re. the youngster ...

users
#1

Anthony you grew up in a world that many folks still have not
entered - some of us started using computers as a convenient type-writer,
some of us started communicating over the BBs with others, with the hope
that we could learn from those who were inventing these electronic gadgets,
... less than a decade before you were born, some folks were still saying
this industry was a passing fad, following the thinking of those at IBM and
Xerox that they had the latest for many years to come ... then things
started to change with each passing day; computers were no longer those
huge machines filling some large room and spilling out stacks of cards, ...
[have you seen the movie Bridget - it will open your eyes to how things
were before the computer age and has a great scene showing what's supposed
to be a computer filling a room with umpteen flashing lights.]

I was mistaken as to which version of MO I learned to use as a 5 year old.

#2

        Anthony you grew up in a world that many folks still have not
entered - some of us started using computers as a convenient type-writer,
some of us started communicating over the BBs with others, with the hope
that we could learn from those who were inventing these electronic gadgets,
... less than a decade before you were born, some folks were still saying
this industry was a passing fad, following the thinking of those at IBM and
Xerox that they had the latest for many years to come ... then things
started to change with each passing day; computers were no longer those
huge machines filling some large room and spilling out stacks of cards, ...
[have you seen the movie Bridget - it will open your eyes to how things
were before the computer age and has a great scene showing what's supposed
to be a computer filling a room with umpteen flashing lights.]

How about paper tape readers and punch cards in the days of IBM and 7 dwarfs, Fortran, Cobol, and Basic.

#3

And I bought my first computer (IMSAI 8080) 20 years before he was born!.

anne-ology wrote:

#4

Jay Lozier wrote:

How about paper tape readers and punch cards in the days of IBM and 7 dwarfs, Fortran, Cobol, and Basic.

Many years ago, I had a Teletype M35 ASR, which had paper tape punch & reader, which I had connected to that IMSAI 8080 mentioned in my previous note. At one part in my career, I maintained that sort of equipment. I also used to work with punch card equipment.

#5

And a breakthrough was marksense cards that freed you from the punch terminal.

#6

I rerember tales of people learning to use COMODORES. I am in shock to
reliase how far in which we have come since those days, I think you will
find with the new generation there will be a greater acknowledgment of
open source and that will be the way of the future - One can only but
hope :slight_smile:

#7

Steve Edmonds wrote:

I also used to work with punch card equipment.

And a breakthrough was marksense cards that freed you from the punch terminal.

We used those in my Gr. 12 Fortran class. I also worked on equipment that could read them. As I recall, we spent most of our class time marking up those cards.

#8

I started out with punched cards and teletype terminals. I though it was Heaven to go to a CRT terminal a few years later. I bought my first PC-DOS type of computer in kit form. I remember our local college offering courses in how to use Windows, when it came out. I went from using a computer bigger than my apartment to one that is the size of a thin book. I was a mainframe programmer in my early working days. Then learned PC networking when that was becoming popular.

In the Star Trek Next Generation, they had tablet technology. Now we have it. There was a prediction back in the 1950's that there was not going to be an need for more than 20 to 50 computers in the USA in the "future". They just did not get what would become that old clunky monster. Now it is something no kid can live without to do their school work, let alone its ability to entertain us. I remember the B.B.S. systems. My first email address was about 80 character long and it was via a B.B.S. network. Now we cannot live without its descendant, the Internet. Can you imagine your life without the Internet?

Young people today do not know what we had to go through without all of the computer-based items that they grew up with. They would be lost without those devices. How many kids in the near future will never have picked up a printed book, with the trend of eBooks on classroom laptop costing school less than buying new printed book every few years. Curling up with a nice tablet, instead of a nice book, does not appeal to me.

Yet, I am currently taking on the task of converting a batch of .ePub and .Mobi books to a A6 size PDf file for use with a tablet where the Kindle reader software will not read from the external microSD card. Calibre to convert .epub to .txt, then LO to create the A6 page size PDF file with a footer for page number and "book" title. Then they will be read on a $100 USD Android tablet that will read PDF files via Kindle off that external card via the file manager.

#9

same here -
           I was looking for an easier way to type documents, so I bought
what I called the 'glorified typewriter' [the Apple]

And I bought my first computer (IMSAI 8080) 20 years before he was born!.

#10

        same here -
            I was looking for an easier way to type documents, so I bought
what I called the 'glorified typewriter' [the Apple]

My first computer was an Apple IIe I used to write my MS thesis using a daisy wheel printer. Using a computer saved me time and money because I did need to find a typist or need to worry about my so-so typing skills on a typewriter.

#11

webmaster-Kracked_P_P wrote:

I remember the B.B.S. systems. My first email address was about 80 character long and it was via a B.B.S. network. Now we cannot live without its descendant, the Internet. Can you imagine your life without the Internet?

Actually, the Internet predates BBSs, going back to it's roots in the late '60s. While I used those, my first email address was on a VAX 11/780 system.

#12

The Internet was not the Internet back then. I believe it was ARPANET or something like that. I do remember that much in my computer classes. College and businesses had the ability to connect to the "mainframe" interconnection system that sprang out of the Dept. of Defense, but it was a long time before a home user could use their modems to connect to that type of system.

It took a lot of work in the late 80's to get it to become a browser based World Wide Web, instead of a text based system. Then it became the Internet we all know of today. I remember the pre-PC days and did not like it. Then when the first local BBS system was online, having 10 Meg of a hard drive, people could not imagine how it would ever be filled. Later, I was working on a project for making a BBS style of system for the housing market for a local company, based upon a free software template. A few years later, the Internet came to the common home users via their dialup systems. That is when I got my second phone line and started working on a tourism web site. Had to use a text editor to hand code everything, since WYSIWYG editors cost too much.

I do not want to think would my life would be like without my Internet connection. I made a partial living in the 90's from it. The FOSS movement would not exist without the Net being as it is today.

#13

webmaster-Kracked_P_P wrote:

The Internet was not the Internet back then. I believe it was ARPANET or something like that. I do remember that much in my computer classes. College and businesses had the ability to connect to the "mainframe" interconnection system that sprang out of the Dept. of Defense, but it was a long time before a home user could use their modems to connect to that type of system.

The name "Internet" was coined as it's purpose was to connect diverse networks into a common system. It has evolved considerably from it's earliest days. It was already in popular use before web browsers. Back when I first got Internet access, back in the mid '90s, services such as gopher, WAIS, ftp, archie, usenet and others were in common use. Those functions have generally been taken over by browsers.