Feeling really old

Bunch of n00bs :D

My first computer was an Acorn Atom. It came with 1k of memory on board and a 1MHz processor. I upgraded it to the maximum of 12k on board and BUILT a 24k memory expansion board. From scratch.

Here's the computer itself.

atom-1-20160309-183547.jpg


And here's the bottom of the memory card. Lots of soldering there!
atom-2-20160309-183824.jpg


The inside of the computer. See that toggle switch hanging on a bit of wire at the top? That overclocked the processor to 2MHz.
atom-3-20160309-183938.jpg


And the top of the 24k memory card which I built.
atom-4-20160309-184031.jpg


I fired it all up in 2011 and it still worked - It got sold on eBay for a decent sum.
 
I would have kept that personally.

Also not many people on here can say that their first overstock was from 1Mhz to 2Mhz and required physical modification!
 
Acme said:
I would have kept that personally.

Also not many people on here can say that their first overstock was from 1Mhz to 2Mhz and required physical modification!
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To be fair I remember overclocking an nVidia 6200 AGP with a physical volt mod using a pencil back in 2005-2006. Got that thing to about 100% OC :D
 
V F said:
I really don't understand how so many younger ones to this day don't seem as savvy as teenagers with the handhelds from the late 80s early to mid 90s.

It almost comes across todays teenagers truly are spoon fed, or at least far too many of them as there are some truly smart ones out there. I mean regardless of that video, the way society is nowadays it is very believable. They don't strike me one bit being good at trouble shooting.

Can you imagine the internet going down for them as they have hissy fits... It almost feels like that Google film.
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I think it's fairly true to say, that in the early 90s only the geeky/tech smart kids had PC or were into PC games. In the early 90s there still weren't many PCs in schools, remember.

So the non-geeky kids stuck to their consoles, pretty much. As you know, the console experience is pretty much plug and play.

These days, every kid has a PC, laptop, tablet or all three. But there are still only so many geeky/tech smart kids using them properly and fixing them when they go wrong.

The rest want/need a console-like experience from their PC.

So I don't think that kids are getting lazier, I think simply that PCs are in the hands of everybody today, whereas in the 90s only a few tech smart kids would have really wanted one at home, compared to a PS1, XBox, GameCube or whatever.
 
Freefaller said:
Crazy isn't it? A 10Mb hard drive was considered significant - and was a good couple of inches thick.
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They were called Winchester drives when we got one in our first computer

made by a company called MJN it cost nearly £3000 (a long long time ago), spec was a mind blowing:

286 sx12 (complete with turbo button for old 8bit stuff) 1mb ram 10mb hdd, 3.5" and 5.25" floopy drives, a dot matrix printer and a 14" screen the size of my car :p

Dos 5.22 and win 3.1

I remember we got a whopping 4mb memory upgrade for it so my dad could do some editing for ITN on it, we were the talk of the town! :D

Before that PC we had the obligatory BBC Micro followed by the amstrad cpc6128 :cool:
 
FoxEye said:
I think it's fairly true to say, that in the early 90s only the geeky/tech smart kids had PC or were into PC games. In the early 90s there still weren't many PCs in schools, remember.

So the non-geeky kids stuck to their consoles, pretty much. As you know, the console experience is pretty much plug and play.

These days, every kid has a PC, laptop, tablet or all three. But there are still only so many geeky/tech smart kids using them properly and fixing them when they go wrong.

The rest want/need a console-like experience from their PC.

So I don't think that kids are getting lazier, I think simply that PCs are in the hands of everybody today, whereas in the 90s only a few tech smart kids would have really wanted one at home, compared to a PS1, XBox, GameCube or whatever.
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That and a PC was so expensive in the 90s. They were a few thousand. I remember as I wanted one but couldn't afford it so had to settle for a games console and even that wasn't one of the best. I remember once if you wanted to use a computer it was either lunchtime in school or the school library. As well as your local library.
Since I never got a PC until August 99. Even that was pretty basic. As I remember friends having their fancy GeForce 2/Ultra's. Wasn't until late 2000/1/2/3 before I started getting Athlon Thunderbird 1.3/1.4/XPs, GeForce 3s and fancy 19" CRTs. Most had those Iiyama CRTs.

Saying that, look at the price of the NVIDIA 980 Ti cards and such. I still remember parents saying the past few years they aren't paying £400+ for a PS4 or Xbox One.

Though, most to this day don't want PCs or even laptops. A bit similiar how it once was. Gamers, photographers, programmers, production/3D/video/music, scientists using them mostly. Though schools/offices still use them but they wont be beefed up like the above would use since most live off their phone contracts nowadays.
 
I purchased my first PC in 1995, and I think it cost just under £2000. I managed to swindle it out of my parents on the basis that I needed it for University but the reality was that I wanted a Doom machine which could also play the Star Wars Rebel Assault series ( these sold me on the idea of using a PC for gaming).

An expensive hobby and it still is. My GPUs alone cost me more than my ps4 and xbone combined.....but once a pc gamer.....always a pc gamer.....I don't think I could ever use a console again exclusively.
 
the IT world of yesteryear was pretty cool, DOS was good and the same commands from the command line still do a good job are is still needed at times for IT admins etc.

Windows 95 was ok: the usual media hype and a hard sell won the day (Apple were dying back then and I think Microsoft helped save them). Microsoft eventually saw the light and with Windows 2000 client (which didn't play games very well) brought us secure file systems (NTFS) but lets face it the bane of everyone's lives at times is the Virus and Malware/adaware. Windows XP in 2001 was windows 2000 that allows games to be played and now everyone uses Windows 7 (windows 8 and 10 don't really feature all that much thus demonstrating how little we pay attention to desktop operating systems these days).

Personally I think the WWW changed everything as it gave a set of software standards that allowed everything to communicate (remember how hard that was before) so Apple, Unix, Microsoft all of sudden could exchange data quite easily.

Hardware got smaller too and now phones have a lot of power but the batteries run out of charge quickly
 
What was that TV show that had the datablast at the end of it?
We never had a VCR that had a steady enough pause to read any of it. :(
 
I miss Ben the Boffin from The Big Breakfast, he had my dream job talking about games. I trusted this kid more than most magazines.
 
I remember having to go through those huge manuals for anti piracy. Find letter 42 on page 3 and letter 56 on page 12.

So awesome. Now we don't even get manuals :/
 
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