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Methylethylaldehyde posted:Is there any other kind? Skinny ones?
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May 29, 2015 10:08
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laserghost posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUzK0ylOzBY I never knew about the "parity error" thing, I guess I didn't think to type swear words into my computer when I was that young (well, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Sbaitso says that's what makes that happen). Of course, I didn't see any swear words being typed there!?
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May 29, 2015 11:38
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How did Apple manage to gently caress up their case designs so badly in the '90s? The late '80s machines with the "Snow White" look were very slick for '80s PCs and are tidy, reasonably attractive little boxes. Then the '90s roll around and they become these hideous beige, bulging monstrosities. Good (1989)  Bad (1991)   (1996)
Woolie Wool fucked around with this message at 06:11 on May 31, 2015 |
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May 31, 2015 06:08
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Woolie Wool posted:How did Apple manage to gently caress up their case designs so badly in the '90s? The late '80s machines with the "Snow White" look were very slick for '80s PCs and are tidy, reasonably attractive little boxes. Then the '90s roll around and they become these hideous beige, bulging monstrosities. I was reading about this just the other day but can't find the link, but basically they decided to start doing things in-house. "By the early 1990s, Apple discovered that the Snow White language that had served them so well through the 80s was being copied by its generic IBM PC competitors". I don't remember PCs that looked like Macs, but anyway I guess they needed to start doing something new and different so things kept looking exciting, but they probably should have kept the same guy to figure out what the new and different thing was. The not-so-awesome-looking Macs still looked better than contemporary PCs though, so I guess that was the main goal and they managed to do it without having to pay someone external to the company for the work?
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May 31, 2015 06:27
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I dunno man, the later Power Macs looked bad, so bad that if you lined them up next to one of the clunky full tower PS/2s, the PS/2 looked more elegant. Just look at that loving thing, it bulges like it's pregnant with PowerBooks and part of it is a different height for no apparent reason. Apple's whole reputation in the '80s was built on elegant, simple, clean designs, and they threw that away in favor of blobby, fussy, anonymous hulks, and then they ended up struggling to survive for years until they put design first again at the end of the '90s.
Woolie Wool fucked around with this message at 06:43 on May 31, 2015 |
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May 31, 2015 06:30
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Woolie Wool posted:the later Power Macs looked bad, so bad that if you lined them up next to one of the clunky full tower PS/2s, the PS/2 looked more elegant.  Really? I mean I'm not a Mac user and I actually wish I had a PS/2, but I don't think I've ever seen an IBM machine that anyone would objectively say looks good, it's just that I have some nostalgic feelings about them. Maybe I'm just assocating the machines with where I used them and what I used them for though.
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May 31, 2015 07:09
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I didn't say it looked good, I just said it was slightly less offensive to look at, and since IBMs were hideous it's a particularly damning insult.
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May 31, 2015 07:12
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I don't really agree with the trend you're trying to describe. The IIvx is perhaps the worst case design Apple ever made, but it was only one model and it was specifically made to be cheap and nasty. The G3MT is a very dated design to be sure, but most people hold it in quite high regard. Really my point/opinion is that they had mostly good designs the whole way through, along with a couple of stinkers.
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May 31, 2015 07:25
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The Outrigger case is my favourite 90s Macintosh design. Pull the cover and front panel off, drives are accessible. Pull a latch, drives and mounting hardware flip over, plastic cover over the PCI slots flips over, exposing the whole motherboard. All the cables fed neatly behind and under the drives into a little space between the edge of the logic board and the case wall. Sadly there aren't many good pictures of how it disassembles on the internet. I'd love to get my hands on one, even if it would be fairly useless in practice to run for anything.
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May 31, 2015 08:59
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Anyone remember "enhanced CDs" I was just re-ripping my CDs from the 90s and I was amazed at how many popped up a window with some old System 6/7 Mac software. I'd completely forgotten about it, but I remember at one point, they monkeyed up the ability to rip the actual CD on some or another machine I was using.
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May 31, 2015 13:25
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As a really old school Mac guy, I agree that while the designs look lovely today, the contemporary PCs were worse. See the above Packard Bell. My first computer was the Performa 600 CD which was a rebadged IIvx. Still partial to it. Then it was a PowerMac G3, so you are chronicling my computing history in the 90's. The fold out chassis started with the B&W G3 and was awesome for working on those machines through the G4 era.
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May 31, 2015 15:34
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Woolie Wool posted:
You say that, but this case saved so many sliced fingers, compared to its predecessor.
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May 31, 2015 15:56
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Sliced fingers? What were people doing to it? I went from an Amiga to an HP desktop in the mid-late 90's so I missed a lot of stuff.
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May 31, 2015 17:34
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Woolie Wool posted:I dunno man, the later Power Macs looked bad, so bad that if you lined them up next to one of the clunky full tower PS/2s, the PS/2 looked more elegant. Just look at that loving thing, it bulges like it's pregnant with PowerBooks and part of it is a different height for no apparent reason. Apple's whole reputation in the '80s was built on elegant, simple, clean designs, and they threw that away in favor of blobby, fussy, anonymous hulks, and then they ended up struggling to survive for years until they put design first again at the end of the '90s. Licensing clones is what killed them, not design. Why would you pay prices for high end Macs when Power Systems can sell it to you for 70% of the price because they're less picky about profit margins? It just happens that they pulled the right to make knockoffs that ran MacOS at the same time as their design turned around, both with the return of Jobs.
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May 31, 2015 17:50
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Woolie Wool posted:
 Crisis over (1998) I never liked the imac but design wise it was a hit. If you wanted to show "hip office" in a commercial or movie in the late 90s you would drop a few imacs in there.
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May 31, 2015 23:03
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OwlFancier posted:I also remember my sweet as heck ribbon printer. It printed at about one page every two minutes, made constant, high pitch, high volume screaming noises as it did so, and you selected the font by pressing buttons on the printed until one of about four options lit up, I think it did times new roman, copperplate gothic, courier, and courier sans. This brought me back to the dot matrix printer we used to have with our first Windows 3.1 machine. What a complete bastard to reload and keep the paper roll aligned, I remember one day I up and decided to print the entirety of Microsoft clip art and wingdings fonts, I don't think my age even reached double digits yet.
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May 31, 2015 23:19
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OwlFancier posted:Sliced fingers? What were people doing to it? The old tower design (9500 I think?) was hard to get in and out of, complete with several unfinished metal edges if I remember correctly. Pretty much all Macs back then had metal RF blocking cutouts for unused drive bays and such. Wonder why the need need for them disappeared. On the G3 minitower, simply press a button. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zkq9EOnL85M&t=135s (skip to 2:15 if the link won't do it for you.)
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Jun 1, 2015 00:28
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G4s were the best -- pull a lever and the whole side drops open
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Jun 1, 2015 01:33
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evol262 posted:G4s were the best -- pull a lever and the whole side drops open
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Jun 1, 2015 02:46
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NihilismNow posted:
We had these at my school in the late 90s  . Which is weird, considering we weren't in all that rich of a neighborhood, so we weren't very well funded. Maybe it's because up to that point, we had nothing but apple IIs.I mostly just used them to play Bugdom.
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Jun 1, 2015 03:20
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Terrifying to work on, as were emacs. Nobody ever wants to open a crt
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Jun 1, 2015 04:58
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Those iMacs were hateful, hateful machines though - I remember there were a couple of labs filled with them at my University (so circa 2002~2003) which were always completely empty of people even when the labs with NetBSD and Windows machines were packed.
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Jun 1, 2015 07:07
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NihilismNow posted:
I hated the round mouse on the rare occasion I had to use one. I guess real Mac users don't touch type and never have to take their hand off the mouse?
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Jun 1, 2015 07:09
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NihilismNow posted:
I was about ~8 when these came about and I thought they were the most poo poo thing that ever existed. But that may have been skewed by my first mac experience.  My family had a Mac Perfoma that was pretty much that. The 5200, and I despised it. I don't feel like I missed out on any games, I played Warcraft II, Doom, Diablo and Command and Conquers so it wasn't that. But the peripherals like sound, the mouse and keyboard were were tied to the processor load. So in a case in a game cinematic that is blaring out the inbuilt speakers, you couldn't turn it down while it was playing. Then you're getting stressed about being in trouble because your parents are screaming at you to turn it down and you are mashing that volume down button. Did the new iMac in 1998 actually run alright? Or was it a pretty terrible machine in comparison to Linux and Windows?
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Jun 1, 2015 08:59
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Lord Windy posted:Did the new iMac in 1998 actually run alright? Or was it a pretty terrible machine in comparison to Linux and Windows? I had a couple of iMacs over the years and never really had much of a serious complaint over any of them. The early models were crap when OS9 was still around but once OS X came out they were really solid, cheap machines. Hell I used a AV iMac as a jukebox for years. Probably the worst parts about them were if you had to open it up to work on them with the big CRT in it. They looked nice especially considering what the PC landscape looked like at the time and were pretty drat reliable. What were nightmares were the PC clones of them that came out a few years later. I want to say E-Machines came out with one? My god those things were death traps. "I got a great idea, let's take that computer that took a ton of engineering and quality control to work right and be safe. Instead let's not do any of that because it is hard and costs a lot of money. On top of it let's cheap out on every possible bit of electronics in here and make it impossible for anyone to fix it without electrocuting themselves dead!" True story, I was working at a shop in a college town years and years ago. This old guy comes in with one of those, by that point they would have been about 5 years old at least, 2007ish. The guy says there is something wrong with his computer, that it "tickles him and causes all the lights to go off when he tries to turn it on." Not putting two and two together yet because it just was so bizarre I plug this thing in and hit the power button... I get shocked so bad I blacked out and twitched for a good minute. After making sure I was alright, selling the man a new computer, we figured out that the company had not grounded the power button right so when the thing shorted out you got raw 110 power going through you. I am lucky I am not dead. How the old guy didn't die is because his breaker popped before he got a good jolt so it felt like a tickle. I am sure it took 15 years off my life.
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Jun 1, 2015 11:49
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The CRT was segmented off, so no big deal working on them. Decent machines esp when you got Linux on them.
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Jun 1, 2015 13:07
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Djarum posted:What were nightmares were the PC clones of them that came out a few years later. I want to say E-Machines came out with one? My god those things were death traps. "I got a great idea, let's take that computer that took a ton of engineering and quality control to work right and be safe. Instead let's not do any of that because it is hard and costs a lot of money. On top of it let's cheap out on every possible bit of electronics in here and make it impossible for anyone to fix it without electrocuting themselves dead!"  How did the manufacturer not get sued into bankruptcy? And how does someone get repeated electric shocks and not notice he's getting shocked every times he turns the computer on? Even a "tickle" feels like nothing else on earth. I've never heard anything about eMachines that wasn't completely negative.  The Packard Bell Corner Computer is kind of funky and cool in a '90s sort of way. It was also designed by the same company that Apple worked with for their late '80s case designs (although I doubt Hartmut Esslinger was personally involved). Working on one probably sucks though. Woolie Wool fucked around with this message at 15:13 on Jun 1, 2015 |
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Jun 1, 2015 15:04
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There was an awesome documentary a while ago on Slovenian national TV about ''the scene'' in the late 80s. Man, what a time that was! Highlights: -You had to smuggle a computer across the border, usually from Austria. That was a sort of the national past time so everybody was doing but a (now pretty famous) dude was explaining how he got busted on the border, tried to show the officer some fake documents of ownership and when he didn't buy the story and left for some papers, grabbed the spectrum, broke out the window, ran for about 10 km through the forrest and got picked up by an accomplice who also ran for it. Nobody was allowed to buy computers and everyone had them. - A student radio had a weekly show where they would broadcast programs that you could tape. - There was a pirateware market in the capital. On the main produce market. Banners, stands and everything. There were two sections: for Commodores and Spectrums and they each had one stand. First come, first serve so sellers would start setting them up at 3 am. Edit: actually, there's a trailer with subtitles... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5J2-QVTRBo Zhiwau fucked around with this message at 15:19 on Jun 1, 2015 |
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Jun 1, 2015 15:15
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One of the early Spectrum emulators for the PC was written by two guys in Sarajevo during the war. They had to dodge sniper fire to get software to test, and since power was so unreliable they worked out most of the code on paper before typing it up using a computer powered from a makeshift generator built from a car engine hooked up to a natural gas pipeline. http://www.worldofspectrum.org/warajevo/Story.html
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Jun 1, 2015 19:22
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Woolie Wool posted:
Rural Indiana people are not the best and the brightest. The things I saw while I worked for the year there were mind-blowing.
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Jun 1, 2015 20:40
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Sweevo posted:One of the early Spectrum emulators for the PC was written by two guys in Sarajevo during the war. They had to dodge sniper fire to get software to test, and since power was so unreliable they worked out most of the code on paper before typing it up using a computer powered from a makeshift generator built from a car engine hooked up to a natural gas pipeline. I remember reading that. Those dudes are the ultimate geeks. Nothing says true passion like this. Sure, most of Eastern Bloc/post-USSR countries had it hard when it came to availability of home computers on home market, but nothing as bad as full-on war. Also, speaking of Speccy - Sweevo, is your nickname a reference to a certain game for this machine?
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Jun 1, 2015 20:54
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laserghost posted:I remember reading that. Those dudes are the ultimate geeks. Nothing says true passion like this. Sure, most of Eastern Bloc/post-USSR countries had it hard when it came to availability of home computers on home market, but nothing as bad as full-on war.  quote:Also, speaking of Speccy - Sweevo, is your nickname a reference to a certain game for this machine?
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Jun 1, 2015 21:52
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Djarum posted:Rural Indiana people are not the best and the brightest. The things I saw while I worked for the year there were mind-blowing.
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Jun 1, 2015 22:54
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~Coxy posted:The old tower design (9500 I think?) was hard to get in and out of, complete with several unfinished metal edges if I remember correctly. Case design has come a long way since then. The last Dell I worked on has a latch on the top you pull on, the side of the case comes off and you're ready to go. Everything except the motherboard and PSU is toolless. I remember working in beige box computers and constantly cutting my hands on razor sharp edges and wondering how to get the giant metal bar out of the way because it was clearly bolted in.
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Jun 2, 2015 01:14
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Yaos posted:Case design has come a long way since then. The last Dell I worked on has a latch on the top you pull on, the side of the case comes off and you're ready to go. Dell was usually good about case design, at least for their consumer models - I bought a couple of Celermine mini-towers for my shop back in '00 and they were the same way- pull lever, side pops off, PSU swings out, CD-Rom and floppy were toolless - only thing bolted with fasteners was the HD.
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Jun 2, 2015 01:29
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I still can't help but feel that it's not a real cable unless you screw it down.
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Jun 2, 2015 01:41
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Yaos posted:Case design has come a long way since then. The last Dell I worked on has a latch on the top you pull on, the side of the case comes off and you're ready to go. Everything except the motherboard and PSU is toolless. I remember working in beige box computers and constantly cutting my hands on razor sharp edges and wondering how to get the giant metal bar out of the way because it was clearly bolted in. The Antec Nine Hundred I have has the most irritating drive cages where you have to unscrew them using eight thumbscrews per cage with BOTH side panels off and then pull an entire third of the front of the case out to get at the hard drives, and then you have to screw them in with long bolts, and these require a screwdriver. How does Dell manage to it better than a company making a dedicated case specifically for hobbyist system builders? blugu64 posted:I still can't help but feel that it's not a real cable unless you screw it down. When I get a new monitor that supports HDMI I will dance with joy and possibly set my DVI cable on fire. Woolie Wool fucked around with this message at 05:06 on Jun 2, 2015 |
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Jun 2, 2015 05:03
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Woolie Wool posted:When I get a new monitor that supports HDMI I will dance with joy and possibly set my DVI cable on fire. Don't worry, people have made adapter brackets for HDMI cables that allows you to screw them in too. http://www.extron.com/product/product.aspx?id=lockit EDIT: Content. Token ring to ethernet adapter cables in use a few years back: 
n0tqu1tesane fucked around with this message at 05:28 on Jun 2, 2015 |
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Jun 2, 2015 05:25
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BaseballPCHiker posted:Sometimes I miss the crazy off the wall antics of early electronics. The industry was in it's infancy and companies could spring up out of nowhere and throw something against the wall and see what would stick. I can remember back in the day when the tower case design became a selling point! Used to be you would use the desktop as a monitor stand, I can even remember some models that had the power and ups built into the monitor for some odd reason.
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Jun 2, 2015 09:17
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n0tqu1tesane posted:Don't worry, people have made adapter brackets for HDMI cables that allows you to screw them in too. Why would you do that? 
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Jun 2, 2015 14:34
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