17:04 “You will speak to your computer through the keyboard…don’t bother talking to it…” Wish I had known about this at the start of my programming career. Would have saved me countless verbal tirades I have cast at these devices over the years.
Thanks for saving this! I couldn't help but notice that the tape has enough issues that the result is jumping all over the place. I have pro equipment over here including a TBC; I'd be happy to transfer the tape using that equipment if you like and send you the result for re-upload; let me know.
55:56 they treated the phone number as confidential information lol. Big oversight from our tutor to not address why asterisks appeared instead of the four 4's Dos Mitts typed in.
1984 was one year after Model 4 brought to market (April 1983). No or very few used ones available cheap, so people who bought this video have an investment of $2500 dollars (1983 dollars!) sunk into it, if they got the two-drive model as shown in video. Needless to say, since the only software included was the Microsoft BASIC language interpreter, to actually do anything useful took a bit more. Those today too young to remember, alot of people back then were afraid even to touch a computer for fear of "breaking" it. Alot more people were afraid it would take over their jobs. Those people were right to be afraid of that. Good of writer to point out that error messages were a natural part of computing, because too many novices would get apoplectic at the sight of any kind of error or even advisory messages like "file not found" or "no disk in drive". Some people I knew back then were so stupid, they "stored" their floppy disks with a refrigerator magnet stuck to a filing cabinet -- and then complain they couldn't understand why the info on the disk was no longer accessible...duh. Video should expain better how easy it was to accidentally delete data, and the cost in hours of work destroyed by careless handling or use of FORMAT command. Should also have stressed safe handling of disks and no cigarette smoking around computer. Good that he explained write-protect notch on disks.
I was a Software QE several decades ago, and the women in the office would hollar 3 or 4 cubes over for my assistance, you know because I was a computer guy. The first thing I would do is turn their keyboards over and shake. Usually after half a sandwich of crumbs would fall out, and shazaam, no more problem!
Well yeah man, it's for first-time computer users in 1985. Most people didn't even have an electric typewriter in those days. This shit was the highest of high tech and all new.
