For me, it has to be the game [url= https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zarch ]Zarch[/url] on the Acorn Archimedes. It wasn't just the 3D rendering, but the sense of momentum that made it really great, that and trying not to get caught playing it by the librarian!
10 Gary is skill
20 goto 10
Run
(Or something like that)
Display actual words on a screen as you typed them.
Up to that point it was an upside down LED calculater or nothing.
meh..games.
When it can reliably talk to me and respond to me talking, that or nothing.
[i]When it can reliably talk to me and respond to me talking, that or nothing. [/i]
You probably still think that stw is real people talking to you, don't you...
Beat my granddad at chess! He needed the memory expansion pack on his zx81 to play it though
Programming that logo robot thing at primary school from a BBC Acorn.
The awesum power of the Secondary School Archimedes. Rendered demos and the such like.
Lotus 123.
@sum
I wuz amazballzed 😀
The one where you'd type a command and it would repeat the text cascading down the screen.
Sick!
I don't know as it was absolutely the first thing, but I remember being truly amazed the first time I saw a 16-bit machine. A mate's dad was an early adopter of the Atari ST; he had it running Starglider and my jaw hit the floor.
(Okay, not the original music, but still - real music not plinky stuff from a computer. Wow.)
10 Gary is skill
20 goto 10
Run
Syntax Error.
Yup it was the basic words on a screen and trying to programme a ZX81.
Free pron.
Or there was a speech synthesiser for the Commodore 64 - a wee cartridge, you plugged it in and sent it BASIC commands, and it would speak. Actual words, you could sometimes understand.
First day (in fact it was evening, I worked shifts then) of my first job working in IT.
Boss, "I've sent you an email with all the details you'll need".
Me, "Email, how does that work"?
Email and the internet...I like it.
Few weeks later I was working the night shift, some fella phones up and asks me to reboot his machine on the floor below. Afterwards I watched him "PC Duo" into his machine from Singapore and take control of the machine....blown away...
I should add a few weeks before I was working on building sites as a Sparks....Didn't have much use for Puters in those days.
A good few years later I even have a certificate to say I'm an "expert", one of the best decisions I ever made jumping into the IT game....and I can still wire a plug if I have to.
Donkey Kong on the commodore 16 or spy hunter on the spectrum.
First non game thing was probably playing with dulexe paint on the amiga years ago. I did all the 10 20 print stuff and all that but was always underwhelmed by the outcome!
Dextralog predictive production software running on a PDP11 in 1990 or so.
Telling production staff & managers that a batch would fininsh at such-and-such a time, and they need to have the next tools ready. And statistical quanlity management.
@sum
I worked with a trainee accountant who used a calculator to sum up numbers when using Excel. Didn't trust it.
At work, when I could see my code on a screen, rather than printed on lineflow - so early 80's.
When Cougar remoted onto my laptop after I got a virus, seen it done at work but not at home, amazing and terrifying at the same time.
First game was Doom, like an arcade in your own house
alt.binaries.pictures.amazonwomen
3D Maze.
[URL= http://i66.photobucket.com/albums/h260/Magicman657/game%20screenshots/maze_screenshot.pn g" target="_blank">
http://i66.photobucket.com/albums/h260/Magicman657/game%20screenshots/maze_screenshot.pn g"/> [/IMG][/URL]
mudshark - Member
I worked with a trainee accountant who used a calculator to sum up numbers when using Excel. Didn't trust it.
He was right. If I remember it correctly there was a way to get a wrong result. This was either in the early 90s or late 80s.
Can't remember exactly what it was, but doing a checksum showed it up I believe (I was using a different programme so can't be sure).
When Cougar remoted onto my laptop after I got a virus, seen it done at work but not at home, amazing and terrifying at the same time.
That reminds me, I still have your credit card details somewhere.
😯
😆 I think.........
No he has, well we have..
He kindly shared them on here a little while ago..
Thanks for the wheels 😀
Nothing really, just tools aren't they, although MATLAB was pretty impressive.
Although while everyone now gets excited about Macs I still think Silicon Graphics workstations were the coolest computers produced.
Spell check
My father's work meant that we were at the front of the computer revolution. Consequently, I remember these:
[img] 
[/img]
and, not much later, this:
[img] (Microsoft)-1.jpg)
[/img]
That he could bring home a [i]personal[/i] computer was simply amazing. I remember turning in a story writing assignment at primary school which I had typed on a computer and printed out.
[i]That[/i] impressed me.
Saxonrider - what machine is that in the first picture?
The sound and music on a Commodore 64.
Thanks for the wheels
Your welcome 😥
When the W.O.P.R threatended 'Global Thermo-Nuclear War' on the whole of the United States.
[img] 
[/img]
That bit in the Wargames film when he makes the computer talk back to him.
[url= http://www.rs-online.com/designspark/electronics/eng/blog/my-raspberry-pi-thinks-it-s-a-mainframe ]This is what we expected out of Moore's law[/url].
It impresses me. 🙂
He was right. If I remember it correctly there was a way to get a wrong result. This was either in the early 90s or late 80s
Was a young lady and 2001. There was that Pentium CPU that got its sums wrong in the 90s I suppose....
gobuchul - Member
Saxonrider - what machine is that in the first picture?
It is a Mohawk Data Sciences keyboard from the late-1960s/early-1970s.
[url= https://deskthority.net/photos-f62/mohawk-data-sciences-keyboard-t12471.html ]This guy[/url] has done his detective work on it, but I remember not only it, but all the old equipment rapidly evolving in my dad's office...
What you see in that picture soon became this:
[img] 
[/img]
Oooh - this comes down to two things…
1. First seeing the Lucasarts game “Rescue on Fractaus” on my 8 bit Atari 800XL. Was absolutely blown away by the “non square”/“real” rendering of the landscape at the time. Can’t think of anything else quite like it.
2. Recently discovering one of the lead developers of Resuce on Fractalus follows me on Twitter…
🙂
Rachel
Many, but at work, running Autoroute in DOS.
TBH with desktop stuff I'm never that impressed, even with very clever things it's just "well, it's a big computer, just a matter of power and programming". But smartphones do impress me- things like google sky and goggles especially, paper camera- basically toys but really [i]ingenious[/i].
It's only a matter of time til I have a blood glucose meter inside me, talking to an app on my phone, maybe telling an insulin pump what to do. That's a ****ing tricorder, basically. Til someone hacks the bluetooth connection anyway.
Well as I first learned programming on <ahem> punched card with tape outputs then keyboards with monitors attached impressed me no end. Being able to code, compile, run and get output without getting cards, loading hopper bin, loading language from mag tape, going and getting paper tape output, feeding tape through tape reader, counting the cards to find the one that probably had the typo on it.....
EDIT - oh and then being proper computers that could sit on your desk.
Me, now
[img] 
[/img]
Playing F117 Stealth fighter into the early hours or my first real experience of a 3D environment tool, I think it was called Superscape VRT, where you could set variables such as gravity and mass to objects (I was a CAD guy in the late 80's/early 90's).
Spreadsheets allowing me to carry out iterative calculations really quickly.
When it's happening, not a lot. Pretty much worked in IT and Laboratories with lots of IT for the past 25 years. Grateful for the bits that have made life easier but it's only with hindsight I've become impressed.
Cloud Services is an annoying buzzword but as an IT bloke it made my life far simpler not having to look after onsite server, security and backups for small companies where the boss won't pay for server, security and backup. Putting it all offsite and only having to worry about a Firewall and a few PCs was liberating - so much so I got another job as I was bored 🙂
Minecraft recently stuck in my mind in at how deep and useful such a simple concept can be for entertainment and education.
Online games for turning awkward, uncommunicative kids into people that can demonstrate teamwork and work out strengths and weaknesses for situational problem solving.
That last one is a bit hit or miss as some of the awkward, uncommunicative kids in online gaming just turn into awkward, sweary kids.
