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Posted: 9/2/2015 1:18:15 AM EDT
[#1]
Besides games, I think I had just switched over to AOL from Quantum Link.
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Posted: 9/2/2015 1:18:28 AM EDT
[#2]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
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.  Ramdrive was the utility. Some of the later DOS utilities were lifesavers like intersvr/interlnk. Remember loading smartdrv.exe to cache in high RAM? |
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Posted: 9/2/2015 1:18:32 AM EDT
[#3]
Wow, been a few years. Let's see...I'd have been 13. IIRC, Police quest, Kings quest, doom. Hard to remember anything else.
I do remember playing BCs quest for tires on a Tandy 1000 as my families first computer and some of the BBSs back in the 80s 
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Posted: 9/2/2015 1:20:20 AM EDT
[#4]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
Remember the EISA versus PCI battles? Good times. Yes. I read about it from afar, because I couldn't hope to afford a machine that used PCI until about ~1995, when I scored a gig working at a local hole in the wall computer shop. And think about this - I bought a 286 (in 1995!!!), because again - that's all I could afford. And still no PCI. I think I managed to score a 386 a year later, and that's when I went bonkers with stuff. But still...no PCI. I got to work on the stuff, and I got to talk about it all the time, but I never got to personally own it when it was new. |
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Posted: 9/2/2015 1:20:47 AM EDT
[#5]
Selling, configuring, installing, & supporting medical billing systems.
Had been doing it for years by 1992. Building PC's, installing/configuring Netware networks, training and supporting the whole mess. Was installing 286, 386, and 486 servers as they each were cutting edge. My first laptop was a Compaq SLT 286 around 1989. (Previously used a "luggable") 
Turbo-C ran pretty good on that puppy. When I upgraded it's modem to 2400 baud I was the coolest guy around. Spent a fair amount of time on BBSs, pretty active on the NRA Guntalk BBS until they crushed it. Now I feel old. . |
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Posted: 9/2/2015 1:22:34 AM EDT
[#6]
Hitting the open apple button. 1992 was my jr hear of h.s. moved from CA to MI over Christmas break. Not sure the had computers in MI yet.
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Posted: 9/2/2015 1:23:10 AM EDT
[#7]
Fixing an rs-232 cable to play multiplayer doom.
Txl |
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Posted: 9/2/2015 1:23:56 AM EDT
[#8]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
Playing Oregon Trail on the computer at school. 10 And this http://www.joshuacarmody.com/content/images/2015/05/Gorillas_screenshot.png Nailed it. Took my answer. Posted Via AR15.Com Mobile |
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Posted: 9/2/2015 1:24:21 AM EDT
[#9]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
Fixing an rs-232 cable to play multiplayer doom. Txl Not in 1992, you weren't. 
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Posted: 9/2/2015 1:25:37 AM EDT
[#10]
Was building multi-user S-100 bus machines running TurboDOS.
And modifying Osbourne accounting packages written in Basic. Those pesky 16-bit expensive IBM machines will never catch on. 8 in floppies forever !!!! and 5 meg 8" hard drives for $1500 !!!! Televideo and VT 100 green text monitors, with GREAT keyboards. Shit, the $$$$ I spent on hardware i those days    ETA - forget all that - I'm off by 10 years, - that was '82. Shit I'm getting really old, so old that I cannot remember how old I am.  |
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Posted: 9/2/2015 1:25:58 AM EDT
[#11]
playing a dumb fishing game whenever I was at work on my dad's computer probably
I also played some cool games on the computers at school in kindergarten. |
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Posted: 9/2/2015 1:28:32 AM EDT
[#12]
I forgot all about TurboDOS.
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Posted: 9/2/2015 1:28:34 AM EDT
[#13]
Wolfenstein, Silent Service, Airborne Ranger.
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Posted: 9/2/2015 1:29:22 AM EDT
[#14]
I remember building my first 386 that year. I was in middle school.
All of 4mb of ram, 100MB hard drive, 33mhz, and dos 3.1 and windows 3.1 with a Viewsonic 6 1024x768 monitor. The western digital 1mb video card was great for when I wanted to jump into Prodigy dial-up. I never owned a 486---I just went straight to a Pentium 60mhz machine and then a PentiumII with 266mhz and 48MB of ram. that PII was in my freshman year of college in 1998. |
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Posted: 9/2/2015 1:29:31 AM EDT
[#15]
Built my 1st pc in 1993 - a 386SX w/ 8 MB of RAM, running IBM OS/2 2.0. Ran OS/2 @ home up until Windows 95 came out, maybe a bit beyond. Even managed to score a copy of 1.3. In the late 90's, played w/ overclocking by just throwing everything but the hard drive in the freezer - got a 486DX 4 to 200 MHz - booted it on OS/2, & ran 688 Attack Sub. I STILL play 688 Attack Sub.
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Posted: 9/2/2015 1:29:32 AM EDT
[#16]
I got my amateur radio license in 1992, and was running 2-meter packet radio using a Commodore 64 and a serial terminal node controller. Later that year, I "upgraded" to a used Kaypro.
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Posted: 9/2/2015 1:29:40 AM EDT
[#17]
I think that was the year I finally gave up on the Amiga and got an 8086 IBM clone running DR Dos 5.0.
Actually, that may have been 1990. Too damn long ago to remember. |
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Posted: 9/2/2015 1:33:26 AM EDT
[#18]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
Ramdrive was the utility. Some of the later DOS utilities were lifesavers like intersvr/interlnk. Remember loading smartdrv.exe to cache in high RAM? Quote HistoryQuoted:
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. Ramdrive was the utility. Some of the later DOS utilities were lifesavers like intersvr/interlnk. Remember loading smartdrv.exe to cache in high RAM? That's it! Amazing how much we could do with 48MB of RAM and a few 1.44MB floppy disks. When the 100MB Zip drives came-up they were like hard drives we would never fill-up. My computer had SCSI bus for the HDDs and the video card used a VESA bus. Remember when NEC came with the 2X CD-ROMs? I then bought a 387 coprocessor to get started on Auto CAD. What a difference! I forgot when, because of Wing Commander, I upgraded to a 486.
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Posted: 9/2/2015 1:34:13 AM EDT
[#19]
playing chopper commando on a tandy 1000.
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Posted: 9/2/2015 1:34:27 AM EDT
[#20]
Quote HistoryQuoted: I forgot all about TurboDOS. Spending days squeezing the OS into 8k of 'high' ram, to have 60+ k for programs and data. Back when code had to be 'tight', unlike the bloatware of today. |
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Posted: 9/2/2015 1:36:20 AM EDT
[#21]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
Spending days squeezing the OS into 8k of 'high' ram, to have 60+ k for programs and data. Back when code had to be 'tight', unlike the bloatware of today. Quote HistoryQuoted:
Quoted:
I forgot all about TurboDOS. Spending days squeezing the OS into 8k of 'high' ram, to have 60+ k for programs and data. Back when code had to be 'tight', unlike the bloatware of today. There are actually really good reasons for that.
(Geek out for a while) 
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Posted: 9/2/2015 1:36:39 AM EDT
[#22]
In 92 I was a year out of college and doing software QA as a contractor for USPS. That was on a IBM system that ran address forwarding systems. Not long afterwards I started a PC business with a buddy, then got into Netware, token ring, and a lot of serial comms. Did the BBS, CompuServe and Prodigy thing for a while until a AOL came along.
At home I had a 486DX in a tower that barely fit under my desk. I paid $1800 for it and still felt like I was having to make excruciating compromises with the hardware. It was the most expensive PC I ever owned and will probably ever own. Nowadays if I have to pay over $400 for a PC or $200 for a component, I'll find a way to do without. |
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Posted: 9/2/2015 1:37:29 AM EDT
[#23]
About the same age. I was playing Wolfenstein3D on my Packard Bell 486. Dad had a printing company so I was also dicking around with publishing programs on the Macintosh machines of the day.
Was on Prodigy with the same 486 a few years earlier, until my parents saw the long distance bill. Was also messing around on the BBS's with it around '95. Sometime late in High School, after acing my first year of CAD, I got bored with computers. Lost all interest in software and IT. Decided I liked my auto tech and photography/darkroom classes better. Oops.
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Posted: 9/2/2015 1:42:35 AM EDT
[#24]
I was designing database applications in dbase and fucking around in wordperfect. What else was there to do?
28 |
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Posted: 9/2/2015 1:43:13 AM EDT
[#25]
I was 7 and would play Ninja rabbits and Chuck Yeager's flight simulator on a 386.
Screen shot of ninja rabbits
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Posted: 9/2/2015 1:43:43 AM EDT
[#26]
It's weird: I know you guys are talking about computers, but I have no idea what you're talking about.
I was 2 in '92. |
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Posted: 9/2/2015 1:43:55 AM EDT
[#27]
'92 I was stringing VT-220 terminals off of Motorola VMEBus minis running System V/88 R4 UNIX. Writing and maintaining PICK databases and programs in PICK Basic. Building reports for everyone. Lots of reports. Doing 'resizes' every month to keep the databases fast - really just backing up to QIC tape, blowing out the DB, and restoring.
Our big Motorola was an 8840. Massively tough tower. You could probably hold up a building on it. We had about 300 users on it. The processor complex used four VME slots. Shortly after that we built our first network on Thinnet coax and started adding PCs to the mix. Tons of fun tracking down cabling problems. Around '96 we finally got 10Mb hubs. We eventually replaced our Motorolas with Compaq AlphaServers (21164 processors IIRC) running Reality C2.02 on top of Digital UNIX. Those were a huge leap in performance. Multivalue databases rock! |
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Posted: 9/2/2015 1:44:57 AM EDT
[#28]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
Remember when NEC came with the 2X CD-ROMs? I then bought a 387 coprocessor to get started on Auto CAD. What a difference! I forgot when, because of Wing Commander, I upgraded to a 486.
And who can forget such quantum leaps as the Pentium Overdrive chip which would plug into a 486 socket and allow those unfortunates a taste of the blistering speed the elites were enjoying. Then a few years later the Cyrix 686 CPUs. |
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Posted: 9/2/2015 1:47:04 AM EDT
[#29]
In 1992 I was a little younger than you and had a TRS-80 CoCo, and pair of Apple ][es. Less than 5 years later I had, among other things, an IBM 5150, a Xerox PC clone, Atari 800 XL, Amiga 500, Amiga 2000, Sun 3/60, Sun SparcStation II, VaxStation 4000 VLC, VaxStation 3100, IBM PC/36... I'm probably forgetting a lot of them.
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Posted: 9/2/2015 1:47:40 AM EDT
[#30]
I didn't own a computer until 1999. I was 30.
I took BASIC in junior high and Pascal in high school. Hated writing code, pretty much turned me off to computers until I was 30. I was never into video games either. I had Intellivision when it came out but never used it. I was never home. Still not into video games but have five or six computers and a garage full of servers. They caught on, now what I do for a living. Price is Right by the way. That was my big project in Pascal in 1985. I programmed Price is Right. Multiplayer. It had a series of items to bid on, and would generate random amounts when you'd spin the wheel to get to the Showcase Showdown. I wrote it on an Apple IIe. Learned BASIC on a TRS-80. |
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Posted: 9/2/2015 1:49:04 AM EDT
[#31]
That game where either monkeys or tanks shoot things at each other until you score a direct hit. Also, some Nazi submarine game. I was 6.
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Posted: 9/2/2015 1:49:14 AM EDT
[#32]
I was playing door games.
(First multiplayer game I played really. Brutal is as far as if you lost your shit, you lost it.) 
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Posted: 9/2/2015 1:50:18 AM EDT
[#33]
Heh, I remember GATO on the 8086.
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Posted: 9/2/2015 1:51:29 AM EDT
[#34]
I was 8, I wanna say my Mom was working at home by then and had bought an IBM PS/1...I wasnt even allowed in the same room it was in.
At that age I had a talent for strategically introducing fluids into various electronics.
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Posted: 9/2/2015 1:58:22 AM EDT
[#35]
Ran a WWIV BBS from around '91-92 to around '96-97.
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Posted: 9/2/2015 2:02:59 AM EDT
[#36]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
In 1992 I was a little younger than you and had a TRS-80 CoCo, and pair of Apple ][es. Less than 5 years later I had, among other things, an IBM 5150, a Xerox PC clone, Atari 800 XL, Amiga 500, Amiga 2000, Sun 3/60, Sun SparcStation II, VaxStation 4000 VLC, VaxStation 3100, IBM PC/36... I'm probably forgetting a lot of them. I really do love you. |
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Posted: 9/2/2015 2:04:00 AM EDT
[#37]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
Ran a WWIV BBS from around '91-92 to around '96-97. Right here, my man: 
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Posted: 9/2/2015 2:08:47 AM EDT
[#38]
You know what I loved about WWIV? They were always the best boards. It's like they were made for adults, who were obsessed with computers. That's the vibe I always got, as a young kid. This was long before Open Source caught on and all that, but if you actually paid the $20 (or whatever it was - it wasn't much), you got the source code.
You could then modify it to your heart's content, and by God, a lot of people did. It was pretty cool. |
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Posted: 9/2/2015 2:15:31 AM EDT
[#39]
Is this a Monkey Island thread?
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Posted: 9/2/2015 2:21:55 AM EDT
[#40]
in 92? I'd been programming for the phone company since 85 or 86. My home machine ran Minix or Coherent 386, can't remember.
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Posted: 9/2/2015 2:22:12 AM EDT
[#41]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
Is this a Monkey Island thread? A King's Quest on Monkey Island. 
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Posted: 9/2/2015 2:24:49 AM EDT
[#42]
In 1992 most people simply could not a afford a PC where I grew up. School had a few mid 80's computers with the the orange and green dotted screens, and old school Oregon trail. But actual PC ownership in what would become the NW suburbs of Atlanta? Nah that was more like a later 1990's thing.
The hotness at age 13 circa Fall 1992 was staining friendships with the new Super Mario Cart for the SNES. F U Red homing shell of death! |
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Posted: 9/2/2015 2:28:35 AM EDT
[#43]
1992 I didn't have a computer. I worked at a law firm and none of the lawyers had computers. The secretaries had typewritesprs at their desks for correspondence then went to a separate room where there were computers to do forms that were on a bunch of what were probably PCs. I either dictated or wrote out on a piece of paper what I wanted typed.
I went in the computer room once and sat at the computer my secretary was using for some reason to show her how to do something with the word processing program or something, I had had some old Apple at my previous job and had used a friend's dae woo computer in law school, an older lawyer came by and made some comment about how lawyers did not use computers, only secretaries did that. I certainly did not have one at home and had no interest in owning one. We had had access to lexis and west law in law school, but none of the law firms I worked at had them. We had big libraries with shelves full of books that were updated monthly. Edit I did play wolfenstein at a buddy's house on his PC at some time around there and thought it was kind of cool, but never thought of buying one and having it in my house. |
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Posted: 9/2/2015 2:29:38 AM EDT
[#44]
I had an Amiga 2000
Great games, music software, etc. Got my first modem in 1994. |
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Posted: 9/2/2015 2:30:20 AM EDT
[#45]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
And who can forget such quantum leaps as the Pentium Overdrive chip which would plug into a 486 socket and allow those unfortunates a taste of the blistering speed the elites were enjoying. Then a few years later the Cyrix 686 CPUs. Quote HistoryQuoted:
Quoted:
Remember when NEC came with the 2X CD-ROMs? I then bought a 387 coprocessor to get started on Auto CAD. What a difference! I forgot when, because of Wing Commander, I upgraded to a 486.
And who can forget such quantum leaps as the Pentium Overdrive chip which would plug into a 486 socket and allow those unfortunates a taste of the blistering speed the elites were enjoying. Then a few years later the Cyrix 686 CPUs. I ran my 486 until the early 2000's and then got a Pentium IV. Still running it on a ASUS motherboard with 2GB RAM. Ran XP, then Vista and now 7. Never upgraded to the multicore processors. Thinking about that now. Starting to take some time to do some video processing.
It's funny. I was always getting the cutting edge stuff and spending quite a bit of money. Then priorities changed. Family, kids... I seldom use my desktop anymore, no more games. Right now typing on a 7in Dell tablet running Win 8.1. |
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Posted: 9/2/2015 2:31:37 AM EDT
[#46]
I got a real IBM PC in 1982 for christmas. Can't imagine how much my parents paid. Before that I had a number of Ti computers and such. I still remember my first hard drive a number of years later. A 5mb drive a neighbor gave me they were replacing at work, good ole MFM drive.
I was rocking a 80character wide mono monitor back in 1982. By 1992 I was using a 386 with a math co processor. Yup boys and girls back then if you wanted to do a lot of math intensive stuff like AutoCad you needed an extra math co-processor. Also in 1992 I was rocking a NEC 20" CRT monitor that probably weighed 75 pounds and was 3 feet deep. My dad used it until maybe a year ago. Still looked good but his desk was getting a bend from it. My first modem was a 110 baud teletype modem I used connected to a Vic-20 to get onto compuserve and played text based games, $5/hour. You're really old if you can remember 8" floppies. Yup before 5.25 and way before 3.5 were 8" floppies. |
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Posted: 9/2/2015 2:43:44 AM EDT
[#47]
I was 12, and we just got a Tandy Sensation
Windows 3.1, lol.
I was playing Wolfenstein and The 7th Guest at the time. |
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Posted: 9/2/2015 2:58:42 AM EDT
[#48]
I was 13-14 and most likley balls deep in Falcon 3.0. Boot disk + lowest settings I could play it decently on our packard bell 386sx 16mhz PC.
Oh yeah and I was BBS'ing big time at that point too. Started late 80's. My sister was a co-sysop of one even. |
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Posted: 9/2/2015 3:22:28 AM EDT
[#49]
Robo-dialing
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Posted: 9/2/2015 3:30:32 AM EDT
[#50]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
By 1992 I was using a 386 with a math co processor. Yup boys and girls back then if you wanted to do a lot of math intensive stuff like AutoCad you needed an extra math co-processor. 386/DX-40... you were a god among men
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