Dude, you're getting a Dell!
April 6, 2020 8:06 PM Subscribe
Oh man, look at all those Pro Audio Spectrum sound cards! I bought one back in 95 or 96 because I fell for some marketing hype about it. And it forever gave me trouble trying to set it up for Sound Blaster compatibility. But it did have some good MIDI synthesized instruments.
Judging by the stock in that store, no one else made the same mistake I did.
posted by thewumpusisdead at 9:01 PM on April 6, 2020 [3 favorites]
Judging by the stock in that store, no one else made the same mistake I did.
posted by thewumpusisdead at 9:01 PM on April 6, 2020 [3 favorites]
Yeah, if it was a guitar shop from 1975 or a synthesizer shop from 1989 it would contain priceless treasures. But a computer shop from 2001? Maybe enough scrap metal to pay the hazardous waste disposal fees for the CRTs...
posted by mmoncur at 9:02 PM on April 6, 2020 [16 favorites]
posted by mmoncur at 9:02 PM on April 6, 2020 [16 favorites]
One assumes the plants are plastic- decent facsimile of a dieffenbachia and an alocasia however.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 9:06 PM on April 6, 2020 [7 favorites]
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 9:06 PM on April 6, 2020 [7 favorites]
No no, literally a gold mine
posted by mbo at 9:06 PM on April 6, 2020 [15 favorites]
posted by mbo at 9:06 PM on April 6, 2020 [15 favorites]
This seems like it would have been a golden opportunity to just lease that location -- as is, where is -- and rehabilitate that store as practically and cheaply as possible and just quietly and unironically open it up again to see what happens.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 9:11 PM on April 6, 2020 [46 favorites]
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 9:11 PM on April 6, 2020 [46 favorites]
One man's nostalgia is another man's refuse...
posted by jim in austin at 9:27 PM on April 6, 2020
posted by jim in austin at 9:27 PM on April 6, 2020
Brilliant, mandolin conspiracy. I'd volunteer to travel to Oklahoma to put in a few volunteer weekend shifts behind the counter.
The idea of buying anything computer related in a store is more surprising to me today than it ought to be. Somehow, I don't have any nostalgia for computer stores. Most of the ones I visited around the time of this store were awful and full of bad products and worse information. Except Fry's, which was both awful and magical, and an amazing surplus store that mostly sold industrial hardware from the '80s along with some random computer stuff. But, if I map this onto the way I feel about electronics component stores, I can definitely understand why this is fun.
posted by eotvos at 9:37 PM on April 6, 2020 [2 favorites]
The idea of buying anything computer related in a store is more surprising to me today than it ought to be. Somehow, I don't have any nostalgia for computer stores. Most of the ones I visited around the time of this store were awful and full of bad products and worse information. Except Fry's, which was both awful and magical, and an amazing surplus store that mostly sold industrial hardware from the '80s along with some random computer stuff. But, if I map this onto the way I feel about electronics component stores, I can definitely understand why this is fun.
posted by eotvos at 9:37 PM on April 6, 2020 [2 favorites]
I don't completely understand the nostalgia for that era of computing. Insecure operating systems not ready for the internet (but connecting to it anyway). CRTs, Windows 98, optical media. Parallel ports, IDE, jumper pins. Bleh. More than anything it reminds me of the headaches of my early career.
80s computers like the C64 and Amiga, on the other hand...
posted by Pruitt-Igoe at 9:37 PM on April 6, 2020 [11 favorites]
80s computers like the C64 and Amiga, on the other hand...
posted by Pruitt-Igoe at 9:37 PM on April 6, 2020 [11 favorites]
The nostalgia probably only kicks in if you were between 11 to 15 years old in 2001.
posted by BungaDunga at 10:00 PM on April 6, 2020 [16 favorites]
posted by BungaDunga at 10:00 PM on April 6, 2020 [16 favorites]
80s computers like the C64 and Amiga, on the other hand...
This place is a true Aladdin's cave.
posted by KirkpatrickMac at 10:27 PM on April 6, 2020 [2 favorites]
This place is a true Aladdin's cave.
posted by KirkpatrickMac at 10:27 PM on April 6, 2020 [2 favorites]
This reminded me to check how the Olympia Milk Bar was doing. Sadly, it closed last year.
posted by zamboni at 10:36 PM on April 6, 2020
posted by zamboni at 10:36 PM on April 6, 2020
My nostalgia for Gateway 2000 comes from having gone in one of their stores in the late 90s and seeing two things that impressed me: a DVD player (IIRC, it was playing Space Jam), which seemed to have truly remarkable detail compared to a VHS player, and a black-and-white leather jacket in that random-blob Holstein pattern that they slapped on their boxes. I definitely wanted the DVD player (and maybe even some movies to go in it) and might have gone for the jacket if I had that kind of money, which I really didn't.
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:41 PM on April 6, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:41 PM on April 6, 2020 [1 favorite]
Insecure operating systems not ready for the internet (but connecting to it anyway).
Plus ça change.
posted by Cardinal Fang at 10:56 PM on April 6, 2020 [14 favorites]
Plus ça change.
posted by Cardinal Fang at 10:56 PM on April 6, 2020 [14 favorites]
Go to the back room and find the computers that were being repaired when the place went bankrupt.
Call the original owners. “Yeah Bob here from PC Micro, we couldn’t get the Pentium III 800 Coppermine chip in for your upgrade from *checks records*....err 2001, but I have a hot new VIA Cyrix III 1000 that is also socket 370 compatible. VIA chips will be the future! Should we go ahead and schedule you in for it? Should only be a few more days......just fax us before you come in or send us an electronic mail to pcmicrostore682@compuserve.com”
posted by inflatablekiwi at 11:17 PM on April 6, 2020 [38 favorites]
Call the original owners. “Yeah Bob here from PC Micro, we couldn’t get the Pentium III 800 Coppermine chip in for your upgrade from *checks records*....err 2001, but I have a hot new VIA Cyrix III 1000 that is also socket 370 compatible. VIA chips will be the future! Should we go ahead and schedule you in for it? Should only be a few more days......just fax us before you come in or send us an electronic mail to pcmicrostore682@compuserve.com”
posted by inflatablekiwi at 11:17 PM on April 6, 2020 [38 favorites]
To be honest it's a little bit surprising nobody's burgled it for the copper wire in all those CRT monitors...
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 11:20 PM on April 6, 2020 [5 favorites]
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 11:20 PM on April 6, 2020 [5 favorites]
Sea of beige cases
... Is my new sockpuppet name.
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:25 PM on April 6, 2020 [6 favorites]
... Is my new sockpuppet name.
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:25 PM on April 6, 2020 [6 favorites]
The idea of buying anything computer related in a store is more surprising to me today than it ought to be.
I was in small-town New Zealand at Christmas and very intrigued by this computer shop, but it was closed and I couldn't see through the window well enough to get a sense of whether it was similarly time capsuled. I assume pretty much any in-person computer shop nowadays is going to be a bit quirky.
posted by lollusc at 11:41 PM on April 6, 2020 [1 favorite]
I was in small-town New Zealand at Christmas and very intrigued by this computer shop, but it was closed and I couldn't see through the window well enough to get a sense of whether it was similarly time capsuled. I assume pretty much any in-person computer shop nowadays is going to be a bit quirky.
posted by lollusc at 11:41 PM on April 6, 2020 [1 favorite]
I've got a 1980 TRS-80. I should probably give it to someone who can take care of it better than the back of my closet.
Also: Anyone else remember Computer Shopper Magazine?
posted by symbioid at 11:44 PM on April 6, 2020 [9 favorites]
Also: Anyone else remember Computer Shopper Magazine?
posted by symbioid at 11:44 PM on April 6, 2020 [9 favorites]
pcmicrostore682@compuserve.com
I dunno man, that username isn't octal.
posted by mikelieman at 12:34 AM on April 7, 2020 [5 favorites]
I dunno man, that username isn't octal.
posted by mikelieman at 12:34 AM on April 7, 2020 [5 favorites]
Oh god I was tech support working in a shop just like that in 2001. *has flashback about Windows ME, develops tic in left eye*
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 1:09 AM on April 7, 2020 [13 favorites]
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 1:09 AM on April 7, 2020 [13 favorites]
→ Anyone else remember Computer Shopper Magazine?
The Internet Archive does.
I'm not quite there with the nostalgia for 20 year old PCs 'cos I'm old and only 8-bits matter. But I can attest to the resale value of certain CRTs, especially ones with wide analogue inputs. The Apple IIgs colour monitor is oddly valuable, mainly because the only other ways to make a IIgs not look like crap involve $200 custom FPGA boxes. There's also a small Sony broadcast video monitor that was used by the hundreds in local television that's pretty much the gold standard for low-latency gaming. But I have no love for the CRT: there's one in my Mac Classic II, and that's about the limit.
posted by scruss at 1:12 AM on April 7, 2020 [6 favorites]
The Internet Archive does.
I'm not quite there with the nostalgia for 20 year old PCs 'cos I'm old and only 8-bits matter. But I can attest to the resale value of certain CRTs, especially ones with wide analogue inputs. The Apple IIgs colour monitor is oddly valuable, mainly because the only other ways to make a IIgs not look like crap involve $200 custom FPGA boxes. There's also a small Sony broadcast video monitor that was used by the hundreds in local television that's pretty much the gold standard for low-latency gaming. But I have no love for the CRT: there's one in my Mac Classic II, and that's about the limit.
posted by scruss at 1:12 AM on April 7, 2020 [6 favorites]
Yeah, if it was a guitar shop from 1975 or a synthesizer shop from 1989 it would contain priceless treasures.
The guitar shop, sure, guitars today are broadly the same as they were in the 70s, but the 80s synths are just as niche and only for enthusiasts as the 90s computers.
I say that as someone who considers all of these pretty damn cool, but would pick the synths or guitars over the computer any day of the week.
posted by Dysk at 1:51 AM on April 7, 2020 [3 favorites]
The guitar shop, sure, guitars today are broadly the same as they were in the 70s, but the 80s synths are just as niche and only for enthusiasts as the 90s computers.
I say that as someone who considers all of these pretty damn cool, but would pick the synths or guitars over the computer any day of the week.
posted by Dysk at 1:51 AM on April 7, 2020 [3 favorites]
I’d love to have a few of those. A while back I got my hands on a copy of the first Red Hat release, but couldn’t get it going under virtualization (even with an assist from someone on the kvm team). Would love to have an old machine that could run it and other stuff that doesn’t run well in virtualization or emulation.
posted by jzb at 2:08 AM on April 7, 2020
posted by jzb at 2:08 AM on April 7, 2020
This brought back some heavy nostalgia. The very first website I made 'professionally' was for a computer store in Oklahoma a year or two before this shop closed. 'Professionally' because I was a teenager and for my efforts they mailed me a beautiful beige box with the latest video card so that I could play massively multiplayer online games with less lag. Thanks for the memories and inspiring the next 20 years of my life, Oklahoma computer shop!
posted by romanb at 2:14 AM on April 7, 2020 [8 favorites]
posted by romanb at 2:14 AM on April 7, 2020 [8 favorites]
I dunno man, that username isn't octal.
7xxxx,xx
But once they added that SMTP gateway to the Internet, I think they swapped out the comma for a period?
posted by bcd at 2:21 AM on April 7, 2020
7xxxx,xx
But once they added that SMTP gateway to the Internet, I think they swapped out the comma for a period?
posted by bcd at 2:21 AM on April 7, 2020
Why does this feel different to looking at photos of a recently closed down computer store that were taken in 2001?
posted by McNulty at 2:55 AM on April 7, 2020
posted by McNulty at 2:55 AM on April 7, 2020
I don't completely understand the nostalgia for that era of computing. Insecure operating systems not ready for the internet (but connecting to it anyway). CRTs, Windows 98, optical media. Parallel ports, IDE, jumper pins. Bleh. More than anything it reminds me of the headaches of my early career.
The sense of potential and of wonder. I remember how excited I was the first time I bought a CD-ROM drive. It was so amazing, that you could use these disks with so much information. The mechanical action was so pleasing. The future felt so nice, and non-threatening, and increasingly affordable.
posted by trig at 3:00 AM on April 7, 2020 [23 favorites]
The sense of potential and of wonder. I remember how excited I was the first time I bought a CD-ROM drive. It was so amazing, that you could use these disks with so much information. The mechanical action was so pleasing. The future felt so nice, and non-threatening, and increasingly affordable.
posted by trig at 3:00 AM on April 7, 2020 [23 favorites]
> I don't completely understand the nostalgia for that era of computing. [...] 80s computers like the C64 and Amiga, on the other hand...
In 2001, the C64 and Amiga were only good for scrap and for jokes about connectivity.
Give the stuff in that computer store another 10 years and it'll be somebody's retirement fund.
posted by ardgedee at 3:35 AM on April 7, 2020 [2 favorites]
In 2001, the C64 and Amiga were only good for scrap and for jokes about connectivity.
Give the stuff in that computer store another 10 years and it'll be somebody's retirement fund.
posted by ardgedee at 3:35 AM on April 7, 2020 [2 favorites]
Here's the top of the Twitter thread and the Reddit thread where the person who took the photos describes what he found.
posted by ardgedee at 3:50 AM on April 7, 2020 [3 favorites]
posted by ardgedee at 3:50 AM on April 7, 2020 [3 favorites]
In my neighbourhood in Vancouver BC, a somewhat beaten down area until we were over run by 4 story empty mixed use condos in the last decade there is a computer store like this. I think it has been closed for at least 12 years. When I walk past everything is coated in dust and the hand drawn signs notifying Canada Post still hang in the front door.
I have no idea what happened, or why the store is still there, but in a very odd way I find it quite reassuring.
That is all.
posted by Phlegmco(tm) at 4:01 AM on April 7, 2020 [2 favorites]
I have no idea what happened, or why the store is still there, but in a very odd way I find it quite reassuring.
That is all.
posted by Phlegmco(tm) at 4:01 AM on April 7, 2020 [2 favorites]
Why does this feel different to looking at photos of a recently closed down computer store that were taken in 2001?
We’re 20 years older.
posted by mhoye at 5:33 AM on April 7, 2020 [2 favorites]
We’re 20 years older.
posted by mhoye at 5:33 AM on April 7, 2020 [2 favorites]
Give me a guitar shop from the early pre-Britannia 60s. Should be some fine untouched Les Pauls, Teles, and Strats.
posted by Ber at 6:32 AM on April 7, 2020
posted by Ber at 6:32 AM on April 7, 2020
Huh, this shop is on my old weekend bike route. Never noticed it before, but then again, it's on a section of road that's a bit terrifying to ride on, and your tank is empty from fighting a headwind for 20 miles, so your attention is not exactly on the scenery...
posted by suckerpunch at 6:33 AM on April 7, 2020
posted by suckerpunch at 6:33 AM on April 7, 2020
Good lord now I'm remembering my teenage years playing FMV (full motion video) games on CD-ROM on a Win95 machine where I would reboot directly into DOS and run the exe that way, otherwise I'd get IRQ conflicts and the video wouldn't have any sound.
You really had to want to play videogames back then, if you didn't have a console.
posted by Automocar at 7:07 AM on April 7, 2020 [7 favorites]
You really had to want to play videogames back then, if you didn't have a console.
posted by Automocar at 7:07 AM on April 7, 2020 [7 favorites]
My home test server is a dell from 1998, running windows 2000. IE 6 on it boots faster than any web browser on my brand new work laptop, so it still has its pluses, though I don't use it browse the actual internet.
Excel 2000, Word 2000, et all are still perfectly fine for the work I do at home. The hard drive is 37 gigs. I have a 30 gig USB stick plugged into a tv, so my tv almost has as much storage as a computer.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:20 AM on April 7, 2020 [1 favorite]
Excel 2000, Word 2000, et all are still perfectly fine for the work I do at home. The hard drive is 37 gigs. I have a 30 gig USB stick plugged into a tv, so my tv almost has as much storage as a computer.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:20 AM on April 7, 2020 [1 favorite]
Proud owner of both a Gateway 2000 (386sx/16, circa 1990) and later on a Pro Audio Spectrum 16.
The PAS16 was a fantastic card! It was one of the first that could sample and play back CD-quality audio. And it had a built in SCSI controller for a CD-ROM drive.
I mean, it wasn't as cool as a Gravis Ultrasound, but it was solid hardware.
posted by CaseyB at 7:28 AM on April 7, 2020 [3 favorites]
The PAS16 was a fantastic card! It was one of the first that could sample and play back CD-quality audio. And it had a built in SCSI controller for a CD-ROM drive.
I mean, it wasn't as cool as a Gravis Ultrasound, but it was solid hardware.
posted by CaseyB at 7:28 AM on April 7, 2020 [3 favorites]
"What a gold mine" says one commenter in the second link, flatly contradicting the indisputable reality that just about all of the defunct (and notably un-burgled) store's stock is functionally useless and worth nothing to any but a small number of rabid enthusiasts.
Believe it or not, those rabid enthusiasts of 90s-era PCs buy old gear. And there’s more of them than one might think. YouTube channels like LGR obsess about vintage PCs and have large followings with videos getting over a million views. Prices on old computer gear from the 90s are actually steadily rising.
For example, those Pro Audio Spectrum cards In the third image? Looks like they go for $60-$75 on eBay, for bare cards. So do the Windows Sound System cards next to it. Complete in box stuff can go for a lot more. Complete used Gateway 2000 486 machines sell for $200-$300, and there’s a pile of them there. Now, that’s not a ton of money but the contents of this shop are certainly far from worthless.
posted by zsazsa at 7:33 AM on April 7, 2020 [4 favorites]
Believe it or not, those rabid enthusiasts of 90s-era PCs buy old gear. And there’s more of them than one might think. YouTube channels like LGR obsess about vintage PCs and have large followings with videos getting over a million views. Prices on old computer gear from the 90s are actually steadily rising.
For example, those Pro Audio Spectrum cards In the third image? Looks like they go for $60-$75 on eBay, for bare cards. So do the Windows Sound System cards next to it. Complete in box stuff can go for a lot more. Complete used Gateway 2000 486 machines sell for $200-$300, and there’s a pile of them there. Now, that’s not a ton of money but the contents of this shop are certainly far from worthless.
posted by zsazsa at 7:33 AM on April 7, 2020 [4 favorites]
CRTs, Windows 98, optical media. Parallel ports, IDE, jumper pins.
A large part of the appeal was that making a computer work in this era was somewhere between solving puzzles and tinkering with your car (if you were into that). You had to figure out how to make a system work while keeping track of things like connectors and IRQ levels and memory locations and ports and everything...and if you did everything right, at the end of it you had a nice, smoothly-running machine that you'd tuned with your own hands.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 7:35 AM on April 7, 2020 [14 favorites]
A large part of the appeal was that making a computer work in this era was somewhere between solving puzzles and tinkering with your car (if you were into that). You had to figure out how to make a system work while keeping track of things like connectors and IRQ levels and memory locations and ports and everything...and if you did everything right, at the end of it you had a nice, smoothly-running machine that you'd tuned with your own hands.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 7:35 AM on April 7, 2020 [14 favorites]
Believe it or not, those rabid enthusiasts of 90s-era PCs buy old gear.
It’s not just enthusiasts. There are a bunch of companies and governments with old embedded systems that they need to just keep running and are sourcing parts on eBay. Hell, the US Air Force was using 8” floppies until last year.
posted by jmauro at 7:43 AM on April 7, 2020 [1 favorite]
It’s not just enthusiasts. There are a bunch of companies and governments with old embedded systems that they need to just keep running and are sourcing parts on eBay. Hell, the US Air Force was using 8” floppies until last year.
posted by jmauro at 7:43 AM on April 7, 2020 [1 favorite]
>and if you did everything right, at the end of it you had a nice, smoothly-running machine that you'd tuned with your own hands
And THEN you could hit the Turbo button and really take off!
posted by mikelieman at 7:44 AM on April 7, 2020 [8 favorites]
And THEN you could hit the Turbo button and really take off!
posted by mikelieman at 7:44 AM on April 7, 2020 [8 favorites]
There are a bunch of companies and governments with old embedded systems that they need to just keep running and are sourcing parts on eBay. Hell, the US Air Force was using 8” floppies until last year.
In 1994, I had a job where some equipment was controlled by an original IBM PC; as in, two floppy drives, one for the program and one for the Disk Operating System. For all I know, they are still running it.
posted by thelonius at 7:51 AM on April 7, 2020 [1 favorite]
In 1994, I had a job where some equipment was controlled by an original IBM PC; as in, two floppy drives, one for the program and one for the Disk Operating System. For all I know, they are still running it.
posted by thelonius at 7:51 AM on April 7, 2020 [1 favorite]
Parallel ports? Jumpers?
Yo, this was Windows 98. We had USB and Plug-and-Pray. All those weird IRQ problems were solv
posted by Huffy Puffy at 7:59 AM on April 7, 2020 [13 favorites]
Yo, this was Windows 98. We had USB and Plug-and-Pray. All those weird IRQ problems were solv
posted by Huffy Puffy at 7:59 AM on April 7, 2020 [13 favorites]
And THEN you could hit the Turbo button and really take off!
Fun fact, the Turbo button usually actually slowed the PC down rather than speeding it up! It was a way for newer, faster-clocked PCs to run things that took their timing straight off the CPU clock correctly, by effectively underclocking the CPU. Without it, some older games would just run too fast and be really hard or impossible to play.
posted by Dysk at 8:12 AM on April 7, 2020 [8 favorites]
Fun fact, the Turbo button usually actually slowed the PC down rather than speeding it up! It was a way for newer, faster-clocked PCs to run things that took their timing straight off the CPU clock correctly, by effectively underclocking the CPU. Without it, some older games would just run too fast and be really hard or impossible to play.
posted by Dysk at 8:12 AM on April 7, 2020 [8 favorites]
Mr. Bad Example:
A large part of the appeal was that making a computer work in this era was somewhere between solving puzzles and tinkering with your car (if you were into that). You had to figure out how to make a system work while keeping track of things like connectors and IRQ levels and memory locations and ports and everything...and if you did everything right, at the end of it you had a nice, smoothly-running machine that you'd tuned with your own hands.
Multiply that x1000 if you wanted to run NeXTSTEP/OpenStep. You had to have a particular SCSI card, a SCSI hard drive, a SCSI CD drive, and a particular very expensive sound card that had the Motorola 56k DSP for sound generation (if you wanted to do fun stuff with the music libraries). Oh, and the software only ran on the Pentium Pro processor. I still have a Gateway tower configured like that buried in my storeroom.
posted by Surely This at 8:24 AM on April 7, 2020 [8 favorites]
A large part of the appeal was that making a computer work in this era was somewhere between solving puzzles and tinkering with your car (if you were into that). You had to figure out how to make a system work while keeping track of things like connectors and IRQ levels and memory locations and ports and everything...and if you did everything right, at the end of it you had a nice, smoothly-running machine that you'd tuned with your own hands.
Multiply that x1000 if you wanted to run NeXTSTEP/OpenStep. You had to have a particular SCSI card, a SCSI hard drive, a SCSI CD drive, and a particular very expensive sound card that had the Motorola 56k DSP for sound generation (if you wanted to do fun stuff with the music libraries). Oh, and the software only ran on the Pentium Pro processor. I still have a Gateway tower configured like that buried in my storeroom.
posted by Surely This at 8:24 AM on April 7, 2020 [8 favorites]
it wasn't as cool as a Gravis Ultrasound
Sound Blaster AWE 32 FTW!
Mainly because of the multiple DACs and hardware mixing. On pre-PulseAudio Linux, it meant multiple programs could use the sound device at the same time!!!! Just open /dev/audio and away you go!
Before that, I'd have to exit my audio player to do use anything else that did sound. But with the AWE, the tunes (MP3s ripped from my CDs) kept flowing.
posted by suetanvil at 8:53 AM on April 7, 2020 [2 favorites]
Sound Blaster AWE 32 FTW!
Mainly because of the multiple DACs and hardware mixing. On pre-PulseAudio Linux, it meant multiple programs could use the sound device at the same time!!!! Just open /dev/audio and away you go!
Before that, I'd have to exit my audio player to do use anything else that did sound. But with the AWE, the tunes (MP3s ripped from my CDs) kept flowing.
posted by suetanvil at 8:53 AM on April 7, 2020 [2 favorites]
Anyone else remember Computer Shopper Magazine?
Oh yes indeed, I built my first PC using parts bought through ads in that mag!
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:53 AM on April 7, 2020 [1 favorite]
Oh yes indeed, I built my first PC using parts bought through ads in that mag!
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:53 AM on April 7, 2020 [1 favorite]
Hell, the US Air Force was using 8” floppies until last year.
I used to keep a 3.5" and 8" floppy in the office til they got lost in a spring cleaning. Give an "IT curious" student the 3.5" floppy to see if they recognise it - sometimes they spot that it's same shape as that weird save icon in some programs (such as office). Then you tell them it's a floppy disk we used to save files onto, despite being hard. Then as their face crinkles in further confusion you give them the 8" which is *actually* floppy and tell them that's where the name came from. Then you casually mention you used to run your first computer entirely off two of those (no hard drive) and it's about 100,000 times smaller than the space on your smart phone.
For them, computers in the 80's and 90's is probably about as foreign as trying to imagine what using punch cards was like for gen Xers. I can't even imagine the technological wonders we might have in another 20 years.
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 8:55 AM on April 7, 2020 [6 favorites]
I used to keep a 3.5" and 8" floppy in the office til they got lost in a spring cleaning. Give an "IT curious" student the 3.5" floppy to see if they recognise it - sometimes they spot that it's same shape as that weird save icon in some programs (such as office). Then you tell them it's a floppy disk we used to save files onto, despite being hard. Then as their face crinkles in further confusion you give them the 8" which is *actually* floppy and tell them that's where the name came from. Then you casually mention you used to run your first computer entirely off two of those (no hard drive) and it's about 100,000 times smaller than the space on your smart phone.
For them, computers in the 80's and 90's is probably about as foreign as trying to imagine what using punch cards was like for gen Xers. I can't even imagine the technological wonders we might have in another 20 years.
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 8:55 AM on April 7, 2020 [6 favorites]
I bought a Gateway in 2006 as a college graduation present for myself. It was a top of the line gaming tower from Best Buy that kept up with benchmarks for quite a while - I want to say 5 or 6 years. I actually still have the monitor that it came bundled with, which is still running strong 14 years later. I loved that machine...
posted by codacorolla at 8:55 AM on April 7, 2020 [3 favorites]
posted by codacorolla at 8:55 AM on April 7, 2020 [3 favorites]
We simplify the past when we enter nostalgia mode.
We simplify away the dot com bubble, the selection of a popular vote losing president, the Enron scandal. We simplify away the bad fall day in New York that ultimately started a multi-front war we're still fighting, and the surveillance state that those events both revealed and accelerated.
We look at the shop full of crap computers and remember small, human scale problems we could actually solve.
posted by Western Infidels at 9:18 AM on April 7, 2020 [10 favorites]
We simplify away the dot com bubble, the selection of a popular vote losing president, the Enron scandal. We simplify away the bad fall day in New York that ultimately started a multi-front war we're still fighting, and the surveillance state that those events both revealed and accelerated.
We look at the shop full of crap computers and remember small, human scale problems we could actually solve.
posted by Western Infidels at 9:18 AM on April 7, 2020 [10 favorites]
god forbid that people should spend a little time thinking about old tech and not all the dire things that went on 20 years ago, especially at a time when we're all sitting around home scared that a deadly disease might get at us
how could we?
posted by pyramid termite at 9:29 AM on April 7, 2020 [18 favorites]
how could we?
posted by pyramid termite at 9:29 AM on April 7, 2020 [18 favorites]
One assumes the plants are plastic- decent facsimile of a dieffenbachia and an alocasia however.
There is a fighting chance, given the current house plant craze, that a Reddit famous fake house plant could be the most valuable thing in there.
posted by inflatablekiwi at 9:34 AM on April 7, 2020 [1 favorite]
There is a fighting chance, given the current house plant craze, that a Reddit famous fake house plant could be the most valuable thing in there.
posted by inflatablekiwi at 9:34 AM on April 7, 2020 [1 favorite]
Anyone else remember Computer Shopper Magazine?
Wasn't it like a huuuuge catalog? 200+ pages? Mostly endless advertising?
I pored over ever page, trying to glean what's an important detail and what's chaff, until I finally saved all my summer job money and bought a 100MHz Packard Bell with a 28.8 modem. Win95. Roller-ball mouse. 15" CRT.
Bought it from Montgomery Ward.
posted by spikeleemajortomdickandharryconnickjrmints at 10:45 AM on April 7, 2020 [2 favorites]
Wasn't it like a huuuuge catalog? 200+ pages? Mostly endless advertising?
I pored over ever page, trying to glean what's an important detail and what's chaff, until I finally saved all my summer job money and bought a 100MHz Packard Bell with a 28.8 modem. Win95. Roller-ball mouse. 15" CRT.
Bought it from Montgomery Ward.
posted by spikeleemajortomdickandharryconnickjrmints at 10:45 AM on April 7, 2020 [2 favorites]
Plus ça change.
It's happening now with IoT and "smart" devices. They're slowly learning the same lessons that PCs and phones have had to.
if you did everything right, at the end of it you had a nice, smoothly-running machine that you'd tuned with your own hands.
I get it, and I put together my first PC from parts somewhere around 1995-97. But I guess I don't long for that feeling 25 years later. Maybe the difference is that I'm a Mac Person now.
posted by Pruitt-Igoe at 11:29 AM on April 7, 2020
It's happening now with IoT and "smart" devices. They're slowly learning the same lessons that PCs and phones have had to.
if you did everything right, at the end of it you had a nice, smoothly-running machine that you'd tuned with your own hands.
I get it, and I put together my first PC from parts somewhere around 1995-97. But I guess I don't long for that feeling 25 years later. Maybe the difference is that I'm a Mac Person now.
posted by Pruitt-Igoe at 11:29 AM on April 7, 2020
There's actually a growing faction of gamers who are going back to CRTs for modern games. This would totally be a goldmine for them.
posted by thebots at 11:52 AM on April 7, 2020
posted by thebots at 11:52 AM on April 7, 2020
There's some kind of AOL store in Cambridge MA (Central Sq) that is probably a time capsule of this sort, with the added weirdness of when would anyone have ever gone to an AOL store?
posted by joeyh at 11:53 AM on April 7, 2020
posted by joeyh at 11:53 AM on April 7, 2020
those computer shoppers at archive.org were the latter day small ones - in the mid 90s they were 600-800 pages long and much taller and wider than ordinary magazines - the advertising in them was state of the art, over the top - i think professionals in the print and ad industries kept them around just to check out what the big guys were doing with layout
the web killed it off, of course
back around 2000 i was building my own computers, too - back then it was extremely cost-effective to buy the parts separately and put them together yourself - unless you're going for real bleeding edge stuff, it really isn't worth the hassle now, not when you can buy functional machines, mostly laptops, for anywhere from 40-200 bucks (or way old or broken ones for 5 10 bucks - i have two that i managed to get working for that price)
at that time, i was online with linux, as going online with win98 was a horrible thing - i don't think i had major virus problems but the damned thing would crash on a near daily basis - windows me and 2000 weren't any better - it wasn't until XP that microsoft came up with something that was actually usable and stable
posted by pyramid termite at 11:54 AM on April 7, 2020 [5 favorites]
the web killed it off, of course
back around 2000 i was building my own computers, too - back then it was extremely cost-effective to buy the parts separately and put them together yourself - unless you're going for real bleeding edge stuff, it really isn't worth the hassle now, not when you can buy functional machines, mostly laptops, for anywhere from 40-200 bucks (or way old or broken ones for 5 10 bucks - i have two that i managed to get working for that price)
at that time, i was online with linux, as going online with win98 was a horrible thing - i don't think i had major virus problems but the damned thing would crash on a near daily basis - windows me and 2000 weren't any better - it wasn't until XP that microsoft came up with something that was actually usable and stable
posted by pyramid termite at 11:54 AM on April 7, 2020 [5 favorites]
NT4 and 2000 at least had a decent, modern internal design (carried forward to XP, Vista, 7, 8, etc). The problem was the steep cost and sometimes lack of drivers. 95/98/Me, while affordable and widely supported, never had a hope of stability.
posted by Pruitt-Igoe at 12:18 PM on April 7, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by Pruitt-Igoe at 12:18 PM on April 7, 2020 [2 favorites]
Sadly, this shop went under just a bit too late to trigger the good kind of nostalgia for me. By this time, it was already getting hard to find components that weren't of the shitty cost-reduced variety, especially in pre-built systems. The Pentium MMX enabled the proliferation of soft modems that made the CPU do all the work and sound cards that lacked mixers and on and on.
Those things were largely responsible for the shittiness of PCs of the era with ever increasing specs that never really felt much faster, constant crashes, and so on.
posted by wierdo at 4:49 PM on April 7, 2020 [1 favorite]
Those things were largely responsible for the shittiness of PCs of the era with ever increasing specs that never really felt much faster, constant crashes, and so on.
posted by wierdo at 4:49 PM on April 7, 2020 [1 favorite]
To clarify, it's not that things hadn't previously been cost-reduced. The ~1995 Packard Bell P75 I had for a while was proof enough of that. It had the sound card and modem integrated onto the same expansion board.
The 8 bit micros did similar things to what I was complaining about back in the day to eliminate controller ICs found in more expensive systems with many of their peripherals as well. They took the performance penalty, but it wasn't nearly as infuriating thanks to their single-tasking nature and lower price. It wasn't really until a few years later that consumers actually got lower prices to compensate for the annoyance. For the first few years, it was just padding the OEM's margin. Even the resellers didn't see discounts until the real bottom of the barrel eMachines (and their ilk) came to market that the mainstream OEMs were forced to take lower margins.
Don't get me wrong, value still almost always improved year over year, but mainly through increased speed or storage space for the same price rather than (new) systems becoming more affordable.
posted by wierdo at 5:26 PM on April 7, 2020
The 8 bit micros did similar things to what I was complaining about back in the day to eliminate controller ICs found in more expensive systems with many of their peripherals as well. They took the performance penalty, but it wasn't nearly as infuriating thanks to their single-tasking nature and lower price. It wasn't really until a few years later that consumers actually got lower prices to compensate for the annoyance. For the first few years, it was just padding the OEM's margin. Even the resellers didn't see discounts until the real bottom of the barrel eMachines (and their ilk) came to market that the mainstream OEMs were forced to take lower margins.
Don't get me wrong, value still almost always improved year over year, but mainly through increased speed or storage space for the same price rather than (new) systems becoming more affordable.
posted by wierdo at 5:26 PM on April 7, 2020
"What a gold mine" says one commenter in the second link, flatly contradicting the indisputable reality that just about all of the defunct (and notably un-burgled) store's stock is functionally useless and worth nothing to any but a small number of rabid enthusiasts.
I think I would pay some good hard cash to have one (JUST ONE!) of those Gateways and a CRT for the next time ANY SINGLE PERSON that I support said ANYTHING along the lines of:
a. my computer is too slow to boot.
b. i don't have enough hard drive space. (aside: they have network shares which are backed up nightly and thus shouldn't be using the c: drive).
c. programs run too slow. we need more ram. y'all need to pay for it, because our department won't.
and, of course, the piece de resistance:
d. you're the IT department, you should provide a spare until my machine is fixed.
I would rant. OH would I rant.
"HERE. USE THIS DAMN THING! TOO LONG TO BOOT! WATCH HOW LONG THIS TAKES. I USED TO POWER ON MY PC, GO MAKE THE POT OF DRIP COFFEE (because starbucks is not even in the area yet!!!!), DRINK MY FIRST CUP BEFORE I COULD LOG IN!@!!!!
NOT ENOUGH HARD DRIVE SPACE? NOT ENOUGH RAM? *waves hands* LOOK AT ALL OF THIS! WE WENT FROM THIS TO IPHONES IN 7 YEARS. 7 SHORT YEARS!!!!
YOU INSISTED ON A SPARE. HERE YOU GO!
If this isn't enough for you, the damn phone in your pocket has way more oomph than anything you EVEN USED before 8 years ago!
Yes, I have feelings about this. 90% of the people I support are super awesome and totally get there is often nothing I can do if "the computer is running slow". Of the remaining 10%, half of them are just like, "You're IT. FIX IT!" The other half get pissed when I turn their Pandora off and their computer is running fast again. "But what about my music?" "Stream from your phone.")
posted by a non mouse, a cow herd at 6:08 PM on April 7, 2020 [10 favorites]
I think I would pay some good hard cash to have one (JUST ONE!) of those Gateways and a CRT for the next time ANY SINGLE PERSON that I support said ANYTHING along the lines of:
a. my computer is too slow to boot.
b. i don't have enough hard drive space. (aside: they have network shares which are backed up nightly and thus shouldn't be using the c: drive).
c. programs run too slow. we need more ram. y'all need to pay for it, because our department won't.
and, of course, the piece de resistance:
d. you're the IT department, you should provide a spare until my machine is fixed.
I would rant. OH would I rant.
"HERE. USE THIS DAMN THING! TOO LONG TO BOOT! WATCH HOW LONG THIS TAKES. I USED TO POWER ON MY PC, GO MAKE THE POT OF DRIP COFFEE (because starbucks is not even in the area yet!!!!), DRINK MY FIRST CUP BEFORE I COULD LOG IN!@!!!!
NOT ENOUGH HARD DRIVE SPACE? NOT ENOUGH RAM? *waves hands* LOOK AT ALL OF THIS! WE WENT FROM THIS TO IPHONES IN 7 YEARS. 7 SHORT YEARS!!!!
YOU INSISTED ON A SPARE. HERE YOU GO!
If this isn't enough for you, the damn phone in your pocket has way more oomph than anything you EVEN USED before 8 years ago!
Yes, I have feelings about this. 90% of the people I support are super awesome and totally get there is often nothing I can do if "the computer is running slow". Of the remaining 10%, half of them are just like, "You're IT. FIX IT!" The other half get pissed when I turn their Pandora off and their computer is running fast again. "But what about my music?" "Stream from your phone.")
posted by a non mouse, a cow herd at 6:08 PM on April 7, 2020 [10 favorites]
Came for the cow-colored boxes. Was not disappointed.
posted by lhauser at 6:43 PM on April 7, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by lhauser at 6:43 PM on April 7, 2020 [2 favorites]
I think I would pay some good hard cash to have one (JUST ONE!) of those Gateways and a CRT for the next time ANY SINGLE PERSON that I support said ANYTHING along the lines of: ...
I did internal IT for 20-odd years so I feel you, a non mouse, a cow herd. In light of your brilliant comment, I retract my previous "worth nothing" statement! (and despite that 10% of annoying users I'd love to be doing internal IT again, instead of the remote-support job I have now where it's more like 50% annoying users)
posted by Greg_Ace at 7:32 PM on April 7, 2020 [1 favorite]
I did internal IT for 20-odd years so I feel you, a non mouse, a cow herd. In light of your brilliant comment, I retract my previous "worth nothing" statement! (and despite that 10% of annoying users I'd love to be doing internal IT again, instead of the remote-support job I have now where it's more like 50% annoying users)
posted by Greg_Ace at 7:32 PM on April 7, 2020 [1 favorite]
trig took the words I wanted to say. I’ll add the seeming promise of actual improvement, innovation, advancement in tech. There will be more frames, more polygons, more pixels, and eventually, an ability to submerse yourself in an ethereal fantasy world, whatever that may be.
Goddamn I miss the clicks, the metallic whirs, and simple speaker beeps. The sense that getting online was actually an adventure (Netscape Navigator), with every move a compilation of transactions back and forth between you and another station with people (not just a computer, nor a server). Even dialing up. So much so that Wikipedia wasn’t even an idea, and your encyclopedia was on a CD-ROM, which was fantastic, cause there wasn’t that issue of whether or not someone edited or defaced things. Corrections can come up in conversation with the person you’re doing research for, or further reading.
And here I am typing a comment on what was a PDA back then. Now it’s called a phone, which back then had few functions. No more no less. PDAs, same thing. Each thing had its purpose, tasks were physically delegated.
Sure, things are more convenient, but my brain has fewer prompts to reframe itself for the tasks it wants to do...
posted by JoeXIII007 at 9:04 PM on April 7, 2020 [3 favorites]
Goddamn I miss the clicks, the metallic whirs, and simple speaker beeps. The sense that getting online was actually an adventure (Netscape Navigator), with every move a compilation of transactions back and forth between you and another station with people (not just a computer, nor a server). Even dialing up. So much so that Wikipedia wasn’t even an idea, and your encyclopedia was on a CD-ROM, which was fantastic, cause there wasn’t that issue of whether or not someone edited or defaced things. Corrections can come up in conversation with the person you’re doing research for, or further reading.
And here I am typing a comment on what was a PDA back then. Now it’s called a phone, which back then had few functions. No more no less. PDAs, same thing. Each thing had its purpose, tasks were physically delegated.
Sure, things are more convenient, but my brain has fewer prompts to reframe itself for the tasks it wants to do...
posted by JoeXIII007 at 9:04 PM on April 7, 2020 [3 favorites]
I was at Steve Job's MacWorld keynote presentation where he talked about introducing three devices - an iPod, a mobile phone, and an internet communicator, before revealing the new iPhone that was all three of those things rolled into one. The concept was a remarkable innovation at the time.
Still, it took me a few years to get around to buying one of the first Android phones (at a price I could actually afford). But a decade and a handful of phones after that, despite its shortcomings I'm still amazed and grateful for the ability to carry such a powerful computing device around in my pocket.
posted by Greg_Ace at 10:00 PM on April 7, 2020 [3 favorites]
Still, it took me a few years to get around to buying one of the first Android phones (at a price I could actually afford). But a decade and a handful of phones after that, despite its shortcomings I'm still amazed and grateful for the ability to carry such a powerful computing device around in my pocket.
posted by Greg_Ace at 10:00 PM on April 7, 2020 [3 favorites]
A lot of that nostalgia is certainly related to information being scarce. To put in perspective. This certainly pre-dates 2001, but sometime in the early 1990s, I got my hand on the Anarchist Cookbook from a BBS. We made a series of explosives, caught a friends kitchen on fire, and I was eventually threatened with expulsion for printing out recipes, and selling them for 50 cents each at middle school.
Just being a part of that world seemed mysterious. It was all dark web.
posted by iamck at 10:13 PM on April 7, 2020 [7 favorites]
Just being a part of that world seemed mysterious. It was all dark web.
posted by iamck at 10:13 PM on April 7, 2020 [7 favorites]
It certainly was a different time, one in which you had little choice but to defraud the phone company to communicate quickly over long distances. So much of FidoNET involved phone calls that only happened once a day or less that it could sometimes take a week to get a reply to a message you'd sent to someone network-far away.
Eventually, satellite gateways cut that time down, but by then Internet email was becoming more accessible thanks to commercial ISPs finally being allowed to connect to NSFnet. The first time I got Trumpet Winsock working with Mosaic felt like magic, despite having been familiar with RIP-native BBSes capable of showing graphics. The speed with which you could change resources was amazing. No more waiting 30 seconds for your modem to connect to yet another BBS when you were looking for some specific file or whatever. You could switch FTP (or WWW) sites in seconds!
posted by wierdo at 2:18 AM on April 8, 2020 [4 favorites]
Eventually, satellite gateways cut that time down, but by then Internet email was becoming more accessible thanks to commercial ISPs finally being allowed to connect to NSFnet. The first time I got Trumpet Winsock working with Mosaic felt like magic, despite having been familiar with RIP-native BBSes capable of showing graphics. The speed with which you could change resources was amazing. No more waiting 30 seconds for your modem to connect to yet another BBS when you were looking for some specific file or whatever. You could switch FTP (or WWW) sites in seconds!
posted by wierdo at 2:18 AM on April 8, 2020 [4 favorites]
My father was late to be even casually diagnosed properly, but he was certainly neurodivergent in some way. Fluent in 12 languages, to the point where he had to learn Romanian during the Hungarian Route period and just picked up a book and said "Eh, I know a bunch of Romance and Slavic languages already...this is a doddle!" He did famously invite someone to "set fire to a cup of coffee" which was a subtle linguistic slip that he'd get drinks off of in language circles for years.
But he demonstrated acute dyscalculia. He couldn't remember his own home phone number or house number, despite working as a reference librarian dealing with Dewey and LC systems day-by-day. He once explained to me how he conquered cataloguing number systems, and it involved a complicated six-language Palace of Memory thing that I couldn't do justice to.
So to him, computers of the 1980s were frustrating geegaws, but he had given up his various typewriters once FontMaster 128 came out on the Commodore 128. It had one feature no one else had: It could print multiple linguistic typefaces in the same document.
Sure lots of software could type in Greek, or in Russian, or in English. But only this one could mix Homeric and New Testament and Demotic Greek with English text. For a classicist like him, that was essential, and the type of work he'd previously done by feeding paper through four typewriters and rubbing down diacritics with letraset commas and strokes of a fountain pen.
So one day I was frustrated with my early 90s computer and mused about just switching to a typewriter to see if it was any worse. He looked at me with utter bafflement and said "Are you kidding? Have you ever had to deal with a typewriter long-term? All the jams and ribbon tears and scrambling for ink? Forget it!"
So I feel a kinship now to my late computer-averse father who couldn't see the retro appeal of the tools that had fit his way of thinking but never his way of working. I look at this 2001 tech and think "Are you kidding? Have you ever had to fight an IRQ conflict on one of these misshapen things? No thanks, give me a cruddy Raspberry Pi any day."
I still remember that C128 fondly, and think that the appeal of the 8-bit retro scene is to marvel at how much was done with so little back then. I think the "why put yourself through this" sentiment can be directed at loading software from cassette, and even disk-flipping can be kept or done away with if you don't mind slapping a flash storage device onto your expansion port. All the really annoying mechanical stuff doesn't have to be part of the retro experience.
But 2001-era kit? That's about doing a lot with a lot, to achieve little. It's a period in time when industry standards had just piled on top of one another and we hadn't streamlined anything yet. It was like an industry selling 30,000 typewriters each with slightly different sprocket sizes and shapes, so you'd have to spend half your time adapting your ribbons and paper to work.
And I say all this as a persistent Linux user.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 2:44 AM on April 8, 2020 [9 favorites]
But he demonstrated acute dyscalculia. He couldn't remember his own home phone number or house number, despite working as a reference librarian dealing with Dewey and LC systems day-by-day. He once explained to me how he conquered cataloguing number systems, and it involved a complicated six-language Palace of Memory thing that I couldn't do justice to.
So to him, computers of the 1980s were frustrating geegaws, but he had given up his various typewriters once FontMaster 128 came out on the Commodore 128. It had one feature no one else had: It could print multiple linguistic typefaces in the same document.
Sure lots of software could type in Greek, or in Russian, or in English. But only this one could mix Homeric and New Testament and Demotic Greek with English text. For a classicist like him, that was essential, and the type of work he'd previously done by feeding paper through four typewriters and rubbing down diacritics with letraset commas and strokes of a fountain pen.
So one day I was frustrated with my early 90s computer and mused about just switching to a typewriter to see if it was any worse. He looked at me with utter bafflement and said "Are you kidding? Have you ever had to deal with a typewriter long-term? All the jams and ribbon tears and scrambling for ink? Forget it!"
So I feel a kinship now to my late computer-averse father who couldn't see the retro appeal of the tools that had fit his way of thinking but never his way of working. I look at this 2001 tech and think "Are you kidding? Have you ever had to fight an IRQ conflict on one of these misshapen things? No thanks, give me a cruddy Raspberry Pi any day."
I still remember that C128 fondly, and think that the appeal of the 8-bit retro scene is to marvel at how much was done with so little back then. I think the "why put yourself through this" sentiment can be directed at loading software from cassette, and even disk-flipping can be kept or done away with if you don't mind slapping a flash storage device onto your expansion port. All the really annoying mechanical stuff doesn't have to be part of the retro experience.
But 2001-era kit? That's about doing a lot with a lot, to achieve little. It's a period in time when industry standards had just piled on top of one another and we hadn't streamlined anything yet. It was like an industry selling 30,000 typewriters each with slightly different sprocket sizes and shapes, so you'd have to spend half your time adapting your ribbons and paper to work.
And I say all this as a persistent Linux user.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 2:44 AM on April 8, 2020 [9 favorites]
Multiply that x1000 if you wanted to run NeXTSTEP/OpenStep.
You just reminded me of a time I was in a campus bookstore around 1992 or so. I was browsing the computer section and I ran into a NeXT sales rep demoing...a NeXTCube, I think. The only part of the conversation I remember all this time later:
Me: "How many expansion slots does it have?"
Him: "None! Why would you need any?"
He did not sell me a NeXTCube.
That was also the bookstore where I bought my first copies of Microsoft Word and Turbo Pascal 6. Good times.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 3:10 AM on April 8, 2020
You just reminded me of a time I was in a campus bookstore around 1992 or so. I was browsing the computer section and I ran into a NeXT sales rep demoing...a NeXTCube, I think. The only part of the conversation I remember all this time later:
Me: "How many expansion slots does it have?"
Him: "None! Why would you need any?"
He did not sell me a NeXTCube.
That was also the bookstore where I bought my first copies of Microsoft Word and Turbo Pascal 6. Good times.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 3:10 AM on April 8, 2020
Me: "How many expansion slots does it have?"
Him: "None! Why would you need any?"
I guess Steve Jobs was nothing if not consistent!
rum-soaked space hobo, what's the Hungarian Route period?
posted by trig at 7:59 AM on April 8, 2020
Him: "None! Why would you need any?"
I guess Steve Jobs was nothing if not consistent!
rum-soaked space hobo, what's the Hungarian Route period?
posted by trig at 7:59 AM on April 8, 2020
trig: In 1989 Hungary opened its border with Austra, and it took a while for the rest of the Eastern Bloc to scramble and close their borders with Hungary, so lots of East Germans fled via that route. Romania apparently let many working-age married men leave via that route with the understanding that they'd pay all the "filing fees" (ransoms) to get their families sent over as well.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 8:12 AM on April 8, 2020
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 8:12 AM on April 8, 2020
Oh man, look at all those Pro Audio Spectrum sound cards!
Don't you dis them; those worked just fine under OS/2, so ...
I'm not quite there with the nostalgia for 20 year old PCs 'cos I'm old and only 8-bits matter.
Bah. 12 bits, 16 bits, 18 bits, 22, 32, 36 bits. And probably a few more.
Goddamn I miss the clicks, the metallic whirs, and simple speaker beeps.
I was close to having my flabber gasted when an Apple ][ (clone) voiced "Schweinhund!" running Castle Wolfenstein. With that same Apple, playing Wizardry, you could tell your party was about to meet one or more monsters as the floppy drives would spin up to fetch the appropriate bitmaps.
at that time, i was online with linux, as going online with win98 was a horrible thing
I went from DOS to OS/2 and from there to Linux (started with Caldera; SuSE and Debian now). Windows made an appearance when I wanted to get cable internet in 1998. Even with ISDN, downloading a fixpack would take a good part of an evening. So, cable. "You need a W98 machine, or a Macintosh" the order line responded, declining the order. "Eh, hello, I only need the connectivity, not the Enhanced Super Information Highway Experience you're advertising with." was my reply to that. "No W98 or Mac, no order.". Bugger. So I looked at the requirements, looked in my junk box^W^Wextensive spare parts collection, and cobbled together a machine that was not even close to the actual required specs but did a passable job of running W98. P90 minimum? Here, a 486 Overdrive. 32M memory? 24 is what I managed to get working on that mainboard. 100M free disk space? Yes, it's there. If you add up what's available on the three disks, that is.
Requirements "satisfied", the order was accepted and the technician came around to install the cable modem. That clearly didn't go as smoothly as planned, and after half an hour he had to leave to get to his next appointment. "These are the settings you need to enter on your PC, and If by the end of the afternoon that LED still blinks orange instead of being solid green, call this number, refer to order $mumble, and the service desk will take it from there.". The W98 machine hadn't been touched, but since that day if I needed a Windows box it was named Scrapheap.
posted by Stoneshop at 9:37 AM on April 8, 2020 [1 favorite]
Don't you dis them; those worked just fine under OS/2, so ...
I'm not quite there with the nostalgia for 20 year old PCs 'cos I'm old and only 8-bits matter.
Bah. 12 bits, 16 bits, 18 bits, 22, 32, 36 bits. And probably a few more.
Goddamn I miss the clicks, the metallic whirs, and simple speaker beeps.
I was close to having my flabber gasted when an Apple ][ (clone) voiced "Schweinhund!" running Castle Wolfenstein. With that same Apple, playing Wizardry, you could tell your party was about to meet one or more monsters as the floppy drives would spin up to fetch the appropriate bitmaps.
at that time, i was online with linux, as going online with win98 was a horrible thing
I went from DOS to OS/2 and from there to Linux (started with Caldera; SuSE and Debian now). Windows made an appearance when I wanted to get cable internet in 1998. Even with ISDN, downloading a fixpack would take a good part of an evening. So, cable. "You need a W98 machine, or a Macintosh" the order line responded, declining the order. "Eh, hello, I only need the connectivity, not the Enhanced Super Information Highway Experience you're advertising with." was my reply to that. "No W98 or Mac, no order.". Bugger. So I looked at the requirements, looked in my junk box^W^Wextensive spare parts collection, and cobbled together a machine that was not even close to the actual required specs but did a passable job of running W98. P90 minimum? Here, a 486 Overdrive. 32M memory? 24 is what I managed to get working on that mainboard. 100M free disk space? Yes, it's there. If you add up what's available on the three disks, that is.
Requirements "satisfied", the order was accepted and the technician came around to install the cable modem. That clearly didn't go as smoothly as planned, and after half an hour he had to leave to get to his next appointment. "These are the settings you need to enter on your PC, and If by the end of the afternoon that LED still blinks orange instead of being solid green, call this number, refer to order $mumble, and the service desk will take it from there.". The W98 machine hadn't been touched, but since that day if I needed a Windows box it was named Scrapheap.
posted by Stoneshop at 9:37 AM on April 8, 2020 [1 favorite]
rum-soaked space hobo, thanks!
posted by trig at 10:05 AM on April 8, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by trig at 10:05 AM on April 8, 2020 [1 favorite]
> Me: "How many expansion slots does it have?" Him: "None! Why would you need any?" He did not sell me a NeXTCube.
I wouldn't have bought one from him either because he didn't know his product.
posted by ardgedee at 2:09 PM on April 8, 2020 [1 favorite]
I wouldn't have bought one from him either because he didn't know his product.
posted by ardgedee at 2:09 PM on April 8, 2020 [1 favorite]
despite that 10% of annoying users I'd love to be doing internal IT again, instead of the remote-support job I have now where it's more like 50% annoying users
Oh, I feel you Greg_Ace. And I feel so deeply foryou. Every few months I have a month on phones vs. onsite. I've had calls from people I work with onsite who are just overwhelmed with joy when I come out because, "finally! I know a non mouse will fix this!" who are flat out rude and disdainful when they call in. (They are partially right that they get better service onsite. But, that is also because of how they talk to service desk.)
Any time I get a call from the remote users queue, I cringe. They are most definitely at that 50% level. I can't even imagine what it's been like this month for them. Fortunately, we were given the option to WFH or work onsite during this covid stuff. For various reasons, a large majority decided to work from home. It played out to just about the same work load each person had, due to the larger number of WFH end users.
I can only imagine how rough it is trying to walk people through working remotely for the first time who were never trained on the basics of VPN, TFA, Citrix, etc. and also are afraid of computers.
One last quick aside: Pretty much everyone, including the onsite team, manned the phones the first couple of days. Even with that, 20 minute hold time was common. (Under normal circumstances our SLA says we answer in 1 minute.) We had almost 7 times the amount of users connecting to VPN than we had licenses for.
My first phone call the second day:
He: I can't connect to VPN.
Me: I know. No one can. We're out of licenses. We're working on purchasing more.
He: Give me a license.
Me: I don't hand them out. I'm literally inable to hand them out. They are first come, first serve. The only way to get one is to wait for someone to sign off of VPN and get that released license. You can keep trying to connect, or just use Citrix.
He: No. Citrix doesn't let me dictate. I'm a doctor and can't work patient care cases at home because you won't give me a license. Give me a license now, or get me with someone who can.
There is no secret hidden stash of licenses. Even half of the IT who remote regularly couldn't get on. I'm asking the guy to type instead of speak for one whole day.
So, yeah... The instant I can completely remove remote support from my work life, it's gone.
(Sorry for the big ol' derail).
posted by a non mouse, a cow herd at 4:29 PM on April 8, 2020 [3 favorites]
Oh, I feel you Greg_Ace. And I feel so deeply foryou. Every few months I have a month on phones vs. onsite. I've had calls from people I work with onsite who are just overwhelmed with joy when I come out because, "finally! I know a non mouse will fix this!" who are flat out rude and disdainful when they call in. (They are partially right that they get better service onsite. But, that is also because of how they talk to service desk.)
Any time I get a call from the remote users queue, I cringe. They are most definitely at that 50% level. I can't even imagine what it's been like this month for them. Fortunately, we were given the option to WFH or work onsite during this covid stuff. For various reasons, a large majority decided to work from home. It played out to just about the same work load each person had, due to the larger number of WFH end users.
I can only imagine how rough it is trying to walk people through working remotely for the first time who were never trained on the basics of VPN, TFA, Citrix, etc. and also are afraid of computers.
One last quick aside: Pretty much everyone, including the onsite team, manned the phones the first couple of days. Even with that, 20 minute hold time was common. (Under normal circumstances our SLA says we answer in 1 minute.) We had almost 7 times the amount of users connecting to VPN than we had licenses for.
My first phone call the second day:
He: I can't connect to VPN.
Me: I know. No one can. We're out of licenses. We're working on purchasing more.
He: Give me a license.
Me: I don't hand them out. I'm literally inable to hand them out. They are first come, first serve. The only way to get one is to wait for someone to sign off of VPN and get that released license. You can keep trying to connect, or just use Citrix.
He: No. Citrix doesn't let me dictate. I'm a doctor and can't work patient care cases at home because you won't give me a license. Give me a license now, or get me with someone who can.
There is no secret hidden stash of licenses. Even half of the IT who remote regularly couldn't get on. I'm asking the guy to type instead of speak for one whole day.
So, yeah... The instant I can completely remove remote support from my work life, it's gone.
(Sorry for the big ol' derail).
posted by a non mouse, a cow herd at 4:29 PM on April 8, 2020 [3 favorites]
re: gold mine
Since fabrication processes weren't nearly as nano as now, there's probably a not-insignificant quantity of actual gold on all those PCBs (and Fiasco da Gama's comment on the copper in those CRTs).
Interesting bit of calculus to determine whether the recoverable metals or the nostalgia premium (less the costs to recover the metals/ tender for bids) is worth more. Beyond my ken, though.
The stock is a bit after my time; when desktop computers became a commodity through Dell, Gateway, etc., desktops lost a lot of "sexiness" and you (my peers at the time) were lamers for having a commodity computer.
Dell's semi-stoner spokesperson appealed to the slightly older who thought that the semi-stoner kid was "cool" and I'm not sure who Gateway was targeting (even older people? people who thought that cows were cute?).
I had a PI laptop from a tiny outfit in 1996. In 2001, I sold my beat up cheapo PII (?) laptop that replaced that PI (that got crushed - I know, it was an absolute unit of a tank, yet) and got a discarded P2 desktop with an early graphics accelerator card from work. Didn't get into computers again until I could afford to build an Athlon Barton (?) system from parts in 2004 or so. Replaced with a Core i7 in 2009 and didn't replace that until a previous-gen Ryzen 5 last year in 2019.
Before that, had a 386 SX/16 (no co-pro) then a 486 DX2/66. Upgraded from a SB16 to a GUS too - but my folks gave away that 486 while I was away at college.
The GUS was an intermediate to a full on MIDI soundcard, but iirc, it still performed better with tracker music files (which provided its own wavetables/ instruments instead of relying on frequency modulation) (because more RAM?)?
My most vivid early computers memory was upgrading the RAM on that 386 - I bent a pin installing DIMM chips individually. bent one of the pins, bent it back, snapped it off.
Soldered it back on. No problem.
posted by porpoise at 8:15 PM on April 8, 2020
Since fabrication processes weren't nearly as nano as now, there's probably a not-insignificant quantity of actual gold on all those PCBs (and Fiasco da Gama's comment on the copper in those CRTs).
Interesting bit of calculus to determine whether the recoverable metals or the nostalgia premium (less the costs to recover the metals/ tender for bids) is worth more. Beyond my ken, though.
The stock is a bit after my time; when desktop computers became a commodity through Dell, Gateway, etc., desktops lost a lot of "sexiness" and you (my peers at the time) were lamers for having a commodity computer.
Dell's semi-stoner spokesperson appealed to the slightly older who thought that the semi-stoner kid was "cool" and I'm not sure who Gateway was targeting (even older people? people who thought that cows were cute?).
I had a PI laptop from a tiny outfit in 1996. In 2001, I sold my beat up cheapo PII (?) laptop that replaced that PI (that got crushed - I know, it was an absolute unit of a tank, yet) and got a discarded P2 desktop with an early graphics accelerator card from work. Didn't get into computers again until I could afford to build an Athlon Barton (?) system from parts in 2004 or so. Replaced with a Core i7 in 2009 and didn't replace that until a previous-gen Ryzen 5 last year in 2019.
Before that, had a 386 SX/16 (no co-pro) then a 486 DX2/66. Upgraded from a SB16 to a GUS too - but my folks gave away that 486 while I was away at college.
The GUS was an intermediate to a full on MIDI soundcard, but iirc, it still performed better with tracker music files (which provided its own wavetables/ instruments instead of relying on frequency modulation) (because more RAM?)?
My most vivid early computers memory was upgrading the RAM on that 386 - I bent a pin installing DIMM chips individually. bent one of the pins, bent it back, snapped it off.
Soldered it back on. No problem.
posted by porpoise at 8:15 PM on April 8, 2020
I can only imagine how rough it is trying to walk people through working remotely for the first time who were never trained on the basics of VPN, TFA, Citrix, etc. and also are afraid of computers.
This has been the life of my team and I non-stop for oh, the last month. It's exactly as non-fun as you think, particularly with, at best, the random crusty old laptops and ipads they own now we've run out of loan chromebooks to hand out for key staff. No, that ipad 2 running ios 9 literally *can't* VPN into the network and access the windows-only finance management system, it went end of life 6 fucking years ago. Teachers especially, normally only do half their time in the classroom, and half preparing lessons, marking, email, putting reports into our online system... All the homework, reports, and most of the lesson prep is done on a computer. HTF they've managed with no usable laptop or home wifi up to now, I have no idea. For some of them, I think a 2001 gateway would be a goddamn upgrade.
And no, I will not drive to your house 50 miles away to give you my personal webcam from my house because you refuse to buy one and your own dept manager won't pay for one because you're only a contractor for a handful of music lessons.
The absolute worst issue for me though has been when I've had no choice but to call someone from my personal I-pay-for mobile, and then *every single staff member* that has got that number has then immediately started to use it as their personal direct-to-the-manager 24/7 get-it-fixed-right-now number for every goddamn minor problem, and get really damn snotty when I ask them politely to log new problems in the helpdesk or call the published (shared) number instead because then the whole team can help them instead of just me. I'm seriously thinking of changing the number. Again.
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 6:46 AM on April 9, 2020 [4 favorites]
This has been the life of my team and I non-stop for oh, the last month. It's exactly as non-fun as you think, particularly with, at best, the random crusty old laptops and ipads they own now we've run out of loan chromebooks to hand out for key staff. No, that ipad 2 running ios 9 literally *can't* VPN into the network and access the windows-only finance management system, it went end of life 6 fucking years ago. Teachers especially, normally only do half their time in the classroom, and half preparing lessons, marking, email, putting reports into our online system... All the homework, reports, and most of the lesson prep is done on a computer. HTF they've managed with no usable laptop or home wifi up to now, I have no idea. For some of them, I think a 2001 gateway would be a goddamn upgrade.
And no, I will not drive to your house 50 miles away to give you my personal webcam from my house because you refuse to buy one and your own dept manager won't pay for one because you're only a contractor for a handful of music lessons.
The absolute worst issue for me though has been when I've had no choice but to call someone from my personal I-pay-for mobile, and then *every single staff member* that has got that number has then immediately started to use it as their personal direct-to-the-manager 24/7 get-it-fixed-right-now number for every goddamn minor problem, and get really damn snotty when I ask them politely to log new problems in the helpdesk or call the published (shared) number instead because then the whole team can help them instead of just me. I'm seriously thinking of changing the number. Again.
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 6:46 AM on April 9, 2020 [4 favorites]
386 SX/16 (no co-pro)
Here's where I get to put some of my useless 90s computer knowledge to use. The 386DX didn't have a co-processor either. The distinguishing thing about the SX was its 16-bit data bus.
486SX was the one with no co-pro, compared to the 486DX.
posted by Pruitt-Igoe at 10:00 PM on April 9, 2020 [1 favorite]
Here's where I get to put some of my useless 90s computer knowledge to use. The 386DX didn't have a co-processor either. The distinguishing thing about the SX was its 16-bit data bus.
486SX was the one with no co-pro, compared to the 486DX.
posted by Pruitt-Igoe at 10:00 PM on April 9, 2020 [1 favorite]
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Neat story, though.
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:37 PM on April 6, 2020 [16 favorites]