Yeah, that reminds me...I certainly don't miss the cost of long distance phone calls either. I never personally did it, but many of the local BBS owners had $400-$600/month phone bills in the late 80s/early 90s, just downloading software with those 14.4k modems.
Insane, eh?
StinkyPinky
Diamond Member
- Jul 6, 2002
- 6,985
- 1,283
- 126
Ah yes, memory management. The good old days
Me: "Hmm, I feel like playing ultima 7"
[goes to run it]
Dos: "Please disable extended memory manager before running"
Me: "FFFFFUUUUUUU
[disables ems in config.sys]
[run game]
Dos: "You require 24k more memory for this game to run."
Me: "FFFFFUUUUUU"
[spends hours editing autoexec and config.sys file to get it running]
Me: "Hmm, I feel like playing ultima 7"
[goes to run it]
Dos: "Please disable extended memory manager before running"
Me: "FFFFFUUUUUUU
[disables ems in config.sys]
[run game]
Dos: "You require 24k more memory for this game to run."
Me: "FFFFFUUUUUU"
[spends hours editing autoexec and config.sys file to get it running]
StinkyPinky
Diamond Member
- Jul 6, 2002
- 6,985
- 1,283
- 126
And yeah, the lack of jumpers is excellent.
Hell, as late as 2004 I was still having to switch around jumpers for bus freq.
Hell, as late as 2004 I was still having to switch around jumpers for bus freq.
Red Squirrel
No Lifer
Pretty much everything that has been mentioned already and a few more:
"Windows is now shutting down..."
After sitting for days. Good ol Win98, and the shutdown feature that never actually did shut down the computer.
Win98 in general I don't really miss. It is fun to play with it to get that Nostalgia feeling, but that lasts about 30 seconds. I really don't miss having to reinstall every 2 weeks because it was such an unstable system that crashed at random for no reason. BSODs were pretty much the norm. Now since 2k they are somewhat a thing of the past. If you do get one it's usually very bad, and usually has a somewhat decent reason, instead of it just being random. I remember the VXD error was a common one in win98.
I also don't miss dial up. Was a pain having to work on a computer that cannot be easily added to my network so I can transfer stuff from my server or what not. i still get dial-up computers occasionally, but it's rare now.
I remember IRQ conflicts, THOSE were nasty. I had one on my PC that took me like a month to figure out. It was a huge game of trial and error. I was also newer to computers then.
Remember when you actually had to use a boot disk to start a windows install? wow, I just remembered that now. That good ol win98 boot disk. I had made myself several copies of that, and had even customized it to my liking, like a custom logos.sys file so it shows a different picture when it booted. Oh, how fun this was. Come to think of it, I don't dig as deep into the system as I did then... I need to mess around with that stuff again, that's how I learned a lot about the internals of the OS.
"Windows is now shutting down..."
After sitting for days. Good ol Win98, and the shutdown feature that never actually did shut down the computer.
Win98 in general I don't really miss. It is fun to play with it to get that Nostalgia feeling, but that lasts about 30 seconds. I really don't miss having to reinstall every 2 weeks because it was such an unstable system that crashed at random for no reason. BSODs were pretty much the norm. Now since 2k they are somewhat a thing of the past. If you do get one it's usually very bad, and usually has a somewhat decent reason, instead of it just being random. I remember the VXD error was a common one in win98.
I also don't miss dial up. Was a pain having to work on a computer that cannot be easily added to my network so I can transfer stuff from my server or what not. i still get dial-up computers occasionally, but it's rare now.
I remember IRQ conflicts, THOSE were nasty. I had one on my PC that took me like a month to figure out. It was a huge game of trial and error. I was also newer to computers then.
Remember when you actually had to use a boot disk to start a windows install? wow, I just remembered that now. That good ol win98 boot disk. I had made myself several copies of that, and had even customized it to my liking, like a custom logos.sys file so it shows a different picture when it booted. Oh, how fun this was. Come to think of it, I don't dig as deep into the system as I did then... I need to mess around with that stuff again, that's how I learned a lot about the internals of the OS.
The sound of a modem dialing out.
Beige EVERYTHING.
Adjusting the geometry on a CRT.
Nearly every hit in a Google (more likely Yahoo or similar at the time) search being a "my first website!" or "my personal homepage!" Geocities or similar site.
Websites covered in animated GIFs, especially dozens stating "this site is under construction."
Popup ads; Internet Explorer 6 (especially prior to Windows Xp SP2).
Life before USB became used for nearly everything.
"Ultra-portable" laptops that weighed 7-10lbs or more.
Most of the first wireless input devices - keyboards, mice, etc.
Ball mice.
Scary messages before I was computer savvy saying things about "ILLEGAL OPERATIONS," "TERMINATION," "FATAL EXCEPTIONS," etc. Really... Fatal? That must mean my computer is going to die and will never work again!
The Microsoft Office clippy guy. What were they thinking?
Beige EVERYTHING.
Adjusting the geometry on a CRT.
Nearly every hit in a Google (more likely Yahoo or similar at the time) search being a "my first website!" or "my personal homepage!" Geocities or similar site.
Websites covered in animated GIFs, especially dozens stating "this site is under construction."
Popup ads; Internet Explorer 6 (especially prior to Windows Xp SP2).
Life before USB became used for nearly everything.
"Ultra-portable" laptops that weighed 7-10lbs or more.
Most of the first wireless input devices - keyboards, mice, etc.
Ball mice.
Scary messages before I was computer savvy saying things about "ILLEGAL OPERATIONS," "TERMINATION," "FATAL EXCEPTIONS," etc. Really... Fatal? That must mean my computer is going to die and will never work again!
The Microsoft Office clippy guy. What were they thinking?
Rubycon
Madame President
- Aug 10, 2005
- 17,768
- 485
- 126
Quantum Rushmore drives.
People complain about price of SSDs today hehe.
Beige cases and people smoking. How gross! Only thing grosser is when a child exclaims "Mommy there's a pop tart on the lawn!" Only later when Daddy finds the truth that's a spent sanitary napkin! D:
HVD SCSI tape drives. Heck tape drives in general. Arc serve backup software.
Those NiCd BIOS batteries that were soldered to the motherboard were a PIA. If you kept the system long enough and got CMOS CHECKSUM on power ON, cracked open the case and found the battery all crystalized like a sandcrab that did not make it out on high tide...
Fish bowl CRTs! Sure they may have looked crisp (in the middle!) but talk about a bow! Then with awesome Trinitron vertically flatness we got damper wires running across the screen that resembled a half assed erased etch-a-sketch.
People complain about price of SSDs today hehe.
Beige cases and people smoking. How gross! Only thing grosser is when a child exclaims "Mommy there's a pop tart on the lawn!" Only later when Daddy finds the truth that's a spent sanitary napkin! D:
HVD SCSI tape drives. Heck tape drives in general. Arc serve backup software.
Those NiCd BIOS batteries that were soldered to the motherboard were a PIA. If you kept the system long enough and got CMOS CHECKSUM on power ON, cracked open the case and found the battery all crystalized like a sandcrab that did not make it out on high tide...
Fish bowl CRTs! Sure they may have looked crisp (in the middle!) but talk about a bow! Then with awesome Trinitron vertically flatness we got damper wires running across the screen that resembled a half assed erased etch-a-sketch.
yottabit
Golden Member
- Jun 5, 2008
- 1,671
- 874
- 146
I just remembered another one... 5.25" hard drives haha
Lets not forget the big craze of those mini-cds. I remember when everyone was releasing things on those damn mini-cds becuase they thought it was cool.
Here's another one: FAT16 Compressed disks. I remember having to compress one of my 1.2 GB drives in Win 95 I think becuase I ran out of space. Performance must have been about cut in half ever since then haha.
On that note, upgrading people's harddrives and having to make multiple partitions because windows didn't support >2gb...
When the only burnable DVD was DVD-RAM and it came in those hideous cartridges. I think some early CD burners worked like that too.
All those windows "Plus" packs. Ugh.
Missing all kinds of .dll files in Win95 to run certain applications
CRT's that could only manage their advertised resolution at 60 hz. My EYES....
Probably worst of all, taking your important files to work or school on a floppy and upon arriving being greeted by those words "The disk in drive A: is not formatted. Would you like to format it now?"
Lets not forget the big craze of those mini-cds. I remember when everyone was releasing things on those damn mini-cds becuase they thought it was cool.
Here's another one: FAT16 Compressed disks. I remember having to compress one of my 1.2 GB drives in Win 95 I think becuase I ran out of space. Performance must have been about cut in half ever since then haha.
On that note, upgrading people's harddrives and having to make multiple partitions because windows didn't support >2gb...
When the only burnable DVD was DVD-RAM and it came in those hideous cartridges. I think some early CD burners worked like that too.
All those windows "Plus" packs. Ugh.
Missing all kinds of .dll files in Win95 to run certain applications
CRT's that could only manage their advertised resolution at 60 hz. My EYES....
Probably worst of all, taking your important files to work or school on a floppy and upon arriving being greeted by those words "The disk in drive A: is not formatted. Would you like to format it now?"
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Fayd
Diamond Member
CRT's.
beige.
cooperative multitasking.
dunno why people hate on the zip disks. i remember how elated i was when i was in my HTML class in high school, upon realizing i had a zip drive at home and at school, and thus could work on my projects without EVER having to use the horrors that were floppies. even the joy of moving to flash drives and leaving stuff on my own online FTP site can't compare to the move from floppies to zip disks.
beige.
cooperative multitasking.
dunno why people hate on the zip disks. i remember how elated i was when i was in my HTML class in high school, upon realizing i had a zip drive at home and at school, and thus could work on my projects without EVER having to use the horrors that were floppies. even the joy of moving to flash drives and leaving stuff on my own online FTP site can't compare to the move from floppies to zip disks.
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"The system cannot find the path specified"
"Abort Retry Fail?" (boy, did I ever hate that one)
That lame-ass Star Trek game.
Dot-matrix porn.
Key-punch cards.
Acoustic couplers.
'Lock-out' switches.
Swapping out a gazillion disks.
"Rasterizing." (Though it was a really good reason for slacking off.)
The old VRML (I still hold out hope for X3D - LOL)
There are actually some things I miss. Diamond used to have something called "In-Control Tools". You could set your screen resolution to 1024x768 (wow!) and establish a 'viewport' zoomed to 640×480. Simply moving your 'puck' you could quickly pan across a drawing.
The simple interface of a batch file to launch programs instead of typing the path (with the old DOS 'Color' you were slick, man).
Radio Shack/Tandy used to have a pretty neat 'Desktop' program for its time.
--
"Abort Retry Fail?" (boy, did I ever hate that one)
That lame-ass Star Trek game.
Dot-matrix porn.
Key-punch cards.
Acoustic couplers.
'Lock-out' switches.
Swapping out a gazillion disks.
"Rasterizing." (Though it was a really good reason for slacking off.)
The old VRML (I still hold out hope for X3D - LOL)
There are actually some things I miss. Diamond used to have something called "In-Control Tools". You could set your screen resolution to 1024x768 (wow!) and establish a 'viewport' zoomed to 640×480. Simply moving your 'puck' you could quickly pan across a drawing.
The simple interface of a batch file to launch programs instead of typing the path (with the old DOS 'Color' you were slick, man).
Radio Shack/Tandy used to have a pretty neat 'Desktop' program for its time.
--
Modelworks
Lifer
- Feb 22, 2007
- 16,240
- 7
- 76
Jumpers and dip switches. I remember all the complaints when PNP was created. People complained they could no longer set resources and how limiting it was, they didn't want some chip deciding on what IRQ was used.
DRAM chips that had to be installed in pairs or it wouldn't boot.
cleaning out the mouse ball and trying to get the gunk off the rollers.
DRAM chips that had to be installed in pairs or it wouldn't boot.
cleaning out the mouse ball and trying to get the gunk off the rollers.
Red Squirrel
No Lifer
Wow I remember I had this program, I forget the name, it was not 3DS max, but something similar. I would make all these cool 3D worlds then install the VRML plugin in my browser to mess around in the world I had just created. I wanted to go a step further and add more functionality and maybe even turn it into a game, but that was beyond my knowledge, and tbh, still is, have to be coding directX or openGL or something for that stuff then you are making all the x/y/z coords manually in code.
Rubycon
Madame President
- Aug 10, 2005
- 17,768
- 485
- 126
WIRL and Blaxxun did this. I remember running this on a dual Xeon Dell workstation with 256MB, NT4.0 with an Elsa Gloria workstation card. It flew with OpenGL.
I did save the spare video card I had from that machine (no SLI with AGP!). I should post a pic of the card - it's HUGE! Perhaps next to a 5970 for comparison.
Texun
Platinum Member
- Oct 21, 2001
- 2,058
- 1
- 81
I got a headache reading and remembering all of these. Resolving IRQ conflicts and configuring config.sys and autoexec.bat files were a constant pain. I hated the old technology but must also admit that it sharpened my computer skills.
I once installed W95 using floppies. What a pain that was. I think it was 24 floppies and after the 24th it would ask you to go back and load #4 and #6 again for additional drivers. I guess I should be glad it didn't ask for a 25th disk.
I once installed W95 using floppies. What a pain that was. I think it was 24 floppies and after the 24th it would ask you to go back and load #4 and #6 again for additional drivers. I guess I should be glad it didn't ask for a 25th disk.
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Funny thread. sadly these are the PCs people still bring in to be fixed.
10GB HDDs, win98, 64mb RAM.... and wondering why Crysis wont run on it.
sadly these are the PCs people still bring in to be fixed.10GB HDDs, win98, 64mb RAM.... and wondering why Crysis wont run on it.
VirtualLarry
No Lifer
- Aug 25, 2001
- 56,587
- 10,225
- 126
Funny thread.
10GB HDDs, win98, 64mb RAM.... and wondering why Crysis wont run on it.
Lol. If anyone brings me a PC with something older than Windows XP on it, I offer to sell them a new PC, not fix their old one. Just not worth looking at it.
The things that I don't miss:
Cases with razor-sharp edges, some with dried blood on the bottom from the factory. (Happened once)
Having to wire up the 120V AC power switch on the front of AT cases, and wondering whether or not the switch connects along, or across, the terminals. Blew a few breakers in my day testing that out.
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Rubycon
Madame President
- Aug 10, 2005
- 17,768
- 485
- 126
Haha I did that - once!
Switch nearly exploded and raised a big blister on my finger!
After that I ALWAYS rung them out with a DMM.
Sore ears from being on a 5 hour telephone line wait for tech support from windows after paying 2k for a new wonderful fast computer that doesn't work.
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