Old things youngins might like to know

[Cassi]

I've seen forbidden planet. The special effects were really good considering when it was made. Robby robot was cool too. I just like the lost in space robot waving his dryer vent arms around yelling danger will Robinson. It's funny.

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMTk5NDM0MTgzNV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwNjc4NzgxOA@@._V1_SY1000_CR0,0,1323,1000_AL_.jpg

[sarah1972]

Computers nicknamed breadbox and games stored on cassette tape would be another one...

Oh... this was my first cellphone 25 Years ago... 12 lbs and it could not even text...

[Lady Sarah]

My grandma has one of those huge things. It's a huge wooden cabinet. The top lifts open and there's a turn table, radio and some sort of other thing. The front slides open and it has this big round looking TV screen. The TV doesn't work anymore but she still plays records with the turntable part. This is what I mean when I say she doesn't ever throw anything away.

I have one like that in my shed. I still listen to it when working outside.

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[sarah1972]

The breadbox computer...

[Roll]

Remember when wood paneling was so classy they even put it on state of the art electronics?

[Cassi]

Remember when wood paneling was so classy they even put it on state of the art electronics?

Had one of these!  There was an extension pack that you could load into and play more graphical games.

[Julia1996]

The breadbox computer...

That's a computer? Where's the screen?

[Cassi]

That's a computer? Where's the screen?

wires connected to a pair of sunglasses.  Seriously, I believe these types of computers connected to televisions.

[Cassi]

That's a computer? Where's the screen?

Commodore 64?

[Deborah]

The first computer I used in college had no screen.  We had keyboards to type in Fortran programming line by line and everything came out on a dot matrix printer.  I was lucky though because the year before they were still using punch cards.


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[tgirlamg]

In the late 70s I trained to do key punch on IBM cards!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punched_card

[steph2.0]

Ohhhhh, Wilburrrrrrrr. Why can't I have my own phooooooonnnne? (And it was a dial phone, too.)



- Stephanie


I'm going to apologize first and then earn it. 

Can you imagine the selfie Mr. Ed would be using on Craigslist?

Hay! I'm manely looking for some tail. Have my own pad. Can put on a good feed. Sometimes silly, but generally stable. Built like a hoooooooorse.

Have own phoooooone. If someone called Wilbur answers, hang up and call back later. Hoof it over any time.

- Mister ED (not an acronym)

[Roll]

Hay! I'm manely looking for some tail. Have my own pad. Can put on a good feed. Sometimes silly, but generally stable. Built like a hoooooooorse.

Have own phoooooone. If someone called Wilbur answers, hang up and call back later. Hoof it over any time.

- Mister ED (not an acronym)

I have a very inappropriate rendition of the theme song in my head now.

[Lady Sarah]

wires connected to a pair of sunglasses.  Seriously, I believe these types of computers connected to televisions.

Yep. Much like an old gaming system I used to play.



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[BeverlyAnn]

Typing out teletype traffic onto a punch tape and feeding the tape into the transmitter.  We still used this in the airline industry in the 1970s.

[Cindy]

Talking about old computers, I think Laurie was involved in the build or was it Kendra?

[steph2.0]

Typing out teletype traffic onto a punch tape and feeding the tape into the transmitter.  We still used this in the airline industry in the 1970s.

EBCDIC!

- Stephanie

[sarah1972]

Most people just hooked it up to their televisions. At least that way you could get color out of it (we still had black and white TV's at home at that time). My parents did not want me to watch TV in my room, so I had an orange monitor for it. And yes, this is actually the one I had, still sitting in  box and one day I turn it back on.

What could I do with it? I actually learned programming on it. And I expanded it with additional self-built hardware. One of the bigger things I did was to create a program to control lights and used it in our schools drama club to do all the lights for a few plays we did.

I had a few games but never got into it.

The radio stations all had computer clubs and at the end of the show they would transmit a few computer programs. We recorded them on cassette tape and then loaded them into the computer... The white cassette tape was actually there to store programs and data.

Oh... and thinking back about that time: I was most likely wearing my moms bra's and pantyhose while sitting in front of it...

So I was a weirdo drama club nerd wearing my moms bra's. Happy childhood 

Technically you could dial into a BBS system, which was almost like a forum. There was a modem you could plug your phone headset into and it would connect to a central server. Then you could read and leave messages for other people. I never had that, I did not start getting into this stuff until a few years later on my first PC.

The breadbox computer...

That's a computer? Where's the screen?

[Sarah_P]

Computers nicknamed breadbox and games stored on cassette tape would be another one...

Oh... this was my first cellphone 25 Years ago... 12 lbs and it could not even text...

My dad had a carphone in the late 80s, it was gigantic, bigger than a car battery, and probably heavier.

How about playgrounds with nothing but concrete for ground? With big metal slides, junglegyms and swings with pointy bits sticking out. My grade school had a little wood fort-like thing on the playground, with both big & tiny splinters of wood sticking out that poked us constantly.

The very first video game:


I was big into laserdiscs! They were great for anime (not that there was all that much released back then) because they had 2 audio tracks on them, so you could have subs & dubs on one disc.

Speaking of anime, to get our hands on any we had to share vhs tapes. If you were lucky, you'd know someone who knew someone who knew someone who knew someone who knew someone else who might have had a series you'd heard about and wanted to see. We'd get an address for this person, send an actual physical snail-mail letter, asking if we could get a copy. Eventually we'd get a 12th-generation copy that's barely watchable (if you squint just right...), but we loved every minute because it was the only way we could see it.

Oh, and when US companies finally started bringing anime over on VHS we'd happily pay $40 for a single episode.

[Sarah_P]

Oh, how about minidisc players? I loved mine, it was far superior to CDs, but they never took off. Not enough marketing, plus people were still adjusting to CDs (most car stereos still had tape decks standard).



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MiniDisc