The Whitehouse?

Shocktart, your avatar or paragraph or something does it refer to the level 1 base, the Whitehouse?

Yup, it's the White House from Zork.

It's from the original Zork (Zork I as most people call it now). What you see in the avatar was all you saw when you started the game....no graphics, no action, no nothing. You had to type stuff in like "Open Mailbox", then it would display more text and back and forth.

You really needed to use your imagination back then

But then, just to get the game to load was as entertaining in itself. You had to connect a cassette tape recorder to the computer, use the counter on the tape player to get to just the right location, then type in Line Input#, followed by "GET" and the name of the file, press "Play" on the cassette player, cross your fingers and wait until you either saw "File Loaded" or you watched the counter on the tape player go well past the point where you knew the file ended. Then you would adjust the volume on the tape player and try again. The volume level on a typical tape player ran from 0 to 20, and you had a margin of error of about 1, meaning if 7 was perfect you could have it set to just above 6 or just below 8 and it might work, but you needed it precisely on 7 for it to work perfectly (provided all the other steps were followed properly, of course).

Oh, and if you were one of the lucky ones with a modem to get "connected", you could access bulletin boards at a whoppping 300bps!

I think the Model III was the first that you could actually order with a floppy drive in it - talk about a lifesaver!

Oh God!!!! I'm OLD!!!

ShockTart

Holy crap am I glad I emulated those games...or does emulate even apply there? I've never had to go through that with a machine.

The emulators I've played around with give you the general feeling of what the real thing was like....only the emulators generally run many times faster, and connecting virtual disk drives or cassettes is all done by mouse-clicks instead of reaching around the actual computer fiddling with all the cables...and the virtual tape drive is nearly flawless....and....

But otherwise, they're pretty much the same

I played Zork on my father's Texas Instrument 990.

We actually had a dial up modem, and yes the baud rate was 300. We were so sphisticated that we even had a dedicated modem phone line. We eventually upgraded and got the super fast rate of 1200 bpm but it was so fast that you'd lose data or it would get corrupted.

I actually learned about Zork from a BBS - Anonymous Jones or IIIrd Ring. I remember downloading Zork II (I think)...I had to choose the protocol - kermit, Xmodem, Ymodem, etc. Then start the download and go to bed. I'd wake up the next day and had it downloaded.

man...things have changed.

Kestrel72 wrote:

man...things have changed.

Yes, they certainly have.

Remember when: A floppy disc was actually floppy?

ShockTart wrote:

Kestrel72 wrote:

man...things have changed.

Yes, they certainly have.

Remember when: A floppy disc was actually floppy?

Floppy disks are still floppy, they're just encased in rigid plastic cases. I still have a floppy drive and am working to manufacture the super floppy.

I remember doing school reports on a compack word processor, the really old and big floppy's that you could play organ trail on and maniac mansion, then the upgrade in the floppy to that hard case, then cds, then DVD, then usb, now blue-ray.... i hear that there is something even more efficient on the horizon....

It was the TI 990 - the "floppy disk" was about the size of a small briefcase, had 2 handles that you had to lift it by, and you'd insert it by seating it in to a huge receptacle and rotating till it clicked. Very much like a food processor.

I also remember having to teach it my voice to recognize voice commands - I'd read syllables from a book. You had to say them 10 times each and click OK after each. "sp" OK "sp" OK etc. There must have been 300 of them. And the darn thing still couldn't understand me.

Now I can talk to my car.

Also, remember taking floppys to my friends house and being so upset when they got bent.
And trying to program in Basic, DOS, Hex, Fortran, C++, Kobol, Log...
And sending a sentence to another computer was a really awesome borderline miracle event.
And when the Apple came out - WOAH!!!! Graphic interfaces - that's genius. You just like click on stuff and it does it.

Although the first computer I ever had access to was a TRS-80, Model I; I could use the TRS-80 Model III's that we had at our newspaper office. I played around with one of the TI models that you had to use all sorts of shift and function keys to get the code that you wanted to show up. The first one I ever owned was the TRS-80 Model 4P (a 'luggable" 30 pounder....and we complain about laptops that weigh over 5 lbs today!).
You can see it here:
http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=1083

Bored and want to try the original?
http://thcnet.net/zork/index.php

ShockTart

Okay Ginzaki, I know your character, but I cant seem to remember his name