Yes and no.
Computers and computer systems weren’t so much enshittified back in those days.
But the bulk CRT screens, I don’t miss those…
By the way, at those times almost every screen had one of those stupid placebo ‘glare filters’ . I don’t miss those either.
Oddly, I want the CRT’s, but those optiplexes are horrible.
I just want one crt per system for retro gaming.
Computers were still exciting. And hadn’t been enshitified.
Yes, computers were fun and exciting. Now they just suck.
Unless Linux. But even then it takes an effort to disable all the bloat and spyware bs in the bios.
what do you mean by bloat and spyware on linux? (asking because it’s the first time i hear this take)
In the bios: it’s the booting software that’s separate from the OS. Most newer computers have ridiculously long menu’s and you have to be careful what you disable because of bit locker nonsense and whatnot.
Computer class in high school back then for me was treating them as glorified typewriters. I fooled around with some VBScript as that’s all we had available (I was very fortunate my grade school teacher taught us LOGO) and I managed to script kiddy my way into admin access for the internet filter for my friends so we could play stuff on Newgrounds. My career advisor told me to get a science degree because there was no future in computers, haha.
Computer lab day!
I see your nostalgia and raise you this:
I see your nostalgia and raise you this: this
I actually had to learn to use a slide rule in high school, in the late 1970s.
thhhick
I remember essentially turning a BASIC prompt into a spinning, geometric rave decoration back in 5th grade, and thinking it was the coolest shit ever, but really… it was all about Math Blaster and The Oregon Trail in the years up to that point, and for several years later.
And yes, I’d go back in a heartbeat.
I used to love lifting my feet, putting one hand on the monitor screen, turning it off, and shocking the hell out of whoever was sitting beside me.
Don’t they still use computers in schools?
What? Computers are all in schools, and libraries are still a thing too. This is about the old times.
I don’t understand the picture not being a shared experience.
I learnt to type on a piece of paper that had a picture of a keyboard on it.
You must be young and never experienced floppy drives.
If I was I wouldn’t be asking if kids don’t go through this now.
Simpler times? Hell no they don’t.
Throwback to hand writing assignments then everyone is lined up to the only computer in the school to type it out.
In sixth grade we could rent the laptop brick for the weekend; it’s where I played Police Quest 1.
In the early 90s I went to computer camp at Aldersgate in Rhode Island and we had a whole room in the retreat center for the TRS-80 Model 4’s.
In university in 2000, nothing beat the networked computers with the cables running the ceiling in the metal trays.
Windows 95 in high school was peak though.
Ah, the good old automatic information processing class lol.
I only miss running down the row and pressing the degauss button on every monitor.
I was more in team starfield and pipes and later flying toasters.
Yes, but because it was completely pre-enshitification internet, with so much hope and promise to be something good for everyone.
It was kinda shit but it was shit because it was shit. It was improving every day and the sky was the limit.
Thats what I miss most about the past. The feeling of hope. Things would get better. Tomorrow was a bright place.
The continuous improvement is what I remember the most! At least how I remember the internet of old, it was like a constant stream of something new, from random funny links of random sites, to big new major projects surfacing. It was cool
Anyone, could throw up a website and get hits, and feel like the world gave a damn. Remember when your site visit counter was THE coolest part of your little site??
Yeah, it was a pretty fun time, before the feeling that everything had to be owned by a mega corporation that would wring every drop off cash out of it.
I distinctly remember the 90s internet. It was a paradise.
Yeah, man, I was so full of hope and so excited about the possibilities.
I was going to say something similar. Stuff ran slow because of slow processing not because of a shit load of overhead like now bad webui and stuff.
Pre Internet
Well, pre-WWW. There was internet, but you had to use telnet and remote into computers. Lots of bulletin board systems.
Yep BBS. So much of Halt and Catch Fire hit home.
I used to write the software to refresh and update student labs like that. There’s nothing quite as satisfying as seeing the entire lab reboot simultaneously … and nothing quite as frustrating as seeing all of them fail at the same point in the boot process … thanks to Microsoft.
I administered windows w/netware and zen …. The frustration it could cause but when it all worked it was a sight to behold
Yeah, NetWare and Zen with NAL in full flight was a thing to behold. Instead we got Active Directory.
I got to use my Netware 4.x admin certification a little while ago. A new customer was having a tangential problem that I overheard, they were still running Netware and couldn’t figure out how to make it work. So I showed them some things and quickly admonished them to get anything newer.
