“it’s now safe to turn off your computer”
That’s how old I am
…
…
Fuck
And the power switch was like KA-JUNK when you pushed it, because it was a big ol’ switch that actually physically connected and disconnected the power.
“It’s now safe to turn off your computer” went away after we moved to software power control, where the operating system could signal the power supply to turn off.
I had my computer plugged into a power bar and we’d turn off the power bar to turn off the computer so that we wouldn’t wear out the switch on the computer.
People actually thought you’d have a computer long enough to wear out its power switch.
I knew far, far too many people in HS that just hit the power button without actually shutting it down.
I had to type “/win” to boot up Windows
Into what did you type that? Wouldn’t something already have to have booted first in order to type it?
Dos, windows was just a normal dos program you had to start like anything else until windows 95
And when Win95 booted, you exited into the DOS prompt, the true gaming environment at the time.
Oh gawd, there are people that don’t know DOS.
FACK…
I know about DOS if that helps? I’m not too far off from having used it though, I bet. I’m 38.
Yeah you have no excuse
This PC booted up in DOS
MS-DOS
I assume MS-DOS.
The one I remember best was having to use the DOS ‘park’ command before you shut down the PC. I guess I am that old.
Huh, never ever seen that. We always used the rule "you can shutdown the computer when you can see the C:".
What does park do? Put the HDD arm into a parked position? Never needed that for ours, but we also had a blazingly fast 486 with a massive 250 MB hdd.
Yeah, old drives didn’t autopark like the IDE drive in your spiffy 486. I had an XT growing up, and dad was militant about having us remember to park the drive when we were done with it. I think by the end of the 80s, all drives were IDE and were autoparking, so the command was deprecated.
I never had to do that, because our computer didn’t have a hard drive. We booted DOS right from the floppy.
Damn, I had a Tandy 1000HX (very much not a 486) and never had to do that. Maybe because, despite having a hard disk, it had DOS on its own ROM.
Cool, I’ve wanted an OS ROM chip since the early nineties, and often wondered why nobody seemed to be doing it. Guess they were all along!
You technically didn’t have to park the old MFM and RLL drives, but if you didn’t, then you just had the drive heads resting on the platters after you shut them down. Then if you bumped or moved the PC at that time, it could scratch the disk like a record. If you never tried to move it, there probably wasn’t much risk.
From the sound of it, the HDD in your Tandy probably would have been an MFM or RLL drive, and depending on the drive model, it either autoparked the drive heads or didn’t. As a PC clone running MS-DOS, the command was probably supported, but maybe not needed. Or you may have just been the equivalent of one of those rebels who held down the power button every time they wanted to shut down the PC and always got away with it!
I’m right there with ya. Don’t forget to make sure you set the interleaving correctly on your Winchester drive!
Yup. Thankfully that “feature” went away real quick and it became automatic.
I had a friend who edited the .jpeg or whatever in the shutdown sequence to say “it is NOT safe to shut off your computer” and waited for his family to freak out.
Is that Windows 95?
Any Windows machine that does not support ACPI or has it disabled. IIRC Windows has required ACPI since Vista.
95/98 and ME/XP to a far lesser extent but it was 98 for me lol
I feel you man. Very nostalgic!
The ole AT power supply standard. Nice.
Random tangent, my dad edited the system file that contained that message to “It’s not safe to turn off your computer” when I was like 5 and it kinda fucked me up for a bit.
It’s not safe to turn off your computer.
There are enemies nearby.
Win7 isn’t that old.
People born when Windows 7 was released can get a driver’s license in many parts of the world
Fuck I’m old.
you take that back
I was going to say!
The OP was using the fancy new icons…
1: You a veteran?
2: Yes. No. I don’t wanna talk about it.
Camera zooms in on 2, fades to montage:
MiG 21 thundering overhead at tree top levels, while blasting ‘Hush’, which is being comically raised in pitch to squeaking chipmunk levels as it approaches, and then instantly downshifts by two octaves into quaalude voice after it passes overhead… it is being pursued by an f4 phantom who fires off all of his seeking missiles in a quick burst, all of which guide themselves into your convoy of m113s, as well as a nearby mortar emplacement
squad is slowly advancing through Hue with no resistance thus far… and then suddenly, from 3 different directions, VC on mopeds, blasting ‘Surfin Bird’ and headbanging maniacally, rapidly approach the unit… 2 are shot, but one makes it through, moped detonates with the force of 4 bundles of TNT
… rocket pod armed mi8s and hueys pieroutting around each other in the night sky, throwing unguided rockets everywhere, taking out ground bound friend and foe alike, both ultimately running out if ammo and then crashing into the ground sideways and upside down…
Camera pops back to 2, slowly zooms out.
2: … I don’t … don’t wanna talk about it.
Entertainment packs 1-4. Chips Challenge, SkiFree, Rodent’s Revenge
Oh man, I found chip’s challenge again a few years back (it took forever because I couldn’t remember the name) but I totally forgot about rodent’s revenge!
You can install and run v3.1 in DosBox. In case anyone wanted to keep using it.
Eh… Windows 7 background ain’t THAT old. Still the best OS they made.
Heh, this is brand new software and tech as far as I’m concerned. I remember when the computer did not automatically boot into windows and you had to cd c:\windows and then win.exe.
LOAD “*”, 8, 1Honestly it feels new to me too. I just thought the meme would spark some nostalgia for all us old(er) people who like to complain about the youngsters
Heh, the days when the six 3.5" floppies of Wing Commander was a huge install and often required a hard disk clean out.
All this feels pretty old for me
The standard 5” floppy. The best part was putting down the latch on the drive and that sweet sound it made.
Remind me to send you a picture of my 3ish feet diameter hard drive platter
I loved the island guy and the bad dog ones. Loved After Dark
Images you can hear
Ah yes, the toe remote still works, also for laptops and without even changing batteries.
I mean, I’m in my early 40s and I’ve started with ms-dos. According to this meme what am I? A fucking dinosaur? Am I that old?
In my early 30’s. Started with W95. But did dabble in dos sometimes
Same, but then you severely undersold how old you are. Like, where’s the Space Cadet, at least?
On your phone, now. Somebody decompiled it and released it on the Google Play store.
Yeah, I have it on Vita, Switch and Steam Deck. Cause why not. Wonder if it’s on 3DS…
Not reverse engineered. Decompiled and republished. It’s exactly the same one from the ground up.
That’s nice. But it already seemed pretty accurate to me.
Nah, old(er) people would boot directly to a BASIC editor.
I remember playing a hotseat game with my friend and his brothers ( I think heroes of might and magic 2) and I accidentally big toed the power button, just like in this picture 😅
Everyone was pretty gutted, although we then found out that autosave happened every turn, what a releif.
Gorillas.bas
Nibbles.bas
I’m in my late 20s and started with ms-dos too. And even tried OS/2 to check I wasn’t missing something before upgrading to 3.1 then XP 😂
Well if this is a competition for who can find old computer images im im
did you use that as a child? I was posting my first computer
…is that the demo?..
😂
…we had the
40162001N with an external tape drive: not quite as much geek-cred as the original 2001, but still respectable…Mine was a TI 99/4a. Texas Instruments ‘computer’ of the same generation. Tape drive squealed like a modem. But nobody remembers modems now …
“.” ,8,1
Ayyy childhood
Green Screen!
Turning on the tower with your foot…yeah, that unlocks some memories, lol.
Now do you also remember shutting it down with your foot?
“It’s now safe to turn off your computer”
I didn’t shut down the computer that way, I’d go through the menus and such. At that point I’d just have to shut off the monitor. If I had to do a restart 'cuz the damn thing froze then yeah, I’d use my foot.
mine
I once knew a woman who used cut up punch cards as spacers when rolling joints.
What’s all this newfangled content being posted as old? My first computer had Windows 3.11 that you booted to from a command prompt. It was an amazing graphical upgrade from the command line computers. Now you could actually see what you were doing on the screen instead of typing commands and hoping a document would print with your data.
Before that, I used Apple IIe computers at school, with their solidly green command line interface. I remember being taught how to program instructions with those computers. You had a “turtle” (green triangle) that you needed to move to a specific spot on the screen, and you typed in commands to make him move.
Whatever content is in this meme, it all released long after I grew up and became an adult. You young whippersnappers.
Millennials are now “old” by internet standards, so Gen X and older are positively ancient.
I’m an elder Millennial, and I remember when we got old enough to use the 386 machines at school. Before that we were using DOS.
Our first home computer was bought second hand and didn’t even have a hard drive, just two 5.25" floppy drives, and also ran DOS. We’d have kids from the entire neighborhood visit to play games on it, because although it was second hand it was also very rare to have one.
I was 12 when Windows 95 came out. All this stuff looks waay newer than that. I’d say this draws the line for old at the older part of Gen Z. Millennials aren’t even on the scale.
The oldest Millennials are 44 now, and the term is still sometimes used to mean “young people.” But only by older people.
Are you also a member of the ‘Oregon Trail and Number Munchers on the school computer lab’s Apple II’s’ club?
Along with like… KidPix, lol?
Or am I a bit younger than you?
You had a “turtle” (green triangle) that you needed to move to a specific spot on the screen, and you typed in commands to make him move.
Ah. LOGO.
Oh man! I had no clue what the program was called. We used it way back in my kindergarten/1st grade days, so I’d long forgotten the specifics. Thank you! This is exactly it.
Ok, boomer
