Am I the only Zoomer? I see a lot of “I remember”-type responses, so I have to wonder.

  • @[email protected]
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    171 year ago

    I’m in that weird group that’s between Gen-X and Millennial. I’ve seen us called Xennials or the Oregon Trail Generation.

    • @hactar42
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      111 year ago

      There are dozens of us!

      But seriously, I think we had one of the most interesting technological evolution of any generation. Going from using the Dewey decimal system and encyclopedias early on, to using the internet before graduating.

      • @[email protected]
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        111 year ago

        It really was. It was a time when most didn’t have computers at home. Once a week you’d get to go down to the computer lab and play educational games from MECC. Oregon Trail being the most popular of the bunch.

      • @[email protected]
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        1 year ago

        About twice a week we would go to the computer lab filled with Apple IIes. Usually we had to play Number Munchers, Word Munchers, or some other game to reenforce whatever we learned in class. After we finished the game in the lesson plan, we could then play whatever educational game we wanted. Oregon Trail was a popular choice because nothing was funnier than having the game say a classmate had died or broke a leg. And the hunting and rafting mini games were the closest to arcade games.

        Also keep in mind that the only exposure most of the teachers had to a computer were the mainframe terminals in the school’s office or the computer lab. MECC put together a lot of software and training for teachers. A school building out an Apple II based computer lab with a bunch of MECC software was as close to turnkey as they could get at the time. The documentation for Oregon Trail or Odell Lake gives you an idea of what it was like.

        http://www.mecc.co/history/the-oregon-trail---a-157/mecc_a-157_oregon_trail.pdf

        http://www.mecc.co/science/odell-lake---a-192/mecc_a-192_odell_lake.pdf

  • b06500
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    111 year ago

    Xennial!

    First computer I used in school was an Apple IIe with a 720kb, 5.25" floppy drive.

    First computer at home was a Tandy 1000. Still out in the garage, I think.

    • Schadrach
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      51 year ago

      Xennial as well. My first home PC was an Epson with 640k and a 3.5 DD disk drive and a “Turbo” button on the front of the case.

      I remember getting a kick out of a game that used RealSound, a piece of software for doing voice and other similarly complex sound out of the standard PC speaker (apparently it handled 6-bit PCM audio, though I wouldn’t know that at the time).

      That game included a card explaining how to improve the audio out of your PC by building a cable to connect the line going to your PC speaker to an RCA cable to connect it to a stereo or boombox. The cable wasn’t great at what it did (and better designs had been devised since), but it was pretty simple (if I remember right just some RCA cable, a couple of alligator clips and a capacitor).

    • @[email protected]OP
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      01 year ago

      Floppy drives have been a recent fascination of mine. A small, semi-disposable soft-robotic hard drive, how ingenious.

      • @[email protected]
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        41 year ago

        RIP Bette Stephenson. In the same way that Al Gore invented the Internet, Bette Stephenson invented the ICON. She was a very stubborn politician who would not tolerate anything other than complete success from the project. Passed away 3 years ago.

  • @[email protected]
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    61 year ago

    I’m a millennial but I also have an interest in computing before my time. The possibility of understanding the computer entices me, whereas modern computing is more interested in understanding me.

  • Lewdiculous
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    61 year ago

    Worry not I am also a fellow Zoomer.

    I always enjoyed retro technology either because I didn’t use to get the latest stuff right away or because there’s a certain charm to it that still grabs my interest.

    • Otter
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      11 year ago

      I’m on the younger side (not sure what the category cutoffs are) and I have the same reason. It started with me getting stuff that I wanted to try as a kid, then it went from there

    • @[email protected]OP
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      1 year ago

      I’m pretty close to the dividing line too, and I can no longer stay up all night and feel fine.

      i don’t feel like either “Coulter” is normal

      I’m not familiar with this meme, and DDG is giving me farm equipment.

  • Paolo Amoroso
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    61 year ago

    Old fart Boomer here, my first computer was a Sinclair ZX Spectrum.

      • Paolo Amoroso
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        31 year ago

        Although I did see some punch cards I never used them. At the time I couldn’t afford a computer with punch cards and was too young and inexperienced to work for an organization that had such machines.

  • @[email protected]
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    51 year ago

    I’m a xennial. Though we were always a bit behind the curve (my first computer was a Philips XT clone, back in the early nineties), so I guess I’ve always been retrocomputing.

    But yeah, it’s kind of shocking to see people being all nostalgic about stuff I consider newish.

    (And I’m still cursing myself for throwing out my CPD-G420)

  • @[email protected]
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    51 year ago

    Gen Z here. Oldest computer I remember my family having was an XP tower, a Dell Dimension.

    I studied computer engineering, and that interest pulled me into retro tech. I love seeing what older hardware is capable of — I’ve got a Pentium laptop that can load old Reddit and stream music over wifi.

    There’s a trove of old hardware and software to dig through too with so many unique odds and ends. History and tech worth preserving. One of my favorite projects so far was doing some programming challenges in BASIC on an Apple II. Anything old-tech is fun to me :)

    • @[email protected]OP
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      31 year ago

      There’s a really noticeable difference in motivation between the old and young users here. For you and me, it’s conceptual, for a lot of the older users it’s pure nostalgia because I guess the concepts aren’t new.

  • Quazatron
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    51 year ago

    My first computer was a 48K Sinclair ZX Spectrum, when I was maybe 12 years old. That’s how old I am.

    • @[email protected]OP
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      21 year ago

      There’s a couple proper boomers in here now, so step aside lol. I’m still hoping a silent generation person might turn up.

  • sj_zero
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    41 year ago

    I’m a millennial. First computer was a TRS-80 CoCo 2 with extended color basic. Then a C64 (which was sort of disappointing since extended color basic was way better than anything on the commodore, but the games were much better), and then I started with an 8088 with a herc monochrome monitor and no hard drive and only went up from there.

  • Corroded
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    1 year ago

    I’m in my 20s. I got into retro computing because I used older (Windows 95) computers my parents handed down to me when I was a child and things got cemented and I started looking at even older tech when I started watching YouTube videos covering retro computing.

    • @[email protected]OP
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      21 year ago

      Alright! It’s kind of similar for me, I grew up playing among old towers in our basement, and I still have a supply of retro stuff handed down to me, if I can catch it. I love seeing problems solved in different ways, or even the same way but visibly in old hardware. Today it’s all buried under the higher layers of abstraction, and the the other end of gen Z hasn’t even used a filesystem necessarily, let alone had to think about the physical layer.