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Data Graham posted:I sat up nights with my blanket over my head and a flashlight and a catalog lusting over a CompuAdd 386/33 I remember the first time I ever saw a one gigabyte hard drive in a catalog, and wondered if I would ever need that much space. (Or be able to afford such a thing.) Powered Descent has a new favorite as of 16:18 on Feb 4, 2023 |
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Feb 4, 2023 15:50
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barbecue at the folks posted:After all these years I'm still somehow just floored by the idea that you can record what amounts to the sounds your modem made when you picked up the headset as a kid, play that back at the computer even if it was on a vinyl album, and get a whole game out of it. I grew up on PCs and the whole cassette thing has always seemed to me like some form arcane magic. Learning that there were pirate radio stations that would broadcast signals that you could tape and run as programs on your home computer was a pretty incredible concept.
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Feb 4, 2023 16:40
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Powered Descent posted:I remember the first time I ever saw a one gigabyte hard drive in a catalog, and wondered if I would ever need that much space. (Or be able to afford such a thing.) We ran out of space on our 250mb gateway 2000 computer and called gateway (lol) to order a 1gb drive, the largest one they offered. The sales guy literally said “you’ll never fill this up, it’s so big” (also lol) I recall replacing it with a 4gb from Best Buy before we finally retired the computer
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Feb 4, 2023 16:56
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If I recall, shortly after 1gb-class hard drives debuted, so did mp3s
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Feb 4, 2023 18:13
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Data Graham posted:I sat up nights with my blanket over my head and a flashlight and a catalog lusting over a CompuAdd 386/33 If I miss anything from that era, it's all the bizarre computer brands. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0l_QLuThOE DTK DATA
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Feb 5, 2023 03:05
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Powered Descent posted:I remember the first time I ever saw a one gigabyte hard drive in a catalog, and wondered if I would ever need that much space. (Or be able to afford such a thing.) The same the day we realized we could actually install 1 gb of ram in my friends computer, back in 2001 or so. When I built my first computer from all new parts, I installed that 1 gb and thought I had reached a life goal. I upgraded to 3 gb two months later. My current rig has 24 gb.
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Feb 5, 2023 03:44
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I have 4x 1TB SSDs out of inertia and my dad gave me another one and I literally can't be bothered to install it.
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Feb 5, 2023 04:05
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It’s weird that we’ve gone from an explosion of data with nowhere to store it to an explosion in storage size and not enough data to fill it, essentially
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Feb 5, 2023 04:59
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rndmnmbr posted:The same the day we realized we could actually install 1 gb of ram in my friends computer, back in 2001 or so. When I built my first computer from all new parts, I installed that 1 gb and thought I had reached a life goal. I remember being pleased when I bumped the RAM in my Pentium 4 desktop to 768mb. 
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Feb 5, 2023 06:50
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If we're doing grey-beard dick-waggling, I couldn't play the Doom shareware because my machine only had 2 MB of RAM. 768 MB of storage of ANY kind would have been luxury unmatched.
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Feb 5, 2023 07:00
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I have no recollection of how much memory our 8088, 286, or my Pentium II had. I know I increased the memory on that last one, but do not recall to what.
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Feb 5, 2023 07:07
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Feb 5, 2023 07:23
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Wizard of the Deep posted:If we're doing grey-beard dick-waggling, I couldn't play the Doom shareware because my machine only had 2 MB of RAM. when we got our Pentium 120 in 1996 a friend of mine said "16MB RAM?!!? You could load DOOM into high memory!!"
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Feb 5, 2023 07:39
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Remembering the pain back in the Windows 3.1 days of not having enough hard disk space to install and play various games like Doom 2 and Sam and Max without careful uninstallation of other programs. Always felt like we just had a fresh box install of Windows as there was nothing on it as we had so little space. We must of struggled to get around 5-10mb of space? It was a joy the day my dad added a second hard drive, which may have been less than 50mb.
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Feb 5, 2023 08:05
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my first upgrade was taking my P166 (with mmx!) from 16 to 32mb of ram, and while I was in there I checked the motherboard manual out and flipped the frequency jumpers around and made it run at 200mhz was a really noticeable jump in power
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Feb 5, 2023 08:16
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I actually had one of these bad boys for a while:  Back when I worked at a computer repair place, a local lawyer had it and it stopped working. We couldn’t resurrect it in a reasonable time frame, so he said we could have it and got a new, less absurd tablet-y computer (of course, it was 2004 so they were still very absurd). Boss let me have it, and I was able to get the laptop part working again, but never the digital notepad (though I too tracked down a AAAA battery, from Radio Shack). While the laptop part died again within a year, it was really pretty fascinating to use in the meantime - it had a touch screen and was very thin and light. I honestly still prefer the trade off of the hinge mechanism to the stupid wrap-and-fold convertibles now. I used it a lot for notes in class. I had even managed to get XP Tablet PC Edition installed and working on it, for some very questionable handwriting recognition. I can’t remember if I recycled it or if it’s still in the bottom of my Old Computer Stuff box - I always had a soft spot for it.
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Feb 5, 2023 08:18
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Blue Moonlight posted:I actually had one of these bad boys for a while: I instantly lusted for that thing when I saw it in the video. A similar story where I ended up with an OQO. Except it was from a deployed Korean soldier complete with artillery targeting software. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tYEbv26AFc
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Feb 5, 2023 08:36
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Pittsburgh Fentanyl Cloud posted:If I miss anything from that era, it's all the bizarre computer brands. Our last family PC was a ‘Wombat’ brand machine. It ran about as well as you’d expect from that name. It was second hand when we got it in 2000 (dad didn’t believe in buying new computers) and it died in 2006 from being filled entirely with viruses (dad didn’t believe in AV software). It sometimes had to be kicked just to keep going. It’s why my first major purchase once I started earning money was a G5 iMac, because the experience of using that busted old machine was so awful.
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Feb 5, 2023 09:13
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That attitude! What is it though, some sort of video editing equipment?
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Feb 5, 2023 09:34
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USSR_Computer_Radditude.PNG
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Feb 5, 2023 09:51
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Humphreys posted:A similar story where I ended up with an OQO. Except it was from a deployed Korean soldier complete with artillery targeting software. Wait, what?
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Feb 5, 2023 10:01
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Don't shame their kink.
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Feb 5, 2023 11:17
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Noticed how one of the barcode scanners at work was connected: If it works it works!
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Feb 5, 2023 12:27
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There was a dude driving around town in a BMW or something high-end with a license plate that said 8 MB RAM. He was evidently so proud of that status symbol for like ... a week
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Feb 5, 2023 13:48
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I paid to upgrade my first computer, a Macintosh LC, from the stock 2mb to 4mb of ram for $100 a megabyte. At that price, the ram in my current iMac would cost $3.2 million.
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Feb 5, 2023 14:25
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I wish my family had gotten a PC like normal people, I had to suffer with a Macintosh LC and then a Performa 630 through most of the 90s while all my cooler friends were playing Doom, Shadow Warrior and Duke Nukem 3D deathmatches on their 486 dx2s and early Pentiums At least I had Marathon and pretty good versions of all the Lucasarts adventures and Maxis SimWhatever games. And I eventually were allowed to buy a Playstation for the Performas TV tuner 
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Feb 5, 2023 14:49
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r u ready to WALK posted:a Performa 630  The PowerPC line made those things dated the moment they came out.
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Feb 5, 2023 18:07
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Humphreys posted:Mods change my name to CompuDad
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Feb 5, 2023 19:27
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I will straight up say I would have owned only pure department store junk computers and never gamed like I did if it hadn't been for my one friend with all the computer stuff. I don't know what his source of parts was, but if I ever needed anything, he had it and would sell it to me cheap if he didn't just give it to me. And some of the stuff he came up with was not cheap.
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Feb 5, 2023 22:29
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Flash Gordon Ramsay posted:I paid to upgrade my first computer, a Macintosh LC, from the stock 2mb to 4mb of ram for $100 a megabyte. My VIC-20 8KB RAM expansion cost $300. (edit: to be fair, this was so long ago I could easily be making that up, but it was a solid 3-figures.)
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Feb 5, 2023 22:43
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r u ready to WALK posted:Shadow Warrior The "go speed racer" sound effect when you control the RC car is forever etched in my mind
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Feb 5, 2023 23:03
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 Picked up this 12" PowerBook G4 yesterday and installed Sorbet Leopard on it. All seems fine with it, it has the fastest CPU for the 12" range (1.5GHz) as well as the RAM being maxed out on it (1.25GB). If I ever fill confident enough I'll open it up and replace the spinning rust with a solid state replacement and put fresh thermal paste on the CPU. However the instructions for opening up the 12" are a nightmare.
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Feb 6, 2023 00:11
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The 12” PowerBooks are so tiny and awesome
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Feb 6, 2023 00:23
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You Am I posted:
I never actually owned one but I've always found something very aesthetically pleasing about that generation of Mac laptops.
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Feb 6, 2023 00:28
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I rocked the other extreme of that generation, the 17" aluminum G4.  Look at the ports on that thing for crying out loud! Ethernet and modem! DVI and S-video!! Firewire 400 and 800!!! I felt like a real badass toting that thing around for a few years in the '00s. I think I might still have it around somewhere, at this point it almost certainly needs a new battery (and an SSD upgrade).
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Feb 6, 2023 01:46
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I've got a Titanium Powerbook G4 sitting next to me on the desk. It's already had its hinges replaced once, and the current ones creak ominously when I open it, but luckily I've got at least another set of hinges around here somewhere. It's supposed to be one of the most powerful machines to officially support OS 9, and drat if the display doesn't look great, but the case is such a weak point. I'm thinking of frankensteining a spare motherboard and display together into some sort of desktop machine, provided I can figure out how to manage cooling...
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Feb 6, 2023 01:53
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Pham Nuwen posted:I've got a Titanium Powerbook G4 sitting next to me on the desk. It's already had its hinges replaced once, and the current ones creak ominously when I open it, but luckily I've got at least another set of hinges around here somewhere. The TI PowerBook g4 rules. I’m not quite sure if it’s the absolute fastest machine to run OS9, but it is the highest resolution laptop to run OS9. OS9 looks fantastic on the display, there is mountains of display real estate on it
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Feb 6, 2023 02:05
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Powered Descent posted:I never actually owned one but I've always found something very aesthetically pleasing about that generation of Mac laptops. The boxy look is nice and the newer MacBooks are kind of going back to it, which I appreciate.
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Feb 6, 2023 02:08
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They've finally stopped chasing the dragon of "thinness" which had resulted in no end of annoying design compromises, like those fakeout beveled edges that cut into battery capacity and ensured you couldn't fit any full-size ports on there, not to mention those godawful butterfly keyboards that nobody wanted and nearly singlehandedly ruined the company's reputation for hardware design quality. You've left your dent in the universe Jony Ive, now go rest forever, far away from us
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Feb 6, 2023 02:14
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They even have a full size HDMI port on them again!!
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Feb 6, 2023 02:20
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