Am I the only Zoomer? I see a lot of “I remember”-type responses, so I have to wonder.
I’m in that weird group that’s between Gen-X and Millennial. I’ve seen us called Xennials or the Oregon Trail Generation.
There are dozens of us!
But seriously, I think we had one of the most interesting technological evolution of any generation. Going from using the Dewey decimal system and encyclopedias early on, to using the internet before graduating.
Was Oregon Trail really that huge?
It really was. It was a time when most didn’t have computers at home. Once a week you’d get to go down to the computer lab and play educational games from MECC. Oregon Trail being the most popular of the bunch.
About twice a week we would go to the computer lab filled with Apple IIes. Usually we had to play Number Munchers, Word Munchers, or some other game to reenforce whatever we learned in class. After we finished the game in the lesson plan, we could then play whatever educational game we wanted. Oregon Trail was a popular choice because nothing was funnier than having the game say a classmate had died or broke a leg. And the hunting and rafting mini games were the closest to arcade games.
Also keep in mind that the only exposure most of the teachers had to a computer were the mainframe terminals in the school’s office or the computer lab. MECC put together a lot of software and training for teachers. A school building out an Apple II based computer lab with a bunch of MECC software was as close to turnkey as they could get at the time. The documentation for Oregon Trail or Odell Lake gives you an idea of what it was like.
http://www.mecc.co/history/the-oregon-trail---a-157/mecc_a-157_oregon_trail.pdf
http://www.mecc.co/science/odell-lake---a-192/mecc_a-192_odell_lake.pdf
Xennial!
First computer I used in school was an Apple IIe with a 720kb, 5.25" floppy drive.
First computer at home was a Tandy 1000. Still out in the garage, I think.
Xennial as well. My first home PC was an Epson with 640k and a 3.5 DD disk drive and a “Turbo” button on the front of the case.
I remember getting a kick out of a game that used RealSound, a piece of software for doing voice and other similarly complex sound out of the standard PC speaker (apparently it handled 6-bit PCM audio, though I wouldn’t know that at the time).
That game included a card explaining how to improve the audio out of your PC by building a cable to connect the line going to your PC speaker to an RCA cable to connect it to a stereo or boombox. The cable wasn’t great at what it did (and better designs had been devised since), but it was pretty simple (if I remember right just some RCA cable, a couple of alligator clips and a capacitor).
Floppy drives have been a recent fascination of mine. A small, semi-disposable soft-robotic hard drive, how ingenious.
I’m a Millennial (35 years old)
When did you get the internet for the first time?
My first PC was in 1998, I think we had internet in 1999.
Gen-X, here.
Nice. We still need a Boomer. Silent Gen would be a nice bonus.
What format did you use for removable storage at first?
5.25" floppy disks, formatted on a Commodore 64 with a 1541 disk drive.
Another GenX. Aka the best generation.
There are dozens of us, dozens!
Xennial here! Had friends with Atari 2600s, first childhood console was an NES, and first home computer was a used Atari 800XL.
Oh, and my first school computers in small-town Ontario were Commodore PETs and ICONs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICON_(microcomputer)).
Wow, go Ontario Ministry of Education.
RIP Bette Stephenson. In the same way that Al Gore invented the Internet, Bette Stephenson invented the ICON. She was a very stubborn politician who would not tolerate anything other than complete success from the project. Passed away 3 years ago.
I’m a millennial but I also have an interest in computing before my time. The possibility of understanding the computer entices me, whereas modern computing is more interested in understanding me.
Worry not I am also a fellow Zoomer.
I always enjoyed retro technology either because I didn’t use to get the latest stuff right away or because there’s a certain charm to it that still grabs my interest.
I’m on the younger side (not sure what the category cutoffs are) and I have the same reason. It started with me getting stuff that I wanted to try as a kid, then it went from there
Oh yeah? Are you a big retro gamer then?
Old fartBoomer here, my first computer was a Sinclair ZX Spectrum.What about you, did you ever work with punch cards?
Although I did see some punch cards I never used them. At the time I couldn’t afford a computer with punch cards and was too young and inexperienced to work for an organization that had such machines.
Maybe you need to go to the silent generation for that.
Gen Z here. Oldest computer I remember my family having was an XP tower, a Dell Dimension.
I studied computer engineering, and that interest pulled me into retro tech. I love seeing what older hardware is capable of — I’ve got a Pentium laptop that can load old Reddit and stream music over wifi.
There’s a trove of old hardware and software to dig through too with so many unique odds and ends. History and tech worth preserving. One of my favorite projects so far was doing some programming challenges in BASIC on an Apple II. Anything old-tech is fun to me :)
There’s a really noticeable difference in motivation between the old and young users here. For you and me, it’s conceptual, for a lot of the older users it’s pure nostalgia because I guess the concepts aren’t new.
I’m a xennial. Though we were always a bit behind the curve (my first computer was a Philips XT clone, back in the early nineties), so I guess I’ve always been retrocomputing.
But yeah, it’s kind of shocking to see people being all nostalgic about stuff I consider newish.
(And I’m still cursing myself for throwing out my CPD-G420)
My first computer was a 48K Sinclair ZX Spectrum, when I was maybe 12 years old. That’s how old I am.
There’s a couple proper boomers in here now, so step aside lol. I’m still hoping a silent generation person might turn up.
Old enough to have bought a new C64 from Toys R Us
I’m in my 20s. I got into retro computing because I used older (Windows 95) computers my parents handed down to me when I was a child and things got cemented and I started looking at even older tech when I started watching YouTube videos covering retro computing.
Alright! It’s kind of similar for me, I grew up playing among old towers in our basement, and I still have a supply of retro stuff handed down to me, if I can catch it. I love seeing problems solved in different ways, or even the same way but visibly in old hardware. Today it’s all buried under the higher layers of abstraction, and the the other end of gen Z hasn’t even used a filesystem necessarily, let alone had to think about the physical layer.
Old. Just caught the tail end of the era of big machines.
Learnt Unix on a VAX 11/750. Used text terminals for a long time.
In the early 90’s my college had a VAX for student accounts via wonderful dial up The CS dept had Sparcstation 2 workstations
And now we have everyone. Did you ever use punch cards?
No, except for software that represented data in virtual punched cards under the covers, for communicating with remote systems. (None of which used punched cards anymore.)
Hah, xnec2c for GUI antenna simulation still expects you to make virtual punch cards. “If it’s not broken”, I guess…
Heh. Presumably there’s some very old FORTRAN in there somewhere?
It’s an old FORTRAN program with a graphical interface kludged overtop, I think.
