Steve Posted January 10 Report Share Posted January 10 When I was a kid, my very first computer was a TRS-80 that used a cassette tape recorder for saving files. I remember playing with crystal radio kits as a kid, also bought from Radio Shack. Anyone remember SCSI drives? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rich McGee Posted January 10 Report Share Posted January 10 (edited) 37 minutes ago, unclevlad said: Electric cars won't have taken over in 5 years. They don't need to take over. The genie is out of the bottle and it isn't going back. EVs will always be available on the market going forward, and their tech will only keep getting better while the government and society makes more and more allowances for them going forward. They won't replace fossil cars for decades (certainly not in my lifetime) but as I said kids these days will always have the option to drive electric - and growing up in this climate (both actual and sociological) means many of them will. It's not even a matter of will they have the choice to make. They already do. That future is here, awaiting them getting old enough for a learner's permit. Edited January 10 by Rich McGee Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ternaugh Posted January 10 Report Share Posted January 10 9 minutes ago, Steve said: Anyone remember SCSI drives? I'm sure if I dig through the old parts box, I'd find a cable or two. Probably find a terminal resistor, too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rich McGee Posted January 10 Report Share Posted January 10 20 minutes ago, Steve said: When I was a kid, my very first computer was a TRS-80 that used a cassette tape recorder for saving files. C-64 for me. Tape drive, of course. 21 minutes ago, Steve said: I remember playing with crystal radio kits as a kid, also bought from Radio Shack. Grampa bought my first one. Not really my thing, I was more into model rocketry before I discovered miniatures games, at which point my modeling efforts turned toward scenery for tabletops and kitbashing scifi/alt-history vehicles. You can really pack a lot of turrets on a WW2 battleship kit when there's a whole second set of them on the "bottom" of your space dreadnought. How many people kitbashed the Franz Joseph scout/destroyer/tug/dreadnought designs out of Enterprise kits as kids? I think I killed more of that kit than I did Space: 1999 Eagles. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
unclevlad Posted January 10 Report Share Posted January 10 3 minutes ago, Rich McGee said: They won't replace fossil cars for decades (certainly not in my lifetime) but as I said kids these days will always have the option to drive electric - and growing up in this climate (both actual and sociological) means many of them will. It's not even a matter of will they have the choice to make. They already do. That future is here, awaiting them getting old enough for a learner's permit. Not until they're buying their own cars. Before then? The cars they'll have available will be limited...and probably not EVs. When they can? At that point...they can choose, and I'll agree they'll have the option...but it's not a foregone conclusion, because of all the circumstantial issues with EV ownership/use. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rich McGee Posted January 10 Report Share Posted January 10 15 minutes ago, unclevlad said: The cars they'll have available will be limited...and probably not EVs. Maybe not, but eventually people grow past using the parents' cars for errands. Some will adopt fossil when they do, despite the dark clouds on the horizon. Some will go to EVs, which will be a lot more common in the 2-3 years we have to go before that 2022 eleven year old is driving - unless the tech somehow dead-ends, which seems unlikely. Some won't drive at all because they live someplace where public transit actually works, or just accept the nuisance value of not having a motor vehicle of some kind - which can be pretty doable if you're headed to a college in a year or two and can't keep a car on campus as a freshman. Heck, one of the nearby school districts announced that it's gotten an EV for kids who want to take driver's ed in one, with the fossil junker scheduled for retirement when it finally kicks the bucket. The EV was a donation, if they don't get a similar offer for a fossil replacement that might be the end of it. They'll probably get one, lots out there - but it's still something I wouldn't have expected to see even five years ago. Changing world, and changing faster. What's that about the center cannot hold? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Old Man Posted January 10 Report Share Posted January 10 1 hour ago, Steve said: Anyone remember SCSI drives? I had almost forgotten, you bastard. Steve 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pariah Posted January 10 Report Share Posted January 10 1 hour ago, Steve said: Anyone remember SCSI drives? How about this: Anyone remember Zip drives? I had a Zip 100 parallel port drive. And I worked in one of Iomega's call centers for a year back in the day. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Old Man Posted January 10 Report Share Posted January 10 Just now, Pariah said: How about this: Anyone remember Zip drives? I had a Zip 100 parallel port drive. And I worked in one of Iomega's call centers for a year back in the day. I might have talked to you about the click of death then. Possibly more than once. Pariah 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ternaugh Posted January 10 Report Share Posted January 10 37 minutes ago, Pariah said: How about this: Anyone remember Zip drives? I had a Zip 100 parallel port drive. And I worked in one of Iomega's call centers for a year back in the day. Our home Zip 100 had a SCSI interface, which was very speedy. I took in a disc to work, which had a parallel port drive. It seemed glacially slow. Pariah 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pariah Posted January 10 Report Share Posted January 10 I still have my Zip drive and 3 disks ... and no computer with parallel ports to attach it to. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ternaugh Posted January 10 Report Share Posted January 10 It used to be common for us to buy used SCSI hard drives. I had bought a Micropolis-branded drive, and when I went to install it, I noticed a previous owner had marked the frame with the words, "Seagate Sux". Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted January 10 Report Share Posted January 10 Let me add that Exabyte tapes suck also. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Old Man Posted January 10 Report Share Posted January 10 1 hour ago, Cancer said: Let me add that Exabyte tapes suck also. Not as bad as 3M Blackwatch 9-track. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
unclevlad Posted January 10 Report Share Posted January 10 I vaguely remember having a ZIP drive for a while...but really just vaguely. And I never saw a tape format I liked...or trusted that much. Another blast from the past. 1200 and 2400 baud modems. Those were painful at the time, mind. I remember finally getting a 57.6 kb, and thinking, man does this help! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Old Man Posted January 10 Report Share Posted January 10 I had a 300 baud modem once. Divide that by eight and you get 38 characters per second. It was literally slower than typing, and it made BBSes nearly impossible to use. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted January 11 Report Share Posted January 11 Made for great suspense while playing TREK, though. Old Man 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Posted January 11 Report Share Posted January 11 Talking about modems, and I'm getting flashbacks to AOL and one of the earliest online RPGs called GEnie. Anyone remember Trade Wars? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
unclevlad Posted January 11 Report Share Posted January 11 I don't recall Trade Wars. but Wikipedia lists it as a PC game. I wasn't using a PC...C64, and an Amiga. And a IIc, come to think; pretty sure that's where I ran the Wizardry series. Pretty sure my first PC had a 386. The oldest games...Wizardry I, for sure. Archon...an arcade-style game putatively based on chess, but with fantasy critters who battled each other, arcade style. Edge went to the critter on his side's color. Actually pretty fun. Each monster had different attributes, that you hadda learn. There was a space trading game that was pretty simple...altho the flying could be tricky. Little later? An Amiga. Cool for its day, far better graphics. Bard's Tales I, II, III...hated certain dungeons in BT III that were just hideous slogs. (I got the PC ports for BT I and BT II later. Finished BT I, but man, BT II's dungeons were near-constant fights...like seemingly every square. I'm pretty sure, on the Amiga, it was...pretty bad...but not THAT bad. It's also worth noting that those combats were *painfully* slow. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bazza Posted January 11 Report Share Posted January 11 7 hours ago, Pariah said: How about this: Anyone remember Zip drives? I had a Zip 100 parallel port drive. And I worked in one of Iomega's call centers for a year back in the day. Yes. I inherited a Macintosh SE and I plugged in the SCSI Iomega Zip Drive 100 MB and the Zip Disk booted the Mac flawlessly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tkdguy Posted January 12 Report Share Posted January 12 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BoloOfEarth Posted January 12 Report Share Posted January 12 (edited) We had a way-early TV video game where we had to put semi-transparent static-cling film overlays on the TV screen to represent the play area. Can't remember whether that was Pong or something else. Edit: Did a little research online, looks like it was the Magnavox Odyssey. Edited January 12 by BoloOfEarth Old Man and Pariah 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Old Man Posted January 13 Report Share Posted January 13 51 minutes ago, BoloOfEarth said: We had a way-early TV video game where we had to put semi-transparent static-cling film overlays on the TV screen to represent the play area. Can't remember whether that was Pong or something else. Edit: Did a little research online, looks like it was the Magnavox Odyssey. I played one of those. It spoiled me with its controller design, which was capable of so much more than the Atari 8-way joystick with one button. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scott Ruggels Posted February 10 Report Share Posted February 10 On 1/10/2024 at 3:11 PM, unclevlad said: I vaguely remember having a ZIP drive for a while...but really just vaguely. And I never saw a tape format I liked...or trusted that much. Another blast from the past. 1200 and 2400 baud modems. Those were painful at the time, mind. I remember finally getting a 57.6 kb, and thinking, man does this help! 2400Baud US Robotics Modem atttched to my Macintosh Plus to access the BBS with the champions Play by Post that Tom Tumey was running. THe funny thing is that site seemed to run better if accessed by a C64. THat Macintosh also had a hard drive that the Macintosh sat upon with a rather thick SCSI cable stuck in the back Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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