You Know You Are Old When

[ultrarunner]

I remember when the 1st digital calculators came out.
No memory in the early ones, then Texas Instruments came out with their scientific calculators

SR-11 cost me $120

 

[LouNY]

I don't remember what processor my first computer had, but it was a fancy portable with dual floppy drives and a 5" green screen.
And my first fancy calculator was an H-P which came with a manual 3-4 times the calculator, that was in the late 70's

 

[jmc]

Back in the day of carbon paper credit card receipts and manual bad card checklists, the clerk was instructed to confiscate any card on the checklist...

"Uh, sorry. Not for $1.25 an hour."

 

[WinterDeere]

I don't remember what processor my first computer had, but it was a fancy portable with dual floppy drives and a 5" green screen.
And my first fancy calculator was an H-P which came with a manual 3-4 times the calculator, that was in the late 70's

Each new introduction was monumental enough, I could probably guess with 95% certainty, based only on the month and year of purchase. There were a few short-lived odd-balls along the way, but especially the 8080 and x86 series each came with huge leaps in capability and architecture. Then Pentium and PnP changed everything.

Remember when early Plug'n'Play was called "Plug and Pray"? Crap didn't work half the time, in those first two years.

 

[LouNY]

Each new introduction was monumental enough, I could probably guess with 95% certainty, based only on the month and year of purchase. There were a few short-lived odd-balls along the way, but especially the 8080 and x86 series each came with huge leaps in capability and architecture. Then Pentium and PnP changed everything.

Remember when early Plug'n'Play was called "Plug and Pray"? Crap didn't work half the time, in those first two years.

8086 just jumped into my mind, that would have been what she was. Then a box of I/O boards to swap out for every different PLC (Programable Logic Controller)

 

[WinterDeere]

I remember having to set jumpers for IRQ and DMA numbers on each card. And then every time you'd get a new card (e.g. sound card), you'd have to resort everything around it, to have no addressing conflicts. We'd resort to paper to map out and set up a computer... a nerd's corollary to ICE's having to rescue EV's today, or horses towing Model T's through WW1.

I also remember having to allocate specific memory blocks to specific programs, and being totally hosed if your spreadsheet grew beyond the memory you had allocated for it. Win95 changed all of that.

Windows 95 had some major hiccups, mostly PnP compatibility with third-party hardware, and was always blamed for looking a little too much like Apple OS7. But in terms of things like memory allocation, it was a truly revolutionary operating system, in how it changed the fundamentals of how we use computers today. IIRC, it was the first major release of a truly non-deterministic OS.

 

[LouNY]

I never liked Windows and still don't even though I'm using it now. I preferred DOS and as Windows became more and more dominant I ran a dual boot system for many years.
It was just a dozen years ago when my brother was still milking cows his old "automated" protein supplement system was DOS based and I was keeping a couple of desk tops spares loaded and ready to go after one crashed one night and it took several hours to get an old computer up and running with windows wiped and a dual boot system setup.

 

[WinterDeere]

Yeah, command line is still a great go-to for certain tasks. But I could never even imagine going back to an OS without multi-tasking, or that can't even copy/paste between programs. Want to write a report that needs a few graphs? You'll be starting and terminating Excel and Word six-dozen times... each! God help you, if you want to paste an image into a TBN post, from another program... that'd be half your morning's work! And you'll be losing work and re-doing it all, if you failed to allocate enough memory to either of those programs, at initialization.

True multi-tasking and non-deterministic dynamic memory management both came in with Win95. After that, there was no going back. You can lament the horse, they certainly had their good points and could do some things better than cars, but the auto is here to stay.

 

[MossRoad]

I remember using one. Every month the Gulf representative would bring us a list of invalid cards. We were supposed to check it each time we ran a transaction, and pick up any cards on the list. Also call Gulf for every charge over 50 dollars. Gas was a bit less than $3.099/gallon back then.

Working at the airport in the early 80's we had to call in all sales over X dollars, too, as I recall.

Some poor schmuck would come in for 15 gallons in his little puddle jumper and we'd have to call for approval. They'd make us ask for his ID.

Some other guy shows up in this private jet, takes on a couple thousand dollars worth of fuel, pilot hands me a credit card, I call for approval and it's instantaneous approval, no questions asked.

It was The Gambler.

 

[MossRoad]

A star on the card meant up to $100 no liability.

I still have the imprinter from working the auto parts as weekend manager in high school.

Don’t know why but when it it was going to the trash along with the crank Victor adding machine I asked the owner if I could take both home.

Ever get your finger pinched in one of those things?