Retro Computing

[greg]

Firefox has had it's issues of late for me. It's gotten kind of bloated and the version just before the current one (I think) had a bunch of memory leaks. That pushed me to switch to chrome and I've been happy with it so far. But then, I also (like you) really liked Firefox for a while, so I guess we'll see.

I'm not really sure what a memory leak entails, or how I can tell that it actually happens. I've never found it to be bloated, because it still remains a straightforward browser. To me, bloated is when AOL pushed all sorts of other crap onto Netscape instead of just leaving it alone. "No, I don't want a crappy HTML editor. NO, I don't want AIM!" etc.

[Heero]

This is from Mozilla's own support page:

Firefox sometimes uses more memory (RAM) than it should. This can make Firefox slower, and in extreme cases, it can even make Firefox crash. This article describes how to make Firefox use less memory.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/fi ... memory-ram

[Daniel]

The first computer that I really used with a passion was an old 386... It had Windows 3.1, but stopped wanting to boot at some point. Got a set of Windows floppies from a friend, but the install failed. It didn't really bug me, though, as I could run my games on DOS anyhow.

Lots of old school computing resources floating around; Google turns up many. Always fun to poke around. http://oldcomputers.net/ , etc. Take a look...

[Kame-Sen'nin]

My first computer was an Atari 800, cut my teeth learning BASIC on that thing and trying to build text based RPGs.

Interesting to hear that you were an Atari 8-bit user, Heero. Any fond memories of the platform? I haven't had much experience with Atari computers, although they still seem to have quite the following. It seems as though more people have fond memories of their 8-bit line, but their 16-bit line has some diehard fans. I've always considered picking up an Atari ST to give it a whirl.

It's interesting how much more COMMUNAL BBSes and later even the internet was back in the heyday. I may be romanticizing it in a way, but it seems like back in the early to mid 90s with webpages and IRC, you either actually knew at least some of the people involved or MET and really got to know new people. I think that's one thing we've really lost, and things like facebook have made online .. "relationships"(?) much more superficial. Now it's just a "thumbs up" or "link a goofy image" rather than real conversation or communication.

I think that a lot of people feel this way. The relationships that were forged during those days seemed to be much more significant and meaningful compared to the endless number of followers, connections, and online "friends" that are now the norm.

When we were putting our UFO/conspiracy/hacker convention "Phenomicon" together in 1990, we somehow were introduced to a local guy who was a total Amiga partisan. Boy, did he want to talk about the Amiga. He held a meeting with us so he could show us all the neat stuff the Amiga could do, and never once did he get around to describing how exactly this device was going to make our convention run more smoothly or be more entertaining.

For so many Amiga users, getting the word out to others is like a crusade!

Even now, fans have done some amazing work to keep the Amiga alive. From the creation of accelerator cards for the older computers, new hardware (and the new OS), spinoff operating systems (such as AROS and MorphOS), and more, Amiga fans are truly dedicated to the platform.

Two fantastic examples of Amiga fandom are these videos:

Animated Amiga Tribute
"Only Amiga" 25th Anniversary Animated Tribute

These are worth checking out if you're an Amiga fan, curious about what made the platform so great, or just a fan of well-done videos! Oh, and Portal fans may be interested as well.

[Daniel]

Speaking of retro computing, I went over to a buddy's place the other day, and he fires up his computer, and it turns out that he actually still uses AOL, so when he logs in I hear that old "welcome, you've got mail" for the first time in years...

[greg]

Did anyone ever play a game called Starflight back in the day? I played it on my family's old 286. It was like an RPG in which you could explore an entire part of the galaxy. You travel between star systems, land on planets where you can mine and explore, sell stuff back at spaceport, and interact with alien races in outer space (and battle with them, too!) Eventually as you explore the planets, you discover that there was an ancient race called The Ancients and you find ruins of this lost civilization. You can also find a lot of Endurium near where these ruins are, which fuels starships and makes interstellar travel possible. Eventually you also learn of impending solar flares, which are slowly sweeping through the galaxy like a wave. What is causing these solar flares that destroy life on these planets?

The game was made by Electronic Arts in the late '80s. It is very much like Star Trek: you are the captain, and you must recruit and train an engineer, navigator, communications officer, and medic. You can recruit these crewmembers from various races. I never did complete the game, because the copy I bought was defective and wouldn't allow me to complete the game. I followed the guide book to a T, and wrote many letters to Electronic Arts. Eventually they just told me that my copy of the software was defective and that I needed to just buy the game again. Rats!

Starflight II was released in the early '90s when I was in high school, and boy did I freak out when I first saw it in Video Games & Computer Entertainment magazine! I didn't get to play the game until much later, when I was in college. It was far greater than the original, plus it involved time travel wormholes! The problem is that once I got a 486 computer, the game was unplayable. Some older games would run way too fast on a 486 because of the increased hertz. This was not the problem because the game apparently could max out at a certain speed. The problem is that communications are established in the game via a subroutine that generates a random time to start. My math coprocessor was too fast, and the random event for communication would be overlooked because the processor was too fast. So there were some times by complete coincidence that a communication link could be established, but the majority of the time I would be hailing other starships over and over again and be ignored until the ship would fly away from me. Rats again!

So even though I never finished either game, it just amazed me at how they could fit an entire galaxy on a 3.5" floppy disk. Well, my version of Starflight I came on two 5.25" floppies, but I could fit them into one 3.5" disk. The universe contained was so incredibly vast and nonlinear that a guide book was essential to completing the game.

Fun times!

[Drew_Sutton]

Lots of old school computing resources floating around; Google turns up many. Always fun to poke around. http://oldcomputers.net/ , etc. Take a look...

Thanks for posting this - for years, I've been trying to figure out what type of Atari system we had as our first home computer. Now I know it was a 520ST. Looking at that picture with the Gauntlet load screen, if we had that on our computer, I'd have probably spent more time on it! I still wouldn't have really done anything productive with it, though. To be completely frank and honest - I don't even know what my dad's logic behind having it was. He didn't game and I doubt any projects at work he did used any Atari software or could be run/written on TOS. I remember he bought a game or two but never played that much. The only thing I can think of what his GEnie subscription and using it to supplant genealogy he was helping his dad with.

At school, I started using Apple II and had a couple of different other Apples in the labs. We never were taught anything useful like basics of programming or networking or anything like that. Mostly just typing work. Hard to imagine that I never liked working with computers and wound up going into technology later on as a career.

I've been using PCs ever since, but everywhere I've worked has been a balance of Apple and PC devices. I never quite understood the 'either-or' mentality.

I can sympathize with that because to me, even someone who has those fruitless "this OS is superior" conversations more often than I care to recall, they ultimately are just different tools to get a job done. Even from a technologist's standpoint. I have my preferences as to what I'd like to work with but so long as my tools aren't completely hobbled then it really doesn't matter what OS they're running.

[PinkAppleJam]

Ahhh you must come to Cambridge UK and visit these guys
http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/
We're so lucky to have them in our li'l city!

Yeah we grew up in Primary School using BBC Micros (up to '90), and Amigas and Amstrads in Secondary School (up til '96). We had a ZX Spectrum but solely used it to play games (Load "ghostbusters" etc)

Eventually we sold the Speccy and got in a NES. The UK was really behind the USA though we got the Ataris and everything at the time. When we got Mario Bros & Duck Hunt, you guys had already got Super Mario 3! It was a weird transitional period in general though as for half of my secondary school time we were still using those BBC Micros. Then suddenly VROOM these Amstrads. No Windows systems or DOS

When I left Secondary School we got a 486 and I used the Windows systems in Alevels too. Another transitional period. Weirdly we had no internet access at Sixth Form or at home (my family are technophobes and I didn't understand it enough to take the helm, nor did we know anyone who could install it for us). It was mainly for playing some games (most of them crashed) and using it to teach myself Word and Excel (a glorified word processor!).

At Uni I got onto the net and I got myself a Yahoo email in 1999. The rest is history though I didn't get the internet at home until the early y2Ks. I tried setting up the internet but got a shitty £300 telephone bill (it was supposed to be monthly but I was being charged per minute on dialup.) About a year later there was a Guardian article saying some journo had done exactly the same thing so that got me out of the doghouse even after all that time, lol!

So yeah after trying Windows ME I manage to get up to speed with Windows 7 and here I am. I find it weird how basically how you have to be self taught to be computer literate as classes don't seem to do any good whatsoever...

(Me and tech don't always get on, even though I use a PC every day for digital artwork. I don't really do Steam/PC gaming, even phone gaming. have old Nintendo/Famicom console systems mainly, Game Boys and SNES/SFC. I collect carts I want at no particular pace. )

[greg]

Here's a blast out of the past. This brings back so much nostalgia!

2400 baud modem connection noise.
14.4k baud modem.
33.6k baud modem.
56k baud modem.

Oh man.... the memories of my BBS and early Internet days! I finally got high speed Internet access in 2005, but until then, I was using my 56k modem.

[Kame-Sen'nin]

Let's revive this thread...

So, a while back, I purchased an Amiga 1200. The only issue I've had so far is spending too much money on it! The amount of upgrades for the Amiga 1200 now are just mind-boggling. There are accelerator cards, MP3 decoders, a card that gives it DVI output (impressive for a computer from 1991), and much more. I've been having a great time upgrading it, messing with the OS, and playing a lot of great games. I also picked up an Amiga CD32, which is a lot of fun, despite it being somewhat difficult to find games in the U.S.

I'm working on getting the Amiga 1200 online, hopefully I'll be able to browse the forums using a real Amiga soon!