Celebrating '21 Things We Miss About Old Computers' (denofgeek.com)

"Today, we look back at the classic era of home computing that existed alongside the dreariness of business computing and the heart-pounding noise and colour of the arcades," writes the site Den of Geek. An anonymous reader reports: The article remembers the days of dial-up modems, obscure computer magazines, and the forgotten phenomenon of computer clubs. ("There was a time when if you wanted to ask a question about something computer related, or see something in action, you'd have to venture outside and into another building to go and see it.") Gamers grappled with old school controllers, games distributed on cassette tapes, low-resolution graphics and the "playground piracy" of warez boards -- when they weren't playing the original side-scrolling platformers like Mario Bros and Donkey Kong at video arcades.

In a world where people published fanzines on 16-bit computers, shared demo programs, and even played text adventures, primitive hardware may have inspired future coders, since "Old computers typically presented you with a command prompt as soon as you switched them on, meaning that they were practically begging to be programmed on." Home computers "mesmerised us, educated us, and in many cases, bankrupted us," the article remembers -- until they were replaced by more powerful hardware. "You move on, but you never fully get over your first love," it concludes -- while also adding that "what came next was pretty amazing."
Does this bring back any memories for anybody -- or provoke any wistful nostalgic for a bygone era? Either way, I really liked the way that the article ended. "The most exciting chapter of all, my geeky friends? The future!"

Comments

Being able to understand the whole stack

[williamyf]

Being able to understand the computer top to bottom, that's what I miss about that era.

Yes, it was frustrating to try and make it stable and configure it. But the HW, and the OS and the SW were so simple that, if you were so inclined, you could deeply understand the whole stack...

Nowadays, not anymore...

My list?

[lord_mike]

1. Instant on. Turn on the switch ad the computer's booted. On some machines, you might have to wait for your DOS to load, but it was typically quick. No more waiting minutes (or sometimes hours in the case of Windows XP) to boot up.

2. As noted upthread, BASIC. Yeah, it was a crappy programming language. The microcomputer versions were pretty bad--line numbers, single letter variables, no structured programming constructs, lack of hexadecimal notation for POKEs, and slow speed. Debugging was nearly impossible as the language was prone to spaghetti code and it was hardly self documenting (who is going to waste precious memory on a REM statement?). Regardless, it was very straightforward to use and allowed novices to create something that worked. It forced people to learn how to code, as even the most basic of commands, like "LOAD "*",8,1 was a BASIC statement. If you wanted to do anything with the machine, you had to do something in BASIC. It was good for people to learn.

3. Games. The games were fun and didn't require investing a part of your soul and all of your spare time to play them. I still play some of them in emulation when I have some time to kill. they were unique, and there is nothing like them today.

4. Modems. Yeah, they were slow, but you had to love that handshake/connect sound!! It's amazing how much juice they managed to get out of them near the end. There is something very primal about connecting a computer via phone line. I miss it. I read recently that modems don't really work on VOIP lines, which is what most remaining land lines consist of. That's a big bummer...

5. The Atari Joystick Standard. I have a very hard time playing with a modern game controller with it's millions of buttons. Give me a one (I'll be generous, two) button joystick any day over these modern monstrosities.

6. Babbages. Yes, that came later, but a store devoted to computer gaming? Heaven! I had a friend who was a manager there. They were allowed to take home and "test drive" the software. I was so mad when he quit that job!!!

7. The simplicity and closeness to hardware. You can't manipulate hardware nowadays like you used to. Everything was easy to get to via software. The software itself was simple and straightforward. You don't get that today.

The things I don't miss:

1. Tape loading... who would be crazy to name that as a good thing? That was awful. There's a reason why everyone switched to floppies if they could.

2. Lack of access to information about your computer. The books and magazines were great, but getting the right book or back issues of the right magazine were often difficult to find... There was no access to code libraries or helpful info if you ran into a problem programming or using your machine.

3. Getting software. It could be tough finding retail outlets that sold your stuff, and very few things came at a discount. That was another good reason to learn how to program.

4. Single tasking. We are spoiled nowadays with our ability to run multiple programs at the same time. Back then, on some computers, just loading up a DOS file directory would cause you to lose all your work. Thanks to multitasking, we can emulate our beloved old computers at the same time we can do something else.. so overall, we certainly are better off today than before... but I still miss the old times.

Re:I miss software that works.

[mykepredko]

And yet, your complaints are all hardware related.

No, Rosco's complaints are regarding a computer system that wasn't [fully] defined.

"High" and "Extended" memory were two different things that resided in the same space. "High" was up to 384k that resided above the 640k standard memory limit. "Extended" memory was additional memory which also resided above the 640k standard memory limit but was paged and could be much larger than 384k. Some programs could access additional "High" memory while others accessed "Extended" memory.

Things got more complicated when you had to make allowances for the BIOS memory that may take up the entire top 128k (IBM and other PCs with GWBasic) or 64k or, in some limited cases 8k as well as video memory that took up different spaces depending on whether or not a monochrome or colour adapter (or both) was installed and how much memory space they took up as well as whether or not they had their own BIOS chips. I worked on a few systems that had less than 64k available in this space which meant that "High" memory was basically useless, but you maybe able to get some value out of "Extended" memory for some applications (like Lotus 1-2-3). '286 PCs could simulate High and Extended memory with very buggy drivers.

Then there were the IO port and interrupt selection switches and often you would have to deal with hardware that used interrupts which were already "allocated" (which meant they were listed as having a specific meaning in the "IBM Technical Reference Manual") and then redefine how other hardware interfaced to the processor. Sometimes you might have driver code which chained the interrupt handlers, allowing multiple devices to request interrupts on the same line.

At the time students and other young'uns were given the task of configuring PCs and we usually had a book listing the configuration of the various options of different people's PCs and what they were running along with the PC tech refs and adapter manuals - it was department level IT and incredibly frustrating when a new version of software came in, somebody wanted to add a card (for a scanner, CD drive, new display, etc.) which meant figuring out the new memory, IO port and interrupt configuration and updating and testing the machine.

NOT good times.

Two Unforgivable Errors

[Scarletdown]

From TFA...

"It was at this point that the entire industry moved over to 3D rendering. Sega failed to anticipate this, with its Saturn console, while the Sony Playstation and Nintendo 64 excelled in this area. Subsequently, Sega never made a console again."

BZZZZZT! How can he not remember the actual final console Sega made? The Dreamcast, not the Saturn, was their last; and it did do 3D.

"Mario Bros, an arcade game that was later ported to the home platforms. This first Mario game has most of the elements that we now think of as intrinsic to platform games as it’s a scrolling game world made up levels to be traversed to completion."

Again, BZZZZZZZTTTTT!!! Mario Brothers was not a side scroller. It was a nonscrolling platformer (and I believe the first to introduce Luigi). The game the author is describing is Super Mario Brothers. I would bet he thinks Mario didn't get named until then either (I think in Donkey Kong Jr., he got renamed from his original Jumpman moniker from DK, to Mario, where he was the "villain."

Those two errors do a lot to destroy any credibility this guy has as a writer on classic video game and computer history.

"Game over. Press Redo or Back." (Always thought the gal who did the female voice for TI-99/4a Speech Synthesizer games sounded hot.)

Related: Knowing what your computers was doing

[bradley13]

Related to understanding the whole stack: You also knew exactly what your computer was doing. Why is the disk thrashing? Because you just started a program to do X. There was a very direct relationship to what you asked the computer to do, and what the computer did. Programs and activities had rhythms to them (visual and aural). If you saw/heard something unexpected, this was an immediate indication that something was wrong.

Nowadays: Why is my disk busy? No idea. What program is sending crap across the network? No idea. WTF are those 1000 or so threads doing in the background? No idea on at least half of them...