Just reminisce mainly for the kiddies who didn’t navigate through these connections. Who here doesn’t remember using the game port for MIDI? That is, before they bought a dedicated MPU-401 or clone thereof. Early days you had to program “them there UARTS” as well as remembering if your MODEM needed a stop bit before dialing up your BBS to ask - LOL
I still have a box with all those connectors and adapters of “one to the other,” especially RS-232 stuff. I still have external gear that use RS-232, SCSI and Roland gear with RBus.
Win10Pro,i9,64GB,2TBSSD+20TBHDDs,1080TI,BIAB'24,Scarlett18i8,Montage7,Fusion 8HD,QS8,Integra7,XV5080,QSR,SC-8850,SPLAT,FL21&others,Komp.14,IK suite&others, just a guitar player-AXE FX III &FM9T, FishmanTP, MIDIGuitar2, GK2/3'sw/GI20
I wondered if the zip drive would get a shout out. Those changed my life at the time. Found memories. I would ask if that was odd; but hey, y'all seem to get it.
I remember have a love/hate relationship with firewire. The spped (at the time) was great; but it was so finicky. A lot of plugging and unplugging, trying again, and it felt a bit like I never could remember when you had to add the "eye of newt" to get it to work. It felt like...
Great thread! Lot's of memories.
Last edited by HearToLearn; 10/06/1902:58 AM.
Chad (Hope that makes it easier)
TEMPO TANTRUM: What a lead singer has when they can't stay in time.
A good informative article. Definitely we came a long way in a short time.
BIAB & RB2026 Win.(Audiophile), Windows 10 Pro & Windows 11, Cakewalk Bandlab, Izotope Prod.Bundle, Roland RD-1000, Synthogy Ivory, Session Keys Grand S & Electric R, Kontakt, Focusrite 18i20, KetronSD2, NS40M, Pioneer Active Monitors.
Before USB everything was incompatible with everything else.
I remember MPU-401, Zip and Jaz drives, RS-232, Centronics, 5.25" floppy disks, Turtle Beach Sound Cards, DOS, SCSI, and quite a few other things long tossed in the recycle bin.
My old Atari/ST had an external 40M hard drive. They called it a Winchester. It was huge, bigger than the box new computers come in. When started up, you could hear it whirring as it took about a minute to reach speed before it would work. But having 40M of RAM was a dream in those days.
I remember when programs came out in floppy disks because CDROM hadn't been invented yet, and when you backed up your computer you needed a stack of floppies.
I also remember when BiaB came in DOS.5, Atari, and Mac (Motorola CPU) versions with only 4 instruments, 24 built in styles, no user styles, no shots, no holds, and no endings.
A lot of things got better and easier to use.
I hadn't thought about those things for years, thanks for the trip down memory lane.
Bob, I remember that old Atari HD! It was huge wasn't it.
I also remember having to save everything on tape. Talk about slow loading; it could take up to 10-15 minutes to load a program. It was really a PITA when at the 14 minute mark you would get an error and had to start all over again. Thank God things are so much easier these days, and cheaper also.
Back in my day the only time we started panic buying was when the bartender shouted "last call"!
64 bit Win 10 Pro, the latest BiaB/RB, Roland Octa-Capture audio interface, a ton of software/hardware
It was really a PITA when at the 14 minute mark you would get an error and had to start all over again.
Amen to that on the Commodore 64. I thought I was the sh%$ when I upgraded from a cassette to a 5 1/4" floppy drive. That 14 minutes shaved down to a minute or two....
Yes lots of memory's there. I started on a Timex Sinclair to a Commodore 64 with cassette tape and moved to a 1541 disc drive. I soon went to work for Wiser Electronics an Atari Dealer and organ repair shop in Las Vegas repairing Atari computers and game machines. I remember making printer cables for the ever popular Epson 9 pin dot matrix printers. Them were the days indeed. Now I work on these printers
BIAB 2026 Ultrapack- Fender Studio Pro 8, Windows 11, Mac Mini M4 with Logic Pro 11, Melodyne Studio, Luna Pro
Ahem, Brian, these printers looks slightly more sophisticated than the Epson 9 pin dot matrix
BIAB & RB2026 Win.(Audiophile), Windows 10 Pro & Windows 11, Cakewalk Bandlab, Izotope Prod.Bundle, Roland RD-1000, Synthogy Ivory, Session Keys Grand S & Electric R, Kontakt, Focusrite 18i20, KetronSD2, NS40M, Pioneer Active Monitors.
My TI99 used cassette tapes. I forgot all about that. Thanks for reminding me. (I think.)
The programs also came on cartridges, plug and load. But the computer didn't do much of anything worthwhile. Too slow, and not advanced enough. But I taught me BASIC, which was a nice introduction to the art of coding.
I consider the Atari the first 'real' computer, the TI was a toy.
One nice thing about the Atari was the OS was burned in ROM, so a virus couldn't get to it. Of course that meant it couldn't be upgraded with new features either.
I bought Master Tracks Pro as my first sequencer on the Atari. When the first edition came out for Windows, I bought that. I still use it.
When I went to a computer shop (remember those) to buy a Win95 computer the owner gave me a deal if I have him my TI99. He wanted it as a collector's item.
While we are looking back, does anybody remember Computer Shopper magazine?
Still a UK publication with that name, You seem to be a guy that might like reading mags like that Bob and more general as well, check out Readly website usually do an offer of 99p for one month for five digital devices, great digital reading material in there, I have it now for about 18 months.
Windows 10 (64bit) M-Audio Fast Track Pro, Band in a Box 2025, Cubase 14, Cakewalk and far too many VST plugins that I probably don't need or will ever use
My first computer was a Tandy Coco that saved to cassette and I learned to code Basic on it. My first real computer was an IBM PC Jr. I used it for years. I still have two 286CPU with floppy disk drive and 1 meg ram and 10 meg HD desktops that work. (at least they did the last time I fired them up - several years ago They're in deep storage in an outdoor shed...
Like some of you others, I have boxes filled with every imaginable adaptor and cable. I have internal and external zip drives but no disks. I finally discarded all of the old CRT monitors a couple of years ago to make room for the 'newer' flat screens.. Last time I looked, there was still a box of dot-matrix 3-sheet carbon copy paper that comes out of the box in one long strip and you tear off each page at the perforations.
It was a video game that included a form of basic computing language. It did not have a keyboard but it had a keypad where some keys contained commonly used basic commands like if, then goto, etc. I had three games published in their newsletter.
I learned Atari basic and programed a video golf game but did nothing with it. It was thrilling at that time but today seeing a golf ball go blink-blink-blink across the screen does nothing for me
Then I discovered those weird looking input sockets and my programming days came to an end. A bought a Korg DS-8 keyboard, learned MIDI, and that has developed into one expensive, but fun, hobby. I did use MIDI in my wedding band. I bought and still use a Casio strat and MIDI controller combined and had three tone generators that I used on stage.
Back in my day the only time we started panic buying was when the bartender shouted "last call"!
64 bit Win 10 Pro, the latest BiaB/RB, Roland Octa-Capture audio interface, a ton of software/hardware
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