Now this is one amazing Goodwill find: A vintage pop-up book designed to teach burgeoning nerds about the wonders of the modern computer. Floppy disks, ASCII, and the dot-matrix printer. Oh my.
Some of this stuff is amazing, like an ASCII and binary decoder, and the hilarious message on the dot-matrix printer:
Now that we’ve met, I’m ready to work—and play—with you. See you soon! Goodbye.
Computers used to be so adorable (and polite!). [JonathanRyan]
Macca
May 10, 2009 at 5:45 PM
I used to have this book! Threw it out ages ago (what was I thinking??)
Report PermalinkAbaddon
May 10, 2009 at 6:39 PM
I had one of these… it was awesome!
Report PermalinkLoindoin
May 10, 2009 at 7:26 PM
You good lord!!!!! I had that book when I was a kid!!!! I think my parents thought that they could get me this instead of a real computer. I wore them down and enventually got my C64 monster!
Thanks Giz!
Report PermalinkMal
May 10, 2009 at 10:19 PM
Holy crap! I had that book when I was a kid!
Report PermalinkIt even talks about acoustic couplers so computers can talk to each other over the telephone!
Macca
May 11, 2009 at 8:49 AM
Funny how all of us that had that book wound up reading gadget blogs :p
Report Permalinkluke
May 11, 2009 at 1:38 PM
hey, i still have this book :D
Report PermalinkJay Binks
May 11, 2009 at 2:01 PM
haha I had this book also… mum probably still has it somewhere..
Report Permalinkhave to dig it out.
Bob
May 11, 2009 at 3:11 PM
I think I’d still have mine somewhere.If I find it I might actually read it , rather than just play with the ‘working’ floppy drive.
Report PermalinkEkfud
May 12, 2009 at 1:24 AM
Sadly, I still have it in my box of teen books. For some reason I thought the embossed green ‘circuit board’ and chip were awesome. You never got to see one live because back then you needed a white room and licence to open a PC without voiding a warranty.
Report PermalinkNathan
May 12, 2009 at 3:43 PM
I still have this book :)
Report PermalinkI still love it.
It does bring back good old memories.