IT BS thread

i haven't looked that far into it, not sure i want to.

 

LOL.

 

I seem to remember OS/2 came on a huge number of floppies (25). It could be up to 39 if you ordered bonus pack. You could buy it in 5.25" format or 3.5". Most of them we're just before CD-ROMs became mainstream. I remember being awed at my room mates 2x CDROM (used cd caddies). I also remember downloading Redhat linux on my 2400b modem. It took a month.

MS Office 4.3 had about 40 floppies.

 

installing ubuntu on my mac in virtual box.

 

I honestly didn't think anyone manufactured those anymore.

 

Recent flavor Ubuntu is fun. I've slowly gotten used to it since the whole Unity thing went in (I was a big user through 9.x). I still don't like it very much, but I can at least use it.

Mint is another nice one. Occasionally there are BIG headache bugs (like the massive USB file transfer memory boondoggle), but overall is a NICE low-end desktop to futz with. A lot easier than Unity Ubuntu.

 

Just last week I had to identify a Zip Drive for someone, and was asked if we still should keep it . There's still weird stuff out there.

 

I was sorting through a box of "must keep stuff" at a customer's site the other day and came across Windows 95 packing and media still in the wrapper. I thought I had a picture but I guess it is on my old phone.

 

Heyyyy, this thread loots awesome!

I'm an IT assistant to the IT specialist where I work. Pretty much all I do right now, and I love it, like an internship for me. Nice thread!

some links for you guys

http://www.superuser.com/
http://www.serverfault.com/

 

Ah, this thread is taking me back . . .

I used OS/2 while I was going through school, I remember all the floppies. I loved it, was sad to see it fail, but I blame that on poor marketing.

I downloaded Slackware Linux via Compuserve and had a dual-boot machine, but the CD drive wouldn't work under Linux -- the CD drive was the old Panasonic proprietary interface connected to the sound card, before they were all IDE/ATAPI or whatever.

I upgraded my video card to 1024KB memory by adding one of those old big chips that looks like a caterpillar. Now you can get 64GB on a chip smaller than my thumbnail.

I think I still have some zip drives and disks in a box somewhere. Along with a ton of other crap. I need to make a robot.

Ah, good times.

 

I still have a small stack of floppies and a couple drives somewhere. The mainboard I have doesn't even have a connecter for a floppy drive (or IDE). I remember having an ISA card that was a giant memory board, probably out of an 8086 if I remember correctly.

 

Yeah, I remember those memory boards. We used those in Novell "servers." For a while I had a high-end ISA vision board worth $8K, but I couldn't sell it because it ran licensed software loaded on a ROM. Gave it to a buddy that had a use for it.

I may still have an old Hayes 9600 ISA modem (with DIP switches to set the IRQ, gotta set the IRQ right to avoid IRQ conflicts!). Better than those crappy Winmodems they came out with that never worked right.

My kids complained about lag when I switched to AT&T Uverse. I remember tweaking Team Fortress (Classic) running it over a modem. Lag? Really? Switched back to cable anyway.

 

I owned it as well. I think their biggest fail was their development kits. They wanted to charge developers excessive amounts for the kit (about $3000). As a result no one made apps for it or the apps that did exist were very expensive.

I finally gave up on it when OS/2 Professional magazine declared Word For Windows 6.0 the best word processor for OS/2. I thought, well if that's the best, I should just go back to Windows. Plus, games didn't run well on it without major tweaking.

 

Think I started with a 14.4K modem. I have old parts lying around. Just found a Vibra16 and a 56.6K modem blaster lol.

Got memory? There's probably less than 2GB sitting there.

 

What sucked is downloading & being 4 hours into the download & lose connection. Then having to start over. Before the days of being able to pick up where the download left off. I was downloading Netscape & after 3 attempts said fuckit & ordered the floppies.

 

I started with the IBM XT. I went from a 2400b modem to a 14.4K modem. It was amazing the speed difference. Then I bought a 40mb SCSI hard drive and a Stacker compression card which doubled it to 80. My buddies and I used to compare machines and boast when we got new hardware. We called it the arms race. I remember my friend spending his $500 bonus on a 100 meg drive.

On the XT you put in the chips individually. I think it was like 24 chips to expand it from 256k to 640k. You had to be careful not to bend the prongs or put them in backwards.

 

alt text: "Before you say anything, no, I know not to leave my computer sitting out logged in to all my accounts. I have it set up so after a few minutes of inactivity it automatically switches to my brother's."

 

My first machine was an IBM. 12mhz, 1024K of RAM, 10MB HDD, 3.5" floppy drive, 256 color VGA monitor with MS-DOS and Windows 3.1. The mainboard was shaped like a giant expansion card.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=WEKhJ3CYWz4

 

That was cute....