Main Area and Open Discussion > Living Room

Things your kids will never know - old school tech!

<< < (34/35) > >>

Shades:
<off-topic>
That is an interesting one, zridling. If I may say so, super-capitalism, fear-mongering and (old time "favorite") greed, mixed together as a cocktail became too popular too quickly on a global scale.

Let's hope that the new US president (and his team) will be able to water this cocktail down (a lot) and make that just as popular as the previous one.

Being born in the (early) 70's I experienced a great childhood where inventing/creativity was stimulated in all things virtually without limit. Nowadays as a kid you are hitting boundaries very quickly set by everybody and their favorite community (government/corporation/shareholder).

To me it looks like that environments responsible for my childhood, produce more free minds that in turn produce more innovation which IMHO is the only way forward.
</off-topic>

<on-topic>
Does anyone remember "boomerang guns"? I had a lot of fun with those...not only when hitting the target or catching them in mid-air, but also when climbing on sheds/over walls to retrieve a "lost" boomerang.

They still make those guns  :)

richel8:
old school don't have high tech computers....

http://www.fieldstoneacademy.org

Darwin:
old school don't have high tech computers....

http://www.fieldstoneacademy.org
-richel8 (May 24, 2009, 08:51 AM)
--- End quote ---

Ironically, the webpage you linked to features a picture of a kid sitting at a desk surfing the web on a notebook computer - see upper right hand of the webpage  ;D

40hz:
One thing they will never know (unless they develop an interest in electronics or go for an EE degree) is the joys of getting down and dirty on a fundamental level with computer hardware.

Anybody remember the Kim-1 single-board computer trainer kits? Don Lancaster, who was one of the earliest computer hardware columnists, used to wax poetic about starting with one of these. I took his advice and never looked back. I spent many hours on this little monster back in the days when you did machine code in actual machine code. Assemblers? "We didn't need no steenkin' assemblers!" Back then, a code monitor was considered pretty posh.





I cut my programming teeth on the 6502. After working out a simple program (and laboriously keying it in) you could actually envision the bits and bytes streaming down the circuit traces on that ugly green board. Almost felt like a mystical experience, except it came partnered with a pretty good neck cramp and watery eyes since it took forever to key the code in.

Much like the fans of vintage radios, there are people still  in love with the Kim-1. Here's a link to one Kim-1 enthusiast site for anyone who's interested: http://www.kim-1.com/index.html

In looking back, I'm glad I was there when this stuff first came out. That being said, I wouldn't want to go back there for anything. ;D

merkin:
Text based adventures (Scott Adams, Infocom).

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page