I'm so old I remember when...

Inspired from a topic on another forum that I’m not yet a member of (at the time this was posted).

I’ll start: I’m so old I remember when…

… “Classic” SpectrAlerts were very common
… cell phones were not called “computers” (makes me feel old when people refer to smartphones as “computers”)

When you wanted to talk to a friend outside of school, you called their house. You hoped they would be home, and if their mother answered, you’d have to ask for them.

At the end of the school year, you’d exchange email addresses.

I remember when Columbia broke up and killed the crew. I remember the very next mission that was a return to flight (STS-114).

When TVs were large, square CRT jobs.

When MySpace was still a thing.

When YouTube was just starting out.

When Netflix was just a mail-order DVD rental service. On that same note, I remember video stores.

I used floppy disks, landline phones, and a bunch of other old tech old people today tease my generation for not knowing about.

I could go on…

…We still had CRTs at my house not even Trinitrons as the first LCDs came with a hefty price tag. To this day I still remember the “Bwonk!” that a CRT will make when the degauss kicks in, once heard never forgotten.
Our cellphones were nowhere as advanced as todays’ smartphone and they were unbreakable (the famous original Nokia 3310 that thing could be dropped from 60 ft it’ll not even get a scratch!)
Windows Vista was only starting out and we had a rather tanky EMachines laptop, it was blazing fast but by todays’ standards it’s to be trashed.
We still had 3"½ Floppy drives, I even found a stash of these on the street.
We still had VHS recorder/players you could record directly from the antenna!
Computers were still the beige boxes that we all know and love.

Like most of the older members here, I remember when TFP (then known as the Schumin Web Community) and the DFA were “rival” forums. Despite the fact that the DFA ran a tight ship, it was definitely the place to be for fire alarm discussion during the early 2010s. I remember being more active on that board than the Schumin Web.

For those of you who don’t know, the DFA began discouraging enthusiasts from participating, branding themselves as “the professional’s forum” or something along those lines. As a result, everyone left and moved to The Fire Panel. The DFA eventually closed.

Here we go. I remember when:

Color TV was the big new advance.

There were only 2 or 3 channels. (I was the remote control.)

Telephones only had dials - no buttons.

Lived in a small town. Only had to dial 5 digits for a local call.

The first transistor radios came out.

The first Sony and Ampex home video recorders came out - open reel tape.

In my first years at Simplex I installed 4247 systems until the 4208 was released for sale.

My first two years in tech support I used a C64 to write trip reports.

Top that!

In Kindergarten, our computers were Windows ME machines with CRT Trinitron monitors that buzzed like heck when you’d turn them on.

Our telephone system was a Merlin Magix system.

We still had a 1978 Station Wagon as the family car, I don’t remember what brand. Possibly Chevrolet.

I remember 9/11. I was 3 at the time.

Telephones were just starting to be 2.4 GhZ.

Wifi was becoming a known thing when I was in 2nd grade.

When smoking was still allowed in restaurants and other public establishments (in my area). My parents would always ask for us to be seated in the non-smoking section (not that it made a difference).

When features such as touchscreens/navigation systems or HID headlights were exclusive to certain luxury cars.

When cassette tapes were still popular.

When my family had dial-up Internet (plus the fact that going online meant that the phone could not be used).

When my school supply list included floppy disks (not that they were ever used).

When full-service gas stations were common in my area (if I’m not mistaken, there is only one such gas station left in my city).

When the Birds of Canada banknote series was in circulation in Canada.

[quote=nightfly287 post_id=81813 time=1537977682 user_id=2562]

Like most of the older members here, I remember when TFP (then known as the Schumin Web Community) and the DFA were “rival” forums. Despite the fact that the DFA ran a tight ship, it was definitely the place to be for fire alarm discussion during the early 2010s. I remember being more active on that board than the Schumin Web.
[/quote]

Speaking of fire alarm forums, does anyone remember a short-lived (yet quite popular) community named The FACP (The Fire Alarm Collectors’ Planet)? If I recall correctly, this forum had been created as an alternative to the Schumin Web Community in late 2008, and it reached the peak of its popularity in mid 2009. I never joined The FACP, but I was quite active on DFA.

Im so (notveryold) old, that when in childhood,
“FRED” was still a thing on YouTube,
Giant 72in CRTs were a thing (my dad got shocked/knocked out by one),
Mini four-wheelers/cars were really popular (I had a mini Corvette lmao),
EVERYBODY played ClubPenguin,
Justin Beiber was really popular (still annoying),
We still used old-style projectors in classrooms,
and McDonalds still served carmel with their apple slices.

1 Like
[quote="Retired STR-SG" post_id=81814 time=1537979466 user_id=3047]

Here we go. I remember when:
Color TV was the big new advance.
There were only 2 or 3 channels. (I was the remote control.)
Telephones only had dials - no buttons.
The first transistor radios came out.
The first Sony and Ampex home video recorders came out - open reel tape.
My first two years in tech support I used a C64 to write trip reports.

Top that!

[/quote]

I think you have us all beat! But like I said - I could go on:

Grades, attendance, etc. were all taken on paper. Computerized gradebooks were not a thing yet. On that same note, the computers we did have at school were beige boxes running Windows 98, before being replaced with Dell Optiplexes running Windows XP.

“You’ll never have a calculator on you all the time.”

“You’ll always need to write in cursive.”

I remember playing games on Cartoon Network’s website, and getting viruses on my dad’s old Dell Dimension. I miss the Internet of the early to mid 2000s.

Chain emails/texts, with a dozen "FWD"s before the actual message.

Cell phones flipped, slid, or just had the keys on the front of the device. My first cell phone was a Sanyo SCP-3100, then an LG Rumor, then an LG Rumor Touch, before I finally got a smart phone. No fancy touch screens, no fancy apps. You could call or text, but if you so much as accidentally hit the internet button, you’d be mashing the END button in the hopes your parents wouldn’t get billed.

Mixtapes were actually a mix of songs on a cassette tape. Even when everyone switched to burned CDs, we still called them mixtapes.

The 10 year anniversary of Pokemon was huge.

I’ll never forget our old friend, the overhead projector:

[quote=kcin556 post_id=81829 time=1538069878 user_id=2844]

I’ll never forget our old friend, the overhead projector:

[/quote]

On a similar note, whenever you walked into the classroom and saw the big rolling TV cart there, you knew class was going to be fun.

I remember when:

Cell phones were only used for phone calls.

Payphones were common in public places.

There were people who had pagers also known as beepers.

Walmart stores only had a little grocery section and you couldn’t make a full grocery shopping trip at one.

Game consoles with the Sega brand.

Needing to have the CD in every time you play a computer game.

When records were obsolete and you couldn’t buy them at ordinary stores.

Walkmans.

Video rental stores and the “be kind please rewind” stickers that were put on the movies.

Fire alarms with translucent strobes being common.

I still remember a lot of things that were previously mentioned in this thread. However, here’s a few interesting things to still note (some of these may be similar to what has previously been listed on this thread):

[list=]

  • VHS Tapes were still popular for watching movies and other pre-recorded content.
  • [*]Windows 95/98, pre-XP era.
  • [*]The Pre Mac OSX era (OS 9 to be exact!).
  • [*]When LCD screens were starting to be popular with computers (first LCD I saw with a computer was around 2003).
  • [*]Computers and associated peripherals transitioning from beige to the black (I think this started around the time XP was released) .
  • [*]Early iMovie (earliest I used was '05 or '06).
  • [*]Early Windows Movie Maker videos.
  • [*]Roller Coaster Tycoon 3's release (I still love this game).
  • [*]Going onto websites of popular children's entertainment stations (Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, etc.) to play games based on their shows.
  • [*]The start of the smartphone era.
  • [*]The start of the tablet era.
  • [*]AIM (though I never used it).
  • [*]When fire alarm videos were starting to be uploaded on YouTube (the first one I ever watched was a Simplex Speaker/Strobe from federal3t22 back in 2007).
  • [*]When elevator videos were starting to be uploaded to YouTube as well (I'm an elevator geek too :D).
  • [*]The rectangular Simplex 4903 series still being relatively new (actually the first fire alarms I was ever exposed to that I remember). This is also the pre-TrueAlert/QuickAlert era (going THAT far back).
  • [*]An era before the SpectrAlert Advance was released. (Similar to what firealarmveteran15 had said about "Classic' SpectrAlerts. As a matter of fact, the Advance was fairly new when I started getting into fire alarms).
  • [*]Video Stores (in general).
  • [/list]

    Wow…that’s a lot of stuff I listed!

    1 Like

    Ah yes forgot that: the JHS I attended to, had some of the first DLP videoprojectors, the large “Hitachi” blocks hanged on the ceiling needless to say they were on the way out… I also remember, we still had Dell OptiPlexes (fitted with Celerons that were slow as molasses) you dared to plug a USB disk after the machine booted up: it crashed the entier network for some reasons.

    We still had overhang projectors (I even used one to trace the contours of a drawing, others preferred to stick onto the windows and try to trace with the sunlight)

    I also remember one of our teachers still used VHS tapes, we still had old Goldstar CRT TVs attached to the wall (from the 90’s one of the classrooms had even an old Diamondtron monitor that sat taking the dust… I would’ve loved to take it home if they wanted to get rid of it)

    Wheelock 7002Ts were the new kids! And the same with the NES game, Astyanax!

    I apologize, if I posted so late in this thread.

    Another one I remember:

    Diesel cars used non-Turbodiesel engines (the turbocompressor was an option, until the common-rail diesel injection engines started getting popular…)

    People still used cars from the 80’s to 90’s (good ol’ Citroën ZX 1.9D, that ol’e Xud9 engine was a freakin’ tank, rock solid.)

    We still had ADSL and dial-up.

    ADSL subscriptions often didn’t come with a TV option.

    Analogue TV was still a thing, and my country used SECAM (unlike the rest of Europe which used PAL, and you Americans used NTSC (“Never The Same Color”))

    Péritel/SCART was still a thing.

    VGA was the de facto standard for PC monitors

    Keyboard has that weird purple connector (PS/2)

    The PS2 was all the rage.

    Apple still used PowerPC CPUs (I myself had a iMac G3…)

    Plasma TVs were a thing, and we still use one as of today, still going strong. It has insane color levels, almost like a CRT.

    The WWE was still the WWF, Windows XP, the Spectralert Classic was still in production, the simplex 4100U was a brand new panel and Thomas The tank engine was filmed using a live action set, rather than today’s CGI BS. (I was born about a month before season 6 came out)

    Note: the WWF became the WWE before I was born (3 months before August) but some people still referred to it as the WWF, so there are some exceptions.

    • Windows 98 was my computer’s main operating system (this was essentially my childhood), then XP (most of my middle school days until about partway into my senior year of high school).
    • Watching movies (mostly Disney) on VHS and DVD. (Nowadays I just don’t have the time for that anymore)
    • Windows XP was mainstream
    • The iPhone 3G was brand new
    • People still used MySpace
    • Most people used Yahoo Mail

    I also know someone who still uses AOL.

    I’m so old I remember when Fox Kids and then the Fox Box was a Saturday morning block (and the only one I had since our cable provider dumped the WB for HSN)