Going from game port to USB with “plug and play” was a huge deal man. Not having to manually assign IRQ to get your audio working too lol. That said, there is still one thing that was cursed in the old days and remains cursed now: printers. Fuck printers.
I’m convinced that in the late 90s/early 00s, the printer companies got together to form a cartel, and have purposefully neutered all consumer-grade printers from that point forward. They knew it wasn’t profitable (unless they charge an arm and a leg for the ink, which of course they eventually did), so they decided to just not play the game at all.
Yes they did exactly that actually
Iirc from a YouTube video I watch long ago they trade mark all the ink printer technology and abused it for years until we made laser printers
Do you mean patents? Trademarking ink wouldn’t do anything.
I bought a laser printer for my job in 1990. They’ve been around
Yeah but they cost like thousands of dollars back then. Upwards of five figures for professional grade printers I believe. They were out of reach for most consumers.
Agreed. Assigning IRQ ports was so annoying.
Yea and some fucking cards only had IRQ selection jumpers for irq 5 or 7. Had a situation where I had to swap cards depending on if I wanted to use my twain scanner or play games with sound.
I’m glad I was never in that bind. That sounds hellish.
I would argue that for the humble serial or parallel port printer, things just worked. Yes, the ribbon needed replacing sometimes, and the tractor feed could snag or jam. But that’s all a see-it-and-fix-it situation - zero tools required. These things took raw serial data, a straight dump of ASCII characters on the wire. Nothing to confuse and nothing to get wrong. No wacky software drivers either - just tell the software what hardware port to talk to and you’re printing. You got boring text, tabs, spaces, newlines, and zero frills.
For whatever reason, the moment we started to emulate professional printing on a consumer budget was when things started to get hairy.
And you got to remove the perforated strips on the side of the paper after printing!
Printing nowadays is so boring.
If you think printing nowadays is boring, you don’t have a printer
Nah, most of that was resolved decades ago too. The problem is greedy companies making printers who just seem to forget what printers are for
They’re for throwing ink expired warnings and automatically ordering you new ink on a subscription plan. Right?
I remember studying for my first A+ cert. So much of it was dealing with IRQ assignments and conflicts.
For me, it was about learning the anatomy of the laser printer. I do remember a lot about IRQ and memory addressing, but I don’t remember it being that much of the test.
Remember when you had to configure the IRQ with DIP switches?
Yes! Remember when you had to set your HDD to master or slave using jumpers? Then channel select came along and made that easier.
Getting your modem not to conflict with your mouse. Yes, this was a thing.
Using a brother laser printer through cups on linux, it just works.
I’m pretty sure that Brother is the only printer company that didn’t sign a contract with the devil.
Still only on the laser printers though. In my experience Brother inkjets have become trash like all the rest.
Ah, I’ve only owned one of their laser printers. It’s like 13 years old and still works great. We’ve only had to replace the cartridge 2 times.
Used to be Lexmark was really good, too. Simple printers that weren’t too fancy, but they worked. Guess they’re still around, but I haven’t used one since the very early ‘00s.
And managing/freeing upper memory so you could play games in DOS like DOOM.
You’d plug your mouse into the serial port and your scanner into your printer port. Wild times.
I had a modem for my Atari 800 that plugged into the joystick port.
*Parallel port
C:\>type autoexec.bat @ECHO OFF PROMPT $P$G PATH C:\DOS;C:\WINDOWS;C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM; SET TEMP=C:\TEMP REM -- HDD cache: SMARTDRV.EXE 2038 512 MODE.EXE LPT1:,,P >NUL SHARE.EXE /F:150 /L:1500 MOUSE.COM /Y DEVICE=C:\sb16\DRV\CTSB16.SYS /UNIT=0 /BLASTER=A:220 I:5 D:1 DEVICE=C:\sb16\DRV\CTMMSYS.SYS CD \WINDOWS WINAnd don’t forget to set the jumpers correctly!
You forgot to load EMM386 or even HIMEM.SYS! You might as well not even bothered installing that expensive 4MB SIMM stick for all the use you’re gonna get out of it.
That’s done in config.sys, not autoexec autoexec.bat IIRC
Also anyone remember that joke?
;fastest mouse driver available DEVICEHIGH=C:\DRV\CAT.SYSI was more a QEMM kind of guy. Also, multitasking Windows in DOS, using Deskview.
Oh man the memories this brings back. I remember being sat down in front of a 386 by my dad when I was ~6 years old. I asked him how to use the mouse, he gave me an instruction manual and told me to figure it out.
We often criticize boomer dads but they were right about this point: kids have unlimited curiosity, feed it.
My daughter recently turned 6 years old. She saw a game called Wobbledogs and wanted to play it. I sat her in front of an old PC and told her to figure it out. She spent a few hours playing last night and narrated the entire experience to me lol. Glad she is enjoying herself. Even if this doesn’t set off a lifetime of experience in IT she will develop some problem solving skills, and if nothing else she is learning something useful as opposed to being handed a tablet.
Not only was I somehow given the card to upgrade my Apple IIe to 128k in the 80s when I was elementary school age, my parents trusted me to install it because they didn’t know how. And I did!
That could have gone so horribly wrong lol. It’s like the times my dad asked me to set jumpers for anything, I think he was more spooked than I was but he let me do it anyway. Every badly set jumper is a learning opportunity I guess lol.
What, no mscdex.exe?
??? The DEVICE= lines go in the config.sys file.
So happy to feel the other old people here.
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I remember having to configure the sound card within games. IRQ and DMZ settings. I had no idea what I was doing so a lot of the time I just played without sound.
DMA, direct memory access. DMZ is a networking thing.
DMZ is also between North and South Korea.
They also stand for the same thing (demilitarized zone) oddly enough.
Well I think that is where the term comes from.
I’ve seen it backronymed into “data management zone” in a few places, but it will always be “demilitarized zone” to me.
Not oddly enough. Exactly as expected. DMZ in networking forwards all ports to a specific IP address behind the firewall. That address is demilitarized. It has no firewall defending it.
Irq was always 8
It was 5 for me, and 220 for I/O Address.
5 -1 or 7-1, who the hell uses 8
The sweet sound of bowling balls
The modem used to echo the tormented screams from the crypts of hell every time it tried to connect. It’s ok to be confused, grandma.
ATM0 is your friend for late night mud playing.
I had completely forgotten about that. Thank you for that particular trip down memory lane.
The modem used to echo the tormented screams from the cripts of hell every time it tried to connect.
And if someone picked up the
landlinephone it would sever the connection.Ha, my best friend had ISDN, so no severed connections when somebody dared placing a phone call while we were traversing the murky depths of rotten.com.
Of course, in style of the meme, we also had the internet at home. Cable internet, which was slow enough it would actually hang up the Windows 98 network stack, taking down the entire system with it.
*crips
If you started a call with your cellphone close to a loudspeaker you could hear the connection being initiated through the speaker. Something like a tat-ara-tat sound.
It never went away.
I can still hear incoming calls, texts, and tower pings with my headphones.Oh yeah. I totally forgot about that. Why did that stop? Phones started using different frequencies or something?
It’s actually a change in audio equipment. If you have old speakers you can still hear it.
IIRC transmission power was higher back in the day and the shielding of electronics wasn’t quite as good. So if you put your phone by a speaker the RF interference would be enough to be able to hear over the speaker.
GTA IV uses this sound when you’re about to receive a call while driving. I remember being confused (and subsequently blown away by the attention to detail). I’m a little nostalgic for the sound so I’m glad it’s preserved in that game.
I think they made a song with that noise, something dance or techno or house
Barcode Brothers - SMS
Mario Piu - Communication?
https://youtu.be/CGHKb5LSKE0?si=zGhmQNtJoLRcaDyp&t=55“They” probably made a bunch, but I’d recommend you to check out Venjent - Calling for You (ft. Oktae) (and anything else from him tbh).
some GSM phones would reboot PCs if a call came through and was situated near the PC.
I didn’t know, that’s fantastic!
Sound cards used to take up one of the few slots so they’d also have a joystick port since the people buying sound cards were often doing it for games.
I remember buying the Sound Blaster card and “upgrading” my ram for a pretty penny so I could play wing commander.
It was also the MIDI port, so it made sense.
Oh shit th CD drive connection! If you didn’t plug that in, Audio CDs wouldn’t have any sound.
Soundblaster.
Now that’s a name I’ve not heard in a long time. A long time.
Creative Soundblaster AWE 32
I might still have one or two of those in a box somewhere…
Did joysticks actually use MIDI or they just use the same port? You can program so many buttons with MIDI. You could set up an entire cockpit on one device.
They were separate hardware protocols. Thanks to the pinout, the port would get used in different ways depending on what’s plugged in. In theory you could have both midi in/out devices and a joystick plugged in at the same time.
More here: https://www.mikesflightdeck.com/interfacing/gameport.html
That’s nifty. If I understand this, the advantage of a joystick using game port instead of MIDI is much simpler hardware. The game port seems like a sort of ADC which means the joystick needs only very simple analog components. A midi joystick would need those same analog components, plus its own ADCs and some digital logic for midi comms. Without the need in most games for dozens of axes and buttons, the extra cost and complexity wouldn’t be worth it.
I did find this though, if someone has midi stuff and wanted to go wild. https://github.com/c0redumb/midi2vjoy
A midi joystick would need those same analog components, plus its own ADCs and some digital logic for midi comms.
That’s the gist of it, yes. Consider that the most silicon peripherals of the time had were things like shift registers in NES controllers. The rest was all switches and pots (joystick), the latter of which had to be calibrated every time you fired up a game.
In another timeline, embracing MIDI in the 80’s and 90’s for game controllers would have been amazing. I feel like Japan would have really run wild with something like that.
Do you know how that compares to USB today? I assume those need ADCs and some sort of digital logic, which overall is similar to midi. I assume that whatever USB is doing is much simpler though, still making midi more expensive. Maybe not though, and we’re missing out on some crazy joysticks?
Do you know how that compares to USB today?
I know enough to be dangerous.
I assume that whatever USB is doing is much simpler though, still making midi more expensive.
Basically we live in a silicon rich world compared to back then. Your vision of putting the ADC circuits in the peripheral is exactly what’s done now with every game controller on the market. And no, USB is technically much more complicated since MIDI is just a serial data protocol whereas USB is a full-on bidirectional packet network. Yet silicon-wise, it’s kind of same-y since the guts of these devices are one or two purpose-built chips for either USB or MIDI. Heck, they even use the same number of wires!
If you’re wondering why MIDI devices today seem expensive despite rocking a 40+ year old communication standard, its because the cost is in everything else. As far as I understand, musical instruments (and anything else in that ecosystem) need rich, repeatable, and reliable tactile input with a decent duty cycle. They often need to be roadworthy, or put up with being run hard in a studio. But also there has always been kind of a premium attached to music stuff in general. Maybe lower production numbers of devices compared to game consoles? Maybe they’re mostly professional or “prosumer” goods? I honestly never understood the big picture here.
Also, there’s a trend of musicians going back to “control voltage” style synths, which is basically analog signal processing from the 70’s and earlier (e.g. Moog). And feature-for-feature, that stuff is even more expensive. Go figure.
Maybe not though, and we’re missing out on some crazy joysticks?
I mean, people have demolished Dark Souls using a Guitar Hero guitar, and also using MIDI drumkits. So there’s that. Anything’s possible with the right silicon glue in play.
Ha, those are crazy. I was thinking of something with tons of buttons and axes. It looks like people are making those though https://www.svg.com/113674/untold-story-insane-game-controller-ever-made/
I mean the MIDI port was where you would plug in a MIDI keyboard, which is just a fancy joypad anyways. So I guess they did use it. I don’t think it supports any other protocol.
Warcraft II Human Footman: Your Sound Card Works Perfectly!
Your sound card works perfectly!
Your sound card works perfectly!
Your sound card works perfectly!
Enjoying yourself?
Your sound card works perfectly!
Your sound card works perfectly!
Your sound card works perfectly!
It doesn’t get any better than this!That brings back memories of the most cursed sound check I can remember…
Wing Commander III’s Captain Eisen: God I love that boy’s spunk! 🫤
DOS games had the best installers. Don’t forget to insert disk 4 to continue!
Stop touching mEEE!
Human knight in the demo: In the real game i am much funnier.
I remember getting the full game and seeing all the new units. A whole fleet of 9 battleships! Come at me Deathwing!
Battleships cannot shoot up tho…
It’s been a few decades 😁 Dwarven Flying Machines then!
Baa-ram-ewe. [Kaboom.]
I’ll go with what’s on CompTIA’s A+ certification exam for $100 Alex.
Mines collecting dust somewhere.
I took the part 1 test right before they turned it into a 3 year expry certificate. Should have taken part 2 also but I have a problem with being a perfectionist and printers were never my favorite subject.
Going to do Security+ and Network+ soon because I’m going back into IT. Not even going to entertain A+. Going to do ITF+ just because it never expires.
I got it as part of my degree program them I ended up getting a job not in IT. Security+ was not too hard to get as well. Even though I don’t plan on getting back in I still wish I never lost my free Net+ voucher.
Mine is expiring and I get a discount if I renew it. But I won’t, since I literally used 0% of my knowledge.
I am not sending CompTIA money so they can now “prove” my cert is valid again
I remember this, but I also remember never actually managing to get a serial port gamepad or joystick to work in Windows. Only DOS.
Serial port, or game port?
Game port (specifically on a SoundBlaster32). But isn’t it also a serial port? That’s just what I’ve always referred to with any plug that was just a rectangle full of little pins and not PS/2 or USB lol
No, a game port was a 15-pin connector, while serial ports were either 9- or 25-pin.
Sound card game ports usually doubled as MIDI interfaces, and MIDI is async serial. So they’re technically correct, which is the best kind of correct.
Wtf is that top font? Those bitch ass letters are going too low.
Dude be cool I think she has Parkinson’s
I didn’t notice until your comment but some type of crime has been committed here. Cursed
Why are you surprised? The only ADCs in you computer were on the sound card, and a joystick was just two potentiometers and a couple of push button switches.
And I also remember studying Basic on a book on the beach during summer because I didn’t have a computer yet.
Did you ever get a magazine like Enter where they had fairly lengthy BASIC programs in the back for you to copy down line by line?
Oh boy. I’ll never forget the amount of fun I had copying them by hand as a 12 year old.
There was one with coordinates to a wireframe of a sports car and drawing it on screen. What blew my mind was the next section where we perform trigonometry magic to rotate the whole thing in 3D space with arrow keys.
Yes, but later, you know… when i actually had a computer
I’m just trying to block out trauma from winsock.dll and figuring out IRQ conflicts.
There was this game I wanted to play that required a lot of memory. My dad didn’t want to spend more money on the computer so I spent a few days hacking the bios, config.sys and autoexec.bat to make sure only the bare minimum was met with drivers for the sound blaster and the mouse loaded and enough RAM left for the game to load.
Making the game play was engineering at the time.
Absolutely is/was. It’s how most of the engineers I know, including myself, got started with computers that led us to the career we have today in tech.
Anyone else remember Memory Commander?
I suspect that all this program did was push stuff to the hard drive or faked how much free RAM you had to games.
Stop with the euphemisms Jessica. I told you, I’m not interested.
Thrustmaster?
