Your thoughts on computers circa 1990?

[Mr.Nick]

What did you think about computers around 1990 - if you're old enough to have an opinion that is.

I remember being 10 or so and taking a mandatory "typing class" and thinking: "this shit is stupid, when the hell am I going to need to know how to type on a computer "

Hell, we (my family) was online since 1995 and I wasn't even interested in the internet until 96 or 97..

I suppose I'm one of the last "play outside" generation.

These days my 4-year-old nephew is playing online games with his Ipad (don't worry we play soccer, hockey, basketball etc, besides he would prefer to play outside, he just loves his puzzle games tho)..

I suppose I thought about this because when I went to the store earlier today I saw a kid that couldn't be more than 7 or 8 glued to his Iphone while he was standing in line waiting with his mom... Then I realized (I have always known) that these kids are not like the kids from my generation.

Hell, in my generation NES was a novelty... We spent more time playing "war" outside or jumping our bikes off a ramp than we did playing video games. Now all these kids do is play video games...

I suppose my point is did any one of you think technology would be as big as it currently is??

 

[editec]

I did.

Technology is changing our lives so rapidly that society is having serious problems dealing with the increased efficiencies that this technology is bringing us.

We're still telling ourselves that we don't need to address these obvious problems but in the next decade or so I expect that people are going to start talking about this problem because it is going to negatively effect most of us sooner rather than later.

You folks who are now just starting out you careers are going to find yourself made redundant repeatedly duuring your working lives as technology makes you are about useful as buggy whips to NASCAR drivers.

Inicidently, I love technology, but we need to start thinking about how to compensate the victims of it, too.

 

[Mr. H.]

Computer History for 1990

I was using a slide rule in high school when hand held calculators were first introduced. I had to have one and used my part-time job to buy a Commodore that did + - x and /. Paid $90 LOL.

My first office computer was an Apple with a whopping 256K memory. But I put it to work and it made me more productive. These things can be time savers or time wasters. It's up to the individual.

 

[Douger]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmDz7Q9_h6c]Printing a Giant Wrench with a 3D Printer - YouTube[/ame]

 

[Mr.Nick]

I did.

Technology is changing our lives so rapidly that society is having serious problems dealing with the increased efficiencies that this technology is bringing us.

We're still telling ourselves that we don't need to address these obvious problems but in the next decade or so I expect that people are going to start talking about this problem because it is going to negatively effect most of us sooner rather than later.

You folks who are now just starting out you careers are going to find yourself made redundant repeatedly duuring your working lives as technology makes you are about useful as buggy whips to NASCAR drivers.

Inicidently, I love technology, but we need to start thinking about how to compensate the victims of it, too.

I love technology as well but when is too much "too much."

When I was a kid/young adult people would go out and socialize with one another - now these days people think its funny to text one another who are in the same room...

WTF....

IMO, it's getting out of hand.

 

[uscitizen]

I started on computers circa 1977.

the punched paper tape was cool and you could get an entire megabyte of storage on a 12" hard drive platter.

Programmers had to be efficient.

 

[Mr.Nick]

Printing a Giant Wrench with a 3D Printer - YouTube

Me and the entire family and friends were talking about this on Mothers Day...

The biggest problem with that technology is the weight.... If one was going to use that technology in space for example one one still have to bring X amount of "matter" in weight to produce those tools.... I suppose if one could recycle the tool and create a new one that would definitely be worth while.

If you need a wrench, make one, if you need a screw driver, recycle the wrench and make one etc....

 

[George Costanza]

Once in the late 70's, I think it was, I paid $75.00 for a Texas Instruments calculator. This was a hand calculator. It could add, subtract, multiply and divide.

You know - the ones you can pick up now for a dollar or so at the checkout stand.

 

[Mr.Nick]

Once in the late 70's, I think it was, I paid $75.00 for a Texas Instruments calculator. This was a hand calculator. It could add, subtract, multiply and divide.

You know - the ones you can pick up now for a dollar or so at the checkout stand.

Yeah I bought one a few years back at a ham radio festival (a gigantic flea market for electronic geeks) for a couple of bucks. My dad pointed it out and pretty much said what you said so I bought it for a couple bucks.

I had one of these as a kid tho...

If I remember correctly the thing would say shit like: "spell cat" then you would put in c-a-t and then it would say "correct." hahaha

 

[Ariux]

I remember being 10 or so and taking a mandatory "typing class" and thinking: "this shit is stupid, when the hell am I going to need to know how to type on a computer "

I remember in elementary school some students brought work to school that was printed on a dot-matrix printer. I envisioned a day when all homework would consist of dots. But, I was a stupid little kid, no smarter than an average Afro with a Ph.D. I made the error of not considering future improvements in print quality, even though there were some letter-quality" inkjets at the time (maybe I thought letter-quality papers were from typewriters).

The Internet didn't have much to offer anyone outside of nerdom until nearly 2000.

Video games (SNES) were pretty bad then. I don't remember any of them that demanding hours of play, at a time. And, there weren't very many that demanded even minutes of play.

These days, the most kids spend out time is when they're in an organized activity, like a soccer team. Today, I'm glad there are basketball video games, to help keep Afros off the street and reduce crime.

 

[Mr.Nick]

I remember being 10 or so and taking a mandatory "typing class" and thinking: "this shit is stupid, when the hell am I going to need to know how to type on a computer "

I remember in elementary school some students brought work to school that was printed on a dot-matrix printer. I envisioned a day when all homework would consist of dots. But, I was a stupid little kid, no smarter than an average Afro with a Ph.D. I made the error of not considering future improvements in print quality, even though there were some letter-quality" inkjets at the time (maybe I thought letter-quality papers were from typewriters).

The Internet didn't have much to offer anyone outside of nerdom until nearly 2000.

Video games (SNES) were pretty bad then. I don't remember any of them that demanding hours of play, at a time. And, there weren't very many that demanded even minutes of play.

These days, the most kids spend out time is when they're in an organized activity, like a soccer team. Today, I'm glad there are basketball video games, to help keep Afros off the street and reduce crime.

The internet had plenty to offer pre-2000.

I used to chat on one of the best chatrooms ever - it was called Mplayer. It was voice chat/text chat... The interface was pretty badass to boot.

There was plenty of substance online as well - the only think was that back in 96-97 we had a 28.8 modem and that made downloading media a real pain in the ass.

I used to visit this music site that had literally 1000's of songs, but the problem was it would take 30 minutes to steam a 4 minute song...

Of course that's kinda funny considering today I get annoyed when it takes anything longer than 30 seconds to stream a youtube video/song ...

I remember it taking us something like 2 or 3 hours to download Duke Nukem 3D .

Of course now its 2 seconds.

 

[Darkwind]

I started on computers circa 1977.

the punched paper tape was cool and you could get an entire megabyte of storage on a 12" hard drive platter.

Programmers had to be efficient.

I started when the transition from paper tape to punch cards came about. Used the JCL, had to punch the data onto cards, until mag tape came along, and send the entire job to be 'batched' on an IBM 3240 VMS mainframe. We still had to program our detectors using the punch tape.

Times have really changed with regard to computers.

 

[Ariux]

I used to chat on one of the best chatrooms ever - it was called Mplayer. It was voice chat/text chat... The interface was pretty badass to boot.

Do you really think that voice chat over a 28.8K modem was a significant factor for the general public, outside of nerdom, in the 1990s? Between the low bandwidth and high latency, throw in the primitive audio codec, the sound quality would have been atrocious.

I used to visit this music site that had literally 1000's of songs, but the problem was it would take 30 minutes to steam a 4 minute song...

Did you misspeak? Streaming? Streaming is more than downloading. But, your 30 minutes of downloading for 4 minutes of audio says something about the quality of voice chat you would have had, where you need to transfer 4 minutes of audio in 4 minutes.

I remember it taking us something like 2 or 3 hours to download Duke Nukem 3D .

Of course now its 2 seconds.

Wait ten years when you have 100mb/s internet speed, or much faster.

 

[uscitizen]

I started on computers circa 1977.

the punched paper tape was cool and you could get an entire megabyte of storage on a 12" hard drive platter.

Programmers had to be efficient.

I started when the transition from paper tape to punch cards came about. Used the JCL, had to punch the data onto cards, until mag tape came along, and send the entire job to be 'batched' on an IBM 3240 VMS mainframe. We still had to program our detectors using the punch tape.

Times have really changed with regard to computers.

Remember ASCII porn?

 

[uscitizen]

I started with an abacus.

 

[alan1]

I think it was 1994 when I got my first home computer.
Pentium 120 mhz processor (fastest processor intel made at the time)
32 megs of ram (massive at the time)
2x CD-ROM drive (can't remember if that was the best at the time)
1 gig hard drive (you'll never run out of hard drive space with that they told me)
8 meg graphics card (impressive at the time)
14.4 baud modem (not the best, but damn fast for the day)
Cost was $1700 including monitor, keyboard, mouse. It was a hot machine, played Doom, Duke Nukem and Wolfenstein like a champ, and ran the MS office suite at blazing speeds. Funny thing is, $1700 will still buy a damn good machine these days. Same cost, but 1000X the power.
Oh, and I learned how to overclock that pentium 120 up to 133 without frying anything.

At the time I got that machine, I never realized how important PC's would become, nor how fast the tech would advance. My daughters were real young back then, as far as they can remember, PC's and cell phones have always been part of life. Today's phones have just as much computer power as my first PC if not more.

 

[Dude111]

My 1st computer ever was a TI-99 4a (Didnt know much about them then)

Then i got a C64 which i still love!!!!!!

 

[Big Black Dog]

Your thoughts on computers circa 1990?

Well, they would be 22 years old and could legally vote if they so desired.