Olds go nostalgic for the good old days of tech

[RAvery]

I couldn't fix this SPARCstation because of one STUPID problem

[ficuswhisperer]

Sad. I worked at Sun for a time and much of my early career was spent working with Sun workstations and servers so this brings back a lot of memories.

I always liked the lunchbox form factor, especially when there was a bunch of matching form factor devices stacked on top of it. For a while I had an IPX or maybe IPC with a CD-ROM, tape drive, and multiple HDD enclosures stacked on top of it all with matching Sun cases. I had a sticker on it that said “the tower of power”.

I was also always jealous of the guy down the hall from me who had a SPARCstation 20 which was top of the line at the time. At a later job I thought I was cool because I had an Ultra 2 at my desk.

[RAvery]

@ficuswhisperer

I had a sticker on it that said “the tower of power”.

Sounds impressive.

I too like the design of that case. Kind of like a Macintosh II, but folded in half.

[ficuswhisperer]

It really wasn’t that impressive. It was a bunch of cobbled together stuff I had collected over a period of time. I probably barely had 5GB of disk space total even with some 3 enclosures. And having a tape drive was beyond unnecessary.

But it sure looked cool. I wish I had a picture of it.

Here’s a second attempt at a “tower of power” from some 25 years or so ago. I couldn’t stack it all up because it would break the shelf it was on, and it didn’t have a tape drive, but it gets the point across:

(Yes, it’s potato quality. It was taken on a really, really old digital camera.)

[RAvery]

[Millie_Fink]

A little better?

[nosaj]

@ficuswhisperer

I always liked the lunchbox form factor

Samesies. My first job after uni involved Sparc 4 lunchboxes and Sparc 5 pizza boxes. Definitely preferred the performance of the 5, but loved the shape of the 4. I’m very messy my with desk space; the 4 shared that space so nicely.

[FGD135]

[RAvery]

July, 2007.

Will It Blend? - iPhone

[nosaj]

Surprised we didn’t see a battery fire.

[noahdjango]

[music]
*chef kiss

[RAvery]

December, 2006.

Will It Blend? - iPod

[ChickieD]

That’s super cool!

[sqlrob]

[RAvery]

An Exciting Announcement from Connections Museum 🥰☎️

[Millie_Fink]

[sqlrob]

[MarjaE]

Does anyone know how to run ms-dos apps on Linux and/or MacOS?

I can’t use Dosbox unless I can stop the blinding paincursor and replace dark mode with readable text in light mode. (I know it’s supposed to show where you are typing: somewhere in the painful blur in the general direction of the computer screen.)

[Murgatroyd]

You might look into trying either QEMU or Bochs. You can install FreeDOS on a virtual disk, and run your app under it within either emulator. I don’t know if either of these will cause visual problems for you, but QEMU seems to have a pretty neutral interface (I use it in my Operating Systems and Systems Programming classes, and haven’t heard any complaints from students about that aspect, but anecdata isn’t proof).

EDIT: typos do vex me greatly!

[sqlrob]