Tech support for savvies on the way out..

[Greyhatter]

When I was 16yo I had a Vic 20, then at C-64, later on an IBM 8086 & 8088, a 386 (so glad to miss the 286 and BTW,what happened to the 186??) , (so, so nice to miss so many others) Celeron, P4, and today I bought my first Micro 1G MP3 personal audio player (this thing's 1/2 my thumb size, recharges through the USB, and gets its data through the same USB charge adapter) but it has one button only and it’s the size of a planters wart I must skillfully manipulate up, down, left, right, and push to play and pause to run the show! These old fingers and eyes could handle those bigger older computer toys of the past, but so far this new toy is no treat. I’m betting when I’m 70 these things will be so damn small I’ll need reading glasses and after that a microscope to see the buttons and toothpicks to press them. Someone please tell me there will be some kind whippersnapper there to press the buttons on my MP9 player? I just hope the nursing homes are teaching the new (and next) generation how to help us savvies when we get there.

[Thorn]

Re: Tech support for savvies on the way out..

When I was 16yo I had a Vic 20, then at C-64, later on an IBM 8086 & 8088, a 386 (so glad to miss the 286 and BTW,what happened to the 186??) , (so, so nice to miss so many others) Celeron, P4, and today I bought my first Micro 1G MP3 personal audio player (this thing's 1/2 my thumb size, recharges through the USB, and gets its data through the same USB charge adapter) but it has one button only and it’s the size of a planters wart I must skillfully manipulate up, down, left, right, and push to play and pause to run the show! These old fingers and eyes could handle those bigger older computer toys of the past, but so far this new toy is no treat. I’m betting when I’m 70 these things will be so damn small I’ll need reading glasses and after that a microscope to see the buttons and toothpicks to press them. Someone please tell me there will be some kind whippersnapper there to press the buttons on my MP9 player? I just hope the nursing homes are teaching the new (and next) generation how to help us savvies when we get there.

The 80186 was mainly used as an embedded processor, although some PCs used it. The one I personally remember was the Tandy 2000.

You're dead on on what your saying about the controls and displays on a lot of the current tech. Being past just reading glasses and well into trifocals, I can tell you the seeing the displays can at times be an exercise in frustration.

My hope is the nanotech will give us in-place eyeball upgrades.

[nerdgir1]

Re: Tech support for savvies on the way out..

Haha, in the future, the UI will be *in* your *BRAAAIN*! Speaking of nostalgia, Apple ][ Forever!!

[streaker69]

Re: Tech support for savvies on the way out..

Haha, in the future, the UI will be *in* your *BRAAAIN*! Speaking of nostalgia, Apple ][ Forever!!

I have a similar story as Greyhatter when it comes to cutting teeth on computers. (I knew there was a reason I liked him).

But it's funny you bring up the Apple ][. My school had many in the 'computer lab', and we had one in the Physics lab. The Physics teacher had bought some interesting hardware for the Apple. Before the years was out, I had written in BASIC an Oscilloscope program that would graph pulse and breathing rate on the screen. It was about 500 lines of code and fit on a 360K floppy.