Back in my day...

[sanddrag]

You guys have better stories than mine but I'll post anyhow. Back in my day kids rode bikes after school and on weekends. Cell phones were mainly just expensive options in cars, then we got motorola flip phones.

We had Apple IIe computers at school with 5 1/4" floppy drives on which we played Oregon Trail and fun math games. I had a IIc+ at home. After a short while, as mentioned above, AOL CDs were everywhere. I remember at school when we got PowerPC Macs they were the most remarkable thing. I remember when my 6th grade classroom got one that we would take turns using. Alta Vista was the best search engine on the web. Netscape Navigator was the browser of choice. There was no such thing as Google. I remember reading in the newspaper about how telephone lines would "soon be able to transmit data at much faster speeds of 56 kbps." I remember at that time we had a 14.4 modem at home, that made all sorts of silly noises. Web pages loaded about a 1/2 inch at a time, down the screen. The internet was not full of ads and spam and hobbyists and individuals put great effort into making web pages with quality information that was often quite interesting. Animated GIFs were the hot ticket for making a web page fancy.

I miss the early days of the internet.

The other day I found a receipt for a Pentium MMX 233MHz computer we bought from CompUSA in 1997. It came in just under $2000.

When eBay came to be, it was individuals, in the United States, selling their unique used stuff. You would pay for it with a money order in the mail. People paid insane amounts of money for Pogs and beanie babies. Radio Shack had the best RC cars around, and actually sold radio equipment...

Middle school had classes like Wood Shop and Drafting. Students knew how to respect their teachers, and could pay attention and read books, without having to constantly be entertained.

In high school, I got one of the first color cell phones for about $400.

FIRST Robots were programmed in PBASIC, were powered by drill motors, and you could only buy parts from the Small Parts catalog or a small list of approved materials.

That's about all I remember. Sometimes I want those days back.

[AllenGregoryIV]

Back in my day
- We had large rotating police lights on our robots
- Bumpers were an obscure rule that no one dreamed of implementing
- We programmed in PBASIC (The emulator was a lot better back than, thanks to rbayer)
- Autonomous mode was brand new, and very unexpected
- Only 4 robots were on the field at a time
- The van door motor was awesome
- The battery counted as part of your weight

This thread made me way to nostalgic. I want to play stack attack again.

Also looking back it's nice to see most of the issues Dr. Joe outlined here have been solved

[EricH]

Originally Posted by AllenGregoryIV

- Bumpers were an obscure rule that no one dreamed of implementing

Gotta call you on that. At least one team did, and the next year the standard design came out. IIRC, there was some sort of weight-transfer system inside.

Most other teams used a wedge instead.

Oh, right:

Back in my day, robots were built to flop down onto their drivetrain from vertical!
Back in my day, there was no limit to a robot's expansion!
Back in my day, drill motors were the drivetrain motor of choice!
You kiddies don't even know how good you have it. Back in my day, the Kitbot was about 3 aluminum beams, some drill motors, and pray you had the smarts to put it together! (The kickoff video one year included "look-ins" at a group of about 3 "average joes" putting it together. Only problem? That's 3 average joes with PhDs.)
Back in my day, there was a large obstacle in the middle of the field.

[Taylor]

Back in my day, the Unofficial Caption Contest was actually scored over the weekend

[MrForbes]

...robots were something we saw on Star Trek and Lost in Space

[Warren Boudreau]

Engineers used slide rules to design airplanes that could do Mach 3+.

Computers were the imagination of science fiction authors.

[ebarker]

Originally Posted by squirrel

...something we saw on Star Trek

They had the little devices that they flipped open called communicators.

Today we call them "flip phones with speakerphone".

Back in the day the 'communicator' was sheer fantasy. Today they are ubiquitous.

[Peyton Yeung]

Back in my day every high school student was on a FIRST Robotics team.....ps I'm from the future

[Molten]

Originally Posted by Taylor

Back in my day, the Unofficial Caption Contest was actually scored over the weekend

Sounds like someone is going to score -infinity.

On topic though...

Back in my day:
Cartoons had a moral to the story.
The violence was outlandish and plentiful.
The video games were 2-D.
School vending machines had candy in them and no raisins.
Rosie O'Donnell did a talk show.

[DonRotolo]

Originally Posted by Taylor

Back in my day, the Unofficial Caption Contest was actually scored over the weekend

Burn FTW!

Back in my day, if you were out and had to make a phone call, you got a dime and went to a public pay phone. If you were lucky, there was a dime already in the coin return.

[ebarker]

When I was a kid I had to call my aunt in a town 54 miles away. I had to pick up the phone and "rotary dial' a zero, an OPERATOR answered and I'd say "I like 'such and so' and the OPERATOR would say 'Please Hold' - and she would get an operator in the next town to finish the other end of the connection.

Another day I was digging around in an old drawer and found an old ticket, to ride the steam train to the next town, 17 miles away, for 15 cents. The ticket had been redeemed so it wasn't like they lost the fare.

A few years ago I was rummaging around an antique shop in Minnesota and bought myself a B-Battery Voltage Meter. They had no clue what it was and why it was on the plains of Minnesota.

Back in the day - if you wanted to listen to the radio in the evening you needed an A battery, a B battery, a C battery to run the radio. If you want to learn more about the technology go research an early edition of "Elements of Radio" by Marcus and Marcus. To learn more about the culture listen to the references from Garrison Keillor on Prairie Home Companion.

[treffk]

I can't believe this hasn't been said yet, or I missed it, but back in my day....

Pluto was a planet.

[Taylor]

Originally Posted by Molten

Back in my day:
Rosie O'Donnell did a talk show.

Back in my day, Rosie O'Donnell was a backwards-hat wearing comedienne on the Improv. She later hosted it.

[Molten]

Originally Posted by Taylor

Back in my day, Rosie O'Donnell was a backwards-hat wearing comedienne on the Improv. She later hosted it.

Touché, good sir. You outdid me on this one.

[EricH]

Back in my day, floppy disks were at least as common as CDs.
Back in my day, the same went for cassette tapes.