• lunarul@lemmy.world
      11·
      4 days ago

      I remember when I first saw floppies and how amazing it was to load things instantly instead of waiting minutes for a game to load from a cassette tape.

      • ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.worldEnglish
        5·
        4 days ago

        Lol you rich kids and your cassette drives. I cut my teeth on my friend’s VIC-20 which didn’t have a hard disk or a tape drive (they were available but my friend’s parents couldn’t afford one). If we wanted to play a game, we had to type it in in BASIC every time.

        • lunarul@lemmy.world
          5·
          3 days ago

          My ZX Spectrum clone didn’t have a “tape drive”, it had a cable that you could use to connect any tape player to it. We didn’t have a specialized tape player for it, we attached the same one we played music on.

          • AugustWest@lemm.eeEnglish
            2·
            2 days ago

            I can’t remember if the tape drive came with a TRS-80, but I do remember using the tape drive port to get sound from games like pacman. Basically it was hack to use the save to cassette to make sounds for the computer.

            This game contains programming which produces sound effects that leave the computer through the AUX plug in the cassette cable. To hear the sound follow these instructions: First, load in the game. Remove the tape from the recorder if you loaded the game from cassette. Insert the large grey plug on the cassette cable into the AUX jack on the recorder. Insert an earphone into the jack labeled EAR on the recorder. Pop open the cassette door on the top of the recorder and reach in and hold in the interlock switch that is located in the left rear corner. Now press Record & Play together and then release the interlock switch. Sound should now come through the earphone.

        • panicnow@lemmy.world
          3·
          4 days ago

          I had the pleasure of working with 8” floppy drives with the Social Security Administration.

    • Knoxvomica@lemmy.ca
      8·
      4 days ago

      This is so old, so old that Memorex is where my dad worked back in the day. I’m also old. Goddamnit.

      • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
        3·
        3 days ago

        If you get old enough everyone’s parents used to work for a big tech company. My mother who can barely operate her phone, used to work for a company that manufactured microchips.

        • Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          3·
          3 days ago

          My mother used to work for a company that made magnetic core memory.

          That’s the kind of memory that predates semiconductors and it was assembled by hand using gold wire and tiny ferrite rings.

          She does know how to use a PC and has a tablet, though 😀

    • Noxy@pawb.socialEnglish
      8·
      4 days ago

      ahh yes, the good old bunch of games on a disk. my grandpa went so hard that he had a printed catalog of which games were on which number-stickered disk

      • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world
        5·
        4 days ago

        You shut your pretty little whore mouth! I loved Pitfall!

        …but also I was 4, and as we all know, kids are stupid.

          • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world
            3·
            3 days ago

            I read this while I was power walking to the bus stop. I read it as:

            When I was four I loved pegging.

            I had SO MANY questions. None of which I wanted answered.

          • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world
            2·
            3 days ago

            Pong is still arguably a balanced, and therefore good game. Especially if you were playing the Atari or Texas Instruments versions, since those may have been some of the last mainstream video games that didn’t cheat in favor of anyone. Neither the player or the computer was favored, which became the norm for most video games rather quickly thereafter.

            • wowwoweowza@lemmy.world
              3·
              3 days ago

              Both. A nerd new nerds. The Ti friends had that shoot ‘em up gunslinger game… it was basically pong with a hat and guns.

    • dparticiple@sh.itjust.works
      5·
      4 days ago

      LOAD “*”,8,1 . I was there, too shakes cane and ruffles grey hairs (It was a wonderful era. The current generation doesn’t know what they missed.)

  • Dagnet@lemmy.world
    65·
    4 days ago

    Typing CD keys was such a feeling when it was for a brand new game you can’t wait to play, pure despair if you mistyped something and it didn’t accept but then you corrected the error, biggest sense of relief of my childhood

  • Taleya@aussie.zoneEnglish
    4·
    3 days ago

    The fact I recognise that key.

    (Also my husband agrees with me that looks eerily like my handwriting and is the kind of disk i used OP are you in Australia…)

  • DUMBASS@leminal.spaceEnglish
    18·
    4 days ago

    Ahhh, the good old copy of windows xp that was stolen from Microsoft a month before release and spread it’s beautiful self all around the world, I had that code memorised for a long while, I called it the fuck code.

  • Resol van Lemmy@lemmy.worldEnglish
    271·
    4 days ago

    Finally, now I don’t need to have to call a number to get my XP activated, I can just use this.

    For those not in the know, XP’s activation requirements are so harsh that your computer just gets disabled completely after the 30 day grace period if you don’t activate at all. I live in a place where people really don’t tend to buy operating systems, so this was a gigantic letdown.

    You know what? Fuck Windows XP. There. I said it. And I’m taking the downvotes without remorse.

    • proceduralnightshade@lemmy.ml
      11·
      4 days ago

      Fuck Windows XP

      I think it’s allowed to hate anti-customer practices and have good memories of an actually somewhat user-friendly OS that just worked for many people in many other regards.

      I hate Windows. I will always fondly remember XP and Win 7. Windows 7 should’ve been the last Windows.

      So I am not mad at you. You shall be forgiven, and I am even going to turn the other cheek and give you an upvote. It’s what Windows XP would’ve wanted me to do, too, I am sure of it.

      • MelodiousFunk@slrpnk.net
        4·
        4 days ago

        I hate Windows. I will always fondly remember XP and Win 7. Windows 7 should’ve been the last Windows.

        Windows 7 was the first and last version that I didn’t immediately (and lastingly) despise. Something something stopped clocks etc.

  • M137@lemmy.world
    3·
    3 days ago

    I recently cleaned out some boxes of random stuff I had in one of my wardrobes and found several discs like this, some with Ubuntu 5-8.04, random drivers and other fun stuff. Huge nostalgia trip going through them. I also found this CD my dad gave me when I was 20 and had just started smoking weed:


    (the title is in Swedish and means “a chill disc”)

    Sadly lost him in December last year, RIP dad. I normally don’t smoke anymore but I’m gonna get a small piece of hash and smoke it while playing this in memory of him.