I was featured in The Big Idea in 1984

[leastbest]

Back in 1984 I was featured in The Big Idea. I just found the issue and the article is a hoot.

Back then I had a computer with 48k of memory and one of those new fangled disk drives.

Randy

 

[sx2700]

Back in 1984 I was featured in The Big Idea. I just found the issue and the article is a hoot.

Back then I had a computer with 48k of memory and one of those new fangled disk drives.

Randy

Very cool........My first computer was a commodore 64 and I thought that was pretty awesome.

 

[DS]

cool article....back then my friend had the flight simuation on his atari,

 

[mikestrek]

Hey, I was in the Big Idea also, Were talking way back. I was part time, and I took our 1st and only part time employee of the year. It never took off so they stopped doing the employee of the month and year. But I also stil have the article. I saved a few of the magazines. I saw your website. I also remember those huge calculators we had when we were kids.

 

[mattwtrs]

Back in 1984 I was featured in The Big Idea. I just found the issue and the article is a hoot.

Back then I had a computer with 48k of memory and one of those new fangled disk drives.

Randy

Nice article, Who misses the old District Big Idea?

 

[scratch]

Great story, leastbest.
I went to DeVry Tech to study Computer Design back in 1976. Studying resistor codes and Cobol was boring back then to me. This is a computer Steve Wozniak invented back then, it came as a $500 kit and you had to build the case yourself. It had a 6502 microprocessor and a buddy of his, Steve Jobs, helped him market it. The Apple 1. There have been a few improvements since......

 

[wornoutupser]

My first computer was a Texas Instruments TI 99. I bought it on employee discount at my old job for $100.00!

 

[Overpaid Union Thug]

Great story, leastbest.
I went to DeVry Tech to study Computer Design back in 1976. Studying resistor codes and Cobol was boring back then to me. This is a computer Steve Wozniak invented back then, it came as a $500 kit and you had to build the case yourself. It had a 6502 microprocessor and a buddy of his, Steve Jobs, helped him market it. The Apple 1. There have been a few improvements since......

I have one of the "improvements." Smartest consumer decision I ever made.

 

[rod]

The "Big Idea" really was a neat magazine. Even though we kidded each other about how we threw it away without opening it I know most of the guys had still read it. The favorite issue was the yearly "records" one. Everything from most COD's collected to who had driven the same vehical to work the longest.

 

[Dutch Dawg]

My first computer was a Texas Instruments TI 99. I bought it on employee discount at my old job for $100.00!

Yea buddy and if you sprung the Xtra $600 for the expansion rack with the humongous floppy drive and synthesized voice card you were really cutting edge.

Why is it we end up paying less for advances in computer technology and more for advances in auto technology as time goes by?

 

[UpstateNYUPSer(Ret)]

Why is it we end up paying less for advances in computer technology and more for advances in auto technology as time goes by?

Non-union/Union.

 

[dcdriver]

The Bid Idea was a great mag.

 

[pkgdriver]

Still have quite a few of them in the closet.

Its fun to see how different people look 20 yrs later.

 

[Bad Gas!]

I liked the Big Idea also.It actually reconized safe driving awards on time by center..birthdays,family births etc. etc..That was before we all became a 7 digit number.....Everybody was stressed and pushed for production but it was more civil..It's hard to explain..

 

[Cementups]

Turns out public ownership wasn't part of the Big Idea. Once the company went public they conveiently stopped caring.

 

[trplnkl]

My first computer was a Hewlett Bell or was it a Packard Bell, Hewlett Packard? Whatever. Looked identical to the apple II except it had a black case instead of the tan case. The insides were 100% Apple. It's stored in my Ex wife's attic. She can keep it.

 

[moreluck]

Bell & Howell ??

 

[freeloader]

My first computer was a Texas Instruments TI 99. I bought it on employee discount at my old job for $100.00!

I had the TI-99/4A also, with a cassette recorder to save my programs. A couple years after that my parents got me an Apple 2e with a 300 baud modem and I discovered BBS's. Those were the days.....

 

[rod]

I had the TI-99/4A also, with a cassette recorder to save my programs. A couple years after that my parents got me an Apple 2e with a 300 baud modem and I discovered BBS's. Those were the days.....

I can see I still would have been a computer idiot even if I would of gotten in on the ground floor. What's a 300 baud modem and is BBS's a porn site?

 

[freeloader]

300 baud is the speed of the modem. Baud rates started out at 110 and over the years progressed up to 56000 baud. Not too many people actually use modems anymore as DSL and cable have taken over and are much faster than the fastest dialup modem.

To put it into perspective, connecting at 300 baud resulted in text filling up your screen at the rate of about 1 line per second. And we are talking plain text here, no graphics whatsoever.

A BBS (bulletin board system) can be considered prehistoric internet. It's how people communicated electronically before the internet became popular. It was mainly an underground culture for geeks, hackers, crackers, phreakers, etc. There was hardly any porn at all, mostly games and game trading.