This was cutting edge tech… I remember the excitement of replacing floppy discs with CDRs…

  • Emerald@lemmy.world
    7·
    3 days ago

    This isn’t very old lol. That computer could be from 2010 and CD’s and Sharpies were used then. Also, LimeWire was functional until like late 2010.

    • D_C@lemm.ee
      231·
      4 days ago

      Wooo, look at hoity toity FancyPants over here with their screwdriver. All we could afford to fix our cassette tapes was a pencil. And a blunt pencil at that. And it was probably stolen from school!! Screwdrivers indeed!

      • hessenjunge@discuss.tchncs.de
        291·
        4 days ago

        The screwdriver is not for the tape. It’s for adjusting the audio head so it can pick up the data on the tape.

        When someone gave you a tape with some nice games on it there was a near 100% chance you needed to adjust your datasette to read them.

        • Treczoks@lemmy.world
          9·
          4 days ago

          Exactly. On the long run, we settled down on what we called a common calibration, a setting that allowed all of us locals to exchange tapes without constant tweaking.

          • hessenjunge@discuss.tchncs.de
            1·
            2 days ago

            A flathead is still a screwdriver, is it not?

            It was a Philips screw IIRC. You can also use a flathead screwdriver on them but you shouldn’t IMHO.

            • Farid@startrek.website
              1·
              3 days ago

              Then I misunderstood and was thinking of a different adjustment of the head. The one I was thinking about us when you wedge the screwdriver behind the head and bend it otwards a little for better contact. For that you need a flat tool.

  • Admiral Patrick@dubvee.orgEnglish
    82·
    4 days ago

    I’m exactly that old.

    Edit: The PC in the image is a bit anachronistic. This is the workhorse we’re all thinking of:

      • Admiral Patrick@dubvee.orgEnglish
        19·
        4 days ago

        I had an Optipex from that era too. It was “horizontal” but could also stand vertically. It was the business model.

        This one, but beige:

        The image is the Precision Dimension model which was the consumer version of it.

    • FrostyCaveman@lemm.ee
      5·
      4 days ago

      Dell Dimension 2400. My family had the entry level model, and it still absolutely destroyed every prior computer we’d had performance-wise

    • PugJesus@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      5·
      4 days ago

      That or the ol’ tan cased dinosaurs.

      The gray Dell helped me through many-a “100 Games!” disc…

    • NotSteve_@lemmy.ca
      2·
      4 days ago

      This was the first desktop I used with a big ol’ chunky CRT. I played around installing so many different windows XP themes

    • f4f4f4f4f4f4f4f4@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      2·
      4 days ago

      I maintain dozens of the black & silver Optiplexes, they’re used in Raw Thrills arcade games like The Fast and the Furious, Big Buck Hunter Pro, Guitar Hero Arcade… They are workhorses; usually clean it and recap the power supply (which are kind of a bitch to disassemble) and they’re good for another few years.

      I still run into the blue/grey ones like your picture, but not in use. Usually stored in the basement of a bar.

      My personal collection includes a couple of first-generation Optiplexes, the beige GX1. Dell is a bigger part of my life than I ever imagined or hoped. 😅

      • Jerkface (any/all)@lemmy.caEnglish
        83·
        4 days ago

        I mean, they are half right. The music industry is eating itself. Back catalog is outperforming new releases year after year because new music is dead.

        • Vespair@lemm.ee
          5·
          4 days ago

          New music is thriving. There is more music of almost every style and genre imaginable being released today than ever before. What’s dead is traditional music distribution channels and marketing avenues like radio, and the popular means of promoting music now reward the most dogshit meme-able content. But if you seek out music yourself, the modern era is a paradise of incredible music; don’t blame music itself for the failures of the industry to reward good within it.

          • Jerkface (any/all)@lemmy.caEnglish
            15·
            4 days ago

            New music is surviving. Of course it will survive. Music is an expression of our humanity.

            Thriving? I think not. When was the last time you went to a bar and people just starting singing and playing folk music? When was the last time you even heard of that happening? Once it wasn’t weird, it was normal.

            Music is dead because it has been elevated to something that is performed by the few and consumed by the many, instead of something that we all live together.

            • Vespair@lemm.ee
              2·
              3 days ago

              “Haute cuisine is dead! When was the last time you walked into a restaurant and saw aspic on the menu? When was the last time you heard of somebody serving aspic? Once aspics weren’t weird, they were the hottest fashion!”

              ^ That’s you.

              Trying to define the relevancy and lifeline of music as a whole based on the popularity of pub folk music is crazy.

              More people are making music today than ever before, as barriers monetary, technological, and knowledge-based only continue to lower with time. I have no idea how you’ve managed to draw the opposite conclusion.

        • Thassodar@lemm.eeEnglish
          4·
          4 days ago

          Hi! I’m a musician with new music that is not dead! Check it out: www.thassodar.com

          Bonus: 99% of them are instrumental, and the ones that aren’t don’t have any actual lyrics and are only on SoundCloud.

    • ERROR: Earth.exe has crashed@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      5·
      4 days ago

      I had those at home when I was a kid.

      I was born around the 2000s

      It’s not really that old lol

      Granted, I was in a developing country, so the timeline of technological development is not quite the same (People’s Republic of China).

      Do people in the west still have Cassettes in the 2000s?

      • MehBlah@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        4 days ago

        Those of us who can remember used those to save programs. It could take an hour or more if you had a large enough tape save a single file.

      • klu9@lemmy.caEnglish
        1·
        3 days ago

        A lot of people did: home, portable, car. But a lot of people had also left them behind for ordinary CDs, CDs full of MP3s and dedicated MP3 players like Rios and iPods.

  • boonhet@lemm.ee
    3·
    2 days ago

    No, because my country was pretty much too small and poor to have brand-name sharpies, we just had felt pens with other names. Carioca I believe was the most prominent brand back then.

  • Perhapsjustsniffit@lemmy.ca
    3·
    2 days ago

    Record off the radio to cassette and an active market for pirated live shows because we lived past nowhere and it was all we had access to.

  • voodooattack@lemmy.world
    10·
    3 days ago

    Old enough to remember using a 3½” floppy disk to boot my first PC and mess around with GW/Q-BASIC and play DOS games.

    The disks were strongly perfumed (I guess the guy I bought my pirated games from liked to do that for some reason), and I still remember that aroma.