What were you doing with personal computers, in 1992?

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[ARCHIVED THREAD] - What were you doing with personal computers, in 1992? (Page 1 of 8)

Posted: 9/2/2015 12:44:16 AM EDT

And how old were you?

I was 13.

I had an IBM 5150 (It's all we could afford), and I was addicted to bulletin boards (WWIV FTW! Fuck Renegade!), when I wasn't studying my Dad's Pascal textbooks from the junior college. I wrote a really sweet app in Pascal (I wish I could still find the source - it's no doubt on a 360k 5.25" floppy somewhere) that quickly logged CB channel 9 calls, as part of the REACT network. I was so proud of it. It had menus and everything. How fucking dumb is that?

It actually wasn't that sweet. My younger brother (who had an affinity for x86 assembler and later...C), tore me a new asshole over how shitty a coder I was, after finally finding one of the disks with the source code, after I moved out. It's a strange sensation, getting dressed down by your younger brother who still lived at home, and secretly knowing that he was totally right, but not giving him the satisfaction of knowing it until like 20 years later.

But I was proud of me. How about you?

Posted: 9/2/2015 12:45:15 AM EDT

[#1]

I wasn't much older, but all I did was play Doom and occasionally do homework (WordPerfect and QBasic).

Posted: 9/2/2015 12:45:59 AM EDT

[#2]

I was 12. We didn't get a computer at home till I was 17. I rarely used one at school.

Posted: 9/2/2015 12:46:21 AM EDT

[#3]

Frogger on an Apple IIGS.

Posted: 9/2/2015 12:46:43 AM EDT

[#4]

I was 2.

The extent of my personal computer usage was probably limited to an etch-a-sketch.

Posted: 9/2/2015 12:47:00 AM EDT

[#5]

Playing Kings Quest and Quest for Glory

Posted: 9/2/2015 12:47:42 AM EDT

[#6]

Playing wolfenstein on a 486ish...

Posted: 9/2/2015 12:49:31 AM EDT

[#7]

This is a nostalgia thread, in case it wasn't obvious.

Posted: 9/2/2015 12:49:39 AM EDT

[#8]

92? I had finally gotten a 286. With a 2400baud modem, green and white monochrome DOS 6.1 and Win 3.0

I had a free async internet account which lasted about 3 years ( used Qmodem Pro to access) pretty much spend most of my time going through USENET and checking email VIA Pine

Posted: 9/2/2015 12:49:44 AM EDT

[#9]

I was 25 and doing my last year in Germany. My personal computer experience up to that point had been a Commodore 64 and TRS-80 in high school in the '80s. I didn't have a computer again until 2002.

Posted: 9/2/2015 12:50:12 AM EDT

[#10]

Quote History

Quoted:
Playing wolfenstein on a 486ish...

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Oooh, Richie Rich!

Posted: 9/2/2015 12:50:28 AM EDT

[#11]

I was a master CNE and master CNI.

Posted: 9/2/2015 12:50:57 AM EDT

[#12]

Not existing until mid 1992.

Posted: 9/2/2015 12:50:58 AM EDT

[#13]

Nothing I was 5

Posted: 9/2/2015 12:51:59 AM EDT

[#14]

12,

Playing some DOS games. One was a fishing one, Huey, and Indy car game, and some space shuttle game.

Posted: 9/2/2015 12:52:07 AM EDT

[#15]

Playing Oregon Trail on the computer at school. 10

And this

Posted: 9/2/2015 12:52:53 AM EDT

[#16]

The only PC I used prior to 1994 was my uncle's TI 99A and my cousin's IBM Portable PC. Both only for playing games.

That IBM portable, the first "laptop" I guess, weighed about 35 lbs and was the size of a suitcase when folded up.

My first full time job out of high school was stuffing boards for the TI PC. Very advanced, very expensive and a total failure in the market.

First PC I bought was a Packard Bell with a Pentium 1.

eta.. I guess I was 30 years old when I bought that thing. Had accounts on Prodigy, CompuServe and AOL. Chatting with Charles Petty on Prodigy was fun.

The OJ trial was the BEST!

Posted: 9/2/2015 12:53:47 AM EDT

[#17]

I wasn't, didn't get a PC until '95.

Probably wouldn't have been interested even then, but my B-I-L showed me what the Internet was for...

Posted: 9/2/2015 12:54:07 AM EDT

[#18]

Quote History

Quoted:
I was a master CNE and master CNI.

View Quote

I followed in your footsteps, but didn't score my Master CNE until 1998.

I still kinda miss it.

Posted: 9/2/2015 12:54:13 AM EDT

[#19]

ETA I was 16>17 So really how loud I could make my car stereo, and chasing pussy, and where we drinkin were higher priorities at the time

Posted: 9/2/2015 12:57:51 AM EDT

[#20]

I ordered my first PC in autumn of '97 and got it just after Christmas.

It was a 300mHz Gateway Destination D6, which came with a Gen. 2 Toshiba DVD player, a Harmon Kardon Dolby Pro Logic 5.1 HT receiver and some Infinity cube speakers and subwoofer. It came with an RF wireless keyboard and handheld mouse/remote (think Star Trek phasers.) The coup de grace was a 35.5" Toshiba tubed monitor that had a circuit inside that lightened the tube up/down for the TV/PC settings. I could get up to a 27" PIP for the TV portion, while Windows was running on the full screen.

It was a truly integrated entertainment system.

It was $6300 back then and the monitor was 103#, lol. I got back about $700 when Gateway upgraded the 300mHz processor to the 333mHz Intel within three months of purchase.

UNREAL was a blast on that thing. I then upgraded the proc. to the 450mHz Intel and ran that until it died after about 14 years!

Chris

Posted: 9/2/2015 12:57:54 AM EDT

[#21]

Quote History

Quoted:

I followed in your footsteps, but didn't score my Master CNE until 1998.

I still kinda miss it.

View Quote View All Quotes

View All Quotes

Quote History

Quoted:

Quoted:
I was a master CNE and master CNI.

I followed in your footsteps, but didn't score my Master CNE until 1998.

I still kinda miss it.

The instructor thing was pretty interesting to get. The whole going away for a week and presenting and getting graded could be very stressful for some people. Some people were told that if they failed to become an instructor, they would be fired. If I remember correctly there were only about 300 in the world at that time. I was amazed that my employer let me get my MCNI, which was even more rare. It was worth it for the training center we had though.

Netware just plain worked well. NDS was better 15 years ago then AD ever has been.

Posted: 9/2/2015 12:59:05 AM EDT

[#22]

Fuck, making a living.

Posted: 9/2/2015 12:59:22 AM EDT

[#23]

Used them at work to schedule flight crews on missions(Air Force). Can't remember that program name. Bought my first used computer about that time. 486DX-25 with 16 MB of Ram, 2 hard drives and a 14.4 Practical peripherals modem. Dos 5 and Windows 3.1. Compuserve acct. Bulletin boards as well. Guess I was around 35 then.

Remember the Loadhigh(LH) command?

We used to play a golf game and TRACON while deployed to Saudi the year before.

Posted: 9/2/2015 1:01:07 AM EDT

[#24]

Sold the old IBM 8086 and CompuAdd 386 at home and bought a Gateway 486.

Had a Mac IIfx at work, and also a Genigraphics workstation that was the size of a small car.

ETA: The Mac IIfx cost over $10,000 and the Geni was about $250,000. I soon consigned the home Gateway to my wife and bought a Mac IIsi (105MB hard drive, 9MB RAM, sound card, VideoSpigot video capture card, digitizing tablet) for a bit over $7000.00. Took out a bank loan to pay for it. Sold it at a garage sale about 10 years later for $5.00.

Posted: 9/2/2015 1:02:10 AM EDT

[#25]

Hmmm I was 7 so maybe oregon trail at elementary school

.

I don't think we had a home PC until 96 or 97.

Posted: 9/2/2015 1:02:18 AM EDT

[#26]

In a dorm room hovering around a monitor waiting for the next row of pixels to load.

Posted: 9/2/2015 1:03:06 AM EDT

[#27]

Playing games. 1992? Probably something like Castles. Or maybe Duke Nukem. Or Master of Orion.

Posted: 9/2/2015 1:03:07 AM EDT

[#28]

'92!!! Back to college after taking a brief interuption to kill ragheads in a a thing called Desert Storm.

However.....working on an IBM clone, and remembering the sound of the first modems...

Posted: 9/2/2015 1:03:36 AM EDT

[#29]

Playing MajorMud on a DX2 66MHZ with 8 megs of ram and a 777 meg HD. I went and bought another 8 meg stick and we had an install party with my mud buddies.

We eventually had to have another phone line installed once I started scripting and then I started running two characters 24/7.

Those were the days.

Posted: 9/2/2015 1:03:52 AM EDT

[#30]

Had a Kaypro 2000 I had bought for the ex back in 86

Didn't do squat with it, just booted it up every once in a while
to check it's function and keep the battery charged.

Sold it right before the dotcom bust with its software bundle for 8k to a regular I knew
in a Raleigh NC bar that was riding high at the time as a PE in the Research Triangle
and was collecting trophies with his sky's the limit winnings.

Posted: 9/2/2015 1:04:59 AM EDT

[#31]

mIRC and lots of porn.

Posted: 9/2/2015 1:06:10 AM EDT

[#32]

Don't make me pull out my vintage Compaq Portable III from 1986. Yes, it works.

Posted: 9/2/2015 1:06:26 AM EDT

[#33]

Early 90's? Got a 386 with a modem and used a lot of BBS's, games, and started hearing about a thing called Internet.

The modems progressed quite fast. My first was a 2400baud, that went to 9600 both internal boards. Then I started buying the external models by US Robotics 33k, and finally 56k.

It was also a time to play with memory managers (QEMM386) for some games that demanded more performance and there was also a very neat program that created a virtual drive in the memory. Forgot the name.

Then the multitasking programs for DOS, DeskView. We could do a few things at the same time.

And, last but not least, the eternal struggles with IRQs and DMAs and being able to take control of the multiple boards installed in the PC.

Good times.

Posted: 9/2/2015 1:06:53 AM EDT

[#34]

Quote History

Quoted:
mIRC and lots of porn.

View Quote

mIRC was released in 1995.

Posted: 9/2/2015 1:07:20 AM EDT

[#35]

Quote History

Quoted:
mIRC and lots of porn.

View Quote

Shity low res porn that took days (literally) to download on a 28.8kbps connection.

Posted: 9/2/2015 1:07:24 AM EDT

[#36]

I never even owned a computer until 8 years ago.

This is what they looked like when I had my first computer experience in high school.

Posted: 9/2/2015 1:08:46 AM EDT

[#37]

Remember the EISA versus PCI battles? Good times.

Posted: 9/2/2015 1:08:50 AM EDT

[#38]

Quote History

Quoted:

mIRC was released in 1995.

View Quote View All Quotes

View All Quotes

Quote History

Quoted:

Quoted:

mIRC and lots of porn.

mIRC was released in 1995.

Then porn bulletin boards and Microsoft chat where you can use that alien and make weird faces at people.

Posted: 9/2/2015 1:09:19 AM EDT

[#39]

Quote History

Quoted:
Early 90's? Got a 386 with a modem and used a lot of BBS's, games, and started hearing about a thing called Internet.

The modems progressed quite fast. My first was a 2400baud, that went to 9600 both internal boards. Then I started buying the external models by US Robotics 33k, and finally 56k.

It was also a time to play with memory managers (QEMM386) for some games that demanded more performance and there was also a very neat program that created a virtual drive in the memory. Forgot the name.

Then the multitasking programs for DOS, DeskView. We could do a few things at the same time.

And, last but not least, the eternal struggles with IRQs and DMAs and being able to take control of the multiple boards installed in the PC.

Good times.

View Quote

I recall having to reallocate memory or something to make Xcom:TFTD work. Same for Tie Fighter.

That is, I recall asking my brother to do it.

Posted: 9/2/2015 1:09:40 AM EDT

[#40]

Well I was 6 months old, so....

Nothing

Posted: 9/2/2015 1:09:54 AM EDT

[#41]

92? 25yo, working at the job I retired from... I had a sweet 386, the only one in the company, and built a customer database to track sales. Eventually used it to build basic marketing brochure prototypes. No internet connection.

It wasn't until 93 or 4 that I got compuserve!

Posted: 9/2/2015 1:10:27 AM EDT

[#42]

Worked for Sequent Computers in Beaverton OR 1992. When not waiting 5 minutes for a porn picture to load, I used it to handle all of my emails and work orders.

Posted: 9/2/2015 1:11:00 AM EDT

[#43]

Work - used MacWrite pro, Cricket Graph, and Excel to write up papers on neutrophil defense mechanisms (I was a research career development awardee and grantee of an R01, as well as several smaller grants) and make teaching handouts for the students. I used a Mac SE30 or something.

Home - games included Riven/Myst, Apache or something, and a few others.

Posted: 9/2/2015 1:12:39 AM EDT

[#44]

I'd be 9...

Playing Star Control on my computer in my room.

if we jump ahead slightly to 1993 we get my all time favorite games... Master of Orion and X-wing.

Posted: 9/2/2015 1:13:59 AM EDT

[#45]

I was one year out of college working on getting our IBM PS/2 computers to talk to our AS/400. Most everyone in the office was using twinax IBM 3487 terminals, so having a PS/2 was the cat's meow.

Posted: 9/2/2015 1:14:25 AM EDT

[#46]

I was drawing in Fullpaint and Superpaint on the Mac SE/20 at home.

I was playing Scorched Earth at school.

Best,
JBR

Posted: 9/2/2015 1:14:56 AM EDT

[#47]

In 1992 I didn't have a computer. I was in college and just needs something to write papers on. I had a Brother word processing typewriter. It had a screen that I could type entire papers into first and then hit print and it would print the paper out all at once. It was pretty cool. I didn't have a lot of spare money because I was buying rifles and handguns, I was finally old enough to buy them. I got my first computer in 1994" it was an Apple PowerBook 165c.

Apple included a backup of the operating system, it was on seventeen 3.5" floppy disks.

Posted: 9/2/2015 1:15:21 AM EDT

[#48]

Using AutoCad every day working at home doing structural steel drafting.

Posted: 9/2/2015 1:15:56 AM EDT

[#49]

I can't really remember using computers much back then, maybe some shitty flight sim on my dads computer or Oregon Trail at school.

Posted: 9/2/2015 1:16:49 AM EDT

[#50]

I was a PC salesman in 1992 and in college. I remember the turbo button.

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[ARCHIVED THREAD] - What were you doing with personal computers, in 1992? (Page 1 of 8)

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