Monsterzuma
the sly one
- Joined
- Jun 1, 2008
- Messages
- 2,984
Has no one else used Amiga and Atari ST home computers? They were pretty cool precursors/competitors to IMB PCs from the 1985-1990 period.
Link to video.
Link to video.
What technology did you have in your childhood?
- Thread starter Tycho Brahe
- Start date
Bamspeedy
CheeseBob
My first video game system:
My friend had an Odyssey:
Then I got an Atari 2600, then a NES, then a SNES, then N64, and finally a PS3 which I've almost never used since I play games on PC.
The calculator my dad used for taxes and I liked to play with was something like this:
(didn't look like that, but it was big and bulky, plugged into the wall and allowed up to something like 20 digits)
Cable TV was 13 channels, but at least we had color then.
My friend had an Odyssey:
Then I got an Atari 2600, then a NES, then a SNES, then N64, and finally a PS3 which I've almost never used since I play games on PC.
The calculator my dad used for taxes and I liked to play with was something like this:
(didn't look like that, but it was big and bulky, plugged into the wall and allowed up to something like 20 digits)
Cable TV was 13 channels, but at least we had color then.
This reminded me of when I was first in Basic Training, and our Corporal gave the order to 'ease springs' (discharge our empty rifles) and then mused 'of course when I was in your place, that was 'ease strings'.
Catharsis
catch u on the flip scythe
All I remember is the After Dark screensavers. They promised us flying toasters, we of the future. 
(I spent my entire childhood looking at screensavers)
(I spent my entire childhood looking at screensavers)
Narz
keeping it real
After Dark was awesome. I had it & More After Dark (and I think a 3rd after dark). Now no one gives a damn about screensavers. 
Tycho Brahe
Emperor
LegionSteve
Motörhead
It was indeed totally awesome. Before I could upgrade to the C64 I had to make do with the rather less awesome (but still amazing to me at the time) VIC 20 and its 3.5k of RAM:
Attachments
Chukchi Husky
Lone Wolf
When I was really young the first computer I used was an Amstrad CPC 464.
It was used almost entirely for games, which had to be loaded from cassettes. I did try to program games for it, but never got far, the furthest I got was following a guide to make a game where you had a plane and dropped bombs on buildings.
My first games console was the Sega Master System II.
The console had a game built into it, Alex Kidd in Miracle World. I had a few games for it before I went onto the Super Nintendo.
It was used almost entirely for games, which had to be loaded from cassettes. I did try to program games for it, but never got far, the furthest I got was following a guide to make a game where you had a plane and dropped bombs on buildings.
My first games console was the Sega Master System II.
The console had a game built into it, Alex Kidd in Miracle World. I had a few games for it before I went onto the Super Nintendo.
classical_hero
In whom I trust
Spoiler :
Don't forget having these to play music, even before tapes.
- Joined
- Mar 17, 2007
- Messages
- 9,311
Taking this list as a starting point. We had:
- Central heating and air conditioner (although my grandparents didn't have air conditioning when we visited when I was young)
- Microwave (the one technology my grandparents adopted significantly before my parents)
- VCR. Multiple, so we could copy from one to another (not sure how often that happened in practice). Still don't have one of those newfangled DVR things.
- Dishwasher except for 2-3 years. I'm impressed that my mom had the patience to not replace it more quickly with two toddlers to take care of.
- Landline telephones, one phone line.
- One small black and white TV, plus one large console TV (see image - looked similar, but not identical) Later replaced with a more modern CRT curved screen TV. Four channels to watch, sometimes five.
- Record player, cassette player, CD player. CD player in our lower-end car and cassette player in our higher-end one. My dad also has some nice floor speakers. He was a musician for awhile, so this is one area we were kind of ahead of the time in.
- Fridge, non-chest freezer that's fun to defrost (kind of).
- Washing and drying machine.
- Regular vacuum and also an R2D2-style vacuum, like Tycho's but more plasticy. The regular vacuum and several successors have failed, but the R2D2 model is still operational.
- Film cameras.
- A sizable camcorder that wasn't very reliable.
- From a somewhat young age (but after I can remember), a fairly unreliable computer. It had OS/2 and a floppy drive, but also a CD drive - I'm probably on the younger side here.
- An early 1960's Monopoly set. It's pretty similar to modern Monoply sets. We had a few other board games from the '50s and '60s as well.
- Toasters, of varying reliability.
- Watches. People actually wore them back then. Though I didn't, I was too young.
- A boombox. You don't see those being hawked in stores so often these days.
- Cars with 0 or 1 airbags, and no fancy anti-lock brakes, stability control, etc. I learned to drive partially in the same car that we had when I was born, and still drive it on occasion, so the reliability was pretty good here.
We got cable when I was in middle school. The Internet didn't arrive until my last year of high school, though I had used it in school before that.
And how could I forget that my grandparents had and still have rotary phones? I think their main phone is the original one they got back in the '60s... can't say that isn't reliable.
LegionSteve
Motörhead
Same here with the grandparents, weird that.
Leifmk
Deity
Had a VIC 20, then a C64 (best computer EVER, or at least the best-exploited hardware platform), then later an Amiga. But those were things that belonged to my tween and teen years, not my early childhood.
I remember a good bit of the 1970s (born in 1972).
We had a rotary phone exactly like the one Tycho Brahe posted a picture of earlier in the thread, but before that we had a black unit with NO rotary dial, because we were connected to a manually operated switchboard. The switchboard ladies were a useful local resource as they knew everything that was going on. There was one national telephone company and it was not run very efficiently -- you might have to wait as long as a couple of years to get a new telephone line installed, depending on where you lived.
Got our first TV set some time in the mid-70s (no later than 1976 as I remember it being delivered to the rented house we lived in before we moved to the house my dad had built for us). It was a big boxy colour set; we had excellent reception as we lived right across from the mountain which had the local transmitter on it. There was only one broadcast TV channel (until 1992; urban areas began to get cable TV with a bunch of foreign channels and some very amateurish local channels during the 80s, though) and most programs were only broadcast in black and white (I remember the TV listings in the newspaper explicitly stating when a program was in colour). In fact there was only one national radio channel as well, although they opened a second one in 1984.
VCRs began appearing on the market in the end of the 1970s but were pretty rare to begin with, it wasn't until a bit into the 1980s that video rental places became widespread and somewhat respectable. Video game consoles, likewise, only had limited success here in the beginning of the 80s and after that were almost totally eclipsed by the home computer boom (until later generations of consoles began to gain back some of the market share). Single-purpose handheld LCD games were big in the early 80s, I had several. Arcade games were getting big by 1980 or so.
Photocopiers were fancy and rare until some point in the 80s; my parents were schoolteachers and I remember they only had a mimeograph at their school in the 70s.
We had television, radio and such. No car or telephone, but that was more of my parents thinking them unnecessary and/or too expensive. Most people had them.
When I was about 8 we bought VCR and little later Commodore 64. I sometimes laugh at the floppy disks (our C64 didn't have floppy drive, just tape), but find it almost odd when they're doing it on those HD 1.44 disks.
It was 2002 or 2003 when a friend of mine bought a laptop and told it as suprising news that it doesn't have disk drive at all.
I have similar, bought it in 93 for high school, and never needed another. Haven't used it much either though, since calculators are for girls. Graphical calculators might be work of devil.
When I was about 8 we bought VCR and little later Commodore 64. I sometimes laugh at the floppy disks (our C64 didn't have floppy drive, just tape), but find it almost odd when they're doing it on those HD 1.44 disks.
Spoiler :
It was 2002 or 2003 when a friend of mine bought a laptop and told it as suprising news that it doesn't have disk drive at all.
Oh, I had a Ti-34. That sucker was the single most awesome piece of tech I've ever had in my hands. It did base-2, base-8, and base-16 along with base-10. It had logs, and trig functions, and all that cool stuff. Plus it was solar powered.
This badass mofo right here. This little sonofa got me through the SAT and ACT.
I have similar, bought it in 93 for high school, and never needed another. Haven't used it much either though, since calculators are for girls. Graphical calculators might be work of devil.
Mrs.DT still has one of those! I had never even seen one before until I went to her apartment for the first time. Apparently, they aren't that uncommon in older apartments in Chicago.
We had Windows 3.1, and a 386 PC. I remember having to use some sort of Dos Shell program to find all my games, and would get really mad when I couldn't spell something correctly. We got a Dial-Up modem when I was 8 I think (1995?), and I could use it for one hour a week....something I used almost exclusively to get walkthroughs for computer games.
We had a VCR, and I got my first video game system (a Sega), in 1997 I think.
mayor
Heart & Mind
A black and white PC on which I played Pong against my little brothers 
Later a (slightly more) PC colour on which I could play Civ I. Playing civ as a 8-9 year old that didn't grasp more than the basics of the game
good times
Later a (slightly more) PC colour on which I could play Civ I. Playing civ as a 8-9 year old that didn't grasp more than the basics of the game
good times
warpus
Sommerswerd asked me to change this
I grew in in communist Poland in the 80s
The only technology we had was:
- a black and white tv with 2 channels
- a wristwatch with buttons on it that beeped (when I got that thing as a gift I was the coolest kid in town)
- a pong like electronic game with 10 pong-like preset games (no cartridges) and 2 very simple controllers without any buttons, just a thing you can spin to the left or right. Imagine the simplest electronic gaming console you can - this was simpler than that.
I think that's pretty much it. I spent 99% of my playing time outside, screwing around.
The only technology we had was:
- a black and white tv with 2 channels
- a wristwatch with buttons on it that beeped (when I got that thing as a gift I was the coolest kid in town)
- a pong like electronic game with 10 pong-like preset games (no cartridges) and 2 very simple controllers without any buttons, just a thing you can spin to the left or right. Imagine the simplest electronic gaming console you can - this was simpler than that.
I think that's pretty much it. I spent 99% of my playing time outside, screwing around.
No tv, various cruddy computers with dial-up internet.
When I moved away from home, I went from 56k dial-up to 50mbit internet.
Also never watched tv/movies or listened to music prior to having them available via 50mbit internet.
When I moved away from home, I went from 56k dial-up to 50mbit internet.
Also never watched tv/movies or listened to music prior to having them available via 50mbit internet.
SS-18 ICBM
Oscillator
It was a time where saving data was done with a flat black square instead of a USB stick. And connecting to the Internet caused a small white box to wail and sputter.
