In the early 80s, my high school got a few microcomputers

Arrrgghhh.

In the early 80s, my high got a few microcomputers (Ohio Scientific, if you're interested). They had a 6502 CPU, 48K of memory, and two 8" floppy drives, with a total of about 540K of storage. They came with the old BASIC Star Trek game - the one that used numbers for commands, rather than the one that used three-letter abbreviations. I loved the game, but when I heard we could actually make modifications, or even write our own games, I was hooked. I wasted so much time in the computer room over the next couple of years, they had to ban me from it, a few times.

I remember one of the math teachers proudly saying that, if we upgraded to double-sided floppy drives, we could get more than full megabyte of storage online.

I recognize that message. I have one of those in my garage and, the last time I checked, it still worked. I finally wrote an emulator for the thing, copied the roms to a modern computer, and play with that, occasionally.

I think the best part about "Tapestry" is the fact that they took a two-minute piece of a previous episode, and made a whole new (and very good) episode out of it.

Reminds me of zip drives

It was obvious to anyone who was paying attention that Zip drives were a flash in the pan. I'm still amazed that so many people wasted their money on them, when they didn't even outlast the floppies they were supposed to replace.

And everyone should skip Ishtar.

Agreed.

My wife and I argue, occasionally, about which movie was worse: Ishtar or StarTrek III.

Can you read your MO or Bernoulli disks today

Yes, in fact, I can read my MO disks, today. Sure, my MO drive is more than 10 years old, but it still works, and the disks are still readable.

8 inch drives never made it to consumer use. They were only for the big computers of the day. Things like newspaper typesetting machines.

No it's your memory that's failing. As other people have pointed out, one of the TRS-80s had 8" floppy drives. The first computer I ever used was an Ohio Scientific something-or-other - 6502-based, with 48k of memory and dual 8" floppy drives. These computers were at my high school, and they weren't multi-tasking systems, so they couldn't have cost that much.

Calling that "multi-user" is stretching it a little...

what's not to like?

That fact that it's not multi-user? I'd like to see a (possibly web-based) password manager that can be used by an entire IT department, to keep track of all the passwords on the network.

I'm not a creationist, but I live in a red state, so I know enough of them to tell you their answer will be "But they're still bacteria". They won't believe it's evolution, until they see a bacterium evolve into something like a human.

have you considered running?

Assuming you mean "running for office", do you really think we need more creationists in Congress?

But on 6502 machines one did not have to wait for the vertical sync to update the video memory.

I'm pretty sure you believe that, because the only 6502-based machines you've worked with have very low resolution. (Both the C64 and Apple II were 40x24.) I have a 6502-based machine, at home, whose resolution is 64x32, and it does require you to pay attention to Vsync. It's easy to play tricks like that, when you cut corners.

6502-machines' 40-column displays are probably one of contributing factors to their reputation as gaming machines, since they don't work well for business, and most Z80-based machines at the time were 80x25.

That malicious software wouldn't happen to be called SELinux, would it?

The fact that the new consoles utilize processors suited for low-profile notebooks is a joke

Shhhhh! Weaker consoles are easier to emulate on PCs.