I just turned 73. I was a hardware guy. Semiconductor test. Bipolar and CMOS.

My first computer was an Atari 400. We all scrambled to replace the original 16K RAMs when 64K RAMs became available, by cutting a big hole in the top of the aluminum box for unfettered access. I believe that only 48K was accessible. Programmed in BASIC using a small tape recorder/modem. Wrote a program, which pseudo-randomly output certain things being inserted into other certain things. Over 60 things being (80 verbed) into 70 other things. It was kind of fun, and funny, but would never fly today. But, at the time, we busted a gut over some of the combinations which popped up on the screen ... "I would like to (word) your little (word) with my huge (word)." 336,000 combinations. But that was 40 years ago. My, how a man's priorities change over time.

My first computer was an Atari 400. We all scrambled to replace the original 16K RAMs

Hmmm my first one 1977 [a microcomputer] had a whole 1 Kb of RAM, programmed in assembly language only. Had a four digit hex-decimal led display and a 4X4 keyboard for input in hex code.

It was an electronic magazine project/kit as a learning tool, sold for $A75 at the time, all DIY construction. It took quite awhile for us to get it to multiply 3 times four. It had an RCA 1802 CPU

Isn't that CPU the same as in the Atari?

Yes kiddies CPU's in native state cannot multiply and divide

Mul or Div instructions for CPU's later literally called an embedded routine, which? Does exactly what we had to do above. I can't remember when they were first became embedded though.

RCA 1802 CPU - Instruction Set
[atarimagazines.com ]

38 year old female I remember being on this forum before Google existed

Always read this forum but these posts are interesting so I signed up to post yes it gets lonely making money all by yourself I have virtual team and been doing this since 2001. I remember rand fish on seochat how times have changed!

1st computer Dick Smith Wizard (wikipedia it)
2nd Commodore 64
3rd Commodore Amiga 500
4th Commodore Amiga 2000
Then PC's

I was late to computers as instead of going to uni after high school I went into business and then the RCN. It was while on board ship I first read Byte (think Vogue for geeks) magazine and was shocked at the terms and acronyms I didn't recognise - so shocked my life goals totally changed; a new road beckoned.

First computer was a Tandy 1000 on which I fell in love with programming: my very first was an ascii animation (hello world morphing to goodbye cruel woman :) it was time appropriate!) via gw-basic. Then C++ and omg what one could do!

Still have my first self built 286sx with a huge 100MB hard drive (30 was standard), 2MB RAM (512KB was standard). Nothing catches that time so much as the chatter of a 9-pin dot matrix printer...

The past ~35 years have been a truly wonderful ride. As much for the folks met along the way as the magic of the computer et al.

I gotta' ask this trivia question to verify ages.

There was a couple who lived in a house (a while back) with one of those telephones connected to a wire (eeeek!). The phone company didn't have enough wire to put the phone inside their house, so it was mounted on a pole outside and they had to climb the pole to make a call.

Now here's the real trivia question. There was a short man with four legs who would visit from time to time. He talked funny.

What was his name?

FarmBoy

Should we PM you with the answer? Otherwise, one person posts it and ruins the game :-)

FWIW, this is just a few inches before my time, but I do get the reference...

Should we PM you with the answer?

Good idea.

I got your PM and you got half correct.

FarmBoy

I used to watch black & white TV when i was a kid.

60 this spring.

My original big website was listed by Google while they were in the garage, which means Larry or Sergey did it.

In 2007 my Microsoft Office associated free art site surpassed Walmart.com in global traffic.

At the time Bill Gates definitely knew my name or my site at least.

FB how can you get that half correct? Where do you think your are Hooterville?

1st computer Dick Smith Wizard (wikipedia it)

A school friend of mine had one of those. An Intellivision clone with chiclet keypads and BASIC on a rom pack. It was #*$! awful. I had the Laser/VZ200 from the same maker, which came out shortly after. It had a whopping 8KB of RAM, 2KB of which was video RAM. It was marginally less awful.

FB how can you get that half correct? Where do you think your are Hooterville?

Someone described the short guy but couldn't remember his name.

Maybe I should have asked about the woman who lived in the house. What was her real life first name, the names of her sisters and which ones are still alive?

Or maybe the name of the man who ran the general store/post office inside the store, depnding on which hat he was wearing? (hint: D?)


FarmBoy

At the time Bill Gates definitely knew my name or my site at least.

I remember reading Bill Gates' book when he wrote that computers were going to rid the need of so much paper.

People in the current post-dinosaur-age think the computer has created the need for more paper.

FarmBoy

Paper, insecurity of the general public.

I still have clients that insist on printing out their slide decks.

I say why? An they say, because.

It is like they don't think things are real unless they are in ink.

Old habits die hard and kill a lot of trees in the process.

I'm old enough to be able to do math in my head.

I'm old enough to be able to do math in my head.

Wow, that's old. I guess you remember when dinosuars were little.

FarmBoy

old enough to be able to do math in my head

At age 75 I'm now a shadow of my former self.

As an 18 year old kid in 1960 I successfully applied for the position of a payroll clerk. No calculators, no computers in use way back then.

I was put on a three month probation, and this was pounds/shillings/pence days not the far easier decimal dollars and cents of today. Within that three month period I had to demonstrate I could run my forefinger down a long column of figures, adding cumulatively then enter the total at the bottom. Errors were NOT allowed.

Later in part time work I became a bookmakers clerk - complex simultaneous entries were made on the run - of transactions into a government treasury provided book [government property].

At college much later in another course involving structural engineering I could do complex engineering calculation in my head to get "ball park" figures.

Today? Age 75 I'm now really only a shadow of my former self - sniff, sniff. And yes - I do have a very badly bruised ego. Them's the breaks.

Well, on the subject of math and whippersnappers, I have a story to share.

A few years ago I went to the movies with some friends. They were cash-only, and the total was $15.25.

The girl at the register was an older teen, probably between 16 and 18. I gave her a $20, she typed it in the register and it said to give me $4.75 in change.

Then I suddenly remembered that I had a quarter in my pocket, and I said, "hang on, I have a quarter so this will be easier."

The girl gives me a very distressed look, and says "don't do that to me, man!" Because the concept of adding $0.25 to $4.75 without the help of a calculator was well beyond her capability.

I briefly tried to explain it to her, but she was obviously confused. When she started to call a manager to come and void the transaction so she could start over, I just told her not to worry about it and begrudgingly took the $4.75.

To this day, I'm pretty sure that she thinks I was trying to cheat them.

(And for the record, my friends and family are always impressed at how I can quickly add up a tip and round to the nearest dollar in my head)

I guess you remember when dinosuars were little.

That's Jurassic times.

I'm older.

"Older than dirt", as my daddy used to say.

I'm actually quite surprised at how many of us are 40 and over here, honestly never would have guessed that about this industry.

I was put on a three month probation, and this was pounds/shillings/pence days not the far easier decimal dollars and cents of today. Within that three month period I had to demonstrate I could run my forefinger down a long column of figures, adding cumulatively then enter the total at the bottom. Errors were NOT allowed.

Decimal easier? Try dividing a modern pound or dollar into thirds. My father who was a stockbroker (long before they used screens) used to curse decimalisation because it made mental arithmetic far more difficult.

in much later days, but when we still used adding machines, it was always entertaining to flick the switch on the underside that switched mode from decimal to (old) currency. The youngsters could never work out what the **** it was doing.

One advantage of being a dinosaur was that I learned to touch type. I remember one confused programmer, when I was demonstrating something say "but you aren't looking at the keyboard!"

It is like they don't think things are real unless they are in ink.

That's because they aren't. I have a laptop, a smartphone and a tablet, but I still keep a paper calendar and write my daily to do list in pen. Doing so gives me comfort.

One advantage of being a dinosaur was that I learned to touch type. I remember one confused programmer, when I was demonstrating something say "but you aren't looking at the keyboard!"

Wait... seriously?! I couldn't imagine programming if I didn't know how to type! My god, man, a 1-hour job would take days! I actually ran in to my typing instructor from high school a few years ago (he volunteered at a church that was hiring me for a contract), and since I really loved the guy I was bragging on him to everybody ("love like family", don't get the wrong idea). I made a point of saying that I owe my entire business success to him... if I couldn't type, I'd be helpless!

It is like they don't think things are real unless they are in ink.

I mostly sell local ads on my site, in addition, of course, to Adsense. I do get tickled sometimes that I make a living selling nothing on nothing, in exchange for something.

I remember in high school I took modern computing and they handed me a stack of punch cards in 1974.

I said, what is this? They said that is how you program.

No worries, I'll wait a few years.

Ink? Ink is a psychological state of mind.

Are your perceptions tangible in an intangible world.

I'm another that has clocked up a half century and an extra boundary on top.

I started programming on a teletype terminal with a 300 baud modem into a mainframe. Output to print or punched tape

I'm another that has clocked up a half century and an extra boundary on top

As they say, or should say, AdSense publishers don't get older, they just get smarter and better looking.

FarmBoy

Im 36 years old. I remember the old days where my mom bought her first computer. It was a Cyrix 486 AST computer she bought from Incredible Universe, which eventually became Frys Electronics. I remember internet was still fairly new and the thing at the time was dial up to local BBS's. I also remember the mouse pad that came with the computer, it had a number to call for a BBS and it said "For high speed 14.4K access, call [number here]". Played Doom2 via BBS's, made friends via BBS's. The cool part about that? I met my high school sweet heart. And October 2017 will be our 20th year marriage anniversary. Good times... Good times...

So here's a story that I think you guys will appreciate.

I got my first computer in late '94 or early '95, and signed up for internet service... of course, dial-up. I had no idea how it worked or what was going on, really, just what I'd seen in AOL commercials and Denis Leary's "Internet" commercials:

[youtube.com...]

(that one came a little later, but it's still nostalgic)

I lived in a large town at the time (not a city), and when I called the phone company (GTE) they asked what city was closest to me, then gave me a short list of 3 to choose from. I chose the one that was physically closest, and they gave me a number to enter for the dial-up connection...

A long distance number.

Naively thinking that GTE knew what they were doing, I happily typed everything in that they gave me. For the next month, I was online 24/7, downloading new browsers (which seriously would take more than 24 hours), games, I was in chat rooms (KeepTalking.com was my favorite), #*$! (5 minutes to download a picture, videos were unheard of), you name it.

Then I got my first bill... I'm not joking, over $2,500! This was at a time when I MIGHT have had $100 in the bank. My girlfriend (we had just moved in together) started crying, she KNEW we shouldn't have done this!

So I called the phone company, and the rep said, no, you used it, sorry! So I spoke to a supervisor, and then HIS supervisor, repeatedly explaining that there's no way it was my fault that they gave me a long distance number. Finally, someone finally understood what was going on, and said they would waive the cost that one time.

Phew!

I changed the dial-up number immediately, of course (they did have a local number, after all), and everything was fine. Right? Nope!

Next month comes, I get another phone bill, and this time it's $1,500! I look and figure it out; I had called in on the 25th of the previous month, but the bill date was for the 10th through the 9th. So, obviously, there was an overlap of 16 days where we had still been using the long distance number.

No problem, I had made a note of that last supervisor's name and he clearly understood, so I just called him back and explained the situation. His reply... "oh, no, we've already waived it one time, we're not doing it again!" He totally couldn't understand that the dates were from before when I called.

So I kept calling back, getting higher and higher up the chain, over the next several days. Until finally, I was seriously talking with someone in the Executive offices! Where FINALLY somebody understood the problem, and waived the second bill.

And that was my first experience with the internet :-)

@csdude55: totally relate but without the computers and without the happy outcome...

Back in the early 70's in western Canada, the summer after high school I met a loverly Danish woman on holiday... she went back to Denmark, and besotted me phoned her. For 2-1/2 hours. For those of you who are too young to remember before they broke up Mama Bell into the Baby Bells long distance calls were ummm, brutal. That 2-1/2 hours cost me $750 ($4500 today, pretty much my life savings at the time). And terminated our tentative relationship...

Today we'd be Facetiming/Skyping for basically free.