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

I miss software that works.

[mcmonkey]

Any old 8 or 16-bit software from decades past, if we have any of that software around today, it still works. And all we'd need to run it was the appropriate hardware.

Software you buy today, might not work in 6 months. It almost certainly, like 99.99% certain, won't work in decades. And if it even works today as you buy it, it only works when it can connect to some authorizing server. So we have no idea, literally no idea what is required for current software to run. You have the software, the hardware, an internet connection, and some mysterious something out there on the other end of the wire.

So what do I miss? I miss software that works.

Re:I miss software that works.

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Hmm, I think memory is failing you here. I clearly remember many, many programs randomly crashing and taking the entire OS with it - and losing hours of work in the process, having to fiddle with hi memory and extended memory in DOS for hours to get some half-assed program to work, installing version after version of certain buggy drivers and goofing around with interrupt jumpers to get a somewhat stable system, etc etc etc. And the worst thing was trying to figure it all out on my own, without any internet forum to help me out.

It was fun at times, but mostly frustrating. I sure ain't missing those days...

What I miss about computing of yesteryear

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

No sonofabitch was trying to monetize my data, watch what I do on my computer or online (when there was an online to speak of), or force-feed me advertisement.

No bloatware

[edx93]

'nuff said.

BASIC

[Anonymous Coward]

I miss BASIC. Seriously. I miss the days when the built-in command prompt was so easily accessible and so easily programmed that a 6 year old child could learn how to write "Hello World" within a few seconds, and could begin exploring the computer on his own after that. (That's exactly how I started, by the way.)

Guys like us we had it made

[Anonymous Coward]

Didn't need no welfare state, everybody pulled his weight.

Gee, our Apple ][ ran great.

Those were the days.

Going to the arcade as a group

[HockeyPuck]

I miss going to the arcade (or bowling alley) with a group of people. It wasn't just about playing the games but the social aspect of it. Lining up quarters on the SF2 cabinet as to who "had next". Now I see kids staying home, each on their own xbox/Playstation and connected via VOIP with their friends.

Even LAN parties were better than what we have now from a social interaction standpoint.

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...

Write-protect tabs

[dottrap]

I miss the hard physical write-protect tabs we had on floppy disks.

Nowadays, if you plug in a USB stick or external hard disk, you have to trust that the OS won't write or screw up your data in any way. Ignoring bugs and and "helpful" OS's who try to reformat if they don't recognize the filesystem, with viruses and other malware, you can't trust software to enforce read-only modes.

Simplicity

[houghi]

I used to have (under Linux) a thing that did something and another thing that did something else.
Now I have a PC with a bios that tries to do everything, starting a bootloader that tries to do everything, running a desktop manager that tries to do everything to launch a browser that tries to do everything, to visit a site that tries to do everything.

And when _I_ try to do anything, it breaks and when I ask for help, they all point to others because their software is perfect.
And do not even try to change settings in a human readable file, because if you are lucky, it will be overwritten by who knows what and that would be the best outcome.

And asking questions on how to do that, the RTFM is not available and the FAQ is something not even the writer or the developer can understand and all other documentation just says : you need X, Y and Z and the versuon you run is not the correct one and if you install the correct one, 7 other programs will break and will never work again.

So all you can hope for is to install something, hope it works and never do any upgrades, because that will break the system.

So what will I really miss? Being the boss over my own PC with tools that are usable by a human of average intelligence, not just by some Linux Guru who is only interested in his small little world, just so I can use it how I like it.

This fredom has been taken away by removing simplicity.