Tech Relics: Now integrating PIII processors for the wank factor.

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Dr. Quarex: Apr 18, 2003; I'M A BIG DORK WHO POSTS TOO MUCH ABOUT CONVENTIONS LOOK AT THIS

TOVA TOVA TOVA

Hello I am here to post about months-old things but mostly helpfully answering questions OK sorry

Mr_Angry posted:

Back before mp3s and downloadable music became a thing, those of us with our SoundBlaster 16s were rocking out to music from Mod4Win, which for its time was pretty drat awesome. One of the few things I actually paid some money for and to this day I'm kind of sad that I never backed up my library of .MOD files as some of them were pretty good. Here's a screenshot of said product (this shows it running on Vista but I was using this back in the days of Windows 3.1):

I meanwhile am kind of sad that I never registered it myself, I last used it back in the days when I still pirated things, so SHERE KHAN's version was the only one I ever knew.

But...if you want to remember some names of tunes, go get them back yourself in .MP3 format if they happen to be one of the 127,312 tracks that Stone Oakvalley has already converted for you: http://se2a1.bigbox.info/soamc/index.php

Humphreys posted:

Never heard it before but wow that is a good tune. Will admit I spent a good chunk of time trying to find a proper version thinking it was just a remake of a song.

It really sounded like something Blutengel would have made.

Dr. Awesome is one of those demoscene people who stayed in music outside the scene; he releases stuff under Bjorn Lynne most of the time, and it is pretty great. Also this thread has the most demoscene fandom I have seen in a thread in ages, between these posts and PowerofRecall discussing ModPlug Player, Woodch mentioning Purple Motion, and LaserGhost busting out a bunch of old-school names...and the Second Reality discussion a few pages before that, too! Wow! Now if only the Demoscene were not mostly known today for chiptunes and hilariously anachronistic demos on old hardware.

blowfish posted:

can I buy all of these

Unicomp produces new Model M keyboards, I am using one right now; go nuts!

PRESIDENT GOKU posted:

Best Buy catalog from 1996. Pretty neat.

http://imgur.com/gallery/do6if

As insane as it is, this post almost helped me in real life. My friend donated his Windows 95 computer to me in the late 1990s to serve as a DOS machine that I am still using for that purpose to this day, and it is the PACKARD BELL(!) in the upper-right corner of the Windows machine page. I now know more about the specs of this computer than I ever thought I would. Or maybe there is some way to know how fast your CD-Rom drive is in DOS, but if so, I never figured it out.

Buttcoin purse posted:

Any ISDN?

I have a friend who does professional voiceover work, and you apparently for whatever incredibly stupid reason need to have an ISDN line for this purpose (at least if you do it remotely). Apparently every year or so when something goes wrong with his setup he has to spend hours on the phone bouncing between a dozen different people because nobody at Verizon understands what ISDN even is anymore, and has no idea what he is talking about, despite obviously providing the service.

nigga crab pollock posted:

100gb is more than enough for whatever poo poo you have. its more than enough for my poo poo and i am a loving nerd. buy a $20 flash drive for your 30gb music collection if you must, its more fail-secure than just putting all your poo poo on your main drive anyways

Non Serviam posted:

I once blew my friend's mind when I asked him "when was the last time your laptop was actually on your lap, not on your desk?"

A lot of people get laptops, even desktop replacement laptops for gaming, to be "on the go" even though they're not going anywhere. It wouldn't be a problem if it wasn't because you pay a significant premium for laptops vs. Desktops.

I have personally experienced edge cases for both of these ("wife needing terabytes of backup for recording conducting performances that she does not know if she will need for 2-3 years" and "temporarily moving to another country and buying a gaming laptop rather than getting a foreign desktop that I just had to abandon there anyway," respectively), and yet I still pretty much agree that both hard drives and laptops are worthless. Just decommissioned the laptop I have been using since 2008 because I am finally done with school so I no longer need to do stupid things like "endlessly work at coffee shops" and can focus on doing real computing :smug:

Also that Tandy 1000 cat from a couple months ago is beautiful. And probably long-dead ;(

# ¿ Mar 5, 2016 20:57

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# ¿ May 7, 2024 05:18

Dr. Quarex: Apr 18, 2003; I'M A BIG DORK WHO POSTS TOO MUCH ABOUT CONVENTIONS LOOK AT THIS

TOVA TOVA TOVA

Police Automaton posted:

Also honestly, I don't think people took everything as serious as they do now. This might be rose tinted glasses but the 8 to 12 hours a day shut-in autistically creating excel spreadsheets about everything didn't really seem to be such a thing back then or at least he seemed to be a rare creature, now it seems to be the only way you can even play such a game and get anywhere. Well, if you can call that enjoyment. I personally prefer having a life outside of the game.

I remember how upset I was when I first started seeing guides to "secret" things in Ultima Online popping up online...though interestingly this was how I found out about GameFAQs, and then suddenly was a total convert, like "wait, why am I still buying paper hintbooks when some [shut-in] has already put a year's worth of work into walking me through Ultima VIII?"

But yes, it was a totally different world. Nobody knew what they were doing, and most everything was transmitted word of mouth...and honestly I feel the single most relevant fact that made Ultima Online different from everything that came later was the fact that you could only talk to the people currently on your screen. Sure, you could cheat and use an instant messaging program to talk to your friends or something, but I definitely preferred the isolation it provided (in the year or so before they caved and added global chat). Then again, I hate multiplayer gaming, so...

a medical mystery posted:

I still remember using a GM tinkering skill in UO to sneakily place trapped containers on top of mob loot. IIRC if characters didn't have extra HP from a potion or w/e a GM tinkerer's trap was a guaranteed instakill without any PK penalties.

I don't know just how popular this technique was (I know for a fact I wasn't the only one doing it because I learned it from another player), but the average player generally had no idea and almost anyone could be fooled at least once.

I never even heard of this until now, so it must not have been hugely popular. Pretty awesome, though; I remember trying desperately to figure out some sort of mechanical shortcut to being good at killing other players in self-defense. I do not think such a thing existed. You could certainly get good at murder, though

# ¿ Mar 10, 2016 21:47

Dr. Quarex: Apr 18, 2003; I'M A BIG DORK WHO POSTS TOO MUCH ABOUT CONVENTIONS LOOK AT THIS

TOVA TOVA TOVA

Unctuous Cretin posted:

I also get a lot of emails mistakenly sent for people using initial/firstname.mysurname.

I am too proud of my first wave Gmail to give it up.

Try this one neat trick to get infinite Spam forever (Google HATES it!)

Though as far as I can tell you can no longer find any proof that this is the case, GMail originally did differentiate e-mail addresses like Your.Name and YourName, even though now it just casually says "any number of periods in an e-mail address will reach the same person, obviously!"

I forgot when exactly this happened, I think it was either mid-2005 or early 2006, but I went from zero Spam and misdirected messages to literally hundreds a day overnight. From what I have gathered, there were at least two, and possibly up to four, other Myfirstname.Mylastname@GMail.coms out there with differing numbers or placements of periods in their names, and suddenly I got all of their e-mail.

It took months of politely responding to people who had no idea who I was before the casual mail stopped, and I never even really much tried fighting the battle against the hundreds of mailing lists (well until Unroll.Me came along and let me destroy all of them at once).

All because somebody at Google apparently arbitrarily decided that periods should be ignored. And I am still not entirely sure I know why.

On the plus side, I found out that one of them is a Tennessee-located dude who spends a lot of money at gyms and on hot twinks and supports Planned Parenthood, and another is in Texas and in the market for both real estate and hairy women.

Data Graham posted:

Hence the BMW 3-series is the size the 5-series used to be, so here comes the 1-series, and every year they all shuffle up the ladder again

Conversely, none of the tall men in my family fit in most foreign cars and increasingly few non-SUVs because all cars seem like they are heading towards an exact center point of Slightly Above Average-Sized as the actually large (and sometimes small) cars disappear. Your move, Data Graham :colbert:

# ¿ Mar 26, 2016 21:13

Dr. Quarex: Apr 18, 2003; I'M A BIG DORK WHO POSTS TOO MUCH ABOUT CONVENTIONS LOOK AT THIS

TOVA TOVA TOVA

stubblyhead posted:

This game was pretty awesome, not that I ever made too much progress with it.

Same. I actually went looking for a screenshot of Uncle Smoke since that was literally the only thing I remembered about the entire game, but then I saw those dudes and I was like OH MY GOD THE ALIEN AUCTION THING I WAS 5 I HAD NO IDEA WHAT WAS GOING ON

EoRaptor posted:

This is because Google was wrong. the RFC for the acceptable ways to format an email address speciifcally says to ignore periods within an address, and treat them as the same address.

AFAIR, Google added suppoer for + addressing at the same time.

That makes perfect sense. And why they would try to casually pretend now that it never happened.

My favorite side effect of this was that I had to decide what to do with the Facebook page of the dude with my Firstname.Lastname since he could no longer access it. I had literally no way of contacting him and when I asked on his page if one of his friends could talk to him for me, they all defriended me. So I was like "O.K., fine" and just took it over.

# ¿ Mar 27, 2016 03:04

Dr. Quarex: Apr 18, 2003; I'M A BIG DORK WHO POSTS TOO MUCH ABOUT CONVENTIONS LOOK AT THIS

TOVA TOVA TOVA

Yeah I mean, Ookiimarukochan, I understand what you are saying, but I got an acknowledgement from support at one point that people "may" have been able to inadvertently create separate accounts with dots in them, but they claimed they never should have been able to receive e-mail separately from my account.

Well, maybe that was true, but they sure gave out that address a lot before realizing nothing was working. Kind of like Reagan, I always wondered what in the world was going on on the other end, considering the number of accounts people have opened in dot variations of my e-mail address that I have had to shut down or otherwise reclaim.

# ¿ Mar 28, 2016 05:00

Dr. Quarex: Apr 18, 2003; I'M A BIG DORK WHO POSTS TOO MUCH ABOUT CONVENTIONS LOOK AT THIS

TOVA TOVA TOVA

I am so excited about the pending possibility of Even More Hilariously Old America OnLine things happening!!!

Powered Descent posted:

This is good stuff, but no discussion of AOL and the Internet would be complete without mentioning The September That Never Ended.

In case anyone reading that great succinct write-up assumes it is a romanticized remembrance of the Good Old Days, speaking as someone who Usenetted pre-AOL-appearing, it really was like I was posting on my usual RPG and Simpsons groups one day, all was well, then a week later I popped up to see what I had missed and it was like somebody threw up all over every Usenet group. And the vomiting continued forever.

Up until that point, it was such a surprising scenario to encounter someone Spamming on a large scale that individual circumstances were memorable events of their own... and there were even, like, NAMES attached to people who Spammed because it was so unusual. Which is so hilarious and sad to think about.

kilogram posted:

A couple of months ago my friend told me about a PS1 game he used to play 20 years ago, but he could only remember that you played as a caveman with black hair. So I googled "ps1 game caveman black hair" and the right thing came back as the first result. And his hair wasn't even black, it was purple.

How the gently caress did people live pre-google

We just said "who knows?" instead of actually finding out the answer, I think. Which is just nightmarish in hindsight.

Hillary Clintons Thong posted:

I remember getting one of those lovely 1000 games collections. Absolutely all shareware but I found some cool games on there
[...]
There was one i think called Operation: Bodycount which was a lovely fps where you had to clear 100 small levels of a sky scraper. I spent a whole summer basically loving around on one of those discs. Before the internet, it was harder to waste your time completely.

Ooh, Muslim terrorist enemies; ahead of its time! Well not really, considering the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and all, but still "feels" different looking at this now
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RiCFRClJzFo

As delightful as it is that their leader is a German man named Victor for some reason

Also what the hell is going on, one of the songs on the soundtrack is like halfway to being a Deus Ex outtake (at least until it descends into garbage guitars half-way through), what business does a song this delightful have existing in a 1994 shovelware Wolfenstein 3D clone
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8Vax1r7QRs

simosimo posted:

SL supported voice comms so the wrasslers would cut the worst cringiest promos you ever heard. Walk down to the ring (with the robotic default walking animation and super bunny hop over the ropes (as the ropes were basically walls and you couldn't walk through them) and then commence in an awful animation battle. I will YouTube later and see if there are some videos. I hope so.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bn7a1cTPmcg

# ¿ Apr 20, 2016 19:50

Dr. Quarex: Apr 18, 2003; I'M A BIG DORK WHO POSTS TOO MUCH ABOUT CONVENTIONS LOOK AT THIS

TOVA TOVA TOVA

Return Of JimmyJars posted:

http://youvegotmail.warnerbros.com

The original promo website for you've got mail is still online. They just added it to prime now if you want to see some primo late 90s product placement.

I just got some sweet themed icons from that page. I can hardly wait to use the "frowning face by letter" for ... uhh

I wonder if you can still change the "This PC" icon

Edit: Ah, of course you can! Hello, 12-year-old me, let us do this

# ¿ Apr 21, 2016 19:54

Dr. Quarex: Apr 18, 2003; I'M A BIG DORK WHO POSTS TOO MUCH ABOUT CONVENTIONS LOOK AT THIS

TOVA TOVA TOVA

I think if I read this thread long enough I will start to understand the appeal of emulating older versions of operating systems. I mean, if emulating Windows 95 actually sent you back to 1995, then I would get it

(I do understand emulating other types of computers. And MS-DOS, even though everyone should just have their own DOS machine)

Humphreys posted:

Anyone remember the days when winamp skins (and other program skins) were a big deal? I just checked out a site I haven't been to in over a decade and its still going strong!

http://skinz.org/

I would spend soo much time on that site finding 'just the right' skin to suit my needs.

I always felt there was a sort of collective agreement when WinAmp 5 came out that we would all cease using it, and thus needing skins, for the rest of eternity.

At least, that is the only way I can explain how I went from being just like you, constantly downloading JUST THE RIGHT SKIN FOR MY PLAYER/GRAPHIC EQUALIZER/PLAYLIST setup to suddenly forgetting about the very concept of skins entirely.

Oh they have a great section on the just-completed Super Bowl XLVI though http://skinz.org/football/super-bowl-xlvi-wallpapers.html

mng posted:

I still use Winamp and have been since like 1999. Is that weird?

Ha ha, yes, very funny, you still use it. But really though, what do you actually use

Code Jockey posted:

I think I found the cover for my vaporwave album

Buttcoin purse posted:

Needs another window with Windows running VMware Player running Linux running DOSbox running Windows 3.1 running Borland Delphi with the About dialog:

hahahaha

# ¿ Apr 24, 2016 16:08

Dr. Quarex: Apr 18, 2003; I'M A BIG DORK WHO POSTS TOO MUCH ABOUT CONVENTIONS LOOK AT THIS

TOVA TOVA TOVA

JediTalentAgent posted:

I sort of remember a small but popular trend of just every webpage being a single huge jpeg and just used image mapping to assign link locations. It seems a lot less prevalent now, but I'm sure it's still a popular technique.

It might seem ridiculous, but thinking about how those "huge .JPGs" were probably like 150k makes that trend seem like elegant minimalism in comparison. Sometimes.

O.K. I am just defending it because I had a webpage like that in 1998. But still.

# ¿ Apr 27, 2016 21:54

Dr. Quarex: Apr 18, 2003; I'M A BIG DORK WHO POSTS TOO MUCH ABOUT CONVENTIONS LOOK AT THIS

TOVA TOVA TOVA

CaptainSarcastic posted:

I visited the site out of morbid curiosity, and it ran more or less okay for me, given that it is a steaming pile of overdesigned poo poo. I checked the FAQ, and surprisingly "Why is your website a literal piece of poo poo?" was not amongst them.

I wanted to give it a chance and I got that far, too. When three clicks on logical links still did not get me to their opening hours, I decided this was not the kind of restaurant anyone should visit. Granted, I am sure you have to make reservations fifty cycles in advance so the opening hours are irrelevant.

Anony Mouse posted:

There's an excellent website where you can download just about any MOD that has been made anywhere ever. You can also download torrents containing their entire archive, more than 40 GB now. They even have a web player so you can listen to MODs in the browser! http://modarchive.org/

Turdsdown Tom posted:

anyway, I remember this being in a keygen for some game and I went to PutFile (remember them? or ZippyVideos? non-YouTube video hosts are another computer relic tbh) and looked up the dude's name and found tons of awesome music and demos

Radix also goes by several other handles if you do not know that already: Mosaik, Rymdlego, and Sinespree. I remember first encountering him as Sinespree and being blown away by this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPdQ24pb3Fw

I could talk about the Demoscene every day for the rest of my life, but I swear any efforts made to create a thread somewhere have always failed over the years.

# ¿ Apr 28, 2016 13:35

Dr. Quarex: Apr 18, 2003; I'M A BIG DORK WHO POSTS TOO MUCH ABOUT CONVENTIONS LOOK AT THIS

TOVA TOVA TOVA

Mak0rz posted:

I remember searching for/downloading no-CD cracks and trainers for various games and being in a cold sweat the entire time like I was defusing a bomb.

hahahahahahaha

# ¿ Apr 28, 2016 14:16

Dr. Quarex: Apr 18, 2003; I'M A BIG DORK WHO POSTS TOO MUCH ABOUT CONVENTIONS LOOK AT THIS

TOVA TOVA TOVA

Code Jockey posted:

Okay you tracker music dorks help me out

Ages and ages ago I remember a website that had a ton of tracker songs on it, and I want to say the format of the site was like browsing a file system? I want to say it was styled like black background / green text and UI, and you'd just poke around folders and stuff and it had lists of tracker songs.

I'm going through The Mod Archive right now but I wish I could find that old site again I really liked it for some reason

Hello, Tracker Music Dork Prime here

You are (probably?) thinking of Stone Oakvalley's archive, considering it has about 99% of all tracker songs not written by me or one of my friends online:

http://se2a1.bigbox.info/soamc/

Also yes, it is clear we can sustain a Demoscene thread.

8 track betamax posted:

Do it now... this is the time and this is the place. GBS is ready and willing.

AM I A BAD ENOUGH DUDE TO CREATE A WORTHWHILE ORIGINAL POST???

Maybe I could just post a few examples of WHAT AM DEMO, HOW ARE MUSIC and links to archives and we can rock and roll from there??? Anyone else want to do it better instead?!??!?!?!?

# ¿ Apr 29, 2016 17:48

Dr. Quarex: Apr 18, 2003; I'M A BIG DORK WHO POSTS TOO MUCH ABOUT CONVENTIONS LOOK AT THIS

TOVA TOVA TOVA

WebDog posted:

They did, discs came as double and single sided but double was apparently twice the price, despite the internals being exactly the same.

Cunning people discovered that all you needed to do was cut in a notch into the disc that would allow it to be flipped over to access the other side.
The square hole punch was there to capitalise on this.

I forgot where I read/heard this even though it was like a week or two ago at most...Ooh! I think it was JASON SCOTT, FAMOUS COMPUTER HISTORIAN who said that disks were manufactured as single-sided if the company's internal testing suggested that one side of the disk was not manufactured perfectly, thus everyone who ever used one of those to make a single-sided disk double-sided was virtually guaranteed to end up with a broken disk after a few years.

That was literally the first I had ever heard of that, but he is also one of the only people I could believe would know something so obscure rather than just be making it up, so it is hard to say.

Jason, if you are reading this, and you probably are, know that I am no longer mad at you about refusing to change the one letter in that one text file on behalf of my friend.

thathonkey posted:

At least start is back in 10 but not without leaving tons of overly bloated with dumb poo poo tacked on to the right expanse.

I love Windows 10 ;(

I think you can disable any bloated expanses that you are discussing? Well, O.K., though you probably cannot just fundamentally destroy it.

And now that you mention it, I roll my eyes hard every time I think about the XBox integration that you cannot seem to fully destroy even if you run the command that fully destroys it.

Vanagoon posted:

Doom E1M1 Meets Metal

I am so confused, I thought much of the Doom soundtrack was blatantly ripped metal in the first place? I would assume :thejoke:

except...why would someone go to this trouble if they knew that?

Haha...apparently the only difficulty is figuring out which of three different 1980s metal tracks was blatantly lifted for that song: http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/Doom_music

# ¿ May 5, 2016 15:13

Dr. Quarex: Apr 18, 2003; I'M A BIG DORK WHO POSTS TOO MUCH ABOUT CONVENTIONS LOOK AT THIS

TOVA TOVA TOVA

RVWinkle posted:

I'm kinda glad that M$ wrecked the start menu because classic shell is so much better than anything that Microsoft could ever conceive. You folks all use classic shell right?

I...I guess I am just confused that anyone really liked the Start Menu that much in older versions. The programs folder always drove me to THE BRINK OF MADNESS by resisting all efforts to keep it orderly. Stop paying attention to it for a week and suddenly find new folders for a half-dozen programs that updated without you even realizing it...ugh. UGH, RVWINKLE.

The Kins posted:

The sound guy on Doom was a lawyer before he was a musician. He knew exactly how much he could get away with...

That is an excellent piece of information for the world.

# ¿ May 6, 2016 03:04

Dr. Quarex: Apr 18, 2003; I'M A BIG DORK WHO POSTS TOO MUCH ABOUT CONVENTIONS LOOK AT THIS

TOVA TOVA TOVA

Oyak posted:

Well, every Veterans Administration hospital in the US still makes its employees use a program with a command line interface in order to request vacation time or sick days. This means learning to program a few lines of code if you want time off. God Bless America!

There are dozens of various arcane databases in use for federal agencies that involve command-line interfaces, though granted most of them are menu-style. I can only assume it is logistically impossible to ever convert them to anything else, so anyone who wants to still have the joy of looking at 80x25 interfaces at work can still do so for the foreseeable future with the right agency!

# ¿ May 16, 2016 00:59

Dr. Quarex: Apr 18, 2003; I'M A BIG DORK WHO POSTS TOO MUCH ABOUT CONVENTIONS LOOK AT THIS

TOVA TOVA TOVA

Casimir Radon posted:

When did you become Dr. Quarex?

Truly, when did any of us become Dr. Quarex?

_{I figured I might as well do something with my new title since I cannot officially use it at work}

# ¿ May 16, 2016 01:14

Dr. Quarex: Apr 18, 2003; I'M A BIG DORK WHO POSTS TOO MUCH ABOUT CONVENTIONS LOOK AT THIS

TOVA TOVA TOVA

Black Pants posted:

I don't know if I should request this here or in SH/SC but are any of the early 3D graphics acceleration cards from the late 90s era worth bothering with, for a retro-ish PC build? I'm gunning for a 4:3 monitor, Windows 98, DOS/Windows games sort of system, but I basically had my P166, 16mb SDRAM, S3 Trio PC until like 2003, and I don't even remember what I replaced it with. Some hand-me-down from a friend.

Police Automaton's advice is generally hard to beat in the sense that it is sourced directly from the Heart of Hardware Knowledge, but I agree with the others that the Voodoo 3 was a pretty great card for the era you are talking about. My gaming life was definitely rocking for the couple of years it was relevant.

Adding to Police Automaton's comments about acceptable framerates and the like, it really is funny to think about what one person might consider playable; at some point when playing Dying Light last year before getting my new swank system, it occurred to me that I basically did not even notice a constant level of stuttering in big group fights because it sort of felt like COOL SLOW-MOTION. But I am sure anyone who never struggled through playing 4D Boxing at 4 FPS would have been horrified by that.

# ¿ Jun 5, 2016 20:14

Dr. Quarex: Apr 18, 2003; I'M A BIG DORK WHO POSTS TOO MUCH ABOUT CONVENTIONS LOOK AT THIS

TOVA TOVA TOVA

DetroitVectorSmooth posted:

looks like you can sell that on etsy

Germstore posted:

Wall Art Decor. Words fail me.

I have some old PC Gamers somewhere. I wonder if anyone will buy "John Romero's about to make you his bitch."

Yes.

All of it.

I remember being at some big antiques store in the 1990s and buying a couple of hilarious vintage (to my young self) advertisements. I got them home and upon taking them out of their protective covers discovered they were just clippings from 1940s or 1950s magazines, and here I had paid like $5+ for each of them. It took years for me to suddenly remember the "GUARANTEED GET RICH QUICK" guide I had seen in the meantime that was like "first, buy all the old magazines you can find. To learn the next step, send me $25!" Suddenly, it all made sense.

Yes, now 1980s niche magazine advertisements are undoubtedly valuable enough that they would sell individually for more than the entire magazine they are from. I imagine computer-related will have a pretty substantial market. I also imagine that it is hard to envision being the kind of person who puts in the effort required to actually do this at a large scale.

# ¿ Jun 7, 2016 18:17

Dr. Quarex: Apr 18, 2003; I'M A BIG DORK WHO POSTS TOO MUCH ABOUT CONVENTIONS LOOK AT THIS

TOVA TOVA TOVA

thathonkey posted:

wow quake turning 20... i remember playing it when it first came out and thinking wow this is something special (i was 10)

I remember playing it and thinking "huh, seems like a pretty big step back from Duke Nukem 3D; why is anyone excited about this?"

(Honestly I think my opinion still holds up)

(I acknowledge Quake 2 was pretty impressive though)

# ¿ Jun 8, 2016 17:09

Dr. Quarex: Apr 18, 2003; I'M A BIG DORK WHO POSTS TOO MUCH ABOUT CONVENTIONS LOOK AT THIS

TOVA TOVA TOVA

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

This makes me so sad to have just had my desktop fall over and crush my back-up hard drive with all my pre-2006 stuff in it. I remember being quite fond of my desktop screenshot that had three different "you need to restart for settings to take effect [OK]" dialog boxes open at once, I was such a rebel for refusing to reboot until I drat WELL FELT LIKE IT :c00l:

(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.

Quake fanboyism dies hard

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 :mad:

# ¿ Jun 22, 2016 21:27

Dr. Quarex: Apr 18, 2003; I'M A BIG DORK WHO POSTS TOO MUCH ABOUT CONVENTIONS LOOK AT THIS

TOVA TOVA TOVA

Lowen SoDium posted:

I always pronounced it Geo-Cities but one time I heard someone pronounce it like it rhymed with atrocities (which may have been more accurate for it's content).

My mind has been blown by this. Thank you for Gee Ossities.

Also I pretty much turn the treble up and the bass down on every volume equalizer thing I have ever encountered. I think my brain's bass receptors are broken, since what other people perceive as pleasantly booming I just hear it drowning out the melody or whatever. So yes, my EQ generally looked like

uh

code:

    __
__--

Then people ask what is wrong with my computer because it sounds funny and I just cry forever

Oh wait, nobody asks anymore because I do not have any friends :c00l:

# ¿ Jul 13, 2016 22:41

Dr. Quarex: Apr 18, 2003; I'M A BIG DORK WHO POSTS TOO MUCH ABOUT CONVENTIONS LOOK AT THIS

TOVA TOVA TOVA

sinking belle posted:

This reminded me that there was this bizarre social stigma about playing a game boy with the sound on at the school I moved to in 1999. Like, it was somehow "babyish" to not have the volume turned off, it wasn't even an "it's annoying to other people" thing. Using headphones was the absolute worst thing you could do because that meant people would see that you really cared about video game noises and that was just awful and sad.

This makes me so profoundly sad. What level school was this? If it were like junior high/middle school I could understand how some arbitrary set of social mores had formed that declared digital beeping was uncool, but it still breaks my heart to envision a place where this would not be appreciated

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KeqpopmFv7Y

Oh and also thank you as I will finally remember to tell my dumb story about my youth now

My friends and I were walking to school excitedly discussing some amazing demo (probably Second Reality, we had not really seen anything that topped it by the mid-1990s when I think this took place) and how we were sure if we could make a demo that good we could all get hired as a result.

The most enormous good ole' boy farm kid at the school was walking not too far away from us, and he turned around and angrily said "HOW THE HELL YOU GONNA GET HIRED DOING A DEMO???"

All of us froze in utter confusion and terror and I think I muttered like "uh...you never know?" and that seemed to satisfy him and he resumed walking.

Years passed and I always wondered what in the world he could have possibly thought a "demo" was.

It took until, like, earlier this week when remembering this story to realize he probably thought we were talking about some sort of home demolition or demolition derby or something. I guess I can see how that might not really be that useful for your future job prospects.

# ¿ Jul 15, 2016 21:44

Dr. Quarex: Apr 18, 2003; I'M A BIG DORK WHO POSTS TOO MUCH ABOUT CONVENTIONS LOOK AT THIS

TOVA TOVA TOVA

I bet there was a direct correlation between using a graphical IRC client and liking anime. At least using regular IRC as a control group.

Were there ever any analyses done of relative popularity of shell IRC versus client programs? Would such studies have even been really feasible? I always assumed at the time that the vast majority were using IRC, but it is probably due to the selection bias of the kinds of channels I hung out on.

# ¿ Jul 19, 2016 20:16

Dr. Quarex: Apr 18, 2003; I'M A BIG DORK WHO POSTS TOO MUCH ABOUT CONVENTIONS LOOK AT THIS

TOVA TOVA TOVA

nigga crab pollock posted:

best android ive ever had is the moto x tho like the only thing that might break is the plastic back and you can replace that poo poo for $2 on ebay. ive had it for like two+ years and bought it used and it still works perfect. nothing has broken or spazzed out or started creaking. no phone ive owned has ever lasted this long and its motorola???

Moto X is a pretty solid phone. Mine lasted two years and a dozen falls onto concrete before I dropped it into my shower which splintered the screen in a thousand places. No, the shower was not on. And to be fair the phone still works fine, it is just, you know, might as well get a new phone anyway right

DetroitVectorSmooth posted:

oh man those resistive touch screens and mini styluses

Has a retro phone scene emerged yet? I am picturing a popular YouTube channel dedicated to, like, playing all of the built-in phone games from 1999-2004 Motorola phones or something that sounds revolting yet probably would be popular I guess

# ¿ Aug 4, 2016 19:41

Dr. Quarex: Apr 18, 2003; I'M A BIG DORK WHO POSTS TOO MUCH ABOUT CONVENTIONS LOOK AT THIS

TOVA TOVA TOVA

thathonkey posted:

yeah i cant really think of an avenue for them to make a comeback. it's much less likely to find somebody who still has a vcr versus people that still have turntables or even cassette decks.

it's not like people ever went gaga over vcr packaging and extras like they do with vinyl and tapes even. the vhs tapes have 0 aesthetic value.

Looks like someone is not a Vaporwave fan. Though Vaporwave does exist in some small part specifically to fetishize utterly useless obsolete commercial concepts, so it makes sense.

Alan_Shore posted:

VCDs are still a thing here in Hong Kong, and that's just insane.

Thank you for saying this, as it led me to finding this: http://www.ychlpyss.edu.hk/~eng/interactive/piratevcds.htm

Gonz posted:

The state of Personal Computers, nearly 11,000 days ago.

I never knew in all my fabulous years that I needed a dedicated piece of spell-checking hardware until I watched this video. The endless nightmare of a box that beeped at you whenever you typed something it did not recognize as a word...oh, it sounds perfect.

oh my god I think I used the Muppet Keyboard as an extremely young child, where have these memories been buried? I think our local public library had it? Ugh going to the library to sign up for 30 minutes of Apple II computer time in an era when the Amiga already existed, what the hell Illinois

I hope that MS-DOS-compatible Macintosh rumored for 1987 comes out soon!

Ugh that discussion about how you should make sure your user group library has at least a couple of copies of the guide to hard drives...so nostalgic for something I never experienced.

Jerry Cotton posted:

S3Ms please name chang to Secret Scene Releaser TIA.

fuknnice.mtm

Farmer Crack-rear end posted:

I'm watching that video and I can visualize in my head the LAN parties where kids played that for hours on end.

Haha, I was going to quote that to say "holy poo poo, I have not thought about this since my last LAN party at a commercial establishment." A fine example of something that was obviously impressive to everyone who saw it but that everyone forgot about immediately.

nigga crab pollock posted:

*double clicks on .mov file*

quicktime popup "you must install the quicktime runtime to watch this video"

download the 60 megabyte quicktime installer, which you install over the existing install for quicktime that was installed with itunes and yet is not capable of opening anything

'quicktime is not capable of opening this video'

I have a .MOV file whose audio continues for a good minute after the video ends. I imagine there is not "really" any video missing, but I find it interesting that QuickTime is the only player that stops playing at the end of the video, despite the file coming from a Mac. Not that I understand how such a file came to be in the first place.

# ¿ Sep 16, 2016 05:43

Dr. Quarex: Apr 18, 2003; I'M A BIG DORK WHO POSTS TOO MUCH ABOUT CONVENTIONS LOOK AT THIS

TOVA TOVA TOVA

doctorfrog posted:

This makes me feel bad. It's also part and parcel how I feel about console games and any kickstarter. "you poor idiots."

Kickstarter was fantastic RIGHT when it blew up with video games and a dozen-odd things from people who had been shut out of making their dream projects by the publishing industry got the chance to do good things again, and all of those games either came out or are coming out soon.

And then...it went back to being Kickstarter.

# ¿ Sep 17, 2016 04:49

Dr. Quarex: Apr 18, 2003; I'M A BIG DORK WHO POSTS TOO MUCH ABOUT CONVENTIONS LOOK AT THIS

TOVA TOVA TOVA

Humphreys posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OE8WzYNRPNU

This counts as a relic right?

I think this is actually more dated:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvWGdInf65Q&t=11s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQpeCzLNNp8&t=10s

# ¿ Oct 20, 2016 02:16

Dr. Quarex: Apr 18, 2003; I'M A BIG DORK WHO POSTS TOO MUCH ABOUT CONVENTIONS LOOK AT THIS

TOVA TOVA TOVA

Powered Descent posted:

Typing this on a Unicomp right now. They're awesome, and are basically identical to the old buckling-spring Model M. (There's a good reason for that: Unicomp bought not only the rights but even the tooling and equipment from IBM to keep manufacturing them.) You can get them with or without Windows keys, in a few different colors, and in PS/2 or USB. It's the one true keyboard, everything else is a pale imitation. Typing on it feels amazing. It's kind of like the big heavy lever on a slot machine, it just feels so... important.

Yes but they stopped offering blank key caps, driving me into the arms of another company when I wanted a second keyboard to match my first :mad:

what do you mean I could surely have gotten third-party blank key caps

Collateral Damage posted:

The Type M has nice keys, but if you use it in an open office your coworkers are going to beat you to death with it.

Slow typer identified :smug:

If I use anything louder than the most pathetic membrane keyboards I get asked to "please stop taking notes" in any group setting. Why does everyone Noise Shame me ;(

# ¿ Oct 22, 2016 20:50

Dr. Quarex: Apr 18, 2003; I'M A BIG DORK WHO POSTS TOO MUCH ABOUT CONVENTIONS LOOK AT THIS

TOVA TOVA TOVA

Kelp Me! posted:

Blank keys is one of the most technology-related concepts I can think of

Agreed. I did not understand my wife's eye-rolling at it in the first place until someone asked if they could check their e-mail on my computer, saw my keyboard, and said "oh. Never mind." It was easy to get self-absorbed enough to forget that people, you know, sometimes look at the keys for practical reasons.

# ¿ Oct 22, 2016 22:21

Dr. Quarex: Apr 18, 2003; I'M A BIG DORK WHO POSTS TOO MUCH ABOUT CONVENTIONS LOOK AT THIS

TOVA TOVA TOVA

turn it up TURN ME ON posted:

Hi friends! I went to a retro gaming expo today. It was fun, I saw lots of neat old game systems. Here are pictures for you all to enjoy!

A CAT box thing!

Possibly the coolest thing ever created.

Who remembers these things at Sears?

What in the hell is that CAT box and why did I not own one?! Dang.

Also, 100% agreed that is the coolest thing in the world. I am so sad that satin jackets are so uncommon in this era.

And ... is that a cartridge storage system that looks like an Atari? Or an Atari with built-in storage? Or, uh ... uhhhh

Powered Descent posted:

What? No they didn't.

Full set of blank keycaps, 20 bucks, in white or gray: http://www.pckeyboard.com/page/product/KSET

Lots more keycap options here, straight from Unicomp: http://www.pckeyboard.com/page/category/Buttons

What. Oh. O.K., apparently they just stopped making them in black. You would think the customer service guy would have mentioned that when I told him how sad I was that I could not get my beautiful blank keyboard repeated. Granted I doubt I would get it in white or gray.

# ¿ Oct 23, 2016 02:30

Dr. Quarex: Apr 18, 2003; I'M A BIG DORK WHO POSTS TOO MUCH ABOUT CONVENTIONS LOOK AT THIS

TOVA TOVA TOVA

CubanMissile posted:

I am confused as to why Unicomp doesn't appear offer a model with black keys.

They realized they were too awesome and had to discontinue them for national security reasons.

# ¿ Oct 24, 2016 18:19

Dr. Quarex: Apr 18, 2003; I'M A BIG DORK WHO POSTS TOO MUCH ABOUT CONVENTIONS LOOK AT THIS

TOVA TOVA TOVA

I do like that Underlight knows exactly what it is and runs with it.

Underlight's Splash Page posted:

Old Style Graphics!
Immerse yourself in old style retro gaming feel of the late 90s! Experience a unique dream world surrounded by gorgeous 3D sprites and pixels!

# ¿ Oct 31, 2016 16:41

Dr. Quarex: Apr 18, 2003; I'M A BIG DORK WHO POSTS TOO MUCH ABOUT CONVENTIONS LOOK AT THIS

TOVA TOVA TOVA

Kelp Me! posted:

Wait no, they were IIGSes, not IIcs. Still pretty great though.

holy poo poo Rastan looked really good for a game from 1990

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iVu2GqrQJg

Data Graham posted:

Man, the IIgs was fuckin' legit.

I did not even understand this until like a decade later, but the IIGS/Macintosh dichotomy was why I started to dislike Steve Jobs. He seemingly stopped caring (if he ever really did) about how amazingly fun Apple II computers were as a gaming platform, and the IIGS was totally boss but I barely even knew it existed at the time and then suddenly the next thing I know it is a given that if you want to play games you need a Windows machine and then it was all over and as a result I never wanted another Apple product after ~1992.

Also I swear if any of you bring up WINE I will cry and tell my parents you are being mean. Maybe the issue is largely moot now, but I am not talking about now. I am talking about how the IIGS was awesome and should have been Apple's future

# ¿ Nov 2, 2016 15:20

Dr. Quarex: Apr 18, 2003; I'M A BIG DORK WHO POSTS TOO MUCH ABOUT CONVENTIONS LOOK AT THIS

TOVA TOVA TOVA

I actually had some big utility program download fail on me earlier this year on a day when I was having connection issues and really needed to get it downloaded, and I thought for the first time since like 1999 that it would be nice to have a download manager. Thank goodness it still exists, I guess!

# ¿ Nov 2, 2016 19:07

Dr. Quarex: Apr 18, 2003; I'M A BIG DORK WHO POSTS TOO MUCH ABOUT CONVENTIONS LOOK AT THIS

TOVA TOVA TOVA

Trunko posted:

The first time I ever heard people talking about apps was with their iPhone when those first came out. I just assumed it was some cutsie apple specific term, especially since app... Apple.

And those stupid commercials. "THERE IS AN APP, FOR THAT!"

Little did I know that before long it would be the standard word for computer program. The nightmare has become reality.

Even though I agree with you and it is awful and stupid, ... oh, Keith Atherton beat me to it, but a guy I know who was at Microsoft in the 1980s said they called programs "apps" then too, which made me feel a little better about the seeming-buzzclickpow-intentionality awfulness of the term. I am not sure where I got the idea that programs were called "utilities" though, but I definitely called them that in the 1990s.

EVIL NOONER posted:

java applet sounds like a small breakfast item mmmm

Freshly frosted java applets.

# ¿ Nov 3, 2016 18:39

Dr. Quarex: Apr 18, 2003; I'M A BIG DORK WHO POSTS TOO MUCH ABOUT CONVENTIONS LOOK AT THIS

TOVA TOVA TOVA

Grand Prize Winner posted:

not terrible, just kinda weird how the nomenclature has seasawed. kinda like the emoticon>smiley>emote>emoji thing.

omg kill u smiley came first u dead ok

Trunko posted:

It also sounds like something a casual dining chain would call their appetizers

It actually is. I bet that was :thejoke:

though.

Humphreys posted:

The 'emoji' name really irks me for some reason. And I have no idea why.

Probably because it referred very specifically to emotion faces on Japanese feature phones initially, and obviously "emoji" sounds entirely reasonable in that context, but then for whatever reason was adopted by Apple(? maybe? somebody?). Probably because it was totally cool?

Skoll posted:

A lot of goons seem to hate James Rolfe for whatever reason. What unpardonable crime has the Angry Video Game Nerd done to you, goon sir?

I did not know why people hated him either, and I watched a bunch of his videos and appreciated how much work he put into things and that he was occasionally fairly entertaining, but then he led the charge of the "WOMAN GHOSTBUSTERS = UNPARDONABLE SIN, WHY ARE YOU CALLING ME SEXIST" thing which pretty much instantly turned me off of him immediately.

# ¿ Nov 5, 2016 13:59

Dr. Quarex: Apr 18, 2003; I'M A BIG DORK WHO POSTS TOO MUCH ABOUT CONVENTIONS LOOK AT THIS

TOVA TOVA TOVA

Trunko posted:

Good grief did you even watch his ghost busters review? That wasn't his point. At. All.

I watched enough of it to see that he was lying through his teeth about his concerns, if that counts. Yes, Angry Video Game Nerd; these fantastic special effects look crappy and worse than things from the 1990s. You nailed it with your honest critique driven by quality and nothing else.

I will grant that if late in the video he revealed he was pranking everyone I would have had no idea. And as a data-driven information consumer I would have to update my Pop Culture Opinions Database posthaste.

Platystemon posted:

The similarity to �emoticon� is complete coincidence. It comes from Japanese words for �picture� and �character�.

But is its similarity to calling someone "Honored Emo" in Hindi a coincidence? Hmm???

Also oh good lord I just remembered this for the first time in ~20 years. I think I was too young to figure out how to get this terrible homebrew-caliber game running on my system for weeks until someone else did it for me. It was not worth it. Tech moments lost in time like e-tears on rain.com.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OtF2l147b4

Dr. Quarex has a new favorite as of 16:34 on Nov 7, 2016

# ¿ Nov 7, 2016 16:25

Dr. Quarex: Apr 18, 2003; I'M A BIG DORK WHO POSTS TOO MUCH ABOUT CONVENTIONS LOOK AT THIS

TOVA TOVA TOVA

Powered Descent posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUXnJraKM3k

I wonder if the person who made that was sexually aroused by his own naughtiness the whole time

I assume there was an answer video where Apple destroyed something by simplifying it ... oh wait, it was http://www.theonion.com/video/apple-introduces-revolutionary-new-laptop-with-no--14299

# ¿ Nov 21, 2016 14:13

Dr. Quarex: Apr 18, 2003; I'M A BIG DORK WHO POSTS TOO MUCH ABOUT CONVENTIONS LOOK AT THIS

TOVA TOVA TOVA

Non Serviam posted:

That's a badass cover art

I have it framed on my wall :c00l:

but with the "I" in "IBM" fully intact :cool:

Jerry Cotton posted:

A lot of those hell-folk seem awfully happy

They have great benefits packages.

# ¿ Nov 22, 2016 23:30

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# ¿ May 7, 2024 05:18

Dr. Quarex: Apr 18, 2003; I'M A BIG DORK WHO POSTS TOO MUCH ABOUT CONVENTIONS LOOK AT THIS

TOVA TOVA TOVA

Jerry Cotton posted:

Oh you mean they're fiends with benefits?

:notbad:

Oh one of these must work

:ace:

:regd10:

Code Jockey posted:

Those Psygnosis covers are legendary but this, this is probably my favorite cover of all time. It's an incredibly good cover.

Yes. I feel like it is not even a contest. But I am admittedly biased.

There is a reason the sequel and the announced third game in the series pretty much just go "yeah, we are not going to top that, so here it is in a different environment."

# ¿ Nov 23, 2016 17:55

The Something Awful Forums > Main > Post Your Favorite: Carefully Curated > Tech Relics: Now integrating PIII processors for the wank factor.

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