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Still booting after all these years: The people stuck using ancient Windows computers (www.bbc.com)

submitted 4 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 76 points 4 days ago (4 children)

I was tearing out ancient infrastructure for a new office and my eye kept going to a rectangular square box on the wall. Finally realized it was a PC! The cause of death was clear, PSU fan died, killed itself from heat. It was a form factor I had never seen, but standard nonetheless. It was running an answering machine system in DOS, still worked! Such a rare machine I've only found a single reference on the web and a single video about it. 1999, 486XS (I know, would kill for a DX, it's soldered on), upgraded from 2x 2MB SIMMs to a whopping 2x 64MB SIMMs. Imagine what that would have cost in the day!

LONG story, but I got it running Windows 95b. 3.1 was just too much challenge to get it networked and happy. Much pain was removed when I got a USB floppy emulator. Can't do jack without a floppy! Broke the network card drivers, need to start over. Had it running Doom with a legit SoundBlaster card and could RDP into over the network.

It was an amazing journey getting it all together and updated. Most of that knowledge is gone from the internet, and I sure don't remember all the tricks. Going to be my first token ring machine! LOL, had to get parts from Romania and trash cans.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 4 days ago

I binge people doing this type of thing on YouTube lol. I miss working in the industry

[–] drasglaf 8 points 3 days ago (1 children)

If you ever see yourself in the need of information about the DOS era again, Vogons is the place to go IMHO.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 days ago

But it's all in poetry, unfortunately.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 days ago

Man, remember when people used to break into offices to steal the RAM?

My work experience in around 1995 was spent at a local computer firm.

At one point a group of men in balaclavas showed up, the boss stopped playing Doom long enough to cover the security camera and hand over a bunch of crumpled banknotes, and I was handed this pile of SIMMs to put in a test rig to make sure they were OK to sell.

I also had to straighten the pins on used/stolen 486 CPUs, and pretty sure at one point was taken to break into a warehouse. There was certainly nobody else in the whole building, and we loaded the van with a bunch of cheap looking boxes before taking them back to HQ.

The boss was also banging a girl in my class, which in later years I learned makes him a paedo. Times sure were simpler in 1995.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 days ago

The cause of death was clear, PSU fan died, killed itself from heat.

PSU: "Release...me...from this mockery called life"