Geek/Nerd moments of the Past...

[Rubycon]

Yes 5.25" was dead for quite a while.

Not too long ago I ran a stage show that had a system with 8" floppy drives! CP/M Z-80 64KB. It all worked. Should have been in a museum! I replaced it with a PC that had a celeron 300a and it was so fast.

Oh man... MFM hard drives. They could shake a whole desk seeking.

Those and Micropolis SCSI/ESDI drives. Sounded like a jackhammer!
Put an inkjet printer on a wobbly table and it will shake really bad too!

 

[Red Squirrel]

I modded a windows 98 rescue floppy and basically made my own mini "os" based on it. I had totally hacked up the DLLs, changed the bootup logo, and had a custom C++ interface. It was actually kinda cool, and I even wanted to distribute it as an OS LOL. I eventually lost interest, which is a good thing since I totally would have been sued over that I think, given I was just modding MS stuff lol.

I also remember modding shell32.dll so all the error messages in windows were different. kernel32.dll had a few fun things to mod too. These were easy hacks though, using a resource hacker tool, that I still have.

I've also turned down social night outings so I could code.

I do remember solitaire in win98, it was also graphic card based and the cards went too fast.

I was actually a geek even as a little kid. Most people would draw a house, with over sized stick man and stuff like that. I drew stuff like electrical power plant systems, city sewage systems, and other stuff. My parents figured I'd be a civil engineer or something because some of the stuff I did actually made sense from an engineering point of view. I was probably like, maybe 6? I used to do nothing but draw random stuff. Not all of it was geeky but lot of it was. I knew nothing about computers then since we did not have one, so it's not like I was learning stuff off the internet or anything. I also remember in grade 6 I caused a small electrical explosion with a foil paper contraption I made which plugged into the mains. It got crushed in my school bag so it did not work properly when I plugged it. The teacher totally freaked out and the rest of the students found it was cool. I was not allowed to do any projects related to electricity anymore.

 

[Rubycon]

Drawing stuff...

I used to grab a No. 1 pencil and sketch lightning striking stuff, put it in the microwave (the graphite heats up and burns out the paper where it was shaded) and hang it in the window on days with lots of moon(shine) and the art would be cast on the walls.

All my friends had blacklight posters (yeah I'm kind of old here!) but I went a step further and would take fluorescent ink and write messages in places and they would see it when they blazed up and flicked the switch on the 'tube!

 

[crab]

Remember when you plugged your CDROM into your sound card?

 

[gaidensensei]

Remember when you plugged your CDROM into your sound card?

Yup, how about remember when PC speaker was king?
*wolf 3d enemy alert noises*

 

[Rubycon]

Remember when you plugged your CDROM into your sound card?

You still can do that for SPDIF passthrough. Some video cards require this to pass this through HDMI. My 295GTX was like that.

I believe Windows 2000 ended the need for hooking up the analog cable from the CD rom to the sound card. But for years OEMS shipped those cables. They piled up on tech's benches like AOL CDs piled up in everyone's mailbox!

*wolf 3d enemy alert noises*

Spion!

 

[crab]

You still can do that for SPDIF passthrough. Some video cards require this to pass this through HDMI. My 295GTX was like that.

I believe Windows 2000 ended the need for hooking up the analog cable from the CD rom to the sound card. But for years OEMS shipped those cables. They piled up on tech's benches like AOL CDs piled up in everyone's mailbox!

Well yeah, but I mean when they were also an IDE controller...

 

[Rubycon]

Well yeah, but I mean when they were also an IDE controller...

Ha!

Remember when sound cards had THREE sets of pins for Philips, Panasonic and Sony CD roms? Proprietary interface for the LOSE! Plextor Four Plex for the WIN! Although I hated caddies! That SCSI drive had a HUGE 1MB buffer and was built like a tank. It also had a tank price tag ($600!)

 

[Locut0s]

I modded a windows 98 rescue floppy and basically made my own mini "os" based on it. I had totally hacked up the DLLs, changed the bootup logo, and had a custom C++ interface. It was actually kinda cool, and I even wanted to distribute it as an OS LOL. I eventually lost interest, which is a good thing since I totally would have been sued over that I think, given I was just modding MS stuff lol.

I also remember modding shell32.dll so all the error messages in windows were different. kernel32.dll had a few fun things to mod too. These were easy hacks though, using a resource hacker tool, that I still have.

I've also turned down social night outings so I could code.

I do remember solitaire in win98, it was also graphic card based and the cards went too fast.

I was actually a geek even as a little kid. Most people would draw a house, with over sized stick man and stuff like that. I drew stuff like electrical power plant systems, city sewage systems, and other stuff. My parents figured I'd be a civil engineer or something because some of the stuff I did actually made sense from an engineering point of view. I was probably like, maybe 6? I used to do nothing but draw random stuff. Not all of it was geeky but lot of it was. I knew nothing about computers then since we did not have one, so it's not like I was learning stuff off the internet or anything. I also remember in grade 6 I caused a small electrical explosion with a foil paper contraption I made which plugged into the mains. It got crushed in my school bag so it did not work properly when I plugged it. The teacher totally freaked out and the rest of the students found it was cool. I was not allowed to do any projects related to electricity anymore.

You sound like a friend, Eric, I had back in elementary and HS.

 

[ahenkel]

I remember playing Microprose flight sims like f15 strike eagle on our 486.

 

[crab]

Ha!

Remember when sound cards had THREE sets of pins for Philips, Panasonic and Sony CD roms? Proprietary interface for the LOSE! Plextor Four Plex for the WIN! Although I hated caddies!

Yup

 

[Locut0s]

Ha!

Remember when sound cards had THREE sets of pins for Philips, Panasonic and Sony CD roms? Proprietary interface for the LOSE! Plextor Four Plex for the WIN! Although I hated caddies! That SCSI drive had a HUGE 1MB buffer and was built like a tank. It also had a tank price tag ($600!)

Why can't companies learn this lesson permanently? Even today companies insist on all kinds of closed "standards". The world would be just that much better if all the hardware and software standards were open and on proprietary.

 

[Rubycon]

I remember playing Microprose flight sims like f15 strike eagle on our 486.

I used to eject on the runway so I would get court martialed. (Falcon 3.0)

Why can't companies learn this lesson permanently? Even today companies insist on all kinds of closed "standards". The world would be just that much better if all the hardware and software standards were open and on proprietary.

Woah there's a HUGE pic in here that's blowing up my screen...

Don't even get me started on laptop/cell phone chargers. Now they've changed USB plugs because phones are getting smaller...

It all runs on electricity, dammit! One unified connector for EVERYTHING!

Oh Gravis Ultrasound Max > Creative Labs!
Although I did enjoy the foundation (AWE and sound fonts) that the AWE32 built upon. Too bad CL's drivers SUCK!

 

[Locut0s]

Oh right I remember my father brought back this uber Chinese word processing system from Taiwan. computers didn't have the HD space to devote to character storage at the time so all the chinese characters were stored on a dedicated ISA board that had like 40 chips on it. The thing was like 17 inches long!

 

[Perknose]

Back in the day, anyone ever load a recursive bat file that called it's own damn self right after echo on / FUCK YOU / echo off in an infinite loop onto the 'puter of someone you were pissed at so it would never get out of startup and just keep displaying FUCK YOU?

 

[crab]

My first CDROM

 

[Rubycon]

Back in the day, anyone ever load a recursive bat file that called it's own damn self right after echo on / FUCK YOU / echo off in an infinite loop onto the 'puter of someone you were pissed at so it would never get out of startup and just keep displaying FUCK YOU?

No but I did have one that would fill up the boot drive and crash the machine.
Win nuke was popular in 9x days too. All the AOL kiddies used that crap. I think before they fixed AOL you could type {S con\con into any chat and people running out of date AOL would get a BSOD instantly.

 

[gaidensensei]

Back in the day, anyone ever load a recursive bat file that called it's own damn self right after echo on / FUCK YOU / echo off in an infinite loop onto the 'puter of someone you were pissed at so it would never get out of startup and just keep displaying FUCK YOU?

I remember MAKING something similar to this..



There was also this qbasic game, can't remember the name of it. You loaded these gorillas on skyscrapers 2d, where it's like scorched earth but you throw explosive bananas against your opponent by inputting numbers for the banana trajectory.

 

[Rubycon]

I remember MAKING something similar to this..



There was also this qbasic game, can't remember the name of it. You loaded these gorillas on skyscrapers 2d, where it's like scorched earth but you throw explosive bananas against your opponent by inputting numbers for the banana trajectory.

Gorilla.bas...

They also had a maze one called sammy.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I used to eject on the runway so I would get court martialed. (Falcon 3.0)



Woah there's a HUGE pic in here that's blowing up my screen...

Don't even get me started on laptop/cell phone chargers. Now they've changed USB plugs because phones are getting smaller...

It all runs on electricity, dammit! One unified connector for EVERYTHING!

Oh Gravis Ultrasound Max > Creative Labs!
Although I did enjoy the foundation (AWE and sound fonts) that the AWE32 built upon. Too bad CL's drivers SUCK!

yeah that pisses me off. Even with the same manufacturer there are several different size plugs!

Blackberry recently changed their chargers, so there's at least two, if more, different chargers for different blackberries. IMO there needs to be a few standards like 5V and 12V and maybe a lower voltage like 1.5V and 3 different style adapters for those. A uniform ma rating would be nice too. At least for small stuff like phones. Laptops need a bit more ma but even then, why not just have a standard for all laptop adapters. 12V and 5 amps, or something (maybe they need more amps, just guessing here). Don't get me started on docking stations.

 

[Rubycon]

Phones can be inductively charged...

The power some notebooks need your charging station could double as a coffee pot if you get a ferrous decanter!

 

[Red Squirrel]

Phones can be inductively charged...

The power some notebooks need your charging station could double as a coffee pot if you get a ferrous decanter!

Actually that would be cool, just a small platform you put your phone on and it charges through the magnetic field. Is there actually phones like this?

I remember when MS announced a special table that had a screen in it, and you could just put your camera on it and it would transfer pics from it. I don't think they ever made it, it was just a concept. But something like this to even charge items would be neat. If everything used a single standard you could even charge stuff like power tools like this. Just put it on the table and it charges, and the circuitry would know when to stop charging. heck, houses could receive their power through induction. Ok maybe I'm taking this too far, and this is probably how Tesla died. :awe:

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

My first computer. Well, it's what I learned on.

 

[JoeKing]

For a computer class I took in high school I had forgotten some project at home. Teacher was going to dock me some points. That's when I logged into my ftp server at home and grabbed the file real quick.

War FTP rules!

 

[Locut0s]

I remember MAKING something similar to this..



There was also this qbasic game, can't remember the name of it. You loaded these gorillas on skyscrapers 2d, where it's like scorched earth but you throw explosive bananas against your opponent by inputting numbers for the banana trajectory.

Ahh memories. My fav qbasic game is still nibbles though. GO NIBBLES GO!