“Lister bags”?
(prepare yourself for a serious trip down mid-80’s pc-architecture memory lane…)
Bzzzt. Close, but no cigar.
CGA = Color Graphics Adapter
EGA = Enhanced Graphics Adapter
MCGA = Multi Color Graphics Adapter
VGA = Video Graphics ARRAY
If I recall correctly, CGA provided two graphics modes:
-640x200 with two colors
or
-320x200 with 4 colors (your choice of cyan-magenta-white or red-green-yellow)
however, some super-cool games played some weird synching trick where they switched palettes such that the top half of the screen would have one set of 4 colors and the bottom half would have the other.
EGA added:
640x400
and
16 colors, although I don’t remember if you could display 16 colors at 640x400
MCGA (which was a crippled version of VGA that came with the PS/2 model 30) added 320x200x256 colors. This was a great mode for programming, because each pixel was exactly one bit, and the whole screen took up 64000 bytes starting at $c800 (or something like that).
And finally, VGA added 640x480x16 colors. At the same time VGA came out, there was a super cool thing called VGA 8514/A announced that went up to 1024x768x256 colors. Holy crapmonkeys!
And of course, who can forget the Hercules graphics adaptoer, MDA (monochrome display adaptor), XGA, and Targa?
The real weird thing, though, is the baffling difference between extended memory and expanded memory.
Speaking of cigarette commercials on TV:
“Four out of five doctors who smoke, smoke Kools!”
I remember what “LSMFT” means.
I remember how to complete “You’ll wonder where the yellow went…”
Using a fountain pen.
Sonic booms (the Air Force got tired of buying new windows for people, so they don’t to low-level supersonic runs around populated areas anymore)
Minimun wage: $0.85/hr (and yes, the conservatives were yelling that it was going to bankrupt small businesses, even then 
).
When really tall smokestacks belching noxious gasses were a source of civic pride (yes, kids, it really was like that).
Club membership restricted to those “invited” or “sponsered” by existing members (direct response to Brown v. Board of Education).
Lawyers were respected members of society 
•. . . when Michael Jackson was black.
•. . . when milk was sold unhomogenized. That is, there was a layer of cream at the top of a glass gallon container.
•. . . the College All-Star Football game. The defending NFL champion would play an exhibition game against the top college players, and the pros would not necessarily win.
•. . . our dim-witted Republican president was Ronald Reagan
•. . . replays in televised football games were specifically labeled as such
•. . . at the age of 6 purchasing a pack of cigarettes for my parents for $.20
•. . . at the age of 5 being sent to wait in the car while my parents shopped-- after dark
•. . . being taught by nuns at a Catholic school
•. . . street signs that said “Quiet–Hospital Zone”
•. . . the new Star Wars movie not sucking
•. . . the new Stephen King novel not sucking
•. . . Joan Rivers being funny and entertaining–I mean in a good way
•. . . women could not legally work on the job for more the 40 hours per week
Do any of you real old timers remember margarine being illegal?
You’re from Wisconsin, maybe?
Used to be illegal there to sell colored margarine - the dairy folks didn’t want people confusing it with butter, so it was sold in its natural state (icky white), with a little packet of food coloring for the consumer to mix in.
and:
35mm cameras being called “slide cameras”
cigarettes being called “cancer sticks” (before that, “coffin nails”, but that was before my time)
The GM “progression” marketing scheme:
when you’re young and poor, you buy a chevy, and as your income raises, you move to Olds/Pontiac/Buick, and when you finally “arrive”, you buy a Cadillac.
(can anyone tell me which out-ranked the other - Olds or Pontiac? - never got that part straight)
TV’s had round picture tubes
The CAA - still don’t know what made it different from the FAA
Don’t know if this is still done: spray-painted chicks and duclkings sold at Easter time - living Easter eggs, dead before 4 July, generally.
Republicans looking for a “viable alternative”
Anyone from Philly? I used to watch “Wee Willie Weber” which I think showed Astro Boy cartoons, IIRC…
Also, Banana Splits! “Bingo, Fleagle, Drooper & Snork”…
including Arabian Nights: “Rosahn Kobar! Size of an elephant!!”
And we used to eat Oreos, and Hershey bars, and Pixy Stix…no, wait, those are still around!
Skates with the key on a gimp lanyard, with the wingnut on the bottom to adjust the shoe size. Now, ya gotta buy a new pair when the kid outgrows the old one!
My friend remembers taking Space Ghost seriously…
I believe Olds outclassed Pontiac, and a Buick was just a little better than both. This all depended on the model of course but comparatively speaking, on the high-end of the $$$ scale you would find the Buick “Electra” & “Riviera” models right behind Cadillac.
Now if you’re talking “muscle cars” that’s another story.
hmmm…Muscle Cars…I remember them too!
I’m only (almost) 19 and I can relate to most of this stuff.
*- My first computer: a Franklin Ace1000, which was an Apple IIe clone.
*- Mr. Hooper on Sesame Street.
*- The SF Earthquake during the World Series
*- The Atlanta Braves and New York Yankees sucking every year
*- Satellite dishes being big, ugly, hard to use, but everything was free
*- Chevrolet building “bubble-top” Monte Carlos just so they could use them in Winston Cup
*- MTV playing ZZ Top and Weird Al videos
*- Nirvana’s debut
I know, this is a fairly recent list, but hey, I’m still young.
-brianjedi
Inventing the wheel.
Discovering fire.
Yep, that was me.
Corner mailboxes (now solid blue) painted red, white, & blue
“oil bath” auto air filters
Atomic energy was going to make electricity “too cheap to meter”.
Mercurochrome and Merthiolate being used as topical antibiotics (both are toxic)
DDT at the garden-supply store (until Silent Spring spoiled everything)
p.s. - brianjedi - I have clothes older than you, but thanks for playing 
-
when steering colums didn’t lock
-
Keds and PF Flyers
-
when nobody ran for exercise
-
there were only 3 brands of jeans
-
Klackers
-
smokers on airplanes
Cars had choke controls.
Cars had carburetors.
My 1955 Buick had a starter button on the floorboard.
Oh yeah, headlight dimmer switches were floorboard items, too.
VW beetles had semaphore turn signals.
We got our driver’s licenses at 14.
AM radio was where the rock’n’roll was.
I liked Ike.
A new Hudson Hornet.
When 3M was Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing
TRW was Thompson, Ramo, and Wooldrige
When the symbol on the Steeler’s helmets was US Steel’s logo.
(Before US Steel became USX, before USX was replaced on the Dow Industrials my McDonalds)
Riding in a DC-3.
I, too, remember the end of WWII because my Daddy came home and we moved to Chicago.
Cal & LouisB do you remember Broadway Open House on TV? Jerry Lester and Dagmar. She was pretty steamy for TV in those days.
I remember coming home from school and finding my mother wrapped up in watching the Kefauver hearings.
We’d go to the airport to pick up my aunt who’d arrive on a TWA Constellation and I’d fantasize about actually going on a plane trip someday on that graceful bird.
Just to top it off. I can remember when Studebaker introduced the first Champion model. My circulation dept. boss at the Sioux City Tribune bought a brand new one for $350 and a 1937 Ford 60 hp V8 .
When toothpaste came in tubes made of lead.
Laundry chutes in homes.
REAL TSP
Ink cartridges
Being forced to vote for the “lesser of two evils” was the exception, not the rule.
and, Ringo -
My Model ‘A’ also had manual carb mixture and timing advance controls.
- party lines
- a long distance call meant someone had died
- Gorgeous George (the wrestler)
- bedsheets were ironed
- a Western on TV was called a “horse opera”
- you could tune your own car
- push-button transmissions
- when the milkman would enter the house and put milk in the fridge
- Howard Johnson’s was where you went for ice cream
- milk in dark amber bottles
- taking a note to the drugstore to buy cigarettes for my parents
- eating in the basement when it was too hot
- booting an Apple II with a Radio Shack tape recorder
- parents who walked to school with newspapers on their feet – and it was uphill both ways!
Uhm…data entry jobs still ask about that, as late as March of this year. It’s measured in keystrokes per hour. I 10-key about 10K.
Crow