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KozmoNaut
Apr 23, 2008

Happiness is a warm
Turbo Plasma Rifle


That is the nostalgic sound of science fiction, right there :)

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sleepy gary
Jan 11, 2006

And anytime anyone was near a computer in Oz.

kastein
Aug 31, 2011

Moderator at http://www.ridgelineownersclub.com/forums/and soon to be mod of AI. MAKE AI GREAT AGAIN. Motronic for VP.
Oh man, my XT clone I got like a decade ago to screw around with (yup...) has exactly that hard drive, and makes exactly that noise.

Fun fact: old hard drives like that used an actual stepper motor with a specially cut very thin stainless steel ribbon wrapped around its shaft to move the read/write head across the platters. The noise you are hearing is the stepper motor running. Modern hard drives use what's called a "voice coil" actuator, which is basically a pair of very strong magnets with an electromagnet coil suspended between them connected to the pivoting arm instead. The voltage across the coil (actually the current through it, but I digress) changing results in the angle of the arm changing.

3D Megadoodoo
Nov 25, 2010

Shugojin posted:

Like an actual beep from a speaker or just a motor noise that sounded like a beep?

Oh man it's hard to describe unless you've experienced it. That 20 meg drive (I'm assuming it's the same model as in the 286 XT) would positively SING. The video really doesn't do it justice.

The_Franz
Aug 8, 2003

A Pinball Wizard posted:

Way back when in 95, my first computer was one of these:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-RyvZxKufo

The IBM PC XT. It was built like (and weighed as much as) a tank. It rocked an 8088 processor at a blinding fast 4.77 megahertz. It "fell off the back of a truck" at my mom's work, after they upgraded to a :siren: 286 WITH MATH COPROCESSOR" :siren: for accounts payable/receivable.

My old high school had a bunch of these sitting around well into the late 90s. There were about 20 machines sitting in the back of the library that I don't think anyone ever used while I was there. However, the office and guidance counselors were actually still using these daily as terminals to access the student database as late as 1999 when I graduated, maybe beyond that for all I know.

Killer robot
Sep 6, 2010

I was having the most wonderful dream. I think you were in it!
Pillbug
I had an XT in the mid-90s myself. Only for six months or so before I upgraded to a still-old 386, but it was still a lot of fun to play with at the time. First hard drive was a 10MB full height one, though I soon upgraded it to a pair of 30MB half-height, and added a 720k 3.5" floppy so I could swap files more easily off more modern computers. (XTs wouldn't support high density floppies without extra controllers.)

Pivit
Oct 14, 2012

And the Itsy Bitsy Spider
went up the spout again.

My family's first computer, purchased back around 1995/1996, was made by Canon (the camera people). They paid extra for some upgrades like a pentium 100 instead of a 486, 8mb ram, 28.8 modem, and a sweet Alps four-disc cd-rom drive. I think these magazine based multi-disc drives became popular with trunk mounted car cd players in the next few years. Having it for your computer was something else.

Pivit has a new favorite as of 19:05 on Jun 23, 2013

Ron Burgundy
Dec 24, 2005
This burrito is delicious, but it is filling.
All the Silent Steel discs inserted at the same time :getin:

Code Jockey
Jan 24, 2006

69420 basic bytes free

Pivit posted:

My family's first computer, purchased back around 1995/1996, was made by Canon (the camera people). They paid extra for some upgrades like a pentium 100 instead of a 486, 8mb ram, 28.8 modem, and a sweet Alps four-disc cd-rom drive. I think these magazine based multi-disc drives became popular with trunk mounted car cd players in the next few years. Having it for your computer was something else.



My first CD burner was kind of like this. It was 4 disc, and it didn't have a magazine, but it somehow just loaded everything in through the slot [slot, not tray]. It's been... jesus 15/16 years since I had that thing so my memory might be foggy, but I still remember the sounds it'd make during bootup/when it'd change discs. :allears:

Thing was like $200+ too, cannot remember how I managed to convince my parents to buy that.

e. I keep thinking about it and not using a magazine doesn't sound possible to me but I swear it didn't use one

Coffee And Pie
Nov 4, 2010

"Blah-sum"?
More like "Blawesome"

Krispy Kareem posted:

It may have been a urban legend, but my mom spent 30 years at IBM and said the coke virus, which thanked you for being a loyal customer and popped open the CD drive for a cup holder, caused their IT department so much trouble.

This was a virus? I remember my parents had it on a floppy, I think it was like cokegift.exe or something. That was the funniest poo poo when I was a kid, along with Elf Bowling.

sleepy gary
Jan 11, 2006

Code Jockey posted:

My first CD burner was kind of like this. It was 4 disc, and it didn't have a magazine, but it somehow just loaded everything in through the slot [slot, not tray]. It's been... jesus 15/16 years since I had that thing so my memory might be foggy, but I still remember the sounds it'd make during bootup/when it'd change discs. :allears:

Thing was like $200+ too, cannot remember how I managed to convince my parents to buy that.

e. I keep thinking about it and not using a magazine doesn't sound possible to me but I swear it didn't use one

There were multi-disc slot-load CDROM drives, but I don't think they ever made a burner like that.

Willfrey
Jul 20, 2007

Why don't the poors simply buy more money?
Fun Shoe
So I said I'd burn a few DVD's for a friend, I'd just need her to grab me some DVD-r's because I was out.

She came back with eight of these:



It is kinda hard to see because of the :whatup: jewel case but that is a HD-DVD rewriteable disc.

:psyduck: I didn't even realize what they were until I was inspecting the fancy raibow-cases.

I'm tempted to hang on to them for a while. They were bought at this ghetto-rear end drug store in my town for less than a dollar each

Code Jockey
Jan 24, 2006

69420 basic bytes free

DNova posted:

There were multi-disc slot-load CDROM drives, but I don't think they ever made a burner like that.

You know what? I bet it was my first cdrom, not my first burner.

Come to think of it, it was a Hi-Val 4 disc changer, but I can't find any pictures, googling tends to just turn up modern hi-val drives and like car stereo changers.

Powerful Two-Hander
Mar 10, 2004

Mods please change my name to "Tooter Skeleton" TIA.


DNova posted:

There were multi-disc slot-load CDROM drives, but I don't think they ever made a burner like that.


Imagine the power - you could coaster 4 discs from a buffer underrun without having to swap them round each time!

pants in my pants
Aug 18, 2009

by Smythe
Wow, I forgot about buffer underruns. The first CD burner we had was an external Backpack Re-Writer. I think it was some company owned thing my dad got from work, and it was like a coaster factory. It hooked up to the parallel port and had a pass through system so you could still connect your printer. As I recall it was supposedly capable of blazing fast 4x speeds.

My father still has CDs burned with it, using mp3s he got off napster in the glory days.

AntiPseudonym
Apr 1, 2007
I EAT BABIES

:dukedog:

two forty posted:

My father still has CDs burned with it, using mp3s he got off napster in the glory days.

Man, this just makes me think about how little I miss Napster. There are some songs I still expect to suddenly stop halfway through when I'm listening to them, because my downloads never seemed to want to finish. Also just having a gigantic directory full of random songs, each with their own unique naming scheme. Rare songs that would appear in a heartbeat, download for 5 seconds and then never resume or appear again. Makes me wonder why I even bothered, honestly!

Taeke
Feb 2, 2010


The worst was thinking you had downloaded an episode of Dragonball Z or Pokemon or whatever I watched back then, only to have it be childporn.

I was only 13, goddamnit. I shouldn't have had to see that.

Datasmurf
Jan 19, 2009

Carpe Noctem
Episodes? As far as I remember, Napster was only for music.
Lots of other stuff for series and cp - if that is your thing - though.

I was the king of our school for having a 2x CD burner and a 128 kbps cable modem, I downloaded and burned out so many songs for people at my school, and earned a fat load of money on it too. Ah, those were the days …

Willfrey
Jul 20, 2007

Why don't the poors simply buy more money?
Fun Shoe

Taeke posted:

The worst was thinking you had downloaded an episode of Dragonball Z or Pokemon or whatever I watched back then, only to have it be childporn.

I was only 13, goddamnit. I shouldn't have had to see that.

Kid Buu! NOOOOOOOOO!

Code Jockey
Jan 24, 2006

69420 basic bytes free
Yeah, if I had it to do over again I would've monetized the gently caress out of my first burner. I could've retired by now!

[or more likely, I would've bought some gaming hardware that would've gone obsolete before I even had it installed]

Pilsner
Nov 23, 2002

Speakning of burned CDs...

I once got contact with a guy on IRC, him in Holland and I in Denmark. He was apparently a bit of a big time warez and media hustler, and we struck a deal where I sent him a shoebox full of common Magic the Gathering cards in exchange for a ton of stuff on burned CD-ROMs: Applications, games, movies, porn and music albums. We both got our stuff via mail and were happy. So utterly primitive today, though.

Taeke
Feb 2, 2010


Datasmurf posted:

Episodes? As far as I remember, Napster was only for music.
Lots of other stuff for series and cp - if that is your thing - though.

I was the king of our school for having a 2x CD burner and a 128 kbps cable modem, I downloaded and burned out so many songs for people at my school, and earned a fat load of money on it too. Ah, those were the days …

You're right, I had it confused with kazaa I think.

Datasmurf
Jan 19, 2009

Carpe Noctem

Pilsner posted:

Speakning of burned CDs...

I once got contact with a guy on IRC, him in Holland and I in Denmark. He was apparently a bit of a big time warez and media hustler, and we struck a deal where I sent him a shoebox full of common Magic the Gathering cards in exchange for a ton of stuff on burned CD-ROMs: Applications, games, movies, porn and music albums. We both got our stuff via mail and were happy. So utterly primitive today, though.

Ha ha, I did that at school too.
But instead of a shoebox with MtG cards, it was a tote bag with latex gloves, a speculum, lots of those sticks the doctors use to check your throat, syringes, needles, those things you crap / puke in when you're at a hospital and what not. I got all that stuff for free (well, not the speculum, but nobody suspected me - at least I never heard anything about it), and I got lots of games andapps on burned CDs. Good times.

Taeke posted:

You're right, I had it confused with kazaa I think.

Ah, yes. Kazaa. Or Kazaa Lite, Bearshare, Limewire, Frostwire, iMesh, EDonkey2k, Gnutella and my old favourite after Napster, WinMX. Interestingly enough, I've got the setup exes for all these (except LimeWire, because gently caress that crap). I should really clean up my old misc download folders.

sleepy gary
Jan 11, 2006

Datasmurf posted:

Ha ha, I did that at school too.
But instead of a shoebox with MtG cards, it was a tote bag with latex gloves, a speculum, lots of those sticks the doctors use to check your throat, syringes, needles, those things you crap / puke in when you're at a hospital and what not. I got all that stuff for free (well, not the speculum, but nobody suspected me - at least I never heard anything about it), and I got lots of games andapps on burned CDs. Good times.

Good lord. Good LORD.

Monkey Fracas
Sep 11, 2010

...but then you get to the end and a gorilla starts throwing barrels at you!
Grimey Drawer

DNova posted:

Good lord. Good LORD.

The less you think about it, the better.

Robot Uprising
Sep 19, 2006

Spinning Buzz Saws
:stare: I think you where supplying a serial killer.

ol qwerty bastard
Dec 13, 2005

If you want something done, do it yourself!
Obviously someone was making a human centipede.

TheHistoryChannel
Feb 12, 2008

Pretty good scam really. Steal warez for free, and some kid puts together a pro rape kit for you. He probably used the money he saved to flash at prostitutes to get then into the limo.

mactheknife
Jul 20, 2004

THE JOLLY CANDY-LIKE BUTTON

Code Jockey posted:

Yeah, if I had it to do over again I would've monetized the gently caress out of my first burner. I could've retired by now!

[or more likely, I would've bought some gaming hardware that would've gone obsolete before I even had it installed]

We had a kid doing this at my junior high. He'd take requests and make you a cd for five bucks. I think he might have gotten suspended for it.

Exit Strategy
Dec 10, 2010

by sebmojo

mactheknife posted:

We had a kid doing this at my junior high. He'd take requests and make you a cd for five bucks. I think he might have gotten suspended for it.

I did this, minus the suspension. I'm pretty sure nobody in authority was even AWARE it was illegal.

3D Megadoodoo
Nov 25, 2010

Exit Strategy posted:

I did this, minus the suspension. I'm pretty sure nobody in authority was even AWARE it was illegal.

Most people over the age of forty do not understand the concept of paying for things you can do/get with your computer for free.

El Estrago Bonito
Dec 17, 2010

Scout Finch Bitch
Kazaa started out as a great program but then when it went all spyware it forked into Kazaa Lite. Of all those WinMX is probably the most important since it (along with the work of Ian Clarke) influenced and gave birth to all the modern P2P clients through its unofficial successor WinNY and later WinNY's unofficial successor Perfect Dark.

These are mostly used in Asia however, where WinMX and WinNY still have huge fanbases and piracy through torrenting isn't as common. I'm pretty sure this has a lot to do with certain Asian countries being really terrible at adopting new operating systems. Back in 09 I used to deal with people from Korea, Taiwan, China and Vietnam on a pretty frequent basis and the amount of people who would show up complaining they couldn't run some software for their class due to them running WINDOWS ME was insane. I don't know what it is about ME but that was where half of the Asian student populations computer problems stemmed from.

Ofaloaf
Feb 15, 2013





You see, having the drives wheels run against a set of smaller wheels instead of directly contacting the rails creates a gearing effect which totally speeds up the locomotives, and if you could just invest in a few hundred of



then I could totally sell these efficient locomotives to the railroads and make us all rich! No, why on earth would you think this is a scam? :haw:


But the damndest thing is that two of these things were actually built.

DrBouvenstein
Feb 28, 2007

I think I'm a doctor, but that doesn't make me a doctor. This fancy avatar does.

Datasmurf posted:

Ah, yes. Kazaa. Or Kazaa Lite, Bearshare, Limewire, Frostwire, iMesh, EDonkey2k, Gnutella and my old favourite after Napster, WinMX. Interestingly enough, I've got the setup exes for all these (except LimeWire, because gently caress that crap). I should really clean up my old misc download folders.

No one ever remembers Scour. :sigh:

Plinkey
Aug 4, 2004

by Fluffdaddy
I also made some dough in early highschool by burning napster mp3s for $5 a pop. I think my burner was only a 2x and I had to convert every mp3 to a wav for it to burn right.

Then in college I moved onto moding xboxs and loaded them up with bigger hard drives and tons of games or just burning the games to dvd...those were the days.

DrBouvenstein posted:

No one ever remembers Scour. :sigh:

I moved onto Direct Connect after the napster downfall. Someone ran the server on the school's network (which had no bandwidth limits inside the network) and restricted it to the school's ip addresses. It was amazing.

pants in my pants
Aug 18, 2009

by Smythe

Ofaloaf posted:

You see, having the drives wheels run against a set of smaller wheels instead of directly contacting the rails creates a gearing effect which totally speeds up the locomotives, and if you could just invest in a few hundred of

This is interesting, what was it called? Looks like something out of a married to the sea comic.

I know they've been discussed before, and the consensus was they aren't totally obsolete, but today I dug up my old Sharp MiniDisc player. A Japanese import that cost close to $500 in 1999, I bought it for $20 for kicks a few years ago. It has an array of pretty fancy features, I think there was even a way to record to it via a special TOSlink cable, and I see pictures in the instructions (mostly written in Japanese) of some sort of serial port adaptor. Songs could have the titles entered, and they would display on the backlit screen on the remote in between an animated swimming fish. What really struck me about it is what a precisely engineered, compact mechanical device it is.

Interesting to think of how far we've come in 15 years. This was I guess pretty much the pinnacle of portable media players back then, recording to minidisc at 1x speed.

Geoj
May 28, 2008

BITTER POOR PERSON

two forty posted:

Interesting to think of how far we've come in 15 years. This was I guess pretty much the pinnacle of portable media players back then, recording to minidisc at 1x speed.

I'm honestly surprised they lasted as long as they did, given that they were basically smaller CDs that stored data on the disc by a slightly different method.

I sometimes wonder if it was technological advancement and price reduction in solid state digital media players that did them in, or recordable CD media prices dropping below $1/disc in the late 90s.

Ofaloaf
Feb 15, 2013

two forty posted:

This is interesting, what was it called? Looks like something out of a married to the sea comic.

They were built by the Holman Locomotive Company. I've no idea if they had any fancy name associated with them, but I'd be surprised if they didn't.


In a less-scammy vein, railway engineers in the early 20th studied steam-powered ships and thought to themselves "Gosh, these steam turbines are pretty powerful and efficient in ships! I bet they would do wonders for a locomotive!" The results were failures across the board, but produced some pretty rad designs nonetheless.

The German steam turbine locomotives were just :black101:





Whereas the American steam turbine locomotives look like they belong in some caricature of the 1950s:





I think there's a couple steam turbine locomotives preserved in Sweden, but all the super rad designs have long-since been scrapped.

GWBBQ
Jan 2, 2005


Plinkey posted:

I moved onto Direct Connect after the napster downfall. Someone ran the server on the school's network (which had no bandwidth limits inside the network) and restricted it to the school's ip addresses. It was amazing.
We had a DC++ network, too. Same deal with on-campus addresses and bandwidth only, and the IT department looked the other way because keeping it on campus meant no lawsuits or infringement notices.

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kastein
Aug 31, 2011

Moderator at http://www.ridgelineownersclub.com/forums/and soon to be mod of AI. MAKE AI GREAT AGAIN. Motronic for VP.
I did xbox modchips in college too... knowing how to solder well was a good skill to have.

The DC++ network at my school was constantly being shut down because the netops group was a bunch of nazis. That being said, every oncampus system, student or otherwise, that wasn't part of critical infrastructure had a public static IP, so there was somewhat of a reasonable explanation for why it needed to be shut down.

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