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You know you're a REAL veteran of the MM's when. . .
02/25/2015, 13:54:50

    Elf writes:

    You still have a tablet of paper with the New World Computing logo on it. (Used to be included in the disk box of the early games.)

    You have "King's Bounty" in DOS on a 3-1/2" disk.

    You remember heated arguments over which were better RPG's: the M&M's, the Gold Box games, the Wizardry series, or the Ultima games. (I loved 'em all.)

    The only clues available were either by Scorpia* in the old "Computer Gaming World" mag, or Shay Addams' "Questbusters" sheets. ("PC Gamer" was not yet born.)
    *This triggered an inside joke in M&M3: the villain serpent-woman, "Scorpio."

    You rejoiced when M&M 3 broke all the molds by having a small FOUR-person party, and the party members had changeable facial expressions (unheard-of before then.) I laughed out loud at the green gagging faces when poisoned, and the look of astonishment and dismay when a party member was wounded.

    You deplored having to change out the 5-1/4" disks so frequently: usually one for party stats, another for dungeons, still another for the game itself.

    And for you real old-timers (like me) you know what a DIPP switch was, and still occasionally think "Load *, 8, 1."





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Or another known to old timers "Face down, 9 edge first"
02/25/2015, 20:22:01

    Peter2 writes:

    Or the Eye of the Beholder (well, 1 & 2 at least), for which I still have a folder of hurriedly hand-drawn maps . . .

    Or the games that I left to go to the RPGs, like Space Quest 1—3 and Lords of Time, preceded by Colossal Cave, or even before that, Zork . . .





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This one is included in the collection of jokes at GNU website.
02/26/2015, 02:18:11

    Ramillies writes:





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(Hence I know it, eventhough I'm not an old timer )
02/26/2015, 02:21:57

    Ramillies writes:

    We also have a big lot (several thousand) of empty punched cards ... so I can imagine which edge is the "9" .

    [ But what did I not know is that the "face down, 9 edge first" was inscribed on IBM card readers. ]





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Thanks – I hadn't seen that.
02/26/2015, 04:21:50

    Peter2 writes:





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I don't remember the poem that went with it offhand. But it reminds me of a story. . .
02/26/2015, 13:44:50

    Elf writes:

    ...about why we "boot up" a computer or program. Many years ago, when those punched cards held sway, a given program might require a stack of cards nearly a third of a meter deep. In certain establishments where cards are played (think Las Vegas, Atlantic City or Monte Carlo,) games requiring multiple decks of cards are dealt from a wooden frame called a "shoe." When one long-ago programmer remarked to his buddy that he needed a shoe to keep the cards aligned, the other programmer exclaimed, "That would take a boot, not a shoe!" And the term stuck.




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Hm. I know a different one.
02/26/2015, 18:16:00

    Ramillies writes:

    We actually talk about bootstrapping (for lazy people, booting). It is said that on some boots, there is a "helper" device called a bootstrap to help your foot get inside. And the process of booting the OS looked like a similar thing. [ I can't say anything for nor against that. The term is surely older than me and I'm not an English native either. ]

    But who knows now ...





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The way I heard it, years ago, was almost identical.
02/26/2015, 19:50:05

    Peter2 writes:

    Each time one of the early computer was switched on, it had to load the operating system into memory from storage, and the bootstrap was a very simple instruction that told the computer where and how to start. I was told that the name came from the old saying "You can't pull yourself up by your bootstraps". (One of the earliest attempts at anti-gravity, possibly? )




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By the way, today it is no different, only the code that loads OS may be more complex
02/27/2015, 01:38:10

    Ramillies writes:

    and more cluttered with useless things (like drawing funny images on the screen).




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