jam25mack

I'm with you Scamp. I know none of this guff!

My parents bought a Victor (I think) but I didn't really get on with that. School had a BBC but that was crap.

My first real computer console was a Megadrive (Jap import obviously). All my mates were into Nitendo Snes' but Sega was the brand for me.

After that I bought a Xbox when I was in Kuwait to try and kill the boredom.

I then bought a Wi which we played for a while but it's now jammed in the drawer.

Millhouse

ZX81 - 48k (Millhouse family had money back then)
Amstrad 1512
Amiga 1200
Amiga 500
Sega Master System
Play Station 1
WII (still have - Mini loves Skylanders)

Was a massive computer nut back in the day (I mean hours upon hours of screen time), now I can't use them for more than a few minutes before I get bored. The Amiga was an amazing machine and way ahead of its time.

Most I do now is a bit of wordmole on my blackberry while taking a shit.

scrubbedexpat141

My first console was the Mega Drive (might have been mega drive II). Had to share it with my sister though...that sucked, but we had Sonic which was cool. Some game with a dolphin as well, Ecco or something maybe...couldn't work that one out.

The we shared a playstation. The first console I ever had all to myself was a PS2. Obviously I grew up and had a PS3 and a Wii but the latter got sold quite quickly, apart from Mario kart it was bang average.

NorthernLad

I've got a Spectrum emulator on my PC, Manic Miner is still great fun.

I still enjoy The Monty Mole games and Skool Daze.

Millhouse

Skool Daze was amazing

weasel decentral

In moment of boredom I loaded up an emulator to find old favourites of mine Bruce Lee and Green Beret but they were terribly shit.

However I did also find Double Dragon and Streets of Rage which me and my mate at the time used to pour 10p pieces into down at the local arcade. Still as good as ever.

Shout out to Duke Nukem which was a favourite PC game of mine also, and networked Doom which almost took up 50% of our college servers at one point in Uni.

Irishbeekeeper

What a well written article and so spot on!! Mirrors a lot of what I think is going wrong in front of our eyes with this generation and hence will go wrong with the following generations in a snowball effect

Will definitely watch and share the video as well


*its time to kick ass and chew bubblegum...and im aaaaaaaaall out of gum*
I hated the new duke nukem btw

I see your networked Doom and I raise you one on one Doom over the phone line using a 56k modem...ha!
playing the game and then going apenuts when the sis picks the phone and disconnects the internet
ditto for a hot chat session on irc with probably a dude and then getting disconnected in the middle of typing out a complete song

and dont even get me started on the arcade stuff man, I must have spent atleast a million dollars combined in my lifetime on all the arcade I have played
I actually used to play till about 10 years ago as well, huge Tekken fan

shiva

Atari 400
Atari 800
Atari ST
MS Dos, win 3.0, win 95, 98, me, vista, 7 and now 8 over about 4 home builds and about 6 laptops/netbooks and an ultrabook
Throw in an Atari console, jaguar, ps1 and a wii that was never used

Geek and not ashamed.

I feel nostalgic about the old machines but my ultrabook is tiny and has an alarmingly better performance than all but the last PC build I did.
I tried to fire up an old laptop to donate the other day, reckon gouging my eyes out with a spoon would have been less painful. I still need to go back and fix that before I give it away but I just can't face the pain of doing it

OriginalSunshine

bbc at primary school

no computers at secondary except those funky graphical calculators

Computers only in 2nd year at Uni - and only for AutoCad

Email came in when I started my Masters

Personal mobile phones were only becoming affordable just as I entered the workforce in the mid-late 90s

Now, I'm skyping (video phone call - wow!) my friend in Western Australia from the Middle East. My 25 year old self would be having a serious sci-fi moment!

Millhouse

Download a lite XP (or make one) and install it via USB. I was running 7 year old laptops on that basis until recently and all were faster than my loaded with crap work PC.

Irishbeekeeper

or just install Ubuntu
its light, its fast, it will pick up almost all the drivers in the first go, otherwise will connect to the internet and download the rest
all free ofcourse
skype, office, everything runs for free in it and you dont need an antivirus
will make even a P4 look sexy on a lonely night

and while on the topic of speed, isnt it weird that the speed of processing which we used to call fast, kept on increasing exponentially along with our perception of speed?

I mean, a couple of years ago XP was the bees knees and I would not have thought a world possible without it you know
now it feels slow
before that 98 was IT, and now we cant stand it

the big IT companies are in on this conspiracy to keep on churning out resource heavy software so the hardware guys will keep on making faster processors to fulfill the average Joe's needs

scrubbedexpat141

The PC I built was incredible.

Pentium II 233mhz I think but I had a CD writer which nobody else did. Revolutionary.

Autonomy

When at Strathclyde Uni from '88 to '92 I spent countless hours, many many 24 hours at a time using very expensive Sun Sparc workstations. Not for AutoCAD as I should have been but playing MUD (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUD) and MUF (multiuser fighting games) games over the internet 5 years before Sir Berners-Lee worked out HTML.

The guy at the Uni that kinda ran the whole game thing was in the workstation room 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. He was always dressed like a vampire. His user name was Madman. He wasn't a student but more of a janitor. It was something out of a John Hughes movie....

When I started at my first main job in London I had to use a green screen terminal.

I am old.

Autonomy

and don't remind me of the arcade thing...

The joy of discovering a massive amount of foreign coins in a collection that my friends brother had collected on travels around the world (of sorts - in several coffee tins) - many of which were the same size as 10p bits...

Myusernamewastaken

Did you really do all tests involved and was turned down only because of the specs? Because in the military I suppose that they won't continue to test someone if the candidate is going to fail anyway.

Have you tried flying a civilian helicopter? Many people with specs pass a civilian medical. It might not be the same as a fighter, but flying low-level in a valley is not too shabby.