Does that bring back memories. Just prior to that it was a struggle with DOS. I remember how proud I was of a menu system I had created in one of the early basics that came out.
Anybody remember Clive Sinclair's ZX80 I still have a working model. I learnt basic on it. 1kb of memory

I went through the struggle with DOS too. But the first computers I had to do with was something where you had to load the OS every time you started it. Don't even remember the name. Perhaps Commodore? Does that ring a bell?

Oh man does that bring back memories. Basic was the first language I learned anything about (didn't learn it fully, but a lot about it for sure) and I did that mostly on an IBM at tech school during the day and a Commodore 64 at night hehe. Loved programming little games back then, course I didn't write all of it, much of it I copied into the console, but it was pretty slick at that time indeed!

To be honest, I loved DOS, could not get used to windows when it first came out, drove me crazy. Wasn't horrible because the first windows programs still gave us full accessibility to DOS as we had to load the Windows from a disk (5 1/4" one lol) as Inger mentions so we could still boot the computer up pretty easily with DOS if we wanted to. Not like now where you have to fight tooth and nails just to get to a totally working DOS prompt lol.

We also used a program called Tree Gold that did the equivalent of creating a visual windows setup with what looked like an HTML Table full of links that went to your programs (basically DOS shortcuts) and that was the bomb back then lol.

Whoever would have though we'd be where we are now with computers? I sure didn't.

Funny thing was, that when the internet first started getting popular with the general public my husband was totally into it. He loves to research things so it was awesome for him. I thought it was the stupidest waste of time I ever saw LOL. Now it's the other way around hahahaha. Well he don't think it's stupid, but he's not on it all the time like I am, he works on a computer all day though so I guess I can't blame him lol.

I can relate to that, it is the same situation here.

Internet came to Norway in 1993, I think, and that's when we started using it on a win3.1 machine with Trumpet Winsock to connect. The first browser I got to know was Netscape, and the pages were boring, not to mention the design at all. But with the modems of that time, I guess that was all that could be produced and opened within a reasonable number of seconds.

hehe remember Juno email? I remember that as the first way (only way we knew at that time) to create emails and send them. You could sign up for a free Juno account and it would then connect to your modem, send / receive emails, and then disconnect from your modem (which was soooo slow it's just amazing now to think of them lol)

I don't recall Juno. Eudora was the first one I came across, and Pegasus. There was another one too, in which you could conntct to the Usenet groups too, but I don't remember the name of it.

True confession: Once upon a time, I programmed in 6502 assembler on the Atari. I got an outsized kick out of beating the all-powerful IBM PC on various benchmarks. Down & dirty machine language covers ground a lot faster than a BASIC interpreter can, even with a 10X clock advantage.

When I needed non-integer math (not often), I would call upon the Atari's built-in BCD (binary-coded decimal) firmware.

I even managed to attach a 5 MB hard drive to the thing. 5 MB goes a long way for a machine with only a 64 KB address space.

Now I sit at my Win XP-64 PC, writing PHP scripts to include() in Web pages. They execute remotely, on a server beyond my control somewhere in Utah. How far I have fallen! What a wasted life! O tempores, o mores!

Oh yeah, Scott:

Many moons ago, I encountered a demo of Microsoft Bob at a computer store. (Remember computer stores?) I played with it for maybe five minutes before talking to one of the salespeople. I was shocked to learn that Bob was a released Microsoft product. What a horrid thing it was.

I thought perhaps Bill Gates had gone soft in the head. But no, he had merely gotten married.

The universe righted itself shortly after the honeymoon, and Bob was no more.

Bill Gates now donates toward grand problems that he has no possibility of correcting. He might instead have remained at Microsoft and used his $$$ to improve the company's software, something entirely within his control and affecting millions of people. But no. Go figure.

Thank you for not spending your vast riches in trying to Eliminate World Hunger, Scott.

@halfnium

You ever delve into the pic16f690?? it keeps me awake at night some times

@david wilson

No, I never had a good excuse to work with a PIC. Its premise surely seems interesting: a microcontroller so cheap and quick that there is no longer reason to include "glue" logic in board-level hardware.

The PIC should never keep you awake at night. Ask it to turn off the stereo and go to sleep.

These days, I would appreciate having a good excuse to try the Arduino (http://www.arduino.cc/).

If I could figure out a way to make money with all this fun stuff, I surely would pursue it!

I see that you used CC Photo Gallery at http://www.tbaygeek.org/.

BTW, what is your connection with Confederation College and Innovation 2011? I don't find your name on either organization's Web site.

Noting that your name appears on the OACETT's roster, I infer that you live in Ontario, and that your photo is the first one shown in your site's gallery. Is that correct?