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Rebecca Holden's avatar

Great story, Matt! And you've taken me right back.... I remember my brother selling me his 386 in order to be able to afford a 486 - I think that would have been in around 1994. Although it was a lot of money I was very glad to have it, because it gave me independence at university - I no longer had to queue for a station in the terminal room every time I needed to type an essay.

And yay for PacMan! In the 1980s we had an Atari games console, and we played PacMan on it ALL the time.

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Matthew Murray's avatar

You had to buy it? Your own kin wouldn't give it to you? I would think that with you being brother and sister that he would just hand down something like that. I guess that only worked with clothes.

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Rebecca Holden's avatar

LOL - no, it was absolutely fair enough for me to pay for it, Matt, although I might have done my brother a disservice in the way that I had phrased my comment. He needed to upgrade his computer, and was putting it up for sale. I made him an offer, because I really wanted (but didn't really need, to be fair) a computer for university, and was going to be looking around to buy one second-hand. He then gave me his printer for free, which was really kind, and took care to upgrade the computer every time we were both home for the holidays. I have no complaints at all! 😊

And you're right - something like that is really not like a hand-me-down jacket! 🤣

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just mud by Ron's avatar

Hey Matthew; yeah, I'm looking to buy a Commodore 64. Mine is too nosey!

Enjoyed your story, back in the day. How did they get so much weight in those things?! Feels like we were on another planet then!

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Matthew Murray's avatar

It's mind-boggling what they can do these days with computers. When I see computers with the CPU in the monitor as the all-in-one PCs are, it is amazing.

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Ms. Writer's avatar

I graduated from high school in 1979 and remember that Mercury Bobcat. I also remember the 3.5 floppy disks from my first run at college in the 1990s. Technology sure has changed since then. And yes, I agree, it's mystifying how some people who seem so different end up together!

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Matthew Murray's avatar

I graduated from high school in 1989. In the one computer class I had, we used the 5 1/4 inch floppies. Ah yes the 3.5 floppy disks. I had those in college too. That was my first introduction those. We kept all of our work on them. I remember us having an assignment in my computer class where we did a project and had to turn in the disk to the instructor.

When I got my first full-time job, I did a project and backed it up on a floppy. Later in life when I wanted to retrieve the code that I programmed, I couldn't access it. I was wishing that I'd have printed it out when I had the chance. Live and learn.

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