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WebDog posted:I wonder, what's the largest amount of 3.5 floppy disk for a game/program anyone's come across? Monkey Island 2 on the Amiga came on 11 disks, and yes you could play it without a HD with disk swapping. (to be fair though, it was possible to install it on a HD, which wasn't a given thing people with an Amiga always had) It was like you imagine, but you just somehow put up with it. E: The worst with such games wasn't even always the disk swapping itself, although it was annoying. (People creating the games usually had the sense to spread content in a way that you'd have to swap as little as possible if you followed the gameflow somewhat like they anticipated) The worst thing was not finding one of the disks and staring at that "Please insert disk _" knowing you could neither get out of there nor somehow save the game. (Also savedisks crapping out etc.) Police Automaton has a new favorite as of 01:41 on Jun 22, 2016 |
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Jun 22, 2016 01:37
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Don't know about floppy games. The most CDs I've personally seen used was Phantasmagoria with 7. Though I've heard the Windows X-Files game was on 8. I was really surprised when I never had to swap to the second disk playing Jedi Outcast.Mak0rz posted:Was it worth plugging the mouse into a different port?
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Jun 22, 2016 01:48
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Humphreys posted:Has Solid Ink become a thing for anyone here? I heard they would be great for lowering the costs of printing. However I remember reading an anecdote about some idiot putting wax crayons in them. We got a new plotter installed at work today. Instead of toner it uses these little marble-sized balls of colored wax. At least the technician said it was wax, I'm not sure exactly what they're made of but I had a lot of fun using one as a crayon.
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Jun 22, 2016 02:40
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Monday_ posted:We got a new plotter installed at work today. Instead of toner it uses these little marble-sized balls of colored wax. At least the technician said it was wax, I'm not sure exactly what they're made of but I had a lot of fun using one as a crayon. Is that an Océ plotter? We had someone at work get chewed out by IT for printing fishing maps on that thing. A few personal things on a Xerox is OK but personal use of anything large format was a big problem.
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Jun 22, 2016 03:02
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Three-Phase posted:Is that an Océ plotter? Yeah, a Colorwave 650.
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Jun 22, 2016 03:03
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WebDog posted:I wonder, what's the largest amount of 3.5 floppy disk for a game/program anyone's come across? I had OS/2 Warp 3.0 with WinOS/2. It was around 20 for OS/2, 10 for screen, printer and multimedia drivers, and 15 for WinOS/2. It even used a non-standard formatting scheme to get more out of the disks (and copy protection). I could not install from CD because my CD drive was the wrong model to be supported during installation (it was when standards for CD was still emerging and booting from CD still future technology). I also installed Windows 95 using floppies, but that was less. Speaking of, you could format floppies to non-standard sizes. The Amiga and PC used different schemes with different layout. An 1.44 mb floppy was really 2 mb and could typically be formatted close to that capacity. 720 floppies was 1 mb. OS/2 used roughly 1.8 mb/floppy. Amiga roughly 800/1.6. I got close to 1.9 during my experiments. Floppy sizes are hugely misleading btw; an 1.44 mb floppy is 1440 kb = 1440 * 1024 bytes != 1.44 * 1024 * 1024 bytes. A 360 kb floppy is really 354 * 1024 bytes. You could also use crt monitors at non-standard resolutions. I had a huge ancient 21" sync-on-green monitor connected to a Matrox card which could do sync-on-green running at 1300*1100 under Linux to get a few overs an pixels out of it.
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Jun 22, 2016 05:02
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klafbang posted:I had a huge ancient 21" sync-on-green monitor connected to a Matrox card which could do sync-on-green running at 1300*1100 under Linux to get a few overs an pixels out of it.   Done with a VGA to composite converter.
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Jun 22, 2016 05:16
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WebDog posted:I wonder, what's the largest amount of 3.5 floppy disk for a game/program anyone's come across? I was doing tech support back in the mid-90s and vaguely recall installing Office on PCs running Windows 3.11 or similar. It was a stack of floppies as long as my forearm, I think and I did it often enough that I memorised the installation key.
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Jun 22, 2016 06:30
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sick.
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Jun 22, 2016 06:40
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WebDog posted:
that aesthetic, god drat
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Jun 22, 2016 07:03
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I sort of skipped the high-floppy-use days, going from a TRS-80 using a random tape recorder, to a PC when CDs were well into being all the rage. Don't forget Wing Commander 4 had something like 7 CDs. And no 'install to HD', IIRC. As an aside, I came to really hate multiple-CD games when I worked in an internet cafe/LAN gaming place because if a computer got hosed up and needed to be refreshed I'd have to sit there for hours feeding CDs into it. The absolute worst were games where they'd have an install CD and data/movie CDs, so you'd go CD1, CD2, CD3, then CD1 again to finalise the installation. 
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Jun 22, 2016 07:43
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WebDog posted:
Whoa. I worked in the Office team in the early-mid 90's and boxes of floppies were there in the mail room alongside the pens and reams of paper. Just another office supply that would be restocked each week. I remember going to meetings with my presentations or mockups on a 3.5" floppy.
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Jun 22, 2016 09:06
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I work at SolidWorks (we make CAD software) and our supply closets still have floppies.
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Jun 22, 2016 11:07
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Did somebody mention floppy disks? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Y1ya-yF35g
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Jun 22, 2016 11:11
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GutBomb posted:I work at SolidWorks (we make CAD software) and our supply closets still have floppies. I've been meaning to learn how to use Solidworks. I'm pretty well versed in 3D AutoCAD and dabbled in ProEngineer. I've seen people with these dual-xenon systems doing mechanical FEA on Solidworks but I don't know if he solver is optimized for multiple threads. I designed this mechanical cradle for equipment and one of the guys did FEA on it. It had to support about 150 pounds and the way it was designed it could easily handle 600 pounds as a safety margin.
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Jun 22, 2016 11:21
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Three-Phase posted:I've been meaning to learn how to use Solidworks. I'm pretty well versed in 3D AutoCAD and dabbled in ProEngineer. I've seen people with these dual-xenon systems doing mechanical FEA on Solidworks but I don't know if he solver is optimized for multiple threads. Good, so your average electrical engineer could safely sit on it.
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Jun 22, 2016 11:46
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I know people have brought this up in the thread a while ago but I was just thinking about old-style filesharing and how hilarious it was that every single metal cover was by Nine Inch Nails, every single parody song was Weird Al (even if it was vulgar), and every single prank phone call was The Jerky Boys even if it was none of their characters. People were so lazy with their naming. Though I do kind of miss the days when images were actually named lars_tongue_kissing_kirk_hammett.jpg where now everything is N9xJEn1.jpg and you have to hope tineye or reverse google images can find what it is. WebDog posted:I wonder, what's the largest amount of 3.5 floppy disk for a game/program anyone's come across? In terms of video games for the PC, this was the craziest one I remember:  I had it because my 1X CD ROM drive could not keep up with the game and the nice computer store man let me exchange it. What a waste of time. That game was so bad. Though I have to say I am impressed they fit it into 20MB considering all the FMV and music. I am guessing the floppy version was watered down from the CD-ROM version, though I don't know for sure.
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Jun 22, 2016 11:51
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Newcomer for C64 came on 12 floppy disks. Pretty boss for 2001 release.
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Jun 22, 2016 12:05
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Uncle at Nintendo posted:Though I have to say I am impressed they fit it into 20MB considering all the FMV and music. I am guessing the floppy version was watered down from the CD-ROM version, though I don't know for sure. Someone's made an interesting mini-doco on this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4udiQq5gpY
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Jun 22, 2016 12:21
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WebDog posted:From what I can read the floppy version had all of the rendered cutscenes replaced with still images. haha that's awesome, though I could have sworn I remembered the FMV. Maybe I am confusing it with the SNES version, which I also had for some odd reason.
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Jun 22, 2016 12:25
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drunk asian neighbor posted:e: according to this old FAQ from MS's website, Office '97 Pro was 55 disks. Mods please change the thread title to "Computer relics - Please insert disk 55" TIA. I sure hope they numbered the disks, and it wasn't "Please insert the disk labelled 'Clipart Y-Z and WordArt Help Files'." I was having a look through some old magazines and remembered that OS/2 kept coming on floppies for quite a while. This superuser.com question on the topic of "What was the highest number of floppy disks ever used for a product? [closed as off topic]" says "OS/2 Warp v3 was 25 (39 if you include the bonus pack)".
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Jun 22, 2016 13:32
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WebDog posted:I wonder, what's the largest amount of 3.5 floppy disk for a game/program anyone's come across? Duke Nukem 3D was on 13 floppies. Voice samples and pre-rendered cutscenes  ! Doom II was only on 4, for comparison.drunk asian neighbor posted:e: according to this old FAQ from MS's website, Office '97 Pro was 55 disks.  Jesus Christ
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Jun 22, 2016 14:04
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Yeah, turns out Office has been a bloated whale of a program for way longer than just the last few years  Really though that era was when CD drives were almost ubiquitous, even the Office '97 install notes mention a CD version, so at that point it was probably less of a "our software is huge lol" situation and more of a "our software was designed to fit on 1CD, if your dinosaur computer doesn't have a CD drive, at least you can still install and use the software" type thing. It'd be like buying a boxed copy of the latest PC game nowadays (funny story, last week the physical PC version of Doom went on sale for $40 vs $60 for digital. Inside the DVD case was a DVD and a Steam code. You need the code to activate the DVD installation )
Snow Cone Capone has a new favorite as of 14:46 on Jun 22, 2016 |
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Jun 22, 2016 14:41
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klafbang posted:I had OS/2 Warp 3.0 with WinOS/2. It was around 20 for OS/2, 10 for screen, printer and multimedia drivers, and 15 for WinOS/2. It even used a non-standard formatting scheme to get more out of the disks (and copy protection). I could not install from CD because my CD drive was the wrong model to be supported during installation (it was when standards for CD was still emerging and booting from CD still future technology). I also installed Windows 95 using floppies, but that was less. At first, we thought most of our discs were bad because some games and things would work fine, and others would crap out after a few minutes. After some messing with the driver settings, I found that if the program used protected mode (Windows in general did, and I think a handful of later DOS games like maybe Warcraft II), I had to set the drivers to run the drive in single speed and then it worked fine. So eventually I just set it to run single speed all the time so I didn't have to keep rebooting and picking a different startup option. Oh, and our first sound card was almost accidental. The 486 my dad bought had no joystick port on it like our old 8086 had, so he went out and bought the original Sound Blaster so we could use a joystick. Once we realized it had sound (and was the reason DOS games suddenly started crashing when we tried to run them from Windows 3.1), we scrounged an old stereo with like 2-3 foot high speakers to plug into it. LeChuck's theme from Monkey Island used to shake the floor on those things.
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Jun 22, 2016 15:06
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You didn't realize something called "sound blaster" was a sound card?
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Jun 22, 2016 15:14
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I once paid $80 so I could use my PC gamepad on my 1998 laptop. This was before USB. It was just a pcmcia to MIDI controller adapter. I don't know what the hell I was thinking. I don't even think it could accept a midi piano or anything. It was sold as solely to be able to use joysticks on a laptop.
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Jun 22, 2016 16:03
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laserghost posted:Newcomer for C64 came on 12 floppy disks. Pretty boss for 2001 release. Holy poo poo, considering thee 1541's read speed that probably took a month to load! And probably sounded like the wrath of god while doing so. (I wouldn't have it any other way)
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Jun 22, 2016 16:17
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GutBomb posted:I work at SolidWorks (we make CAD software) and our supply closets still have floppies. Gamefly here, same. Dunno why, but there's 2 boxes of floppies in the closet.
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Jun 22, 2016 16:39
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Not a Computer Relic, but it is certainly built on their ruins. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hm4E8TcjF70
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Jun 22, 2016 17:23
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Buttcoin purse posted:Mods please change the thread title to "Computer relics - Please insert disk 55" TIA. Here's some photo evidence - pardon the instagram filter. We found this at the old office when we were housecleaning in preparation for a move.
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Jun 22, 2016 17:42
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I work at staples and we do computer and electronics recycling, I should start taking pictures of the ancient computers we get sometimes. Today I took in hewlett packard workstation with windows 2000 NT and a P3. Oh also we still use AS/400 for our entire inventory system and we still sell wordperfect.
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Jun 22, 2016 18:07
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Radio Shack's POS system was DOS-based until like, 2006 or so. It was awful, and yet still a thousand times less frustrating than the one they switched to, which would do wonderful things like crashing the system if you scanned the serial number barcode instead of the actual product barcode at the wrong part For those who've never taken a close look, a typical digital camera/cell phone/cable modem/etc. can have anywhere from 2-5 different barcodes, usually all clustered onto 1 part of the box.
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Jun 22, 2016 18:19
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Regular Nintendo posted:Their magical mouse is a dream for doing work but just plain unsuited for gaming, it's like using a knife to eat soup I would agree with you in non-gaming tasks the magic mouse is pretty awesome. Have been using one for the first time at my new job. But what makes it terrible for someone that reads source code or text documents that it doesn't have is free scrolling mouse wheels. I think it does have that function but my mouse I use lets you press a button to switch the wheel from freespin mode to click scroll mode. Makes it so I never have to remember the five hotkeys combo or whatever to do the simple action going to bottom of document and dream a little dream its the same hotkey on all applications. Side note: what the gently caress apple, why all the loving loving insane hotkey combos that don't even stay the same between applications. Why do I need to press three hotkeys to create a newline that doesn't break paragraphs or lists?
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Jun 22, 2016 18:22
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drunk asian neighbor posted:For those who've never taken a close look, a typical digital camera/cell phone/cable modem/etc. can have anywhere from 2-5 different barcodes, usually all clustered onto 1 part of the box. Yeah this poo poo is pretty annoying, you just have to know what a UPC looks like but good luck getting the scanner to scan the right one. For reference I took a picture of a random HP toner cartridge: 
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Jun 22, 2016 18:43
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Ferroque posted:I work at staples and we do computer and electronics recycling, I should start taking pictures of the ancient computers we get sometimes. Today I took in hewlett packard workstation with windows 2000 NT and a P3. LOL, I remember when they installed that system. Back in highschool I worked at store #28, when the Staples concept was still new. And speaking of Staples and floppy disks... Several times I stole games for my Amiga (which came on 3.5" floppies) from EB or Babbages by buying them and returning them. Since I didn't have a HD, and I couldn't beat the protection, I would steal a box of blank disks from work, carefully peel the labels off the game disks, reapply them to blank disks, repack the box with the labeled blanks, and then re-shrink-wrap the boxes using the shrink wrap station in the basement. Finally, I'd peel all the stickers off of the original shrink-wrap, and careful apply them to re-wrapped box. Then I could return it to the store for a full refund. I guess I was screwing someone else who bought a game with no software, but they could always return it, too.
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Jun 22, 2016 18:45
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Here's a relic from an interesting period in history:  
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Jun 22, 2016 20:41
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I found this at my mom's house about 4 years ago and took a photo for posterity:
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Jun 22, 2016 20:44
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Turdsdown Tom posted:hey relic friends, anybody got screenshots of the desktops from long ago? i love looking at old "post your desktop" threads from ~2004 but a lot of the images are no longer hosted obviously. this is the best i've got and this honestly wasn't even that long ago  (or, of course, until Windows Whatever just died on its own and functionally rebooted) Tears In A Vial posted:I had no idea there were people that hated Duke Nukem 3D. I loved it when it was new, and I still love it today.  I really do remember the vicious Duke Nukem 3D-versus-Quake arguments of the era, though. Somehow the fact that we were not even really arguing about the same thing did not dawn on me...it helps that I was a stupid kid and could not understand that perhaps "actual 3D geometry" was exciting to some people because of what it meant going forward, as opposed to "yeah...but pipebombs and interactive toilets!" Though the "Mario 64 is the best-looking game ever" argument still makes me angry in hindsight. So much intellectual dishonesty 
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Jun 22, 2016 21:27
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Steve Jorbs posted:I found this at my mom's house about 4 years ago and took a photo for posterity: Descent into the maelstrom.
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Jun 22, 2016 21:52
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OS/2 was IBM realizing they were boned with the MS DOS deal right? Was OS/2 Warp their off brand Windows? The extremely dated PCs we received in middle school had an OS/2 mode, which we neglected because we just wanted to run Tomb Raider on em.
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Jun 23, 2016 01:51
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