Am I the only Zoomer? I see a lot of “I remember”-type responses, so I have to wonder.
I’m in that weird group that’s between Gen-X and Millennial. I’ve seen us called Xennials or the Oregon Trail Generation.
Was Oregon Trail really that huge?
It really was. It was a time when most didn’t have computers at home. Once a week you’d get to go down to the computer lab and play educational games from MECC. Oregon Trail being the most popular of the bunch.
About twice a week we would go to the computer lab filled with Apple IIes. Usually we had to play Number Munchers, Word Munchers, or some other game to reenforce whatever we learned in class. After we finished the game in the lesson plan, we could then play whatever educational game we wanted. Oregon Trail was a popular choice because nothing was funnier than having the game say a classmate had died or broke a leg. And the hunting and rafting mini games were the closest to arcade games.
Also keep in mind that the only exposure most of the teachers had to a computer were the mainframe terminals in the school’s office or the computer lab. MECC put together a lot of software and training for teachers. A school building out an Apple II based computer lab with a bunch of MECC software was as close to turnkey as they could get at the time. The documentation for Oregon Trail or Odell Lake gives you an idea of what it was like.
http://www.mecc.co/history/the-oregon-trail---a-157/mecc_a-157_oregon_trail.pdf
http://www.mecc.co/science/odell-lake---a-192/mecc_a-192_odell_lake.pdf
There are dozens of us!
But seriously, I think we had one of the most interesting technological evolution of any generation. Going from using the Dewey decimal system and encyclopedias early on, to using the internet before graduating.
I’m approaching the top of the hill.
What was your first machine?
A Packard Bell Legend 486. Can’t recall the exact model.
I’m in my 20s. I got into retro computing because I used older (Windows 95) computers my parents handed down to me when I was a child and things got cemented and I started looking at even older tech when I started watching YouTube videos covering retro computing.
Alright! It’s kind of similar for me, I grew up playing among old towers in our basement, and I still have a supply of retro stuff handed down to me, if I can catch it. I love seeing problems solved in different ways, or even the same way but visibly in old hardware. Today it’s all buried under the higher layers of abstraction, and the the other end of gen Z hasn’t even used a filesystem necessarily, let alone had to think about the physical layer.
I’m a Millennial (35 years old)
When did you get the internet for the first time?
My first PC was in 1998, I think we had internet in 1999.
Im somewhere between Gen Z and Millennial i don’t feel like either “Culture” is normal
I’m pretty close to the dividing line too, and I can no longer stay up all night and feel fine.
i don’t feel like either “Coulter” is normal
I’m not familiar with this meme, and DDG is giving me farm equipment.
The meme is bad autocorrect…
Ah, that would explain it. Well, I know how to make really nice clean furrows with my horse-drawn plough now.
Worry not I am also a fellow Zoomer.
I always enjoyed retro technology either because I didn’t use to get the latest stuff right away or because there’s a certain charm to it that still grabs my interest.
Oh yeah? Are you a big retro gamer then?
I’m on the younger side (not sure what the category cutoffs are) and I have the same reason. It started with me getting stuff that I wanted to try as a kid, then it went from there
Another gen-z dude here 🙋🏼♂️
Nice! Did you experience the CD era at all, or were you straight into MP3s?
More like both, i always had a little cd collection, but it was mostly self-burned from mp3s my dad bought off iTunes. I also had a early-ish mp3 player at some point.
Gen-X, here.
Nice. We still need a Boomer. Silent Gen would be a nice bonus.
What format did you use for removable storage at first?
5.25" floppy disks, formatted on a Commodore 64 with a 1541 disk drive.
Another GenX. Aka the best generation.
Xennial!
First computer I used in school was an Apple IIe with a 720kb, 5.25" floppy drive.
First computer at home was a Tandy 1000. Still out in the garage, I think.
Floppy drives have been a recent fascination of mine. A small, semi-disposable soft-robotic hard drive, how ingenious.
Xennial as well. My first home PC was an Epson with 640k and a 3.5 DD disk drive and a “Turbo” button on the front of the case.
I remember getting a kick out of a game that used RealSound, a piece of software for doing voice and other similarly complex sound out of the standard PC speaker (apparently it handled 6-bit PCM audio, though I wouldn’t know that at the time).
That game included a card explaining how to improve the audio out of your PC by building a cable to connect the line going to your PC speaker to an RCA cable to connect it to a stereo or boombox. The cable wasn’t great at what it did (and better designs had been devised since), but it was pretty simple (if I remember right just some RCA cable, a couple of alligator clips and a capacitor).
Old. Just caught the tail end of the era of big machines.
Learnt Unix on a VAX 11/750. Used text terminals for a long time.
And now we have everyone. Did you ever use punch cards?
No, except for software that represented data in virtual punched cards under the covers, for communicating with remote systems. (None of which used punched cards anymore.)
Hah, xnec2c for GUI antenna simulation still expects you to make virtual punch cards. “If it’s not broken”, I guess…
Heh. Presumably there’s some very old FORTRAN in there somewhere?
It’s an old FORTRAN program with a graphical interface kludged overtop, I think.
In the early 90’s my college had a VAX for student accounts via wonderful dial up The CS dept had Sparcstation 2 workstations
My first computer was a 48K Sinclair ZX Spectrum, when I was maybe 12 years old. That’s how old I am.
There’s a couple proper boomers in here now, so step aside lol. I’m still hoping a silent generation person might turn up.
I still have my first VIC-20. Representing!
Atari VCS > VIC20 > C64> Amiga 500 > Amiga 1200 > Amiga 4000
I’m a millennial. First computer was a TRS-80 CoCo 2 with extended color basic. Then a C64 (which was sort of disappointing since extended color basic was way better than anything on the commodore, but the games were much better), and then I started with an 8088 with a herc monochrome monitor and no hard drive and only went up from there.
Old enough to have bought a new C64 from Toys R Us
