My Dream PC

> Girls want one thing, and it's disgusting...

An afforable retro computer.

What I grew up on

I grew up with computer surrounding me. My father was really into technology and he collected computers one way or another. Buying prebuilts, offloading broken PCs from his job (and swapping parts - you'd be surprised - 3 busted computers can equal 1 working computer). And as a child this has become magical. And "gifting" to us children his old work machines as they upgraded.

Aside, Dad you did all this, you can setup a router

Seriously, routers haven't /really/ changed in 20 years (and when I flash DD/Open WRT onto it it'll LOOK like it did 20 years ago)

Anyway, those PCs

My first computer was two computers! We had two DOS machines in my parents office. One with Windows 3.1 installed (I don't know if my mothers machine had it, I was quite young) which blew my freaking mind.

I had no idea how computers worked at the time. I just knew if I went in, typed d2 I could boot Doom 2 shareware. Or I think "fun" to get the Apogee games.

I missed the bus on 5.25"

We're talking 93-95 here I am barely able to form thoughts, but watching my dad and older brother gib demons was sick as hell.

The only game we had (that I played at least) on 5.25" was "Fischer Price: School Bus Driver**"

// Another aside. I wanted to find some details on this game. So I just opened my browser and websearched "School bus"... No qualifiers, no limiters. Just "School bus"... Apparently I am still barely able to form thoughts

** I had to look up the title - babby me would call it Bus Driver. Its awful CGA graphics bring me so much joy to this day.

And it would glitch out a lot, and the bus would drive across the floor and it made us all laugh when they drove on the grass lol.

The Best of Microsoft Entertainment Pack

On 3.1 I would load up these games and play for hours. These are classic games and if you've never played any of these games do yourself a favor and install it. They all run fine on DOS Box and I wouldn't put it past running in compatibility mode on a Windows machine.

I recently booted up Chip's Challenge on my 3.1 DOS Box and just :D! I was instantly sucked back in.

I guess we're growing up now

I am running on fumes here with my memory. I was in preschool and kindergarten during this time. So I had a functioning brain, and plenty of home movies and honest to god memories of these moments. But I am older now and this all blurs together.

Over time, as my dad's work machines upgraded, our play machines upgraded (by being last generations work PC).

I can't remember when we got Windows 95 for ourselves, so I am certain (considering MEP4 came out in 1994, same with TIE Fighter) a lot of these memories are from 93-97.

But where does it end?

Our basement became the gaming dungeon. We had all of these machines lined up along the wall.

2 DOS machines on one wall. Three 95-98 machines along the adjacent wall.

My brother, cousin, and I would go down, play LAN matches between the 3 machines. Just watch eachother play. Type every cheat we knew into Doom II... it was magical.

We horded these PCs in our basement forever. Until, ultimately, space became too much. They went unused... the internet took over and we each got our own machine to play with. My brother had a proper gaming PC, I had an old IBM thinkpad to browse the net and make flash games, and an XP in the basement for school work that my sister and I would share.

But when was my favorite

Realtalk? Modern day Linux. I can do everything on my computer and it rocks.

But of my past? I would say either a 1994 DOS machine or as far into 98 I can go with full Dos compatibility.

But I am young. I benefited from having an older sibling, father, uncle, friends with even older siblings, to share their knowledge with me and guide me along the computing path.

Half the software we had is our friends older brothers software. I was JUST old enough to remember this world but not old enough to appreciate it.

I know if someone put an old DOS machine in front of me - I'd throw a floppy in, go to the A drive and it would kick back some error (or just crash) and I'd never figure out why. I can't troubleshoot an old machine, so I should probably stick to emulation.

So my dream PC?

What I would love to make is a C64 style keyboard+PC computer. Add side ports for gamepads and joysticks, and an flash card reader for storage.

Mounting either a Raspberry Pi/style device or finding the most compact motherboard I could would be so cool.

Then I'd just hook up a monitor wherever and have a cool PC that I could tailor to my needs and whims.

Conclusion

I have had a rough week. (It's Wednesday...) and I wanted to go down memory lane for a bit. I cut a lot of extra bullshit ya'll didn't need to hear (and listing what most people would consider "a top-10 games of ERA" I wasn't some underground kid playing sleeper hits. I got to experience the stuff that stuck with people, since if something sucked, why would they share it with their friends?) and general like "DAE Death Rally?" adjacent nonsense. (Not actually, but I kept it as lean as I could).

I do appreciate how lucky I was to have the privilege of getting access to these machines for so long and having access to older kids/adults to escort me through this world.

I can't imagine what it's like to grow up where the internet and computing is this ubiquitous. I do miss how simple things were though, granted I was 5 and had no responsibility, but you'd go into the computer room on a rainy day, boot up the same game as yesterday, and just enjoy it.

Someone asked on Reddit the other day? Essentially, older people - what did you do in your rooms before cellphones and modern PCs?

And the answer was basically, listen to music, homework, and sleep. And that was it for me. The radio (story for another day) was a huge part of my childhood as well... but I can't say I was this kid who ran around my neighborhood all that much (I did, and it was so fun), but I really did spend way too much of my childhood in front of a CRT playing games.

So I hope this either brought you some memories, made you frustrated like "this girl has no idea what shes talking about", or made you curious what growing up around PCs before the internet was everywhere was like...

But I'll stick to emulation for now, and binge LGR to satiate my retro PC building desire.

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