Stijn!!

[Porsche-poor]

I must have missed the instructions or the info on the app. Oh well.

[RKDinOKC]

A Geeky Good Morning

In the 80's when I worked in a machine shop I wore my 87+ gradient tinted prescription safety glasses with tinted side sheilds AND those safety goggles that fit over prescription glasses. Told everyone I was getting used to wearing Augmented Reality glasses. They all looked at me like I was nuts because they had no idea what I was talking about. Probably still wouldn't know.

Later I had software to emulate flying R/C planes with a serial port joystick that worked like an R/C radio. I emulated a PC on my mac to run the software. So I was emulating a pc to run software to emulate flying r/c planes which emulated flying real planes. Even my geekiest friends thought it was way geeky cool.

[Porsche-poor]

being a geek is cool.

[RKDinOKC]

Nowadays it's no big deal to run Mac Sierra and Windows 10 on the same box, It's my workaday thing. And use Windows software and cables to monkey with the ECUs in the 928 and everything in the Cayenne.

The software for the R/C simulator was DOS if that puts any sort of time frame on it.

[flipper35]

Ah DOS. I don't miss those days. Of course back then I had an Amiga and only worked with DOS for work.

[Jim Richards]

Hola, y'all. It's another beautiful day here in SoCal. I guess I'll spend it working in the garage/attic. I really need to retire!

[RKDinOKC]

Had just changed from an Apple IIc to a Macintosh 512. Didn't change until someone came out with II in a Mac, they also did DOS in a Mac. Had huge collection of software for the Apple II I thought I would need. Never used any of it except to see that it could run Appleworks.

Also when Photoshop only did black and white and was from Kroll software and Excel was called Multiplan. Adobe only sold Postscript to printer and typesetter manufactures and drivers for desktops.

[GH85Carrera]

I kinda liked DOS. I started with DOS 2.0 or actually Compaq DOS 2.0 on my 4.77 MHz machine with 256 K of memory and two floppies. No hard drives. I had to buy more memory and maxed it out at the full 640K and I bought a HUGE 10 MB hard drive to store all the files I could download with my 300 baud modem.

[Porsche-poor]

Ahh the good old days.

[RKDinOKC]

The Apple II actually used MS DOS for it's disc operating system, but had it's own AppleSoft Basic and machine language. Think it went up to DOS 3.3. Bought a Microsoft Machine Language Compiler to convert my AppleSoft Basic programs into machine code binaries.

All that was right after I got out of college. Almost 40 years ago. The stone ages in personal computer time.

[GH85Carrera]

Yea, the display was black with green text. I had 4 levels of brightness for the green I think, so no photos or graphics at all. I logged into Compuserve and I could read the text faster than it came down. And they charged several bucks per hour so on-line was EXPENSIVE. I ordered a pair of Levis back in the 1980s and it cost me several bucks of Compuserve time to place the order. I got my first Compuserve bill and then fainted. When I woke up, I canceled it.

And the modem was several hundred bucks.

I found the BBS world and got into Fido-net which was an early type of email. I remember asking about which CD ROM to buy. It was over $400 and it could only read a CD, the burner was later. The burners were just coming out and I waited until I could get the 2X burner and it was close to $600. We bought one for the office.

I still have my first mouse. It was a Microsoft mouse with two large green buttons and the wide serial port. The ball is steel.

[flipper35]

I started with a C64 and then the Amiga. I always had full color displays from the early 80s.

Of course, the first flight sim I had we wire frame. Full color wire frame though!

[GH85Carrera]

I dug out my mouse.

You can see it says patent pending. I think I got it with my first copy of Windows called Windows 386. The blatant ripoff of the Mac OS that was the blatant ripoff of Xerox OS called GEM.

[flipper35]

Looks comfy!

[GH85Carrera]

The ironic thing is I used that mouse mostly with Ventura Publisher which ran under the DOS extension of GEM. That is how I made extra money back in the stone ages. I did a newsletter for two other clubs besides doing the PCA newsletter for free. The computer and the software was mine, but the local PCA region bought me a laser printer so I did not have to use my electric typewriter with a home made interface to a computer that I learned to make from Fido net instructions.

I ended up collecting clipart from other PCA clubs and then set up my own BBS for the Porsche club. PCA national paid for my second phone line and I allowed any region to log in and download articles or clipart that was great filler. I was still using that BBS in 1996 when I did the registration for our Parade. I was the Parade registrar using dial up connections. My wife and I hand entered every single registrant. Back then the Panorama published one page that we ripped out of the magazine and filled out and mailed in. The national staff had access to a private area of the BBS and they could download or upload the reports and information needed for Parade. Dang that was 21 years ago.

[RKDinOKC]

Yep, was on Compuerve, AOL, eWorld, all the local BBSs and several other BBSs.

Ran into a guy on compuserve in the CB or chat rooms. Turned out he worked at the same place I did AND was a 3rd shift machinist like I was. Were friends until he passed a few years ago.

The most popular local BBSs were Milliways and N.O.R.A.D. Norad was the Oklahoma University BBS. Miliways was a Hitchhiker Guide to the Galaxy themed BBS that was the general chat area for the local Apple software collectors.

My first modem was a 300 baud Apple modem. To use it you had to open a terminal program and type commands to the modem. AT got the attention of the modem, D was dial, T was tone, P was pulse, etc. On the Apple modem if yo accidentally typed ET instead of AT it returned back "Phone Home."

AOL was the first service to have it's own interface for the modem commands and icons for all the various areas of the service.

Also had a program called Action Express. It let me automate doing all the on-line stuff. It would dial BBSs thru the night. When it connected to one it would upload any replies I had to messages, and download any new messages. I could then read and make my replies at my leisure then set it off going again. The BBSs were almost always busy.

My modem upgrade was a 9600 baud. Was interesting. Listing basic programs on the Apple II listed the text at 9600 buad. Ended up being able to read at 9600 buad.

300 baud is 0.0003 Mbps. 50 mbps internet today is 50,000,000 baud. 166,666 times faster than 300 baud.

[GH85Carrera]

I remember being thrilled to get to the point I could download one full MB is just 12 minutes. I think that was 14.4 but it might have been 28.8 or 14.4 it has been too long.

I see some of the "updates" for programs and 40 to 60 MB and just no big deal. I was on my third or 4th hard drive before I had over 200 MB on the entire drive. Now I walk around with a phone with 128 gig of capacity.

[Porsche-poor]

and now today the oce decided that the print heads need replacing. $200 times 9. stupid people I told them I didn't want an ink jet.

[RKDinOKC]

Switched to a color laser at home about 15 years go. I don't print very often. Every time I went to print the ink jet needed a new ink cartridge or the head needed cleaned, or a new print head. It basically dried out. So bought an at the time Brother color laser printer copier scanner fax with wireless. It was expensive way back then $900. But figured it saved me in ink cartridges and print heads.

Also have an Epson scanner that rivals a drum scanner. Had it a long time. But don't use it very often. The scanner on my color laser usually does higher quality than I need. Have scanned slides on the Epson, it is backlit has a slide carrier and it did really well. Some of the slides were really old and started losng color. Got a Photoshop plug-in from Kodak and it did a great job restoring them.

My brother and his wife using both a b/w laser and a color ink jet all-in-one. They use the b'w laser for the stuff without pictures and his wife likes the ink jet better for pictures. When they want a high quality scan, they bring it to me. She prints often enough they actually use up the ink cartridges and get new ones.

When I was using the color laser to do the paperwork to sell the CayenneS the old brother started printing streaks. Called around and it was cheaper to replace with a new Canon all-in-one laser than have fixed. Took the brother and the extra cartridges I had for it to Staples to recycle the printer. They gave me enough store credit for the brother cartridges to take home a new Canon color laser all-in-one.

[RKDinOKC]

mertnin hump day

Woohoo...they cancelled the 8:30 IT meeting this morning. Don't have to spend an hour going to the company facility and back for a 30 minute meeting. Wasted taking a shower this morning.