You know you're a sad old geek when.....

[tech_guy]

You get all nostalgic over recalling:

• DOS 6.22
• DEGAUSSING MONITORS
• TINKERING WITH CONFIG.SYS & AUTOEXEC.BAT FILES
• SOUNDBLASTER SOUNDCARDS
• DOOM

[mattx]

You get all nostalgic over recalling:

• DOS 6.22
• DEGAUSSING MONITORS
• TINKERING WITH CONFIG.SYS & AUTOEXEC.BAT FILES
• SOUNDBLASTER SOUNDCARDS
• DOOM

My Fav was IBMDOS.
I still use a 21 inch monitor for my photo work with a degauss button. Some of the youngsters on here won't even know what we are talking about.
Oh yes, make up a special disk just to pull in that extra amount of memory you need for a game.
Still remember the IRQ [ 5 ] for a SB card + DMA settings etc....
Doom - wasted so much of my life playing that.

[BKGarry]

and that was all when I was still in primary school, by the time I got to year 6 (sept 95 to aug 96) windows 95 was there, :-)

but then, when I got to "big school" my parents saved up lots of money and got me a 96 edition IBM aptiva, complete with the following items:

• 14 inch CRT auto degaussing monitor
• 12 mb EDO RAM
• 1.4gb HDD
• 16bit soundblaster pro soundcard (plugged into one of those big black ISA??? slots)

but then again, when I go to a primary school and see a BBC basic hiding in a cupboard, I can't help but to want to boot it up and see if they have the Smile suite of software :-)

[Jawloms]

I remember having to either change the IRQ for the printer port from 7 to 5, or turning the speakers off when you print otherwise you get a load of noise whilst printing.

[sparkeh]

Ahhh Degaussing, I remember the satisfying "Bonnnnng!" sound the old RM monitors used to make when you hit the button

Also, I remember having to run Mo'Slo for DOS games that ran too fast

[Danp]

Not that long ago I had a large plug in magnet that we used to degauss the monitors.

[salan]

I still do all those things! lol
Well the degaussing not so much.
Still play Doom and Quake and Heretic etc.
I keep one Compaq deskpro 486 dx2 66 for game playing(but it uses CF cards for a hard disk now).
The rest (including an IBM mainframe) are virtual machines/ emulators. Having said that the loft and garage are still full of Dragons etc. lol
Alan

[chazzy2501]

I remember getting a soundcard so I could install a CDROM drive! I remember playing magic carpet from floppy disk on my diamond graphics card. I remember my first voodoo2! (the best PC purchase I ever made)

[HaleStorm]

I remember the first proper upgrade i bought for my PC, saved up all my pocket money for weeks and weeks to buy a 3DFX Voodoo3 PCI card....to play the original version of Thief...worth every penny

[mattx]

When I get home this evening I will video degaussing my monitor. I can't wait........

[DaveP]

Ahhh Degaussing, I remember the satisfying "Bonnnnng!" sound the old RM monitors used to make when you hit the button

You forgot to mention the, also strangely satisfying, "wobble" that degaussing caused to the image. Perhaps there is a gif of it somewhere...

[JJonas]

You know you're a sad old geek when.....

You can remember entering code into debug to low level format an RLL hard drive.


I can also remember killing the first IDE drive we had with the same bit of code.

[DMcCoy]

Press play on tape

[sparkeh]

Press play on tape

And if its a ZX 48k Spectrum, get the volume control at *exactly* the right level so the game loads

[jinnantonnixx]

...

Also, I remember having to run Mo'Slo for DOS games that ran too fast

Remember the 'Turbo' buttons?