• @[email protected]
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      9 days ago

      And the power switch was like KA-JUNK when you pushed it, because it was a big ol’ switch that actually physically connected and disconnected the power.

      “It’s now safe to turn off your computer” went away after we moved to software power control, where the operating system could signal the power supply to turn off.

      • @[email protected]
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        218 days ago

        I had my computer plugged into a power bar and we’d turn off the power bar to turn off the computer so that we wouldn’t wear out the switch on the computer.

        People actually thought you’d have a computer long enough to wear out its power switch.

      • @[email protected]
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        89 days ago

        I knew far, far too many people in HS that just hit the power button without actually shutting it down.

    • @[email protected]
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      169 days ago

      The one I remember best was having to use the DOS ‘park’ command before you shut down the PC. I guess I am that old.

      • Björn Tantau
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        8 days ago

        Huh, never ever seen that. We always used the rule "you can shutdown the computer when you can see the C:".

        What does park do? Put the HDD arm into a parked position? Never needed that for ours, but we also had a blazingly fast 486 with a massive 250 MB hdd.

        • @[email protected]
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          139 days ago

          Yeah, old drives didn’t autopark like the IDE drive in your spiffy 486. I had an XT growing up, and dad was militant about having us remember to park the drive when we were done with it. I think by the end of the 80s, all drives were IDE and were autoparking, so the command was deprecated.

          • @[email protected]
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            48 days ago

            I never had to do that, because our computer didn’t have a hard drive. We booted DOS right from the floppy.

          • @[email protected]
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            7 days ago

            Damn, I had a Tandy 1000HX (very much not a 486) and never had to do that. Maybe because, despite having a hard disk, it had DOS on its own ROM.

            • @[email protected]
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              17 days ago

              Cool, I’ve wanted an OS ROM chip since the early nineties, and often wondered why nobody seemed to be doing it. Guess they were all along!

              You technically didn’t have to park the old MFM and RLL drives, but if you didn’t, then you just had the drive heads resting on the platters after you shut them down. Then if you bumped or moved the PC at that time, it could scratch the disk like a record. If you never tried to move it, there probably wasn’t much risk.

              From the sound of it, the HDD in your Tandy probably would have been an MFM or RLL drive, and depending on the drive model, it either autoparked the drive heads or didn’t. As a PC clone running MS-DOS, the command was probably supported, but maybe not needed. Or you may have just been the equivalent of one of those rebels who held down the power button every time they wanted to shut down the PC and always got away with it!

      • @[email protected]
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        38 days ago

        I’m right there with ya. Don’t forget to make sure you set the interleaving correctly on your Winchester drive!

    • @[email protected]
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      27 days ago

      I had a friend who edited the .jpeg or whatever in the shutdown sequence to say “it is NOT safe to shut off your computer” and waited for his family to freak out.

      • @[email protected]
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        8 days ago

        1: You a veteran?

        2: Yes. No. I don’t wanna talk about it.

        Camera zooms in on 2, fades to montage:

        MiG 21 thundering overhead at tree top levels, while blasting ‘Hush’, which is being comically raised in pitch to squeaking chipmunk levels as it approaches, and then instantly downshifts by two octaves into quaalude voice after it passes overhead… it is being pursued by an f4 phantom who fires off all of his seeking missiles in a quick burst, all of which guide themselves into your convoy of m113s, as well as a nearby mortar emplacement

        squad is slowly advancing through Hue with no resistance thus far… and then suddenly, from 3 different directions, VC on mopeds, blasting ‘Surfin Bird’ and headbanging maniacally, rapidly approach the unit… 2 are shot, but one makes it through, moped detonates with the force of 4 bundles of TNT

        … rocket pod armed mi8s and hueys pieroutting around each other in the night sky, throwing unguided rockets everywhere, taking out ground bound friend and foe alike, both ultimately running out if ammo and then crashing into the ground sideways and upside down…

        Camera pops back to 2, slowly zooms out.

        2: … I don’t … don’t wanna talk about it.

      • @[email protected]
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        59 days ago

        Oh man, I found chip’s challenge again a few years back (it took forever because I couldn’t remember the name) but I totally forgot about rodent’s revenge!

    • NιƙƙιDιɱҽʂ
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      8 days ago

      Random tangent, my dad edited the system file that contained that message to “It’s not safe to turn off your computer” when I was like 5 and it kinda fucked me up for a bit.

  • Yerbouti
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    469 days ago

    I mean, I’m in my early 40s and I’ve started with ms-dos. According to this meme what am I? A fucking dinosaur? Am I that old?

    • no bananaOP
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      9 days ago

      In my early 30’s. Started with W95. But did dabble in dos sometimes

      • Farid
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        78 days ago

        Same, but then you severely undersold how old you are. Like, where’s the Space Cadet, at least?

        • caseyweederman
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          17 days ago

          On your phone, now. Somebody decompiled it and released it on the Google Play store.

          • Farid
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            27 days ago

            Yeah, I have it on Vita, Switch and Steam Deck. Cause why not. Wonder if it’s on 3DS…

            • caseyweederman
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              17 days ago

              Not reverse engineered. Decompiled and republished. It’s exactly the same one from the ground up.

              • Farid
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                27 days ago

                That’s nice. But it already seemed pretty accurate to me.

    • @[email protected]
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      69 days ago

      I remember playing a hotseat game with my friend and his brothers ( I think heroes of might and magic 2) and I accidentally big toed the power button, just like in this picture 😅

      Everyone was pretty gutted, although we then found out that autosave happened every turn, what a releif.

    • @[email protected]
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      49 days ago

      I’m in my late 20s and started with ms-dos too. And even tried OS/2 to check I wasn’t missing something before upgrading to 3.1 then XP 😂

    • @[email protected]
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      19 days ago

      We were born in the 80s. But people around me that are younger like to say I was born in the 1900s to make me feel extra special

      • Björn Tantau
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        9 days ago

        We had multiple games on our floppies. All pirated and with miles of paper printouts showing which games were on which floppy.

        I think we had two legitimately bought games.

        • @[email protected]
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          38 days ago

          Apparently we got our floppies for cheap because we just had a whole bunch of pirated floppies.

          Admittedly, some did have multiple games on them. That’s what LOAD"$",8 was for.

    • @[email protected]
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      69 days ago

      I still remember using Windows machine for the first time after only having a Commodore 64 and Nintendos. I specifically remember thinking it was dumb because it didn’t have a cartridge slot.

      • @[email protected]
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        39 days ago

        Haha! Now USB ports are sort of cartridge ports. Although I haven’t see a lot of software distributed on USB, there are some products.

    • Björn Tantau
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      29 days ago

      We actually had a C 128. But we always booted into C 64 mode because that had all the good games.

      The only 128 game we had was some super complicated stealth bomber flight simulator. The manual was cool though.

    • @[email protected]
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      18 days ago

      Did anyone here use the L shift +O shorthand for load? I feel like I never see it mentioned anywhere

  • cobysev
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    309 days ago

    What’s all this newfangled content being posted as old? My first computer had Windows 3.11 that you booted to from a command prompt. It was an amazing graphical upgrade from the command line computers. Now you could actually see what you were doing on the screen instead of typing commands and hoping a document would print with your data.

    Before that, I used Apple IIe computers at school, with their solidly green command line interface. I remember being taught how to program instructions with those computers. You had a “turtle” (green triangle) that you needed to move to a specific spot on the screen, and you typed in commands to make him move.

    Whatever content is in this meme, it all released long after I grew up and became an adult. You young whippersnappers.

    • @[email protected]
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      138 days ago

      Millennials are now “old” by internet standards, so Gen X and older are positively ancient.

      • @[email protected]
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        78 days ago

        I’m an elder Millennial, and I remember when we got old enough to use the 386 machines at school. Before that we were using DOS.

        Our first home computer was bought second hand and didn’t even have a hard drive, just two 5.25" floppy drives, and also ran DOS. We’d have kids from the entire neighborhood visit to play games on it, because although it was second hand it was also very rare to have one.

        I was 12 when Windows 95 came out. All this stuff looks waay newer than that. I’d say this draws the line for old at the older part of Gen Z. Millennials aren’t even on the scale.

        • @[email protected]
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          58 days ago

          The oldest Millennials are 44 now, and the term is still sometimes used to mean “young people.” But only by older people.

        • @[email protected]
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          8 days ago

          Are you also a member of the ‘Oregon Trail and Number Munchers on the school computer lab’s Apple II’s’ club?

          Along with like… KidPix, lol?

          Or am I a bit younger than you?

    • lechekaflan
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      98 days ago

      You had a “turtle” (green triangle) that you needed to move to a specific spot on the screen, and you typed in commands to make him move.

      Ah. LOGO.

      • cobysev
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        28 days ago

        Oh man! I had no clue what the program was called. We used it way back in my kindergarten/1st grade days, so I’d long forgotten the specifics. Thank you! This is exactly it.