Feeling really old

macuser · 8 Mar 2016 at 23:57

Acme said:
I doubt it.

Sorry typo 1.08GB

Akagi · 8 Mar 2016 at 23:57

macuser said:
Sorry typo 1.08GB

Haha I figured, just found it amusing.

Sliver · 9 Mar 2016 at 00:03

My first Desktop PC was from Golf based in Epsom. 1GB HDD and 512mg RAM. Nvidia GFX card, 17 Inch Monitor. This was in 1999. Big step up from my Amiga. I managed to trash it by fiddling with the BIOS but got it all repaired under warranty, bit cheeky really but whatever. It was my first attempt at an overclock. I tweaked a setting to Turbo and it fried the RAM and Mobo

. I Didn't tell Golf that though.

Downloading mp3's from Napster was amazing to me and I ended up with over 300 songs before Napster got burnt and went commercial. It would take 20 minutes on my 56k modem to grab one song. Amazing how things have progressed. Oh and AOL, what a crap setup that was. Ditched them for Tiscali I think.

macuser · 9 Mar 2016 at 00:08

Acme said:
Haha I figured, just found it amusing.

Aye slight difference. At work in early 90's I think we paid over £5,000 for 1 GB Hard drive. Was roughly the size of 2 shoe boxes. SCSI interface

Blackjack Davy · 9 Mar 2016 at 01:55

Pawnless Endgame said:
I think the big 5.25" disks held 1.2 megabytes for double sided and 600 kilobytes for single sided. At least I think that's what it was for BBC Micro disks.

The more conventional 3.5" disks were 1.44 mb / 1.38 mb formatted.

For the BBC Micro it was 800k for DSDD or double sided, double density 5.25 floppies, 400k per side.

3.5 inch I can't remember but its was similar or the same iirc. I remember getting my hands on a 1.44mb floppy on a PC for the first time and thinking "wow thats a lot"

edit: I think they were 640k, 320k per side for 3.5 floppy I seem to remember.

V F · 9 Mar 2016 at 05:07

Hades said:
Green is the correct colour for cheese and onion.

My dog used to love space dust

Lol! Why the hell did they get changed to blue. Blue was salt and vinegar.

Gooner Leroy said:
I was hoping they'd have to dial up to connect to the internet just so I can hear that beautiful dialing tone again

Followed by a click after several attempts?

ttaskmaster said:
You mean New Kids On The Block... or The Beatles?

Disks?
Pfft.... Cassette tapes - Beeeeeeeeep-Screech........Beeeeeeeeep-Screeeeeeeeeeeech........ Beeeeeeeeep-Screech........ Beeeeeeeeep-Screeeeniuncpii[pok[johpqoker[jfop4ij[ioj9fi]ojkf8j]3opfkrprevg'r#vf'#r'fc'w[#'2;]3xl3fj[jfiojqehwiofjpqweokfpeeeeeeeech........ LOADING FAILED.

I still cannot get over Donnie Wahlberg was in that group.

robfosters said:
90's internet in 30 seconds

Wasn't there a female voice?

trackrat said:
The good old days when the modem use to screech when it was connecting.
95 was my first OS
So yes I am an old fart.

98 was mine, well first owning but I remember only using computers in school/college with 95 and Novell? No internet in school. Was too costly.

McGraw said:
Why the obsession with WiFi?

Surely the teenagers of today know about Ethernet?

bsoltan said:
Why would they, if the only technology they use they can hold in their hand?

So true, bsoltan. I find it frightening how so many appear dumber? Is that the correct term? The phone google generation. As in remember the days internet seearching required better knowledge. It was down to finer key words.

Efour · 9 Mar 2016 at 05:47

There was nothing good about 400 quid phone bills back then.
When adsl first came out my wallet groaned with relief.

Kids these days wouldn't even use a desktop. They all either have tablets, Phones or thin laptop things it's not too far fetched. Unless you have an interest in IT there's no reason to know half the stuff even exists or how it works.

V F · 9 Mar 2016 at 05:51

Sliver · 9 Mar 2016 at 05:55

When you think about it, we paid a premium for 56k interweb, back in the day, which would disconnect if anyone phoned while you were online and we were only getting Kb speeds. Now we have 80Mb download speeds and pay half the price. Hopefully, in 10 years or so, we'll have 80Tb downloads for peanuts.

V F · 9 Mar 2016 at 06:17

I don't recall it being disconnected when somebody phoned. I remember they got the engaged tone but usually up to 2 hours it would disconnect. I do also remember it very costly trying to be online a lot. Or at least for me in 99.

Sliver · 9 Mar 2016 at 06:22

V F said:
I don't recall it being disconnected when somebody phoned. I remember they got the engaged tone but usually up to 2 hours it would disconnect. I do also remember it very costly trying to be online a lot. Or at least for me in 99.

In our house, every time someone phoned the modem would drop out, which was annoying when you're 15 minutes into a 20 minute download and you had to start again.

SonniLombardi · 9 Mar 2016 at 06:31

Sliver said:
In our house, every time someone phoned the modem would drop out, which was annoying when you're 15 minutes into a 20 minute ~~download~~ pr0n video.

Sliver · 9 Mar 2016 at 06:36

lol. it wasn't pron it was Napster. I'd spend hours every day file sharing and creating CD's from it. My sister though had a billion friends who called our house all the time so it was really annoying.

bainbridge · 9 Mar 2016 at 07:26

Wait, is windows 95 out?

Antar Bolaeisk · 9 Mar 2016 at 07:44

Sliver said:
In our house, every time someone phoned the modem would drop out, which was annoying when you're 15 minutes into a 20 minute download and you had to start again.

We were the house of the future having installed an ISDN line, no more dropping of the internet when someone picked up the phone and glorious 128Kb/s when the phone wasn't in use.

Rifte · 9 Mar 2016 at 08:00

ahh DOS.....my university years consisted of the following command :

cd doom2
doom2

The only times I would find DOS frustrating was when to creating a boot disc to configure EMS memory (autoexex and config.sys) for X Wing.

I did the whole Windows 95 thing, but the reality is that as a gamer, there was no need for it at the time of launch and for sometime afterwards.

9 times out of 10 I would usually force the PC to boot into DOS and ignore Windows completely.

Rifte · 9 Mar 2016 at 08:04

Sliver said:
In our house, every time someone phoned the modem would drop out, which was annoying when you're 15 minutes into a 20 minute download and you had to start again.

Never had this.

I used to use two ISPs at the time.

The first was demon.net (monthly subscription and PAYG with your phone bill :eek:

)

The second was Lineone, their subscription gave a free phone number for dialup but every 2 hours it would cut out and you had to redial in. I was heavily into Everquest at the time, so I used to run an alarm clock on my desk which would count down so I could log out safetly etc and then dial up again and relog in. Pain in the bum......I used to used Demon net for raids.

McGraw · 9 Mar 2016 at 08:07

Still not sure if I buy this WiFi thing.

WiFi is not magic, it needs a physical connection somewhere and surely they get taught some of this stuff at school or know what to do if the internet "breaks" at home?

jsmoke · 9 Mar 2016 at 08:09

I think we had two phone lines so avoided the clash of phone and internet, I also remember thinking that ISDN would be the holy grail probably an extra 5kb/s.

Rifte · 9 Mar 2016 at 08:11

jsmoke said:
I think we had two phone lines so avoided the clash of phone and internet, I also remember thinking that ISDN would be the holy grail probably an extra 5kb/s.

Always wanted ISDN but I could not afford it. It was crazy money back then if I remember correctly.