Discussion on:

10 IT relics I really miss

I miss magazines with source code and BBSes as well. The sources were a great way to experiment with programming, 2 more that I miss are text adventures, like Zork and the Infocom series, and the PLATO system that linked users at educational sites much like a social network. PLATO lives on at cyber1.org with many of the original games and notes files but it was the community that made it really neat.

What about loading a tape into the unit ? And rearranging an all messed up deck of cards? Those were the times...

(Sorry if it was mentioned before. Haven't read all the comments yet.)

Was my first job. Paper tape, punch cards.
HUGE dot matrix, tractor-fed printers that were a BITCH to reload and required boxes and boxes of paper.

You can still get easily modifiable code in with Open Source software.

I miss keyboards that had the function keys arranged in two columns down the left-hand side of the keyboard where God intended them.

The reason keyboards have mostly changed is because they were expensive before membrane keyboards were developed. You can still find very high quality keyboards today that have great feel and are even quieter than the old buckle-spring method. You need to look for the term "mechanical keyboard" or "cherry switches." You may be able to find a mechanical keyboard for around $50-60, but most of them are above $100. Compare that to the $10 keyboards you can easily find and it's easy to see why the bulk of manufacturers switched to membranes.

You can also find excellent deals on large speakers and amplifiers if you are willing to delve into some of your own building. parts-express (dot) com has a great array of such parts, along with amplifier boards. You may be surprised how good a $30 amplifier with a set of $3 drivers can sound when properly designed.

For those of you that remember them, there are still many of us sysops out here. Instead of dialing in, you just have to telnet. Try oldtime.synchro.net, vert.synchro.net or bbs.execpc.com. You might also like to try a telnet gui called syncterm.

For those of you that have never logged in, give it a try and see what we're about.

I miss the "old-fashioned" power switches, the big red toggle that when "up" meant the power was "on". Of course, the OS is so much more complicated now, but that's another story. My new Windows 7 laptop seems to take forever to "shut down".

'Miss' isn't quite how I feel, but reminisce about:
- having access to BitNet in the pre-Internet days, when it was mind-blowing that you could contact someone electronically clear across the globe.
- bang-addressing your emails (when you had to actually know how you wanted to route them across the aether)
- playing Rogue and Hack way into the night on University computers because it was more fun than studying
- attending some of the first MacWorld Expo summer shows in Boston (before I developed a preference for PCs)
- having a dial-up account with Unix shell access on the world's 1st dialup ISP - Software Tool & Die (TheWorld.com). I was lucky enough to go to college with one of the founders.
- as mentioned before ... the screech of modems (300,1200,2400,9600,56K) ... got real good at figuring out what connection speed I was gonna get just by the sounds
- screwing around with 3rd party TCP/IP stacks before Microsoft provided their own

Gosh, the list could go on forever.

One thing I definitely won't miss is how unreliable those 3.5 floppies were - or how patheticlly small they were (1.8 meg per disk!) - or how vulnerable they were to viruses. (ok that's three things)

Another thing I do miss is reliable keyboards. - I use my laptop heavily for writing and editing and am now in need of replacing the keyboard, not because its broken but because the printing has come off the keys - plus its only just a few months over a year old. And its one of those stupid Samsung models that are fully enclosed - that means completely dissembling the whole case just to replace the keyboard. ...

Mice with a rubber ball inside...trying to get something done in a hurry and finding the mouse is dirty and the cursor just refuses to go where you need it.

Going to connect to the internet and finding someone is either talking on the phone, or another computer is already connected and you're out of luck.

Hoping to get through all 16 floppies without one of them being unreadable leaving you with a partially installed program.

The sign on the chief engineer's desk "CD burn in progress...do not touch".

Along with the above, the "buffer underrun error" message and always having plenty of "coasters" at $5 each.

CRT monitors in general...or paying $200 for a used 640x480 Compaq CRT in 1996 and thinking it was a bargain.

Unhelpful "get a mac" replies in PC forums...especially when our office had a bunch of Macs and they were more trouble and crashed more than the PC's.

The whine and wait of dot-matrix printers. Ever-clogged inkjets.

When we lost the BBS we lost the local community.

I ran a RBBS-PC for years, The South Texas BBS system, three nodes of pure programming heaven along with one of the top downloads, HDInfo.zip.

Three nodes running on an IBM-PC with an AST expanded memory card with 2 meg of high end and very expensive memory and QEMM with Desqvu, with an internal modem and two external modems. With Baron Realms, Solar Realms, and Tradewars door games.

My Current DOS computer is a P-III with 256meg and three 8 gig drives, running DOS 6.22 and the last version of QEMM, now I wish I was running my BBS on this system!

Agree totally on the IBM keyboards. I'm typing now on a late 80's one that came with a PS/2, and I have another one in the attic just in case this one ever breaks (unlikely but you never know).

I loved "Soft Side" magazine from Radio Shack. I couldn't wait for my dad to get the latest copy so I could see what programs were available. I would type in BASIC code for hours just to get a new program on our TRS-80 Model I. The programs weren't great by today's standards, but when you're not even 10 years-old and in the 1970's, it was high-tech. We didn't own a floppy disk back then (1977-ish), we use to save everything on a cassette recorder. We got the floppy disk a few years later.

I once weot some code in Basic that would select a range of ROM on my Atari and give me back the Code from the machine instructions... Just to be sure, I compared it to the code I found in a book on the Atari and it actually worked.

Even though I agree with just about everything in this article, there is one thing I don't miss. Buying a new program and finding out that it doesn't work with one component on my computer and having to wait for the software company to mail me a new driver.

I am still using the keyboard from my old IBM 55 from 1987. Nothing like it.

I type this into a HP Desktop (not a tower) and I am planning a list of jobs and visiting users at one of our sites tomorrow. I don't care what "best practice" dictates. Remote control is great but unless you go and see users at the "coal face" from time to time you are going to always alienate them. Fly the flag for IT!!!

PS - Might go to the computer shop at lunchtime

20MB HD 256 K RAM 2500 price tag (with pin printer)

I miss running Green Acres BBS in New Mexico and writing all of the code that I did for Mustang Software's WildCat BBS (I wrote THE WILDSTUFF!). Times were good with those old phone lines and modems doing their thang!

Who remember the Turbo button on the 486 PC, Push it to play and go for the 66 MHz !!! AWSOME !!

Why they had a turbo button, I seem to recall people just left them in turbo mode all the time.

Why would you ever want your PC to go slower?

Presumably there was some reasonable explanation for it but I never found out what it was.

Ummm, i'm a little confused by number 9....you seem to be suggesting that you can run Windows 8 from a USB flash drive, making it "portable software". But, the article you link to is only showing us how to install Windows 8 onto a PC from a USB flash drive, rather than a DVD. Can you really run Win 8 from a flash drive?

My C programming class (circa 1993) instructor said he would accept assignments on anything except 8" floppies. I had access to a card punch and turned in an assignment on 80 column punch cards. He said it was hilarious, then he tossed them into the air.

I also had a BBS, only one person at the time, they call me by phone to reserve time.
As you say I had more or less 100 "clients", I knew each one for is name, they were friends.
One day my ATARI 520 has total crash, I don't continue, my clients beg me, but that's all.
I finish the BBS, because it took to much time.

I miss DEC VMS. What a sweet OS. Went from VMS to Unix (remember Ken Olsen and his "Unix is snake oil" comment?). It was non-proprietary, but was it ever a step backward from VMS.

My two grains of salt:

- Memory management; freeing most of your 640kb of base RAM
- COM port and IRQ-DMA assignment for modems and other peripherial equipment
- CPU frequency and voltage configuration by jumpers
- Installing individual I/O ports cards, disks controllers, audio cards, etc.
- Using a schematic diagram to pinpoint a failed IC in a motherboard
- Configuring your disk's "bad sectors table"
- Installing and configuring a VGA-capable video card (640x480-256 colors! Awesome!)

No discussions, al past times are better...

As a kid, I used to build circuits and stuff from mags like Popular Electronics of even Sci Am. I even built the chassis with tube sockets and discrete parts (resistors, capacitors, chokes) and transformers. Now you'd have to buy a kit to get even the ICs needed. In Canada, Radio Shack has disappeared and surplus stores mostly too. We have a couple of refurb computer stores but nothing else. You can't really do electronic experimenting anymore without joining a informal network. And I miss reading about what is happening inside the circuits and how you can change outputs. Now its all programming. No wonder art school kids take computers apart and hang them on the wall so you can look at the spinning drives, No one really knows what is actually going on inside anymore. I'm not a luddite but I don't understand why I must buy a "new" system just because the OS has a new version. If MS or Apple made cars, they'd only work for a couple of years. And we'd have more "crashes".

Come to Chile! Where I live there are many computer stores.

We have several nation wide companies (though I should say they are "nation long" companies... Have you ever seen Chile's map? (http://static.icarito.cl/200912/620311.jpg).They do sell on Internet too, but I guess they sell much more at the stores (otherwise, they would close them).

We also enjoy, in most cities, plenty of independent little computer stores that sell a great variety of computers parts, sometimes with slightly higher prices, but we prefer to pay a little more because we can see and touch things before buying, without waiting one or more days for delivery.

Come to visit us!! :-D

I had the Commodore 64 with the 5 1/2 inch Floppy Disk drive, and the removable disks did flop back and forth when you handled them!

It was a lot of fun playing games hooked to a regular TV, and downloaded stuff from BBS at a blazing 1200 baud modem.

I miss typing commands to the computer. It really felt like conversation between friends back there. It made a strong relation of boy and computer.

back then a 360kb diskette, single sided, can become double sided by adding a notch at the side of the disk and inserting it thru it's back side. viola! 720kb! And a 5.25" hdd with a capacity of 5mb was capable of running a system! apple ii-e was dominating the pc market that time.

When you needed external hardware for almost all multimedia stuff, had a compaq laptop, bloody thing was 1.2Gb hdd, 236MHZ and 32MB ram had an external c.d and i had only one game called accolade that sweated the cpu like hell

Not old enough. Portable computing is NOT old school!

My old IBM convertible was a true laptop, and I consider it pretty old. It still works too! That thing was built - it has been kicked around in the field during Army exercises, and took the licking very well!

I'd have said mobile instead of portable, but that distinction has pretty much been left behind. I think it would have gone over the heads of the younger crowd.

My first laptop was a 286 Gridcase with a 20mb hard drive, a 3.5" floppy drive, and an amber display. It was solid as a rock, but at 20+ pounds with charger and hard case, it felt like you were carrying around a rock. It was mobile, but only because one person could pick it up and move it.

I decided to use a separate memory writer as a printer for my laptop, so my clerk could keep working while I was. That memory writer was the BIGGEST heaviest piece of machinery I ever remember hauling around, that was part of the PC revolution. It was one of the heaviest things I ended up loading onto a deuce-and-half! - actually! I think my .50cal HBMG was lighter!

After all, it was a two-man lift, and the memory writer wasn't!

weighs in at 127.87 lbs. with heavy barrel, tripod, pintle and T&E. I used to carry one just like it all over the mountains with at least one box of ammo. I prided myself for carrying the whole thing with my issue M16A2 w/40mm grenade launcher as well! Maybe it was the special backpack that held it all; but that damn Xerox 620C felt like a ton of bricks, even though I bought a special case to lug it in!

to the relative impact of each on your future survival.

Although I've never seen the Marines in action in the field, I'm inclined to think they were part of your situation. I know when the Army moves Ma Deuce, they split her up between two people. The Air Force, of course, lets her ride in the truck!

but at any given time, their was only one flunky in my section, and that was me. I preferred it over the M60 because if its high range; and I suspect you're right about the motivation of being well armed gives one in the field. Typewriters take a back seat!

We had M-60s with 2-man crews. I never wanted to carry the tripod, only the 60. My crewmates never argued with me. Silly boys...

My first laptop was:
1) made in February 1985. Is that old school enough for you?
2) a true laptop. 4 pounds. Ran 16 hours on 4 AA batteries. Fit in a briefcase, about 8"x10"x1.75".
3) Integrated LCD - 40x16 characters. It did have bit-addressable monochrome graphics.
4) Had apps in ROM - no built-in floppy. (I did later purchase a 200K external floppy drive that also ran on 4 AA batteries.) It included Basic, a text editor, basic telecom and MS Multiplan spreadsheet software standard.
5) 24K RAM and 72K ROM - upgradable to 72K RAM and 104K ROM. Oh, and a built-in 300 baud modem. 2.4Mhz 80c85 CPU. Bootup time in fractions of a second.

The wonder machine? A Tandy Model 200. I _still_ use it - runs great for jotting recipes & whatnot in the kitchen due to it's long battery life and IMNSHO, the best laptop keyboard *ever*. The built-in keyboard rivals the IBM Model 'M'; I used to be able to type over 100wpm (my best is over 110wpm) on that keyboard - new lappy keyboards I'm lucky to hit 65wpm.

I'm thinking of inviting all my geek friends and throwing a party for it when it turns 30. (Mainly just a reason to drink heavily, tho... )

It's not even 30 yet!

And any excuse for drinking heavily is a good excuse.

I would like to have seen that.
My current PC is very useful and can run rings around my old Commodore 64. But that C64
provided me with untold hours of fun. You could really get down and dirty with programming with Peeks and Pokes. Some of the games I got from friends and at the store were really quite remarkable given the limited power of the old machines back then. My favorite game was "The Castles of Dr. Creep".