This was cutting edge tech… I remember the excitement of replacing floppy discs with CDRs…

  • Emerald@lemmy.world
    7·
    2 days ago

    This isn’t very old lol. That computer could be from 2010 and CD’s and Sharpies were used then. Also, LimeWire was functional until like late 2010.

  • boonhet@lemm.ee
    3·
    2 days ago

    No, because my country was pretty much too small and poor to have brand-name sharpies, we just had felt pens with other names. Carioca I believe was the most prominent brand back then.

  • Perhapsjustsniffit@lemmy.ca
    3·
    2 days ago

    Record off the radio to cassette and an active market for pirated live shows because we lived past nowhere and it was all we had access to.

  • voodooattack@lemmy.world
    11·
    2 days ago

    Old enough to remember using a 3½” floppy disk to boot my first PC and mess around with GW/Q-BASIC and play DOS games.

    The disks were strongly perfumed (I guess the guy I bought my pirated games from liked to do that for some reason), and I still remember that aroma.

  • epicstove@lemmy.caEnglish
    2·
    2 days ago

    I can still sorta remember as a kid, sitting down at a chunky old Dell PC running Windows XP, while my dad inserted a CD for some Go Diago go computer game.

    We still have that old computer. We tried to throw Linux on it to see if we could use it for something but I think it’s truly beyond saving.

    • D_C@lemm.ee
      241·
      3 days ago

      Wooo, look at hoity toity FancyPants over here with their screwdriver. All we could afford to fix our cassette tapes was a pencil. And a blunt pencil at that. And it was probably stolen from school!! Screwdrivers indeed!

      • hessenjunge@discuss.tchncs.de
        321·
        3 days ago

        The screwdriver is not for the tape. It’s for adjusting the audio head so it can pick up the data on the tape.

        When someone gave you a tape with some nice games on it there was a near 100% chance you needed to adjust your datasette to read them.

        • Treczoks@lemmy.world
          10·
          3 days ago

          Exactly. On the long run, we settled down on what we called a common calibration, a setting that allowed all of us locals to exchange tapes without constant tweaking.

        • Rose@slrpnk.net
          6·
          3 days ago

          The tape drive has a hole on the top for adjusting the azimuth, but one of my friends basically just removed the top cover entirely for easier access to the screw. I did that too for some particularly tricky tapes.

          Another of my friends had basically an unearthly knack of adjusting this stuff. Dude would just walk up to the tape drive, masterfully tweak the screw for a second, and it’d work. Which makes no sense.

          This was all a kind of mysterious part of the Commodore 64 culture to me. Because I had a floppy drive and that’s what I obviously preferred to use.

          • hessenjunge@discuss.tchncs.de
            1·
            3 days ago

            Dude would just walk up to the tape drive, masterfully tweak the screw for a second, and it’d work.

            Me too! For some reason I was the only guy in school who could do that. Fun times. 😊

            Because I had a floppy drive and that’s what I obviously preferred to use.

            In the beginning these were not available. Also I remember them costing the same as the C64 itself. As soon as I could afford one I got one obviously.

            I just another item that could a generational riddle: the hole-punch that made your one-sided floppy two-sided.

            • Rose@slrpnk.net
              1·
              2 days ago

              In the beginning these were not available. Also I remember them costing the same as the C64 itself. As soon as I could afford one I got one obviously.

              I guess I was lucky. My parents got me my first Commodore 64 C second hand, and it included the floppy drive. Guess it was affordable that way.

              I just another item that could a generational riddle: the hole-punch that made your one-sided floppy two-sided.

              Ooh, I didn’t have one of those fancy pieces of gear! I lived in a small town. Used to see disk notchers at the book/stationery store, which had the reputation of being slightly pricy place but was the only store in town that had computer stuff at the time.

              Instead, I figured out a way to cleanly cut the notch using scissors. Two horizontal cuts, then two cross cuts, then carefully cut out the remainder.

          • hessenjunge@discuss.tchncs.de
            1·
            2 days ago

            A flathead is still a screwdriver, is it not?

            It was a Philips screw IIRC. You can also use a flathead screwdriver on them but you shouldn’t IMHO.

            • Farid@startrek.website
              1·
              2 days ago

              Then I misunderstood and was thinking of a different adjustment of the head. The one I was thinking about us when you wedge the screwdriver behind the head and bend it otwards a little for better contact. For that you need a flat tool.