Comments on: Headlines We Never Thought We’d See in 1983

By: Philocrites

Philocrites — Sat, 12 Feb 2005 15:36:34 +0000

I should add that my dad had the computer. When I ambled off to college in 1989, I took a Sears electric typewriter. I wrote most of my papers in student computing labs, though, since the typewriter wasn’t exactly at the top of its class at storing data. I received my own computer — a Macintosh Performa — as a graduation present.

By: PeaceBang

PeaceBang — Fri, 11 Feb 2005 23:00:15 +0000

You guys were highly technologically advanced! We had a Texas Instruments chunk of plastic at home that just looked ugly in the den and which I could never figure out. When I went off to college in 1984, no one had their own computer except that rich kid Alex in my sophomore year dorm. We carried around floppy disks to use in the computer lab. I stuck to my trusty typewriter until I graduated and someone taught me to use a Mac. My dear old Ex and I were reminiscing the other night about how often we’d run out of typewriter ribbon in the middle of the night before a major paper deadline. “Why the hell didn’t we buy five or six at a time?” I asked him. “Because we were TOO POOR!!” he said, and we guffawed.
He’s an actor whose parents told him he was crazy to major in theatre. Nineteen years later I’m proud to say he’s making his living as an actor/director/writer and bringing in plenty of bacon to feed his wife and new baby. Mad props to you, Minnesota Flash. Happy 19th anniversary of our first tumble (feb. 8th).

By: fausto

fausto — Fri, 11 Feb 2005 22:34:57 +0000

I had a “portable” Osborne 1, about the size and weight of a sewing machine, with a built-in 4″ monitor and a whopping 64k of memory, supplemented by VisiCalc and WordStar on 5″ floppies for breezing through my grad school assignments, hooked up to a klackety-klack daisy wheel printer.

By: Philocrites

Philocrites — Fri, 11 Feb 2005 22:23:59 +0000

Except that we did have a computer in my house: An Apple IIe, which replaced a Commodore Pet, and which I was using at the time to write my JRR Tolkien knock-off. Oh, the memories!