Authored by: MattyTheGreek on Thursday, April 12 2007 @ 09:18 PM

>>Top 6 PCs of 1982

Ah, 1982: the year I discovered computers... and it appears that my very
first machine is on that list: the TI 99/4A. It's like seeing an old friend
again. Until I ditched that "friend" for a CoCo 2 in '83. Oh, the
capriciousness of youth.

Thanks, Bill.

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Authored by: DanZ on Friday, April 13 2007 @ 09:27 AM

The 'yeti' captcha was pretty funny. Presumably y'all tried typing in incorrect as well as correct values. Witty.

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Authored by: casey on Friday, April 13 2007 @ 12:08 PM

Man, that computer article is creepy. My favorite lines: "Many people
start out with a tape recorder to save and load programs. This allows
you to use a $30 to $50 tape recorder, instead of a disc drive that
costs hundreds of dollars." Imagine!

And:"It used to be that programs were easy to copy and change. But
manufacturers began to lose money as many people made copies of
software and gave them to their friends. Now, many manufacturers
have figured out how to “copy-protect” discs. A copy-protected disc—
like a cartridge—can’t be copied or changed."

Who knew that the battle would live on with DRM?

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"As for the charges against me, I am unconcerned. I am beyond their timid, lying morality, and so I am beyond caring."

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Authored by: casey on Friday, April 13 2007 @ 12:13 PM

Also, re: cloaking device — Will it have little lines around it, like Wonder Woman's jet?

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"As for the charges against me, I am unconcerned. I am beyond their timid, lying morality, and so I am beyond caring."

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Authored by: Spine on Friday, April 13 2007 @ 01:45 PM

All hail the Radio Shack TRS-80! My mother had one of those at work, and sometimes she'd bring it home so I could play a space-fighter game that I'd load from a cassette tape. I also enjoyed keying in the code for a program that, when executed, would "paint" the screen white, row by row. "Mom, look!" I'd cry out between swigs of Juicy Juice.

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Palabra Jot

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Authored by: JIMO on Saturday, April 14 2007 @ 12:32 PM

I had the most pathetic excuse for a 1980's PC ever marketed and sold: the Commodore VIC-20. I'm pretty sure the "VIC" stood for "Very Immense Calculator", and "20" was the suggested retail price of $20, because that's about all it could do: add and subtract. I could be wrong, but I think it even lacked the power to run Zork, the least graphics-intense game ever made. Despite that, I remember playing Zork, somehow on someone else's computer, and being inspired enough to start designing an all-text, "turn-to-page" style adventure game for the VIC-20 that started with you getting teleported to a different land where a frantic wizard ran up to you, handed you a magic sword, screamed, "I'm getting the hell out of here!" and vanished.

A) If you would like to drop to your knees and cry, press "A".

B) If you would like to take sword and follow trail, press "B".

C) If you would like to call JIMO a dork, press "C".

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There's always gotta be a reason for something.

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Authored by: MarkS on Saturday, April 14 2007 @ 04:58 PM

I used really old computers at the Freep, back in the 80's & 90's. The mainframe was was some type of industry specific thing that used these giant beige monitors. Screen characters were orange dots. Caopy was printed out on a dot matrix printer.

It was a revolution when the graphics department switched to Macs in the late 80's. I think their SE was eventually named Brontosuarus. I was excited when Photo got a Mac IIFX. 40Mhz was wicked fast in 1992 and 128Megs of RAM was frickin' huge. You could conquer worlds with 128MB. No one had ever heard of a gigabyte. Doc Brown's mispronouncement of "Jigawatts", when he meant "Gigawatts", made me think it was a made up word.

The Lumix FX07 looks pretty good. I like that it also has the three different aspect ratios and a 28mm (equivalent) wide focal length, like my LX-1. Maybe the FX07 has better noise suppression than previous models. That's the one thing I hate about my LX-1 is that the pix are rather noisy, even at 100 ISO. But it's a great camera. I may get the LX-2, which is supposed to have better noise supression. The LX-1 has been a great little camera and small enought that I can keep it hooked to the bat belt and shoot stills while on set. I thought about getting the newer Leica D-Lux 3, in sexy all black but I don't think the extra $$ is worth it. As much as I'd like to support the founder of 35mm and modern photography as we know it. But then, maybe I might.

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Authored by: MarkS on Saturday, April 14 2007 @ 05:01 PM

Oh, yeah, Sunny day in Boston, 1971. I might have been walking around Cambridge that very same day, enjoying the sun and pretty girls (I was born a dirty old man and even at age 8 I had an eye for the ladies.)

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Authored by: billsimmon on Saturday, April 14 2007 @ 09:14 PM

Doc Brown pronounced it right for the time frame of the film, but it was misspelled in the script. Wikipedia is my copilot.

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Authored by: DanZ on Saturday, April 14 2007 @ 09:45 PM

It would make sense if we had a voluntary system of utilzing emoticons on our posts that indicates if we pronounce "giga" with a soft or hard "g".

:j "jigga"

:g "gigga"

:3=o "nigga"

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Authored by: MarkS on Sunday, April 15 2007 @ 12:44 PM

^^ - Wigga

*:~0 - Nappy headed ho

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