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The Old Coots Lounge

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14:59 / 17.01.06

Coal deliveries

Oof! Yes! We had them. A big dirty man would empty his sack into a brieze block bunker in the back garden. Me and a cousin hid in there once, came out covered in coal dust and had it washed off *in the kitchen sink*. That was the same cousin who did a poo in the bath - our bath, with me still in it.

15:02 / 17.01.06

Vinyl with computer programmes in the runout groove.

Tell me more about these, please.

I don't remember them at all.

Mon Oncle Ignatius

15:14 / 17.01.06

There's some useful information on vinyl software here. The one I knew about was the Inner City Unit album, New Anatomy, which I never actually owned. I knew someone who had the LP, and I seem to remember we tried to get the programme to work on a Spectrum at some point or other, though ze had a C64, so perhaps not.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

18:51 / 17.01.06

My mother was actually rushed to the maternity ward on a milk float. No shit. (That may have been more a Liverpool thing than a 1971 thing, though).

I remember I used to have a flexidisc (whoah, remember them?) with a Spectrum program on it, which accompanied a song by a band called Mainframe (the song was called "Talk To Me", as I recall)- the program was one of those thingies where you played music into the computer and it made funny patterns, although this being the Spectrum it was more a case of making some squares change colour in time to the song.

22:07 / 17.01.06

22:13 / 17.01.06

I vaguely remember those fellows from my university days. I think they were an agitprop collective. Practised above the Westport as I recall.

ONLY NICE THINGS

22:21 / 17.01.06

Oh, yes. I remember Prince of Persia. On the SAM.

Mon Oncle Ignatius

22:43 / 17.01.06

You remember the SAM? You used a SAM? Now there's obscure, now...

I always wanted to try an MSX as it seemed so exotic, but only ever used an emulator.

Madman in the ruins.

10:37 / 18.01.06

Oh lordy. The Spectrum vs Commodore debates that raged around the schoolyard.

And lets doff our hats to those that fell by the wayside. The Dragon 32, the Tandy, the Acorn Electron (brought for kids by parents who thought computers were educational, as opposd to spending 4 hours a night playing manic miner)

Mon Oncle Ignatius

10:41 / 18.01.06

I had an Amstrad CPC, eventually. With a disc drive! Somehow I even managed to sell it once I no longer wanted it to a computer games shop in Swansea in about 1988.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

10:41 / 18.01.06

The Vic 20. Now THERE was a machine. Even had its own Miner Willy game- The Perils Of Willy. Kind of like the original Manic Miner, but played Stairway To Heaven instead of Hall Of The Mountain King.

lord nuneaton savage

11:07 / 18.01.06

Our Amstrad CPC actually exploded, nearly killing me and my brother. You just don't get that kind of risk with one of those new fangled "Games Consoles".

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

11:10 / 18.01.06

Yeah, what's with all this "games console" nonsense?

"TV games", sonny. "TV games".

lord nuneaton savage

11:22 / 18.01.06

Although it should be said that owning a CPC was quite frustrating. Despite its incredible loading time of 11 seconds (11 seconds? Extraordinary!) they didn't produce as many games for it. I never got Robocop, for example and am sad to this day.

That and the amount of glass they had to remove from my face.

11:28 / 18.01.06

Our Amstrad CPC actually exploded, nearly killing me and my brother. You just don't get that kind of risk with one of those new fangled "Games Consoles".

That's brilliant!

I remember studying Basic and Logo at computer club in the early 80s, and talking about "Machine Code" in hushed whispers. I was told by a boy at school that Machine Code could be "accessed" by connecting the joystick port to the power socket.

What about micro-switches, they were great.

Mon Oncle Ignatius

11:53 / 18.01.06

I never got Robocop, for example and am sad to this day.

You should be able to get it from here and run it under emulation.

It was a great game, one of the first I got, on one of those bundle a load of games on a disc comps - remember them?

11:56 / 18.01.06

You are all such geeks.

Is this an inappropriate place for such statements, I wonder?

I had games on floppy disks, and I too blew up my machine buy squeezing three disks in all at once. Ah, the acrid smoke, the parental panic...

I was gutted that I couldn't ever play Hopper again. Damn that cheeky frog.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

11:59 / 18.01.06

Cor, floppy disks? They were the height of sophistication- it was all tapes round our way.

I remember (cue the Dvorak "Hovis Music"- another blast from the past) cycling four miles after school every day to go to my friend's house because his dad had A Computer, and we could play text adventures on it. Only for an hour, mind you... but it was the coolest thing in the world ever.

13:36 / 18.01.06

Text games! They rocked. Maybe it's time for a new one in Creation.

What about hand-held gaming devices like Game and Watches (or should that be Games and Watch)? Remember the excitement when they came out with double screens? Donkey Kong, Oil Panic. And they taught us the only proper way to set an alarm - by poking about with your pen in a tiny hole.

01:29 / 20.01.06

5 1/4 inch floppies? Pooh. How about the original 8 inchers?

(I'm just being difficult. Never actually used them myself.)

Mon Oncle Ignatius

08:06 / 20.01.06

5 1/4 inch floppies? Pooh. How about the original 8 inchers?

Never used them either, but I think I handled one once (Matron).

lord nuneaton savage

10:39 / 20.01.06

"one of those bundle a load of games on a disc comps - remember them?"

Fuck yeah! I had one with both Barbarian AND Gryzor! The greatest side-scrolling shoot-em-up of all time! It also, unfortunately, had Daley Thompson's Supersprint. My wrist still hasn't recovered from the cycling level. Ouch.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

10:43 / 20.01.06

Whoah yeah, back in the day Daley Thompson was like Lara Croft in the computer game world!

11:37 / 20.01.06

Wasn't it Daley Thompson's Super Test? I loved that game. Oh how I used to waggle my joystick...

Less searchable M0rd4nt

11:41 / 20.01.06

Fuck floppies--I remember my dad bringing home punchcards from work.

11:41 / 20.01.06

Whoah yeah, back in the day Daley Thompson was like Lara Croft in the computer game world!

And he was real!

11:49 / 20.01.06

I remember when a bag of chips used to be 50p, when I used to go and by Beano comics, when I used to play football in the park with most of my friends.................I remember when F2B invaded the conversation forum.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

11:49 / 20.01.06

At work the other night one of mt friends, who is of a similar age to me, related the story of when one of his (much younger) minions asked if he had a pen they could borrow. When they saw it was a fountain pen, their response was "oh, it's okay. I don't know how to use one of these".

What are they teaching them?

11:51 / 20.01.06

I don't remember any of this stuff. Too busy building dens, playing sport, and kicking sand in faces.

Mon Oncle Ignatius

12:41 / 20.01.06

Gryzor was the best sideways scroller ever - and one of the few games I could be arsed to complete. I recently downloaded that to run under emulation as well, and it was still fun.

Punch cards - heh, I did have those brought home for me to view on occasion as well. Sadly we never had the mainframe at home to run the software. How the Vax vs IBM wars would have raged in the playground.

lord nuneaton savage

14:37 / 20.01.06

Yeah! But when you completed it....

SPOILERSPOILERSPOILESPOILERSPOILERPOILER*

The World got destroyed anyway! Blew my mind that did.

*OK, I realise putting a spoiler alert in there might be a bit over the top, but someone might be on the last level or summat. They'd be FURIOUS. I know I would be.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

15:42 / 20.01.06

My dad used to bring home boxes and boxes of used punchcards for us to play with. IIRC, they were about the size of an envelope with lots of tiny oblong holes in them, about a couple of millimetres across. Sometimes they only had one or two holes in them, and my mum would make those into flash-cards. The ones with loads of holes in were great for drawing night-time cityscapes: you used them as a stencil, coloured through the holes with a yellow felt-tip, then drew buildings round them.

I also got given a slide-rule to play with when I was 10, and a reverse-polish calculator. I had a proper calculator as well though.

15:54 / 20.01.06

10 PRINT "JETSET WILLY IS THE BEST GAME EVA!!!!11!!!"
20 GOTO 10
RUN
>JETSET WILLY IS THE BEST GAME EVA!!!!11!!!
>JETSET WILLY IS THE BEST GAME EVA!!!!11!!!
>JETSET WILLY IS THE BEST GAME EVA!!!!11!!!
>JETSET WILLY IS THE BEST GAME EVA!!!!11!!!
>JETSET WILLY IS THE BEST GAME EVA!!!!11!!!
>JETSET WILLY IS THE BEST GAME EVA!!!!11!!!
>JETSET WILLY IS THE BEST GAME EVA!!!!11!!!
>etc.

Mon Oncle Ignatius

16:53 / 20.01.06

Yeah. Calculators were great in the old days, especially when they had red LEDs. Great for writing 5317 and so forth on and looking at the display upside-down. Hours of mindless fun, and probably about as expensive as a PSP is now.

In fact, I've only owned two calculators in my whole life, thinking about it. The second one is still going strong after about 16 years, and possibly on the same battery (now I've said that it will conk out, natch).

16:53 / 20.01.06

I remember when there were hundreds of toy shops. And they were little and proper shops, not huge supermarket sized buildings with some russain writing and a dopey looking giraffe on the logo.

I remember when bags of monster munch were big bags and the beef flavour tasted like beef and the pickled onion flavours made your eyes water, your thought hurt and could clear a room of adults once opened.

I remember my folks having a remote controled TV and the ability to change channel by dropping a coin in the big whiskey bottle of change at just the right angle.

I remember my school having a room full of BBC Acorn Computers and them seeming to be the highest in digital excelenceand sophisication.

I remember the excitment of my dad bringing home an Apple Mac from work. Three huge luggage cases in the back room and this behemoth sat on the dining table. Loading up 5¼ inch disks and bathing in the green glory of space invaders (and being taught the best plan was hid under one of the outer buildings, shoot your way through and blast away from it's cover).

I also remember our first computer, a ZX81, and my dad placing cling-film over it to protect the keyboard (I kind you not).

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