Life before the internet???

[richard5933]

Originally Posted by Kjon

Worked at IBM for 30+ Year’s. ‘68 to ‘98. Saw many innovations. I now have a better understanding of how we got from the Wright bro’s first flight to going to the moon and back in only about 65 years.

You probably started at IBM with a slide rule in your pocket, and when you left had a smartphone in its place. Quite the transition.

[Glenn and Kathy]

Originally Posted by Jim18655

I have a PC Jr., a PS2 with tape drive, and an IBM convertible portable computer in the "museum." The Convertible has 2 - 720 kb floppy drives and a thermal printer that attaches to the rear of the computer. The screen is blue with yellow letters and can be removed and a CRT monitor can be plugged on the connector. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PC_Convertible

Hey Jim, I have one of those PC convertible's. I bought it 7/28/87, still got the original order paperwork. I have the carrying case and upgraded monitor. It hasn't been powered up since the mid 90s, not sure it would even work anymore. The batteries gotta be shot by now.

Glenn

PS for Richard, I was with IBM from 63 to 93, took a class on operating a slide rule, started selling cell phones in 93, they were pretty stupid at that time.

[Glenn and Kathy]

Originally Posted by Jim18655

I have a PC Jr., a PS2 with tape drive, and an IBM convertible portable computer in the "museum." The Convertible has 2 - 720 kb floppy drives and a thermal printer that attaches to the rear of the computer. The screen is blue with yellow letters and can be removed and a CRT monitor can be plugged on the connector. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PC_Convertible

Hey Jim, I have one of those PC convertible's. I bought it 7/28/87, still got the original order paperwork. I have the carrying case and upgraded monitor. It hasn't been powered up since the mid 90s, not sure it would even work anymore. The batteries gotta be shot by now.

Glenn

[Kjon]

I understand Massachusetts passed a law requiring car manufacturers to release all the details of their cars needed to repair them including the details of the computer diagnostic and troubleshooting codes. The law was passed to give local repair shops the info needed compete with the manufacturers dealerships. I hope it works as intended.

[Johnynorthla]

Originally Posted by EdInArk

My dad was born in 1896 and did in 1976, and sometimes I think about what he saw in his lifetime. People were still using horses and wagons when he was kid.

There is a great little paperback birthday card in most card store that have the tittle “the year you were born”. I love reading theses little cards. I bought my dad one on one of his birthdays.

Worth a read when your in the card store!

[nbluesky]

Originally Posted by EdInArk

My dad was born in 1896 and did in 1976, and sometimes I think about what he saw in his lifetime. People were still using horses and wagons when he was kid.

My great grandmother was born in 1898. She died when I was about 12 which would have been 1993 ish. I often think about everything she saw in her lifetime. After her husband passed early in life she lived in her home alone until she was in her 90's. Tough lady I wish I could go back and ask her to tell me some stories!

[rgvtexan]

My wife's Grandmother (1887-1989) lived to be 102, she came to Oregon when she was 2 years old, part of the trip in a covered wagon.
Our kid loved to hear her tell stories, wish I had had the forethought to record them so they could be put on the web.
She never used the internet.
She was a concert organist and an accomplished leather worker.

[Unicorn Driver]

Originally Posted by nbluesky

My great grandmother was born in 1898. She died when I was about 12 which would have been 1993 ish. I often think about everything she saw in her lifetime. After her husband passed early in life she lived in her home alone until she was in her 90's. Tough lady I wish I could go back and ask her to tell me some stories!

Wow, there is someone on irv2.com that's younger than me;-)

[TexasJeff]

Originally Posted by nbluesky

It just occurred to me that as long as I have been alive and wrenched or tinkered with anything I have had internet. My first car was when I was 13 in 1994. I am pretty sure I used forums then if not shortly after and still using one now. I as most probably do rely on google and the internet constantly. I can find, build, and fix just about anything. I have more skills than I can keep up with.

So, what was it like before the internet? Just what friends and relatives knew? The local expert? Books which were limited and dated quickly? I'm sure a jack of all trades was a bit more rare?

Maybe things were just a bit simpler. No fancy electronics. Cars ran off mechanical devices. Houses had less gizmos. The devices we rely on giving us all headaches time to time were not around. No one bugging me on my cell phone all day. In some ways it seems nicer.

Has the internet saved us or doomed us? Well if that doesn't open a can of worms on here...

To be determined..

I'm a baby boomer and I hit my stride in the 1980s. 20-something, bullet-proof, lean, muscular and all that and a bag of chips to boot. I was in banking and the company did business leases and were taking in a bunch of devices called PCs, and dot-matrix printers. They couldn't understand why, at the end of the 3 or 4 year lease, that the customers were buying them for $10,000. So, I took one home with me in order to figure out what they were. The first one was a TRS-80 running on something called MS-DOS 1.0.

Learned what I could about them and after a few years, and learning how to build a couple of them, I hired on to Microsoft. This was in 1994. Supported a product called MS Mail. The rest, they say, was history.

Pre-internet, rely on general knowledge, or dad. Either way, things got fixed as best they could, or we had to take it in to the shop. But dad was pretty much a guy that could figure it out and do it yourself. Also, you relied on customer service; people you ask, who helped you find, or provided for you, what you needed. The phone was a thing in the kitchen... with a bell that rang loudly... and party-lines were fun when they happened. And books were a thing. Outside was the place to be because there were only 3 channels on TV and in the middle of the day who the heck wanted to watch soaps?

Now, we trade our privacy for cell-phone technology and convenience. Prices trend downward because computers are doing it for us, instead of people drawing salaries. In some ways it's better, because you have information at your fingertips. For this, YouTube is your friend.

If I had enough cash on hand, more than I needed, I'd buy acreage in the woods, near a lake, with a cabin, that has no electricity. No phone. Just propane for hot water and a wood stove to heat and cook with. Kerosene lamps for the evening. Not that I'd live there all the time, but it sure would be nice to go there and stay awhile. Therapy for the mind and soul.

[Kjon]

Originally Posted by richard5933

You probably started at IBM with a slide rule in your pocket, and when you left had a smartphone in its place. Quite the transition.

I like your conversion bus. My dad used to drive them for Greyhound.


Yes, I also recall when Hewlett Packard released their first scientific calculator circa 1973-74 the HP-35 followed by the HP-45. The 45 could do polar to rectangular conversions; a great time saver. I still have mine although the batteries are no longer usable. It still works with the AC adapter.

[EdInArk]

Originally Posted by Kjon

I like your conversion bus. My dad used to drive them for Greyhound.


Yes, I also recall when Hewlett Packard released their first scientific calculator circa 1973-74 the HP-35 followed by the HP-45. The 45 could do polar to rectangular conversions; a great time saver. I still have mine although the batteries are no longer usable. It still works with the AC adapter.

I started business school about that time and got a Texas instruments calculator. It would divide one large number by another so quickly I didn't trust it for a while. I thought there was no way that worked that quick. LOL

[IC2]

I had to put what we have now into some perspective and looked up how much computing power the moon Apollo project had in the '60s. Your iPhone is waaaay more powerfull. In simple, non 'puter savvy terms, I found this:


"To put that into more concrete terms, the latest phones typically have 4GB of RAM. That is 34,359,738,368 bits. This is more than one million (1,048,576 to be exact) times more memory than the Apollo computer had in RAM. The iPhone also has up to 512GB of ROM memory. That is 4,398,046,511,104 bits, which is more seven million times more than that of the guidance computer. But memory isn’t the only thing that matters. The Apollo 11 computer had a processor – an electronic circuit that performs operations on external data sources – which ran at 0.043 MHz. The latest iPhone’s processor is estimated to run at about 2490 MHz. Apple do not advertise the processing speed, but others have calculated it. This means that the iPhone in your pocket has over 100,000 times the processing power of the computer that landed man on the moon 50 years ago."*


*https://www.realclearscience.com/art...er_111026.html

[Dennis58]

We had books, yellow pages, road maps, pay phones, mom and dad and of course $0.50 gal gas.

We cooked at home and going out to eat maybe once a month was a treat and considered an family outing.

Home was what you made of it and only the rich people lived in the really big houses. I look at those really big houses today and say, what a POS house that is. But back than they were grand.

[Dennis58]

Originally Posted by Kjon

I understand Massachusetts passed a law requiring car manufacturers to release all the details of their cars needed to repair them including the details of the computer diagnostic and troubleshooting codes. The law was passed to give local repair shops the info needed compete with the manufacturers dealerships. I hope it works as intended.

This has been a really big deal with farmers and John Deere. Were talking big dollar big size machines. Watched a YouTube vid on the subject and I agree John Deere is screwing the farmer.