[PetrolRider]

My computer life started with a neat, fresh to the market Win95 Compaq with JBL speakers . I did have played Prince before on DOS machines though and also used few of the cheat codes, one I remember is to go backward and break a roof to go over the enemy and to level 2 direct.

In my time, mini floppy was getting out and micro floppy was the new thing. Micro floppy were so unreliable that we used to take the hard disk out and carry the hard disk to college lab / friend' place for data copy. Motherboard setup was so complex with full of jumpers and I in fact blew my original mother board due to a wrong jumper setup.

I grew up with Yahoo chat and Sify and of course Calltiger internet telephony card.

[vrprabhu]

How did I miss this thread?

Originally Posted by IronH4WK

If you remember this, you're old. Very old.

Going by this standard, I would qualify as a pc-o-lethic! Over the weekend let me see if I can get hold of the proof of my qualification!! In my school college days, we weren't allowed to use calculators - what was allowed only the log tables. In fact, for some university exams we were supplied the printed eight sheeter log tables (because Clark's log table book had quite a bit of useful mathematical information in them!)

Originally Posted by tilt

Microsoft Flight Simulator in those days came on a bootable 5.25" floppy .... Put the disk in the drive and turn the computer on, and there you were, inside the cockpit of a Cessna 172 in glorious 8-bit graphics with just Cyan, Pink and Black

I recollect this quite vividly. We had a PCL (Pertech Computers Ltd.) machine in the late 80s and used to run this game.

I do have the original floppies of Windows for Workgroups (Win 3.1) - let me see (if I manage to connect the floppy disk drive to my PC) if it still works.

Originally Posted by blackasta

...Most of those systems did not have any HDD, and we carried bootable floppies to boot them up.
I guess in 1998 or 1999 we got to see color monitors and windows OS (few machines)
We first had 5.25 inch floppies, and later we graduated to 3.5 inch ones while in class 9 or 10.
... BSNL dialup internet using 56.6 kbps modem - this generation would never know that sound a modem makes while connecting!

Right!

The first colour monitors appeared with Windows 98, I think.

Since even 3.5" ones had limited capacities, we had these ZIP drives (iOMEGA) for back up.

Wasn't it VSNL which gave out the internet connections, during this period? The music and static would indicate whether you were connected and the strength of your connection!

UNIX machines had DAT drives...

Thanks to the nature of my work or curiosity or both, I have seen mainframe computers in my school /college days (Centralised ticket booking - Railways, MICR clearing - RBI). Datamatics had a centre near Egmore, Chennai. Was it called IDM by any chance?

When computers were first introduced in work place, we were required to remove our footwear and use (hawaii) slippers in the computer room

[Thad E Ginathom]

I think not USB in 2000, and I don't think it would be USB slots.

But... I can't even open the brain cells containing the names of the expansion slots in my current pc, let alone previous generations . Oh, PCI and PCI express.

There was colour since Win 3.1. not here in India? There were even windowing graphic interfaces before Win-anything. Unix had graphic workstations. And (Duh, I should know, but I put most of techie brain cells in cold storage years ago) isn't X as in Linux machines directly descended from X on those workstations?

Plainly, we have historians on hand to whom these questions are trivial

I hated my first PC. Compared to the Unix machine that was my introduction to computing, it just didn't do anything interesting. I think it had some sort of windows system called Gem?

[reignofchaos]

Recently got hit with the nostalgia bug and ended up with a few old systems - a Pentium III, a Pentium mmx and an Athlon 64. Even managed to find a correct aspect ratio 4:3 1280*1024 LCD for them. Playing old games has never been more fun.

Apparently old PCs are in seriously high demand now as people wish to collect them for various reasons. Had a hard time finding a Pentium 200 mmx system as they cost pretty penny these days. Pair it with a 3dfx Voodoo 1 card and it is the perfect machine to play 90's games.

[Guite]

Originally Posted by Thad E Ginathom

There was colour since Win 3.1. not here in India? There were even windowing graphic interfaces before Win-anything.

Colour definitely was available on Win 3.1 in India. I think some colour app like 3D Studio we launched directly from DOS prompt. That was way back around 1993-94.

[Thad E Ginathom]

I think Windows always had colour. paint was an early Win application, right?

But it was not colour as we know it today. Before VGA there was EGA? And before that? I guess Google would give me a potted history.

[tilt]

Originally Posted by Thad E Ginathom

*SNIP* Before VGA there was EGA? And before that? I guess Google would give me a potted history.

Before that was CGA.

Cheers

[vrprabhu]

Originally Posted by Thad E Ginathom

There was colour since Win 3.1. not here in India? There were even windowing graphic interfaces before Win-anything.

Unix had graphic workstations.

....... isn't X as in Linux machines directly descended from X on those workstations?

Yes there was colour in Win 3.1. What we didn't have was colour monitors! So while the PC supported colour output, there wasn't a monitor available to view the colours.

This makes me remember the X-windows terminal in Unix machines (HP Ux was what was being used then, I think)..... Unix serves were great (when compared to Windows PCs) - they were really multi tasking monsters those days...

Anyone here remembers Novell network?? Both Unix and Novell were pretty good at LAN and centralised storage...

[myavu]

I completed my Mech. in 1995 and joined Cad Centre, Kochi for AutoCAD and LISP. That was my first exposure to computers. AutoCAD was in DOS initially. After couple of months new version came and it climbed to first UI version in Windows 3.1 (My first Windows OS experience). Then in the last 23 years worked in Windows 95, 98, NT, 2000, ME, XP, VISTA, 7, 8 and now 10 1809. That's a long way.

From 1996 the most nostalgic one is my first job firm got VSNL Internet connection at 32 kbps. Doing all those shell mode chatting . Feeling as sitting duck while waiting for downloading a 1 MB file.

Formatting both big and small floppy disks. Doing CHKDSK and Disk Check everyday in 256 MB hard drive to deal with bad sectors.

In 1997/98 we were rendering a walk-through of now famous shopping destination at Shanmugham Rd. Kochi. It took 6 days to render with 4 computers and we were going for movies and other outing everyday.

Then the December 31st, 1999. The whole IT team sat entire night to watch then famous y2k. Nothing happened and those days were so much hilarious.

Today computing is actually a Thug Life

[vrprabhu]

Originally Posted by vrprabhu

I do have the original floppies of Windows for Workgroups (Win 3.1) - let me see (if I manage to connect the floppy disk drive to my PC) if it still works.

Our in-house recycler has converted the floppies into a pen stand holder!

Win 3.1 did come in 64bit VGA colour......

[Thad E Ginathom]

Yes, I remember Novell! It was rubbish compared to Unix, but we had it in a small branch office, so kept a server at our place too. I installed it in a few places in another job. No love for it, but it provided net services for DOS.

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by vrprabhu

The first colour monitors appeared with Windows 98, I think.

No way... I got my first VGA color monitor in 1992 since I was working on Windows 3.0, it was not popular because of the expense. It was available even before that.

I had also worked on CGA, MGA and HGA monitors prior to VGA.

Prior to Win95, windows/dos didn't have networking. Yeah, I know there was Windows for workgroup 3.1 thing, but it was not common. So most used other third party products. Out of which, I had used Novell Netware, Banyan Vines and PC-NFS.

[vrprabhu]

Originally Posted by Samurai

... I got my first VGA color monitor in 1992 since I was working on Windows 3.0, it was not popular because of the expense. It was available even before that.

WoW!

Thanks for making me feel (relatively) modern!

[swissknife]

Originally Posted by tilt

I grew up on CP/M, MP/M and TurboDOS - all 8 bit, on 8-bit Intel 8080 or Zilog Z80 processors with 4 KB RAM and a single 8" floppy drive, before Microsoft even probably existed.

You may remember the first "Graphic"display on the Apple IIe. O remember the "biorhythm" program that we wrote to plot the data, through self learning from the manuals that came with the computer. Part of the manual set was the complete 6502 processor manual as well.

Though it wasn't the first desktop computer at that time. The IDM S/30 was a true desktop computer since it was built fully into a desk, and on top of it was the display and keyboard built into one. 2*8 inch single side single density, 64 KB each running with CP/M 2.0 on a Z/80 processor with 64KB RAM.

I can't forget the endless repetitions of the movie theater ticketing program that we wrote while learning COBOL.

[shivshanker]

a few from my old Tool Box, indeed can share a few funny stories from my time.

Attached is an 8 Inch Floppy diskette used to either IML (initial Microcode Load) a device or load Patches or even for that matter load the Operating System at times. I have kept it next to an A4 Folder, just to how the Size


Second Image is from another treasure I found in some of our old offices, Original IBM Punch Cards, please do not ask me how they were used as I am not that old. Punch Cards were used primarily on IBM 1402's as the source for Data Input for the 1401 Data processing Units. There were no Disk Drives during the 1401 era but surprisingly there was Tape Storage indeed.