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Geek Culture / What Do You Remember....

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Sigh
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Posted: 10th Apr 2008 06:40
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Just decided to start a thread where people can post computer geek stuff they remember from Ye Olde Days. 60s, 70s, 80s and yes early to mid 90s. Post stuff like hardware specs, programming, games, etc.

I remember....

-using 2114 type RAM chips in my first homebrew computer
-causing the case of a Z80 to pop open because I had connected the power to it as if it were an 8080 (despite what some may say, you CAN make a IC explode)
-adding more RAM meant putting a bunch of chips in sockets
-the boxes expansion cards came in were almost as big as the one the motherboard came in
-being able to control every aspect of a computer, even the internal registers of system ICs, without mucking with APIs or being hassled by the OS
-playing Mechwarrior 2 and thinking it was the greatest looking and playing game I'd ever had

Smaller government, fewer social programs, no illegal wars...Ron Paul in 2008!
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Osiris
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Posted: 10th Apr 2008 06:52
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Not being able to watch the intro movie to Red Alert 2 because my computer was not powerful enough

RIP Max-Tuesday, November 2 2007
You will be dearly missed.
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Argorre
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Posted: 10th Apr 2008 07:40
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playing chex quest that game was awesome!!
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Van B
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Posted: 10th Apr 2008 09:23
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Praying that after the 50th attempt, Manic Miner would finally load.


less is more, but if less is more how you keeping score?
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Dazzag
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Posted: 10th Apr 2008 09:34
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Using two tape decks to load Bubble Bobble on the Spectrum. It was a naff tape, but Bubble Bobble had this new loader system that loaded in bits. You could literally stop at any point and rewind to load that bit again and it would work fine. Between the two tape decks and using various tone and volume adjustments I could get just the right sound to load it in properly. Couldn't do it with just one of the tape decks. Used to take at least half an hour to get loaded correctly.

Talking about half an hour to load; anyone remember how long the 128k version of Neverending Story took to load? God...

Cheers

I am 99% probably lying in bed right now... so don't blame me for crappy typing
Current fave quote : "She was like a candle in the wind.... unreliable...."
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Digital Awakening
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Posted: 10th Apr 2008 10:49
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Ah the early days:

Using a screwdriver to adjust the C64 tape deck to load different games. Had this program that could display the tape output and by adjusting for maximum levels the game should load. So I knew which setting to use for the program and where (the tape deck had a seconds counter) to find it. After a while you knew which games you could play on the same setting. Switching game could be quite a hassle.

Playing The Adventures of Willy Beamish on Amiga 500 without an external floppy drive or HDD. The game came on 12 floppies and required constant (at least 6 times) switching between two floppies for every scene change. The game was very hard and it was easy to die.

Blowing myself dizzy on NES cartridges because after a while they didn't work when they where dusty. The cartridges also needed to be inserted and pushed down before powering it up. Then power down, pushing down to make the cartridge pop up and give it a bit of a pull and back to blowing again...

Kids these days don't know what we did just to play games they wouldn't even touch


Formating a save disk for Cannon Fodder must be experienced. That game probably have the worlds most well known game song, not counting Nintendo games

[center]
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Sigh
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Posted: 10th Apr 2008 11:19
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Hmmm, reminds me of playing games on my old Apple ][e (yes, I just typed ][e instead of IIe). Had to switch disks constantly. Still have that computer in mint condition although the FDD is getting worn out.

The catchy tunes of Sega Genesis games Horrible MIDI quality, but catchy.
Taking apart the Sega Genesis to find the CPU was a M68k in a huge DIP and wondering what would now be "WTF?"
And then there's Road Rash for the Genesis....still play it from time to time, as well as a little known game called Arrow Flash (which has a couple schnazzy tracks).

Almost forgot about the oooolllld Oregon Trail we played in school.

Smaller government, fewer social programs, no illegal wars...Ron Paul in 2008!
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Jeku
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Posted: 10th Apr 2008 11:22
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Playing Threshold on the Commodore 64 with my sister.

Making several different bootdisks with various combinations of config.sys and autoexec.bat files for all my Sierra games.


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Dazzag
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Posted: 10th Apr 2008 11:27
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And who was like a pimp with games in high school? Heheheh, the amount of complex transactions made a web of loaning throughout the school (loan that game and that game to get this game so you can get that game that will allow you to loan to get this game...) that probably rivals a good sized organised crime organisation

Cheers

I am 99% probably lying in bed right now... so don't blame me for crappy typing
Current fave quote : "She was like a candle in the wind.... unreliable...."
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Van B
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Posted: 10th Apr 2008 13:53
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I was something of a games Godfather, has to be said .

It was Dizzy games mainly that would be the top bargaining chips - they were nice and cheap, a lot of different games, it would be like a race to complete them all. Even against full price games a new Dizzy game was like gold!. Some full price games were worth having though just for bargaining with, like Target Renegade and Last Ninja.


less is more, but if less is more how you keeping score?
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Jeff Miller
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Posted: 10th Apr 2008 13:57
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I just found a bunch of my old punch cards from 1967. Brought back memories of leaving them in a bin at the college computer center, and coming back the next morning to find them wrapped in the printed output (which was that really wide paper with the holes on the sides), usually bearing an error message. Makes me appreciate monitors.
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BatVink
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Posted: 10th Apr 2008 14:23 Edited at: 10th Apr 2008 14:23
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Buying games on tape from Boots the Chemist - the £1.99 collection

3 inch Amstrad PCW disks

Locoscript

Cartridge games for the Dragon 32 - so much quicker than tapes

Cheating at Horace in the Park - just touching the bell got you an almost infinite amount of points (until it wrapped round)

Joust - flying Ostriches

Space Invaders on tabletop arcade machines

Sit-in Star Wars with 3D vector graphics

card sorting machines (bigger than your average dining room table)

Screen Design pads (with the comment "pass to the machine operator on completion")

Computer Machine rooms that only held one computer
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CattleRustler
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Posted: 10th Apr 2008 14:42
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Quote: "What Do You Remember...."


...spending hours typing in code from magazines (Byte?) into the Atari 400, in BASIC, just to have it not run

[href]mod2software[/href]
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Zdrok
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Posted: 10th Apr 2008 14:44
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I remember my Dreamcast, we had a big pack of games like Sonic Adventure, (some game I can't remember, you beat up baddies and killed Mr. X in the end, it was #2 though), old games, you name it. We also used to have a Genesis and played James Bond on there from dawn to dusk. But now I've got my five or seven year old Xbox, still play Splinter Cell 1 to this day.

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Digital Awakening
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Posted: 10th Apr 2008 15:42
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I remember when me and my friends got old enough to leave the school area on breaks. One guy lived quite close and we usually went there to play DOS games on his 486. That was the only time I can remember we could sit 3-5 guys together with one computer.

My friends had been playing The Rocketeer for a while when I wasn't around and not beaten the first part of the first level, then I beat it on my first or 2nd try, being first to fly with the jetpack .

When I got my Amiga 500 from my (much older) brother I remember that it had much better sound, like background music in Duck Tales (not the same as the NES version). I was also first to beat Duck Tales as well as The Lost Vikings.

I still got my A500 tucked away at my parents house

[center]
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Jimmy
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Posted: 10th Apr 2008 15:55
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I remember when Half-Life 2 came out. Waiting in line with my iPod and my N-Gage... Man...

... old times.

"Oh hey, nice website Jimmy, it's really nice and fancy." -- That C++ Nerd
Visit. Website. NOW!
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xplosys
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Posted: 10th Apr 2008 16:10 Edited at: 10th Apr 2008 16:11
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Quote: "...spending hours typing in code from magazines (Byte?) into the Atari 400, in BASIC, just to have it not run "


Oh yeah. Been there.... done that.
But when you did get one to work it was great. Make sure you back it up to that cassette drive.

Best.

fpsFREE.com - for FREE FPSC Content
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MSon
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Posted: 10th Apr 2008 16:59 Edited at: 10th Apr 2008 17:00
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I remember doing my first memory upgrade, I was about 10 years old and upgraded my AtariST to what i think was a Whole 1mb memory, WOW

Nowerdays you need atleast 1gb

Everyone Be Cool, You, Be Cool.
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tha_rami
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Posted: 10th Apr 2008 18:07
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First thing I remember was a game called Grand Prix Circuit. We had a PC without Hard Disk back then, I recall, and we had some sort of monochrome menu-ish interface running over DOS. I think it was the CGA/EGA era. Also loved the NES (still have one) .


A mod has been erased by your signature because it was larger than 600x120
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CattleRustler
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Posted: 10th Apr 2008 18:44
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Quote: "But when you did get one to work it was great. Make sure you back it up to that cassette drive."

yep, did that, lol

still have my atari 400 + cassette drive lol

I so wanted a 5.25 floppy drive back then when they first came out but my parents wouldnt buy it I had a picture of one that I hung on my wall and stared at

[href]mod2software[/href]
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Samoz83
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Posted: 10th Apr 2008 18:51
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I had a picture of one that I hung on my wall and stared at


www.firelightstudio.co.uk
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xplosys
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Posted: 10th Apr 2008 18:55
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Unfortunately, I lost my Atari 400 during one of my moves. I so miss the membrane keyboard. I still have the books (Atari Basic) and manuals though. My C64 is just not the same. Ahhh... first love.

Best.

fpsFREE.com - for FREE FPSC Content
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MSon
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Posted: 10th Apr 2008 19:14 Edited at: 10th Apr 2008 19:20
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Anyone Remember STOS or AMOS, I think STOS was better.

When i got my First PC all I used on it was Minesweep, Solitaire and QBasic

Everyone Be Cool, You, Be Cool.
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Dazzag
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Posted: 10th Apr 2008 19:29
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Quote: "Anyone Remember STOS or AMOS, I think STOS was better"
Still got the manual for STOS. AMOS was written afterwards (no line numbers), and is technically a lot better apparently, but we always fanboyed them Didn't Lee write AMOS demos or somesuch I seem to remember?

Did you have the STOS compiler (made it faster essentially) and the 3D plugin? Top stuff

Quote: "But when you did get one to work it was great"
Don't remember that. I remember they all went wrong My debugging routine consisted of deleting problem lines until it ran. Obviously ran incorrectly but hey. I remember one that took me and my dad most of a weekend once, and it never worked. Then the following week the magazine posted the fact there was an error in one of the (literally) thousands of DATA statements. ARGGGGHHH!!!!

Oh, and anyone remember when local radio stations broadcast small games? Just about got one to work by holding a tape recorder under a bed (not quite as good as Dolby noise reduction) right next to the radio...

Cheers

I am 99% probably lying in bed right now... so don't blame me for crappy typing
Current fave quote : "She was like a candle in the wind.... unreliable...."
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NeX the Fairly Fast Ferret
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Posted: 10th Apr 2008 19:30
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My first PC was an Amstrad PC 1512, from 1986. It had a 10mb hard drive, a black and white display and an 8mHz processor. It was ownage, and still runs today.


I fail at life. No, really.
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5Louiz
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Posted: 10th Apr 2008 19:30 Edited at: 10th Apr 2008 19:32
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I remember that, until october of ninety six, I did not know about the existence of computers.

The first games I played were Jazz Jackrabbit 1 and Alone in the Dark 1.

Until two weeks ago I used my first CD drive, which was around twelve years old.

The first actual creations were a cool pinball table that I made with "pinball basic" (or something likethat) and a short frame-by-frame animation in Flash. The animation contained a tree and a bastard peeing near it; a fruit jumped from the tree and threw a stone at the head of the guy and killed him. First contact with 3D was a house builder program.

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Jeku
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Posted: 10th Apr 2008 21:27
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The first videogame I spent my own money on was an Atari 1040 ST game called Shadow of the Beast. I also remember buying a kickass paint program for the ST, where you could make animations.

The first time I played a PC was on my friend's Tandy--- we played Prince of Persia and California Games for hours.

When we bought our first PC, a 486 DX-33 with a 1x CD-ROM drive, 120MB hard drive, 4MB (!!) RAM, and a whopping 1MB Trident video card (wow!), the first game I played on it was Duck Tales.

Finally, the first time I spent a small fortune ($90) on a game was for the 7th Guest, which included a VHS "Making Of". Good times


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MSon
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Posted: 10th Apr 2008 21:36
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Quote: "Shadow of the Beast"


one of he best games that came out on the Atari, they made 3 of these, you can still get them on atari emulators, YAY

Gods was also a good one, I use to have it on PC Aswell, but the CD got scratched

Everyone Be Cool, You, Be Cool.
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Samoz83
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Posted: 10th Apr 2008 22:30
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the first game i really remember was another world

www.firelightstudio.co.uk
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SunnyKatt
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Posted: 10th Apr 2008 22:47
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I remember the low system requirements. "1 megabyte of ram! nobody has that much!"

ZEKEGAMES FORUMS-GOOGLE "Zekegames"
http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=115938&b=20
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Dared1111
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Posted: 10th Apr 2008 23:50
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1990s

21 seconds to go!!!

lol

not old enough to remember this kind of stuff


Is the Apple Mac(intosh) waterproof? (Mac users test. Go on, I dare you
Do fishes get thirsty?
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bobert
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Posted: 10th Apr 2008 23:55
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Buying the playstation 1

... ah, the good ol days

therapy has taught me not to talk to men with needles
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GatorHex
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Posted: 10th Apr 2008 23:59 Edited at: 11th Apr 2008 00:03
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Games playing in low memory 4k Atari 2600 or 48k ZX Spectrum

Games were so much easier to copy when you just popped them in the Getto Blaster tape deck and pressed play on one side and record on the other.

Sneaking my Christmas present (an Atari ST) out of parrents wardrobe and playing Arkanoid. No harddrives yet but floppy disks seemed amazing after waiting 20 minutes for tapes to load!

Intalling a math co-processor for a 386 laptop. You used to have 2 CPUs!

I still have STOS my AMOS was sold though. I also had STAG and SEUCK. I've always been an indi game maker even had a few published.

DinoHunter (still no nVidia compo voucher!), CPU/GPU Benchmark, DarkFish Encryption DLL, War MMOG (WIP), 3D Model Viewer
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Agent Dink
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Posted: 11th Apr 2008 00:37
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Quote: "I remember my Dreamcast, we had a big pack of games like Sonic Adventure, (some game I can't remember, you beat up baddies and killed Mr. X in the end, it was #2 though), old games, you name it. We also used to have a Genesis and played James Bond on there from dawn to dusk. But now I've got my five or seven year old Xbox, still play Splinter Cell 1 to this day."


You make this all sound like a long time ago... What are you, 12?

just kidding around and answering that will get us in trouble... But what I remember...

Playing pinball, ET, centipede, space invaders, (all the classics) on the Atari and Intellivision... Watching my brother program music on the Commodore64... the first graphical OS I ever saw was on the C64. I remember the 286 and being able to play Commander Keen over at my cousin's house! Blowing in NES cartridges till we were blue in the face. Turning on the old hand-me-down 386 from my dad's work and loading up control panel thinking 'Mouse' was a game or something. Sneaking Doom and Wolfenstein into the house and hiding it from the parents so we wouldn't get in trouble... and failing xD Programming text adventures in QBASIC which is what got me interested in game design in the first place... All sorts of fun, although this list of memories is nowhere near as impressive as some of your guys' lists. Almost wish I were older to have had all those experiences.

MISoft Studios - Silver-Dawn

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Zdrok
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Posted: 11th Apr 2008 03:10
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Dink, I'm well into my teen years, I'll tell ya that...

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Libervurto
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Posted: 11th Apr 2008 03:36
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i remember leaving the pc on overnight to install games
i remember the special sega megadrive cartridges with the yellow square that meant you could save the game!
i remember the noise of a sinclair spectrum (what did those colours mean?)
I remember the BBC computer!
i remember not being able to fit FFVII in my games rack
I remember games boasting "real 3D graphics!"
I remember typing "kill [random object]" into text adventures to see what would happen
i remember PCGames magazine with a free 3.5 inch floppy that demos on it
i remember exiting to DOS to run games

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SunnyKatt
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Posted: 11th Apr 2008 04:28
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Quote: "i remember leaving the pc on overnight to install games"

I still have to do that with my external HD.

ZEKEGAMES FORUMS-GOOGLE "Zekegames"
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BMacZero
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Posted: 11th Apr 2008 04:47
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Quote: "playing chex quest that game was awesome!! "


That game was really awesome! Have you played the second and third ones? They're great too.


Los Mineros are on leave...
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Kevin Picone
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Posted: 11th Apr 2008 07:30
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I remember

* When Atari we're the kings on console industry

* Playing Falcons / Lode Runner/ Karateka on Apple II2e

* Trying to work out video format on the Apple II2e..

* Playing Omega Race / Gorf & Shamus on the vic 20

* Writing an my own machine code monitor/assembler on the vic 20 (with super expander )

* Cycle Counting my raster routines on the c64.

* Playing Elite on the C64 and wondering how the hell is that done.. I still do btw

etc


Make Games Easier with www.PlayBASIC.com - 120 Day Free Trial
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Digital Awakening
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Posted: 11th Apr 2008 12:58
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Quote: "i remember exiting to DOS to run games"


Yeah, Windows sucked big time in those early days before Win95 came.

I can't remember exactly what my first game was as I played games on my dads Sharp Z80 before I can even remember. It had 2 special characters on each alphanumeric key that the games used for graphics. Kinda like playing games in ASCII but you got a bunch more characters to play with, most of today's modern characters didn't exist in case anyone wonders. Most games we had on those big old floppies, I think it was the early 8" ones. And you could really fit like 20 games on one; there wasn't any media back in those days, nor any story to speak of

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MSon
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Posted: 11th Apr 2008 14:57
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Quote: "BBC Computers"


They had them when I was in my Early Primary School Days, they where considered State of the art and installed Extra Security just to protect the BBC's, but they where stolen pritty quickly, I was that young that the only Programming Commands i could master where to change color and draw Dot, line, Box, Ect, Cant remember what they called the language.

infact now you mention it i think the first system i ever tried to programme on was a BBC

Everyone Be Cool, You, Be Cool.
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Dazzag
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Posted: 11th Apr 2008 19:20 Edited at: 11th Apr 2008 19:24
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Quote: "I also had STAG and SEUCK"
I also had PAW. That was tops and an impressive box (oooeeerrrr).

Bit later in the game, but anyone remember in the very early 90's in Uni compiling a jpg viewer in Unix to view amazing quality ray traced images downloaded from the news group thingies (like loads of uue files in loads of messages that you stiched together with a Unix command. Probably in a tar file. Can't remember now...)? And then upgrading to compile an mpg viewer to watch tiny raytraced animations. And after that level of innocence, tiny animated porn

Talking about news groups, those used to be a laugh (when there was only a few hundred/thousand). I remember hearing about Doom on there, and finding out about River Pheonix dying from the coroner posting about it before any TV knew about it. Thought I was so ahead of the game with this new web stuff. Never really used it like that since... Ho hum... Charlton Heston (and that guy from mastermind) is dead BTW.... damn, too slow these days...

Cheers

I am 99% probably lying in bed right now... so don't blame me for crappy typing
Current fave quote : "She was like a candle in the wind.... unreliable...."
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SikaSina Games
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Posted: 11th Apr 2008 19:24 Edited at: 11th Apr 2008 19:26
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Very young then in the 90s, about 4, I played my very first computer game, Mechwarrior. Then my little brother blew the fuse on my computer around 1997 and 99 and could never use it again Some old days can bring good memories, while others bad.

Halo 1 user: X10~Photon, Bebo: Crysis Rocks!, Company: Output Overload, Employment: Self-employed, Region: UK, Likes: Smooth Gaming, Hates: Lag
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Dazzag
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Posted: 11th Apr 2008 19:26
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Blew the fuse on the computer? Surely blowing the fuse would just require a new plug on the end (or a new fuse in the plug)?

First computer game I played was Harrier Attack! and then Horace and the spiders. Good times

Cheers

I am 99% probably lying in bed right now... so don't blame me for crappy typing
Current fave quote : "She was like a candle in the wind.... unreliable...."
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MSon
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Posted: 11th Apr 2008 22:12 Edited at: 11th Apr 2008 22:12
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First games i can remember playing was "ABC ZOO"
it was a flash card spelling game.

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Blobby 101
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Posted: 11th Apr 2008 23:41
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i Remember ages ago, These early Acorn computers(at school), Where the only three programs we could access were "Teddy Bear's Picnic"(a sort of paint by numbers game), "Hexagon"(tessellating shapes game),"Painter"(Can you Guess?). The other 5 Built in programs were password protected oh, and none of us knew how to shut them down. I could nearly guess (being fairly, Slightly Used to looking at computers ) but i was used to Windows NT so still couldn't quite do it

That's no time in the past for some people here is it?


EotP! Click on it.
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David R
21
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Joined: 9th Sep 2003
Location: 3.14
Posted: 11th Apr 2008 23:47
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Being able to watch single bullets slowly travel across the screen at what must have been ~2fps (in a 2d game) because I tried to run a game designed for a 266 on a P1 100Mhz.

Sadly I don't have any "really old" computer memories pre-Pentium I era, although I'm pleased to say I remember playing my first ever computer game at school - Zarch on an Acorn when I must have been about 6. Good times


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SikaSina Games
16
Years of Service
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Joined: 5th Dec 2007
Location: Reading, UK
Posted: 13th Apr 2008 20:25
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Quote: "Blew the fuse on the computer?"


On the back, there was a small red switch dispalying something loik 576 and 128 or something. Then my brother switched it round while it was on and BAM! Went off. We tried a new plug in the fuse, but it didn't work.

Halo 1 user: X10~Photon, Bebo: Crysis Rocks!, Company: Output Overload, Employment: Self-employed, Region: UK, Likes: Smooth Gaming, Hates: Lag
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Digital Awakening
AGK Developer
22
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Joined: 27th Aug 2002
Location: Sweden
Posted: 14th Apr 2008 00:27
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It's the old setting for voltage that allowed the PSU to work both in NA and Europe (and the rest of the world?). We have 250V and 50Hz here in Sweden (same in the rest of EU I guess?), in NA it's 60Hz and a lower voltage. These days PSUs have no such switch, I think people complained about them

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draknir_
18
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Joined: 19th Oct 2006
Location: Netherlands
Posted: 14th Apr 2008 01:05
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They certainly haven't removed those switches, I see them all the time on brand new computers. Ive lived in 3 different countries in the past three years and all the computers have had PSU voltage switches.
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