What real-life lessons did you learn from working with classic computers?

[Keatah]

What real-life lessons (or tech world lessons) did you learn from working with classic computers?

 

Well, I learned early on about backups and their importance. Though I never really practiced conducting them much in the early days. I did backup my TRS-80 Pocket Computer programs from tape to printer. I still have the baggie full of rolled-up strips of cash-register-styled paper.

 

I learned early on to get and hoard all versions of a program. Even if I wasn't interested in it. Never know when they'll come in handy.

 

Much later, I learned not to store or pack full disks into space-savings custom archives like Dalton Disk Disintegrator. One bad bit can screw up an archive. And you have to take time to locate original packing program and even more time to unpack it prior to usage. Best to leave it in an immediately useable format.

 

Murphy's law is alive and well. Things I have 2 or 3 copies of, so does every goddamned archive on the internet. But rare one-of-a-kind sets of text files and source code listings *always* seem to suffer from bit-rot and require extensive forensics to completely recover. And they're found nowhere else.. Why couldn't 1 of the 4 copies of Lunar Lander or that Carmen Sandiego shit go bad?

 

Try not to use custom storage solutions, no funky 36 extra-track mods or chopped VTOC or Dosless disk crap based on tricks that might not work on all hardware. Always use the lowest most common and most basic device for long term storage.

 

The most interesting things tend to come from one-off, no-name, outfits.

 

Keep boxes, documentation, accessories, packaging materials and other assorted doodads.They don't take up any more space than the original box - which can go into auxiliary storage or whatever.

[Polymorph]

I learnt the perils of not making backups when I inadvertently erased a graphic adventure game that I had been writing for the best part of a year (without any backups!).

 

In the same disastrous event I also learnt the perils of being too smart for one's good - I had updated the DOS on my adventure game disk using Beagle Brothers DOS Boss to change all of the standard commands to actually do something else (in a crude means of hiding my code). One of the commands I changed was LIST ==> INIT HELLO. I'm sure you can guess what happened - yep, put the disk in, loaded my game and typed LIST without thinking and wondered why I heard the familiar <TCHK>..<TCHK>..<TCHK> of a disk being formatted. Looking back now, there were probably means of recovering my data, but at the time being a kid I had no idea. I wallowed in my shame and humiliation for quite some time after that. :-)

 

There is still a bit of pain even now when I think of all the time I had put into that game...

[Osgeld]

no matter how many times you have done it, with all these years of experience, you can still smoke a board by plugging in the ribbon cable off by 1 pin

 

luckily I know how to fix it but that was day 1 with my XT laptop a few months ago

[desiv]

I learned that it's just as important, if not more, to understand how something works compared to "just how to do something"...

 

Surprising sometimes how many people are pretty good at their job, but have problems when something "off" happens, because they don't really understand what they are doing.. They just know how to do it..

 

desiv

[Keatah]

Yup. Happens in airplanes too. Pilots are always caught asking "what's the plane doing now" because they don't understand how it works.

[Omega-TI]

I learned...

Family demands on ones time and attention are directly proportional

to the amount of concentration you are trying to expend on a computer project.

[classicgamer_27330]

I learned to type in all caps. Then when I got the internet, it took me a while to break out of that habit

[MarkO]

I learned...

Family demands on ones time and attention are directly proportional

to the amount of concentration you are trying to expend on a computer project.

 

The Same, when it Comes to Watching TV... That's why I "applaud" the invention of the DVR...

 

MarkO

[ClausB]

I learned that computers are fragile and need to be handled carefully. My young robotics students always look at me funny when I remind them to close the laptop when they walk away, to not touch the screen, to not pound the keyboard, or to use more than two fingers to carry it. Maybe modern laptops are tougher, but I watch the way the kids handle their smartphones and cringe. To them, I'm an old curmudgeon, I suppose.

Edited December 16, 2016 by ClausB