Things were different back then. For example, PCs came with floppy drives, no optical disks, and no built-in networking. Wi-Fi didn’t exist. USB? Forget it. If you wanted on the Internet, you purchased a dialup modem. And storage was measured in kilobytes and megabytes. It was a different world.
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\nI typically retire a computer after four to six years of service, sometimes longer. I keep old systems around for a while, but eventually I yank out the hard drive and recycle the hardware. I broke that rule with one PC, however: Koby, a 1994 vintage IBM PC that I’ve kept “just in case.”<\/p>\n
Koby is also one of the few PCs I have that features a 5¼-inch floppy drive. For my recent experiments in The Quest For Floppy<\/em> (Post1<\/a>, Post2<\/a>), I pulled out Koby’s 5¼-inch drive. Before I did so, I powered-on the system to see whether or not it still worked.<\/p>\n It lives!<\/p>\n The old PC came up just fine, though it’s not perfect. The CMOS battery is dead, plus it has other issues. I was able to get Windows 3.11 to run and started Word version 6.0. The system crashed a few times, but I was so thrilled that I made a video documenting the process. Until the male-to-male PATA converter arrives, this will have to do for your Quest For Floppy update.<\/p>\n