PCs have changed a lot

[winemaker81]

In the Post a Photo thread, there's a few posts about ancient PC technology. I've got an interesting story.

In 1989, I replaced the 10 MB hard drive in the office server with a 40 MB drive. The price had just come down to $750 USD, we were out of space, so the office head authorized it.

Ten years later I replaced the HD in my PC. I figured the per MB cost for each:

At 1989 prices, the 1999 HD would have cost $750,000.​

​

At 1999 prices, the 1989 HD would have cost about $0.02.​

A HD I installed in 2009 would have cost something like $45,000,000 at 1989 prices.

 

[Christopher Anderson]

Two months ago, my company got rid of some Dell video servers with 10 Terabit HDD. They say properly dispose of them. which I did. Into our vehicles and upgraded my servers at home. The problem is we stream so much, and I can just stream what I want and not "record" anything off the stream.

 

[winemaker81]

I've a couple of IT support horror stories, and this thread is as good a place as any. Story 1:

I was the unofficial desktop support guy for a small satellite office of about 20 people, plus for a program office of 5 people. It was a MacIntosh shop, back in the Mac Plus and Mac SE days. The main part of the company used IBM PCs (had to be IBM!) and I helped with that if folks from the main office came to our office.

Guy shows up, says he can't read his floppy disk. It was a 5.25" floppy. He pulls it out of his back pocket, and unfolds it. Yes, he had folded it in half and carried it around in his back pocket. The only copy of some important work was on the disk. He had been doing this for months.

I was honestly surprised that the disk had ever worked after being folded in half.

Upon examining the disk, the media inside was broken from repeated folding. No chance of reading it. I had to tell him the disk was unreadable.

 

[winemaker81]

Story 2:

Our office had an AppleTalk network with a 100 MB server. At the time, this was a HUGE amount of space, as Word and Excel files were often 3k to 7k in size.

A woman comes to me with a 3.5" floppy (which were actually rigid, unlike the 5.25" and 8" floppies). She had 6 months of work on the disk, and it had failed -- unreadable.

I had previously badgered the office head to authorize purchase of 3 different sets of management & recovery tools. Why 3? When I needed to recover files from a floppy (all too often), one of the three usually worked.

I tried all 3 on her floppy. No dice. It was dead, unreadable. I thought she was going to cry, for reasons I understand.

"Why didn't you save a copy on the server drive?"

"I don't trust the network!"






The moral of these stories?

BACK UP your stuff!!!

 

[winemaker81]

Regarding installing Linux:

As long as the BIOS is set to boot from USB (flash drive) before the HD, that works great. Balena Etcher (free program) will create a bootable flash drive using the ISO (disk image) of Linux installers, which can be used to boot the PC or install the OS.

I have a couple of flash drives that I use to play with Linux on occasion. Shut the PC down, insert the stick, and turn it on, and it boots Linux off the stick.

This works great with my generic desktop (I build my own) and my old Lenovo laptop. Anyone who knows Microsoft will not be surprised that I've been unable to boot my Surface Pro laptop to Linux ....


I realize the above has a LOT of buzzwords. If anyone is interested in creating a bootable Linux flash drive, ping me and I'll translate to English.

 

[Raptor99]

Your post brings back a lot of memories. I think that my first computer (Kaypro) had 64k memory and dual single-sided 5 1/4 inch floppy drives. It cost something like $1500, which is a lot more in today's dollars.

Somewhere in a box in my office I have an 8" floppy disk that I got from my dad. It was fun to take it out once in a while to show it to people.

 

[Sage]

Just lit it up

 

[winemaker81]

Just lit it up

Hmmm ... Win XP? That's a dinosaur.

There may be nothing wrong with the PC. It's just slower-n-tar in January. (well, January in the northern hemisphere).

My in-laws' last laptop (Win Vista, 14+ yo) took 15 minutes to boot. I ran an update, it took 12 hours to complete. At that point I convinced them to buy a new one. The old one is so slow that Linux doesn't run well on it. Better than Windows, but using it is an exercise in masochism.

 

[winemaker81]

Interesting factoid: I worked with a guy who had been an IBM PC sales rep. He said they called selling PC's "pumping iron". The old IBM PCs had cast iron strips in them to give them weight. Management felt the light weight of the CPU gave the wrong impression. Adding weight made the PCs more impressive.

Having carried enough old PCs ... assuming he was correct, IBM management were idiots ...

 

[Sage]

I have 2 sitting here running on XP. I use one for books. It has never been on the internet for at least 15 years. Not corrupted, not hacked, not damaged. Starts up in just a couple minutes.