90s Nostalgia Thread

[igor_kavinski]

Microsoft Windows 3.11 (aka Windows for Workgroups)

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I really wish they had OS/2 4.52

I kinda dreamed about its highly touted stability after reading an article about it in PCMag I think.

I really want to get one running in a VM and just try out all the productivity apps and nifty utilities developed for it.

 

[nakedfrog]

I only have experience with 3.1 but maybe 3.11 was really solid and didn't have any bluescreen issues?

Definitely not how I remember it, and I had a bit of experience. Honestly from Win7 on I've experienced very, very few crashes. Even Vista was pretty solid after SP1.

 

[Charmonium]

I kinda dreamed about its highly touted stability after reading an article about it in PCMag I think.

I miss PC Mag. Also Computer Chopper. I just generally miss printed pubs. New Scientist and Science News both still have print editions. Praise Satan.

 

[igor_kavinski]

I miss PC Mag. Also Computer Chopper.

Yeah they were good. I would read all of their issues now if I had them in printed form. That paper was really nice to touch. CShopper was thinner since it had more pages. It was also kinda adult-ish, with naughty photos to be found especially near the end with the long list of various sound cards, TV cards and AGP/PCI video cards for sale.

 

[Kaido]

I miss PC Mag. Also Computer Chopper.

it's tough because everything's so great these days. Computers are fast, operating systems are stable, there's software available for anything you can imagine. Apple has run out of ideas to the point where they're trying to sell a $3,500 VR headset, which there really isn't even a market for, because what else are they going to add to an iPhone at this point? Back in the day, there was PCI, then AGP, then PCI Express. IDE because SATA. Hard drives became solid-state drives. Single-core PC's became dual-core became quad-core. We live in a golden age of performance. You can get a T-Mobile 5G wireless home Internet router for like $60/mo with 70-meg download speeds. They sell smartphones that have folding screens that flip out to become a mini tablet.

Getting the magazines back in the day was so cool because you never knew what cool new stuff was coming out...dot matrix to inkjet to laser to color laser printers. CRT's to flat-screens to LED's. I'm typing this on my 32" QHD IPS, which was like $199 lol. Every movie, music, video game, and book you can think of is available online to stream or download. Anything you want to can be shipped to you via Amazon or Uber Eats. Things are crazy lol.

 

[Charmonium]

CShopper was thinner since it had more pages.

CS was like a meteor. In the late 80's and early 90's it was as thick as some phone books - remember those? And it was THE source for personal computers and peripherals. But by the late 90's it was down to about a third of its size as well as using a smaller format. I got my first XT from an ad there.

 

[igor_kavinski]

CS was like a meteor. In the late 80's and early 90's it was as thick as some phone books - remember those?

Sadly no. Never did see the phone book CShopper. I saw maybe one or two issues during the Cyrix 586 era that were still thick enough to be used as a weapon to clobber someone on the head. AMD didn't have much name recognition back then, at least for those new to computers. For some reason, the name Cyrix seemed to pop out more to me in their CShopper ads and I wanted one of their Overdrive chips bad. But I was just a dumb teenager back then. Used to read a book called C Programming Proverbs that my dad bought me. Except it didn't tell me anything about how to actually program in C. No mention of even compiler tools and what they did. Just general wisdom about programming. Guess my dad wanted me to get wise before I could shoot my foot with C

 

[Kaido]

I really wish they had OS/2 4.52

I kinda dreamed about its highly touted stability after reading an article about it in PCMag I think.

I really want to get one running in a VM and just try out all the productivity apps and nifty utilities developed for it.

Gravis has a bunch of pre-built images for Virtualbox available:

OS/2 on Virtualbox Guide | Gekk

Free hypervisor:

Oracle VM VirtualBox

www.virtualbox.org

They also have pre-built images for things like Windows 98, which you can do 3D acceleration with:

Pre-installed Windows 98 SE VirtualBox Image – Download and Use - Sysprobs

We created this pre-installed Windows 98 SE VirtualBox image if you want to have it on your Windows 10/Linux or macOS computers.

www.sysprobs.com

If you ever want to get more heavily into virtualization, just go on eBay & search for used Dell T7810 towers. You can get 8 to 28-core boxes for $200 to $700!

 

[Charmonium]

Gravis has a bunch of pre-built images for Virtualbox available:

I've been out of the loop for a while but is VB the same as VM. Looked up a list of Oracle's acquisitions but didn't know the name of company. I'm guessing it was Virtual Iron.

edit - nevermind. Thought VMware had been acquired. Thankfully, no.

 

[bbhaag]

Come get some! My younger brother went running when I brought this bad boy out!

Disclaimer:The 50 foot range on the packaging was hilarious and I may have looked a lot less cool then I actually thought I was.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I'm pretty sure I had one of those, if not at least one similar. Fun times.

I remember my dad also borrowing it to spray pesticide in the trees when tent caterpillars were taking over lol.

 

[Paratus]

Come get some! My younger brother went running when I brought this bad boy out!

Disclaimer:The 50 foot range on the packaging was hilarious and I may have looked a lot less cool than I actually thought I was.

The super soakers were a game changer from the 80’s motorized water guns. They had better range and thicker streams.

However 80’s water guns, especially Entertech had a bit more style and risk of being shot by police!.

 

[Kaido]

I've been out of the loop for a while but is VB the same as VM. Looked up a list of Oracle's acquisitions but didn't know the name of company. I'm guessing it was Virtual Iron.

edit - nevermind. Thought VMware had been acquired. Thankfully, no.

If you have Windows 11, there's also the free Hyper-V option:

How to Enable Hyper-V in Windows 11

If you like using virtual machines, then it's a good idea to learn how to use Hyper-V on Windows 11.

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