RetroFIRST...
 

With all the talk about the best robots ever, and things changing in the game, I thought it would be fun to reminice a little bit. To some, it might give you some scary memories, to others, it might raise a few questions...

Do You Remember...

...the dot matrix printer?

...hexagon shaped fields?

...the American Pavilion Theater?

...FIRST Jeopardy!?

...seatbelts in the human player station?

...human player helmets?

...the yellow position?

...Off Kilter?

..."Whatever it takes we'll make it by tommorow, whatever it takes you know it can be done..." (god i can't believe i remember the words to that)?

...The Voices of Liberty!?

...3D Studio Release 4 (Not Max!)?

...Sunny Delight?

...Big Jimmy the Wedgebot!!!?

...The infinate scoring plane of 1996?

...The absolute dead perfect tie during the finals in NJ in 97?

...The Placebo!!! (extra points if you can name what each one was)?

...Who "Steeeeeve" was at Rumble at the Rock?


Give yourself 1 point for each one of those you remember (also one point for each Placebo you named. If you get more than 10 points, you have been in FIRST for wayyyyyy too long!! :D

Congrats All!,
Andy Grady

What FIRST is....
 

Do I remember the above...you better believe it!!!! Those are the things that shaped my FIRST expirence and the things that I will always hold close to my heart when I think about FIRST. How I long for an 'infinte scoring plane' and to be able to yell "Steeeeeeve" just one more time at Rumble. How I remember 3DS4 cursing at it and loving it at the same time...endless animation meetings which gave way to computer lab baseball (another story). Placebos....we need them back....bring back the old seeding charts and the hovercraft placebo that is what I say...and it is all about the yellow position ;-) I remember when Blue Lighting was 121 and CHAOS was 108. Nothing will ever compare to "old FIRST" and sadly there are very few left who remember it. Nothing will compare to regionals at NHC...ever ;-)

*sighs*

-Justin

i know of none of that, except for maybe a dot matrix printer. will somebody please explain if you can?:)

Do You Remember...
 

Do You Remember...

...The "Threaded" CD Board, and its original forums?

...What an IBOT was?


p.s. I didn't score more than 10... just 10.

Steve Prairie <The quiet RAGE guy

I actually got to meet one of the drivers from 1994 Sunny Delight!
He was reffing with me in Seattle.

That was a hell of a bot!

PS - I scored higher than I should have, considering I joined FIRST in 00. (yay for being from an original team)

off kilter ruled!! the one thing that sucked about the american pavillion was the trek from there to the pits outside, across the dirt road with all the potholes and stuff....infinate scoring planes made my old team famous in the day...we were the only team who designed a robot to flip the goal on its side and drive in front of it to score points, sunny delight was an awesome team, with awesome buttons, and awesome animations. if you remember all that stuff.. then you have to remember Rnets....way old school, especially after running a match and those things were really hot!

I scored a 9
 

Wow you have some great oldies there! I got a nine but only because I remember scouring videos of the 1995-1996 games when we were rookies in 1997.

How about these oldies?

... Tekin speed controllers (usually smokin hot)

... detachable devices

... death from below (think "rules named after 121")

... last second HP shots changing the outcome of the game

... no alliances

Old
 

This whole thread makes me feel real old.....

Not really just brings back great memories.

Each year new things stand out so special they are remembered.

What will make the memories for this year.

I start....

The uphill trek from the Dome to the reliant. Up hill both ways, or so it seemed.

Ken Patten Wrote...
I think we need to make a movement for FIRST to bring back detatchable devices. Land mines were so cool!!! I remember Plymouth North (I believe) had some small landmines in 96. And I also remember the detachable wall blocker that one team had in 1993. (though ive only seen that on video).

Does anyone besides me actually remember FIRST Jeopardy???

Here is another remember when...

Remember when Chief Delphi used to do FIRST Pen Pals???

I think I can add a few more (eventhough my days in FIRST only date to 1998). Remember:

--Getting a list of all team contact information?

--Thinking of a hockey puck the first time you heard the word puck?

--Not thinking of a hockey puck when you hear the term puck?

--Being able to call Eric when you had questions about the rules?

--Having to order aluminum and steel from Small Parts (anyone else wind up with steel bases because aluminum would've broken the $450 budget?)

--Double elimination tournaments?

--One regional per weekend?

After writing this, I'm starting to feel old.

Matt

i'm not supposed to feel old..
 

I actually remember 8 of those..wow..and I was in middle school in 98/99..I really remember human players deciding it all. We managed to actually score that way! Our first robot..well..ya. I believe our first human player still has a big red ball and two pucks in his room

Off Kilter is still at Epcot. Go to the Canada pavilion.

As for the other ones, yes I know some.... but that's because I go to Epcot a lot!

Here's a few more:

-What a floppy is
-stretcher
-before Test Track opened
-before the ugly 'Epcot'/'2000' on Space Ship Earth
-Dean actually WALKING and not riding on something
-FLOOD

Re: Do You Remember...
 

The what? Oh wait.. yeah. :D

Anybody remember the old poll system?
The one that categorized results by engineer, student, coach and other? That was my first big 'from scratch' perl project. Man, that was ugly (code & presentation).

placebos
 

96' super sweet hovercraft with dry ice for effect

97' the vacuum cleaner, always fell over, also had the hovercraft around somewhere

98' triangle box on casters, terrible

with those three hits i went off the chart i think.

Re: Re: Do You Remember...
 

Care to try again?;)

I remember few to none from experiance, but can recall quite a few stories....


Wetzel
~~~~~~~
Not yet old

Here are some more blasts from the past...

- Robots made of plywood

- The infamous "2 on 1" strategy

- Two fields per stage/regional, with only one in use at a time

- Trying to calculate your seeding on Friday night (FIRST did nout publish seedings until Saturday morning)

- Playing matches every 10 minutes or so once you'd been relegated to the losers side of the bracket

- Teams outside of the top 8 being allowed to decline an alliance offer

- Pre-arranged alliances

- Two team alliances

- Calling timeouts

Wow, it has been a long time.

There are still a few of those around, just not in our shop. If we can bend 30x30 extrusion , how and why should we use wood?

Haha
 

The worst thing was when you spent a good 3 or 4 hours on friday night trying to calculate what the bracket was going to be for the next day. Then when you arrived at the competition, you found out that you were off by one seed...and your WHOLE bracket was trash!!! Ahhhh the good ol' days!

I resent that remark our robot had a piece of wood in it. It sure beat the plexiglass that we were going to use and it never broke.

Wow Andy... way to bring back the good ol' days :)

I loved the placebos... the placeb-o-matic especially :P

Anyone at Rumble the first year remember their placebo??? Points to anyone who remembers that :P

God I miss those days... the game was so great back then.. in '96 not only were the human players strapped in, but the driver's weren't behind plexiglass and they had TV screens at their stations to watch the videos.

Oh yeah, and you got the points you got.. not 2x the losers and all that jazz.

Thanks for the nostalgic moment :)

Speaking of Placebo's...
 

How about these...

Do you remember...

...Showbot!!!

...The robot crossing signs

...Talking trashcans

dont forget:

Andy the Astronaut!

[BTW - im trying hard to FORGET OffKilter: EEEEEEEeeeeeEEeeee EEEE EeEEeeeeEE eeeeEEe EeEEEEeeEeeeeEEEEEEEEEGh - nobody ever has a spear when you really need one (to poke your eardrums out!) ]

i remember alot of that stuff....

bringing it back to the old school FIRST days...
gotta love those floppies and inner tubes :)





edit: didn't realize i was posting under my brothers name...lol, really though, this is Team238-Aholic

-98 awards ceremony where off kilter got booed for playing during the winning animation

Re: Haha
 

Andy, I remember that feeling oh so well. '98 was my first year in FIRST, so I was still ridiculously eager. Friday night of Nationals (It was still called nationals back then, even though I was on the one and only Canadian team) I stayed up until 3am entering all the scores into an excel spreadsheet. Finally I got it all done, only to find out Saturday morning that about 3/4 of it was wrong. Despite my many errors, I still managed to correctly determine our first three opponents of the day. Was it worth it, probably not, but I'll never forget the arduous effort.

I've got a picture of one these somewhere in a photo drawer. I'll try and get it scanned.

Re: Speaking of Placebo's...
 

I actually still have a robot crossing sign...i remember i got the last one in 99, and there were people all over epcot trying to buy it off me...it got all the way up to 50 bucks, but i held on!

Re: RetroFIRST...
 

now someone has to fill me in on that one

Big Mike,

The dead tie in 1997 was probably one of the most amazing yet most boring matches of FIRST history. The RoboRaiders (team 75 in this age) went up against I believe TJ² in the finals. Now that year the idea was to get as many innertubes on the top of the goal as possible (at least that was the best way to score). The RoboRaiders had made a strategy out of going right after the other teams robot and not letting them near the human player throughout the whole playoffs. (The human player in that year was the best way to get 3 tubes if you wanted to get to the top first with a cap). Well, in the finals, both robots decided to do the same thing to each other, basically resulting in a long pushing match on the side of the field between the two teams. In the process, absolutely no tubes were touched on the field, and no tubes were thrown from the human player station. (The first tie breaker was the number of tubes in the human player station). When the two minutes were up, there was nothing moved on the field, no tubes scored, no tubes tossed. FIRST went town the whole list of tiebreakers and found that they tied in each and every category! Because of this, they had to repeat the round...which the RoboRaiders eventually won.

It was interesting to say the least.

One of the things I miss most from my high school days was breakfast at Liberty Inn before the day began.

Re: placebos
 

The hover craft was really neat! Do they still have it in storage?

As student driver, having a match against the vacuum cleaner in '97 MotoMidwest...with Eric (FIRST) as the driver.

"Hey, Eric, ... you're going down"

"Oh, yeah? I'm gonna 'clean' up this round."

We actually scored FOR the placebo that match trying to see if the scoring system would put them in 2nd place and our other opponent in 3rd. I think the placebo automatically got 0 pts and 3rd though, but we tried........It would have been interesting to say the least.

KA-108 :cool:

p.s. Andy, I got a 12. Yikes!

I might be able to find that video!!

...

96- one team (i wanna say today's #85) had a "bird cage" that held some of the small ball, then detached into the lower scoring area of the goal. This prevented, for the most part, any other teams' small ball from entering the area.

97- tons of teams had tree-toppers. P&G (former Sunny D) got a lot of oohs and ahhs the first time they showed their's at 97 MotoMidwest. Quickly teams figured how to defend them.

....

96- Nationals, In 1st or 2nd match of Saturday the goal was tipped over, and the crowd's reaction was "ut-oh, now what? There goes our strategy."

97- Brian Beatty's story: 97 MotoMidwest, They 'took out' a HP with their super-long extendo-arms by turning the wrong way with the robot. After that, HP's had to wear a face guard, not just a helmet.


KA-Moto108 :cool:

Do you remember the first time you used the word(s)...
Limbo
Hang
Feet per Second
Balance
Stategy Team
5 Minute Time Out
Curie, Archemides, etc. to refer to a stage
Multipliers

I seem to remember that the Placebo scored points in 1998 (as they had balls scored at the beginning of the found). I also seem to remember the placebo being in second place at least once (ahead of us if I remember correctly).

Matt

Now, those are more my speed... I've only been around since 2001, so I don't know most of the older ones. All of those ring a bell, though...

FIRST Jeopardy was so much fun. One of my friends did that and she didn't know any of the easy questions but when it came to the ones that most people don't know she had them right off.

I remember cheering for the placebo on my old team and we would always get disappointed when they lost...

Does anyone remember Pep Bands? Like the one in 96 in New Hampshire.

-30 seonds, 45 seconds, and 1:30 anyone remember those?

Do you remember the original rules on that so that if you stopped a second early you would get a multiplier?

Hurray team updates!
:rolleyes:


Wetzel

I do. That seemed like the dumbest thing in the world, which I think is why they changed it. Now, there's also the fact that time multipliers in general seemed like the dumbest thing in the world, but that's another story entirely...

Actually R.A.G.E. has been using plywood religously. Every year for like the past at least 4 the base has been plywood. So it isn't really only in the past now is it.:D

Helooooo memories!
 

Wow, I remember all too many, maybe even all of those thing. Everything that's been mentioned, not just the original list. Crazy stuff, I tell you.

So, not that I've been all too active in FIRST lately (college and dance, *sigh*), I still keep my feet wet in and around it. I've been around since back in the day, '94. FIRST has been in my blood for quite some time now, it's just been put on the back burner recently. I'm graduating from WPI May 17th and starting work at BAE sometime in the summer. I may get back into being an active participant with 166 (my former team) and 151, but we'll see how work goes first. Look for me again at more competitions than just NH over the next couple years. I likely won't be able to keep myself away. :cool:

Oh yeah, much thanks to Justin Tresvik for having a link to this thread in his AIM profile. So much the memories...

I LOVE this thread!! Hey...remember Lori Buckley Ragas?
 

Was she the best or what??!! Hey Lori, if you're out there, how about letting those of us who love you and miss you know how you are?

And does anyone remember when you could sit down and read EVERYTHING on the ChiefDelphi site in about an hour? And there weren't 50 categories? Everything was just all stuck together on a couple pages?

Does anyone remember the Zeeland (Michigan) competition in May? We started the Sweet Repeat because of them!

Remember when Disney used to put on a huge laser light show and have dancers for the awards ceremonies?

I, too remember being able to call Eric Rasmussen for anything technical, and he'd get right on the phone with you! Also, Tony Norman of Innovation FIRST down in Texas.....boy, I bet I spent hours talking to him.

Here's another one.....remember 'floppies'?

Remember all the guys on Wildstang BEFORE they started wearing tye dye?

Re: I LOVE this thread!! Hey...remember Lori Buckley Ragas?
 

My friend and I got charged with painting all the innertubes for the '97 competition there. We were up until like 4am with that nasty elastomeric (sp?) paint the night before. And on top of that, when we went to the paint store to buy it, they didn't have any stock colors other than white so they had to mix it up. I told them we needed red, white, and blue. They added as much tinting as they could, but we still ended up with PINK innertubes!

I still have all the video from that competition. I should dig that up one of these days.
I thought I remember Wildstang wearing tie-dye their first year out (1996)?

Could be wrong, but I thought Wildstang wore tye dye in 99 first
 

.

Wildstang has worn tiedye for every year except one, since 1996. I have them all. The one year we did not was a year of blue bowling shirts that had our names on the front of the shirt. That year was 1999 and this was the logo on the back. And the shirts were awful hot in Florida. No one knew who we were without tiedye and they didn't believe us even when we told them.

I can't imagine Wildstang without tiedye... it just wouldn't be right. It would be as bad (or worse) than my team without our black FEDS shirts..

I remember all that and more.. We were one that had a detachable wing that blocked the goals in 93. (Keene High) In 94 they added a no projectile rule just for us

Now for the real old timers...
Remember the Corn and tethered robots?
Remember those little soccer ball trophies?
the banquet at the Center of NH with crazy slinkies and glow sticks?
When the championship was held with 28 teams? can you name the teams?
When you had a name not a team number?
when it was USFirst?
Robot Crossing was a way of life, as was shuttles through the backlots of EPCOT.
The Kit of Parts with the Dot matrix Printer. we always managed to use something from the printer.
movable pucks, and the infamous Placebo.
Thanks for the memories!

old days
 

Tony Norman of Innovation First...How about Tony Norman from E-Systems.... A 1994 USFIRST Yearbook goes to the first responder with the name of the two schools on his old team.

By the way...I still want to trade something to get a Maize Craze shirt.

Re: old days
 

Was it...

Dallas Christian School
and Greenville High School - both in TX?

Tom

Remember adding the no detachable parts rule.

This is for Joe....

Remember when FIRST would let you pay your registration fees whenever you happened to have the money as opposed to making the deadline a hard date?

Matt

Remember when the Chairman's Award did not have a restriction on size or view length