Just a few headlines and such from February, 1999:
Quote:Windows 98 Lite: Win95's Explorer could be installed on W98 resulting acceptable performance on the author's P133
DVD RAM! For at about $800 in price, writing on a special boxed DVD disc
Game walkthrough: Twinsen's Odyssey. You will need Pentium based system with 8Mb of RAM, 4x speed CD-ROM and MS-DOS (Optionally Win95, but 16Mb RAM then). Mixed from 3D and izometric parts, 640x480 resolution. I played it 
- six years before... I lost it 
Programming: Othello in Basic (!) Full source code, not even for QBasic having line numbers and LET statements!
VBScript viruses - a new threat?
Iomega Recordit! ZIP discs software coding MP2 music: A ZIP disc can hold the same amount like a CD (Anybody knows what is a ZIP disc? )
IBM PC DOS 2000 - ready for Y2K. In the world a million of PC users use DOS while both MSDOS and PCDOS are not ready for 2000.
(Strange, a real 16bit DOS system was still being developed at that time! )
MOD - Music on Demand: buy and get music online
(The strange thing is that now this is not so new like it looks to be: it was there since six years!)
Brand - new home PC's: Olivetti Computers Worldwide:
PC 1: Pentium Celeron 366MHz, 32MB RAM, 4,3Gb HDD, AGP integrated on motherboard
PC 2: Pentium Celeron 400Mhz, 64Mb RAM, 6,4Gb HDD, AGP integrated on motherboard
(What was the high - end six years before...)
Enterprise purpose HDD:
Western Digital 3,5", 18,3GB, 7200RPM
The computer magazine from where these came was full of DOS and Win3.1 programs, and adwertisements on wich 3D technology was "not really visible". To tell the truth all of it looked like... Looked like something from 100 years before, this is the best how i can express it. I have even older magazines, but they are buried a little, this was enough for one approach.
This all passed without that we even noticed it! We lost hundreds of years with this damned fast IT development! To what we looked as Whoa! six years before we can not imagine now that it ever existed (At least i had this feeling leafing through the magazine)!
To a relief one prediction still not came true: The 3.5" FDD is still in most of the computers no matter how hard they wanted to bring it down!
Yeah, time flies... Feels like yesterday I rejoiced on how I could now play all the new games on my dads newly bought 400mhz... Now I can hardly seem to play HL1 on it
Quote:To a relief one prediction still not came true: The 3.5" FDD is still in most of the computers no matter how hard they wanted to bring it down!
It's not in any new computers sold here - you have to buy it seperatly.
i think were in the golden age now, we've got millions of talented programmers and computer power that would have got us hung for witchcraft not long ago. We have ever growing in capacity and shrinking in size disks, life is good, and will get better.
I voted for 1995 - 2000. I most liked that age because Internet was there, compatibility with old stuff was complete, everybody could program or play freely. Not to mention that Win2000, WinME, WinXP did not existed then. Games written in that age still had idea as 3D was not a so spread thing (For example "Thief" if anybody can remember - i not really played it, just thought that "Yes, interesting idea!"), and people usually not just ignored something just because of it had 320 x 200 resolution. I consider 1994 - 1999 the golden age of IT, not before mostly because of Internet: that made it open and free for all.
Now most of the companies turned into a ruthless race killing everyone, their base is the incompatible hardware development (so older things will simply not run), incompatible softwares (same) while offering the greates compatibility between recent stuff (what kill smaller ones since they are unable to invest so much to offer the same). Yet another major base is the security: larger companies can offer more discrediting smaller ones who can not deal with it. At game development i bet they make high quality stuff at graphic side to make them sold, but low quaity or just relatively short at gameplay side to keep up the need of buying yet another game. So i consider 2003 - ???? the dark age, mostly because of these, but Windows XP would be enough alone for me to give this "award".
if think xp is really quite good, my one only crashes due to odd game problems, sometimes one game inperticular returns false errors that confuse the somputer, but that usually happens ONLY right after saving or when quitting, so that aint a problem, and the xp catches the error quite well, it exit's the program and asks if you want to send an error report, and everything runs fine. The xp is a lot faster and stronger that the older ones, mine can handle 1600 * 1400 without effecting speed, my one seems a lot more stable than the 95 and a god compared to sir-crash-a-lot, mr windows 98. The whole incapatability thing, you can usually download compatability patches for games, and there's dosbox and other compatibility programs.
Oh yeah, and the xp has the most eye pleasing screen, never liked the 95/98 ones, too sharp and hurtful to the eye.
What kind of powerhouse do you have? :-?
I do not like Win 95 - 98's original theme either. But all colors are modifiable so it was possible to set up a very pleasant look what style i am using since more than three years. Not to mention that good old 98 only uses up 28Mb of memory to start itself while XP needs at least 100 additional megabytes... :evil:
A good game too from 1999 with which i played (the demo only) is Drakan. Interesting idea to ride a dragon
I also liked DragonStrike from 1990 - same subject - but i played it through already. It was not easy
The intro images were nice, the 3D was pretty good compared to it's age. The polygon based dragons were unusually realistic in movement!
Not to mention Transport Tycoon, somewhere around 1994... Sadly i played too damn much with it that after triing out everything i got bored with it :-? It was not easy again, requied many effort...
An another Tycoon game what i thought i will love even more was ZooTycoon... But it looked like the authors had never seen any animal or zoo in the real life
Poor Cheetah roared like a leopard, the whole thing was unrealistic... I threw it away after a few runs.
Just to mention that i still have a P233MHz MMX with ATI 8Mb video card, 160Mb of RAM and 30Gb of HDD. I use it for all my development, a few times i am watching DivX movies with it too!
Being a computer programmer that started in the field in 1961, when I hear the term IT, I naturally associate it with computer programming.
In the years before 1981, there were no PC's. Programmers were a distinguished group of trained professionals that developed a wide variety of applications on mainframes, minicomputers and microprocessors.
With the coming of the PC, millions of computer users began developing some sort of applications on their PC's, some with purchased packages, some with languages like Basic, and others with spreadsheets. These users now began to think of themselves as programmers.
By the late 1990's, the once distinguished computer programmers were begun to be considered a commodity, with companies not hiring them directly anymore, but obtaining their services on a temporary outsourcing basis.
So, the best age of IT, from my point of view, was before 1981.
*****
the best age is yet to come. we don't see large scale integration today. but in a few years time we will see it
Quote:the best age is yet to come. we don't see large scale integration today. but in a few years time we will see it
If you are referring to integrated circuits, LSI or Large Scale Integration happened in the 1970s, and VSLI or Very Large Scale Integration began in the 1980s.
So, I don't understand what you mean when you say "we don't see LSI today." Maybe we haven't reached its full capacity.
*****
Better age? :barf:
I think there is not any technological nightmare what can stop what is happening now. IT became cryptic again - Moneo, your age is coming back if you liked that, but mine is passing...
(On the other hand although everyone might have called him/herself a programmer then, true programmers knew who is really that. I think it is more good than bad if something is reachable for everybody, and that is passing now again :evil: )