Getting on line in the early 1990s

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Getting on line in the early 1990s

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June 9, 2011 at 6:20 pm

#698121
6

General Lighting

@general-lighting

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this is the sort of terminal I’d normally use. This one was in a USA bookstore but in uni you’d have labs with loads of desks with these on them.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]150937[/ATTACH]

you’d be logged into a Unix shell (Linux wasn’t invented until 1994!). all command line stuff normally!

it connected to systems like this

[ATTACH=CONFIG]150939[/ATTACH]
A VAX/VMS from Digital Equipment (now in a museum in NL). Digital (DEC) was based in Reading for many years.

The period 1989 – 1994: “Supertime and decentralisation”

if I was really lucky there would be one of these. They were very advanced for their time.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]150938[/ATTACH]

it is in the collection of this German dude

http://john.ccac.rwth-aachen.de:8000/alf/

there wasn’t any easy way of getting info back to my house and I didn’t even have a computer at home until 1993 (a year after I’d left uni) so you had to print everything. A printer looked like this and was shared between several labs..

[ATTACH=CONFIG]150940[/ATTACH]
June 10, 2011 at 1:17 am

#949119
1

p0ly

@p0ly

Participant
only time i can remember using a proper oldskool computer was to play those classic arcade games like space invaders.
June 10, 2011 at 12:01 pm

#949126
1

DaftFader

@daftfader

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The place I last worked in STILL uses them style printers! Up untill a few years ago they had the black and green terminals as well lol.
June 10, 2011 at 3:46 pm

#949121
1

mungo1972

@mungo1972

Member
Hi All ,
I was sorting out the Library/archives room at work about a month ago and i found MicroFiche , any one remember that shit !!!! . It wasn’t a computer as such but not long ago they still used it !!!! . I mean the next step down is black board and chalk !!!!

regards
Mungo
June 10, 2011 at 4:22 pm

#949117
6

General Lighting

@general-lighting

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Microfiche were still used in libraries until the late 80s or early 90s for library catalogues. It is still in use for long term storage especially for important archive info, as provided its kept safe from really bad conditions its a lot harder to completely trash the information it contains..

consider this – if I had a disk from either the VAX or the Sun Sparcstation today, it would be a right bugger of a job to extract the data from it, whereas a microfiche or spool of microfilm I could take to the local library where they’d probably still have a reader tucked away somewhere…
June 10, 2011 at 4:27 pm

#949122
1

mungo1972

@mungo1972

Member
Hi General Lighting ,
You mean that microfiche might have had some important info on it …….the microfiche i burnt !!!!! oh shit lol . No its okay its stored , but yes im not sure but i think its not in use any more where i work but maybe i dont know . You ever use it ? its quite funny looking at the big screen/project thing lol…and you moved it around with a small lever if i remember right ? ….long time ago now .

regards
Mungo
June 10, 2011 at 4:53 pm

#949118
6

General Lighting

@general-lighting

Moderator
Staff
@mungo1972 438948 wrote:

Hi General Lighting ,
You mean that microfiche might have had some important info on it …….the microfiche i burnt !!!!! oh shit lol . No its okay its stored , but yes im not sure but i think its not in use any more where i work but maybe i dont know . You ever use it ? its quite funny looking at the big screen/project thing lol…and you moved it around with a small lever if i remember right ?

yep and possibly as recently as the 1990s, it was (and still is) used to store copies of computer generated reports that would otherwise take up a lot of space.

Nowadays there are clever devices that will scan the film automatically and convert pages to PDF or other formats you can look at on a normal computer….
June 10, 2011 at 6:29 pm

#949127
1

DaftFader

@daftfader

Participant
I used to have one of these when i was a child :laugh_at:

A BBC Micro

“Draw_line from 20 to 235” you used to have to type in comands similer to that and you could make pictures etc or use the 5inch floppies and play text based adventure games like “you see a building in a clearing of the forrest” > “Open door” > “the door is locked” > “kick door” > “you kick the door but it’s too heavey to move” etc. etc. lol

I also used to own a ZX spectrum like this one …

They were the shizz back then. casette tapes ftw … but the noise they made .. dear oh dear!
June 10, 2011 at 6:43 pm

#949120
1

caned_monkey

@caned_monkey

Member
My uncle used to have a BBC Micro, he used to sell them as well. I’m still not sure what he used it for as home computer, probably just accounting. i remember the floppy disk was about the size of a 7″ record and properly floppy too.
June 10, 2011 at 6:45 pm

#949124
1

sinner69

@sinner69

Member
we also had zx spectrum at school but only the 8k and 16k versions…128 k wasnt invented back in the dino days
June 10, 2011 at 6:59 pm

#949128
1

DaftFader

@daftfader

Participant
@caned_monkey 438970 wrote:

My uncle used to have a BBC Micro, he used to sell them as well. I’m still not sure what he used it for as home computer, probably just accounting. i remember the floppy disk was about the size of a 7″ record and properly floppy too.

yeah they might of even been bigger then 5 inch now you mention it … they were huge lol
June 10, 2011 at 7:00 pm

#949129
1

DaftFader

@daftfader

Participant
@!sinner69! 438971 wrote:

we also had zx spectrum at school but only the 8k and 16k versions…128 k wasnt invented back in the dino days

yeah i think mine was 16 bit as well … my mate had the 128 when he was younger tho … he allways jokes about that his spectrum was better then my one lol
June 10, 2011 at 7:33 pm

#949125
1

sinner69

@sinner69

Member
@Kung Fu Fader 438976 wrote:

yeah i think mine was 16 bit as well … my mate had the 128 when he was younger tho … he allways jokes about that his spectrum was better then my one lol

not bit but kilobytes
June 10, 2011 at 8:07 pm

#949130
1

DaftFader

@daftfader

Participant
ah was it … was so long ago i can’t remeber hehe
June 25, 2011 at 4:07 pm

#949123
1

FrenchTekno

@frenchtekno

Member
My first computer i tried at school was an amstrad. We learned how to type in commands, which was boring from my point of view. But i remember there was this golf game which was fun. (i wss like 8-9). My cousin had one, a later version and he had some cool games on it : boxing (with joysticks!!! u should have heard them groan…lol), tanks, and this crazy scrolled “fist person shooter” with a female spy who was setup in these crazy situations and environments. The only time i went online at the time was through an Apple “Macintosh” computer. Our classroom had a couple. i even learnt how to type “typewriter style”. When i think of it, this was a strange thing to have been taught.

After that my family bought a 120 Mhz computer(!!!) (but we had no internet connection then at home), that was then considered fast and the rest is history as you all know it in terms of computers. I remember a friend who had a 100 Mhz computer and he was so jealous! lol
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