h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I think he may have just converted from Mac User to Mac Owner...

Indeed. Always a user

No, my first computer was a Commodore 64 (to own). After that the next computer I even touched was an Apple II ...

Ironically, although they used very similar CPUs, the C 64's* extensive collection of peripheral support chips (sound and graphics) made it much faster than the Apple II for most practical purposes... Yet it was far cheaper...!

I've got several of each secreted around the house...

(* The extra space in the middle was deliberate, else the new forum system turns the name into a link! )

We had one of the originals. The floppy drive was practically as big as my current hard drive! Mine is in the closet, to tell the truth. Although I sometimes drag it out to play a good solid game of Pitfall and that Monkey with the barrels game (No, not donkey kong. I remember you have to jump across aligators in that one too. Fantastic graphics for the time.).

Anyone here remember Archon for the Apple II? That battle-chess type thing? That was so cool. And the word processor with the programmable turtle? I was really good at that. I miss the Apple II...

The first serious program I wrote on the Apple II (actually, on *any* computer) was the world's slowest implementation of "Space Invaders"...

I only had the BASIC manual to work from, and I hand-wrote the whole thing in a jotter at home before taking it to school to type in; two rows of "aliens" in low-res graphics mode, with a firing base controlled by a game paddle. It worked almost perfectly first time, except... I had unrealistic performance expectations... It took about eight seconds to draw each frame before clearing the screen immediately to start again...

Sorry, I forgot, "APPLE ]["...

How about QBasic from Microsoft's DOS? I had a Snakes game where you got a longer snake for munching bigger and bigger numbers. Also with the program was a Gorillas game where big apes stood on skyscrapers and chucked explosive bananas at each other by naming the angle and power of the toss. That was fun, if slightly dumb. Oh well. I miss old games. I just installed Quake 1, though, at the insitence of a friend. My Performa can barely handle it. Oh well, at least I can kinda play X-Wing... when it works... which it isn't... sigh...

I'm still waiting for my sister to get on up here. She has an iMac 500MHz CDRW jobbie. Its very nice. Her co-worker's brother gave her a Powerbook Duo 230 which he didn't want anymore (he upgraded to something or other), so she's going to bring the powerbook up here (I live about 150 miles from her), and we'll see whether we can get it up and running.

It comes with the dock, external monitor and keyboard... which is nice. I'm sure the battery will be totally flat.

Got some news yesterday, a friend of our's PC blew up in the storms we've been having here. Lightning sent a huge surge through the modem line and fried the computer! poor guy, he's 70 years old, this is his first computer and he paid about £2,000 for it just over a year ago at PC World. I can't see how the whole computer would be dead. Is that possible? Ive heard with other people that the modem just get's burnt out, but not the entire machine! weird!

I was fortunate enough to unplug our computers at the first clap of thunder. a surge protector on your plug socket may protect the computer, but apparently far larger spike's can shoot down the modem line. One of those you usually don't find out about until its too late.

Just added an 80 GIg 7200rpm hard drive and another 512 MB ram to my G4 - sweet. When I bought my first mac in 94? I think it was, an LC475 ram was about £100/ MB. Now they're giving it away.

What's the difference between a mac lover and a terrorist?

You can negotiate with a terrorist!

OK not original if you're a MacWorld reader but I thought it was funny.

I still have the original advert offering an Apple 5MB (Yes, MegaByte!) hard drive for about $3500 around 1980/81...

Mind you, before bloatware became the game of the day you could fit a lot on a 5meg drive - Still remember having the macOS , (sorry "System' in those days) , Macwrite and MacPaint all on the one 400K floppy on a 512K "FatMac".

Cheers

Rod

Ouch, that sounds like a nasty surge. I'd be telling him to check with the power company and the phone company . Don't know what the situation is in post Thatcher Britain, but in Victoria, Australia power companies still have some liability for power surges (even after privatisation) .

Contents insurance policies sometimes cover these things too.

Some surge protectors also provide protection to the modem line these days by teh way. Whether they would handle a lightning strike though might be pretty doubtful.

Cheers

Rod

I have a friend who lives out in the wilds here in the UK (well... 2 miles from the nearest village!) and suffers from bad spikes during thunderstorms. His house is on the side of a hill, and the 'phone lines are the nearest thing to a lightning conductor for miles around.

The most spectacular one so far not only killed the modem (he's on about his fifth modem at the moment) but caused the telephone socket it was plugged into to explode - flying pieces of the socket broke the cat's bowl which was sitting about a foot away from it!