Ask Lemmy

IDK how old that picture is but it reminds me of my computer class back at school and the computers at the library. Back then Windows XP/2000 was the thing but there were many older NT 4.0 machines and I think even ancient 3.51 machines too lol.

The Internet was a very different thing back then. I used to spend ages on CBBC games and other random sites I've forgotten by now xD

Yeah... playing runescape in computer class then the browser got blocked so I used the old .txt to .bat trick to open it

@echo off was hackerman level stuff to my peers

lel

I'm old enough to recognise an iomega ZIP drive.

30 years ago?

When the Internet used to be something almost equal to a library, the excitement of and the privilege of going online (about $3 an hour in my country back then) and discovering some more knowledge to be had, and was then constantly growing with new information being put online. Yes, and if you have to make contact, you make the effort of writing an email after reading all you have to do to follow "netiquette". Or introducing oneself at a newsgroup.

BTW, in some places with limited options for which to make computers work, you had to DIY, like making your own Laplink cable so that you could transfer files.

The games... Yes, the games were becoming exciting as we were then enjoy watching the intense competition between the largest console makers, and there was no greater excitement than waiting for the newsstands putting out the latest copy of EGM, can't wait reading where video games are heading to next. And nearly all the devs were then really sincere about their personal idealism about video games.

It was also a time when the fringers were then really in the outer fringes, conspiracy theories also made for entertaining long barroom tales we even laugh at between sips of beer, rather than accepted as, uh, "truth". Way before some techbro rolled out a certain "TheFacebook".

On the other hand... 17" monitors were fucking heavy already, what more with bigger ones made for CAD jobs? Plus, around that same time a lot of those mechanical IBM AT keyboards were being pulled out from offices and stacked on top of another, destined for recyclers... now those same keyboards you have a hard time finding intact, or even still in their boxes.

Yes, but because it was completely pre-enshitification internet, with so much hope and promise to be something good for everyone.

Yep can confirm. I was a computer technician in a UK university throughout the 1990's, and we had 8 labs with PCs and Macs, and at the very beginning, BBC Micros, Atari STs, and even Sun SparcStations. Not sure I miss it - certainly not the hassles with configuring interrupts on expansion boards, getting CD-ROMs working on "older" PCs, juggling conflicting DOS config.sys and autoexec.bat configs, or self-combusting mice. I did enjoy it, though - being right there as the World Wide Web was born, and each new year brought faster CPUs, better colour graphics, and progressively worse versions of Windows...

Yep. There weren't devices everywhere so we all learned about them together, hunted for Easter eggs, and trolled each other by inverting mice and flipping screens and all of that. It felt cleaner because there wasn't an ad on every screen. I remember getting a book with exercises in it and just working through it for keyboarding, and going to the lab in a class to do research for a report (or just goof around on the Internet). I also remember in later high school when the IT director informed us very proudly the school had almost a TB of storage across our several computer labs like this.

Good times. I do also remember having THE computer for the school and it rolled in on a heavy cart.

I miss the 35 cent scribbler and way better gym equipment.

I can SMELL this room. Like ink toner, burnt dust, ozone, and slightly cooked plastic.

Also, yes and no. There were many positives and negatives. I just really fucking hate the fascist politics and the absolute horseshit that has enabled to proper and grow. In many ways, it's like we all died in 2016 and this is a parallel nightmare dimension leading to really bad shit.

Do I miss those days, like in that picture? In some ways, yes, but in many ways, no.

If that doesn't truly make sense to you, you aren't old enough to understand and I'm not about to explain it.

I used to write the software to refresh and update student labs like that. There's nothing quite as satisfying as seeing the entire lab reboot simultaneously .. and nothing quite as frustrating as seeing all of them fail at the same point in the boot process .. thanks to Microsoft.

Proof: https://www.itmaze.com.au/articles/zen

The computers were always slow. SSDs are a wonderful thing as are multicore processors.

But I miss when I had a positive view of tech.

i can still literally smell and remember the atmosphere in those IT classes:

• PCs takes 10 mins to boot sometimes 30 mins. By the time it boots, we are out of time and cant play any games. Yes we are allowed the last 10 mins of class to play games.

• Remember DAVE the game?

• Keyboards are very satisfying to type on. Mouse is a hit n miss because they have those ball thing to control the direction. I.e. sometimes the ball gets stuck and you cannot click or scroll.

• A bunch of geeks try to send message using net send command. We thought we are the gangsters.

• Nothing worse than having an IT class after lunch, you have like 50 kids and 25 pcs and there are NO A.C. The only thing you have is the ceiling fan.

I don't know if I miss this or if I miss being young but yes.

Maybe I just miss using a computer without ads all over the place.

Zip drive AND a CD ROM? What kind of elite school is that?

Not really. I don't like nosy people and I don't like having to hear them loudly clacking keys.

Cutting a second notch on a 360KB floppy to make it double sided, doubling the capacity to 720KB

Also, taping over the notches to protect the floppy from being overwritten.

My brother told me what it was like. Sounded much more fun than what we have today.

THAT was a service worth paying for (internet cafes). They sound really fun.

I never got to experience it...

Mid 90s. Our school built its first computer lab. The guy they hired to teach students how to use computers was probably in his mid-20s. He installed Doom on a few PCs, and the few of us who figured out there were games hung around near the end of the school day to see if he would allow us to play. He eventually let us when he was convinced we won't tell anyone.

I'm old enough to remember classrooms without computers! The most technologically advanced piece of equipment in the room was my digital watch!

Yeah, I want my toasters back

Being optimistic about technology and humanity

No.

Why am I crying?

Bah, I'm too old. Had a commodore 64 at home tho.

Simple answer : no

Windows? Fuck no, we had Sun Sparcs and we lik

Segmentation fault.

.... you kids need to get off my lawn *shakes fist*

We had Apple IIs and later some early macs because my area experienced a population boom and had some more tax money to play with.

I mostly miss that our society seemed stable at the time. I was wrong; for minorities it was still a shit show, but I didn't know that yet.

Gaming got way better after around 2007, and Turtle Rock invented co-op multiplayer that wasn't deathmatch.

Not much, but I do miss the fact that school computers were linux and we used free software to learn basic computer stuff. Nowadays the our school system is held ar gunpoint by google&co

Sweet summer child. We learned FORTRAN on punch cards that we would send off to the regional office for them to run. Our punch cards would get returned to us with a fanfold printout of errors/output. I'm not sure I ever saw a program work correctly. Mostly because the bad kids would slip fucked up cards into other people's programs, and comment cards remarking on the teacher and her physical unattractiveness. It was a major relief when they put in a micro-lab stocked with these.