Funny Incident's With Your Old School's/College Computers.
Reading a few threads on the WoS forum's got me thinking of the old computer's that we used at my primary/secondary school, and the sometimes very funny and silly incidents that use to happen with them. One I always remember very vividly and still find it funny to this day, is as follows.:smile:
We had BBC's at my primary school and one day a guy turned up to do a demonstration with this robotic turtle(Valiant Turtle), that he connected up to one of the BBC's, which was set-up in our assembly room. A week prior to the demo, our school had a new carpet fitted in the assembly room, and the teachers/headmaster was being really careful with the new carpet, making us take off our shoes before we were allowed into the room etc.
Back to the demo. We all sat around in a large circle on the floor with the robot connected to the BBC via infra red, inside the circle. We were all amazed seeing this turtle move around with no wires, doing some sort of game with us that I can't remember. The guy then put this large piece of paper on the floor with the robot on it, attached a permanent marker pen to the robot, and shows us how it could draw. After that he picked up the paper off the floor and went on to the next demo, only he forgot to remove the pen!:roll:
When the robot moved again, there was this 6 inch long, black pen line in the new carpet.:-o I can never forget the look of our headmaster's face then.:mad: He was not happy seeing the new carpet spoiled like that. They tried to clean it out of the carpet but it was permanent.:roll: I remember that pen line was in the carpet till I left for secondary school.:lol:
So do you have any funny, silly or odd stories at your schools/college's with old computers?
We had BBC's at my primary school and one day a guy turned up to do a demonstration with this robotic turtle(Valiant Turtle), that he connected up to one of the BBC's, which was set-up in our assembly room. A week prior to the demo, our school had a new carpet fitted in the assembly room, and the teachers/headmaster was being really careful with the new carpet, making us take off our shoes before we were allowed into the room etc.
Back to the demo. We all sat around in a large circle on the floor with the robot connected to the BBC via infra red, inside the circle. We were all amazed seeing this turtle move around with no wires, doing some sort of game with us that I can't remember. The guy then put this large piece of paper on the floor with the robot on it, attached a permanent marker pen to the robot, and shows us how it could draw. After that he picked up the paper off the floor and went on to the next demo, only he forgot to remove the pen!:roll:
When the robot moved again, there was this 6 inch long, black pen line in the new carpet.:-o I can never forget the look of our headmaster's face then.:mad: He was not happy seeing the new carpet spoiled like that. They tried to clean it out of the carpet but it was permanent.:roll: I remember that pen line was in the carpet till I left for secondary school.:lol:
So do you have any funny, silly or odd stories at your schools/college's with old computers?
Post edited by Your Spec-chum on
Comments
we used to have winchester drive crashes on econet bbc.. so had to stay after school to do work.
teacher went meeting one day, and school mates prank called school mates pretending to be local nick.
few more stories like that from college / uni also.
lol
can't match the marker pen/carpet story but one thing from school that stands out in my memory is the 2 Plymouth Bretheren girls in our IT class who had to spend every lesson sat at a computer with their chairs turned 180 degrees, with their backs to the screens. thinking about it now, I cant work out why they even had to come into the class? weird.
Presumably because otherwise you have to find someone else to teach them something for an hour so it's easier to just park them in the same room as the rest of the class.
We tried to explain what the noise was, unfortunately we'd spent the morning peddling so much crap to her, that she instinctively assumed everything we told her was a lie.
Everyone has a crap game inside them, let yours out!
In my early years at high school there was also a computer lab full of RM 480Zs and the obligatory Winchester Drive, in which the compting teacher would visibly have tingles running up his spine when ever he mentioned it. I rremember fondly a program called control in which we could write logo code to control external IO board with digital and analog outputs, two pairs of red amber greed leds, and two digit counters. I have never seen them since but would like to buy one on ebay for nostalgia purposes. The computers and the drive were later relocated to the English dept as they had a really good word processor application with them. They also had a program called email and some kids had figured out how to use it as an asynchronous chat client with other class rooms.
The computer room then got RM Numbuses, which had an OS which was not windows but blue with massive menu options in red.
Was rummaging through some drawers in the computer room, full of BBC Masters a few model B's and one APPLE 2e and found a Speccy in a drawer.
Think it must have been a refugee from the metal/woodwork shop,
Turned off all the BBC Masters held the R key down and turned them all back on, and the dozy computer teacher couldn't sort it out.
He was very boring, and hated sound, colour and moving images, and had very little imagination.
hmm good point, well made.
I expect mr davey the pervy science teacher would've liked to give them some 1-on-2 tuition for half an hour instead though.
I knew the college I.T. bloke had a bad temper so I scarpered.
My mate stayed in the room and told me the guy had an epic meltdown :)
I knew I had to scarper cos a few weeks earlier I asked him how to open a .zip file.
the zip file was called ancients,zip and he said in this voice 'IS THIS A GAME?!'
the kind of voice that if I said yes, I knew I would get a *******ing.
Of course it was a game, but I wasnt going to admit it. Luckily it sounded like it could be something to do with history.
At least it wasn't some game with Speedlock. "Right children, we've got ten minutes left, let's load up Daley Thompson's Decathlon... oh bugger, it's crashed. Right, six minutes... oh balls, crashed again. Home-time!"
Oh how we laughed and laughed and laughed....
I didn't know the first thing about BASIC but me and my mates would type in a statement like.
And then laugh and walk away knowing Mr Thompson would have to restart it.
After several times doing this the headmaster made an announcement at assembly that if it happened again no one would be allowed to use it, someone in the year above comically muttered that we weren't allowed to use it anyway, which proceeded with the most awkward 5 second pause from the headmaster before he changed the subject.
In secondary school which for me was 92-97 we had the same old knackered Acorn Archimedes throughout and all we learnt in IT was CV's and Business Cards. When the options came round in the 4th year no one hardly bothered choosing IT and the people who did said it was just more of the same boring business related pap.
I remember when i was in the last year some lads in the year below had a hobby of collecting the mouse balls from the old 2 button brick mice the Archie used which caused chaos. It soon spread to more people nicking them and booting them over into the nearby field. I heard stories of an entire classes having to sit and read books about IT as none of the computers were operable.
I think in the end they just stopped nicking them and normal service resumed.
That was an endemic problem. It's a shame because if people did not own their own computer they would assume the subject was extremely boring. If someone is smart enough to teach and become a qualified teacher, they should surely have the skill to learn the basics enough to give the kids a flavor.
That use to happen at my secondary school too with the A3000's. One of my old school mates use to be a right whiz kid on them. Our IT class had a printer next to each computer, but out of all of them only 2 were colour printers. If he was on a computer which didn't have a colour printer, he knew how to print of his work on the other colour printers, without moving onto that computer. He wouldn't say how he did it, and I remember we asked our IT teacher how to do it, but she wouldn't say, and I don't think she knew either really. He later got expelled from school and banned from using the schools computers after he somehow hacked into the schools records/personal information during an IT lesson.
Could have been worse he could have hacked into NORAD and started world war 3 :)
An old lecturer also used to head to the pub.
One afternoon we are all back from a session.
In the computer room at the lesson, the old lecturer has a moment, then stands up wobbly, and lights a fag and smokes it there and then.
How we laughed!!!
I remember seeing inside the staff room at my school once, you could not even see the other side there was that much smoke in it.
I don't remember anything particularly hilarious in regard to the computers. Everything was logged on a BBC with a second processor.
The animal house, chemistry lab and metal work suite probably were more likely to be centres for daft antics. We had a python called Monty - which escaped once to be found again a few days later, the story made the local news.
Our old secondary is closed now - dwindled down to 80 pupils after several reprieves.
Even at University we had nothing much in the way of computing power, at least on my course (late 80's, Geography BA) - I had to hand-write my final year 20,000 word disseration, have it typed up in Southampton city by a typing agency, proof read it and make hand written revisions before being retyped and bound. Happy days!
That said, we used Minitab as a stats package as part of my degree, and someone found out that you could send anonymous messages to other terminals in the lecture room if you knew the pc id number, so a small group of us used to plague other students by sending offensive, inane or flirtatious messages to them ... more often than not without being caught :grin:
We had no computers in primary school - but our secondary school had 3 or 4 BBC Micros. They may also have had one BBC Master - but I'm not sure.
I remember programming BASIC on it and saving it to those giant floppy disks that were easily damaged. I preferred my Sinclair BASIC back in the day, but to be honest BBC Basic is really good.
Played Wizadore, Revs and Kingdoms on the BBC's in school sometimes.
Haha! Cultist nutjobs :lol:
Evangelical luddites :D
Had a winchester drive in the computer lab which was the pride and joy of the teacher.
We were sat in a lesson and there was a huge bang and a grinding noise. Turned out one of the winchester platters had shattered, there were bits sticking out of the case. The teacher was devastated.
Seem to remember we changed over to a Bernoulli drive there after.
We had RML 380, 480 and later nimbuses - Oh and i seem to remember a memotech ( as there factory was here before they went bust ).
http://www.theplymouthbrethren.org.uk/brethren-and-the-use-of-computers/
program bob;
uses crt;
begin
delay (500);
sound (9000);
end.