MC Banhammer Posted:

I had my first computer long before Microsoft even existed. Let alone “MS-DOS”.

It had 48K RAM and a 5-1/4” floppy drive. Actually, two of those. We splurged.

It played the Scott Adams text adventures just fine.

I remember using those huge floppy disk on school computers (we didn’t have one at home), but probably they were “newer” that the computer you’re talking about.

1337xxxxxxxxxlolololololololololxxxxxxxxx1337 Posted:

. . .

But I don’t know what you mean by “the phone companies owned the phones,” unless you’re talking about payphones.

Up until some time in the 70s, there was only one “phone company” (in the U.S.) and you could only get phones from them, which you had to pay monthly for. We had a broken one lying in our basement for years that a repairman left behind that we weren’t sure what to do with (you had to call a repairman if your phone stopped working) . It said “Property of Bell Telephone” or something like that on the bottom.

Catt although Posted:

Up until some time in the 70s, there was only one “phone company” (in the U.S.) and you could only get phones from them, which you had to pay monthly for. We had a broken one lying in our basement for years that a repairman left behind that we weren’t sure what to do with (you had to call a repairman if your phone stopped working) . It said “Property of Bell Telephone” or something like that on the bottom.

And, the humor in the movie, Pillow Talk, is really lost on anyone who doesn’t know that you used to not even have your own phone line. It was a shared “party line” with your neighbors, so nothing you said over the phone was likely to be private when anyone could listen in.

MC Banhammer Posted:

I actually had to do that on a phone which lost its dial. We could still use it with that workaround.

My dad taught it to me and I thought it was ~super awesome~ so I did it on purpose, though I never had a reason to. Now I don’t have a land line and can’t imagine a reason for having one except that.

We got our first “home computer” when I was 3 – an Atari 2600. Cbumette Drives and cartridges. My father used to program in games out of the Analog magazine for me. I still have that Atari, and the 2400baud modem for it, somewhere. Sadly, I imagine the cbumettes are long past usable.

Our first “PC” came when I was 6 (1986). An IBM. Blazing fast 286 DX 33mhz (Yes, kids, thirty-three whopping megahertz). It had a whole megabyte of RAM, and a 30 meg mother****ing harddrive. Jesus Christ, who the hell would need 30 megs of storage space?! PLUS there was the 5.25” drive and the awesome newfangled 3.5” “floppy” drive. DD was just gaining popularity, and, man, you could put more than a megabyte of info on a single disk. Talk about portable storage!

Ironically, that computer could boot up in 30 seconds, and I’d be working in my WordPerfect 10 seconds after I saw a command line. Nowadays, I turn on my tired old Lenovo and go make a cup of friggin’ coffee while I wait. Thanks, Microsoft.

I also remember beta-testing Win95, and hating it. 3.1 and 3.11 were OK, riding on DOS, but what the hell? What good was a GUI with no way to shut off all the bells and whistles and go back to a nice clean command line?

1337xxxxxxxxxlolololololololololxxxxxxxxx1337 Posted:

I don’t know, I had to reformat Windows 3.11 like 50 times. It was partly because, “Hmm, is this file really necessary?!” but it was pretty unstable. I could sure play some Commander Keen on it though. Log in to see images!

I think my logic at the time was, if 3.11 got screwy – as it tended to do – I could always dump out to DOS and diagnose it/run my usual command-driven apps. Plus, I could be relatively sure as many resources as possible were available to a given application. You can imagine my horror when MS released the first version of Windows that didn’t even have a “reboot in DOS mode” option.

1337xxxxxxxxxlolololololololololxxxxxxxxx1337 Posted:

”motivational posters.”

Log in to see images!

My first computer was purchased before I was born. I’m not sure that this is the exact model we had, but it’s close.

Log in to see images!

1337xxxxxxxxxlolololololololololxxxxxxxxx1337 Posted:

I don’t know, I had to reformat Windows 3.11 like 50 times. It was partly because, “Hmm, is this file really necessary?!” but it was pretty unstable.

Log in to see images! It wasn’t even an operating system. It was a file manager with a solitaire and wordpad bonuses.

Also, seen Windows 1.0 – it was an honest file manager without calling itself something bigger.

Win 3.1 owned. Trying to clear enough space to install a new game owned. Trying to get my dot matrix to print anything at all ever OWNED.

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About Successories Posted:

For over 20 years, Successories has been the leader in motivational products fueling the pbumion of high achievers and top performing teams with our stirring images and uniquely inspiring messages. Tap into the powerful possibilities in you and your staff – shop our complete collection online today. Most items can be customized with your logo or personalized for award presentations or gift giving.

Soooo Successories invented motivational posters “over 20 years” ago, meaning the late 80’s. I don’t think Despair, Inc. (inventor of demotivational parodies) came around until the mid-90’s, but I can’t find any reference to a date on their site. 4chan still finds this funny 10-15 years later, but it wasn’t that funny to begin with.

I agree that kittens are highly motivational.