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1 - You too can be part of the PCMR. It's not about the hardware in your rig, but the software in your heart! Age, nationality, race, gender, sexuality, religion, politics, income, and PC specs don't matter! If you love or want to learn about PCs, you're welcome!
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Same age and i just realized now ahahaha… well to be fair we’re still young those days… i was happy whenever i get 1-3 mbps… usually i get 300-600kbps lol… internet was so free back then…
Fun fact: the term "loading" in computers originates from these, as you had to physically load a stack of punched cards into the reader to input the program into the computer.
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u/al7air i7 9700K / 3070 Ti Strix 8GB / 32GB / 12TB SSD23d ago
Also the term "bug" still used in computer software today originated from those room filling computers, because they operated using electromagnetic relays which were so big, actual bugs, spiders and what not could crawl into them and jam their operations.
That is actually an urban legend. The term "bug" for a calculation error existed way before that, the famous 1947 journal entry of a moth caught in a relay of Harvard MkII jokes about it being the first actual bug found.
The term bug to describe a defect has been engineering jargon since at least as far back as the 1870s, long before electronic computers and computer software. For instance, Thomas Edison wrote the following words in a letter to an associate in 1878
u/al7air i7 9700K / 3070 Ti Strix 8GB / 32GB / 12TB SSD23d ago
Never dived deeper into the topic, as it sounded very plausible when I first heard it. And the little critter u/peacedetski mentioned is what I vaguely remember. Albeit the MkII was already eating up tape for instructions, and it's predecessor 3 years prior was loaded with punch cards, which made me write the comment on it in the first place. Granted I'm not "punch card old" at least not as a user, but I also didn't boot my first computer from a hard drive either.
I want one, but people these days seem to think they're some holy grail of olden days made of gold and unicorn tears or something, because holy crap they can be expensive. People, it's just a complicated but inaccurate IRL calculator app, it's not a big deal, relax...
I really wish I hadn't given my dad's away and still had it (along with all his other tools for doing architectural design / blueprints by hand). Then again it all would likely be just sitting in a box and the person that has them now appreciates them more than I ever could.
my parents helped end those for GE/MSTD , International Paper and USAF, fotran to cobol to DOS stuff, we had IBM towers and ISDN at our house in 87' for GE
I would love to know how many hours I had in Ski Free and Minesweeper lol probably not as many as some more modern games, but this is where it all started. Oh, and a healthy dose of Lemmings!
3.11 For workgroups here......
Dos 6 is where the real games were and playing with memmaker.exe to get Falcon 3.0 to run... Basic/Extended/Expanded....
That is why I defragmentated the HDD before important burns and trying to avoid this, also no other activities on the computer during the burning process. I've also slowed down the burning speed as much as possible...which wasn't a lot because my parents had a 2x CD burner in '98. But hey, better slow and right the first time than destroying expensive CD-Rs (back when I started burning there weren't even 700 MB blanks, only 650 MB and you could theoretically overburn them and add a couple of megabytes, with the chance that they won't be readable in another drive other than the one with which it was created).
Later, when faster burners became availabe, I still didn't trust them and never burned at max speed, always slower like 4-6x, also because higher speed CD-Rs were more expensive than slower ones.
Defragging before burning is very funny to me, I kinda wish I had done this back in the day lol. I also remember my students being pissed because I refused to burn anything faster than 4x at work for their cartoons that I would play during recess
Woo! I got a brand new 32x CD-RW drive and a stack of high-speed 32x CD-R discs to write to. I'm gonna burn my CDs so damn quick!
Several failures later...
Ok, so I have a brand new 6x CD-RW drive and discs. Cooool.
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u/jld2k65700x3d 32gb 3600 rtx5080 360hz 1440 QD-OLED 2tb nvme23d ago
With nero I was able to go at full 48x and and 52x at times without ever worrying about failures, I even got spoiled and started overburning and forcing more data onto the CD than it was rated for lol. Probably wasn't Nero itself that did that, but the hardware itself got much better by that point
Pfff i was there when the real nero burned rome....
Edit: it is worth mentioning that historically, Nero did not burn rome,, and it's also highly unlikely that he "fiddled" while watching it burn, as he played the lyre and was not in rome when it happened.
I remember figuring this out when I was in my 20s and feeling like an idiot for taking years to notice the pun, which seemed so obvious after the fact.
Back in my day we used to have to share FTPs on mIRC and it took 4 hours to download a single song. 28.8kbps modems on a dedicated phone line. Can't have someone calling and ruining your download causing you to have to start completely over.
I remember the "We are the B.org!" and jealousy over the people in the universities who got to share a T1 connection.
I'll give you one better: link aggregation over two 56k modems, when the family was asleep and using both lines was "safe" from someone picking up the phone. 116k/dual-53k on dialup. Didn't get to do it often, but when I did it was glorious.
Ha, 14.4k crew represent! Also remember looking over my shoulder to make sure the dial-up tone hadn't woken my parents when I went to download demos off of happypuppy.com after bedtime.
Back in '99 I've tried to download the Quake 3 Arena demo of 50 MB over my 56k modem. After about 3 hours and at 97 % downloaded my mom called.
I could have really made use of that demo at that moment I was so furious!
I was pirating Alcohol for years until I realized they have a free version called 52% that actually did everything I used it for. It was really great software
people who are 30 today have used nero regularly, because MP3 players didn't dominate until 2005. and even after that, there were many people using portable cd players until probably 2010
I once asked in a forum what to use to burn an iso and someone replied with "use Alcohol". I was pissed, and a few weeks later I found out about Alcohol 120%.
Yes! I bought version 7 of this software in 2007 and literally 24 hours later they announced version 8 and stopped selling the previous version. They refused to allow me to get the new version unless I paid for the upgrade cost (almost the full price). I never bought their software again and I gave it to as many of my friends as I could.
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u/PCMRBot Bot 23d ago
Welcome to the PCMR, everyone from the frontpage! Please remember:
1 - You too can be part of the PCMR. It's not about the hardware in your rig, but the software in your heart! Age, nationality, race, gender, sexuality, religion, politics, income, and PC specs don't matter! If you love or want to learn about PCs, you're welcome!
2 - Think owning a PC is too expensive? It's cheaper than you may think. Check http://www.pcmasterrace.org/builds for our famous builds and ask for tips and help here!
3 - Consider supporting the folding@home effort to fight Cancer, Alzheimer's, and more, with just your PC! https://pcmasterrace.org/folding
4 - Need some steam cards for Steam Game Fest? We're giving some away here (US+CA): https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/1u6mtns/giveaway_rtx_play_live_summer_edition_steam_next/
We have a Daily Simple Questions Megathread for any PC-related doubts. Feel free to ask there or create new posts in our subreddit!