# Ready to feel very old?



## Geoffrey (Jun 20, 2009)

Some of this might send our beloved twentysomethings into the old folks home ...


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## ◄ Jess ► (Apr 21, 2010)

Hahahaa, some of that stuff was too old, even for me (I had to ask my boyfriend what that yellow thing was that the kids thought was a bomb). So funny! I remember those big floppy disks so well. I used those all the time. I remember being so confused when we started using the little ones instead (that weren't quite so floppy).


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## Geoffrey (Jun 20, 2009)

I love that they knew that record players were for scratching.


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## screwballl (Jan 4, 2011)

I still got some of those 5.25" floppies floating around my computer room here (I think several have DOS 2 on them)... no computer or drive to use them but I have them. Also I think my ancient parts pile has a few 9600 (or lower) baud ISA modems... and at least 1 ISA modem/sound combo card that is about 8" long.


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## Karen (Feb 12, 2009)

I resent the implication that I am old!    I still have my dynamite 8 track player (found it in a box in the barn), no 8 tracks though.


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## lonestar (Feb 9, 2010)

I recognized everything but the yellow bomb.

Karen, is that the 8 track player?

Very cute kids.


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## BTackitt (Dec 15, 2008)

Not that Things in the home I am visiting are OLD... (Grandma's only 92) But there is still a working 8-track stereo system here, as well as computers that use the 5.25' floppies, as well as the 3.5" disk..There is also a refridgerator in the basement that they had while living in Japan as a part of the occupation forces in 1946. They bought this house when they moved back to the states in 1949. $15,000 for a 2 bedroom home with front/back & side yards in San Francisco, and they worried about being able to afford it..


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## Tris (Oct 30, 2008)

Okay, I was lost with the 8-track and the last thingy.  Is it another record?  Something with "The Planet of the Apes"?  Alas, they are both before I was born.  We never did have more than a small pile of actual old records in my house growing up...we had plenty of cassettes and CDs.  Heck, we had a Betamax until 1990!  

My grandpa is 103, and my cousins and I constantly discuss what he would've seen change!  Now that is crazy!

Tris


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## Lyndl (Apr 2, 2010)

Tris said:


> Okay, I was lost with the 8-track and *the last thingy. Is it another record? * Something with "The Planet of the Apes"? Alas, they are both before I was born. We never did have more than a small pile of actual old records in my house growing up...we had plenty of cassettes and CDs. Heck, we had a Betamax until 1990!
> 
> My grandpa is 103, and my cousins and I constantly discuss what he would've seen change! Now that is crazy!
> 
> Tris


The last thingy was a video disc ( or laser disc) They were like a giant DVD , you needed a special player for it.


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## Scheherazade (Apr 11, 2009)

The 8-track lost me till I saw the tape.  I actually did have a toy when I was little the played 8-Track tapes and we had a large stereo system with an 8-Track player as well as a car with one, but never saw one with a plunger like that....  Sadly I recognized it all.  Pretty funny that the one kid thought the 3.5 inch diskette was a camera.


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## Katie Salidas (Mar 21, 2010)

Wow, part of me feels really really old now, and the other part is astonished at how quickly technology has advanced and left so many things obsolete!


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## cmg.sweet (Jul 6, 2010)

Well, this 29 year old feels ready for the senior center lunch special now!  I remember using both types of floppy discs and thinking my friends gameboy was soo cool.


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## Tip10 (Apr 16, 2009)

Okay so I must be really old -- I instantly recognized everything there (and actually HAD) most of them!  

Okay everybody saw the 5 1/4 inch floppy -- anybody remember 8 inch floppies (still got some of those around)?
Or with 3 1/2's trying to read a 1.44 floppy in a 720 drive?

I've got an old 300 baud modem stuck away -- along with (I think) every version of DOS from 2.0 on....

Anybody remember slide mount racks for auto 8-track players?  Installed many of them in my day!


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## CathyQuinn (Dec 9, 2010)

That was fun.


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## Someone Nameless (Jul 12, 2009)

LOL!  I remember back when my son was younger we had what they called 'circle dialing'.  For a lower fee, you could call the surrounding area, something like a 90 mile radius, which would otherwise be long distance.

My sons heard the term 'circle dialing' and he thought it was referring to the old rotary phone.


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## Geoffrey (Jun 20, 2009)

Lyndl said:


> The last thingy was a video disc ( or laser disc) They were like a giant DVD , you needed a special player for it.


... and some longer movies required two of those big discs ...


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## Karen (Feb 12, 2009)

Yes, the yellow bomb is an 8 track player.


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## Sandra Edwards (May 10, 2010)

When I read the title of this thread my first thought was..._I already feel old_. And apparently with good reason...I recognized ALL that stuff. lol


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## NogDog (May 1, 2009)

Before I saw a 5-1/4" floppy disk, we had an 8" floppy disk drive where I worked. There weren't a lot of them ever, though, as the 5-1/4 came along very shortly afterward with about the same amount of storage, I think.

I had a 300-baud modem for my Atari 1200XL computer. Just downloading plain text to the screen seemed only slightly faster than I could type it. 

And of course I'm still living in the past, with my phono turntable and modest collection of vinyl LPs for when I want the absolute best sound reproduction. (One of these days I'll get the replacement tubes for my refurbished/tweaked Heathkit amplifier so I can hook that up to the stereo system again.)


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## 4Katie (Jun 27, 2009)

lol - "That's a phone... but very old." I resemble that remark!

They didn't even show those little plastic things you had to put in the center of a 45 to play it!


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## Maria Romana (Jun 7, 2010)

Who else remembers storing computer data on a cassette tape  Am I the only one who goes back that far in technological history?  I don't even remember what kind of computer it was, but I distinctly recall connecting it to an ordinary cassette player and saving the program & data on a tape.  The large floppies were a huge improvement on that.

--Maria


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## kindlequeen (Sep 3, 2010)

I was watching the video and my DH looked over and said, "I remember that mouse, I still have one around here."


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## NogDog (May 1, 2009)

meromana said:


> Who else remembers storing computer data on a cassette tape Am I the only one who goes back that far in technological history? I don't even remember what kind of computer it was, but I distinctly recall connecting it to an ordinary cassette player and saving the program & data on a tape. The large floppies were a huge improvement on that.
> 
> --Maria


Of course. But then I'm old enough to have played "Star Trek" in the math building at college on a teletype printer terminal. We were so impressed the following year when we could play on (monochrome) CRT screens. That was back when a cassette tape would have been a luxury as opposed to the punch cards in current use. In fact, cassette tapes were just then starting to gain a little traction in the audiophile market and would start replacing 8-tracks in a few years at the record stores (which still mostly sold vinyl LPs and 45s).


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## Tip10 (Apr 16, 2009)

meromana said:


> Who else remembers storing computer data on a cassette tape Am I the only one who goes back that far in technological history? I don't even remember what kind of computer it was, but I distinctly recall connecting it to an ordinary cassette player and saving the program & data on a tape. The large floppies were a huge improvement on that.
> 
> --Maria


I remember cassette tape data storage, hell, my senior project in college was stored on paper punch tape -- I was ecstatic when they progressed so that I could store stuff on 9-track tapes. (Yes that does say 9 track -- spool data storage tapes).

And yeah I remember playing Star Trek on teletype printers and later on green screens -- and it was done via a time share on a PDP11 with a university 100 miles away.


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## swolf (Jun 21, 2010)

meromana said:


> Who else remembers storing computer data on a cassette tape Am I the only one who goes back that far in technological history? I don't even remember what kind of computer it was, but I distinctly recall connecting it to an ordinary cassette player and saving the program & data on a tape. The large floppies were a huge improvement on that.
> 
> --Maria


The Commodore 64 and Vic 20 both used cassette tape storage, but they were specifically made for that. I believe the Texas Instruments home computer used ordinary cassette players.

And remember punching the hole in the floppies so you could turn them over and use the other side?


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## NogDog (May 1, 2009)

swolf said:


> The Commodore 64 and Vic 20 both used cassette tape storage, but they were specifically made for that. I believe the Texas Instruments home computer used ordinary cassette players.
> 
> And remember punching the hole in the floppies so you could turn them over and use the other side?


Both my Radio Shack TRS80 and later Atari 1200XL used external cassette tape recorders for data storage. The Atari's used stereo playback heads, so that commercial programs could store the program on one track, and have music and/or advertising audio tracks on the other track which played while you were loading the program. Later I got a 5-1/4" floppy drive for the Atari and thought I was in heaven: programs that used to take 5-10 minutes to load now loaded in tens of seconds.

PS: Anyone remember the hole-punch-like devices for turning single-sided 5-1/4" floppies into double-sided disks?


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## pidgeon92 (Oct 27, 2008)

I had an Atari 800 that I also had a cassette drive for.... I remember having a great game with aliens in a maze, and it took about 6 minutes to load before I could play it....


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## Annalog (Dec 28, 2008)

Not only do I remember using punch cards, punched paper tape, and cassette tapes for programs, I still have a working Commodore 128 and programs I wrote on my Vic 20 for use on my parent's Commodore 64, mostly on 5-1/4 floppies but also printed paper copies of the programs. I remember using my Vic 20 and 300 baud modem to work on COBOL homework assignments from home instead of from the computer lab. Emulating 80 column lines on a screen that displayed 22 characters per row was lots of fun.  

I remember punched cards warping and jamming machines when the humidity levels changed during monsoon. 

I remember one instructor talking about having to store programs on wire reels but I do not remember how much she said each reel weighed. My dad used to program analog computers where he would rewire the computer to change the program.


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## swolf (Jun 21, 2010)

As a software programmer used to the almost-instantaneous revise/compile/test/revise cycle of today's development, it boggles my mind to think of coding a program, then handing it to someone else to create the punch cards, taking the punch cards and feeding them into the computer, test running the program, finding bugs, and starting the whole cycle over again.

Numbs my brain just thinking about it.


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## N. Gemini Sasson (Jul 5, 2010)

meromana said:


> Who else remembers storing computer data on a cassette tape Am I the only one who goes back that far in technological history? I don't even remember what kind of computer it was, but I distinctly recall connecting it to an ordinary cassette player and saving the program & data on a tape. The large floppies were a huge improvement on that.
> 
> --Maria


I do! Our high school had a computer class that used them. Only the brainiacs could program computers to do things, because you had to know DOS.


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## NogDog (May 1, 2009)

swolf said:


> As a software programmer used to the almost-instantaneous revise/compile/test/revise cycle of today's development, it boggles my mind to think of coding a program, then handing it to someone else to create the punch cards, taking the punch cards and feeding them into the computer, test running the program, finding bugs, and starting the whole cycle over again.
> 
> Numbs my brain just thinking about it.


If you think you've seen an upset programmer when his compile fails, imagine one who tripped and spilled a stack of a few hundred punched cards into a jumbled mess on the floor -- talk about a program crash.  I also heard tell from some old-timers at a place I worked about editing programs on paper tape with scissors and tape. 

I don't go back that far myself: my first programs were in BASIC on my TRS-80*, full of GOTOs and PEAKs and POKEs.
___________
* With is whopping 4 KB of RAM -- yes, that is 4 (four) *kilo*bytes.


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## cc84 (Aug 6, 2010)

Aww i like how that girl thinks a floppy disk is a card you use at the bank  

I remember the Gameboy (i still get the urge to find mine and play it!) and the floppy disk and the old style phone. I remember watching my Saturday morning kids shows and they'd have a phone in competition and it would say something like "only for use with touch tone phones." Nobody says that now because pretty much everyone has a touch tone phone. 

Book me into the nursing home.


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## swolf (Jun 21, 2010)

cc84 said:


> I remember the Gameboy


Every time I hear Kenny Roger's 'The Gambler', I have to laugh.



> So I handed him my bottle and he drank down my last swallow
> Then he bummed a cigarette and asked me for a light
> And the night got deathly quiet and his face lost all expression
> Said, "If you're gonna play the *game boy*, you gotta learn to play it right"


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## Annalog (Dec 28, 2008)

Concerns about dropping programs on punched cards resulted in me numbering the cards in each program.

Turn around time between turning in a stack of cards to the student computer center and getting the result back could be over 4 hours. It was well worth the time to "desk check" the program by reading the program while trying to only see and do only what the computer would. 

Original Nintendo game machines and cartriges are still used at my house and my mom's house. DH is still waiting for his favorite games to be retrofitted to the Wii. (Romance of the Three Kingdoms anyone?)


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## hsuthard (Jan 6, 2010)

You guys are the best. I was feeling pretty old when I recognized almost everything in the YouTube clip, but then you guys started bringing up punch cards and I realized I'm still younger than some! LOL


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## Annalog (Dec 28, 2008)

hsuthard said:


> You guys are the best. I was feeling pretty old when I recognized almost everything in the YouTube clip, but then you guys started bringing up punch cards and I realized I'm still younger than some! LOL


Anytime!


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## Tip10 (Apr 16, 2009)

Annalog said:


> Turn around time between turning in a stack of cards to the student computer center and getting the result back could be over 4 hours. It was well worth the time to "desk check" the program by reading the program while trying to only see and do only what the computer would.


Our turnaround wasn't quite that bad -- usually on the order of 45 minutes to an hour -- maybe hour and a half at peak times. But nothing was more frustrating than turning in a 1000 card deck and having it spit out a syntax error on card three, fix it, resubmit and have it spit out another on card 5, etc. The worst part was our punch printed the commands on the cards really light -- almost illegible. Made "desk compiling" a royal pain. 
Never numbered my decks but the all were marked with big W's along two sides with big markers.

Was never so glad when they got the emulators up and running and we could do all of our coding from a terminal.


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## 4Katie (Jun 27, 2009)

<--- Used to use punch cards at work. We had a huge Burroughs machine that sorted the cards according to the report we needed. 

I also used an old Ernestine-type switchboard in the early 70's.

Geez, even the Ernestine comment makes me feel old!


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## drenfrow (Jan 27, 2010)

My roommate in college was an Accounting major and I remember her living in the dungeon that was the computer center, hunched over the computer and producing stacks of punch cards.  And in the awful days before "Are you sure you want to delete?"  I went to see her one day and walked in moments after she had hit one button (maybe Escape?) and deleted hours of work.  I have never again in my life seen such a dumbstruck look on anyone's face. In my senior year she quizzed me and I couldn't tell her the difference between hardware and software.

Going waaaayyyy back, my aunt worked with computers in the 60's and 70's and when she would fly home at Christmas she always brought a banner of Snoopy or Merry Christmas or something printed on the folding green striped paper with the holes on the edges that printers used to use.  The pictures were printed all in "1"'s (if that makes sense) and we thought it was the coolest, most space age thing ever.


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## BTackitt (Dec 15, 2008)

Annalog said:


> My dad used to program analog computers where he would rewire the computer to change the program.


My dad was just talking about this a couple of months ago. It seems his work only had 5 Wireboards, and it would take him an hour or more to wire the "program", and if he had to pee he would just hold it, because if he stopped and left, someone else would come and wire the card for what they needed and he would have to start all over. He was an accountant from the 60s-about 3 years ago.

Tonight I found something that made me feel young/old.... A box of carbon paper in my grandfather's desk. and 5 Sheaffer Fountain pens. I jumped on Amazon and bought fresh ink. It will be at my house on Monday, and I get home late Sunday night.


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## swolf (Jun 21, 2010)

BTackitt said:


> My dad was just talking about this a couple of months ago. It seems his work only had 5 Wireboards, and it would take him an hour or more to wire the "program", and if he had to pee he would just hold it, because if he stopped and left, someone else would come and wire the card for what they needed and he would have to start all over. *He was an accountant from the 60s-about 3 years ago*.


Sounds like he wired himself a nice little time machine.


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## 4Katie (Jun 27, 2009)

> Going waaaayyyy back, my aunt worked with computers in the 60's and 70's and when she would fly home at Christmas she always brought a banner of Snoopy or Merry Christmas or something printed on the folding green striped paper with the holes on the edges that printers used to use. The pictures were printed all in "1"'s (if that makes sense) and we thought it was the coolest, most space age thing ever.


It makes perfect sense. I go waaaayyy back myself, and I've made those banners!


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## NogDog (May 1, 2009)

I used to have a disk from a disk drive that one of the computer techs gave me after a disk crash, and I had it hanging on my office wall as a decoration. Nowadays that might be something you'd not even notice if you didn't look right at it, but this was from a disk drive which was about the size of a small washing machine, and the disk was about 16-18 inches in diameter, made of aluminum or some similar metal/alloy, and you could see a couple concentric rings on the coated surface where the read/write heads had scraped along it when it crashed. I don't recall the stats, but I'm pretty sure that entire disk drive held a tiny fraction of the data you get on the little compact drive that's in my notebook computer. 

And, of course, we had a bank of 6-foot-high reel-to-reel tape machines for additional long-term storage. They were more fun to watch, and on long days/nights in the computer lab we could play ring toss with the little plastic rings that were used on the tape reels when you wanted to make them read-only.


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## swolf (Jun 21, 2010)

Discussions like this make me wonder what we'll be talking about in another 10-30 years.

Remember when disk drives were only measured in terabytes?

Remember when you had to use hardware to get on the internet?

Before cranial implants, we had to actually carry around 'jump drives', 'mp3 players', 'kindles', and 'iphones'.

It's hard to believe the crappy CGI in Avatar was considered cutting edge.

Remember what the Olympics were like before they became a Wii competition?

Remember when President Lohan was a young and out of control actress?


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## Tip10 (Apr 16, 2009)

NogDog said:


> I used to have a disk from a disk drive that one of the computer techs gave me after a disk crash, and I had it hanging on my office wall as a decoration. Nowadays that might be something you'd not even notice if you didn't look right at it, but this was from a disk drive which was about the size of a small washing machine, and the disk was about 16-18 inches in diameter, made of aluminum or some similar metal/alloy, and you could see a couple concentric rings on the coated surface where the read/write heads had scraped along it when it crashed. I don't recall the stats, but I'm pretty sure that entire disk drive held a tiny fraction of the data you get on the little compact drive that's in my notebook computer.


I busted up laughing when you posted this -- 
For better than 25 years or so I have had a platter from a 300 MB CDC disk drive hanging on the wall of my cube. Its a platter from a pack that suffered from a catastrophic head crash -- exactly as you describe except this one has several sets of rings ground into it. CDC's used 9 platters and 17 heads -- the drive itself was about the size of a washing machine. The heads actually "flew" on a cushion of air less than the thickness of a human hair and when one head crashed (touched down) it usually resulted in multiple heads touching down because of the shock to the head positioning arm. Rarely though would you get all 17 heads to crash (usually the drive tripped long before all of them got hit).

I spent about 12 hours cleaning the debris out of the CDC when it crashed and rebuilding the heads and getting the drive back up and on-line (on new packs obviously). This was back along about the mid 80's or so (and at that time the drives were obsolete). The platters are made of magnesium, I believe.

Hanging inside of the CDC platter is a 5 1/4 inch platter from a PC hard drive that suffered a head crash and shows the rings as well.


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## NogDog (May 1, 2009)

Yeah, I started working there in '87, I think. They had a big Honeywell mainframe: 2 CPU units I think, each being the size of a large refrigerator. It was already pretty much obsolete by that time, but we did have the honor of supposedly creating the largest PL/I program running on a Multics operating system, for whatever that's worth now.


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## AnnetteL (Jul 14, 2010)

I'm not old, I'm not old . . . fine. I'm old. 

That was hysterical. I LOVED the Fisher Price turn tables as a kid. In 9th grade had to vigorously protect my 5.25" floppy for my fancy word processing class (which was down the hall from keyboarding and the typewriters).

I've got 15-yr-old. It's wild to think about the advances we've had just in HIS lifetime.


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## Geoffrey (Jun 20, 2009)

AnnetteL said:


> I've got 15-yr-old. It's wild to think about the advances we've had just in HIS lifetime.


Remember when, once upon a time, we could get cash without having an ATM card?


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## Someone Nameless (Jul 12, 2009)

I remember my 486 computer and trying to get online with AOL and my dial-up modem.  The little "world" would spin and spin trying to connect and nothing would happen for ages!  Or sometimes I'd connect when suddenly I'd hear "GOODBYE".....


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

Geoffrey said:


> Remember when, once upon a time, we could get cash without having an ATM card?


So, the other day, I go into work -- in the Pentagon -- and I had a check that needed to be deposited. I had it with me because I knew there were ATM's for Navy Federal Credit Union and I figured to do it that way. Well, there's actually a full service branch in there now. . .which is nice. And it's close to my office so I thought, great. . .don't have to go very far for the ATM.

So I walk down there before going to the office, get the deposit envelope -- no comfortable place to write on it so I'm sort of using the wall and hoping my pen won't dry up as it's sideways. . . . . and the nice manager lady came and said. . . .you know, there's no one waiting at the windows. . .if you like you can just deposit it that way.

 D'oh!


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## Xopher (May 14, 2009)

I love it. I actually had an 8-track player when I was a kid. Used to put in a tape at night and let it play all night long while I slept.

My first computer was an NEC APC, which had two 8" floppies built in beside the screen. It ran the CP/M operating system (pre-MS-DOS). I thought it was the greatest thing when I got a 300 baud modem and could comment to different bulliten boards; I could actually read along at 300 baud. My favorite was a FidoNet board. I could actually write an electronic message to my friends back east. The FidoNet servers would call each other overnight and swap messages. An electronic message could reach from one coast too the other in just a day or two! Much faster than snail mail (pre-internet email). Now messages are delivered in seconds!

The "Planet of the Apes" video disc was another flashback. I can remember when two disc formats were fighting for market share. One used laser discs, the other used vinyl like record players. Both were as big as the disc in the video. I think laser won out and was the precursor to DVD.


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## NapCat (retired) (Jan 17, 2011)

Wonderful  Clip !!

My Dad lived into his 90's and literally went from "Horse & Buggy" to the Space Shuttle. We often would reflect on the changes he saw in his lifetime.......for myself, now 67, I am seeing even more changes.  I have gone from "pre-TV" (Yes, I remember the first "Uncle Miilty" show)....to the casual use of Internet and Satellite technology.  And I truly believe the Kindle may be one of the greatest "inventions" of my lifetime.

Thanks for Sharing that.
Cheers all

Walter


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## markbeyer (Jan 9, 2011)

In my experience, LIFE BEGINS AT 40 ... and only gets better javascript:void(0);


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## R. M. Reed (Nov 11, 2009)

meromana said:


> Who else remembers storing computer data on a cassette tape
> --Maria


My first computer was a Timex-Sinclair, a little brick with membrane keys, that attached to a TV. I also bought the cassette recorder to store programs, and the extra memory that brought the computer all the way to 16 kilobytes. I also bought magazines with BASIC programs printed in them that you had to type in exactly as printed or they wouldn't work.


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## tsrapp (Jan 3, 2011)

Okay, that was fun.   Like most here, I knew everything except the 8 track player.


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