Hey, I thought it was The 5th Dimension who recorded that! LOL

It's always fun to pull a fast one on the young'uns. :D

My brother got me one of those cards, with the front that read, "True rock and rollers never get old..."

Inside - "...they just keep rockin' to the classics." With "Sweet Home Alabama" blaring out.

The funniest part was his little note that fell out, which read, "I'm trying to sign this card while at work, but I don't want to raise a ruckus. I'm slipping this note in as carefully as possible." LOL!!! I could just picture him there in his cubicle, trying to be stealthy.

Brenda

Brenda, you're probably right about the 5th Dimension...ya know the memory is the first thing to go...:0)

OH NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We missed Sheepco's birthday, or at least I did!

So happy belated, hope it was wonderful!

late happpy bday!

here's one, not to interrupt but i know you would enjoy this. i am 35, not that old really TO BE EXPLAINING TO A 20 YR OLD WHAT A RECORD IS!!!!! yep.

I should have started another thread for the b-day wishes, so folks wouldn't miss it! Yet another bad habit of mine. :D

Sarah, I'm not yet in that age group listed above, but yeah....the mind is...uh...yep. What you said. LOL

Explaining the concept of the "8-track" is fun, too, FTM. Fun as a stick in the eye. I love how they look at you and burst out laughing. Some day, they'll have to explain CDs, though, and THAT should be fun. :D

Brenda

I believe! I think I was almost out of high school. Heeheehee.

About the 8-track. Listen to this one. Two of my daughters are camping this weekend (with one DH and the two grandchildren), with my minivan. Says one of them, "Mom! The CD player?"
It's a cassette tape player.

And I just emptied a drawer full of video tapes... the VCR hasn't been connected for ages. I need room for the DVD's. But I can't throw them away - many of them are SUCH GOOD movies! Including the home movies, of course.

:) Mary

i fear i will be just like my grandmother....when cds came out, i refused to purchase them and kept getting cassettes. i never even had a cd until, oh, 2003?

Ahem! I just got a CD player when I bought a 2003 jeep in '04, and I still don't have a DVD (mostly just 'cause I rarely watch the TV or movies). Now I have a portable CD player so I'm moving up in the world. But it still has a cassette player in it - my folks had to search forever to get one that had both when I asked for one for my last birthday!

8-tracks were quite the latest when I was in Jr High, all the cool guys installed them in their cars. And records...I no longer have a "record player" but can't stand to throw out my classic vinyl, I'm pretty sure they'll be worth something on Antiques Roadshow in the near future.

Oops, as Krista would say "Too much information!" (She also rolls her eyes and shudders when anyone over 25 at work mentions S-E-X. I guess only people under 30 do that too!)

PS: Thanks for the BD wishes! And the humor!

Sarah, do keep those records... and in the original sleeves, keep them dry etc etc. We "inherited" my father's record collection when he moved into a nursing home, and it's priceless. DH has actually bought a new needle for the record player, and some cleaning tools. Some day* he's going to put them on CD's. There are old musicals, country and western (Jim Reeves!), lots of classical, different European countries' folk music, etc.

:) Mary

* "Some day" is going to be a very busy day....

i'm determined to find a stereo with a record player! i also remember 8 tracks.
like sheepco, the reason i even got a cd was b/c there was a cd player in my truck. my specifications also that the truck needed a cassette player or i would pass on it. my current car does not have a cassette player :(

i didn't have a cellphone until 2 years ago. but it isnt' the most up to date all the recent technology kind. nope, i said, "show me the one with the full rebates." no computer until this year and still very recently. i do not have a dvr but i do have a dvd player. i don't have an ipod. or a blackberry. or a pda. or satellite radio. or onstar. gasp!

No offense, but do FTM and I really need an ipod? Isn't that why we have the old am/fm radio? Where you just tune it to another station if you want a new song?

However, I do like my 'puter (but it doesn't have speakers) :)

Even worse, try explaining reel to reel. I keep expecting someone who transferred all their music to stereo VCR tape to say something. For the computer minded, how about floppies? Sandy (as she slowly creeps out to feed her fishies)

:)
i meant to add earlier that i would like to transfer all my records and cassettes to cd's. i forgot about floppies!

oh, i also do not have an mp3. i do have a digital camera, though not the greatest.

what's wrong with us?!

Speaking of record players, I had to do some serious hunting a few years back to find one for my mom's Christmas present! People would look at me like, Why do you want one of those?? We were actually able to find one at Fry's Electronics, and it also has a CD player for her collection of those, as well. :)

I still don't have a cell phone, and I don't ever want one. I don't have any of those other things listed, either (ok, I do have a DVD/CD burner on my computer). If anyone cares to reach me, wait until I get home. :D

Brenda

Sandy, I just read today that the hard drive has turned 50!

1956: IBM ships the first hard drive, the RAMAC 305, which holds 5MB of data at $10,000 a megabyte. It is as big as two refrigerators and uses 50 24-inch platters. [WHEW! Expensive! And talk about bulky!]

2006: Cornice and Seagate each announce a 1-inch hard drive that holds 12GB. The drives are slated to ship in the third quarter of 2006. [One inch...amazing!]

Floppies may come and go, but hard drives are here to stay....well, for now. :D

FTM, I had my mom's old home movies transferred to VHS a few years back, so I bet you can have your music transferred, too.

I remember waiting for Dad to get the reels loaded up correctly so we could watch them projected against the living room wall. And then part way through, the tape would break! Bummer! :D

It looks like I better get my hands on that VHS so I can have it made into a DVD. Or maybe I'll wait for new technology. LOL

Brenda

Here is a link that might be useful: 50 Years of Hard Drives

I learned to program in Algol 60 in my first real job in 1970, and we used a 1000 kb Elliot computer. It was housed in an addition to the building. There were a handful of girls that typed up our code unto PAPER TAPE, which we then picked up in cardboard boxes. Then you wrote the name of the program on the side of the box. And walked it over to the computer room.

It was a giant event when they upgraded to a Philips magnetic tape! computer in '72 - they skipped paper cards! and they !WOW! even had four or so keyboards! with monitors! in another room! adjoining! the air-coinditioned! computer room! But I didn't have enough rank to be allowed to use those, I was only a newbie.

And they used those giant obnoxiously loud line printers.

:) Mary

I took a look at that link, Brenda. I remember my first experience selling one of Seagate's Winchester Drives and how petrified I was at the idea I might have made a mistake recommending it for the customer. We had 3 people trying to figure out how to make it work. On one hand I had people demanding more and more memory and on the other were demands that I promise they would never need more than 8K or 16K or that magic number 64K. It was amazing how creative people could get when they had only that much to use. I remember one company that tried to sue because they couldn't get that promise and wanted perpetual hardware and software upgrades at no cost, including training, for a 64k desktop purchase. I am so glad I don't have to keep up any more. Remember the Texas Instruments 6x8 inch mini? Sandy

not to change the subject, but i forgot about hd tv. not here...

brenda, i THINK, with the right equiptment i am supposed to be able to burn them onto a cd with my computer. perhaps throught the use of a microphone, but maybe it would hook up to a stereo somehow. hmmmmmm, now to find the right stereo. i don't have one!

"Remember the Texas Instruments 6x8 inch mini?"

Sandy, you are dating yourself again! :-)

I definitely remember TI, Commodore, & Atari. These days people complain when they have to use a 56,000 baud modem. I thought I was BLAZING when I bought a 300 baud modem!!! You could actually watch the words SLOWLY scroll across the screen as you logged onto a BBS (pre-internet era).

1" hard drives??! Pffff...... Give me back those bulky 5-1/4 floppies that would bend and corrupt so easily!

ha! there's another thing not in this house. thanks for your patience while i continue to compile my list. it isnt' i am trying to be obnoxious. it just drives me crazy how everyone is always knocking at your door. no gamecube, nintendo, etc.

now, wheni was a kid we had one of those black and white plug into the tv things that played jai lai, tennis, and something else. we thought we had it made! it was years later before we had an atari 64. many years, whenever it was when it came out.

and who else only got 3 channels on their tv?

Three channels here, FTM! Well, back then. Now, I can't keep track. LOL And no HD for me, or video game stuff. My favorite computer "gadget" is my 17" flat-screen LCD monitor. :D

PONG!!! I loved Pong. The new (tennis) commercial on TV featuring Pong is pretty funny.

I love all of your stories! Sandy, I don't remember any of that. I remember when my mom got her computer (first in the family!) about 11 years ago. That's when I began to learn about them. LOL

Brenda

When the average person entered the computer age it was either enough to get you committed or totally hilarious. Some business men were offended by such things as graphics (other than pie charts), a 12 year old who could write code and being forced to deal with the guys with the screwdriver in the pocket protector. Color other than green was strange. I always figured it was because it was the color of money. I think it was Word Perfect that come out with a blue screen and I had several people that thought something was wrong. Programs came with huge instruction manuals and they always had glitches. I would get weekly updates for one program that had 12 books. Sometimes the update would be 20 or 30 pages long. Then the update got updated. I had a six foot long bookcase with 4 shelves devoted to the hardware manuals and I read them all. Those got updated too.
There were memory upgrades that couldn't be accessed except by turning off the programs that needed the data that was stored on the upgrade. Not all floppies were 5.25. There were also 8 inch. I think I may even have a few somewhere. The computer is long gone but DH keeps taking them out of the trash. There's even a partial roll of flat rainbow wire for making cables to connect anything. You had to make your own because there were no standards between manufacturers. To change printers or add stuff you had to know which of a half dozen or more toggles to flip inside the CPU. And that was after making a cable that had up to 64 wires on each end to hard wire. Clip on type connectors were a great time saver.
Do they still sell diddle sticks? A common practice was to protect a program from being copied by changing the speed of the disk drive to the point where the data was read only or insert so many blank areas on the original and the copy would automatically eliminate them and make the copy crash. All a teenager needed to pirate a program was a diddle stick (you couldn't use a regular screwdriver to adjust the screw that controlled the speed). If the case covering the drive was missing the screws that held it on you knew you had a pirate.
Are you bored yet?

Wait! Programs don't come with huge instruction manuals anymore? I still need Windows for Dummies.

"When the average person entered the computer age it was either enough to get you committed or totally hilarious."
This is ME NOW! "I KNOW NOTHING, NOTHING..." :0) Thank god my sister's significant other is a whiz or I'd still be using the Mac my dad (he doesn't know anything either, but has a university's whole commuter lab to help him out)pawned off on me years ago!

Pong! What year did that come out? That was the first game we had at home! And it wasn't very long after we got our first color TV. Quite frankly it didn't hold us kids attention for long, there were tree forts to build and marshmellows to roast and games of kick the can to play!

FTM, 3 channels here back then too, and even now I only have 5 out here in the country (and I only really watch 3 of those). Too cheap to go for cable or whatever the latest is. Though I'm looking into something faster than dail-up net!

Love the stories!

"Programs don't come with huge instruction manuals anymore?"

Not like the ones Sandy is talking about. They made War & Peace novel look like Reader's Digest material. Undoubtedly, there were a lot of bored technical writers back in the 80's.

A pistol at home? Nah! I keep an old DOS manual under the bed!!!

My life was made sooo much more complicated by being the person who found the vendors, contacted them for info and finally ordering the stuff. Then you would find the stuff wasn't compatible with your other stuff without a lot of experimenting, or that the directions had been translated by someone who was not an english speaker. For some reason my letters to manufacturers in Japan would wind up going through the Japanese Embassy and the dialogue could get very strange. The import/export regulations were stranger. It seems that some computers were shipped to Japan where they were then sold to US customers and shipped back. Despite the claim "we could create many moonies together" I decided to let the bigger companies handle the paper work. Sandy

Watching my (older) former boss, as well as my mother-in-law, type their fingers off while in DOS, I was amazed and a little bit jealous! Here they were entering stuff that was Greek to me. "Oh, this is nothing! I don't know anything about computers," they'd say. *clackity-clack-clack* I always wished that I'd learned DOS at some point, but now...what's the point? :D

LOL @ the DOS manual under the bed! Now, THAT I could wield with no problems. Look out, kitty!

Brenda

Like many other dealers I had to learn several operating systems. Some must have stuck better than others. Sometimes now the machine will start beeping away and I look up to see I have been entering commands in an obsolete code. Sandy