"Retro" Computing - 80's, 90's, 00's

makes me a bit sad looking at this after all this time

I used it to write my coursework for college. Never been so productive in all my life as when I had that in the corner of my dorm.

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Back when printing didn't involve getting Jew'd.

I still use an old HP laserjet with a big fat toner cart. It's on its way out and I'm dreading the day when I have to replace it.

I miss getting magazines with CDs full of demos and shovelware. There was always something neat there that I'd never have heard of otherwise.

my babby's first programming moment was using a hex editor to give myself more money in SimCity 2000. Then I wrote a little script that would write the correct value for a hundred million dollars at the right spot in the file for me. I could finally afford to change the terrain and build highways and subways at $100 a tile.

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Yeah, probably why there's dozens of youtube channel content creators that pull millions of subs and views exactly about this topic, dumbfag.

a little text editor, a little spreadsheet program, that jigsaw puzzle game. I remember putting $10 in an envelope to get the full version of shareware from a guy in california. he'd send back a floppy disc and a cheat code.

it's funny, most of the games my dad and i played were those room-by-room text adventures but we'd still throw up our arms and rage any time we died or get thrilled any time we figured something out. Stuff sure has changed a lot.

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i just wanna be 12 years old again and playing d&d with my bros. why is adult life so horrible

lmao that cover

>I remember putting $10 in an envelope to get the full version of shareware from a guy in california.

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I miss the sounds they made. youtube.com/watch?v=V5kG3E5Jolg&t=32s

same

also youtube.com/watch?v=VXbP7OkQ8LQ

More computer sounds:
youtube.com/watch?v=ptYHlQvMoMY
youtube.com/watch?v=2Xz2xBGUfn4
It's all nostalgia because they were slow and somewhat unreliable, but I do miss the mechanical noises of floppy drives

i only got to experience early 00s computing, and it was definitely better. everything was more personalized and unique. even all company websites would differ from one another, and creating/selling of website templates was a legitimate business. personal websites dedicated to various hobbies were common place and digging for information was always an adventure.

now companies use wix or some other cookie cutter website creation bullshit. no one hosts their own personal websites, instead they have blogs which all look the same. everything is targetted to the lowest common denominator to make the most sales. wikipedia has a monopoly on information, good luck finding a website someone has dedicated to their hobby or interest unless it's 10+ years old and no longer updated but the owner is still willing to pay for hosting.

m.youtube.com/watch?v=nTUvJtIfWFE

>decide to play a game
>start the tape to load it
>go outside to kick a ball or play with lego while i wait

God I miss those days

youtube.com/watch?v=Sd9nOtX-CJg

>unstable as shit OSes and software
>massive hardware churn
>mice with buttons that wore out after a year and balls that needed cleaning
>"widows rot"
>complete lack of hardware and driver standards
This one was a real pisser because few if anyone here remembers heaving to deal with early 3D acceleration. Games had to ship with a parade of wrappers or custom drivers and you had to pick the right one or a close enough equivalent to play.
>56k connections
>having to hunt down game patches on the web
>fussing with autoexec.bat and config.sys for a game that wouldn't start if you didn't dial it in just perfect
>floppy disks with comically pathetic data retention
Rich people had zip drives. Weirdos had aftermarket tape drives. Sad sacks had to hope their floppy didn't get too hot, too cold, or pass near anything remotely magnetic

Gaming was fun though when you had a working machine and software. Still, there was no shortage of things to dislike.

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God I miss shit like PC Accelerator.

It's because software is shit now. User interfaces used to have a warm and human feel to them with soft colors and consistent 3D shapes, so that they would look like real objects. Now it's all just flat 2D shapes and bright ugly colors.

You can always modify and resin modern OSS if you try hard enough. See pic related.

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This is Tim Cook's fault for being so allergic to skeuomorphism that he completely killed it on the iPhone/OS X.

Late 90's and early 00's web design was the best. I even miss the dial-up connection sounds desu.

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It's not horrible for all adults; just the poor/working class.

jesus, what were they thinking

>>unstable as shit OSes and software
>t. Windows only user since the late 80's
Poor bastard.

>tfw no libreAge to satisfy my autism and 0AD is a clone of shitty aoe3
ehhh I wish I could play proprietary games again without triggering my autism

Use AoEHD, it patches the game to work on Windows 7+ and in high resolution.

proprietary.

I miss it a lot. In ~1996 we didn't have internet access at home - I was 13 - so I used to catch a bus into town every Saturday morning and go to the library where internet access was free, unlike the nearby internet cafes. I'd hit view-source on my favourite pages and then print off the HTML - the Librarians handing me the printouts would almost always say "something must have gone wrong" but nope, the HTML is what I wanted, not the actual page.

At the end of the day I'd catch the bus home with all of my printouts, and as soon as I got home I typed them all into Notepad, saved them with a .html extension, and viewed them in the browser - just as they looked in the library (pages weren't image heavy back then).

It was a simpler time. I had no friends, obviously.

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Why print instead of just copying onto a floppy?

this is beautiful user

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Hah!

I miss how I could spend an entire weekend in a game without a network connection. I would look forward to the weekend the entire week, planning how I would play it.

>computer nastalgia
Nope. I discovered computers when my dad ran linux in the early 90's it didn't even have an IP stack at that time, he showed me how to use tip(1) to call into a SunOS machine and that is how we got on the internet. I'm still a command line jockey today so it's like time has stood still between then and now.

Everything was locked down in the library - no floppy access. Also I wanted to learn HTML etc. so typing it up by hand was a good way to do that.

I do what I can to fight the feels

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paid digital distribution has ruined everything

so basically 99% of all adults in the worlds

what's the difference between middle and working class nowadays, that you have a little more spare money to spent on frivolous shit but otherwise you still have to work until you're in your 60s, at least?

on top of that, by being middle class your children get fucked because they won't qualify for any need based financial aid for college, so unless you're a typical piece of shit with a boomer mentality, you'll be spending a shit load of money right there.

Took this pic years before I knew what a 'battlestation thread' was

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I just noticed I was listening to a nickelback album. hahahaha. Still has the original exif data too. 1/1/2003

I want to get into Amiga stuff, but have no clue where to start. Any advice? I was thinking either a 1200 or 600 to start with.

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I will tell you that the nostalgia has taken hold. However, what you consider soul is actually extreme inconvenience. The work it took to get games running properly on a 3dfx card in Windows 95 *and* the sound working right is like calculus compared to what we have now. Great to see how it all worked though.

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A-are all those plugged in? At the same time?

I'm alright with inconvenience, I just don't like paid digital distribution.

Well, everything that isn't on a shelf is plugged in, and in surge protectors, but they don't get turned on at the same time.

OK, so it's maybe not an immediate fire hazard, but I have to think the resulting monthly electrical bill is fairly large.

Will VR make me smart?

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I miss this time.
The hardware was unreliable, big, expensive.
But we had more fun, because the software was more fun.

Now it all looks the same and it's dumbed down.

moar

I just bought an 07 matte black macbook, really nice desu. installing linux on it right now. ($65 USD) battery is total garbage though, doesn't work unless it's plugged in. Going to eventually upgrade the ram processor and battery. To match the white backlight logo I might switch touchpads and keyboards. either that or get a black backlit keyboard for it

I remember the internet was a cleaner place back in the 1990s. I never stumbled on porn until around 2005 or 2006.
I hate porn so much. It took so much energy and potential and turned the internet into a place for distraction instead of erudition.

>implying it's not vastly superior

this story hit really close, same year/age too, but instead of a library it was an internet cafe/ISP owned by a friend of my father, grabbed shit like manuals from there and printed them back home
man, if I got paid every time my father lost his shit because he had to print something important and his faggot son spent all of the ink printing low resolution anime tiddies and shitty hacker code I'd be millionaire

I also remember these anime CD from 2-3 years later with full websites dumped on them, I would spend hours looking at the fancy HTML and this new crazy thing called CSS

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Yes. My favorite times started with pre-x86 8 bit home computers, through shit mall 8086 - 286 XT Tandys with TGA II graphics (640x200 CGA!) and PSSJ sound. I missed them so much I've nearly bought everything from the first 1000 to the Sensation I...

Also miss BBSes :(

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Yes, this is the right place for you. Around 80% of Jow Forums or more enjoys being stuck in the past. It's the most retarded thing to do if you're into tech.

>If something is new then that means it's better!
>Put it on the blockchain!
>It's the future!

bump

>not the headspace skin

>le old = gud
The ones I haven't quoted are alright, these are objectively awful.
>random clashing colors all over the place
>random disorganized graphics
>that wavy disney panel
>that awful pepsi site with the wonky edges and matrix aesthetic
>that completely autistic lego title with a font worse than comic sans and the letters randomly colored
They probably thought the internet was only for kids back then and didn't really give a shit about appearance. They all look horrible and could have been made much more professional even with the tools available back then.

Man I really miss skeuomorphism

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Did I miss anything?

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It'll be back. GUI will get depth again, at least on phone there'll probably be 360° light direction sensor and everything will be ray traced with true real time ambient correct shadows.

>younger at the time and had no attention span
Young kids never do when it comes to RTS and RPGs. Only games they know how to play is anything first person shooters and alike. Even that they don't get far because they run around like retards just shooting shit.

RTS are not really to my taste, I find them boring and mostly pointless. It always comes down to APM and metagame bullshit which kills the romantic fantasy element for me.
>y-you d-dumb k-kids

>Be me
>1996
>Enjoy a 1h session in the library Saturday morning, no kids around
>Its free
>Fuck encarta, go straight to internet
>Spend the time researching how to bring Aerith back to life in shitty forums
>Print a color copy of a walkthrough
>Be me another day, same library
>Walk the entire computer section
>Grab the coolest programming book around
>Its Java
>'In Java, everything is an object'
>Have an epiphany. The book is talking to me.
>Immediately rent the book
>Read it cover to cover without understanding shit
>Not having a PC to type the hello world
>Years later, make a career as pajeet
Man, those were the good times.

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During the 90's it was video game consoles. My dad never wanted a computer in the house. We ended up getting one in the early 00/01 and got dial up. My dad would bitch and bitch about it. So I got online late at night. He would bitch because he said that someone could at anytime could be calling. Also during this time my brother would download those porn programs that charged you on your ISP account for per minute use.

During that time I wasn't into how computers work or what not. Just games. Age of Empires with RoR and Age of Empires II with TC, Diablo, Diablo II and LoD when it came out, RollerCoaster Tycoon, and The Sims.

As time went by I started to get more into computers, learning about them, networking, and web design and development.

Growing up none of my computers were new. All of them were used and came from the mid to late 90's and early 00's. Before the modern web I would get by using older systems. Any system I used I would try to max out as much as I can. I still remember using an old Compaq with a AMD K-6 (3XXMHz or 4XXMHz, can remember the cpu speed), 384MB RAM, 10GB HDD, onboard ATI Video Card. Hell during my late high school years (2007ish) I got by using an iMac that ran at 450MHz with 512MB, and 20GB HDD with no problem.

It wasn't till 2012, maybe 2013 when I bought a brand new computer. Looking at my past I had so much fun with computers and owning all different machines from SGI, Sun Microsystems, Apple, and all different branded and custom built PCs. Also all the different operating systems. BeOS, IRIX, Solaris, Windows, fuckin Plan 9, all different Linux Distros, and so on.

Damn I feel old and miss simpler times.

>those great games preinstalled on old Macs

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what dwarf fort tileset is that?

>iMac that ran at 450MHz with 512MB
How much of a masochist were you?

My first PC was a proper computer. AMD Athlon XP, 1.6 GHz. Cheaper than jewtels, yet faster. I used it until 2008. Expanded the fuck out of it. Was still used by sis in 2010.

Most people I knew had bought their second computer by then. They were all infested by viruses downloaded from emule. Let alone they had USB autoplay enabled. Nothing of that shit touched my rig.

I fucking hate how everything is worse than 10 years ago (mostly because of capitalism)
does that count?

>How much of a masochist were you?
It ran good. Like I said in my post, modern web wasn't a thing yet. I mostly used it for typing docs, getting on the internet, and listening to music. I had other machines at the time. Dell Optiplex something with a P4 and 1GB Ram, but I didn't used it that much besides for some games. But the iMac was my daily driver.

In my town there was only a few computer stores. They mostly sold custom built pcs and jew the fuck out of people. Ex friend owns a computer shop. He was selling basically any shitty pcs with XP on them. Pretty much PII/III with bare specs till he started to sell used Vista machines.

impressive conquistador armor there

as sturdy as the IBM PC cases of old

and kept all clean without retr0brite, unlike pic related

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Skeuomorphism doesn't work any more because everything now just looks like a smartphone or computer.

more like this

just buy another one used. Not great for the environment but if you recycle it then its not so bad and much cheaper.