Ah - Memories - Remember the excitment of going to the School's computer lab?

[packman]

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[ret5hd]

1. My schools computer lab:

[yellowcanine]

2. How modern. This was mine.

https://www.searchlock.com/mirror/p?e=1&h=HBuq9TXFSwcFRjUhAf1qoEiAIiE3Q1PK5WJSp20oJI1atskSlD+wY+VmlfWsm9CWTV1S8Nu+GCrvhgWetscJSv+j9wJi1hlyf06nIN6l2TqQtcl4vRmDG4J/u/WOnrNRYKd3ex3US+Q4jKn0u8eS5zA4fYiV4/XAoaMsOPL32Mg=&u=

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

3. You missed out on the really awesome computer labs of the late '70s

where you wrote your program in COBOL, typed it onto punch cards, then waited around for the lab's operators to run your cards through the humongous mainframe computer and you'd get your printout on that green and white striped paper, showing how you'd fucked up a line or two and you had to re-do all the punch cards and start over. Those were the good old days.

[malthaussen]

10. Yes, standing in line for two hours to get at the card punch...

... because one lousy period was wrong. I was a systems guy, so I did FORTRAN, but the experience was the same.

-- Mal

[packman]

4. Early computing

[ohnoyoudidnt]

5. Yes, I can't remember how many times I have...

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[rurallib]

6. we carried ours with us in my day

[lastlib]

7. Still have mine!!

(Most kids got a car for their sixteenth birthday--I got a steel Pickett slide rule.)

[hunter]

8. I lived in the computer lab -- sometimes literally.

I met my first real girlfriend in the computer lab. I don't really know how long I'd been in there and I probably smelled kind of funny, but she looked at me and said, "You need to eat." I'll bet I did too, that being one of my skeleton-man periods.

A wonderful relationship that turned out to be... the David Lynch version of My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Fortunately we never got so far as the wedding, we broke up when I jumped out of her moving car a few hours after she'd handcuffed her girlfriend's pimp-boyfriend to a urinal and beat the crap out of him as I stood outside the bathroom door mumbling "rough sex" to drunks who had to pee. The best thing about those times was being in the labs when BSD 2 & 3 were released. Magic.

Eventually I got my shit together and was taking care of classroom labs full of Apple IIc computers when I met my wonderful wife. We enjoyed an entirely ordinary Big Catholic Wedding.

The funniest thing about the computer lab was mouse balls. The Apple IIc mouse had a big rubber coated metal mouse ball that was frequently stolen by our wonderful students. Frankly it was easier to buy bags of replacement mouse balls than to go full Nazi on the kids.

[csziggy]

9. Hah! My school had no computers - I graduated high school in 1970

My first college was proud that they had *A* computer terminal that connected to a mainframe somewhere. Every student was entitled to one hour of computer time a semester - you wrote your code long hand then entered it somehow. I never used it.

The second college I went to had a computer lab. Every woman on campus figured being invited there by the nerds was sort of like being invited up to view their etchings. It was part of the complex that housed the accelerator laboratory at the time since they needed computing power to operate the equipment. The grass slope above the accelerator was often used for sunbathing - the joke being you could get tan on both sides without turning over.

While I knew some of the nerd that worked in the computer lab, I never used it. We mostly went to the science fiction movie nights together.