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Slashdot Asks: Did You Have a Shared Family Computer Growing Up? (theverge.com) 200

theodp writes: "Long before phone addiction panic gripped the masses and before screen time became a facet of our wellness and digital detoxes," begins Katie Reid's article, How the Shared Family Computer Protected Us from Our Worst Selves, "there was one good and wise piece of technology that served our families. Maybe it was in the family room or in the kitchen. It could have been a Mac or PC. Chances are it had a totally mesmerizing screensaver. It was the shared family desktop." She continues: "I can still see the Dell I grew up using as clear as day, like I just connected to NetZero yesterday. It sat in my eldest sister's room, which was just off the kitchen. Depending on when you peeked into the room, you might have found my dad playing Solitaire, my sister downloading songs from Napster, or me playing Wheel of Fortune or writing my name in Microsoft Paint. The rules for using the family desktop were pretty simple: homework trumped games; Dad trumped all. Like the other shared equipment in our house, its usefulness was focused and direct: it was a tool that the whole family used, and it was our portal to the wild, weird, wonderful internet. As such, we adored it." Did you have a shared family computer growing up? Can you relate to any of the experiences Katie mentioned in her article? Please share your thoughts in a comment below.
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Slashdot Asks: Did You Have a Shared Family Computer Growing Up?

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  • Phone? (Score:5, Informative)

    by cwsumner ( 1303261 ) on Tuesday August 14, 2018 @06:46PM (#57126906)

    Sorry, I come from the time of the shared family phone. Hardwired to the wall, without even a connector. Sometimes shared with neibors as well... 8-)

    When I got a computer, no one else saw any reason to use it. Years later, yes, but not then.

    • by lgw ( 121541 )

      Yup, shared family phone, but my computer was gloriously mine. My Commodore 64 replaced my electric typewriter on my desk.

      • by quenda ( 644621 )

        My Commodore 64 replaced my electric typewriter on my desk.

        Electric? Luxury!
        We had to set type by hand whenever we wanted to send a letter.

      • I didn't get a computer until I left home. I wanted a TRS-80 but my mother said I should save my money to get a used car instead as it would be more useful. (Apple-II would have been nice too but I only knew one person who had one and there was no store that sold one nearby, but I really wanted a Heathkit to be honest) Without disposable income, a home computer at the time was just too expensive.

        I got an S-100 based board as a freshman, but it burned out quickly with a puff of smoke a couple weeks after

    • OK, this must be the old man thread, so here I am.

      When I was growing up, our family's shared computer was an abacus. When I got ready for college, my dad splurged on an upgraded abacus with a serial port so I could hook up a 300 baud modem.

      • OK, this must be the old man thread, so here I am.

        When I was growing up, our family's shared computer was an abacus. When I got ready for college, my dad splurged on an upgraded abacus with a serial port so I could hook up a 300 baud modem.

        When I was in school, some of the eastern students were actually using a type of abacus. Well, I was using a sliderule, but I still thought it was strange.
        One day we had a race to see which could work a math problem faster... the abacus won!

    • Re:Phone? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Gr8Apes ( 679165 ) on Tuesday August 14, 2018 @07:23PM (#57127134)

      Good grief what an insanely stupid question. PC or Mac? Try going further back a little like Atari/Commodores. Phones (with neighbors) 1 TV in the house (shocking, I know!!!) hell, even just 1 radio!!! (You know, the thing you have to listen to?) There's a whole host of other things that were shared in the past that aren't as often now (bathrooms, bedrooms, even beds)

      • by tsa ( 15680 )

        It's not insanely stupid. Young people just can not fathom that there was a time not long ago that there weren't any computers in houses.

        I spent my youth in the 1970s and I remember that my dad brought the first calculator I saw with him from work. That was the first digital device we had in the house. The next one was our colour TV with Teletext, 10 years or so later. two years later we got our Commodore 64.

      • Good grief what an insanely stupid question. PC or Mac? Try going further back a little like Atari/Commodores. Phones (with neighbors) 1 TV in the house (shocking, I know!!!) hell, even just 1 radio!!! (You know, the thing you have to listen to?) There's a whole host of other things that were shared in the past that aren't as often now (bathrooms, bedrooms, even beds)

        You had a house? Luxury! We used to live in hole int' ground!

    • by johnw ( 3725 )

      Sometimes shared with neibors as well... 8-)

      I don't know if it's what you mean, but when I was young the "party line" was quite common. Two houses would share a single phone line, with a bit of magic used to control which phone rang for an incoming call.

      You could pick up your phone to make a call, only to find that the line was already in use. You weren't blocked out or anything like that - you were straight in to their conversation. At that point you were meant to put the phone down, wait a few minutes, and try again.

      It was just bad luck if you s

    • And the phone could be locked to limit usage.

    • by methano ( 519830 )
      They were building Eniac when I was a kid. I asked Dad if we could get one and he told me to go play in the dirt.
      • They were building Eniac when I was a kid. I asked Dad if we could get one and he told me to go play in the dirt.

        Ha! ... I guess you would have needed a much bigger house! 8-)

    • by CharlieG ( 34950 )

      Yep. There are those of us old enough to remember the TRS-80, The Apple ][, the Commodore PET etc coming out. Grow up with a shared computer? Ahahahaha. I was just into my teens when the articles on the IMSI 8008 hit the electronics magazines

  • sort of (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 14, 2018 @06:49PM (#57126922)

    We didn't have a shared family computer, but we had a rock and some sticks. After hauling water 50 miles from the nearest creek, eating our small meal of dandelion roots, and sweeping the dirt floor to clean up, we would then sit cross-legged in a circle and roll our family rock back and forth with the sticks for a few hours on end. Such fond memories. Those were the good ol' days.

  • No one, and I mean NO ONE touches my floppies! They could have the computer, though.

  • by pubwvj ( 1045960 ) on Tuesday August 14, 2018 @06:55PM (#57126970)

    I'm from before that time of shared family computers.

    I bought and hacked and built my own computer equipment. My electronics hobby was considered odd and too expensive. So I worked, saved, scrimped and scrounged. The first 'real' computer I bought was one of the very early Exidy Sorcerer computers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exidy_Sorcerer). I had used a KIM-1 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KIM-1) and a Apple I (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_I) at school. I went to college during high school where I used punch card computers and PDP-11. In some ways when I bought my first one, the Sorcerer, it was a step down, except I got the whole thing to myself and I could open it up and hack it, which I did, adding memory, more I/O, tape data storage (my own version, not the bought one). It was great fun.

    Later after I left the house my parents started buying family computers and then still later computers for each of my seven siblings as they went off to college. Prices came down and the computers became more mainstreamed.

    • PDP-8 here, I was lucky. Dad got an 8S in a stunning surplus deal "it fell off the truck" - then later a "straight 8" - and we sneered and jeered at those later 8 bit chip junk machines. Predicting is hard...we were wrong, but the experience did serve well when I later applied for a job at DEC and they were stunned to find I already had plenty of experience with their stuff (as a then stereo repairman).
  • Remembered the shared family TV? I barely can.

    • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 14, 2018 @07:13PM (#57127082)

      Remembered the shared family TV? I barely can.

      I can remember that I was the remote control.

    • by jrumney ( 197329 )
      Remember waiting until there was no sports on the TV so Dad would get up and work on his project in the shed, and you could plug in the computer to play some games?
      • Right - the shared family TV was the monitor for my C=>64 I eventually found a really bad 15" color set at a yard sale for $12 bucks and became liberated.

    • And you call yourself tough love?

      I can remember the shared family tv, its the one in the living room, where the family still watch tv together at times.
      There are no other TVs, why waste life on that shit? really.

      And no, they have not been replaced by streaming on to devices - that would be even worse.

      • I can remember the shared family tv, its the one in the living room, where the family still watch tv together at times.

        For some it's still not completely gone, but nearly. Lifestyle changes, everybody has their own schedule, technology changed, network TV is fading fast. The living room itself is fading out as real estate continues to outpace wages. Today the biggest screen in the house (for those fortunate enough to have one) is in the family room, not the living room, and most probably spends more time running console games than network TV. Couples watch TV together, sometimes, maybe. Everybody else splits up and does the

        • by Cederic ( 9623 )

          The living room itself is fading out as real estate continues to outpace wages. Today the biggest screen in the house (for those fortunate enough to have one) is in the family room, not the living room

          What the fuck? Growing up we had the living room and bedrooms, unless you wanted to gather around the kitchen table. Which wasn't big enough for four people.

          Even now I have one room downstairs and bedrooms/bathroom upstairs.

          Yeah, fucking terrible the living conditions today.

          • You're old now and out of touch with post millennial reality. That livingroom/diningroom/familyroom/yard with lawn and a dog thing belongs to baby boomers.

        • by Calydor ( 739835 )

          If you don't mind me asking as a non-native English speaker, what the hell is the difference between a living room and a family room?

          • Living room - adjoins kitchen and/or dining room, usually on upper floor of a two floor home, formal furniture, where guests are entertained. Family room (or rec room) - opposite end of house from living room/dining room/kitchen, lower floor of a two floor home, informal furniture, where the kids play. Suburban life.

      • To be honest, I don't know anyone with two televisions that isn't rich. Phones don't count. My parents did get a second TV as they got a portable 5" black and white for attending a time share presentation. They gave it to me though, and it was the TV I used in grad school to watch Star Trek Next Generation.

        • by Cederic ( 9623 )

          I don't know anybody that doesn't have two televisions, unless you don't include the ones with projectors.

          That includes the single mothers I dance with, the friend that went bankrupt, the friend with three failed businesses (but she's getting by, just about) and the friend that never actually watches TV (and doesn't have a TV licence).

          • Ok, that's unusual in my experience. The only time I remember seeing two TVs was when someone had a "den", or there was a very tiny one in the kitchen so someone could watch the soaps while cooking.

            Maybe it's just the time that I grew up. When I was in elementary school TVs were BIG, they were often furniture. Wooden cases. You needed a rooftop antenna to pick up stations. You watched what the family watched or you didn't watch anything. Later more portable TVs were showing up. It's possible that peop

            • by Cederic ( 9623 )

              Ah, historically nobody had two televisions. Shit, colour television was "one per street". I'm talking about the current state of things, as that's how I interpreted the person to whom I replied.

              • So current state of things, where everybody eats meals at a different time and telling the kids to shut off the mobile phones is considered child abuse?

        • by Calydor ( 739835 )

          The thing is that it's entirely possible to upgrade your still working but old TV to a much newer and better model on a good sale, and that old TV gets moved to the bedroom while the new one gets the 'prime' spot in the living room.

          • True. But in the past the "old" TV was generally large and bulky and you usually used it until it broke. For new TVs, I also waited until the old one broke, but presumably if it hadn't, a good enough TV is good enough. You don't need 3D TV, you don't need curved screens, you don't need 4K.

  • Protect from what? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by psychic_bacon ( 5478020 ) on Tuesday August 14, 2018 @07:04PM (#57127024)
    I had a shared family computer, way back in the 90s (not old enough to have cool hacking stories about 80s era tech). But what was protected? Everything that is nasty about the internet was true then, just in lesser form. It's just the case that everyone is online now, rather than a smaller subset of people who were more aware of technology. The irony is that the more anonymous the internet was, the nicer and safer it was. My thought is 90% of what is nasty online is because everything is less anonymous. Back in the 90s, when you were cooldude69 and talking to a guy pretending to be coolchick98, what harm could come of it? It's only when it becomes real life and you start giving real addresses that problems start creeping in. Doxxing and harassment isn't relevant when you could disappear and start again. Like on slashdot, my UID is 9 billion, but I could have been UID 42, get in trouble, delete the account, and disappear. Of course, a fully anonymous net will let a lot of fringe views, conspiracies, and nasty stuff fester, but that stuff will always be present.
    • It's only when it becomes real life and you start giving real addresses that problems start creeping in.

      Heh. I have national computer magazines from the 80s and 90s full of wanted ads for pen-pals, trades, sales and the like which always published people's real names and addresses. More striking is that it's likely these were teenagers. I'm not sure that'd happen much anymore...

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      The internet was less anonymous in the early days. Most people got access through an academic institution or work, with a fixed IP address. In fact my first dial-up ISP only offered fixed IP addresses... And most of those institutions would use your real name for things like mail addresses or in the URL of your homepage.

      Of course there was no wifi or other easy means of getting semi-anonymous access, and commercial VPNs/Tor didn't exist. If you registered a domain name the whois data had your address and ph

  • It was an Apple IIc. There wasn't much concern of things being snooped on since we each had our own floppy disks and we could take those from the computer and hide them. There was no "online" with that computer. At the time it was technically possible to get connected to the early internet but phone charges and the cost of a modem made that not feasible.

    • by antdude ( 79039 )

      Ditto with an Apple //c back in the 80s. Before that, was a Texas Instrument 99/4A since my folks wanted me to learn how to use a computer. Funny, I was scared of it until I found out it could do video games. ;)

  • Did You Have a Shared Family Computer Growing Up?

    Yup, tucked away in a special room on a special computer desk like a statue of the Buddha in one of those little temples in the Japanese countryside. Who didn't? Most gamers I know still have a little shrine in their domicile where they keep their 'gaming rig'.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 14, 2018 @07:08PM (#57127050)

    In junior high, we had Teletypes and Decwriters with acoustic coupler modems (300 Baud) for access to the DEC TSS-8 system shared by my whole school system. The TSS-8 had sixteen dial-in ports. We had to reserve time on a terminal a week in advance. Even then, all of the phone lines to the system's computer might be busy and we might never connect during our sign-up time. We had to store our assembler, Fortran, and Basic programs on paper tape. The 128kB of disk space was reserved for teachers.

    Home computers? I was almost out of college by then.

  • by asackett ( 161377 ) on Tuesday August 14, 2018 @07:09PM (#57127052) Homepage

    We had a shared television, one of the first color models on the block. When the parents wanted the channel changed or the volume adjusted they called out "Hey boy! Channel Two!", usually followed by "You make a better door than a window. Move your ass!"

    On the up side, I learned to work the tube tester at the drug store and went on to have a career in electronics before it got moved to Taiwan.

  • by AndyKron ( 937105 )
    I was a teenager when the MIT Altair 8800 came out, so no shared computer.
  • I still remember our first computer. Core Duo with DSL. Only 2GB of RAM. Didn't even have a SSD. Pathetic.
  • My SWTP 6800 was for myself alone. Ditto the Capital E 286 that came after it. And the NeXTStation after that....

  • Leaving work systems out of it,
    First home computer was my PDP-11/73 running BSD Unix 2.8/2.9. Dialup on a 1200 Baud modem and could connect through the TAC to the arpanet for FTP and telnet access. Never did configure email. This was shared between my wife and me. Then came usenet with UUCP. Now I had email and bunches of newsgroups on netnews and easy connection to the university's Vax. Finally, TCP/IP came along and the 11/73 gave way to a sequence of Intel PCs running Windows initially and then Linux as

  • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 14, 2018 @08:14PM (#57127354)

    Good grief no..

    I bought my first computer when I had just barely graduated from college. (TRS-80 model I) No one else in my family even knew how to turn it on or what to do with it. My nephew came over and wrote a "game" - i.e. a random number generator that determined whether you survived a WWII bombing mission. Now he is a System Admin for a hospital and still can't program his way out of a paper bag - er - wet paper bag with a sharp knife.

    My son had his own computer since we decided to use my bonus money to buy a off brand 486 box, he inherited my 286. Once he got enough money he bought all the components and has built out several fire breathing monsters that leave my boxes, seven of them, in the dust. (He is a artist/trouble shooter for a game company).

    I still have the TRS-80 model I with its monitor, expansion box and a "flippy" drive out in the garage.

    • Yeah, TRS-80 here too. Then replaced with an Acorn BBC B (then a Master, but by then everyone else had given up on it by then, and so it was as good as just mine).

  • by filesiteguy ( 695431 ) <perfectreign@gmail.com> on Tuesday August 14, 2018 @08:15PM (#57127358)
    My TRS-80 model I was in my room. I spent hours learning to program on it and playing games before the Apple II came out. That had a modem and I was able to connect to BBSs and Compuserve. Then I went downhill.
  • by Peter P Peters ( 5350981 ) on Tuesday August 14, 2018 @08:27PM (#57127402)
    WTF is this Cosmo magazine? Is it a homework assignment?
    This place is going to shit....
  • by EmagGeek ( 574360 ) on Tuesday August 14, 2018 @08:33PM (#57127438) Journal

    I ran a large BBS in upstate New York with tons of door games, file areas, message boards, and FIDOnet. It all started with our Tandy 1000 PC that had two floppy drives and no hard drive. In 1988 I managed to trade some stuff I had for an ENORMOUS hard drive - 40 MEGAbytes, that miraculously worked in the Tandy. IIRC it was a Miniscribe 8450. The actuator made the coolest sounds.

    g=c800:5 and a few keystrokes later, I had space for my first BBS. I ran a piece of software called Phoenix RCS at first, but transitioned to WWIV later as the BBS grew. I ended up on Wildcat, because all the BBSes in that time ended up on Wildcat. I had 4 incoming lines at the height of it all in 1989, but pared it back to two as the 90s rolled around and BBSes started falling off in popularity. I finally pulled the plug in 1994 when I was only getting a few calls per day and there was clearly no more interest in BBSing in the area.

    I often think about setting up a terminal BBS again, but it's just not the same without... that sounds.... screeeeeeeeeeeee .. beeeeeee .ksshhhhhhhhhh... CONNECT 2400

    Those were an incredibly fun and enriching 6 years though, and I met some of the coolest people. I will always have fond memories of growing up in the BBS age. You young whipper snappers are really missing out on the earliest dawn of the age of communication and data. I would encourage you to see the BBS documentary. It's a great watch.

    I hope this has been a fun, reminiscent story for a lot of you slashdotters. Take care.

    NO CARRIER

    • by Strider- ( 39683 )

      Fond memories of operating my own bbs for 5 years as well. That said I went to a couple of the local Sysop meets and let's just say that... Well... Hygiene wasn't always the top priority.

  • by Monster_user ( 5075027 ) on Tuesday August 14, 2018 @09:06PM (#57127630)
    Yep. First family computer was a Packard Bell, it came with the Packard Bell Navigator GUI. I remember playing Chex Quest on it. A few years later I got my own personal computer, a used IBM of some sort, running Windows 95 if I remember correctly. Some time after that I got my first Macintosh. At one point I had a PC running Linux, a PC running Windows, and a Macintosh running side by side. I think that was around the time I got a Diamond Monster 3D II branded, 3DFX Voodoo 2 graphics card.
    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      My first PC was an Amstrad PC1512. It was a deluxe model with 640k RAM and a 20MB hard drive, as well as a 5.25" floppy.

      It dual booted DOS 3.3 and DOSPLUS. It also had the GEM windowing system with a rather slow but fun version of BASIC by Locomotive software.

      The first Voodoo card I owned was a Voodoo 3 which went in my Amiga that had been upgraded with a Mediator PCI backplane.

  • by CrimsonAvenger ( 580665 ) on Tuesday August 14, 2018 @09:08PM (#57127646)

    When I was growing, up?

    I was grown up and going to college before the first PC saw the light of day.

    I did share a comp with my wife after college, for a few years.

    • Right? It's like younger people can't think past their own "youth". I was around before them too. I built my first from a kit.
  • With a message from the UK, one word at a time slowly displaying on a CRT.
  • What a relatively recent first-world "problem".

    I had a shared slide-rule. Literally. Till I got my own. https://www.flickr.com/photos/... [flickr.com]

    Then I advanced to programmable calculators and punch cards.

    Seriously, where do these pundits come from?

  • Seriously? The IBM 360/50 mainframe was introduced when I was 10. A computer that a family might own wasn't a thing until I was out of college, or almost out.

  • The first family computer I can recall was a TI 99-4a, but I was perhaps five years old and I really only knew about the cartridge games. TI Invaders, Early Learning Fun, a racecar game, and maybe one or two others. My older brother using the ROM BASIC to prompt me to type in my name, and then to print my name over and over again was something I still remember feeling astonished about. Ahh, the days of 40 GOTO 20 loops...

    My elementary school had TRS-80s, and I don't remember much except we played boring
  • Starting with an Amstrad CPC 464 and later a PC, I always had my own. The family however bought one long after I had the PC. For the my PC, I organized to get s modem to connect to mailboxes. Yes, no internet then. It was in the mid to late 1980s.

    Oh jikes grandpa is talking about the war.

  • I am living in Poland. Back in the 80s there was a constant economical crisis in entire Soviet block Poland included. In shortage economy people needed to manage somehow and we shared everything. I remember people tend to borrow from each other everything from sporting goods (like skis, camping equipment). This lasted some time after the system changed to capitalism. The first capitalist decade was really hard on people and the habits lasted.

    Computers like anything else were also shared.

    I remember briefly h

  • I had my own computer. I lived with my grandparents, who had no interest, and I bought the computer with money I saved up from working an after school job.
  • Um, we still have one now.

    Well, OK, my wife has her own laptop. But we have a shared family computer, and the kids don't have phones.

  • I didn't even have an abacus when I was growing up!

  • ""I can still see the Dell I grew up using as clear as day, like I just connected to NetZero yesterday. It sat in my eldest sister's room, which was just off the kitchen. "

    What a terrible place for a computer. How is anyone supposed to get any masturbation done with it when it is so close to the kitchen and in a siblings room?

  • My family had a shared radio and a shared phone and at one place where we lived the phone was shared by a neighbor. I built a crystal radio when I was 11 but didn't use it much. I think I was 14 when we bought a television which of course, was shared. IIRC we were able to receive 3 stations. When I 19 I bought a new-fangled transistor radio so no longer had to share the family radio but by then I was in University and not home. a few decades later, around 1996 when I was married, we bought a family compu

  • by greythax ( 880837 ) on Wednesday August 15, 2018 @10:25AM (#57130298)

    Not trying to pull an Al Gore here, but if it were not for my 7th grade computer literacy teacher, and our brief introduction to BASIC on a trs-80, I am not sure what my life would be like today. I came from a food insecure household, and rarely owned more than 3 pairs of pants and 3 shirts at a time. A family computer was just out of the question. Even back then, in the mid 80s, I was keenly interested in video games, and decided I wanted to learn how to program them, so I took that first class.

    I was instantly hooked. I owe a lifelong debt to my teacher, who let me stay after school messing around writing programs while I waited on the bus (city, not school, we were using a fake residence to keep me out of the school in the bad part of town.) I decided right then and there that I needed to have one. So I scrimped and saved every penny I could get my hands on, hid them from my mom, and after 2 years I had 150 dollars, which I used to buy a used commodore 64 from a college kid without my mom's knowledge. Except for the few times it got pawned by my mom, I was on it constantly, taught myself the hardware and ml, and eventually started a career as a programmer.

    I know it's not sharing a family computer, but when I look back on it, that Jr. high class was the most important thing I ever did in my life, and I still think of that c64, which I still own, as probably my fondest possession.

    Anyway, obligatory shout out to Code.org [code.org], which hopefully is reaching kids like me every day.

  • I can understand pining for a particular device but pining for the general crapness of not having a device each??!!! I was hoping there might at least be some 'sharing' in the sense of a shared experience, but no, each family member used it in isolation. At least families 'shared' a Nintendo - write about that ffs!

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