Last night’s PCMech LIVE show turned out to be a huge retro fest as far as the computer discussion was concerned. I personally don’t mind it because there was a whole lot of stuff that’s happened since the 80s up to today. Here’s a few of the things that were discussed:
An elephant never forgets
Elephant Data Systems made floppy diskettes years ago. And they possibly the most iconic of the 5.25-inch floppy diskette media because of the unforgettable elephant logo. You can see more examples of the logo here.
Back before PCMech
PCMech always had the pcmech.com domain, but the "full" name was formerly PCMechanic. I had asked the audience (some of which were forum members) to locate for me the oldest post on the forums. User Ryuk999 found it here:
http://forum.pcmech.com/showthread.php?p=21403
Posted September 4, 1999.
If there’s one older, please feel free to correct it by posting a comment below with the link.
Apple II Ethernet card
"But Apple never made an Ethernet card for the Apple II.."
You’re right, but someone else does. He currently doesn’t have any in stock, but if you want one, get on the waiting list as I’m sure he’ll be making more.
Yes, it was always better than Windows 95
There is no argument whatsoever that IBM’s OS/2 Warp was always better than Microsoft Windows. It did everything better than Windows ever could at the time. So why didn’t Warp become the dominant OS? Many say it was because Microsoft had much better marketing prowess, and the fact IBM didn’t put enough effort into promoting its own products for the consumer. Others say it was because IBM didn’t put enough presence into major retail stores like Microsoft did. And I’m sure there were other reasons besides that.
But we all know Warp was the superior OS. Those who used it back then remember it fondly, and hated giving it up for Windows.
It doesn’t get much more retro than this:
I used the video below for a PCMech Premium article to describe old-school client/server setups and how you can adapt just about any older computer to still be used today in a similar setup.
What’s really impressive about the video is that what’s seen is not a PC. It’s a DEC VT-240 terminal manufactured originally in 1984, connecting to a Linux server via NFS.
We’re talking green-screen text-only glory here. And the DEC is in near-pristine shape (after cleaned up at the 3-minute mark of the video).
The person in the video not only uses the DEC, but also connects to a homebrew Linux server to browse the web and play media files on another computer.
It’s like I said – this is about as retro as you can get.
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