# Who remembers **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [August 11, 2020, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-remembers/917822 "2020-08-11T16:29:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2020, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-remembers/917822/41 "2020-08-13T02:23:28Z")
> [@ThisIsTheEnd](#): > > I overclocked a 133mhz to 166 once. > > Didn’t make my warez download any faster though. I was working at Intel when those things came out. There was a group who sat around looking at speed paths and fixing them, and when they had enough to make it useful they did a new tapeout for a faster processor. So overclocking probably wouldn’t hurt anything. After one 4 MHz bump we got an award with a chip built in. Rumor was that these were good parts, since no one wanted the slower version. I didn’t work on x86 machines, I worked on the Itanic. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2020, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-remembers/917822/42 "2020-08-13T02:25:20Z")
> [@DCnDC](#): > > I’ve got at least a couple of zip disks sitting around in a drawer somewhere. No clue what’s on them. I may never find out. I’ve got some DecTape floating around, with among other things the Star Trek program from Ahl’s Book of Basic Games rewritten in Pascal. ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2020, 5:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-remembers/917822/43 "2020-08-13T05:31:59Z")
> [@jaycat](#): > > Sometimes when we had a typo, we would retrieve one of the punched-out chads and tape it over one of the holes. Very high tech. And we had a tiny punch that we called a “chicken plucker”, to add holes in the tape. Also splices. Yeah, for a while there was no way to actually edit a tape. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2020, 6:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-remembers/917822/44 "2020-08-13T06:09:21Z")
I bought a used Macintosh 512KE that consumed half my savings, so I had almost no money left to buy software. After a couple months, I discovered the interrupt switch down on the side, which let me get into the machine. For my own amusement, I played around with the interrupt display for several months to the extent that I was able to construct a crude little program, literally in 68K machine code, which allowed me to continue to play around with machine code and resource files. I got to the point where I was able to use it to make a small floating analog clock accessory. But mostly it was just entertainment. ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2020, 7:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-remembers/917822/45 "2020-08-13T07:00:49Z")
> [@FairyChatMom](#): > > > [@beowulff](#): > > > > Who remembers 8” floppies? > > Used them on a Wang word processor Ooh, Matron. ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2020, 7:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-remembers/917822/46 "2020-08-13T07:48:01Z")
Who remembers when kids had paper routes? ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2020, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-remembers/917822/47 "2020-08-13T18:23:01Z")
I do. I had one. Long Island Press, every afternoon and Sunday mornings. ---
**Author:** ![WildaBeast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wildabeast/32/6_2.png) [@WildaBeast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WildaBeast)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2020, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-remembers/917822/48 "2020-08-13T18:28:25Z")
> [@gnoitall](#): > > Pretty amusing to browse the web using a 30-year-old Commodore Amiga. I once read about how someone was able to figure out how to browse the web on a Commodore 64, complete with instructions for how other nostalgic Commodore 64 users could get online. Although this was back when I was in college, which itself was about 20 years ago now, so this was back when web sites were primarily text based, with a few .gif image files here and there. ---
**Author:** ![Treppenwitz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/treppenwitz/32/3445_2.png) [@Treppenwitz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Treppenwitz)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2020, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-remembers/917822/49 "2020-08-13T20:15:14Z")
> [@Zyada](#): > > I learned how to program on a computer that used paper tape. The teacher had written a program where you would input the word you wanted, and it would punch it out into the paper tape. Wish I had kept one of them! When I was in high school, back in the early/mid seventies, we had a lesson in computing! They put us all in a minivan and drove us two miles to the local technical college where they had the only computer in a conurbation of - oooh - forty thousand people? The size of a room (you were looking at a wall, basically), no monitor (there was a keyboard and teletyper-thing so you could see what you were typing). I got to write a basic program that converted fahrenheit to centigrade, and they gave me a copy on punched tape. j ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2020, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-remembers/917822/50 "2020-08-13T21:10:40Z")
I had one too. Afternoons, except Sunday mornings. Got up at 4:30am every Sunday to deliver. Had a lot of money for a 12-yr-old, also. I did it well, and was really proud of it. ---
**Author:** ![I\_Love\_Me\_Vol.I](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/i_love_me_vol.i/32/521_2.png) [@I\_Love\_Me\_Vol.I](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/I_Love_Me_Vol.I)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2020, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-remembers/917822/51 "2020-08-13T21:56:04Z")
> [@panache45](#): > > Long before floppies, we used to do typesetting with rolls of paper tape. All the codes and characters punched onto the tape. Those chads could get quite messy. Yep. I remember learning to typeset on an old Compugraphic system. It was called photo-typesetting and the columns of type came out developed on something like photographic paper. ETA: that’s where I learned about “discretionary hyphenation”. Fun. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2020, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-remembers/917822/52 "2020-08-13T23:21:44Z")
We had a lidded box sitting on the front porch, right next to the door. I seem to recall it being wood clad in tin, about 20"x12"x15" more or less. ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2020, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-remembers/917822/53 "2020-08-13T23:51:26Z")
There was a sliding panel in the wall by the door to our apartment in Manhattan. That apartment building also had one of those elevators with a manually operated door-- double doors-- the first one opened with a lever I couldn’t operate because I was too little when we first lived there-- that is, not strong enough. The inside doors just pulled open. A couple of times, when it got stuck between floors, we just opened the doors, and jumped down. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2020, 4:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-remembers/917822/54 "2020-08-14T04:14:13Z")
A few times in the '60s, we rode in the elevator at the back of the downtown Meier & Frank department store. Unlike the ones at the front of the store, this one had no buttons. There was a person who had a hand on the knob on the disk on the wall, and we would tell them what floor we wanted. I seem to recall that they had a small round seat (that may have been hinged to fold up against the wall), but when we were in the elevator the operator was always standing. ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2020, 8:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-remembers/917822/55 "2020-08-14T08:42:25Z")
When I was a kid, back in the 50s, all elevators had operators. I don’t remember any self-service elevators. ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2020, 2:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-remembers/917822/56 "2020-08-14T14:01:39Z")
Oh, yeah-- in lower rent apartment buildings, the elevators were a lot like the ones that were run by an operator, but self-service. ---
**Author:** ![its\_the\_daddy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/bb73d2/32.png) [@its\_the\_daddy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/its_the_daddy)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2020, 2:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-remembers/917822/57 "2020-08-14T14:05:06Z")
> [@eschereal](#): > > My friend walked into the computer section of some department store, saw a placard offering books for you to learn DOS and asked if they also had books on the DON’TS. Was he the one who phoned the helpline to ask where the ‘Any’ key was? ---
**Author:** ![Si\_Amigo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/si_amigo/32/2877_2.png) [@Si\_Amigo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Si_Amigo)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2020, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-remembers/917822/58 "2020-08-14T14:26:27Z")
> [@its\_the\_daddy](#): > > Was he the one who phoned the helpline to ask where the ‘Any’ key was? And was he one of the pioneers in realizing the full potential of the cupholder? ---
**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2020, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-remembers/917822/59 "2020-08-14T14:33:30Z")
> [@beowulff](#): > > Who remembers 8” floppies? I still have one, from an IBM system 38 or maybe early AS400. I also did a lot of [Twinax cable](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twinaxial_cabling) runs and some Token Ring of course. My Zip disks and 2 zip drives got recycled years ago. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2020, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-remembers/917822/60 "2020-08-14T14:35:16Z")
Well, I have an old HD platter from one of those multi-platter drives that were the size of a washing machine and stored tens of megabytes. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-remembers/917822.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-remembers/917822.md?page=4)