone line from my computer to a friends.  I was so proud when it finally worked.

[Kamaji]

I remember spending days if not weeks trying to send something over the phone line from my computer to a friends.  I was so proud when it finally worked.

300 baud, baby!

[Idiot]

300 baud, baby!

We pirated computer games in college by copying the 10" floppy disks. Seems we had to add errors to the disks in different places to get it to work.  Crap...that was over 40 years ago....  Our computer lab used punch cards. 

[Kamaji]

[Kamaji]

We pirated computer games in college by copying the 10" floppy disks. Seems we had to add errors to the disks in different places to get it to work.  Crap...that was over 40 years ago....  Our computer lab used punch cards. 

I hung with some guys who would jailbreak atari games and put them onto 5-1/4" floppies.

[roamer_1]

We pirated computer games in college by copying the 10" floppy disks. Seems we had to add errors to the disks in different places to get it to work.  Crap...that was over 40 years ago....  Our computer lab used punch cards.

I came around for 14400, and installing Windows 3.11 WFWG.from something close to 10 floppies...

[Kamaji]

[DB]

We pirated computer games in college by copying the 10" floppy disks. Seems we had to add errors to the disks in different places to get it to work.  Crap...that was over 40 years ago....  Our computer lab used punch cards.

One of the early Doom or Quake versions had hard defects in the media so the disc couldn't be copied easily.

[catfish1957]

I came around for 14400, and installing Windows 3.11 WFWG.from something close to 10 floppies...

I think my entry point was in 1986, with my XT Clone, 30 Mg HD, DOS 2.0, one 5 1/4" floppy, and I think we were at 300 baud modem level at the time. And I was the pride of the neighborhood with my CGA monitor.   

Whole get up, at the time set me back $2300.....  which was a ton of cash in 1986.

[roamer_1]

I think my entry point was in 1986, with my XT Clone, 30 Mg HD, DOS 2.0, one 5 1/4" floppy, and I think we were at 300 baud modem level at the time. And I was the pride of the neighborhood with my CGA monitor.   

Whole get up, at the time set me back $2300.....  which was a ton of cash in 1986.

I never paid a dime for mine, even back then.

My first was a 386SX, Tandy I believe... That the folks that wound up being my inlaws broke. They gave it to me broken. That's the first one I fixed. and the one I learned DOS on. Turns out there was a pie recipe in AUTOEXEC.BAT or CONFIG.SYS, can't remember which, but I rewrote the files to approximate proper and it fired right up.

Been fixing em ever since.

[DB]

IBM 5150 PC 1, the first version of the IBM PC is what I had in the early 80's... A 4.77 MHz Intel 8088 with 64 kB of base memory expanded to 640 kB which cost a small fortune then. The expansion memory card had a real time clock (RTC) on it with battery backup so you didn't have to enter the date and time each time you powered it up. Started using it with Cassette BASIC... Added an 8087 math coprocessor to it to increase the math computational speed by about a factor of 7. Wrote the programs to use it in assembly.

[Kamaji]

IBM 5150 PC 1, the first version of the IBM PC is what I had in the early 80's... A 4.77 MHz Intel 8088 with 64 kB of base memory expanded to 640 kB which cost a small fortune then. The expansion memory card had a real time clock (RTC) on it with battery backup so you didn't have to enter the date and time each time you powered it up. Started using it with Cassette BASIC... Added an 8087 math coprocessor to it to increase the math computational speed by about a factor of 7. Wrote the programs to use it in assembly.

My first system was an IBM 5155 "portable" with the orange screen and two 5-1/4" floppies, and 640K of memory:



That cost a pretty penny back then, even after the university discount.

[Kamaji]

[Kamaji]

[Kamaji]

[Kamaji]

[Kamaji]

[Kamaji]

[DB]

My first system was an IBM 5155 "portable" with the orange screen and two 5-1/4" floppies, and 640K of memory:



That cost a pretty penny back then, even after the university discount.

Pretty cool. The monochrome display adapter font was very nice too. And I still prefer an IBM style clacky key keyboard... Anyone remember Mouse Systems optical mice from somewhere around that time? A must have at the time.

[Kamaji]

[Kamaji]

Pretty cool. The monochrome display adapter font was very nice too. And I still prefer an IBM style clacky key keyboard... Anyone remember Mouse Systems optical mice from somewhere around that time? A must have at the time.

The keyboard was nice.  I don't know what ever happened to that thing; it would be fun to find it and take a trip down memory lane.

[Kamaji]

[DB]

The keyboard was nice.  I don't know what ever happened to that thing; it would be fun to find it and take a trip down memory lane.

I finally got rid of mine about 5 years ago when I moved to a smaller home with less storage.

[catfish1957]

I finally got rid of mine about 5 years ago when I moved to a smaller home with less storage.

I think my oldest machine out in shed storage is an old 286 that I used in the late '80's.  Doubt it would even power up after all these years.

[Kamaji]

[Kamaji]

I finally got rid of mine about 5 years ago when I moved to a smaller home with less storage.

I moved a lot when I was in college - including the 7-year gap between starting school and graduating - and lost it on one of those moves.  I also had an old Atari 800 that I lost as well, and an old Epson dot matrix printer.

[DB]

I think my oldest machine out in shed storage is an old 286 that I used in the late '80's.  Doubt it would even power up after all these years.

My first Dell computer was a 16 MHz 386-16 with 16 MB of memory in 1987. It cost at least $7k with all that memory. It also had a 90 MB hard drive.

[Kamaji]

[Kamaji]

My first Dell computer was a 16 MHz 386-16 with 16 MB of memory in 1987. It cost at least $7k with all that memory. It also had a 90 MB hard drive.

Wow.  You were livin' large on that in 1987.

[DB]

Wow.  You were livin' large on that in 1987.

Was using it with Xilinx FPGA development tools and PCAD schematic capture and PCB layout tools way back then... It also had a Vesa video adapter with higher resolution and more memory than was available then with standard adapters. You could pan the PCB real time. The PCBs were large with a lot of components. Took a lot of memory and horsepower to get things done.

[Kamaji]

Was using it with Xilinx FPGA development tools and PCAD schematic capture and PCB layout tools way back then... It also had a Vesa video adapter with higher resolution and more memory than was available then with standard adapters. You could pan the PCB real time. The PCBs were large with a lot of components. Took a lot of memory and horsepower to get things done.

Back in 1986 and 1987 we were just frosh general engineering students at VT; we had to wait before they would allow us to play with the serious stuff!

[Kamaji]

[catfish1957]

Wow.  You were livin' large on that in 1987.

My exact thoughts.  I don't think I got my first 386 and a clone at that until about '92 or '93.

[Smokin Joe]

I like it!

[Smokin Joe]

We pirated computer games in college by copying the 10" floppy disks. Seems we had to add errors to the disks in different places to get it to work.  Crap...that was over 40 years ago....  Our computer lab used punch cards.

We had that damned paper tape...

[corbe]

  My first Computer that I programmed, maintained and operated was courteous of the USAF. 



   My first PC was a hand me down IBM XP~8084.

[Smokin Joe]

I came around for 14400, and installing Windows 3.11 WFWG.from something close to 10 floppies...

First version of MS Office I got from a neighbor in a rummage sale. Boxed up with the manuals, unopened, for $2. They'd handed out samples at the medical office she worked at. I  knew I was going to need it, hadn't even bought the computer yet, but bought it. Twenty five floppies later, I had stuffed it into the first laptop I owned...

[Cyber Liberty]

  My first Computer that I programmed, maintained and operated was courteous of the USAF. 



   My first PC was a hand me down IBM XP~8084.

@corbe

Kids these days.  I cut my teeth on a Z8080.  I had experience before that with the PDP11, I think it was.  It took up a whole room at a University.

[corbe]

   I still consider it phonimal.  I was on SAC Base and watching them do nuclear bomb runs to the on-alert B=52's on acid in 70, gave me quite the perspective of our precarious relationship with TPTB.

[roamer_1]

First version of MS Office I got from a neighbor in a rummage sale. Boxed up with the manuals, unopened, for $2. They'd handed out samples at the medical office she worked at. I  knew I was going to need it, hadn't even bought the computer yet, but bought it. Twenty five floppies later, I had stuffed it into the first laptop I owned...

One of my first guru moves was figgering out how to install DOS and Windows from a hard drive and stop using all those accursed floppies... one of which is sure to die nearly every time you install.

So yeah... Boot to my drive sys the new machine, blow DOS on it and a config and auto exec, Reboot so it's on it's home system, and then navigate to my Win_Setup directory and type setup.

No disks, no fluff. I could blow the whole works on in 15 minutes.

[roamer_1]

@corbe

Kids these days.  I cut my teeth on a Z8080.  I had experience before that with the PDP11, I think it was.  It took up a whole room at a University.

I resent it you know. My gen was probably the first not to know ASM... past a few scripted lines of debug.

I cut my teeth on Basic, and later Pascal, always set apart from direct machine language.

[Kamaji]

I resent it you know. My gen was probably the first not to know ASM... past a few scripted lines of debug.

I cut my teeth on Basic, and later Pascal, always set apart from direct machine language.

I started on BASIC, then learned FORTRAN and turbo pascal in high school.  I taught myself a bit of ASM for the Atari 800 in order to write some game code with sprites that would move without separately showing each raster line.

[roamer_1]

I started on BASIC, then learned FORTRAN and turbo pascal in high school.  I taught myself a bit of ASM for the Atari 800 in order to write some game code with sprites that would move without separately showing each raster line.

I have always been fascinated by full programs written in ASM... Gibson's SpinRite comes to mind. All the early diagnostic stuff was written in ASM, extraordinarily complicated with many options, and all within something like 64k. Crazy cool.

[Kamaji]

I have always been fascinated by full programs written in ASM... Gibson's SpinRite comes to mind. All the early diagnostic stuff was written in ASM, extraordinarily complicated with many options, and all within something like 64k. Crazy cool.

As well as the mindset needed to think through such a program.  One has to be intimately familiar with each separate step one is asking the cpu to perform, and with the underlying metal. 

[roamer_1]

As well as the mindset needed to think through such a program.  One has to be intimately familiar with each separate step one is asking the cpu to perform, and with the underlying metal.

And for that I am jealous.

My own fault I reckon, but like I said, beyond a few lines of Debug, I never could sit down and teach myself ASM. Still could I guess, but it never happens.

But hey. Now I am a old timer too... cussin these kids and their OOPs and IDEs... HATING modular code I didn't write myself... Hell, I still prefer and write inline code.

How's that for geezer? 

[DB]

All I can say is I've done a lot of assembly language programming on embedded CPUs controlling hardware for numerous products over the years. All with very little ROM and RAM.

I don't miss it.

I've also done a lot of C. I still need to do C from time to time for critical items that need maximum speed in code.

I don't miss that either.

I'm using Elixir these days, a functional programming language, on embedded hardware of my own design. With multicore processors it is drastically more efficient in terms of writing and maintaining the code that is both fast and reliable. I like it. I like it a lot.

[Kamaji]

And for that I am jealous.

My own fault I reckon, but like I said, beyond a few lines of Debug, I never could sit down and teach myself ASM. Still could I guess, but it never happens.

But hey. Now I am a old timer too... cussin these kids and their OOPs and IDEs... HATING modular code I didn't write myself... Hell, I still prefer and write inline code.

How's that for geezer? 

Generally agree.  It still sticks in my craw the amount of junk that ends up in some programs, and the use of library includes bothers me sometimes, particularly if I only need one or two routines in a library that contains thousands.

[roamer_1]

Generally agree.  It still sticks in my craw the amount of junk that ends up in some programs, and the use of library includes bothers me sometimes, particularly if I only need one or two routines in a library that contains thousands.

I_CANNOT.

It was practically beat into me to keep code exact and proper, and most of all, TIGHT and LIGHT.

Sorry. I write all my own... All inline, and I betcha its a quarter the size of anything today. I can never be taught to build fat, ugly code. I cannot do it.