I raise
edit, actually, it might have been on the back…it’s been forever since I touched one
I’ll see your raise, and up it:
Please,
Young whippersnappers.
Fun fact, the Romans would never have labeled their abacuses like this. It would have made calculating very difficult; they effectively worked with modern numbers in bead form, and then used the famous numeral system just to record the results.
Don’t buy copper from this guy, it’s low-quality and your messenger will be treated with contempt.
Represent!
This. this is my childhood. Digging through discount bins at blue light specials in Kmart for cartridges and copying BASIC line by line from a magazine and recording it on cassette tape so we could play Yahtzee on the TV.
We had one of those in school. One per classroom. We had one educational game on it. Since there was only one, they would sit us down at it in pairs and we’d get 5m to play on it. I think I got to use it maybe three times in a given year.
My buddy still has one of those in his garage.
My brother in Munchman, Alpine, and coding racist stuff out of the book.
My age in fond memories:
I don’t have long for this world…
Me too… my first code was for Commodore PET. Then I got an Amiga. Sad day when Commodore folded.
On the Amiga’s 40th birthday I brought the old Amiga 500 out of storage to the dinner table and we had cake. Just realized I should do the same with the Atari ST, for more cake. I think my family tolerates me because of the cake.
What is that Acorn? I don’t remember the BBC having an “Acorn Bus Extension”, and it looks too narrow to be a Master…
(nm, I found it online: Acorn Atom. I’ve never seen one in real life.)
Yes, it was a nice little machine, the first computer I used at home. I shared it with some friends because our parents couldn’t afford it unless we pooled our money. Each of us would have it for a week then take it to the next kid’s house. In those days you had the option of buying it prebuilt or (cheaper) as a kit, and I still remember how excited I was when my dad and I came out of the electronics shop with a bag full of circuit boards, chips and keys that would magically become a computer when soldered together.
The Acorn story is really amazing: a tiny hobbyist company that got a break when the BBC commissioned the BBC micro from them, that went on to invent the ARM chips that are in billions of phones and other devices now.
Ooh, I had a serial mouse (9 pin) from Microsoft of all companies, in the 90’s.
Damn good mouse.
Microsoft used to make good peripherals
I’m still using that mouse, with a 9-pin to ps2 and a ps2 to usb
there must be some noticeable latency on that
BTW, Commodore got bought out.
They are releasing C64 again.
I wonder if this will be like the VCS. I have one, and its awesome for the price if you like to tinker.
Its on the side. You can kind of see it in your picture. I have a C64 within arms reach.
Bonus points if you had a mouse to use with GEOS:
I had a mouse like that on my Amiga 2000!
Oh yeah? I raise you stacks of perforated pages and tractor feed accordions
Mine didn’t have a connector it was a membrane
Check this out:
This was why I got into programming.
I still have the book:
It’s so cool:
Lemme know if you want to see more. I thought it’s awesome.
I have to find my UHf dongle, and it looks like I was playing Star Strike the last time, but I will get this running. I have the manual, after all.
edit, actually, it might have been on the back…it’s been forever since I touched one
It was along the right side. I remember it helped to sit a little bit to the right, or angle the keyboard a bit, when playing a two player game, so that the leftmost player’s joystick cord would reach.
Big keyboard jack, serial for mouse, parallel for printer
Yes, this is where my PC master gaming started.
All the naysayers never used a Gateway AnyKey keyboard… their loss.
Such nice keyboards. My Gateway 2000 was from 1991 and I believe they were pretty top notch at the time. It wasn’t until later that they went to shit. Through all the years and the massive amounts of mods, it didn’t fail until I retired it sometime in the mid to late 2000’s and only because home routers now did what it could do…faster and for a lot let power. It’s still in storage and I bet that if I powered it on today, it would boot.
They all got bought by acer and turned into the shittiest brand-name PCs on the planet.
Wasn’t gateway already shitty to begin with?
Nailed it! I was going to post the DIN-5 kb connector.
I’m in this picture.
I got that reference. Fuck, I’m old.
Please explain? I get that the chubby bird is speaking assembly, but I’m sure there’s more to it than that?
PS2 keyboards use interrupts rather than polling in USB, meaning every time a key is pressed the CPU stops what its doing to process it.
Cool! I had no idea it was deeper than just a physical interface change.
I’m wondering, is it still the case for mobos with Super IO?
And having to pick your IRQ when installing anything into your machine, and the weird bugs that could happen if you mucked it up.
Keyboard slows down the CPU because it gets priority over whatever the CPU is working on so the keyboard could cause your system to lag.
Back then all we had was single core CPUs.
Markiplier farquad hybrid deep fried meme
In my day, the RJ-11 jack was for connecting the keyboard, not the phone line.
Okay that’s something I had no idea about hahaha
The first three Macs had this jack in the front for the keyboard and a PC-like serial port in the back for the mouse. With the Mac SE and II, the switched to ADB, which looked like a PS/2 port, but you could daisy chain your mouse, keyboard, and other inputs like tablets or joysticks all into one jack in the back of the computer.
With the Mac SE and II, the switched to ADB, which looked like a PS/2 port, but you could daisy chain your mouse, keyboard, and other inputs like tablets or joysticks all into one jack in the back of the computer.
The port looks similar - both are mini-DIN - but ADB has four pins while PS/2 has six.
ADB was first introduced in 1986 on the Apple IIgs, and later was used in all Macs from the SE until the iMac. For the first few years there were two ADB ports, but in 1990 (maybe starting with the Mac IIsi?) they reduced it to one and started shipping keyboards with ports to daisy chain the mouse from.
I remember those days.
Bitch
please.
(Kidding, you’re not a bitch and this isn’t a contest. But if it was…)
“do you know what ps/2 ports are?”
“holy cow, PlayStation 2? you must be AT LEAST 25!”
[dying inside intensifies]
IBM sure made naming pretty confusing aren’t they?
Ps/2 ports predated the PlayStation 2 by years. Sony made naming confusing in this case.
How can ports of a game predate the platform itself? That makes zero sense.
(/s)
Not really? I mean it was a whole thing. OS/2, PS/2, I think maybe some PC/2? I can’t remember. Anyway it was all branded together.
missed opportunity for the mainframes to be “system/2” and not “system/360”
I remember having a friend ask why my mouse connected to a s-video port.
Explain this please.
So is this a more classic case of Apple’s usual tactic making their things needlessly different to move more product?
ADB slightly predated (and is arguably technically superior to) the PS/2 mouse and keyboard interfaces, but Apple patented it and the only companies that licensed it were those making Mac peripherals.
edit: i forgot, NeXT also used it.
This reminds me when a mouse was an option not a requirement
still is
/i3gang
DEFINITELY optional
go go gadget commandline
My keyboard still uses a PS/2 port via adapter. 1986 Model M, still clicky.
What kind of connector is this? I remember seeing them on 1970s audio equipment, maybe for mic in?
It’s an AT/ XT keyboard connector.
And back then if we did have a mouse, it was square, and used a 9pin serial port
Back in my day they weren’t color coded.
That’s because color hadn’t been invented yet and therefore people could only see in black and white. That’s why old shows don’t have color.
Well they were pretty racist in spite of not seeing color
Well, they could still see in black and white…
Back in my day days didn’t exist /s
And the newer ones then “removed” the color coding by doing one half of the circle in green, the other half in purple…
Those are just a combined port. You can use it for one or the other or use a splitter for both. The dual port was very popular on 90s laptops.
was very popular on 90s
This feels like you just called my PC old…
I’m this old
Shit. I know what this is. Goddammit.
Sorry bro
DB9 is still used on for MIDI on electronic instruments, though some manufacturers are moving to doing it with a TRS 3.5mm plug since it only uses 3 pins.
I had a mouse that plugged into the serial port, but my first computer was a Commodore 64.
The ol’ RS232?
No, this is the rs232 connector (officially the DB9)
deleted by creator
Look at you with your fancy ps/2 keyboard port. Where’s my AT port and 9 pin serial mouse.
Look at you with your fancy AT port.
Where’s my altair with front panel register switches
Ok, I’m not that old either, but still
I’m this old.
I’m punchcard Fortran old.
PS/2
No, not the PlayStation…
First one at home for me too.
Haha yeah I was hoping someone would make a PS/2 not PS2 joke!
Old enough
“hey guys–”
JOYSTICK PORT!
“not what I’m called.”
Yeah a 9 pin dsub. Still used widely in industry applications and other Fields. Edit: just saw that these were used for mouse or keyboard input, wth. This is truly old.
if I remember correctly my first PC had the bigger DIN connector for the keyboard and a DSUB9 for the mouse. Guess I’m old ;)
Same. I remember needing converters for these newfangled PS/2 connectors. Then again, I am old enough that I remember why floppies were called floppies, and used tape for more than just backup. And hard drives being as big as a shoe box and with less storage than you now have as CPU caches.
Was the tape to cover the write protect notch on the floppy?
Nah, we got them fancy sliding tabs on those. I was talking about loading programs from tape LOL.
