I wonder how many of us have these in the attic still?

[Dos_Box]

We've found another use for them...  

 

[hardtailstar]

My mum was recently clearing out her study and found these and a stack of unopened cassette tapes.

 

 

Edited March 22 by hardtailstar

[Dos_Box]

No labels mystery disks!
I'm always curious to see what is on any old media I come across.

[jthompson]

20 hours ago, Dos_Box said:

No labels mystery disks!
I'm always curious to see what is on any old media I come across.

 

 

AUTOEXEC.BAT
CONFIG.SYS

 

I'm hoping that by posting that I've not put @Dos_Box into some odd configuration for the day.

[Dos_Box]

My CD drive isn't working, and my soundcard refuses to pay 😛 
Saying that, I was looking at old Shuttle PC's on eBay the other day. At one of my workplaces, we got these in (circa 2004) for desktop use, and had a mass of them plonked in a storeroom several years later when we upgraded. They now fetch a decent price, so if any of you have one in the attic, it may be worth digging it out.
 

[Koldov]

IIRC someone I knew way back in the 90s had one of these...

 

It was full of disks (probably about 20+) and it was purely for Lotus Smart Suite!

[Dos_Box]

Loved Smart Suite, real competition for MS Office. Time Computers used to bundle it with their PC's.
I think Lotus was the most reliable aspect of those machines!

[Koldov]

Time Computers is the reason I'm in IT at all today! I bought one and it was so expensive, but so rubbish I couldn't play Counter-Strike (with its 128MB ram and integrated graphics), I couldn't afford to buy a new computer so I learnt how to upgrade!

 

As for disks, of course I've moved on because I'm modern, forward thinking and riding on the cutting edge of the tech wave... I'm now using these new fangled compact disks...

 

 

EDIT: I'm still holding on to my 5.25" floppy. In 2049 I'll be wandering around waving it at youngsters and shouting "IT used to be hard!"

Edited March 23 by Koldov

[BKGarry]

Our IBM Aptiva came with MS Works, Lotus SmartSuite and Creative Writer. I used to love the ol' SmartSuite Drawers.

 

In fact, for GCSE IT, back in 2001, We did most of our Coursework in Office 97, but Database Tasks were in Lotus Approach, because the school didn't buy any Access Licenses for students.

[Dos_Box]

1 hour ago, Koldov said:

Time Computers is the reason I'm in IT at all today! I bought one and it was so expensive, but so rubbish I couldn't play Counter-Strike (with its 128MB ram and integrated graphics), I couldn't afford to buy a new computer so I learnt how to upgrade!

 

As for disks, of course I've moved on because I'm modern, forward thinking and riding on the cutting edge of the tech wave... I'm now using these new fangled compact disks...

 

 

EDIT: I'm still holding on to my 5.25" floppy. In 2049 I'll be wandering around waving it at youngsters and shouting "IT used to be hard!"

I bought my first computer from Time (a Cyrix 200Mhz wet lettuce), and taught me a lot about doing my own upgrades and repairs!
It was relatively close to me and they had a factory shop called EMIT (Time backwards). very handy for software bundles and things like joystics etc.
It's the only thing I miss about Time Computers.

[Koldov]

First thing I learnt was that I needed a new GFX card, so I went through a couple of PCI (not Express!) cards, something like this iirc...

 

 

I don't know what was worse, the rubbish computer or playing on a 56k modem!

 

Anyway, I had to eventually upgrade to AGP, so that meant a new motherboard, CPU and RAM!!!

 

Of course I had to put it in a new case, so less of an upgrade at this point, essentially a new computer (but I built it, I got the bug and the career path was set).

[pete]

There's one 2m from my desk (we store random sacrificial USB drives in there).

[AlistairB1983]

8 minutes ago, Koldov said:

Of course I had to put it in a new case, so less of an upgrade at this point, essentially a new computer (but I built it, I got the bug and the career path was set).

 

That's not a new computer, it's the same computer just with different bits ....

 

 

[MinnieTechie]

I’ve still got one of those disk boxes somewhere, complete with a few unlabelled floppies that I’m slightly afraid to open. It could be old coursework, a DOS boot disk, or absolutely nothing.

The Time Computers stories bring back memories too. Those machines probably taught a lot of people more about upgrades and repairs than any course ever did. One bad graphics card and a 56k modem later, and suddenly you had an IT career.

[psydii]

Sorting through somethings in a shed I haven’t been in for a while, and found this: 

[Dos_Box]

On 15/06/2026 at 15:44, MinnieTechie said:

I’ve still got one of those disk boxes somewhere, complete with a few unlabelled floppies that I’m slightly afraid to open. It could be old coursework, a DOS boot disk, or absolutely nothing.

The Time Computers stories bring back memories too. Those machines probably taught a lot of people more about upgrades and repairs than any course ever did. One bad graphics card and a 56k modem later, and suddenly you had an IT career.

One reason Time was so cheap compared to other was that (allegedly) much testing of components and systems was skipped and lots of people received systems DoA. I recall their shops having charts on the walls showing how a Cyrix was juts as good as a Pentium.
Thankfully the Cyrix was socket 7 so could take AMD K6 CPU's.

[psydii]

AMD K6? I also stumbled across one of those today too!

[FN-GM]

On 22/03/2026 at 22:54, hardtailstar said:

My mum was recently clearing out her study and found these and a stack of unopened cassette tapes.

 

 

I sold some on eBay and got some good money!

[nicholab]

I had the AMD K6-2  300mhz

[Dos_Box]

I went from the Cyrix 200 to a K6-2 400. It was a hell of a leap!
I then had a K6-2 450 then 500 before jumping onto an Athlon 750.

 

@FN-GM I see lots discs at my local auction house fetching good money, that and 'big box' PC games (with discs, manuals, posters etc.).