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Flashback to the ’80s: Computer Tech

I was thinking about the old Commodore 64 days and remembered how we used to type in a little program like 10 PRINT "HELLO FROM THE 1980s!" and 20 GOTO 10, then type RUN and watch the same message fill the screen over and over until we hit the RUN/STOP key. It seemed like magic back then - although one missing quote or typo could ruin the whole thing. Can any of you still remember doing this?


@GunFinger you brought back this flashback with your 80s photograph
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ArishMell · 70-79, M Best Comment
My first computer was an Amstrad PCW9512 - primarily a word-processor as the initials suggest, and complete with a daisy-wheel printer.

It was accompanied with a range of auxiliaries including compilers for a version of BASIC, and a very strange language called D[igital] R[esearch] LOGO.

DR LOGO was allegedly designed to help school-children learn something called "structured programming", a phrase akin to advertising a house as "architect-designed", so not necessarily meaning good design for purpose. Ignoring the childish name "turtle" for the arrow-shaped cursor, LOGO could be made to do real work, but the command names were so abbreviated and non-intuitive that it was very hard to understand even the sample programmes printed in a tutorial text-book I bought.

One such would draw a short, straight line then abruptly turn 90º, draw a second line, turn again... The right-left choice was random, apparently set by the immediate 1 or 0 value of an arcane bit within the operating-system.

Like that "Hello", this thing would happily fill the screen until you found some way to stop it.

Some years later I saw a much fancier version likely working in the same way: that screen-saver called "Pipes".


Screen-savers..... another memory, from cathode-ray tube monitors.

Convivial · 26-30, F
My dad had one.... Great and simple...
ElyssTTTrucks · 100+, M
I had a Commodore Amiga 3000 in the 1990s. Used it to make animations.
PHlover19701 · 56-60, M
I remember pre-dating the Commodore 64 with a Radio Shack TRS-80 micro computer (4K RAM). Then the big dog came out with 64K ...wow...the Commodore 64.
HumanEarth · F
I remember the Tandy TRS-80 model well. The computer tech computer i worked at in the 90s kept a working one on display for some reason
PHlover19701 · 56-60, M
@HumanEarth Wasnt very big....connect it to a TV, and pair it with the cassette player to store your programs, and it was an inexpensive way to get introduced to the world of programming in BASIC.
SumKindaMunster · 56-60, M
I remember.

Load "*",8,1 is the command to load the default application on the disk drive.
HumanEarth · F
Proves we old
WillaKissing · 61-69, M
I could not do it then and I barely figured out how to use my desktop of today. So, no!
ArishMell · 70-79, M
@WillaKissing I don't find it easy. I wonder how I manage to use the software I do!

 
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