hpr4606 :: My Nerdy Childhood: From Floppy Disks to Dial-Up Dreams

Trollercoaster talks about his childhood and first years of nerdlyhood

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Hosted by Trollercoaster on Monday, 2026-03-30 is flagged as Explicit and is released under a CC-BY-SA license.
childhood, humor, nostalgia. 6.

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Duration: 00:15:30
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general.

It all started at Flanders Technology International in 1987... a tech expo where an eleven-year-old watched a wooden block move across a desk and an arrow follow it on screen. That was it. That was the moment. He had to have a computer with a mouse.

What followed was a story of after-school showroom squatting, summer jobs, game piracy, a modem bill that nearly gave his parents a heart attack, and an education in computing that no school could have provided.

From the Amstrad PC1512 and the GEM windowing system, to the Schneider Euro PC with its infamous Turbo button that turned Ms. Pac-Man into a half-second blur — this episode is a love letter to the glorious chaos of home computing in the late 1980s.

Along the way: the satisfying clatter of a matrix printer , the dark arts of config.sys and autoexec.bat , Digger , the allure of the Commodore 64 , forbidden floppy disks at computer club, a 2400-baud modem, and the very first taste of online community — long before anyone called it the internet.

The computers

Play the games


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Comment #1 posted on 2026-03-30 14:24:54 by Trey

Trip down memory lane...

Thank you for the trip down memory lane. It very much reminded me of my own experiences during that time.

I believe that we developed a certain set of skills, for troubleshooting, for experimenting, and for learning because we did not have an internet to lookup everything.

This is what made us hackers! Not in the criminal sense, but like MIT and HackerOne have defined it.

Hacker: "One who enjoys the intellectual challenge of creatively overcoming limitations" HackerOne. What's in a Name. Retrieved from HackerOne: https://www.hackerone.com/blog/whats-in-a-name

Comment #2 posted on 2026-03-30 16:23:43 by xmanmonk

Great Episode!

Ah, the memories! I'm a bit older, but I wanted to say that the sound effects in this episode brought back all kinds of memories! Thanks for a great show!

Comment #3 posted on 2026-03-31 08:24:58 by Trollercoaster

Back to you...

Hey Trey... why don't you flip out your PDP11 and show off your skilzz!

If you're into the old school definition of hackers and you're frustrated that those youngsters are spoiled... make sure to pick up next week's episode on Age Verification! It will be the best thing ever.

xmanmonk glad you liked the sound effects. I had to edit out the occasional fart - at a certain age bowel movements are a thing. But then again... luckily podcasts don't also spread the smell...

Comment #4 posted on 2026-03-31 08:26:06 by Trollercoaster

Not to janitors

Hey Janitors,

just realized that you'll have to read my previous comment out loud. May I suggest to NOT add sound effects to that comment?

Comment #5 posted on 2026-03-31 17:20:34 by ClaudioM

Nerdy Nostalgia!

Great episode, Trollercoaster! Really enjoyed this one. Had me all nostalgic for those early days of computing. I recorded hpr1541 back in 2014 (*ding* for shameless plug lol) where I covered my early days of computing and how it all led up to me coming to Linux, and I think I made mention of BSD as well, and this reminded me of that. Thanks for sharing!

Comment #6 posted on 2026-04-06 15:28:34 by Trollercoaster

Damn you Nerdy Nostaliga!

Now you made me listen to a decade old episode of HPR! That's nostalia over nostalgia. So Nostalgia² ... for sure that can't be negative (unless it's complex nostaliga).

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