Tom's Hardware Offers a Walk Down Memory Lane

[Chris Gohlke]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.tomshardware.com/picturestory/530-duke-nukem-cyrix-3dfx.html' target='_blank'>http://www.tomshardware.com/picture...cyrix-3dfx.html</a><br /><br /></div><p><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/dht/auto/1276718424.usr10.jpg" style="border: 0;" /></p><p>If you are among our younger readers, you missed many of the joys (frustrations) of late 80's and 90's computing and this article over at Tom's is a nice little history lesson. &nbsp;I still remember sitting in the technology class in college where the professor had just loaded up the first version of Mosaic and having my jaw drop. &nbsp;Lots of people don't recall that Amazon originally only sold books, my first order with them was&nbsp;July 23, 1998, nearly 12 years ago. &nbsp;Whats your favorite (least favorite) memory of classic computing?&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>

[jeffd]

I am surprised they did not cover AOL's previous popular incarnation, especially after covering the commodore dataset drive. Before Aol was Aol, they were an online gated community for C64(/128 too) called Quantum link. It offered up many themed sections from news, buisness, files (demos, pictures, music files), chat (Not only was there alot of people and many chat channels, but many of the official ones were actually staffed!), and several online games.

The jackrabbit casino offered several card games and slots with virtual cash totals that remained persistent, and many nights there would be official guides that hosted special games that offered up even more money.

Also abit of a lost gem was Club Caribe. a virtual world created by lucas arts in the style of their adventure games at the time.

<img src="http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~toby/writing/PCW/habitat.gif">

[Lee Yuan Sheng]

Optimising the first 640k of memory so that games will run with all features intact.

[Felix Torres]

Well, dripping hot solder on a bare foot while manually rewiring a Cherry keyboard to use as an external Keyboard to an Atari 400 comes to mind. :)

Of slightly more recent vintage: calmly walking into a Staples on Black Friday, with two friends, looking for a Compaq C120 HPC on sale for $50. (List Price was $299, I vaguely remember.) After the mob dashed through, we asked a dazed checkout employee who said they got three. All still available. We grabbed all three. The employee had no idea what the thing was.

[Reid Kistler]

Nice trip down memory lane: still have a soft spot in the heart for Prodigy, 8" floppies, and having to set the size of a word processing document IN ADVANCE of actually typing anything in.... ;)

But my favorite bit of old hardware has to be a Columbia VIP (trans)Portable Computer: 40-odd pounds of industrial square-cornered metal casing surrounding a 9" green screen CRT with dual floppies: one held your program files, and the second the data files. Running a new app meant loading a new floppy, as there was no hard drive.....

[Chris Gohlke]

And I can't forget the Tandy 1400 FD that I complete my high school and the first half of my college career with. http://www.8bit-micro.com/tandylap.htm

[Jason Dunn]

If I go waaaaaaaaay back to around age 10 or 11, my dad bought the family a Laser 128...it was an Apple IIe clone, which a kick-ass AMBER and black screen. The amber colour was supposed to be easier on your eyes then the green and black screens. Hehe. I recall fondly playing games like Gemstone Warrior (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemstone_Warrior), the Ultima games, AutoDuel, etc. Some of my fondest computer memories involve playing AutoDuel with a friend of mine; we'd trade off, he'd get the joystick and drive the car/fire the weapons, I'd man the keyboard and toggle weapons, bring up the map, etc. Those were some seriously fun times. :)