The people stuck using ancient Windows computers

We still have my wife's IBM PS/2 that she bought around 1990. It was "high tech" at the time of purchase, with a 20MB HD and a 3-1/2" floppy drive. We've had it stored in a closet about 25 years. Its last uses were some genealogy stuff and playing archaic games like "Wheel of Fortune". It was working fine when put into storage.

I have a Toshiba laptop that I purchased in early 2013 IIRC from a pawn shop. It had an i3 processor, came with Windows 8, which was fairly new then, and later was updated to Windows 8.1. I still use it, because the laptop has a big screen (17.3"). I have maxxed out the memory and just updated to Windows 10 last year. I also replaced the battery last year. It's a little slow (sometimes), but it meets my needs for web surfing and other. It has a CD drive, which a lot of laptops no longer have.

I recently acquired a "free" Dell laptop from work. We recently did a massive software / hardware upgrade and they decided to dispose of practically all of the "obsolete" stuff. I was one of the newer employees, so my laptop was new in October 2022. It has Windows 11 on it. Employees were told that they could salvage anything they wanted, before the rest went to a computer recycling business. So I got this laptop, a complete Dell desktop setup for my wife (computer (Win11), 24" monitor, keyboard / mouse), and a Hitachi 24" LED TV that was being used as a monitor. That monitor now sits on the top shelf of my garage workbench. I bought a remote from eBay for it.
 
I have five operating computers in my basement...from Windows 98 to Windows NT, to Windows XP-Pro. I still have one 8" disc drive, a box full of 5 1/4 and 3 inch drives, and software from DOS 2.1 to Windows 10. I keep the floppy discs stored in a sealed container.
I run Autocad LT and Autocad 2010 and have them internally networked but rarely connect to the internet unless I use a virtual machine or just access what I need with my newer computer.

And I have an Apple 2e with all the necessary peripherals on the shelf.
Crap...guess I am old!
 
I like new tech as much as the next person.

But what I don't like is when the new software that is required to run on the new OS, has a vastly different user interface than the previous version. I really don't want to waste time learning new procedures - every 3 years or so - for what are essentially administrative tasks in my life: paying bills, reading email, composing documents, organizing files and photos.

Most of the software "improvements", aren't.
 
I had one of the T-shirts with an 8" pocket… for your 8" "shirt-pocket" floppy!

First programming was hand-assembling 6502 machine code on a SYM-1 bare board computer.
 
DWalt said:
Back in the early 1980s, I remember we had dedicated word processors in the office that used the very large floppies, 8" seems about right. They used an impact printer that sounded like a machine gun when printing. It had to be housed inside a sound reducing enclosure because it was so loud. My very first home computer was a Timex/Sinclair, one of the later ones, maybe a 1500. Very frustrating, every key had four functions, guaranteed to slow down the world's fastest typist to a crawl. It did use tape cassettes for saving programming. I think I may still have some of them somewhere. Not much fun, but I did write a few useful programs for it. I then got a Tandy 1000 which was PC-compatible and far easier to use. At least by the standards of pre-Windows days. I have many stories about my experiences with it. I learned a lot by using it. I also go back to programming for a mainframe IBM computer on punchcards during the 1960s. But I don't remember much, except that it was a frustrating experience.
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I worked for WANG Labs during that time period as a technical support person. I installed many word processing and VS data processing computers. I also wrote COBOL programs on the VS.
 
I have been programming computers since 1966 on IBM, WANG VS, and PC networks using Windows NT and SQLServer. I later wrote web based software. Some of the programs that I wrote over 25 years ago are still in use. My first hard drive was 5 MB and was the size of a washing machine. I started PCs with the IBM XT, and have evolved with computers over the years. My current PC is 4X4X2 inches and is the fastest one yet for me.

I have migrated software with new Operating Systems. I have used Virtual Machines(VM) to run old Operating Systems. Sometimes they do not work without old hardware. Fortunately there are currently USB devices that support old stuff like floppies, parallel printer, SCSI, and SATA.
 
Repeater said:
And I have an Apple 2e with all the necessary peripherals on the shelf.
Crap...guess I am old!
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The physics lab I used in college was considered "top tier" with Apple 2e's available for some of us to work with. (Early versions of photoeyes could be connected to do timing experiments, early motor controllers for small DC motors, etc.). The "computer lab" was outfitted with Vic Commodore 64s. My first computer class in college was learning FORTRAN 77 and transitioning from cards to text code. All of it was done with dial up modems to the university system mainframe, dial the number, put the handset in the cups. I think it was a screaming 600 Baud connection!
 
Think about some of the decades old computers NASA has to maintain to communicate with the older space probes still in operation.

Gave in this afternoon and ordered a replacement for my shop computer, it is 13 years old and not Windows 11 capable. Unfortunately I need the Windows security updates that will no longer be available for Windows 10. Still have a Dell laptop that runs perfectly using Windows XP.
 
45Smashemflat said:
TRS 80, TI 99/4A, Commodore 64….. Punchcards and cassette tapes. Yeah, I was impressed with 8" Floppies. I'm old.
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About 40 years ago we were issued TRS80s laptops, quickly became known as TRaSh 80s, in the days of acoustic couplers for phone/modem connection. Many of us came up travel kits of alligator clips, small screw drivers and RJ-11 plugs to work.radio shack trs 80
 
If anyone has an old PC that reads 5 1/2" disks, Dene Grigar, director of the Electronic Literature Lab at Washington State University, Vancouver, would like to hear from you!
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YES!!!!!!!!!! I had one for years! I was so irked when the next computer I bought only read 3.5" floppy disks. Fortunately for me, I uploaded the data from those disks before I wound up with a newer computer that doesn't read anything but CDs.

Ahhhh...............the old days...........DOS only.......................orange letters on a black screen............ dial-ups...........the TI keyboard that connected to your TV, making it a monitor for the limited use of the funny little "cards" you inserted..............mag/punch cards........... :ROFLMAO:
 
I know little about scanners (I do have one but haven't used it for many years). Difficult for me to comprehend why any scanner would cost $50K? What would such an expensive scanner be used for?
 
ISCS Yoda said:
Ahhhh...............the old days...........DOS only.......................orange letters on a black screen............ dial-ups...........the TI keyboard that connected to your TV, making it a monitor for the limited use of the funny little "cards" you inserted..............mag/punch cards........... :ROFLMAO:
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Back in my college days, PCs didn't exist, doubt that they had even been thought of. All they had were IBM mainframes. I had to do all my programming on punch cards. Make up a deck, put a rubber band around it and drop in into a slot in the wall. Some troll would run it, and you picked up your run printout from a bin the next day. Very frustrating. If you made one error on one card, it would not run, and you had to correct the card and repeat the process. Lots of IF…THENs and GOTOs. My first job out of college I was offered the position of setting up a data processing department as no one else in the company knew the first thing about programming. I declined the offer, didn't think I had enough background and experience. I really didn't, as I had taken just two programming courses in college. I probably should have accepted it, as the position I took instead did not work out well as it was a bad fit for me. I despised it and got out.
 
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DWalt said:
I know little about scanners (I do have one but haven't used it for many years). Difficult for me to comprehend why any scanner would cost $50K? What would such an expensive scanner be used for?
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In the color prepress industry, that used to buy you abou a two week timeshare on a 'real' scanner.

[....walks away laughing in Linotype-Hell AG]
 
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All of my Windows computers have upgraded to Win 11, even the one that wouldn't upgrade until I doubled the memory. The two computers that Windows was 'broken' on are now running Linux Mint, Cinnamon version. For web, email and common stuff it's just fine. More specialized stuff have work arounds, but they are clumsy. Like my digital/audio interface that I use with audio software needed some donloads, and they work, but are a pain. I used to use an Apple IIe with 5 1/4" floppies, but it has been a while and I held out for 3 1/4" 'stiffies'.
 
I used Windows 7 for a dozen years. Never a problem, did exactly what I needed, simply. Windows 11 as an operating system is pretty good unless you want to do something "independent" of Microsoft. I took half an hour to get a photo off my I phone yesterday, kept trying to get me to upload to the cloud/ buy Office 365. Had to copy/paste it into a folder while closing over and over the "download photos to One Drive/buy Office 365" pop up. Microsoft is the devil. Joe
 
Linux is close to being capable of full-time duty rather than just an interesting experiment. I run it on old obsolete Macs long abandoned by Apple. Performance is excellent (I'm running right now with Linux Mint 21 on a Mac Pro 5,1 from 2012).

Integration with my iStuff is better than I expected, in some cases better than macOS. An example: Mom texted me a document that she wanted me to print. Plugged the phone in the mac to transfer it...and...Apple provides no way to get it. Or at least no way while the internet was down even when directly connected by cable. Rebooted into linux --- and the iphone shows up in their file browser, all I had to do is navigate to it and copy it. easy-peasy.

Some parts that still need to be fixed/improved:
Upgrades: there really is no way to upgrade to a new version of the OS. Mint has a tool to do so, but it doesn't work. You have to uninstall/downgrade everything in the system until it matches the configuration it expects, then the upgrade will likely produce a non-working system anyway. It is quicker and more reliable to do a fresh reinstall on a different drive or partition and then reinstall all your apps, since you will have to do it anyway.

Fragility: Updates sometimes breaks the system to the point that it no longer boots. ALWAYS do a backup before updating. Recovery from a broken update can be frustrating.

grub: grub is the default bootloader. It is also terrible, fragile, and is frequently corrupted which means it won't boot. There are repair tools, but they don't work all the time (my batting average is .000). Fortunately this is easily fixed by installing refind.
 
I just trashed a 386 tower. It had 4 hard drives. Three of them out of laptops. It had Windows 98 that would eventually load but would blue screen if more than one program was loaded. It had both floppies and a CD burner. It also has some RS-232 control cards for a remote control program.
 
pharmer said:
I used Windows 7 for a dozen years. Never a problem, did exactly what I needed, simply. Windows 11 as an operating system is pretty good unless you want to do something "independent" of Microsoft. I took half an hour to get a photo off my I phone yesterday, kept trying to get me to upload to the cloud/ buy Office 365. Had to copy/paste it into a folder while closing over and over the "download photos to One Drive/buy Office 365" pop up. Microsoft is the devil. Joe
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Email the photo from the phone to your own email account. Open the email on your computer. Download the image. Easy peasy. I do it all the time.
 
SMSgt said:
Email the photo from the phone to your own email account. Open the email on your computer. Download the image. Easy peasy. I do it all the time.
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I have done the same thing on my wife's W11 laptop several times. Am about ready to mirror the hard drive on my W10 laptop in preparation to upgrade it to W11. Not looking forward to that.

My first real PC was a Tandy 1000. It worked well enough, but that was back in the pre-Windows days. There weren't so many IBM PC clones back then.
 
First "real" computer for me was also a Tandy - a laptop, of all things. Ran DeskMate as a windowed overlay on the underlying DOS OS. It ran for over 20 years after I bought my first real Windows desktop machine, a Win95 rig built at a specialty shop. Even kept booting up with the power supply long after the battery would not charge. I donated it to my museum before I retired.
 
rwsmith said:
All of my Windows computers have upgraded to Win 11, even the one that wouldn't upgrade until I doubled the memory. The two computers that Windows was 'broken' on are now running Linux Mint, Cinnamon version. For web, email and common stuff it's just fine. More specialized stuff have work arounds, but they are clumsy. Like my digital/audio interface that I use with audio software needed some donloads, and they work, but are a pain. I used to use an Apple IIe with 5 1/4" floppies, but it has been a while and I held out for 3 1/4" 'stiffies'.
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So what I'm gathering here is that holding out for a 3.5 stiffie is a lot better than making do with a 5 1/4 floppy
 
pasound said:
First "real" computer for me was also a Tandy - a laptop, of all things. Ran DeskMate as a windowed overlay on the underlying DOS OS. It ran for over 20 years after I bought my first real Windows desktop machine, a Win95 rig built at a specialty shop. Even kept booting up with the power supply long after the battery would not charge. I donated it to my museum before I retired.
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Decades ago, mid-80s, I worked with a guy who had very poor eyesight, about 90% of the way to blindness. To read anything he had to use a magnifying reading device, essentially a large magnifying glass mounted on a device to hold books or papers flat that could be moved. He had a Tandy flat PC with it. I don't rember what it was called but it was something like a laptop notebook that did not fold and had a fairly small display screen, just 8 lines. He could lay it flat on his magnifying device to read the screen and also type. I looked it up, it was the TRS-80 Model 100. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80_Model_100 I have never seen another of those, but apparently millions were sold.
 
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