Anyone remember subscribing to Prodigy?

Parent Cafe
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<p>We had Prodigy and CompuServe. I remember thinking Prodigy was very cool.</p>

<p>I remember when we were first married in 1984, H had a terminal at home, and I could communicate with him over the phone line from home when he was at work! What a concept!</p>

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<p>I remember when the 64 Box of Crayolas was the pinnacle in the development of humankind.</p>

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<p>scualum…I used to sell used PDP’s from 1984 through the mid 90’s. They were manufactured by Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC). A typical PDP system took up two 64" cabinets and only had the equivalent capabilities of a pc, that came out a few years later.</p>

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<p>In 1983 I had a 300 baud modem to go with my [Radio Shack TRS-80](<a href=“Tandy/Radio Shack TRS-80 model III computer”>http://oldcomputers.net/trs80iii.html&lt;/a&gt;)computer. It had two 5 ¼ FD’s, one for the OS and one for your proggy. And I did use Prodigy.</p>

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<p>Toledo:</p>

<p>I probably was on some of the systems you sold… This was about 1974-76. We got a home computer - an Apple I for you PC buffs - in 1977.</p>

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<p>“5 ½” floppies…”? Try CPM-86 and 8” SSDD floppies (Single-sided double density) on a Xerox Star system. How about a 1200 baud Hayes modem…? Built out of an ingot of aluminum… The Hayes replaced our company’s 300 baud TI acoustical coupler which had two rubber “cups” where you attached your corded telephone handset into. Our mainframe was attached to an Okidata dot matrix printer (9 pin) that printed out to green bar paper (see fish gutting scene in the movie “Office Space”). </p>

<p>I still get misty-eyed when I think back to my first hard drive: 5 Megs for $200! A lot has changed since MS-DOS 1.0</p>

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<p>OOh, another “oldies but goodies” thread.
I remember whenwe put the phone receiver tfrom an old rotary phone in a coupler (two balck rubbery holders for the mouth and earpiece) to dial into a computer.
I did my dissertation on punch cards that had to be fed into the big ol’ mainframe computer, and the printer was up at the med school library-- had to walk over there to pick up the job.</p>

<p>I’ve got lost more of these.</p>

<p>And yes, AB Dick made the old blue ditto machines. Required a roller, drum and that very acrid smelling liquid</p>

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<p>emeraldkity - eWorld!!! I loved eWorld and was devastated when it went defunct. It was truly a global village down to the streets, cars and buildings. Were you there the last day when everyone traveled around the World and turned off the lights in each building? So sad…</p>

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<p>Yes I remember mimeographs. I also remember prodigy. The first fax I ever saw was interning on capital hill in 1973. I also remember playing asterorids and adventure (text based games with no graphics imagine that!) on the Arpanet. Dh’s college roomate made a computer with a tape deck and a TV (or something like that.)</p>

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<p>I still have my MS-DOS 1.0 in the original package w. shrink wrap. Im going to drag it onto the Antiques Roadshow in about 25 years.</p>

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<p>The “fax” machine was invented in the mid 1800’s, and well before the invention of the telephone. Images were transmitted via telegraph wire and printed using electrically conductive ink. But the resolution was too poor to be useful.</p>

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<p>

Luxury!
At that time I was still using my CPM (OS) S-100 bus Z80 based system with dual 8 inch floppy drives (no HDD) and this was vastly better than some of the early micro-systems I used that used punched paper tape to load a program.</p>

<p>I was too frugal to use Prodigy - I just dialed into free bulletin board systems back then.</p>

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<p>Another compuserve member, back when it was a listserv or something, and I could actually build and fix a pc, though MY first love was an Apple IIC. That’s the first time I used the name shrinkrap…things that came in shrinkwrap seemed very official then, and I felt very clever. I just paid my annual compuserve membership, though I no longer use it.</p>

<p>I also remember something called mosaic…</p>

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<p>Back in the mid-80s, I worked part-time at a mom and pop computer store while in college. We would build IBM PC-XT clones with Taiwanese parts. The store used IBM flip-top cases that had buttons on each side to “flip up” the top to access the internal parts. Great for ease of construction, but the RF interference was unbelievable! You couldn’t run the PC in the same room with a TV set on. I’m surprise I don’t glow in the dark.</p>

<p>Also a CompuServe customer… and client… After college, my first job was to configure data for our corporate database that ran on CompuServe. </p>

<p>Re Mosaic: one of the early Internet browsers…dates to the early 90’s.</p>

<p>See: <a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosaic_(web_browser[/url])”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosaic_(web_browser)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>my first computer cost 1500 (excluding monitor). It was a Pentium 60 with .5 gb hd (that’s 500 megs). I remember paying for a 1.5 GB ‘upgrade’ later, that was at least $150. I used Netscape 1.0 and eudora lite for email. There was no such thing as IE explorer because Mr Bill figured the internet was a ‘fad’. Um, NO!</p>

<p>this was in 1995 and I remember my mom saying “why would anyone want a computer in their house”. </p>

<p>My Dad worked for a company that made the Quip typewriter and QYX fax machine in the early 80’s</p>

<p>I first used acoustical coupler modems (at about 300 baud) in the early 80’s.</p>

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<p>After the Apple I we got a TRS-80 (the trash 80). Anyone else remember the portable cassette player that you used for storage.</p>

<p>I will never forget the day my brother taped Oliva Newton John over the program I had worked on all summer and stored on that tape…</p>

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<p>^^ Oh no! - not Olivia Newton John!</p>

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<p>Remember when phone numbers began with letters? MA6-3049? </p>

<p>I remember our first color TV. </p>

<p>I remember when zip codes began.</p>

<p>How about ethyl gasoline?</p>

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<p>tango - I remember all those things. I recall when a traveling salesperson came to our house selling a film that went over the television screen that was blue at the top, brownish in the middle and green at the bottom. I talked my mom into buying one so it would be like having color television!</p>

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<p>My D remembers - </p>

<ul>
<li><p>When you had to buy CDs to get yourself music rather than just download it.</p></li>
<li><p>When you had to watch TV on a TV rather than just streaming it to your laptop.</p></li>
<li><p>When you had to find a landline phone to make a phone call rather than just whipping out the ubiquitous cell phone.</p></li>
<li><p>When a car radio would fade out with distance from the station.</p></li>
<li><p>When you had to unfold a paper map and figure out where you were and how to get where you were going rather than have some navigation display automatically tell you.</p></li>
<li><p>When one rented movies ‘on tape’ and recorded TV to a tape drive rather than a hard disk.</p></li>
<li><p>When you had to use a phone line to connect to other computers - like EK4 does ;)</p></li>
</ul>