Computer history talk

[Black Knight of Keno]

Okays, peoples!

I have a problem right now. I have a verbal presentation of computer history next thurday, and I need help from you oldies. I have no knowledge from the systems before Commodore 64, so let me in on secrets!

I need you old people!

 

Thank you... >.>

[Prime]

Why don't you use the think called the Internet to get a more accurate view?

[ET Warrior]

zOMG WIKIPEDIA'D

[Black Knight of Keno]

Bah! I can get pure info about the systems from internet, but I want to know the actual feel of playing 'em

[Kylilin]

way back when, I remember playing games on tandy computers, I remember them being the first video games I had ever played, so to me it was pretty amazing, even though the games went a little something like this: "destroy the green dot with the blue dot by shooting yellow dots at it"

 

You young bucs missed out on a whole generation of games that these days are antiquated, but back then, they were the equivalent of seeing XBox 360 screenshots for the first time.

[Black Knight of Keno]

Destroy the green dots with you flying red square! Swing from green dot to green dot with your red square monkey! [/Flash FM commercial]

[edlib]

My personal computer history goes something like this:

 

Pong

Space Invaders

Atari 2600

Atari 400

TRS-80

ColecoVision

Coleco Adam

Apple II-E

IBM PC

Macintosh

Mac II

Power PC Mac

Dell 386

Dell 486

No-name Pentium

iMac

Dell Pentium 3

G4 iMac

 

I didn't own all these... some of them were school computers I had to use every day. There were probably a couple more in there I've forgotten about... plus a lot stuff I saw at a friend's but never got to use.

[Sabretooth]

Go for the uber-oldies first. I did a project last year. Try getting info on ENIAC, UNIVAC etc. And if Google can't help you, nobody can.

[toms]

Just games? Just home computers? or all computers?

 

My first home computer was a ZX Spectrum 48k. It was black, and pretty tiny.. with little rubber keys in an almost QWERTY layout.

 

Software was loaded from audio tapes, by plugging in the audio outs of the cassette player into the audio ins of the speccy. This would then make a loud screeching noise and show migrane inducing vertical scrolling multicolored lines while it loaded... a process that would take around 5 minutes.

 

It would also count down from about 1000 to zero.. but this was purely to **** you off when the process would fail after 4 minutes and 59 seconds with the counter on about 12.

 

You would then wiggle the audio connectors and try again. After about 5 attempts and 25 minutes you'd finally get to play your game.

 

(Unlike PCs, it connecter to the TV... and back in those days it wasn't like PCs/Consoles that were permanently set up... so if you got it out, got the stereo, wired it all up with cables accross the living room, and then finally wiggled the cables enough to get a working tape-load then you played it non stop for about 12 hours until your parents made you dismantle it all. )

 

Games weren't too bad, though colour palletes were a bit limited. Like today most games back then were ported between platforms - but with varying graphics).

 

Interestingly the speccy had built in BASIC support, so you could write your own games/programmes straight in the operating system. They even had the main BASIC keywords mapped on the keys.. in theory to make it easier for home programmers... but in practice it was a lot harder to remember which key was "PRINT" than just to type it out.

 

Still, I remember writing a few basic games back then (pong, driving game, etc..) and i suspect this was one of the things that got a lot of current game developers into the field.

Back then most games were made by one or two people in their bedroom, not billion pound EA projects - so they were much more inventive, but much less polished.

 

Games mags even used to regularly include source code for games, which you had to type in yourself. In the UK at least the industry almost got wiped out because the mags started competing with each other by including loads of free games with each issue, so everyone was loosing money.

 

Then my mates got amigas and atari STs and I got jealous. Then I got a 286. (12Ghz, 1mb ram, 10mb HD, £1300) but most of the games on that still weren't as good as amigas. Then everyone started getting SNES and Megadrives (genesis in the US?) and they blew the poor PCs out of the water for a while.

[jon_hill987]

The first Computer:

 

Charles Babbage was the first to conceptualize and design a fully programmable computer as early as 1820, but due to a combination of the limits of the technology of the time, limited finance, and an inability to resist tinkering with his design, the device was never actually constructed in his lifetime.

[Kylilin]

I had a vectrex back in the day, it was a very underrated systed IMO. While the vector graphics were in Black and white, the gameplay was a lot smoother than any other systems out there and it also had a lot of features most systems didn't have for some time later, such as an analog controller, which didn't debut again until the N64 was released. It also came with its own monitor, which hasn't been replicated in a console system before or since. As an additional peripheral, you could buy what was known as the imager, basically it was a set of goggles with a spinning disc inside that, in junction with certain games, would make the game seem three dimensional, while simultaneously adding color to the games. Vectrex also came with a game that was pre-programmed into the hardware.