I don't wanna be stupid...

[hhsrat]

a few months ago I was cleaning out some storage boxes and came across some SCSI boards and an old ZIP and JAZ drive!

I've got a zip drive sitting on my desk at work. Makes a wonderful paperweight. And conversation piece.

[Zazu]

I remember the first "computer" I worked with was about half the size of a refrigerator, and to program it, we had to use 8 level teletype paper tape. The computer had a whopping 128k memory!!

a few months ago I was cleaning out some storage boxes and came across some SCSI boards and an old ZIP and JAZ drive!

I remember those. I just found a bunch of SCSI cables that I probably paid $25 each for.

Ha! I still have them too. and a whole bunch of SCSI terminators.

(and an old winsta 50Gb external HDD)

Harumph! You kids. I still have boxes of vacuum tube sockets and other components for breadboarding ... on a real board as used for cutting bread! (Smells faintly of pumpernickel.)

[hobie16]

Harumph! You kids. I still have boxes of vacuum tube sockets and other components for breadboarding ... on a real board as used for cutting bread! (Smells faintly of pumpernickel.)

Bring back Heathkit. Again.

[GRUMPY PIRATE]

ha! I Remember those catalogs!

..build your own STEREO!!!!

and of course

at radioshack who could forget the tandy TRS80 supercomputer!!!

[YANXWIN]

I loved the ole commador 64. We would spend hours typing in the code for a game and then playing it for a few minutes and going outside. Ya, that was worth it.

[WEDFan]

Let's hear it for the Timex Sinclair 1000!

[PatchOBlack]

My family's first computer when I was growing up? Commodore PET. :)

[Ianto Jones]

I first taught myself BASIC programming on a TRS-80 with 4 KB of RAM. My dad's first generation IBM PC had 128 KB onboard. A decade later, my first hard drive stored a whopping 120 MB.

Now I have a micro SD card in my phone, the size of a fingernail, which stores 64 GB, over 500 times what that clunky hard drive held. Mind boggling.

Commodore VIC 20, followed by a Commodore 64.
At six, I could type more than the VIC could remember, and my first word processing software was 'SpeedScript' -- which I typed in myself, from the pages of "Compute!" Magazine... (And I'm not yet forty...) Good memories. I still miss my buddy, SAM!
(I said I was in Special Ed, and young for my age. That doesn't mean I couldn't learn BASIC - BASIC was *very* well-behaved, and I preferred it to TurboPascal. Never quite got ahead of Assembly, though...System numbers were just rote memorization, for me...)
/end memory lane detour

[Zazu]

I still have fond memories of needing help to lift a 5K drum memory out of a truck. And when was the last time you saw 8-inch floppies on sale?

[felinefan]

As long as we are talking computers, I'm sure most of you are aware that Hotmail has sprung an unpleasant surprise on its users--they now require that you obtain and use a four digit "security code" in order to access your account. I tried it with three different pass codes they gave me, and all failed. I'm working on moving my contacts--and hopefully my emails that probably number close to 100 by now--over to my Yahoo account. And I'm sure everyone knows just how easy it is to contact Hotmail to complain. *sarcasm*

If anyone can tell me how to work around this mess and access my emails once again, I'd really appreciate it.