How was it like to WORK 8 hours on a retro computer?

[IntelliMission]

I've always used 8-bit computers and MS-DOS/early Windows 95 PCs as game machines, but that's because I was born in 1980. When I started working in 2006, "modern" Windows and the Internet were everywhere.

 

But I know computers were used by many companies through the 70s, 80s and 90s, in times when the Internet was simply not there (or as limited to connecting directly to a BBS at home), multi-task was not an option and, of course, well... often no mouse was available.

 

I know Atari Age has a few users who have lived that era, so I was curious about how your experience was. Here are some of my questions:

 

1) Does your perception of one of these machines change a lot (for the worse) when you are forced to use it 8 hours a day to introduce boring data (or even if you have some fun programming, it's still work and it's tiresome)?

 

2) When there was nothing to do at work or in rest periods, was there any way to have "fun" or "check some news" in those machines before the Internet era? (Including playing pre-installed game packs for Win 3.11 or even bringing disks/tapeswith games from home)

 

3) Can you specific details about the type of work you performed and the computer model?

 

Thanks all!

[+Cafeman]

I used mainframe 3270 dumb terminals linked to an IBM mainframe  for several years before we started to get windows Pc's.  These had a green screen and little extra functionality other than input.  There were special workstations with Wang word processors that we would time share.  This was mainframe software development for banks, railroads, steel mills.  No games that I I recall.  No internet.  Newspapers and Radio instead. 

 

When we first got Pc's, (probably Pentiums)  everybody started playing Solitaire!   I remember getting internet in the mid late 90s, There was a manager who monitored every site everybody visited and would stop by to reprimand us for doing so.  So why have it?   When there was nothing to do or for a rest, we would go talk to another person.  There was no web to surf.  Then we'd be reprimanded for talking and not working.

 

Didn't know anyone who used Commodore,  Atari or other 80s homw computers for actual jobs.   There were TRS 80s around though but I never used one out of school.  But I had no desire to have a Windows home computer at all, for years, because that was my day job. 

 

 

[youxia]

My mom is an accountant and in the early Eighties her company was using ZX Spectrums, with tape decks, to do some work -impossible as it sounds. Not sure what (presumably accounting), because I was only interested in games and, of course, they did have some and in fact this was my first contact with microcomputer gaming (Pyjamarama, Harrier Attack, etc...)

 

Later on (late Eighties) I did some data entry on PCs in her company - it was boring as hell, but I needed money for Amiga. I couldn't slack around then because I was a kid and everyone was watching me but, sure, gaming on work PCs was rife. That's why so many games had the Boss Key

[krslam]

I rarely had days where I spent the whole time with a computer, but we did use them frequently.  Probably my closest experience to the OPs questions would have been when we started using Kaypros (IIs and 10s).  We used custom software for various data logging and processing functions, and Wordstar and dBase to write reports.  It was a huge improvement over writing stuff by hand and taking it off to a secretary to be typed, and much better than our previous use of mini-computers which could only have two simultaneous users.  That was agony for an organization of 50+ engineers so the Kaypros felt like heaven.

 

For play, we had several of the older Infocom text adventures on the Kaypro, and before that would sneak off to play Adventure on the mainframe during off hours.  Our lab also had an HP9825 system with a vector screen that I learned a bit about programming on by writing a horse racing sim and porting the old Trek program. Pretty lame by today's standards but fun for the time.

 

[Frozone212]

Boss key?

[IntelliMission]

31 minutes ago, Frozone212 said:

Boss key?

Yeah, I've actually only seen this once. I think it was a modern application I used, maybe a dating app. It's a feature that basically camouflages your video game/dating app/insert thing you shouldn't be doing with your computer. It makes it look as something different, serious, technical. Often fake graphs are added.

 

I think I got to see/use two:

 

1) Around 5-10 years ago, when i was an IT worker, someone had installed some app that could "fake" that you were writing code as a programmer. I remember some green and black colors that made it look more serious. I seem to remember you could type anything with the keyboard and the code appeared anyway as something that made sense.

 

2) The feature in the dating app. It basically showed a fake graph that made it look like you were working on soething serious and boring.

 

I suppose these retro "boss keys" this user has mentioned worked similarly. I just googled it and found an article about it in Howtogeek. And Mobygames has a list of the games with a boss key! That's pretty interesting, because I've played some of these games (Wolfenstein 3D, Indiana Jones and his Desktop Adventures) and didn't noticed (or dont' remember).

 

EDIT: I just played Wolfenstein 3D and there doesn't seem to be a "boss key" anywhere. The Howtogeek article says you see a fake "C:" prompt if you press F1.

Edited December 4, 2021 by IntelliMission

[oracle_jedi]

I know Atari Age has a few users who have lived that era, so I was curious about how your experience was. Here are some of my questions:

 

More than a few I hope!  I don't have the demographics but I thought most of the regulars here were working or studying as computers entered the mainstream.

 

1) Does your perception of one of these machines change a lot (for the worse) when you are forced to use it 8 hours a day to introduce boring data (or even if you have some fun programming, it's still work and it's tiresome)?

 

Quite the opposite.  Having an Atari 800XL at home, I was originally baffled by the crazy prices of "serious" computers like the Apple II or IBM PC.  But working with them for hours at a time one quickly learned to appreciate the superior keyboard, build quality and large capacity floppy disks (360KB!).  I also learned to quickly appreciate the green screen text monitors.  The crisp 80-column displays were ideal for programming, text processing or working in dBASE and I could stare at those warm green phosphor displays for hours.  Turbo Pascal and Turbo C were fantastic languages compared to the limited programming environment at home.  

 

2) When there was nothing to do at work or in rest periods, was there any way to have "fun" or "check some news" in those machines before the Internet era? (Including playing pre-installed game packs for Win 3.11 or even bringing disks/tapeswith games from home)

 

It greatly depended on where you worked. 

 

There was no regular internet as we know it now.  But there were dial-up BBS systems, and at IBM we had access to the global network of IBM mainframes which included PROFS for email and many repositories with things like jokes and funny stories.  At some places you could access the internet but it was pre-HTML so it was all text.  There were newsgroups which you could access with a UNIX tool called TIN - The Internet News.

 

Years later I think Yahoo took over those newsgroups but I think they are all gone now.  There was also gopher which let you find things.  I actually bought some books from a bookshop in San Franiciso, and laserdiscs from a store in Indiana and had them shipped to the UK long before e-commerce was a thing.

 

At one place I worked in Chicago in the late 90s they had a strict no-external-network policy.  But I needed access to newsgroups to get help learning Oracle.  The company's solution was to give me a modem and a Prodigy account that got me onto the internet.  With no filtering at all.

 

3) Can you specific details about the type of work you performed and the computer model?

 

A lot of programming in Turbo Pascal and Turbo C (as an intern), development of macros for dBASE II, scripting in Foxbase, lots of writing reports/designs in Wordstar and later Word Perfect.  I hated Word Star but grew to like Word Perfect 5.  Some development of spreadsheets in Lotus 1-2-3 and similar clones.  I also did technical drawings in a software package that ran on a PC with Hercules graphics, but I can't remember the name of it now.

 

Machines were BBC Micro, Osborne 1 (CP/M), Apple II, EACA Video Genie (TRS80 clone), IBM PC (and numerous clones), IBM 3278 and 3279 terminals, Daisy Cadnetix CAD/CAM terminal.

 

I worked various internships and part-time jobs starting around 1987.

 

[Mr SQL]

Great thread! Teletype was fun all day long! Great interface for early social networking platforms email and talk and perfect for Text Adventures leaving you with perforated scrolls of your escapades; I miss those.

 

TRS-80, Commodore, Apple and Atari had great keyboards for programming. I could use those machines all day long and something about the CRT displays we had under NTSC was very different than Today's high refresh rate LCD displays; 30 HZ helped with concentration. Also just seeing text appear on a Television display that you could control was very intriguing for the time as well. I liked the IBM AS-400 and think IBM's loud mechanical keyboards were the best. 

 

Today I'm amazed to see everyone squint at really tiny computers for over 8 hours a day and not even program them! 

Early computing was not as ergonomic as Today but light years ahead of Smart Phone technology; dirt and a stick have a better UI.

 

[Keatah]

If an early IBM PC compatible of the 8086-80286 class counts then alright. The work I did at the time was akin to adding info into a database. A serious technical database. Lots of time between entries. But I always felt the machine was overpowered and us users were way behind in what was possible if some automation would've been applied at key points.

 

I always really wanted to use an Apple II in the financial or science professions. But I was way too young to make a plan. And school got in the way. So that never came to pass. It was always games and more games. And some recreational Applesoft programming.

 

As a side business everyone in the neighborhood came to me to print stuff out. From manuscripts to Print-Shop banners and all kinds of documents, program listings, and graphics. Did it all. All on the Apple II with Epson MX-80 F/T with GrafTrax III, and a Practical Peripherals external in-line Microbuffer^[1] and OrangeMicro Grappler+ interface card. And it was nearly as fun as games. Prideful. Honorable. A welcome challenge to set stuff up just right. Real world practical stuff they shielded you from in the classrooms of those times.

 

The first serious 9-5 grind didn't happen to me till the ending of the Pentium II era. Those dull dell office machines. Grinding through a database that I was never fully able to grasp was hell on Earth's surface. With time limits and other de-humanizing rules forced upon us.

 

[1] Just a short while ago I finally found some affordable memory modules on ebay to upgrade the MicroBuffer from 64K to 256K. The modules look like SIMMS, but have 8 x 4164 chips on them. Cross that off my childhood bucket list!

[IntelliMission]

5 hours ago, Mr SQL said:

Teletype was fun all day long! Great interface for early social networking platforms email and talk and perfect for Text Adventures leaving you with perforated scrolls of your escapades; I miss those.

I googled "teletype" and it looks like that thing didn't even have monitors. Can you give more details on "gaming" and "networking" using that? Were you "reading" the social messages on sheets of paper? Did text adventures come into multiple perforated cards? How did you manage to hide ALL THAT from the boss?

[Krebizfan]

Teletypes had a large roll of paper, equivalent to several hundred pages per roll. Each line would be printed on it and the paper would automatically keep scrolling. When complete, advance the paper a little more and tear off the results. Prices of paper were increasing back in the 70s so switching to glass terminals to save money was largely completed by 1980. 

 

More important to me was that the teletype terminals I had access to stored local files on paper tape. A 36 kB file would need a paper tape 100 yards long. Since that is impractical, the programs had to be short. That makes for my favorite form of development: short utilities that are completed quickly. I worked in the 90s on a large project with dozens of programmers that spent a year without generating any useful results. I did not enjoy that project. 

 

I worked from 1990 on database interfaces running on Windows and related specialized formatted output methods. Nothing too fancy. Started with Compaq 386s and worked up the Intel processor lineup as new machines were cycled in. Fewer colors were a bit of a blessing. With only 16 colors available on a budget VGA machine, there was no need for a designer to send memos over the span of months trying to push the correct shade of blue. There was the blue that the video card provided and that was it. 

[Tanooki]

Within the last year I put a PC emulator on here, which since got jacked up and I never put back since PCem kind of croaked.  When it was running, it purely was booting Windows 98SE so I could run a select few games dosbox is a total turd about I enjoy.

 

It took maybe 5-10min at most to get used to the slower speeds, the DOS commands I use less these days, but the OS itself wasn't a problem, chore or really limiting.  Win98SE is a non-bugged to death version of the awful 95 I wouldn't even use then due to all the crashes.  As such using it to run games and other stuff for a few hours here and there, it never was taxing or a problem, so WORKING in them wouldn't be a problem in the slightest.  I still don't like using the modern interface that Win8 forced and 10 kind of uses(but not) so I'd use 'classic shell' a freebie to get Win8 an 98/XP or 7 style start menu etc so I never got used to shittily converted touch interface tiles of metro.

 

There should be little to no issue using let alone putting 8hrs of work into a 25-35 year old OS really at all.

[Mr SQL]

1 hour ago, IntelliMission said:

I googled "teletype" and it looks like that thing didn't even have monitors. Can you give more details on "gaming" and "networking" using that? Were you "reading" the social messages on sheets of paper? Did text adventures come into multiple perforated cards? How did you manage to hide ALL THAT from the boss?

Yes, my perspective with a Teletype was as a student before high school. The guidance counsellor took me to a hidden room where the Teletype was after we played Chess in his Office and told me I could use it anytime. There was only one other student using the machine who was a Sysop and created an account for me on the mail and talk emulator I learned about which was effectively a BBS where you could send email and chat with other users connected to the network and view message board forums, just like here only "the printer was the computer", it had an awesome keyboard too.

 

The text adventures were even better than playing them on home computers, because you could see the last couple of "screens" scrolling out of view while Computers with video output were limited to the current screen.  You could learn BASIC on it too but I learned on a TRS-80.

 

19 minutes ago, Krebizfan said:

More important to me was that the teletype terminals I had access to stored local files on paper tape. A 36 kB file would need a paper tape 100 yards long. Since that is impractical, the programs had to be short. That makes for my favorite form of development: short utilities that are completed quickly.

Very cool! The model we had in school was networked so I never got a chance to load from paper tape, did you load BASIC like that?

BASIC was well really suited for short efficient programs.

 

[IntelliMission]

I just found this in Youtube. Interesting experience:

 

 

[fimbulvetr]

I didn't start using computers seriously for work until the early 90s, but the one thing I enjoyed working with computers in those days was when I had to crunch large datasets or process satellite imagery or whatever is that I would start the machine on processing the data and then just walk away while it did the thing. Depending on what it was doing, it could be 30 minutes, hours, or even overnight. So everything slowed down. I had a perfectly good excuse to go get a coffee, do some other work in the lab, read scientific journal articles, call it a day, or whatever. Especially when I was doing remote sensing work as often there was nothing else to do work-wise when all the machines were occupied processing data. Set up and run the script, and cool my heels until it completed. At least it was something that didn't involve sitting in front of a computer for hours on end.  

 

I don't do research anymore so now my work really is 8 hours or more sitting in front of a monitor, and no downtime unless the the network is down. 

[+littaum]

My parents had a CP/M machine for their work in the early to mid 80's that was mainly used for WordStar, although they did also have a copy of Ladder which was pretty popular around the office (so much so that they had to institute a policy that it could only be played by people at breaks or before/after hours).  The computer had a really nice mechanical keyboard and felt easier to type on than my Commodore 64.  When I used it, it was never boring because you got to actually type on a computer, which was a very big deal at the time.

 

 

As far as news goes, before the internet era, we had these things called newspapers which would collate all of the previous day's news and print it on flat surfaces made of dead trees.

 

[Keatah]

Newspapers were like filters that removed all the social media bullshit.

[youxia]

44 minutes ago, fimbulvetr said:

I had a perfectly good excuse to go get a coffee, do some other work in the lab, read scientific journal articles, call it a day, or whatever

[Krebizfan]

Compiling or waiting for results from punch cards are a great excuse to get coffee or otherwise kill time. There isn't much that can be done until the results are returned. Paper tape has the drawback that the user has to be there to guide the tape through the reader. 

 

I remember at UCLA seeing about a hundred students milling around the computer room hoping to get the results of a class project before the professor refuses submissions. If the campus had included a snack bar across the hall, they could have paid for very nice upgrades just from sales there. 

[zzip]

When I started working, it was a "transitional" period where Windows was growing, Win95 was about to be released, the internet wasn't quite widely available yet, and there was plenty of "old tech" around (VAX, etc)

 

On 12/4/2021 at 9:18 AM, IntelliMission said:

1) Does your perception of one of these machines change a lot (for the worse) when you are forced to use it 8 hours a day to introduce boring data (or even if you have some fun programming, it's still work and it's tiresome)?

You get used to it.  I suppose it depends on if you enjoyed the work you were doing.   There were less things to distract you.   I think the multi-tasking systems changed the nature of work.   Because you could work on multiple things at once, you started to be given more tasks,  and when you could start to hold meetings on your computer, then everyone starts scheduling meetings because they can, which reduces your productivity.

On 12/4/2021 at 9:18 AM, IntelliMission said:

2) When there was nothing to do at work or in rest periods, was there any way to have "fun" or "check some news" in those machines before the Internet era? (Including playing pre-installed game packs for Win 3.11 or even bringing disks/tapeswith games from home)

You gossiped with your coworkers.   It doesn't happen as much as it used to, especially not in the COVID era.

 

There were some terminal-based games too.   I remember having a terminal version of Boggle and "Go Fish" that helped kill time.   Also at one job, there was one system that had internet access, an early Linux system.   Everybody had a DEC terminal at their desk,  some of the lucky ones had PCs or Macs too.   Dec terminals had 2 RS-232 ports (serial) and we had RS-232 lines into our cubes.    The responsibility for remotely managing the Linux internet server fell on my lap.  It was in the server room.   I routed an RS232 line from the server to my cube.    For "remote maintenance" of course,  but really I did it so I could have internet access from my desk on my 2nd RS-232 line.   I had to use a text-based browser, but it was something ?

 

On 12/4/2021 at 9:18 AM, IntelliMission said:

3) Can you specific details about the type of work you performed and the computer model?

DEC Terminals wired into VAX or Unix systems.   I remember coding in some obscure 4GL language that only governments used, and also later porting a Pascal app from one platform to another.

[zzip]

On 12/4/2021 at 10:58 PM, oracle_jedi said:

There was no regular internet as we know it now.  But there were dial-up BBS systems, and at IBM we had access to the global network of IBM mainframes which included PROFS for email and many repositories with things like jokes and funny stories.  At some places you could access the internet but it was pre-HTML so it was all text.  There were newsgroups which you could access with a UNIX tool called TIN - The Internet News.

 

Years later I think Yahoo took over those newsgroups but I think they are all gone now.  There was also gopher which let you find things.  I actually bought some books from a bookshop in San Franiciso, and laserdiscs from a store in Indiana and had them shipped to the UK long before e-commerce was a thing.

I think it was Google who took over the newsgroups?

 

To clarify what this old tech was for OP and others who weren't around.

 

Newsgroups were discussion groups for virtually any topic you can think of.   Even some really naughty ones that would probably get censored today.   Discussion was similar to what we have in forums like AtariAge,  but you needed particular kinds of apps to access and it wasn't very user friendly.

 

Gopher was a menu-driven interface to the internet, you could find places of interest by drilling down menus.   WWW was a hypertext interface to the interner. they were kind of in competition with each other, with WWW winning out.

[BydoEmpire]

I don't think that many people actually did work 8+ hours a day on an 8-bit machine, unless you were developing software for it.  Computers were used to solve specific problems, not be the tool for all the work. Most jobs didn't rely on computers all day.

 

[edit] I read it as '8 bit computer' not 'retro computer' so my mistake. Obviously a lot more industries relied on mainframes and minicomputers, but the point still stands as that's not a significant percentage of the workforce.  I think a lot changed after the introduction of the IBM PC and database and spreadsheet software. Visicalc was a game-changer for sure.

Edited December 6, 2021 by BydoEmpire

[IntelliMission]

So the VAX 9000 was a mainframe... Interesting! (I was a Mainframe operator for 4 years in the mid 2000s, but in my case it was all remote console apps running on a Windows PC).

 

I just found a 2 year old blog entry about a guy who has "VAX 9000 nostalgia". He also mentions playing 2 games on it.

Edited December 6, 2021 by IntelliMission

[oracle_jedi]

13 hours ago, zzip said:

I think it was Google who took over the newsgroups?

 

To clarify what this old tech was for OP and others who weren't around.

 

Newsgroups were discussion groups for virtually any topic you can think of.   Even some really naughty ones that would probably get censored today.   Discussion was similar to what we have in forums like AtariAge,  but you needed particular kinds of apps to access and it wasn't very user friendly.

 

 

You're right- it was google.

 

Here is me in 1994 asking about the existence of Elite for the Atari 8bit.   Some dude at the Atari show in Stafford had claimed he had seen it.  Back then it was much harder to confirm or refute such claims.  So glad the modern internet has eliminated crazy conspiracy theories and unfounded rumors! ?

 

 

A while back I stumbled across a simulator of the internet circa 1988.  I am not sure if this is the same thing, but it looks close.  Point a browser at telehack.com and set up an account.  It gives something of an approximation of the experience we had in university, even down to the green-on-black text only display.   Fond memories of the Zenith Z200 in my dorm room connected via an RS-232 cable into the serial port in the room which allowed me to log into the school's VAX systems, and from there... the world!

 

 

[zzip]

23 hours ago, IntelliMission said:

So the VAX 9000 was a mainframe... Interesting! (I was a Mainframe operator for 4 years in the mid 2000s, but in my case it was all remote console apps running on a Windows PC).

 

I just found a 2 year old blog entry about a guy who has "VAX 9000 nostalgia". He also mentions playing 2 games on it.

There were different VAX models, some were small "MicroVAX".   To me it was always some mysterious piece of hardware locked away in a back room somewhere that I rarely ever saw.  We just interacted with it through DEC terminals.   I was never a huge fan of VMS (the typical VAX OS),  so I can't say I'm particularly nostalgic for them ?