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Your first "Killer APP" (vanity)

Posted on 04/13/2005 9:18:26 PM PDT by gilor

Remember when 'killer app' started the buzzword lexicon of today?

What was the first program or game that made you realize: 'these computer things might catch on'?

I used to mess around with the early stuff (ATARI 800XL w/ dual 5 1/4" 360K drives was my first), but once way back when a friend of mine upgraded his XT to CGA, added one of those new 'sound cards' and replaced a failed 20MB HD(it sucked loading games up off multiple floppies) he installed "INCUNABELLA"(sic) the game had shit graphics but excellent game play.


TOPICS: Computers/Internet; History; Miscellaneous; Society
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To: gilor

"Leather Goddess' of Phobos" on an old Radio Shack Tandy 1000EX. This boat anchor of a computer didn't have a hard drive, only 38K of memory and ran everything from 5 1/4 inch floppies.


21 posted on 04/14/2005 3:15:02 AM PDT by cuz_it_aint_their_money (The difference between Scott Peterson & M. Schiavo - Schiavo got away with murdering his wife.)
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To: LibFreeOrDie

I remember going with my dad to rent CPU time on saturdays. This was early 70's, after he started his own computer related business in 1966. I would haul in handtruck after handtruck of punch cards to the monster computer with the tape drives and the keypunch card readers. IIRC, everything was programmed in COBOL. The printers were humongous and severley slow, and the daisy wheel and dot matrix print quality sucked. I will probably forever hate the green & white color combination.

The day I realized computers were really to stay was when I, at 10 years old, could carry a stand-alone computer into the trade shows. An IBM 5110, with dual 11" floppy drives. Those things were like rockets, you could actually sit & wait for the calculations to run instead of leaving it overnight. It took about 20-30 minutes each to format the disks. My whole summer job on year was to format the floppy disks (I quit after about 2 weeks to work in a landscaping crew.)

Then came the IBM PC. It weighed about a quarter of the 5110 and had a separate monitor. It also used the mini (5 1/4") floppys. Later on the color monitors came along. It sure was a hell of a lot easier carrying a half dozen floppy disks than a pallet of punch cards.

Yeah, therre were some killer apps for the comodious 64 and the trash 80, but they didn't change my outlook on computers like the IBM PC (with no fancy at or xt extensions).


22 posted on 04/14/2005 5:06:52 AM PDT by Fierce Allegiance (Free Republic is funded solely by donations. mail to:FreeRepublic LLC POBox 9771 Fresno CA 93794)
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To: gilor

Star Raiders on the Atari 800. And then...Leisure Suit Larry.


23 posted on 04/14/2005 5:29:49 AM PDT by Bloody Sam Roberts (Remember that great love and great achievements involve great risk)
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To: gilor

I bought the Atari800 for ~$800 essentially to get the PacMan cartridge. Remarkably at the time I saw it as a way to save on quarters!


24 posted on 04/14/2005 7:05:30 AM PDT by parcel_of_rogues
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To: politicket
My first "personal" computer was a TRS-80 Model 1 Level II with a cassette tape interface.

Hey! That was mine as well. I'd start loading up Scott Adams' Adventure, then go to dinner. It'd be ready by the time I got back.

25 posted on 04/14/2005 9:57:34 AM PDT by ShadowAce (Linux -- The Ultimate Windows Service Pack)
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To: ShadowAce
I'd start loading up Scott Adams' Adventure, then go to dinner. It'd be ready by the time I got back.

Only if there wasn't a "glitch" in the tape. Then you would have to start all over.

I had a BASIC programming course in college and our mid-term consisted of going into the computer lab, sitting down at a TRS-80 and writing the code to solve a 5th order polynomial equation - all in one hour, saved to cassette tape. If the code didn't work perfectly in 1 hour then it was an automatic zero for a grade. Everyone failed that day's test...
26 posted on 04/14/2005 10:01:14 AM PDT by politicket (We now live in a society where "tolerance" is celebrated at the expense of moral correctness.)
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To: Swordmaker

SpeedScript... didn't "Compute!" magazine produced that word processor, and the machine code (to be hand-entered by the hobbyist) appear there? I didn't have a Commode Door, but I did fool with that listing, because I wanted to learn 6502 machine language. :')


27 posted on 04/14/2005 11:38:57 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (FR profiled updated Monday, April 11, 2005. Fewer graphics, faster loading.)
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Speedscript

Commodore:
http://www.digitaldinos.com/Pages/ForSale/Commodore/docCommodore.htm

Atari:
http://www.atariarchives.org/speedscript/


28 posted on 04/14/2005 11:43:56 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (FR profiled updated Monday, April 11, 2005. Fewer graphics, faster loading.)
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Speedscript Apple II:
http://www.devili.iki.fi/library/issue/74.en.html


29 posted on 04/14/2005 11:47:25 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (FR profiled updated Monday, April 11, 2005. Fewer graphics, faster loading.)
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To: SunkenCiv

Yes... I had forgotten that! I remember typing in all 39K of it... accurately!


30 posted on 04/15/2005 2:01:55 AM PDT by Swordmaker
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To: Swordmaker

I also typed in the Apple version, and it's at least an outside possibility that the magazine is still around the house. I think I made typing errors because as I recall, it tended to bomb. :')


31 posted on 04/15/2005 8:26:57 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (FR profiled updated Monday, April 11, 2005. Fewer graphics, faster loading.)
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To: gilor

The first piece of software I ever purchased was Doom. In fact I think Doom is the whole reason I convinced my parents to buy a PC when I was around 13.


32 posted on 04/22/2005 8:30:32 AM PDT by somniferum (All warfare is deception - Sun Tzu)
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