You Know You Are Old When

   / You Know You Are Old When #2,551  
I'm remember Radio Shack asking me for my ph number in the 80's. 555-1212 was my go to 🤓
Radio Shack definitely had a thing for phone #s. I'd generally refuse to give it to them, just stating "cash sale".

My employer for most of the 00s/early teens had a corporate account with them. For whatever reason, they insisted I give them the phone # the account was set up under so they could look it up themselves even though I had the account #. I did not know what phone # it was set up under (if it even was). Usually, the clerk would give in and use the account I provided, but one guy absolutely refused to ring up the sale without that phone #. The parts were something I needed right then, so I just paid cash but filed a complaint on their website when I got back to the office. Never saw that clerk again. He was such a jerk I didn't even feel any remorse for getting him fired.
 
   / You Know You Are Old When #2,552  
I was a regular at Radio Shack starting about age 8 with my free battery a month card!
 
   / You Know You Are Old When #2,553  
My first job, working for a computer sales company was to populate AST Six Pac cards. This gave the PC 640k of ram, a serial port, parallel port AND a clock. What more could you ask for.
My first job out of college in 1969 was with Wang Labs in Tewksbury, Mass. (call our salesman, have him show you his Wang). Their claim to fame was powerful (for their day) desktop sized minicomputers, but they were marketed as programmable calculators. The rationale was that back then "computers" were seen as these big scary, expensive things that filled up a room, but 'most any company had room in the budget for calculators. These units were used by NASA execute the first moon landing. I don't remember the amount of RAM (actually core memory) they had, but it was in the single-digit K. No bloatware in those days!
 
   / You Know You Are Old When #2,554  
You know you're getting older if you look in the obits when someone doesn't call you back when you think they should.
 
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   / You Know You Are Old When #2,555  
My first job out of college in 1969 was with Wang Labs in Tewksbury, Mass. (call our salesman, have him show you his Wang). Their claim to fame was powerful (for their day) desktop sized minicomputers, but they were marketed as programmable calculators. The rationale was that back then "computers" were seen as these big scary, expensive things that filled up a room, but 'most any company had room in the budget for calculators. These units were used by NASA execute the first moon landing. I don't remember the amount of RAM (actually core memory) they had, but it was in the single-digit K. No bloatware in those days!
I have a Wang calculator from 1968 (9 possibly). It's in two parts and nixie tube display.
 
   / You Know You Are Old When #2,556  
One of Wangs last buildings in Lowell Mass looked like a W from the air.
 
   / You Know You Are Old When #2,557  
I've a Wang story -
College research project ~1972. Had a TON of biological numerical data to do calculations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, nothing extreme) on for a project while I was carrying a 20 credit load one semester.
My GF offered to do the "data entry", she was quick on the keyboard. She failed to tell me she didn't know how to operate the Wang,
Took her many hours, basically doing calculations by hand, that if she had just entered the numbers would have been a button push.
 
   / You Know You Are Old When #2,558  
I've a Wang story -
College research project ~1972. Had a TON of biological numerical data to do calculations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, nothing extreme) on for a project while I was carrying a 20 credit load one semester.
My GF offered to do the "data entry", she was quick on the keyboard. She failed to tell me she didn't know how to operate the Wang,
Took her many hours, basically doing calculations by hand, that if she had just entered the numbers would have been a button push.
The bolded part is where I started laughing.
 
   / You Know You Are Old When #2,560  
Man that brings back memories. (pun intended)

We bought about 500 AST 286 computers at my last job. They were used as terminal emulators. After a short while, and after the warranty, all of the B/W monitors died and it was cheaper to get color monitor replacements, so I had to install about 500 monitor boards in the 286's to accommodate the new monitors.

Later, they upgraded about half of them to AST 386's. Then AST 486's. They still had several hundred 486's at Y2K, so we had to install clock boards that were capable of 4 digit years.

Good times. 😛
I kinda miss the good old days when it took a real computer nerd to keep them working.
 

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