Clueless Youth Struggle With Old Technology & Stuff We Grew Up With

[Rolodex]

Generation Slide Rule here. I remember using it mostly for chemistry class. I married someone who won a slide rule competition. I think we still have them packed away somewhere but if someone offered me a million dollars I couldn't think how to use it any more.

In chemistry class? But you can't blow it up. What fun is that?

We calculated what we needed to blow up stuff.

[W. Kevin Vicklund]

The TI-30 SLR was the one I used growing up, a solar powered version of the TI-30 (we also had one of those). I got the TI-81 for AP Physics in 1994, a year after it was released, and a TI-83 for college the same year it was released. I used to have all sorts of functions for electrical engineering programmed into that beast, mostly for unbalanced three-phase circuits.

[northland10]

I had a single Math class in college (I tested high enough to not require any but took a lower level one to for the Gen Ed credit and a good grades), so I did not need anything fancier than the one I had in high school.

The electronic device I did need and used often, and still use often today, is this torture device.


It is a digital metronome.

[bill_g]

I still use my handy dandy metric to imperial conversion slide rule! It's only good to two places, but it will get you in the ballpark. IE: you can look up 2.7 (units) or 27, but not 27.5 or 2756..... That's when you need a calc, or your phone.

I've haven't really needed trig in a long time. Most of my calculations involve linear distance (X) generally measured in miles or Km, over a curved surface (planet Earth), with a Y value measured in feet or meters. For example X equals 30 miles, and the vertical distance is 150ft. The approximate value of the hypotenuse is always very close to the value of X, and the only thing we might want to know is the down angle (usually a fraction of 1 deg). What we really want to know is where that big lump of rock and and dirt is along the horizontal axis. That becomes X every time, and no amount of Y will solve the problem (reaching 3X).

[Estiveo]

In high school we weren't allowed to use calculators. In college it was a TI like the resta youse. But the calculator I used at work for 20 years (and still use today when I need to do more than a quick problem with my phone) is the HP 32S II.

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[Reality Check]

In high school we weren't allowed to use calculators. In college it was a TI like the resta youse. But the calculator I used at work for 20 years (and still use today when I need to do more than a quick problem with my phone) is the HP 32S II.

Me too. I used one at work for about the same length of time.

[noblepa]

Generation Slide Rule here. I remember using it mostly for chemistry class. I married someone who won a slide rule competition. I think we still have them packed away somewhere but if someone offered me a million dollars I couldn't think how to use it any more.

I still have one sitting on my computer desk. I'm looking at it right now.

Before I retired, I had it on my desk with a sign identifying it as our backup computer. A lot of the younger workers had no idea what it was.

I looked at it a while ago. I think I remember how to multiply and divide two numbers, but that's about it. I suppose that, with a little work, I could figure out how to do logarithms.

[bill_g]

I just tap my toes to the beat.

[northland10]

I just tap my toes to the beat.

Well, since the performer has to create the beat, without rushing or dragging, we need to practice with something to help internalize the beat. Plus, when playing the organ, my feet are a bit busy to tap my toes.

Not me but I have worked on that piece.

[Tiredretiredlawyer]

[Rolodex]

Hoo boy that's some muscle memory there!

[raison de arizona]

I’m not as old as slide rules, but I remember AOL CDs!

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[northland10]

I’m not as old as slide rules, but I remember AOL CDs!
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Before the CDs it was the AOL floppies. Who knows, I may still have one or two tossed in some box years ago.

[neonzx]

Didn't Prodigy start sending out floppies before AOL? I seem to recall receiving many mailers trying to get me to sign up.

[Reality Check]

Didn't Prodigy start sending out floppies before AOL? I seem to recall receiving many mailers trying to get me to sign up.

I think the first on line service I ever used was Prodigy. My nephew had a subscription and let me try it out. I think before that I dialed in to a few local free bulletin boards and posted a few messages. I didn't get on the internet until around 1994 or 1995. The local community college worked out a deal with the state university to offer service for $12.95 per month. Most ISP's were charging $19.95 at that time.

I never saw the need for using AOL or other front ends that just got in the way IMO.

[zekeb]

I believe AOL charged by the minute or you purchased a block of a certain number of minutes. In any event I knew a local geek who started his own service. I went that route.

[Dr. Ken]

Didn't Prodigy start sending out floppies before AOL? I seem to recall receiving many mailers trying to get me to sign up.

Quantum Link the predeccesor to AOL. Around the mid 80s. I remember them because I still had the old floppies for the service on my Commodore 64 in high school

[Dr. Ken]

Didn't Prodigy start sending out floppies before AOL? I seem to recall receiving many mailers trying to get me to sign up.

I think the first on line service I ever used was Prodigy. My nephew had a subscription and let me try it out. I think before that I dialed in to a few local free bulletin boards and posted a few messages. I didn't get on the internet until around 1994 or 1995. The local community college worked out a deal with the state university to offer service for $12.95 per month. Most ISP's were charging $19.95 at that time.

I never saw the need for using AOL or other front ends that just got in the way IMO.

I remember prodigy as well as compuserve before I was on aol.

[bill_g]

I never used any of those. I had a direct internet connection for a while through Beaverton Technical Library. Then switched to IBM.net before dropping my board entirely, and returning to life as a user only. My little board got completely clogged by internet users, and I didn't feel like putting in the time or money to accomodate them.

For years I had a trunked T1 coming in with a main number, and two unpublished direct numbers. A T1 has 24 lines in it. Users would dial into the primary, and the telco would direct them to the next available open line until it got to 22 where it stopped. 23 was our house phone, and 24 was my outbound line for the board so that it could always shuffle bits upstream even when all the other lines were in use.

When the internet came along, it was hard to stuff all the users through a single outbound modem. So, I made an agreement with BTL to share their OC3 connection through another dedicated T1 from my system. That was a disaster. My primary T1 had always been reliable. The second one would lose sync, drop out, reconnect, drop out, rinse, repeat. When it worked, people would camp out on the 22 inbound lines. Nobody else could connect even briefly to put/fetch their mail which had been the main purpose prior. I could serve several hundred users in that model, but as an ISP, I could barely serve 20.

I tried for almost a year, and then threw in the towel, pulled the plug, and said bye-bye to it all. I kept our personal T1 internet and two other lines for phone and fax. We were the fastest connection on our block for a long time until GTE finally offered DSL. At that point I cancelled the T1, put our fax line to DSL, and kept the house phone. I haven't changed that since GTE sold to Frontier, and then Frontier to Ziply. I'm thinking about adopting fiber. I haven't decided yet.

[Reality Check]

Before Windstream offered DSL in my area I paid for a second phone line and stayed connected to my ISP 24/7. I am surprised they didn't kick me off. Windows 98SE added Internet Connection sharing so I ran Cat 5 cables to the main computer and to my teenage kids rooms so we could all share that 56k dialup connection by using a cheap D-Link switch. Windows ICS was handling the routing function. It saved me from refereeing the fights over internet time every evening.

I think I ran that network for almost two years until the phone company offered DSL at the pathetic speeds of something like 750 kb/sec down and 384 kb up. I bought a real home router with WiFi then.

[keith]

Bring back Compuserve!

[RTH10260]

taking back America