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Thread: What classic computers did you use in school?

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    ServBot (Level 11) tom's Avatar
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    no computers in my school, we weren't even allowed calculators (that was German school during the 70s you know).
    Later at work we used this, well until the mid-80s:

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    Alex (Level 15) boatofcar's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by tom View Post
    Um...what is that?

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    Quote Originally Posted by boatofcar View Post
    Um...what is that?
    It looks like about 5 different types of printer (regular, postcard, store receipt, ticker-tape etc.) crammed into one box. So... when did you guys get screens anyway?

    As for me, the great majority of elementary and middle school was spent on old Macs that usually only had one thing that was at all interesting going for them - DinoPark Tycoon, which wasn't really that interesting as I was already well into games like Doom and Simcity 2000 and Quest for Glory 4 on my PC at home by then.

    I'm sure there were Mac versions of some of those around, Sim City 2000 at least, but no one ever put those on our school computers. High school was a different story, as by then they'd switched to PCs and so you could start sneaking your own games on there in the computer lab.

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    Quote Originally Posted by boatofcar View Post
    Um...what is that?
    Punch card writer/reader, way before anyone's time here.

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    Nothing but Apple's (Apple II, etc.) and Mac's all the way through high school. Didn't bother me. The software was great.

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    K-5 Apple ][e in the lab. The usual number munchers and other fun.
    Library had random "Performa" Macs, which meant "lower than low end" for the most part - still better than Apple ][e.

    6-7 We got hand-me-downs from the high school, so half Mac LC IIIs, and half some of those all-in-one Powermac 5xxxs.

    8-9 Various powermacs.

    10-12 iMacs, and one XP lab. The XP lab was a joke. The network was badly maintained, people downloaded viruses and porn dialers, and people played random stupid games on it, making most of the computers unusably bad. The mac lab was decent and we got to make movies on iMovie for OS9.

    University -> random PC boxes. They weren't bad, but nothing spectacular. At least the University of British Columbia knows how to program a PC network and lock people out of downloading viruses that screw up the computer long after you've logged out. They are getting a bit old tho, I dont think they are bothering to apply patches.

    University in Japan -> basically the same as UBC, but with japanese windows.

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    Grade 6 - 1980 - We had a small computer lab with a handful of Digital terminals, connected to some mainframe somewhere, but I don't know where or how. I think there was a TRS-80 in the room as well, but I didn't use it. I used the terminals for some French program (i.e., to learn french). Also, I played an artillery-launch game on the Digital. Took a couorse in Basic one summer.

    Skip ahead to high school - 82-86 - The lab had a PET (Ugghh with a capital Ughh!). Also a bunch of TRS-80s and Apple ][s. Took some course in Basic again, but was happy for more computer time. For my final project one semester I wrote some 'program' on the Apple ][ that painted a picture on the screen of a sports car I drew out. Was pretty simple - I drew the picture on graph paper, and then wrote the program to draw the same lines, in the appropriate colors, on the screen. Aside from that my program didn't DO anything. The night Reagan bombed Lebanon I was at a friend's house typing up a term paper on his Coleco ADAM. I didn't know anything about the ADAM, and anytime I needed to do something other than type in my paper I needed him to walk over and help.

    College - I didn't use computers. Had myself an awesome Panasonic electric typewriter from Macy's, with a 4k internal memory and a 1-line, 15-character or so, display.

    After college, after puttering around aimlessly for a few years, I got myself a 486-40 and a Compuserve account, soon followed by a Netcom account, and my life was forever changed.
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    What amazes me is that so many of you had so much access to computers, even programming classes, yet started school a decade or more earlier than I did. My schools really didn't have squat. I started kindergarten in '87, and for my first few years of school, I probably never even saw a computer (besides maybe in an office or something). Once I hit maybe 3rd or 4th grade, each classroom had one or two computers, and they were used for virtually nothing but Oregon Trail, Carmen Sandiego, and the Munchers series. I know I used Mac II's in school, but I don't know if I was using them that early. I have no idea how you guys can remember what you used so well. o_O Then in junior high we had a few rooms full of computers, but I didn't get to use them unless a class as a whole was using said room. I'm pretty sure I started using some kind of IBM PC at that point. Junior high also brought me my first exposure to the internet. One room was solely for the typing class, which everyone had to take. My earliest experiences with typing was on a typewriter, but I stunk at both. I think I was struggling to get 25 words per minute. In my 7th grade science/math room (had the same teacher for both), we had some really ancient monochrome, mouse-less computers, probably older than anything I used in elementary school. Played a lot of Frogger and other games on those. In high school we had roughly the same access to computers, but since we were expected to type all of our papers at that point, I finally got my own.

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    My grade school computer lab was all Atari 800s and Apple IIs and IIe's. Oddly enough, they only had very boring, basic reading and math programs on the Ataris, while the Apples had all the fun stuff like Oregon Trail and Carmen Sandiego (okay, so they also had the painful Stickybear Teaches Typing on the Apples, but otherwise...)

    I remember when they got their first Mac (which was actually a few years old already; even though they got it around '89 it was one of the earlier models). Kids got into fights over who got to play a game called Nigel's World on it. As I recall, you played as a cartoon Scottish photographer who traveled the world taking pictures, which displayed as real photos on the screen after you took them. I also seem to remember transition screens with Nigel traveling in various plaid-painted vehicles as clips of bagpipe music played.
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    Most that i can remember the,Apple IIE then towards the end in high school Macs.

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    Yup, my elementary school was heavily into the Apple ][ until I was in grade 5 or so. Pretty much all of them had green screens, except for the one ][GS - that had a purplish-blue screen for some reason. For some reason we did an awful lot of stuff with LOGO Writer, which seems a bit useless now, but was kind of cool at the time; in early grades we even used it for word processing before switching to AppleWorks. One day someone demonstrated Lego LOGO, which was sort of like a primitive version of Mindstorms.

    Even though the school board switched over to Macs eventually, my high school got a lot of milage out of its Apple ]['s ; I learned how to touch-type on one of those. Sadly, by the time I managed to take the school's computer science course, they had finally been retired, so instead of learning Apple ][ BASIC (which might still have been vaguely useful on some level at that point), I was introduced to programming in Hypercard. I might have been better off taking Accounting instead.

    But getting back to the Macs: they were of course Mac Classics, and I remember I got the privilege of learning how to connect to the school board's Telefinder BBS on their 2400 bps modem. The high school eventually got some LC 475s to replace them. I became very familiar with Clarisworks over the years, but I suppose there's really nothing it could do that you can't manage with Word alone these days. I also became very familiar with the headache of PC-Macintosh incompatibility.

    As far as games go, I captured Carmen Sandiego in Where in Time is CS, which was no mean feat given the constant threat of someone maliciously erasing my username and wiping out all my progress, as was the case with Where in the USA is CS. For some reason the high school only had a very limited number of licenses for SimCity, and naturally it was uncommon that I could get to one fo the computers that had it installed before anyone else could at the start of lunch hour.

    I think the main lab had one thoroughly ancient PC that was probably salvaged from a junk heap; someone nonetheless got Double Dragon running on it. Being in the Gifted and Talented program, I had access to one of the few usable PCs in the school: an IBM PS/1.

    Quote Originally Posted by Gameguy View Post
    There's a game most people played but I can't really remember what it was called or much details about it. I do remember a part in it where a woman offers to be with you(I forgot how it was worded), if you agree your health goes up but your honor goes down. If you refuse, your honor goes up. It had pretty simple looking graphics, it was played around the mid 90s but it could be an earlier game.
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    I just looked at a few pics of the Micro, and it looked a bit different to what I remember: no number pad or cart slots. Turns out it was BBC Master computers that we had.

    In the DT lab we had one of those Turtle robots and a robot arm that interfaced via the Master's cartridge slots. They kept all that even after the PC network was installed as it was quite cool to fiddle with.

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    We exclusively had Apple II/E and they stunk. In fact, since no one had any clue about computers, when there was a fundraiser to buy some new computers in my grammar school in 1990, they bought new Apple II's. I couldn't believe they were still sold new at that time! Would have been great if they'd had Amiga's instead.
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    The first time I saw a computer at school was in third or fourth grade (~1982). Our school had one Apple II that was on one of those rolling multimedia carts and they would wheel it from class to class to give us small amounts of computer time. By then my family had already owned an Apple for 2 years, so I usually had to show the teachers how to do stuff like load games.

    In 5th and 6th grade (1983-1985) we had 3 Apple II's set up in our computer lab.

    In mid-high, believe it or not, they taught BASIC programming on TRS-80 Model 4 machines. Talk about taking a step back!

    My senior year (1991) I took a "Business Computing Class" (the only computer-related class our high school offered) and it was offered on 286 PCs.

    My first two years of college (1991-1993) we laid out the newspaper and yearbook on Mac Classics. We used Pagemaker for our layouts and Cricket Draw (ugh) for custom grapihcs.

    My junior year, we laid out our paper on, uh, Mac LCIII's?

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    Hmmm, now that this topic has got me thinking about it again, I really would like to figure out what kind of computer I was using in my 7th grade class. I browsed Old-Computers.com, and the only thing that looks remotely similar is this:

    http://www.old-computers.com/museum/...asp?st=1&c=204

    I'm positive that it was an all-in-one machine, and it had a smooth, rounded shape just like the SuperBrain. I'm also positive that it had some dark coloring like this, but I remember it being more brown. I could be wrong about the pattern of the coloring, but I'm remember the brown being more on the outside than the face. I don't remember it being as wide as the SuperBrain, and I don't remember floppy drives being on the side at all. But I'm not positive about those things either. But I am positive that it was monochrome, specifically black and white, not green or any other shade.

    So what do all you 80s computer experts think? Does it ring a bell for anything else, or do you think it must've been some version of the SuperBrain?

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    I think this thread has really made me appreciate the computer I have right now.

    That, and my dad taking a Apple // nostalgia trip, only to comment about how he likes modern computers more.

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    First computers I ever used were IBMs in 1995 in elementary school no idea what models. Jr high was way better we had dells and as some others mentioned I was a computer geek and got to skip class to play with stuff donated from the military (printers, old notebooks etc) lots of fun

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    i was using some ibm computer all throughout elementary/middle. i think the school corp had a grant cause in a few of the computer labs at high school we got the same kind just with flat screen moniters. then the engineering computer labs have brand new ibm computers. cost 2k each then 2 of the graphics labs have newer apples. unsure on the model since im never in there.
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    Hmmm, I'm 18 so when I was younger (think 1st-3rd grade) we were still using old computers, those of which I'm pretty sure (but not positive) were Apple II computers. I don't remember much, which is kinda sad, but in the 2nd grade I used to play on the Apple II (again, "I think") that we had in the classroom.

    The computer had Oregon Trail, Number Munchers, and some game where you grow plants in a greenhouse in different conditions. It had a color screen, too.

    There was one game(s) that I played that has been racking my brain for almost 10 years! It was actually 3 very similar adventure games on the apple II and you played as this guy in a department store, haunted house, or a funhouse. The name "Bobo's Funhouse" has stuck in my head: I remember seeing it on the title screen. The game had a very similar command style to King's Quest, where you'd type "take something", the only difference was that the game played as a side-scroller a-la Mario Bros. This game has been bothering me for ages because I've been actively looking for it for years to play it again. The school has since thrown out their old Apple II computers.

    Ummm.... From 4th-6th I didn't use computers that much. At home we had a one with Windows 98 which I played with a lot, but at school we used the old generic-90s macs (not Apple II) from time to time.

    In my high school years I used the school's problematic computers running XP and this school year the school got all new computers. The oldest computer is in the library. It's an Apple II with a green monochrome screen. It contains our library's entire catalog of books. The librarian uses it to print labels. I told her that if she finds any old software for it I would like to archive it.
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    Let's see:

    1983 - 3rd grade, my class got an Apple II, I was definitely the computer nerd. I knew how to use the thing before the teacher did.

    1986 - 6th grade, my new school got their first computers: Commodore 64s with black and white monitors. Since I had one at home, I became the computer guy there too.

    1987-88 - Junior High, took computer classes on IBM Pc Jr.'s, our library had one C64, and about 800 pirated games. Those were glorious break periods.

    1989-93 - High school - our school did not have a single computer in it. I took one class back in the Junior High lab, still on the Pc Jr.

    1993-98 - College - We had an assortment of old Macs, and Gateway 386s to work on. Nothing cutting edge, heck, nothing even current the entire time.
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