Intro.
I've been inspired by Engadget's Growing Up Geek columns. I figured I should start writing down my tech experiences before I forget them!
When technology is a big part of your life and that everything new you see in the tech world gets you excited about new possibilities, you know you're a geek! I'll always blame myself before I blame technology and I understand that most of the time it's a user error... not many people will acknowledge this unless you know what you are talking about.
So this is me.
I was born in the 70s and have lived Montreal, Canada all my life. Tech was far from what it is now. I can remember having no cable at home and having a color TV with 3, maybe 4 channels at the beginning of the 80s. I can also remember the first remote we owned. It was a wired brown/beige box with click buttons. You could open it up and turn little wheels to adjust the signal coming from the cable box (was it cable? I'll have to ask dad on that one..). I wish I could remember who made that remote.
We had a VHS player that my grandma won in the early 80s. I still have it and it still works! I just don't have many tapes to play! It too had a wired remote (probably the most useless of remotes!) with the following buttons : forward, back, pause (which would un-pause) and stop. Not even "play"!!! It can also record, but you have to turn the little wheels to adjust the signal (what's up with that anyways??) and can only go up to about 30 channels. It would top eject with a wicked loud sound!
My dad also bought pong game that I remember running with so many AA batteries that my Gameboy would have been jealous!! It was a two player unit. The main console had a few switches and buttons(?) with a wheel and the secondary console (wired of course!) had just a wheel. I don't remember playing it much though.
The first (and only!) real game console that came in the house was an Atari 2600. First it was the old model that was black with fake wood and the miscellaneous On/Off/Reset/1player/2player buttons! Gaming at its best. The joysticks would drive me mad when they started failing, but we had only ourselves to blame. Those things took a bunch of abuse! Pitfall (I and II) were excellent and then Kaboom was great too. We then got the newer 2600, but it did not bring more functionality, it just "worked" better I guess.
Video games pretty much went away for a long time after that. For me at home, sports took over my life. Computers were showing up at friend's houses though. I remember spending hours copying code on a Commodore 64 just to hear a "beep" or a small tune. I remember loading cassettes in a system to play games (I can't remember what it was called...)
And then something happened. We got an IBM XT (X-tended T-echnology!!). Two 5"1/4 floppy drives, a three button PS/2 mouse and a CGA (4 colors) screen that cost just little over 1000$. 1987 was the year and it probably changed my life. I would get boatloads of floppy disks from my dad's colleagues. Every disk's content was scrutinized. No stone left unturned. Loading to DOS was great and using command prompts made me happy. I was in control of this box and the possibilities were endless! I could load Word Perfect and type text on a blue screen and print it out to an Epson dot matrix printer (I'm getting a headache just thinking of the noise that thing made!!).
Sure there were a few games (California Games, King's Quest, etc.) but what really made that magical (yes, even more than an IPad!!) was the 300 baud Hayes modem my dad purchased (or was it given to us?). I don't remember questioning what the heck I was supposed to do with the modem. It somehow plugged in the serial port of my computer and I could connect a phone cord to it. Had to modify DOS boot disk so that it would be recognized and then... magic. I could establish a connection. Where would I dial : BBS (Bulleting Board Systems). Redialing for hours to get the line. The goal? Exchanging posts with other people (wow, the world really has changed a lot hasn't it??). I could even play Risk with complete strangers on a turn by turn basis!
The other thing that came in the mail was an invite to Compuserve. What was this Compuserve thing I asked myself. It turns out Compuserve was something that ruined an entire summer for me! By that time, I was BBSing so much that we had a second phone line put in. I was probably 13 or 14 by then. I spent hours on CB's different channels to communicate to strangers that eventually became friends at the time.
The problem with early technology and parents that knew nothing about it is that they did not pay attention. What ended up happening is that Compuserve's publicity offered 1 month free. After the second month of activity, my parents got a bill. Something around 500$ and of course we were already in the middle of the third month so that one ended up costing around 300$. Needless to say, my Compuserve account was closed (but the memory lives on, I still remember my ID!!). So it was back to BBSing for me.
To be continued...
When technology is a big part of your life and that everything new you see in the tech world gets you excited about new possibilities, you know you're a geek! I'll always blame myself before I blame technology and I understand that most of the time it's a user error... not many people will acknowledge this unless you know what you are talking about.
So this is me.
I was born in the 70s and have lived Montreal, Canada all my life. Tech was far from what it is now. I can remember having no cable at home and having a color TV with 3, maybe 4 channels at the beginning of the 80s. I can also remember the first remote we owned. It was a wired brown/beige box with click buttons. You could open it up and turn little wheels to adjust the signal coming from the cable box (was it cable? I'll have to ask dad on that one..). I wish I could remember who made that remote.
We had a VHS player that my grandma won in the early 80s. I still have it and it still works! I just don't have many tapes to play! It too had a wired remote (probably the most useless of remotes!) with the following buttons : forward, back, pause (which would un-pause) and stop. Not even "play"!!! It can also record, but you have to turn the little wheels to adjust the signal (what's up with that anyways??) and can only go up to about 30 channels. It would top eject with a wicked loud sound!
My dad also bought pong game that I remember running with so many AA batteries that my Gameboy would have been jealous!! It was a two player unit. The main console had a few switches and buttons(?) with a wheel and the secondary console (wired of course!) had just a wheel. I don't remember playing it much though.
The first (and only!) real game console that came in the house was an Atari 2600. First it was the old model that was black with fake wood and the miscellaneous On/Off/Reset/1player/2player buttons! Gaming at its best. The joysticks would drive me mad when they started failing, but we had only ourselves to blame. Those things took a bunch of abuse! Pitfall (I and II) were excellent and then Kaboom was great too. We then got the newer 2600, but it did not bring more functionality, it just "worked" better I guess.
Video games pretty much went away for a long time after that. For me at home, sports took over my life. Computers were showing up at friend's houses though. I remember spending hours copying code on a Commodore 64 just to hear a "beep" or a small tune. I remember loading cassettes in a system to play games (I can't remember what it was called...)
And then something happened. We got an IBM XT (X-tended T-echnology!!). Two 5"1/4 floppy drives, a three button PS/2 mouse and a CGA (4 colors) screen that cost just little over 1000$. 1987 was the year and it probably changed my life. I would get boatloads of floppy disks from my dad's colleagues. Every disk's content was scrutinized. No stone left unturned. Loading to DOS was great and using command prompts made me happy. I was in control of this box and the possibilities were endless! I could load Word Perfect and type text on a blue screen and print it out to an Epson dot matrix printer (I'm getting a headache just thinking of the noise that thing made!!).
Sure there were a few games (California Games, King's Quest, etc.) but what really made that magical (yes, even more than an IPad!!) was the 300 baud Hayes modem my dad purchased (or was it given to us?). I don't remember questioning what the heck I was supposed to do with the modem. It somehow plugged in the serial port of my computer and I could connect a phone cord to it. Had to modify DOS boot disk so that it would be recognized and then... magic. I could establish a connection. Where would I dial : BBS (Bulleting Board Systems). Redialing for hours to get the line. The goal? Exchanging posts with other people (wow, the world really has changed a lot hasn't it??). I could even play Risk with complete strangers on a turn by turn basis!
The other thing that came in the mail was an invite to Compuserve. What was this Compuserve thing I asked myself. It turns out Compuserve was something that ruined an entire summer for me! By that time, I was BBSing so much that we had a second phone line put in. I was probably 13 or 14 by then. I spent hours on CB's different channels to communicate to strangers that eventually became friends at the time.
The problem with early technology and parents that knew nothing about it is that they did not pay attention. What ended up happening is that Compuserve's publicity offered 1 month free. After the second month of activity, my parents got a bill. Something around 500$ and of course we were already in the middle of the third month so that one ended up costing around 300$. Needless to say, my Compuserve account was closed (but the memory lives on, I still remember my ID!!). So it was back to BBSing for me.
To be continued...
Comments
Post a Comment