A geek thread of older Dakkanauts. In which we make ourselves feel even olderer by realising just how far tech has come in our lifetime. And, just perhaps, we find solace at having at least ridden the crest of the wave of that particular revolution.
Me? I was born in 1980. So whilst far from young, I appreciate I’m not the oldest Dakkanaut. But I did grow up in certain glory days of tech. That odd period where things predicted by early sci-fi (50’s to 80’s) were attempted, but were ultimately quite crap at the end of the day.
We did of course have good tech (the home PC, home gaming consoles, all started within my lifetime, Spesh post-crash), but certain things we now take for granted, like portable TV’s just weren’t much cop. I mean, sure. Battery powered TVs existed, but weighed a lot, offered an awful picture, and devoured batteries.
I remember my brother got a combination portable TV, Tape Deck and Radio in….1991/1992. Oh how we marvelled. But now? Yeah my phone does that. Well, it doesn’t play cassettes, but it does the same thing digitally.
Self driving cars are really bloody nearly real nowadays, but still in their relative infancy. But the car I inherited from Mah Paw has automatic parking, and that has blown my tiny middle aged mind all the same - even if I still need to the pedals and shift the gears. It’s still better at parallel parking than I ever was.
But I still feel lucky that it’s happened within my lifetime. And for the most part (the early part), at a pace I could keep up with.
In fact, the main thing I struggle to properly comprehend? A Nintendo console….having a SEGA emulator, built in.
But really I like one commentators observation - we are the generation that has to explain tech to older and younger people. For all the talk of young people being digital natives, they have a bizarre (to me) blank when it comes to how anything works. If it doesn't flicker on perfectly a good proportion of the older and younger generations are baffled.
There is a big gap in Sci Fi imaginations currently. All that early stuff from the late 19th/20th centuries has kind of came about or been dismissed, the next waves of visionary tech and cultures doesn't seem to be emerging in the same way.
The thing is many of us grew up in an age where tech didn't do it all for you. You had to make it do stuff.
Now depending how old you are and how deep you got this might just be as simple as navigating a windows user interface and such; or could be full on console commands. Even if you're only in the former group chances are you are aware of what the latter does, you just don't know how to do it to be familiar with its operation, but you know its there.
Younger generations grew up with tech that's very much like iPods and such - by its very design and interface it REALLY restricts what they can or can't do with it and openly discourages them going into the "back end" of things to do stuff.
Of course some of it is just really slick automation, but it creates a layer that means not only are they not encouraged to delve deeper; the system tries to block them out as much as possible.
Interface and software wise we've very much gone from a generation of "Software made for the customer" to "Software made for the company".
Heck soon we'll be going "you know in my day you could save your work on your local PC and that was the default." To generations who only know how to save to cloud because that's all the system gives you unless you go through a bunch of backdoors and stuff.
Also I'm not surprised a Switch has a SEGA emulator. I'm more surprised it doesn't have almost the entire game library from every former generation of console Nintendo made (and yes you can do the DS on it I'm sure - you just have to make a side-holding cradle that lets you put the screen on its side - top andbottom screens then appear that way and the joycons are on the side).
But yeah its kinda amazing to me today that you can play a game like Witcher 3 on a handheld console
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: .In fact, the main thing I struggle to properly comprehend? A Nintendo console….having a SEGA emulator, built in.
I was born in 1972 (just turned 53, ugh!). Our first video game console was the short-lived ColecoVision (1982-1985 according to Wikipedia). It had a port of the front that took an adapter that allowed you to play Atari 2600 cartridges on the system.
Lathe Biosas wrote: Anyone else remember the joy of swapping diskettes when you were loading a game (X-wing or TIE Fighter, for instance) onto a PC?
Insert disk C
Loading....
Insert disk D
Loading....
Insert Disk A
Huh?
Disks? DISKS? In my house we had cassettes...or better yet, you bought the book with the BASIC code in to write a text adventure game yourself... which inevitably didn't work...
Lathe Biosas wrote: Anyone else remember the joy of swapping diskettes when you were loading a game (X-wing or TIE Fighter, for instance) onto a PC?
Insert disk C
Loading....
Insert disk D
Loading....
Insert Disk A
Huh?
Disks? DISKS? In my house we had cassettes...or better yet, you bought the book with the BASIC code in to write a text adventure game yourself... which inevitably didn't work...
We also had a cassette drive for our Commodore 64. It was fun playing one of the cassettes on a tape player and listening to it screech
I was in the loft with my Dad a while back, and he showed me his perfectly stacked and arranged punch card boxes he used for his thesis research
1970s tech hacks - After arranging your punch cards, draw a thick diagonal line across the whole set so if they get dropped you've got half a chance of getting them back in the right order
Getting free games for your Spectrum or Amstrad on the front of magazines. Or for the more advanced, from code published in the magazine you entered yourself.
On the latter, I wonder how many modern day programmers cut their teeth that way?
Automatically Appended Next Post: Also, still kinda bonkers, given how ubiquitous it is in the modern day, that I completed my education without the Internet.
We had computers, yes. But not the Internet. If we needed to look something up, we had to hope the library had it. Heck. We didn’t even have a home PC until after I’d started work.
Definitely one of those things which feels like yesterday, but also a million years ago at the same time.
We were quite fortunate on that front. We had a home PC from when I was about 10ish I think, and my dad was insistent that it was a 'proper' PC - IBM-compatible as it was termed at the time. Rather than a C64 or whatnot. So it was an IBM 286 processor, with 640KB of RAM and a 30MB hard disk. Quite something at the time!
But it scratched an itch I didn't know I had. The 286 was upgraded to a 486, then I bought a Pentium II to take to university, then at the end of university I built my first computer using the new at the time Athlon processor.
Then I got a job in IT support, entirely from the knowledge I'd built up from having PCs at home and trying to get games to run on them. It wasn't so easy back then. Kids today don't know they're born - having to modify your autoexec.bat and config.sys files to balance base memory, upper memory, extended memory and expanded memory according to game requirements... Even getting a joystick to work, or getting sound out of a sound card, was an effort.
And I've been in IT support ever since... Still love it.
Speaking of tech from yesteryear... remember Reel-to-Reel movie players?
Or better yet, watching movies on film projectors in school?
I told this to someone the other day, and if I had said that I used to watch the Tyrannosaurus at the zoo, I believe I would've gotten the same reaction.
My grandparents had a reel to reel. I think it once belonged to my eldest Uncle. Cinecam, I think?
I’ll tell you one tech advance I’ll wholeheartedly embrace? Dash Cams for cars.
My time in motor insurance was just before they became widespread, but the amount of fraudulent claims exposed by them even then was worth the investment. Not necessarily “this accident never happened” fraud. More “yes, happens I had 23 members of my family in the car and they’ve [i]all[/i[ got whiplash lotsofcashmoniessettlementpls” fraud.
This is all the more important thanks to the advent of “fundamental dishonesty” enabling entire claims, not just the fraud parts, to be declined.
Really must get some fitted to my wheels. Definitely a “have it and hopefully never need it” bit of tech. And one that seems incredibly futuristic to me still.
On other “I’m old” stuff? I remember as a kid, our local Butchers had saw dust on the floor, and pig carcasses hanging customer side of the counter. Now my world then was as small as I was, so I dunno if that was a widespread practice.
Movie night with friends, and we're currently going through the Jurassic franchise, because the Lego game was cheap on the Switch a little while back - normally we put on an episode of Lower Decks or something until it's time for their kids to go to bed so we can watch House of the Dragon or whatever, but dinosaurs are fine so they get to watch the first half-hour, then catch up with the rest during the week. They don't have Jurassic World on any of their various streaming services at the moment, but luckily I'm the one in the friend group who likes physical media so I bring over the dvd - and it's got the copyright warnings and trailers before we get to the menu. "Why isn't the movie starting? Oh my gooood it's so booooring! What is this?!?" (The kids are six and four, so they're at that Natural Drama Student age.) I don't think they even believed us when we told them you used to have to rewind movies before you could watch them.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: My grandparents had a reel to reel. I think it once belonged to my eldest Uncle. Cinecam, I think?
On other “I’m old” stuff? I remember as a kid, our local Butchers had saw dust on the floor, and pig carcasses hanging customer side of the counter. Now my world then was as small as I was, so I dunno if that was a widespread practice.
I remember that, not all of them but the most traditional ones still did,
but we didn't tend to use the butcher, we used the incredibly new fangled tech innovation The Chest Freezer to buy half a pig or sheep (or a quarter of a cow) cut up direct from the local abattoir and froze the lot for future use.... except the heads, that would have been a food adventure too far
Earliest console I recall having was a K-Mart brand Pong system. After that we had a TI-99 so obliviously got a bunch of Hunt the Wumpus in as a kid. Of the mainstream systems the first I had was a Sega Genesis, or Mega Drive in PAL region, at launch.
I didn't have tech where I lived as a general thing for quite a while. My first electronic was the NES from the SEARS catalog that definitely got me started on figuring out things like how cable signals works and removing the blinking 12 on the VCR.
First computer was a hand me down IBM PC Jr. that definitely was a high effort, low return device that I was always kind of proud to make anything work on, but mostly just had me wanting something top of the line like a DOS or Win 3.1 machine. At one point we even got to send messages over this internet thing, but the long distance phone charges were prohibitively expensive.
I will say, the "kids these days" element of this is kind of self selecting. Sure, I did this stuff as did a lot of my current friends who work in tech, but its not like its a generational thing. Most of my classmates didn't know a thing about computers back then and most of them haven't learned a whole lot more than they absolutely had to since. There are just always kids who need to know how stuff works and kids who just want things that work. There are absolutely still kids tinkering with their phone or making their own apps or know settings 14 menus deep that carry the torch just fine.
A colleague in his early thirties was complaining about the two to three day delay in his Amazon delivery.
So myself and the other middle-aged man in the office explained going to the post office to get a postal order and then waiting Up To Twenty Eight Days For Delivery.
I teach high schoolers in a private school and most of them don't know what a URL is, what a browser is, or what it means to save a file locally - they have no idea about the file system in their operating system (or for that matter, what an operating system is).
We recently had to get them to download a file, move it onto a USB stick, and then remove the stick. The vast majority had never seen a USB stick before and had no idea how it worked.
They can all turn their phones into a wi fi hotspot though, and get around content blockers and all that.
Da Boss wrote: I teach high schoolers in a private school and most of them don't know what a URL is, what a browser is, or what it means to save a file locally - they have no idea about the file system in their operating system (or for that matter, what an operating system is).
We recently had to get them to download a file, move it onto a USB stick, and then remove the stick. The vast majority had never seen a USB stick before and had no idea how it worked.
They can all turn their phones into a wi fi hotspot though, and get around content blockers and all that.
....
Yeah, that's a huge problem right there. That whole 'digital natives' stuff just doesn't happen. One of the effects of leaving the internet to tech companies and of course of replacing actual computers with cellphones.
Honestly I'm still amazed at how many people now don't use a laptop or home PC. Granted they were never cheap items, but phones and consoles are around aplenty and are not cheap either.
I very much get using phones on the go, but the idea of surfing the net and doing everything with a phone would drive me nuts. Just typing alone is slower and more fiddly and annoying, not to mention it takes forever to read or view anything on those tiny screens.
As an option/choice sure - but as their only means of accessing the net and computing it just baffles me.
Esp since when we went through school we learned most of those basic things in computing classes anyway. So I'm also left wondering if schools just gave up/never daught computing classes at all now
Lathe Biosas wrote: Anyone else remember the joy of swapping diskettes when you were loading a game (X-wing or TIE Fighter, for instance) onto a PC?
Insert disk C
Loading....
Insert disk D
Loading....
Insert Disk A
Huh?
I only have two glaring memories of this. One was Legend of the Dragoon for PS1, which had 2 CD's and when you went far enough into the game, you had to put the second one in. The other was Baldur's Gate for the PC, where you had something like 8 cd's, and had to constantly switch them out as you travelled to different areas of the world.
Baldurs Gate 2 had I think 4 CDs (that might be 3 and then expansion?). A good few PC games though you often didn't have to swap disks when I got into gaming, you just had to swap them during the install process.
I do recall early Final Fantasy games coming on several disks and it being the big achievement to get to the next/new disk as you progressed.
Oh here's one - I recall when Unreal Tournament 2004 basically got a soft-relaunch and they actually gave you a discount if you mailed the original starter disk back to them.
Lathe Biosas wrote: Anyone else remember the joy of swapping diskettes when you were loading a game (X-wing or TIE Fighter, for instance) onto a PC?
Insert disk C
Loading....
Insert disk D
Loading....
Insert Disk A
Huh?
The first game I really remember doing this with was Riven (the sequel to Myst). Way back in 1996/97 or so. Still probably the best game in that series, although Myst 3 Exile was pretty good also.
On the "do they teach computing classes" bit, no, not in my school any more.
When I started here 10 years ago we had IT classes but they were phased out about 8 years ago as we were assured the kids were all digital natives now and knew more than us.
There was a maths teacher who was teaching them excel and stuff but he passed away and nobody really took it up. So kids are arriving to my physics classes having never used a spreadsheet before. Very annoying, I have to teach them the basics of data handling and transformation before we can do any experiments involving automatic sensors.
A lot of kids never paid much heed in IT anyway because it wasn't an exam subject, but they at least had seen a spreadsheet before.
Honestly its crazy to me - I recall our IT classes not being the most in-depth and they kind of felt more like "MS userguides" at times or got very heavy with management style buzzwords - esp at A level. Eg you'd be told "ok so you use good data protection and firewalls" but you were never really taught hot it worked or how to tell a good one from a bad one or anything.
So management level.
But at least you had an awareness of a bunch of things and could use most MS software to a basic level. Easily enough to then pick up tutorials or more advanced classes if you wanted and be familiar.
Strikes me as nuts that schools would get rid of IT classes. I'd have expected them to get MORE in depth as time went on. If you assumed kids would have more basic understanding surely the right path would have been to teach them more considering that we are increasingly in an IT heavy world (HECK it was an IT heavy world 30 years ago back when most of us were going through school and its not reduced one bit since then)
But yeah if schools have cut classes then that would explain why they've never seen a spreadsheet. Which just baffles me honestly.
I think I was too early for Excel. We did have it, but we never had any lessons on how to use it. Mind you, at that point in time IT was a G.C.S.E. option, at least at my school.
To this day, I’m still baffled by Excel, and bribe/annoy colleagues into making any spreadsheet I might need beyond the most very basic “this is how I keep track of my cases and what I’m doing on each”
I've a decent grasp of its basics enough that if I want to do anything more complicated I can generally follow guides I find online. The real trick is finding guides that do the thing I want them to do so I can copy whatever code/setup they've done.
But most of the time I use it to add up stuff or review excel spreadsheets on stuff.
The tech the kids are using these days is designed to make them customers, not users. They're all on Apple devices, in that closed ecosystem. The OS is basically a shopfront for apps and doesn't let them at a lot of the gubbins.
Even if they get excel, the versions for apple devices are not feature complete, so I often can't get them to do things like adding error bars to graphs correctly or whatever.
I'm totally radicalised against touchscreens for young people now. I will fight like mad not to send my daughter to a school with ipads when it's her time to go. We've had one to one devices for 10 years and it's been a pure disaster.
Back in the day I helped my mum out doing data entry for gymnastics competitions. Unfortunately they didn’t have an excel licence so I had to use stupid Lotus 123 instead. I hated it.
Our house's first consol was an Atari 2600. It was my older brothers', but we got to play with it too. I still have it, and the other week I got my mind blown when I learned that if you plug in the controller from a Sega Genisis, it will totally function as an Atari controller.
I think those of us born in the late 70's to mid 80's are a very special breed. We have one foot into understanding tech, while still being able to function in a 100% analog world.
Things that I don't get about the youth today are some of their social trends. I saw something called "free walking". Basically going for a walk without earbuds, texting, etc. Yeah.... in my day we just called that walking. Or the term "raw dogging", as in not having any entertainment for a flight or long drive as some test of machismo. That's basically the norm of my childhood.
cuda1179 wrote: Our house's first consol was an Atari 2600. It was my older brothers', but we got to play with it too. I still have it, and the other week I got my mind blown when I learned that if you plug in the controller from a Sega Genisis, it will totally function as an Atari controller.
I think those of us born in the late 70's to mid 80's are a very special breed. We have one foot into understanding tech, while still being able to function in a 100% analog world.
Things that I don't get about the youth today are some of their social trends. I saw something called "free walking". Basically going for a walk without earbuds, texting, etc. Yeah.... in my day we just called that walking. Or the term "raw dogging", as in not having any entertainment for a flight or long drive as some test of machismo. That's basically the norm of my childhood.
You could still 'raw dog' a long trip back then... when you forgot your book (or books) at home.
The not exactly pleasant but necessary job of clearing out Mum and Dad’s house commenced this weekend.
And it turned up Mum’s recipe folder. All print outs and magazine cuttings and that. But for millennial Harry Potter twist? I noted the hand written, erm, notes, that Mum left on certain ones. A tweak to the technique, a reckoning on the measurements. A swap out ingredient. Like The Half Blood Prince’s potions book.
Lovely stuff. And a good reason to invest in printed recipe books.
The not exactly pleasant but necessary job of clearing out Mum and Dad’s house commenced this weekend.
And it turned up Mum’s recipe folder. All print outs and magazine cuttings and that. But for millennial Harry Potter twist? I noted the hand written, erm, notes, that Mum left on certain ones. A tweak to the technique, a reckoning on the measurements. A swap out ingredient. Like The Half Blood Prince’s potions book.
Lovely stuff. And a good reason to invest in printed recipe books.
I've got a bookshelf full of that!
Mom's volumes.
Volumes from both of my Grandmothers...
My Great Grandmothers volumes (wich also has some pages from her Mom)....
So accumulated cooking wisdom spanning 1880s(?) - 2020
Da Boss wrote: The tech the kids are using these days is designed to make them customers, not users. They're all on Apple devices, in that closed ecosystem. The OS is basically a shopfront for apps and doesn't let them at a lot of the gubbins.
Even if they get excel, the versions for apple devices are not feature complete, so I often can't get them to do things like adding error bars to graphs correctly or whatever.
I'm totally radicalised against touchscreens for young people now. I will fight like mad not to send my daughter to a school with ipads when it's her time to go. We've had one to one devices for 10 years and it's been a pure disaster.
That's not a bad stance. Computer screens is what the world is run on, touchscreens is where hamburgers are ordered. I'm pretty sure that Android is no better than Apple in that regard; at least Android doesn't even try to give you a feeling of "we're your friends" like Apple seems to do.
It's so absurd that IT classes didn't get MUCH more, all based on open source software. This is where actual change could take place rather than teachers capitulating and we all are herded into the arms of digital leviathans.
For those around my age, how much rage did you have as a child with The Oregon Trail?
I downloaded an emulated version of it a couple of years ago and my kids darn near came to tears when their almost perfect game go hit with a failed river crossing.
cuda1179 wrote: For those around my age, how much rage did you have as a child with The Oregon Trail?
I downloaded an emulated version of it a couple of years ago and my kids darn near came to tears when their almost perfect game go hit with a failed river crossing.
This one was odd for me. We barely had computers in my school and we didn't really have anywhere near enough time allotted to them to understand and appreciate the options in Oregon Trail to begin figuring it out. Being an avid NES kid, I was pretty accustomed to unfair nonsense in games and since Orgeon Trail's controlled sections are a little rough, I mostly just thought it was cheap garbage they peddled to schools like most of the other edutainment options. I'd seen the LJN logo before. The game isn't garbage, but I didn't appreciate it until years later when I was able to actually take the time and learn the game.
Da Boss wrote: The tech the kids are using these days is designed to make them customers, not users. They're all on Apple devices, in that closed ecosystem. The OS is basically a shopfront for apps and doesn't let them at a lot of the gubbins.
Even if they get excel, the versions for apple devices are not feature complete, so I often can't get them to do things like adding error bars to graphs correctly or whatever.
I'm totally radicalised against touchscreens for young people now. I will fight like mad not to send my daughter to a school with ipads when it's her time to go. We've had one to one devices for 10 years and it's been a pure disaster.
That's not a bad stance. Computer screens is what the world is run on, touchscreens is where hamburgers are ordered. I'm pretty sure that Android is no better than Apple in that regard; at least Android doesn't even try to give you a feeling of "we're your friends" like Apple seems to do.
It's so absurd that IT classes didn't get MUCH more, all based on open source software. This is where actual change could take place rather than teachers capitulating and we all are herded into the arms of digital leviathans.
The UK curriculum is, from what I've seen so far, actually pretty good on this.
Looking at what my son is doing at the moment in Computer Science (he's 12, in year 8 at school - Key Stage 3 in curriculum terms, which runs from age 11 to 14) on BBC Bitesize (UK parents, BBC Bitesize is a bloody godsend for school work. Use it!!!), it's computational thinking, algorithms, introduction to programming, hardware, software, networks, the internet, online safety, bias and reliability, law and ethics.
cuda1179 wrote: For those around my age, how much rage did you have as a child with The Oregon Trail?
I downloaded an emulated version of it a couple of years ago and my kids darn near came to tears when their almost perfect game go hit with a failed river crossing.
For me, my version of Oregon Trail should've been sponsored by the NRA.
I remember buying bullets and tapping the space bar repeatedly when anything showed up.
I would sell everything and buy more ammunition. I was the third kid in my class to finish.
Overread wrote: Honestly I'm still amazed at how many people now don't use a laptop or home PC. Granted they were never cheap items, but phones and consoles are around aplenty and are not cheap either.
I very much get using phones on the go, but the idea of surfing the net and doing everything with a phone would drive me nuts. Just typing alone is slower and more fiddly and annoying, not to mention it takes forever to read or view anything on those tiny screens.
As an option/choice sure - but as their only means of accessing the net and computing it just baffles me.
Esp since when we went through school we learned most of those basic things in computing classes anyway. So I'm also left wondering if schools just gave up/never daught computing classes at all now
I think you overestimate how online most people are. Most people don't read anything other than headlines and don't type anything other than texts. A phone does everything they need, even if it severely limits what they can do.
There’s also a limit to how much IT knowledge I need to do my job.
I’ve learned to touch type over the years, and can do very basic fixes, most often clearing the browser cache. Pretty much anything else our IT department handles.
That leads me to wonder as to just how much knowledge the average employee needs about the worky bits of their computers.
I’ve learned to touch type over the years, and can do very basic fixes, most often clearing the browser cache. Pretty much anything else our IT department handles.
That leads me to wonder as to just how much knowledge the average employee needs about the worky bits of their computers.
So. I work in IT support for the user environment for a global corp. Desktop support, field services - whatever you call it. I'm the local guy in the office who knows most stuff, and who the users want to get in touch with but must get through the service desk barrier first... (I'm actually the expert for EMEA - I spend more time helping the other techs nowadays)
For most of our users, knowing MS Office to a basic level is fine. Having a general appreciation that computers are not f'ing magic, hardware has performance limits and you can't run a hundred damn things at once, is fine. Beyond that, we can work with you Well, we can still work with you anyway, but it hurts more...
Where we're struggling at the moment is that, in the UK at least, we had an extremely good local team and provided a very high-level bespoke hand-holding experience to our users - and as such they could really get away with knowing next to nothing, as we would know what they needed better than they did. Unfortunately, after 2 different outsource providers and a certain amount of cost-cutting, we're very much not in that position any more - but the users still know next to nothing, and still expect the previous experience...
I think I started feeling old when my pop culture references started going over colleague’s heads. Or when I’m asked what my Berk and Boni tattoos are.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: I think I started feeling old when my pop culture references started going over colleague’s heads. Or when I’m asked what my Berk and Boni tattoos are.
Crispy78 wrote: ...Unfortunately, after 2 different outsource providers and a certain amount of cost-cutting, we're very much not in that position any more - but the users still know next to nothing, and still expect the previous experience...
I know very little about the corporate world, but that sounds eerily similar to stories I've heard before.... :/
On early computing? I misremembered, as we did have a PC. Green Screen, Dot Matrix Printer, 5 3/4” floppy drive. So old, you could only load one program at a time, from disc. And if you wanted to print? You had to save the file first, or it wouldn’t print amendments.
So, essentially, whilst physically had a PC, we didn’t, for any practical application, have a PC. I’m not sure it even ran Windows 3.1.
Our first pc ran windows 3.11. It was a pentium, 90Mhz, CD-Rom, 16MB sound card, 8MB Ram (IIRC). Played everything up to Commandos/Starcraft. There it started to struggle. My first PC game was Silent Thunder: A10 Tank Killer II, my second PC game was C&C2:Red Alert the christmas thereafter.
The most magical thing was when we first connected that to the later, newer PC (200MHz) and my brother and I played C&C2 over LAN across the house. Mind-blowing stuff.
Pentium Win 3.11 was definitely a pretty magical time. Not my first computer but certainly one of the first where I had the ability to really do things. Logging out of Windows to hit a DOS prompt, manually configuring graphic and sound devices and the like.
I equate a lot of the games of that time with the Sega CD era of FMV. Myst, Burn:Cycle and the point and click adventure era. Mechwarrior 2 was the big deal for me personally, both as my first fights with the concept of performance and accidentally charging a bunch to try and get NetMech working as my first online matches.
What I enjoyed about growing up during the Console Boom was each iteration, up to and including the PS3, bringing noticable advancements and improvements.
Some stuff was bold experiments which didn’t quite work out. Other stuff was more impactful.
I think the biggest one was the N64 era, and the move to 3d games on console. And the last, for me, would be the Wii and its superb motion controls.
Since then, it’s just been refinements rather than outright advancements. And the Kinect will always frustrate me as a wasted bit of tech. Groundbreaking, but horribly underutilised.
But those days, NES - SNES - N64 - GameCube - Wii were a massively exciting time, when a new console genuinely felt must have, as each promised a whole new gaming experience.
I’ll let others weigh in on other manufacturers, as up until the PS2 I was solidly a Nintendo Kid.
My first console was the NES. Absolutely defined my childhood and when it came time to upgrade, I got a random opportunity to play Sonic 1, Mario World, and Bonk all in a sitting and pretty happily picked the SNES which might still be my favorite set of games I own. I would eventually pick up a Genesis but outside of Sonic 3&K, I didn't find many of its greatest games until the mid 2000's.
I had a friend who got all of the odd stuff. Sega CD/32X, CDI, Jaguar, etc, but nothing there impressed me. I'd gotten very into Street Fighter, so I saved up money bussing tables to buy a Playstation for Toshinden and thankfully later the far superior Tekken. It's probably got one of my largest collection of games, but most Sony's debut stuff hasn't aged very well. I didn't really NEED another console, but playing Mario 64 made the N64 a must buy and quickly wound up as the party console.
I initially skipped the Dreamcast but eventually picked it up... mostly for Marvel vs Capcom 2 but also for things like Code Veronica, Arcadia, Shenmue and Sonic's jump to 3D. It didn't last very long and the PS2 launched shortly after I left for college and is still probably the best all around system out there. I'd actually come to prefer games on the Gamecube with the Wavebird and Halo 1 LAN parties were the perfect college experience through my early career.
The next era happens to align well with moving in with my now wife finding a 360 while checking out apartments. Definitely an Xbox era with the Wii getting some absolute classics and the PS3 starting very slow but eventually having a decent selection of must haves. This is also when I started to fall out of console gaming though, with work, MMOs, Table Top, mobile games and kids all eating up a lot of my time.
The PS4 ends up being a fantastic console overall but between remasters and sequels gets hard to separate from its predecessory. I did get an XBOne, but it's probably my single most wasted purchase, even worse than the ill conceived Wii U. The Switch would pull me back in, particularly when it picked up the indie gaming torch from XBLArcade and I've been putting more time into the PS5, whose improved load times are one of the best upgrades in decades and gotten me to go back and clear some things I just didn't have time for.
Of course, it would be a disservice to forget handheld systems. I had the original Game Boy and Gear but battery usage limited how much I used them. The Color really changed that and the GBA and DS kept the spirit of the SNES alive and well. The 3DS faltered a bit in the face of phone games, but that along with so much of the industry has consumed itself in microtransaction nonsense that I cannot overstate how much the Switch has come out as the winner of it all in my book. I'm very glad miniatures have helped fill the void created by this era of miserable free to play nonsense.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: I think I started feeling old when my pop culture references started going over colleague’s heads. Or when I’m asked what my Berk and Boni tattoos are.
Sigur wrote: Our first pc ran windows 3.11. It was a pentium, 90Mhz, CD-Rom, 16MB sound card, 8MB Ram (IIRC). Played everything up to Commandos/Starcraft. There it started to struggle. My first PC game was Silent Thunder: A10 Tank Killer II, my second PC game was C&C2:Red Alert the christmas thereafter.
The most magical thing was when we first connected that to the later, newer PC (200MHz) and my brother and I played C&C2 over LAN across the house. Mind-blowing stuff.
Serial cable - playing mechwarrior 2 against each other.
I remember making my own RJ45 cable so we could hook up two laptops for multiplayer Red Alert 2. That was a fun weekend.
Also, I guess now is as good a time as any for the frankly inevitable “video stores, offy, pizz, night in” reminiscing.
Whilst in almost every way Streaming is superior? I did enjoy wandering around Blockbuster or Local Equivalent, and I turned up many oddities that way. And it felt like a ritual, something done for comfort with preparation.
It’s also where my stubbornness to watch any film, no matter how dodgy, to the end comes from. Once you’d picked and paid? That was it. Those were the films you watched that night. And I do enjoy getting even the most meagre monies worth.
Was also understandably good for finding shonky Straight To Video offerings, which were often dire, but occasionally really good, sequels to better known films.
Usually I'd say our Spectrum 48K+ was my first real exposure to technology, but I have to give it to this wonderful cassette-magazine series from 1984, that transported me to another world altogether with the miracle of headphones and a cassette recorder...
I feel cliched in saying this, but it was quite an experience at the age of four to hear that tune and Miriam Margolye's voice for the first time.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: I remember making my own RJ45 cable so we could hook up two laptops for multiplayer Red Alert 2. That was a fun weekend.
Also, I guess now is as good a time as any for the frankly inevitable “video stores, offy, pizz, night in” reminiscing.
Whilst in almost every way Streaming is superior? I did enjoy wandering around Blockbuster or Local Equivalent, and I turned up many oddities that way. And it felt like a ritual, something done for comfort with preparation.
It’s also where my stubbornness to watch any film, no matter how dodgy, to the end comes from. Once you’d picked and paid? That was it. Those were the films you watched that night. And I do enjoy getting even the most meagre monies worth.
Was also understandably good for finding shonky Straight To Video offerings, which were often dire, but occasionally really good, sequels to better known films.
I kinda prefer DVD's over streaming. It's the only way to see special features and deletes/expanded scenes. There are certain movies that are just great to watch with the Director's Commentary turned on. The 1978 version of Dawn of the Dead had the director's commentary recorded in 2001 in George Romero's living room while they watched the movie. There was a part where George says something like "Yeah, I still have that gun, it's hanging on the wall over there." There's also a part where they are running over zombies with big-rig trucks and they're bouncing off the front of the trucks. George points out a slight editing error that briefly shows how they got that effect. A zombie actor bouncing on a mini trampoline and flying backwards as the truck passes close.
IIRC there were crossover cables and straight though. One of which was needed for wall to computer use, the other for patch cables fo servers/wireing closets.
It’s been a long time, but something I used to know.
I kinda prefer DVD's over streaming. It's the only way to see special features and deletes/expanded scenes. There are certain movies that are just great to watch with the Director's Commentary turned on. The 1978 version of Dawn of the Dead had the director's commentary recorded in 2001 in George Romero's living room while they watched the movie. There was a part where George says something like "Yeah, I still have that gun, it's hanging on the wall over there." There's also a part where they are running over zombies with big-rig trucks and they're bouncing off the front of the trucks. George points out a slight editing error that briefly shows how they got that effect. A zombie actor bouncing on a mini trampoline and flying backwards as the truck passes close.
Physical media are 100% preferrable over fickle websites. Also, once DVDs disappear there'll be a LOT of films and tv shows which also disappear for good. What's currently happening is loads and loads and loads of late 20th century films, music, data, websites, knowledge, texts disappear. We thought that the digital age leads to EVERYTHING being available and we can all archive it and with high speed internet we can all access it all at any time. The sad truth is that with what we let the internet become this just isn't true.
We nourn these lost films like when in the 30s that film studio went up in flames and most of their films got lost. This is nothing compared to what we'll see in the near future. That may sound rather bombastically doommongerish, but I think that this will happen.
Nevelon wrote: IIRC there were crossover cables and straight though. One of which was needed for wall to computer use, the other for patch cables fo servers/wireing closets.
It’s been a long time, but something I used to know.
Yup. I made a Crossover cable, allowing two laptops to directly communicate, for Red Alert 2, and lots of patch cables to hook the school’s PCs up.
We were just experimenting with Wireless when I left in 2003.
Was part of a massive upgrade, which had been enabled by a pair of arson attacks on the buildings. Gave the funding and opportunity for a Tupenny All-Out of the existing network, which had been cobbled together over the preceding what, 15 years or so?
Man I loved a well ordered cabinet. And that’s what we got, in the end!
Robert Pattinson gave a couple of interviews about the new Batman
production...
When asked, “Are you going to do Batman again soon?” the actor responded, “I f–king hope so. I started out as young Batman and I’m going to be f–king old Batman by the sequel.”
He followed his response up by saying, “I’m 38, I’m old.”
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: I’m 45 in a few weeks, and whilst I’ve certainly lived a life, and my back begs to differ some mornings? I still don’t feel old.
Perhaps I never will.
A few weeks? Like the beginning of April? It's that soon? I don't want to be 45.
I kinda prefer DVD's over streaming. It's the only way to see special features and deletes/expanded scenes. There are certain movies that are just great to watch with the Director's Commentary turned on. The 1978 version of Dawn of the Dead had the director's commentary recorded in 2001 in George Romero's living room while they watched the movie. There was a part where George says something like "Yeah, I still have that gun, it's hanging on the wall over there." There's also a part where they are running over zombies with big-rig trucks and they're bouncing off the front of the trucks. George points out a slight editing error that briefly shows how they got that effect. A zombie actor bouncing on a mini trampoline and flying backwards as the truck passes close.
Physical media are 100% preferrable over fickle websites. Also, once DVDs disappear there'll be a LOT of films and tv shows which also disappear for good. What's currently happening is loads and loads and loads of late 20th century films, music, data, websites, knowledge, texts disappear. We thought that the digital age leads to EVERYTHING being available and we can all archive it and with high speed internet we can all access it all at any time. The sad truth is that with what we let the internet become this just isn't true.
We nourn these lost films like when in the 30s that film studio went up in flames and most of their films got lost. This is nothing compared to what we'll see in the near future. That may sound rather bombastically doommongerish, but I think that this will happen.
While a lot of the DVDs I got back in the early 200s were pretty much just more expensive VHS recordings, lacking a lot of the cool special features DVDs could support, there are a lot of really cool gems in the special features that will be lost with the move to streaming. Commentaries, when well done, are really good, being either insightful looks at the art of making movies/TV or genuinely funny anecdotes from the filming and an insight into the atmosphere on set. That'll all go. Then there's the move to "improve" on the originals that often leaves us with only the newer versions available on streaming. Even before streaming and HD upscaling there was the endless tinkering Lucas did on the original trilogy. My old Buffy DVDs are now pretty precious after the hack job they did making the first few seasons widescreen, complete with camera crew obviously standing in the shot and various other errors because it was never designed to be seen in widescreen. Those new versions are the only ones on streaming right now, AFAIK.
There's also just weird fragmentation of media across platforms now. Even if the whole thing is available online it can often have a few seasons on one platform, then one or two elsewhere so getting access to the whole thing all at once can be tricky. My wife and I got about 80% through a couple of shows before they disappeared from one platform and weren't available to us any more. In a few cases they seemed to not actually migrate anywhere else at all. As production and distribution companies go out of business, the lack of physical media means a lot of their content will just disappear. At least prior to this millennium there was always the possibility of finding a random VHS tape of some obscure TV show. Several episodes of various shows that were previously thought lost have actually resurfaced this way, recorded directly from TV. That's another thing the move to streaming has ended.
Best commentary ever is This Is Spinal Tap, where the cast do a commentary in character as if it was a real rockumentary and they are catching up. It’s glorious all over again.
Flinty wrote: Best commentary ever is This Is Spinal Tap, where the cast do a commentary in character as if it was a real rockumentary and they are catching up. It’s glorious all over again.
Flinty wrote: Best commentary ever is This Is Spinal Tap, where the cast do a commentary in character as if it was a real rockumentary and they are catching up. It’s glorious all over again.
Greatest /Worst Commentaries.
El Mariachi- Robert Rodriguez shot for shot tells you how he made the movie. Better than film school.
Conan the Barbarian - Arnold Schwarzenegger does not remember making a sequel... repeatedly.
Starship Trooers- Great for destroying your sound system. As Paul Verhoven does his impersonation of a bug attacking and screams... hope you didn't turn the volume up so you could hear the movie and the commentary.
I never got into DVD commentaries myself. I was at a stubborn point in my life where I only adopted DVD reluctantly, prefering my then truly vast VHS collection. And as part of that idiot protesting, would ignore such extras.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: I never got into DVD commentaries myself. I was at a stubborn point in my life where I only adopted DVD reluctantly, prefering my then truly vast VHS collection. And as part of that idiot protesting, would ignore such extras.
Good news, you can go grab a copy of Alien: Romulus on VHS.
Walmart started selling VHS players just for that one release.
Robert Pattinson gave a couple of interviews about the new Batman
production...
When asked, “Are you going to do Batman again soon?” the actor responded, “I f–king hope so. I started out as young Batman and I’m going to be f–king old Batman by the sequel.”
He followed his response up by saying, “I’m 38, I’m old.”
So, 38 = old.
As someone who was in high school when that young whippersnapper was born, someone roll me over to him so I can beat him with my cane!
Also, and apologies to the mods? But I seem to have (good!) mental block when over my lifetime, an actress has grown up, and is now considered desirable in a certain way.
Consider Emma Watson as an example. I was *check release date* around 21 when the first Harry Potter movie came out. And I enjoyed the movie.
As the other films came out, Emma Watson went through those things life does to our bodies, and became something of a sex symbol.
But, without passing judgment on the next person (especially not those of the same age as her)? I still see her as a kid.
I do get and appreciate she’s grown into a good looking lass, like. But my mind still views those that fancy/perv on her as Awaiting A Seat On Saville Row, because my brain has never quite grasped “she’s in her 30’s now”?
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: I’m 45 in a few weeks, and whilst I’ve certainly lived a life, and my back begs to differ some mornings? I still don’t feel old.
Perhaps I never will.
A few weeks? Like the beginning of April? It's that soon? I don't want to be 45.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: I’m 45 in a few weeks, and whilst I’ve certainly lived a life, and my back begs to differ some mornings? I still don’t feel old.
Perhaps I never will.
A few weeks? Like the beginning of April? It's that soon? I don't want to be 45.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: I’m 45 in a few weeks, and whilst I’ve certainly lived a life, and my back begs to differ some mornings? I still don’t feel old.
Perhaps I never will.
A few weeks? Like the beginning of April? It's that soon? I don't want to be 45.
Flinty wrote: Best commentary ever is This Is Spinal Tap, where the cast do a commentary in character as if it was a real rockumentary and they are catching up. It’s glorious all over again.
Greatest /Worst Commentaries.
El Mariachi- Robert Rodriguez shot for shot tells you how he made the movie. Better than film school. ...
Ooh, I'm really interested in listening to that now.
I never listened to DVD commentaries much, and I think the DVDs i got never had much in the way of commentary, but I do remember the commentary for Universal Soldier being very good. I also enjoyed the commentary on Sharpe's Peril by Sean Bean and Daragh O'Malley years after they did the film. Great for learning who of the cast supports which football club and having a laugh.
Just a few days ago I started listening to the DVD commentary on Farscape. Very good, sometimes slightly repetitive in some bits because I think the people commentating didn't quite know in which order the commentary was taped or something.
Now Community has a remarkable amount of dvd commentary. Every single episode's got it IIRC. And I would not suggest watching a lot of it at once. After a while I developed severe irritation caused by Alison Brie's voice.
Btw, for many years now I wanted to watch Chungking Express again. Couldn't get hold of the DVD, so for the first time in my life i bought the film on Amazon Video. The original audio is fine, but if I switch to German dub, the audio is all over the place and just horrid. No idea how they messed that up.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: I’m 45 in a few weeks, and whilst I’ve certainly lived a life, and my back begs to differ some mornings? I still don’t feel old.
Perhaps I never will.
A few weeks? Like the beginning of April? It's that soon? I don't want to be 45.
There is an alternative....
Time Travel? Genies?
Well, there is the ‘Logan’s Run’ option.
Ok, I tried to find a woman under 30 named Jessica who wanted to run away with me.
I had to settle for a lot less in that department...
After we got out into the world, we were attacked by a guy named "Box," (who I'm pretty sure was a robot) who tried to freeze us for food.
The only other person I ran across was an old guy and a gak ton of cats.
So I decided to return home. And here I am... why is the computer scanning me? I already told it there is no Sanctuary...
I kept ONE punch card from uni, didn't keep the ticker tape from sixth form.
I still have my log (logarithm) tables and slide rules. Took the slide rules in to a maths class I was supporting: the first question was "Where do the batteries go?"
It’s kinda mind blowing that as well as the dawn of affordable and widespread home computing, those around my age also grew up with the dawn of home video.
And this video is pretty interesting, as it shows early flailing within the high street trying to figure it all out. I had no idea WH Smith’s, Boots and that once offered video rental. Probably because by the time I was old enough to start remembering things, it had settled down to dedicated video shops, and the odd newsagent with a small selection.
And yes, I can remember the first VHS I ever owned. Dr Who, The Time Warrior.
Even getting a joystick to work, or getting sound out of a sound card, was an effort.
