yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Epic 4G General] Paul627g:
Got you beat, 39 going on 40...

5 kids, married mortgage the works... Still listen to my heavy metal from the 80's and 90's... First computer was an Atari 600 ... Now thats back in the day ;) My first time around the block was running my own BBS (Bulletin Board System) and I remember when we first figured out how to redo the coding to go from military time format to standard 12 hr format! That was B I G ! Heck I remember doing coding for a members logins with a p/w and creating "backdoors" to get in around whatever security was thrown over the top of BBS software that we passed out and others modified.. Talk about yesterday... Tape drive backups was cutting edge.

Alright back on topic, what is the point of this thread?
[Epic 4G General] drekosh:
32 and I feel outmatched here. I didn't start really using computers till the end of Pentium 1 and the beginning of Pentium 2s. My first computer was a 400 mhz Pentium 2.
[Epic 4G General] bdbc:
I'm 32, and my first comp was an Apple E2, though I think it was written Eii. Can't remember the specs aside from it had a monochrome screen and only used the 'floppy' floppies. The first internet I remember having was 1200 baud. Had to dial into a guy's computer down the way for his BBS The Chocolate Malt. I saw the room at his house for it. Like 12 desktop computers linked together with what seemed like 500 feet of wire.
[Epic 4G General] pixlz:
Insomnia, the only thing I don't procrastinate at. :D
[Epic 4G General] CapsLockKey:
35, and didn't even have my own computer until I was out of college....and I was an Information Systems major. I just remember my roommate dropping like 1700 dollars (student price) on an HP with a pentium 2 and 13 inch monitor. That's what I love about technology, not only does it get better at a fast rate, it also gets cheaper. To think my cellphone would destroy that thing now.
[Epic 4G General] murso74:
WOW i had to look that up and that's even before i remember. i was thinking late 80s .... juan atkins is right after "rap" (not hip hop) came out.

for the youth... Rap was so strange to people there were news stories about the strange new music coming out that involved people "talking, not singing"
[Epic 4G General] murso74:
you win! (5 grandkids? :eek:)
[Epic 4G General] murso74:
hahaah ok i feel like a total A-hole now..

i had one of these (no bs)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSbjbRoIU1I

this guy sounds like buffalo bill from silence of the lambs

in fact i think i still have the damn thing

one of these days i'll learn to multi quote
[Epic 4G General] jbobspants:
I'm 27. When I was in 7th grade my dad brought home a used 286, 12mhz Packard Bell with a 20mb hard drive and DOS 3.3.

I played Wolfenstien 3d for hours on that thing. Also Nibbles and Gorillas in Qbasic.
[Epic 4G General] swear0730:
I'm so old...

* That I didn't get my hands on a card deck until I was in college.

* The first computer I programmed was a Digital PDP 11/20.

* I graduated from college 3 months before the IBM PC was announced.

* The first computer I owned was a Digital PC that dual booted CP/M-86 and MS-DOS.

* The comp sci undergrad program at UW Madison was less than 5 years old.

* I've been in IT professionally for over 30 years.

The internet has been a godsend. Don't hang onto it too tightly though. Like boiling a hot dog for dinner, its only a fad.
[Epic 4G General] crawrj:
I think the first computer I ever worked on was the TI-99/4 later graduating to the TI-99/4A. You guys are really taking me back. Oh and don't forget about speak and spell! How great was that!
[Epic 4G General] nikon120:
Did it have a turbo button to push you to 24mhz? haha, my 286 did.

Btw, response to the Prodigy commercial link above, don't forget about Compuserve. ;-)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kf1DBg5vJs
[Epic 4G General] TexasLTE:
Like I said - "that's when music was music"
[Epic 4G General] djbacon06:
OK, I retract my statement about 23 years old being on the older side of members. Ya'll are OLD!! *Hides under a chair for eminent **** storm*

Just kidding guys :)

Edit: Here's another one for everyone
[Epic 4G General] crawrj:
Gun Fight was the first arcade game that I ever played.
[Epic 4G General] dr_gibberish:
I am 45 years young, and a two time survivor of heart surgery! How's that for feeling old! (Doing great now.)

In graduate school, I had internet access when the very first web browser (Mosaic) came out, before there were even real search engines on the web. You just had to know the URL you wanted or look them up on various lists. I had a vendor once tell me when I asked if they could email me a driver "The internet is just for students."

In that lab I also had an incredible ONE GIGABYTE hard drive. It ran on SCSI in its own enclosure about the size of a big loaf of bread. The cost? A mere $2999.00!

PS I also ran Doom deathmatches on the awesome 1 Mbps LAN and laughed at all the poor dial up users!
[Epic 4G General] boomerbubba:
Kids, all of you!

My first personal computer was a Osborne 1 with a four-digit serial number. Taught myself entry-level Z80 Assembler on it, then got a C compiler. The computer ran under CP/M, had 64K RAM and two 95K floppies. Because I had a spreadhseet, a word processor (Wordstar) and a database progam (DBase 2) I had more business computing power than did my mid-sized employer. Before that, I used a Texas Instruments portable hardcopy terminal, with 300 baud acoustic coupler, to reach Compuserve "online" and write some simple programs in Dartmouth Basic. There was no Internet, not even close, but there were some private packet-switching networks run by corporations such as GE for major customers. Mainframes were being phased out and replaced by minicomputers such PDP-11s and then VAXen. Almost all phones were made by Western Electric, and hard-wired to phone lines (analog) run by the old AT&T. This was before it was broken up into the Baby Bells -- one of which grew up later to swallow its old parent and adopt its name and new Deathstar logo.
[Epic 4G General] murso74:
haha i love how all people that are coming out as older then me i've never seen post before. god bless you old lurkers
[Epic 4G General] deano0714:
Im still in HS and internet was out before me ;)
[Epic 4G General] Stringyquark:
Sorry can't help ya in my thirties, but you got by a couple years.
[Epic 4G General] ecartmen:
i am older then you... i am somewere between 1 year and 999999 years old
[Epic 4G General] aleph23:
I'm 38.

I had a FidoNet BBS from 1988 to 90. Node - 1/363:17
[Epic 4G General] bjhill2112:
Good luck. I'm 34 w/ 4 kids ranging from 12 yrs to 6 mo. Can't imagine what y'all are going through.

As for Prodigy, it technically never went away. SBC bought it (before AT&T) and just stopped marketing it. It is actually one of the main things that got SBC into the ISP market quickly. And for the record, I had both a Prodigy a CompuServe account back in the day (I worked for Electronics Boutique before it was just EB - we used to come up with all sorts of stupid stuff to do with all the free AOL floppies we'd get).
[Epic 4G General] lynyrd65:
I'm only 20 but my first comp was a Intel 386 based Compaq with windows 3.1. I was always trying to "unlock" windows 95 :p and I was looking for a way to add a dial-up modem!

My second PC (IBM, remember when they still made PC's?) came with a blazing fast 28.8k Dial-up modem, a 75mhz Intel 486DX2 CPU, Windows 95 (finally!) and a CD-ROM drive.

Third PC Custom built athlon 1.0ghz comp (windows XP!!!)

Fourth PC Compaq presario 1275 (meh) (Still using dialup at this point)

Fifth PC Gateway (idk model) (Wifi built in!!) I get DSL and wifi

Sixth PC and still current laptop Dell Inspiron 1525 (it's three years old but still running like a champ which is rather impressive considering I had to take it in for repairs every three months when I had warranty coverage. Miraculously problems dissapeared after the warranty expired :) ) Running Snow Leopard OSX86

Current Desktop is a core i5-quad based custom build with a dual-boot of windows 7 and Snow Leopard OSX86. I have cox cable internet now (15-30 mbps)
[Epic 4G General] krisman:
This is me exactly. Glad to see so many people posting that there over 30 makes me feel slightly less old. Which I could use these days. 27 and if someone asks me how old I am I have to think for a minute.
[Epic 4G General] iSaint:
What am I doing here LOL I'm only 17 :S
[Epic 4G General] crawrj:
Are you talking about the key? How you could just randomly type numbers and after a couple of trys you would get a working key.
[Epic 4G General] PythonFanTN:
The mere mention AOL itself as something supposedly 1000 years ago makes me feel older than I even am, because AOL was nothing more than a spin-off network.

My online cyberspace genesis came long before the internet was ever even considered as a commercial entity, via the *Father Network* of AOL that gave birth to it once the IBM PC started becoming popular, the Commodore-only online network known as Q-Link, which the original AOL was almost a complete virtual copy of. I originally connected to Q-Link on a Commodore 64 with a (no, I'm not kidding) 300 baud modem, before I finally managed to move up to high speed for the day: a 1200 baud modem. Most of you young whippersnappers have never gotten to experience the joy of clicking on something and waiting a good 3 minutes for the next screen of text or graphics to completely scroll-load line-by-line. I can remember when all the evolutionary modem advances for PC's were always big news, from 2400 to 4800 to 9600 to 14.4k to 19.2k to 28.8k to 33.6k to 48k to 56k, and I wasn't finally able to graduate from the Commie 64 until the 19.2kbps modem era.

And even that all is uptown compared to my first computer teacher I ever had, who used to program big old-generation mainframe computers which ran at least still in part on old vacuum tubes by way of punch-cards which you fed into the machine in order to instruct it what to do, half a generation before anyone ever heard the phrase 'hanging chad' uttered in mainstream media.

If you'll excuse me, I'll go eat my applesauce now.
[Epic 4G General] heathmcabee:
This guy wins. Sorry fellas. He's right and OLD
[Epic 4G General] sonjohn1:
Born in 1950, I'll let you guys do the math. Looking forward to retirement so I can waste more time on my smart phone. Think I'll go take a nap now. (-;
[Epic 4G General] lynyrd65:
I was only five or six years old. I thought if I hacked around with it enough I could magically make windows 3.1 turn into windows 95. :o
[Epic 4G General] JMMusic:
38 (39 in July).

My first computer was either a Commodore Pet, TRS 80, Timex Sinclair, or Osborne. I can't remember which one I actually got first. I remember programming my own games on the Timex Sinclair, and taking a baggie and putting ice cubes in it to set underneath it so that it would stay running long enough for me to finish programming and actually play.

Edit: Oh yeah, this is a phone forum. They feel like computers these days... My first cellphone was a Motorola DynaTac. The "Zach Morris" phone (personally hilarious, because I graduated from Bayside High School).
[Epic 4G General] || Acer ||:
Got a new sig .gif I can put to support you guys? =P

And btw, I'm probably one of the youngest here lol =D (yeah, I know not really helping the OP)

14, woo!
[Epic 4G General] murso74:
SON!

10char
[Epic 4G General] readingkeeper:
Wait, Bayside High School in Florida? Sorry if its off-topic. Blame the ADHD of a 15 year old ;-) Old people.
[Epic 4G General] othan1:
39. Single dad. Two daughters. One just turned 18 today and the other is 11.

First computer was an abacus. Okay, maybe not; it was an Apple //c.
[Epic 4G General] lancelane:
Isn't that a band. LOL. Yeah, I remember Prodigy and Compuserve and all the other dialups. 42 here.

First computer was an Apple 2 c clone. Yes Apple used to have clones like ibm does now. First phone was a Motorola flip from pacbell in Sacramento. I sold Sprint 14 years ago when they first came to st Louis and I still have the same phone number. They treat me like a Prince when I call.

Samsung Epic SyndicateROM Frozen 1.1
[Epic 4G General] TexasLTE:
LOL ! That was funny ! ( the nap part )
[Epic 4G General] ecooce:
I want to say I was 10 when I first used Prodigy, thinking wow, this is diffrent then Atari. My dad was crazy into computers like I am now. I remeber him being in awe when he got his first 40mb HD. And the turbo button was a classic, I just built and sold a pc using an old case that I found in a pc shop, never got the name of it, wish I took pics, but the thing was huge...
[Epic 4G General] aleph23:
My bbs was run on an IBM model 40. I didn't think I would ever be able to fill my 40 meg hard drive.

And when I upgrade modems from 1200 to 2400 baud, man, that was screamin fast!

Oh yeah, and Aol was never cool. :)
[Epic 4G General] Overstew:
There seems to be a sudden increase in drama on the forums, almost enough to make a TV show out of it! :p
[Epic 4G General] ecooce:
Only a small percentage of users are to blame, the ones that lie,manipulate, and accuse with no proof... its like the "magic button" or FM radio working on some epics :rolleyes:, not directing that at anyone really, but where is the proof, lol...
[Epic 4G General] murso74:
there's no drama in this thread... this is a gettign to know the old farts thread
[Epic 4G General] TexasLTE:
DANG ! This thread is over 10 pages already ! You would thing someone just released a new ROM or something ... LOL !
[Epic 4G General] abrognlie:
I always knew I was one of the older ones here (at 32), but it's good to know there are some relics here even older than I am.

Hehe... I know that doesn't help you feel any younger.
[Epic 4G General] Mutiny32:
Some men just want to watch the world burn.
[Epic 4G General] MДЯCЦSДИT:
I seriously have a button!
[Epic 4G General] sonjohn1:
Looks like I'm still the oldest fart so far. Zzzzzz Oops, I dozed off there for a minute.
[Epic 4G General] sonjohn1:
I recommend the mod close this thread immediately because of rampant ageism. (-:
[Epic 4G General] sniperkill:
38 yrs young here, lol... Damn, my teeth fell out again!
[Epic 4G General] ecooce:
Im getting tired of changing this...
[Epic 4G General] Whosdaman:
Age is just a number, and my number is eighteen ;)
[Epic 4G General] spitefulrain:
Mine will be in 2 short months :D
[Epic 4G General] skeeterslint:
I am not a number, I am a free man!
[Epic 4G General] insanity213:
Ahh, the nostalgia... Gotta love it...

I still have my 1st 300 baud modem, VIC-20 w/ data cassette, all 3 of my C64's, a pair of Ami 500's, and some of my A1000 not to mention the boneyard of PC's. I may have one of the only embedded Ethernet adapters for the cartridge slot on the C64. Unfortunately I roasted my 1200 baud modem and tossed it :(

My Fidonet node was 1:3619/14. I ran Tribbs, then RA w/ the frontdoor fido front end, then WWIV till I saved enough pennies for a real MajorBBS license. I still have a MBBS 6.25 running inside a DOS box, on an XP VM on an ESXi host... Just can't let this **** go!

I was on Q-link, then Prodigy/Compuserve, mostly hung on the local boards tho. I skipped AO-Hell altogether....

Ahhhhh, memories....
[Epic 4G General] JohnCorleone:
36 here as well but feel young again when messing with my phone and adding all kinds of goodies!
[Epic 4G General] spdwiz18:
i remember most of this. i grew up on a vic 20 c64 and 128 also had an amiga in ther somewhere... lol i remember bulitin boards before it become the interweb.

Is it sad that it took me till the end of the thread to figure out how old i was ( the mine goes where the body dears not)

34 btw.
[Epic 4G General] insanity213:
Haha, know the feeling. I remember my fido net address and the reg key/unlock code combo to my MBBS license but I had to do the math to figure out I was 33.
[Epic 4G General] Darkshneider:
I didnt get my computer until like AMD K6-II were around, but I did play an Atari 2600 and my first console was a Sega Master System...
[Epic 4G General] JMMusic:
Virginia Beach. :)
[Epic 4G General] bricky23:
Thats right, your only as old as you feel. 50 years old and compiled a kernel for the first time a couple weeks ago. Just wish I would have started earlier.
[Epic 4G General] DexterDawg:
I completely forgot about the internet yellow pages. anyone remember those?
[Epic 4G General] running_the_dream:
That's what's up!

(In this context, that means, good job :p)
[Epic 4G General] Darkshneider:
Ah... VA Beach, just yesterday a friend of mine posted pics from Peabodies... good times.
[Epic 4G General] othan1:
Anyone ever miss the excitement of owning a Cyrix processor? I mean, really, you never knew what frequency you were going to get.
[Epic 4G General] lancelane:
Does anyone remember the Colecovision game system and the Adam computer module you could add to it?

Samsung Epic SyndicateROM Frozen 1.1
[Epic 4G General] JohnCorleone:
Colecovision vs. Atari Tank or Pong.....oh yeah and Asteroids. I remember when PlayStation 1 came out and thought "how could it get any better?" Lol
[Epic 4G General] lancelane:
Or how bout:

Amiga

Timex computer

TI computer

TRS80 Radio Shack

Pong

Television

Sears Atari 2600 clones

Atari 5200

Apple Lisa

Apple clones

Commodore 64

Brick cell phones

Bag cell phones

Car phones installed in the car

Prodigy

CompuServe

AOL as an ISP

2600 baud dial up modems

Windows 3.1

Packard Bell comp

286 & 386 computers

20 Meg hard drives

256 k of ram. Yes k

VGA monitors 640 x 480

Some of these were already mentioned.

Samsung Epic SyndicateROM Frozen 1.1
[Epic 4G General] JMMusic:
I owned stock in Cyrix. I bought it at $16 a share. It went down. It went down some more. It went down some more... I sold it at $13 a share. IBM bought Cyrix the next month and I would have made a nice profit off the deal. I hate Cyrix!
[Epic 4G General] sonjohn1:
How about teenage girls & 3.2 beer. Ah, the 60's.
[Epic 4G General] lancelane:
Jmmusic.

That sucks.

Samsung Epic SyndicateROM Frozen 1.1 (sorry to see K0nane go)
[Epic 4G General] ecooce:
I remeber all to well... I used to have a video card with 1mb ram, and you could upgrade it to 2 by inserting another 1mb onto the board, ofcourse I did...

Im getting tired of changing this...
[Epic 4G General] othan1:
60's? lol. You haven't been to Oklahoma lately, have you?

2AM Cut off for buying 3.2 beer? Even the state classifies it as "non-intoxicating."

And teenage girls still exist. I made one 18 years ago.
[Epic 4G General] sonjohn1:
How about 60 year old girls and diet coke? Ah, the present!
[Epic 4G General] JulieB42:
sonjohn1 has me beat. Whew. I was starting to think I was the oldster here. ;-)

But let's see: Back in 1977 I was part of a group that put out what (as far as we can tell) was the first fanzine ever created on a computer. We used punch cards.

We have an Altair 8080. Husband and I were both on the original ARPAnet. I was a beta tester for PC-Link, which eventually became AOL.

Now get out of my yard. ;-)
[Epic 4G General] digiblur:
Can't remember my number but writing batch files for FrontDoor was fun!
[Epic 4G General] crawrj:
Have you gone back and played the Atari recently? OMG funny as hell.
[Epic 4G General] greatlakesghost:
41 and happy to see i am not the only one over 30 in here lol its great to see such diversity!
[Epic 4G General] Whosdaman:
Well I started developing for the HTC Touch at the age of 15, I know someone else who is developing right now that is 14. They just keep younger and younger. I thought I was young when I started...
[Epic 4G General] ranchosteve:
I'm 27, gonna be 28 next month. Suxs getting older :(
[Epic 4G General] danasmith2816:
62 years young in June, you young whippersnappers. Lol
[Epic 4G General] DroidApprentice:
What a great topic.

Going on 37 here. I remember TRS-80s with cassette (!) drives where a game that made Pong look sophisticated took an hour to load.

I remember programming in BASIC for my Apple IIe, friends' Atari STs and Commodore 64s. How badass I thought I was because of coping 5 1/4 inch floppys.

I remember playing Atari 2600, the NES, my Sega Master System (perenially underrated) and ALL the 16-bit era consoles.

Having my first pager, then shortly thereafter my awesome P2 with new technologies USB, AGP and OpenGL Quake 2. Having my first dumb Audiovox cell with no texting, then Samsung 1x data and no camera phone, Samsung 3G clamshell with my new Sprint unlimited data plan, Touch Pro, and now Epic.

All good, but the Epic is in its own way the best device yet, and the evidence is that I'm typing this now...
[Epic 4G General] lancelane:
I am impressed that you have an Altair. I don't think most of these kids even knew there was an original PC. LOL!

I have to say that I will miss K0nane but ecooce has always been my favorite developer with Rob at Midnight my close second. Keep up the good work guys.

Samsung Epic SyndicateROM Frozen 1.1
[Epic 4G General] aleph23:
¿Que?

10char
[Epic 4G General] lancelane:
I am sure most of the drama will die out quickly and I bet K0nane will be back sooner than we or he thinks. I think he enjoyed helping us all out. Only time will tell as us oldies on here have figured out over the years.

Samsung Epic SyndicateROM Frozen 1.1
[Epic 4G General] Death259:
I still listen to prodigy almost daily. Their latest album "Invaders Must Die" is ****ing awesome!

Since we're listing ages and what not... 24... I graduated college, got married, went on my honeymoon, started my first real job, bought my first car and house all within the month of my graduation 2 years ago... most of my friends just graduated this may. I feel a lot older than any of them...
[Epic 4G General] austin420:
Fail. They were talking about prodigy not the prodigy.
[Epic 4G General] sonjohn1:
I remember Prodigy, it was good for it's time. I once sent an e mail to Tim Berners Lee at CERN in 1996 and damned if he didn't answer me. Boosted my self esteem that entire day. (-:
[Epic 4G General] Whosdaman:
That's what I thought...where is the proof of FM? lol

Some may find this hard to believe but rjmjr69 is like 40 something.
[Epic 4G General] murso74:
old fart drama? not cool
[Epic 4G General] JohnCorleone:
All I have to say is thank goodness there are actually adults into phone Modding. I swear for 5 months I thought at 36 that I was double everybody else's age
[Epic 4G General] curvatura99:
I've got you all beat at the age of 43, but you would never know if you saw me in person.
[Epic 4G General] eigerzoom:
i think i'm 36 or i will be this year

i remember going to the public library in ft. lauderdale circa 1984 and there was some kind of 'internet' text game on about 8 pc's...probably the first time i put hands on a computer.

i was originally from vermont so things moved a tad slower there...lol

i dont know the terminology for the local pbx trunk...but we only had to dial 4 numbers (pulse dialing) to reach anyone in town...5815 was my home telephone number...

a few years later we had a 486 and i was playing scorch,wolfenstein and flight simulator

still around 80 i remember playing the magnavox odyssey with the keyboard on it and someone in the apartment complex had an atari...we would raid their apartment and whore that thing out...

there was a waterslide park (first i ever saw) on the corner of commercial blvd and dixie hwy in ft. lauderdale called water works and they had a game room...that was amazing...this is 1980...galaga, centipede, tempest, the first double decker pinball game i ever saw with tubes and stuff ... some dark lord middle ages something or other...

some years later the first six flags opened near the airport

oh and my first girlfriend at the age of 4...i started young...behind the bushes

there was a sitdown table pacman at a pizza joint across the street

good times...they will be missed

(i'll save the ufo sighting with my family for another time)

edit: i forgot oily stickers and scratch'n'sniff ... and free cookies at albertsons

and possibly my most favorite day of my life...when cherry coke came out

sad sad existence :p

old magnavox ad
[Epic 4G General] JulieB42:
I wish I could say that I owned one when they first came out, but I was a broke college student at the time. Husband and I found one at a flea market for cheap and grabbed it, though.