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Buttcoin purse posted:I think we only played GORILLAS.BAS and NIBBLES.BAS which came with MS-DOS, I seem to remember hacking nibbles a bit but I don't remember what I did, maybe changed the speed or snake length. We always had floppy disks with us from trading games but I guess we never put them in the machines at school for some reason The halcyon days of SCSI, IRQs, ISA cards and a billion proprietary standards. What a nightmare
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Jul 24, 2019 12:38
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I’m still running Win7 at home because I don’t want to have to figure out how to get my SCSI card (and the late-‘90s large-format scanner that uses it, which I got for $70 on eBay vs. the $2500 it’d cost to replace) running on something more recent. I already had to screw around with repackaging the Vista-era SCSI drivers to get as far as I am now and god knows if that even works on 8 or 10. (Note: this post is not a tech support request, I’m just bitching.)
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Jul 24, 2019 15:41
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Lazlo Nibble posted:I’m still running Win7 at home because I don’t want to have to figure out how to get my SCSI card (and the late-‘90s large-format scanner that uses it, which I got for $70 on eBay vs. the $2500 it’d cost to replace) running on something more recent. I already had to screw around with repackaging the Vista-era SCSI drivers to get as far as I am now and god knows if that even works on 8 or 10. This might be of use: http://www.savagetaylor.com/2018/02/11/scsi-on-windows-10-adaptec-aha-2940-adaptec-29xx-ultra-or-aic-7870-adaptec-78xx/ Apparently some Adaptec SCSI cards do work in Windows 10 using the drivers located there.
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Jul 24, 2019 15:52
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big crush on Chad OMG posted:The halcyon days of SCSI, IRQs, ISA cards and a billion proprietary standards. What a nightmare All of those "it's so hard to flip the USB cable correctly"-memes should just try flipping thru the hell of finding the right of 3 types of SCSI cables, the delightful endeavor to try and convince cards to use different IRQ/DMA/port settings, putting things in COM ports (9/25 pin? or the weird Apple thing?) and remember that you cannot use COM1/COM3 or COM2/COM4 simultaneously because they share IRQs, or the fun of distinguishing between token ring and thick/thin/TP ethernet. At least we still have dongle hell, so we can think back to the buckets of serial/PS2/USB for mice and DIN/PS2/USB for keyboards.
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Jul 24, 2019 17:52
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Lazlo Nibble posted:I’m still running Win7 at home because I don’t want to have to figure out how to get my SCSI card (and the late-‘90s large-format scanner that uses it, which I got for $70 on eBay vs. the $2500 it’d cost to replace) running on something more recent. I already had to screw around with repackaging the Vista-era SCSI drivers to get as far as I am now and god knows if that even works on 8 or 10. There's also this https://www.hamrick.com/ those are universal scanner drivers, not SCSI drivers, but it might still be helpful.
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Jul 24, 2019 19:46
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Speaking of scanner drivers, they are typically standardized to deal with this exact issue. Most scanners use a TWAIN driver which is an acronym for Technology Without An Interesting Name.
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Jul 25, 2019 05:16
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RVWinkle posted:Speaking of scanner drivers, they are typically standardized to deal with this exact issue. Most scanners use a TWAIN driver which is an acronym for Technology Without An Interesting Name. It’s like the interesting number paradox.
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Jul 25, 2019 05:22
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Platystemon posted:It’s like the interesting number paradox. Some people just take being a dork way too far.
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Jul 25, 2019 05:59
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Buttcoin purse posted:I've heard that's pretty destructive? Does it only kill the PSU or also internal components? Oh it killed motherboards at least from what I heard. School was about to do upgrades so I don't feel too bad about it.
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Jul 25, 2019 12:34
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Lazlo Nibble posted:I’m still running Win7 at home because I don’t want to have to figure out how to get my SCSI card (and the late-‘90s large-format scanner that uses it, which I got for $70 on eBay vs. the $2500 it’d cost to replace) running on something more recent. I already had to screw around with repackaging the Vista-era SCSI drivers to get as far as I am now and god knows if that even works on 8 or 10. The Adaptec 2940 and its cousins all work fine in Win 10/8.1 using the same 64 bit Vista drivers that work in Win 7. I’m in the same boat using an old SCSI scanner that would be cost-prohibitive to replace.
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Jul 25, 2019 14:47
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Well, I may have disclaimed that post being a tech support request, but I’m still grateful for the tech support.  VueScan is absolutely the best thing ever, I’ve used it with multiple scanners over the years and anyone who’s ever been frustrated by issues with the drivers or pack-in software that came with their scanner needs to try it out immediately.
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Jul 25, 2019 16:15
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Love that every gigantic scanner making company with an in-house driver and software team is put to shame by Some Guy
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Jul 25, 2019 16:48
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I do not miss the days of SCSI voodoo. Or the thick rear end cables.
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Jul 25, 2019 17:01
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Flash Gordon Ramsay posted:I do not miss the days of SCSI voodoo. Or the thick rear end cables. USB and SATA has made fuckin with computers an unrecognizable activity compared to 30 years ago
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Jul 25, 2019 18:27
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Mak0rz posted:USB and SATA has made fuckin with computers an unrecognizable activity compared to 30 years ago The biggest change in loving with computers came about when they introduced heat sinks that you didn't need to attach by using a flat bladed screwdriver to push down a catch. "You mean I don't have to be constantly afraid I'm going to slip and jam this thing through the motherboard?"
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Jul 25, 2019 19:21
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You put a piece of electrical tape over the end of the screwdriver.
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Jul 25, 2019 19:56
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Like most things involving flat screwdrivers, they actually work pretty well if you have some properly fitting ones instead of the cheap wedge shaped stuff. It's still good that those clips are gone because normal people don't own large sets of good quality flat screwdrivers, but they didn't have to suck.
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Jul 25, 2019 20:15
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A FUCKIN CANARY!! posted:Like most things involving flat screwdrivers, they actually work pretty well if you have some properly fitting ones instead of the cheap wedge shaped stuff. It's still good that those clips are gone because normal people don't own large sets of good quality flat screwdrivers, but they didn't have to suck. Oh I'm sure there were better ways than how I did it at the time, I was a dumb teenager and the internet wasn't what it is now for finding advice on stuff like that. At least I didn't assemble my pc on a nylon carpet like a friend of mine did, that was an expensive lesson for him.
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Jul 25, 2019 20:45
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Sweevo posted:You put a piece of electrical tape over the end of the screwdriver.
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Jul 25, 2019 20:53
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Casimir Radon posted:I'll bet Mr. Fancypants here doesn't even put computers together on his bed. Grounding? I can't just send my computer to it's room
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Jul 25, 2019 21:01
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Data Graham posted:in-house driver and software team Prolly not the case tbh They all just have their own shittier part-time Some Guys
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Jul 25, 2019 21:23
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Pretty cool: emulation of retro systems in hardware using $200 FPGAs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5yPbzD-W-I
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Jul 25, 2019 21:29
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When I was in high school, I took some elective class that was supposed to be about business presentations, but really it was just making precursors to flash animations in Macromedia Director. It was a giant waste of time, but a kid in the class cataclysmically hosed up one of the machines. In a back room there was an "Editing computer", which was some sort of early PC-based video editing system. It ran Windows 3.1, and had about 8 capture cards hooked into various decks and TVs. If you were what the teachers considered an advanced student maybe you got to go mess about with it. Somehow this disgruntled kid managed to swap the contents of C:\DOS and C:\WINDOWS, deleted a few other critical files, then unplugged all the cables from the capture cards. Keep in mind none of this spaghetti mess of cables was labeled, and nobody knew where the documentation for this antique beast of a machine was. At one point one of the teachers asked if I could try to fix it. I managed to get it to boot into DOS and poked around, figured out what he did, then looked at the hopeless mess of cables. I told her there was nothing I could do. Even as a dumb high schooler there wasn't any way I was getting involved in that poo poo for anything other than money. I also got chewed out by the principal for "Putting a virus" on the PC I used in the class. See, they did morning and afternoon classes, and I found out the morning kid that used my machine was finding my projects and ripping them off for his own. I was involved in a months-long arms race where I'd hide my poo poo somewhere on the network, he'd find them, etc. Finally I got fed up and made a Macromedia Director movie that put up "STOP STEALING MY poo poo" for a few seconds then called the Windows restart command. Which for some reason was a function you could just call in Actionscript. I saved it as an exe and stuck that fucker in the startup folder. Apparently they had the school network admin in there to look at it, and he couldn't figure out what was going on. Which says something about the quality of high school IT in the late 90s. Enos Shenk has a new favorite as of 03:26 on Jul 26, 2019 |
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Jul 26, 2019 03:23
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Enos Shenk posted:Which says something about the quality of high school IT in the late 90s. I worked 'open campus' my senior year for a few credits fixing the schools computers and generally loving around, but me and the other guy that did it figure out that all mail that stayed inside the router was smtp, unencrypted. So many teacher affairs. Also a teacher asked us to look up which student was logged into this computer looking up porn, a few nslookups and such later it was the assitant super-intendent. The IT director response to us 'you never saw this' he resigned a few weeks later for 'personal reasons'. All of the computer hostnames for teachers were something like lname.fname.schoolname.whatever. Whoops.
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Jul 26, 2019 03:45
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Plinkey posted:I worked 'open campus' my senior year for a few credits fixing the schools computers and generally loving around, but me and the other guy that did it figure out that all mail that stayed inside the router was smtp, unencrypted. So many teacher affairs. Who resigned, the it director or the porno superintendent
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Jul 26, 2019 03:54
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stuffed crust punk posted:Who resigned, the it director or the porno superintendent Assistant super
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Jul 26, 2019 03:55
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stuffed crust punk posted:porno superintendent Pro username
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Jul 26, 2019 04:11
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A mate for fun signed me up for a bunch of porno sites using my school email account as a joke. Ended up with a LOT of emails the first day and immediately called into the IT departments office to explain myself. I had no clue what had gone down at this stage. I still remember walking around with the unsubscribe URL for one site that the Admin forced me to writedown and manually unsub myself. It was 'pussypalace' and I was walking around with the URL written on my forearm written in sharpie for the rest of the day. At a private school run by a bunch of bible basher teachers and bum bashing priests.
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Jul 26, 2019 08:59
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Reddit has a thread about “what did you see as a porn store worker” that has a few good ones.
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Jul 26, 2019 09:04
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I'm Computer Janitor adjacent and one of the teachers called me in one day about 6 years ago. This kid had a brand new Samsung Galaxy and connected to the network to find some interesting poo poo. Guess the Photos Gallery back then could just scrub the network for shared/unsecured folders and he happened to find someone' pre-tinder share, complete with photos of what some guy was packing. About half an hour later I get the computer name/room number (thank you for the person that insisted on having COMPUTER - ROOM NUMBER on all the work computers). The person got a polite letter asking them to disable the Share Files/Folders setting on their computer. jumkshotpickfilename.jpg was included as a p.s.
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Jul 26, 2019 16:45
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LGR put up a video of the Sierra PC JR he got from that PC warehouse, turns out it used to belong to Ken Williams! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-VBITW94zI
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Jul 26, 2019 20:38
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Veotax posted:LGR put up a video of the Sierra PC JR he got from that PC warehouse, turns out it used to belong to Ken Williams! I don't care about Sierra games at all and even I was like, "You copy everything off of that disk."
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Jul 26, 2019 21:46
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Enos Shenk posted:I also got chewed out by the principal for "Putting a virus" on the PC I used in the class. See, they did morning and afternoon classes, and I found out the morning kid that used my machine was finding my projects and ripping them off for his own. I was involved in a months-long arms race where I'd hide my poo poo somewhere on the network, he'd find them, etc. Finally I got fed up and made a Macromedia Director movie that put up "STOP STEALING MY poo poo" for a few seconds then called the Windows restart command. Which for some reason was a function you could just call in Actionscript. I saved it as an exe and stuck that fucker in the startup folder. Apparently they had the school network admin in there to look at it, and he couldn't figure out what was going on. Which says something about the quality of high school IT in the late 90s. I told the jock who sat next to me in my drafting class what "net send" was and what the various command line switches did. He squinted hard at them, and I said "yeah, the part in front of the slash of your username, that's what the domain part means". He squinted more. He pecked out a few keystrokes, and hit enter. I remember the delay between the enter and the result being about 2 seconds but feeling like 60. The result was that he sent "SUCK MY BALLS" to every. single. computer on the domain. Even better is it came from his username, so it was something like: Message from a.luser: SUCK MY BALLS [OK] [Cancel] I didn't see him in that class after that. edit: this was a large domain, about 6 highschools and 30 elementary / middleschools, in the early 2000s. insta has a new favorite as of 23:01 on Jul 29, 2019 |
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Jul 29, 2019 22:58
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I nearly got in trouble for Netsend shenanigans in high school. I've probably talked about it before in this thread. Any sort of command prompt was locked out for students so you had to make a shortcut to so it. I did a Netsend to the domain that said something like "Bwaahahahaha!". I did this from a classroom that few people used after school. Really limiting the number of suspects, to 4. I got called in the next morning and questioned about. I lied, they asked if I thought any of the others did it, I said I didn't think so. I probably would have fessed up if I thought someone else was going to take the fall for it. I think they knew I did it but let me off the hook since it wasn't a threat or something crude.
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Jul 29, 2019 23:08
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I don't remember the exact command I used (smbclient?) but I figured out some way to issue 'net send' messages from a Linux box and set the sender's username to whatever I wanted. I didn't use it much and I didn't get in trouble for it... I was on pretty good terms with the IT staff, which is how I had a Linux box (a whole cluster actually) on the school network in the first place, and I didn't want to screw that up.
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Jul 29, 2019 23:37
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No net send shenanigans for me as our district's computer admin was an Apple guy. He apparently had nothing better to do than view web access logs and such as my buddy and I both had our personal web sites manually blocked on the service the school used for internet access shortly after we had showed them to friends. Mine was definitely not appropriate for school, and my buddy's had a page about "how not to run a school network" which kinda tore apart how the dude ran the thing (but was totally school/work safe/etc). The funny thing is that after seeing them, he approached us about building a web site for the school (this was either 96 or 97 and the school didn't have one). We weren't interested, especially after they wanted us to do it for free outside of school hours.
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Jul 30, 2019 02:25
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Back in primary school in the mid-90s, our library had two computers connected using LANtastic over a null modem. One was used by the teachers to check out books and one cold be used by students to look up books. Everybody had one or two teacher passwords for the systems (I think one of the passwords were Q and another nimda, so top notch security here). They allowed checking out books on our own or exiting Windows 3.1 to DOS on the student machine. I found out how to use net send over the LANtastic network, so a friend and I sent a message pretending to be an error message to the other computer. Something completely innocent “computer has performed an illegal action, restart and give all students the day off” or something. The librarian/teacher was of course not super computer literate and freaked out. Since the computers were, like, 3 meters apart and we broke down laughing, they somehow caught the guilty and we were expelled from the library for a month.
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Jul 30, 2019 04:55
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The only net send incident I can recall was at a huge LAN party in a big hotel conference room, circa 2000. Maybe a hundred people total. Some genius decided to do a global net send (I think he had another LAN event coming up that he wanted to promote), apparently figuring it'd leave a dialog waiting on everyone's desktop. Nope! Everyone at the party came crashing back to the desktop out of whatever game they'd been playing, so that they could view this message. The swearing, oh god, the swearing.
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Jul 30, 2019 05:27
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This was in 1996 or so but there was a group email discussion among some contractors at Microsoft and they were making fun of one guy. So someone replied about “Ben’s hairy rear end” and CC’d “Ben’s Dad” Well “dad” resolved to the user group “DAD” which was Desktop Applications Division. It went to every inbox in the entire division of thousands of people. Cue the flood of reply alls I don’t think that kind of happens anymore but it was a part of working in a big company back then
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Jul 30, 2019 06:02
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Speaking of null modems. 10 years ago, I worked in a computer store and the owner just shouts "Gary why the gently caress did you order 20 null modem cables?"Keith Atherton posted:I don’t think that kind of happens anymore but it was a part of working in a big company back then "Please remove me from this list" definitely still happens.
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Jul 30, 2019 07:47
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