Memories of Print Shop
Mar. 28th, 2006 02:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thebitterguyLet’s go back to nostalgia, y’all. You know what terrifies me? Sets my bowels to quivering like not quite set Jell-o? The thought that someone who reads this won’t know what I’m gonna talk about in a second.
Because I’m gonna get old here, folks. I’m going back a couple decades, easy. To where? Computer camp, which mostly consisted of repeasts of episodes of Bits n' Bytes and showings of Tron and Wargamrs.
Back in the early, early days (i.e. the early 80s) YHB was something of the nerd. He grew out of that quick, but always retained in himself a love for interesting software. And in that epoch, no piece of software was more interesting than Print Shop (or The Print Shop, if you prefer).
Print Shop was a piece of software produced by Broderbund (and how friggin SHOCKED am I that they still exist, even if as a shell) that allowed you to print things. Pretty things. You could do greeting cards and flyers and seating markers and all sorts of neat things. Admittedly, not that impressive in this day of DTP programs proliferating, but back then I was impressed.
The highlight, and one of those things that’s been eliminated by the advance of technology (much like album covers) was the banner. Printer paper, you see, was once available only as one single sheet of paper, fed through the printer (the Dot Matrix printer!) on spoked wheels. As such, you had to dis-assemble the paper once it was printed out. This made printing, say, 20 pages of fiction very difficult. However, it did allow you to print long banners, which would be used to wish someone a happy birthday, a good trip, a happy anniversary, or a happy retirement.
This is a lost art today. With the advent of affordable inkjet and laser printers we’ve gained many wonderful things (admittedly, that includes paper that doesn’t require manual labour to print out one sheet), but I occasionally miss being able to print out a banner, or a sign with big blocky text.
Dot Matrix printers had a certain hard elegance about them, a rough edged blue collar sense of efficiency. Admittedly, they were noisy, but even that was a sign they were working. A laser printer’s hum can indicate it’s working, it isn’t working, or that it’s just on.
Because I’m gonna get old here, folks. I’m going back a couple decades, easy. To where? Computer camp, which mostly consisted of repeasts of episodes of Bits n' Bytes and showings of Tron and Wargamrs.
Back in the early, early days (i.e. the early 80s) YHB was something of the nerd. He grew out of that quick, but always retained in himself a love for interesting software. And in that epoch, no piece of software was more interesting than Print Shop (or The Print Shop, if you prefer).
Print Shop was a piece of software produced by Broderbund (and how friggin SHOCKED am I that they still exist, even if as a shell) that allowed you to print things. Pretty things. You could do greeting cards and flyers and seating markers and all sorts of neat things. Admittedly, not that impressive in this day of DTP programs proliferating, but back then I was impressed.
The highlight, and one of those things that’s been eliminated by the advance of technology (much like album covers) was the banner. Printer paper, you see, was once available only as one single sheet of paper, fed through the printer (the Dot Matrix printer!) on spoked wheels. As such, you had to dis-assemble the paper once it was printed out. This made printing, say, 20 pages of fiction very difficult. However, it did allow you to print long banners, which would be used to wish someone a happy birthday, a good trip, a happy anniversary, or a happy retirement.
This is a lost art today. With the advent of affordable inkjet and laser printers we’ve gained many wonderful things (admittedly, that includes paper that doesn’t require manual labour to print out one sheet), but I occasionally miss being able to print out a banner, or a sign with big blocky text.
Dot Matrix printers had a certain hard elegance about them, a rough edged blue collar sense of efficiency. Admittedly, they were noisy, but even that was a sign they were working. A laser printer’s hum can indicate it’s working, it isn’t working, or that it’s just on.
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Date: 2006-03-28 07:33 pm (UTC)I also remember my dad getting these Big Blue Disk things that came with all those games and programs and stuff, and one of the games on there, King Something-or-Other's Cave-or-Something, addicted the hell out of me.
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Date: 2006-03-29 07:41 pm (UTC)Dot Matrix tech did have its own strange rhythm. Like sewing with a diesel powered sewing machine.
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Date: 2006-03-28 07:39 pm (UTC)"What would I do with this fancy typewriter?"
"Well, you can print out a gigantic banner."
"I must own one!"
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Date: 2006-03-28 08:14 pm (UTC)That was one reason of many.
Others included Bulletin Board Systems, computer games, and, oh yes, passing around disks (as opposed to discs) of porn.
Ever view porn on a 16-colour machine? Heh.
Oh, and hacking into the school computers to change grades. Not that I ever did that. Nosireebob.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-28 07:47 pm (UTC)I was at computer camp the summer between grade 8 and 9 -- we programmed on Commodores... 64s, I think? The ones with the cassette tape decks. Which was more advanced than the ones in high school, in the end (PETs and CBMs). It was a crappy set up -- the instructors skived off who knows where, and we were left to roam around the former YWCA building at will. That was a LOT of fun -- exploring various spaces, getting grossed-out by the dark green undrained pool, etc. I don't remember diddly squat about what we did on the computers, of course...
If you happen to stumble across an Odyssey 3000 emulator at some point, I will love you forever. *misses cheesy old gaming console*
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Date: 2006-03-29 07:43 pm (UTC)I can't remember what years I went to computer camp. I remember reading 2010 on the ride in, since we had to be bussed from Napanee to Kingston.
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Date: 2006-03-28 07:48 pm (UTC)I was a Print Shop nerd. There was another Print Shop package that let you make your own graphics and fonts and stuff. I made a classic Star Trek font for Print Shop. (Yes, I also bought the TrueType Trek font packs when they were released for PCs.)
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Date: 2006-03-29 07:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-28 08:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-29 07:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-28 08:11 pm (UTC)And Infocom games on the same machines.
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Date: 2006-03-28 08:16 pm (UTC)Likewise! (except mine was an Apple ||e - I miss that thing.)
And other games, like... Tai-Pan. God, I wasted so many hours on that one. *wistful sigh*
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Date: 2006-03-28 08:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-28 08:26 pm (UTC)Mmmmmm, Lode Runner...
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Date: 2006-03-29 03:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-29 03:33 am (UTC)Karateka was the shiznit!
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Date: 2006-03-29 03:45 am (UTC)You have to love a princess that kicks her heroic rescuer in the face for showing insufficient respect.
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Date: 2006-03-29 03:46 am (UTC)I don't recollect that, so prolly not, but then it's entirely possible I've forgotten.
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Date: 2006-03-29 07:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-29 08:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-29 07:54 pm (UTC)I have no idea if I ever got to try any Infocom games in the day. I did beat Karateka, but it took me so long I had to leave hte machine on overnight.
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Date: 2006-03-28 08:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-29 07:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-29 08:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-29 08:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-28 08:27 pm (UTC)Your links in the post are all kerfluffed.
Fer instance your Dot Matrix link actually links to: http://thebitterguy.livejournal.com/%E2%80%9Dhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot_matrix_printer%E2%80%9D
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Date: 2006-03-28 08:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-28 09:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-28 09:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-28 09:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-29 07:58 pm (UTC)Oh, man.
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Date: 2006-03-28 09:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-29 07:27 pm (UTC)Cool.
That icon is a bit Wednesday looking.
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Date: 2006-03-29 09:03 pm (UTC)Ya think? It was taken at my tenth birthday party. Possibly while we were sacrificing the goat...
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Date: 2006-03-28 11:13 pm (UTC)Who feels old now, punk.
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Date: 2006-03-28 11:15 pm (UTC)Dot-matrix printers were great for making ASCII art posters, too. One of my Grade 10 Data Processing classes (the last time I ever took a computer course, too) had us make up a posterized art project with the good old Commodore PETs, where there was one floppy drive for the entire room to use, with each machine having its own cassette drive.
::B::
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Date: 2006-03-29 01:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-29 04:36 am (UTC)Lemonade Stand is good. There's a flash version that's kinda expensive but not as much fun.
30% chance of rain is a sure thing.
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Date: 2006-03-29 03:34 am (UTC)I can still do a really good impression of the noise those old dot matrix printers made.
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Date: 2006-03-29 04:37 pm (UTC)Not as difficult as you might assume. Networked, heavy duty dot-matrix printers were what we had when I was in University (sic) and I worked for a term in the Arts Computing Office. It's amazing how practice (lots of papers to write) and a big flat table makes the task of bursting pages a pretty quick (and oddly soothing) process (ahhh ... ::slide slide:: ::zhnipp zhnipp zhnipp:: ::slide slide:: ... ahhh).
It was certainly quicker to burst pages than it was to debug your paper's markup to make sure that all the formatting, references, and footnoting worked out properly (ahh! GML!).
(Don't get me started on punch cards -- that's how I learned to program: thank God, I saw only one term in highschool of this, and then we moved on to Commodore PETs and got to use COBOL, BASIC, and PETAssembler.)
no subject
Date: 2006-03-29 05:26 pm (UTC)10 PRINT "EAT AT JOE'S"
20 GOTO 10
30 RUN
...or something like that. I swear, that's all we did in grade 10 computers. *snort*
In the sixties, my dad worked with honking big reels of tape, on the 'puters at the IOF. I think I broke his brain when I showed him my thumb drive... :D
no subject
Date: 2006-03-29 07:34 pm (UTC)Wassa GML? Some kind of early markup language?
Punch Cards are still something that come across as pre-me tech. I hear much of them, but after that it's purly hypothetical.
COBOL was a nice language, ya.