Olds go nostalgic for the good old days of tech

RAvery · February 22, 2025, 2:34am

ficuswhisperer · February 22, 2025, 2:57am

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 · February 22, 2025, 3:32am

Sounds impressive.

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

ficuswhisperer · February 22, 2025, 3:46am

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 · February 22, 2025, 4:05am

Millie_Fink · February 22, 2025, 2:48pm

A little better?

1000031369

nosaj · February 22, 2025, 10:34pm

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 · February 28, 2025, 4:51pm

RAvery · February 28, 2025, 11:34pm

July, 2007.

nosaj · February 28, 2025, 11:41pm

Surprised we didn’t see a battery fire.

noahdjango · March 1, 2025, 12:27am

[music]
*chef kiss

RAvery · March 2, 2025, 4:25am

December, 2006.

ChickieD · March 2, 2025, 6:11am

That’s super cool!

sqlrob · March 3, 2025, 2:49am

RAvery · March 10, 2025, 12:47am

Millie_Fink · March 11, 2025, 12:41pm

sqlrob · March 12, 2025, 12:04am

nq250310

MarjaE · March 12, 2025, 12:04am

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 · March 12, 2025, 4:10pm

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!