
Free unlimited rebooting experience from vintage operating systems - yankcrime
http://www.therestartpage.com/
======
mickeyp
Nice one. The Amiga one (the one with the Workbench dialog) is slightly
incorrect.

The disk drive reader head doesn't sound right, at least for an Amiga 500,
which it ought to be seeing as it's using the 1.3 kickstarter.

It's also not mechanically checking if there's a floppy disk in the drive at
the kickstarter screen after the workbench has shut down, which the Amiga
needs to do to detect if there is a floppy disk in the drive. The checking
mechanism manifested itself as a slight "clicking" sound.

Very cool though!

~~~
cgh
I think there's a typo also in the phrase "All rights reserved" \- "reserved"
is misspelled.

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rbanffy
So, when the author reads this, we want:

    
    
      Irix
      Solaris + OpenWindows
      Solaris + CDE
      AIX
      HP/UX
      BeOS
      PC/GEOS
      VMS/DECWindows
    

;-)

Funny thing: I never saw a QNX desktop restarting in real life. The thing was
always connected to some piece of big and dangerous machine and restarting
would be terribly dangerous. It was the first time I saw machines with a
5-year uptime.

~~~
keithpeter
Yup, I was looking for

    
    
        #reboot
    

and did not find it :-)

Seriously, excellent. I'll be using this with teenagers on an interactive
whiteboard for giggles on Friday.

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rlu
This actually reminded me of the old "It is now safe to turn off your
computer" orange text that would come up on older versions of Windows.

Eventually computers began being able to turn themselves off.

Does anyone know what prevented older computers from doing this? And if it was
possible, why the design decision was made to make the users turn the
computers off themselves? Was it some sort of "feel in control of this new
thing in your house" thing?

~~~
wvenable
Fun fact about that "It is now safe to turn off your computer" orange text:
you were actually dumped to a DOS prompt even though the display was set to a
graphics mode. You could type commands and switch the display to text mode.

~~~
frik
You mean in Win95? What would you type in?

In WinNT 4 the same text is displayed in a window. Though, afaik it is
displayed by kernel mode and not from Win32 subsystem.

~~~
wvenable
Yeah, Win95 (and subsequent versions to ME). It was a DOS prompt, so you could
type anything. I believe typing CLS<enter> would clear the screen and show you
the prompt.

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molbioguy
Fun!

I spent way too much time watching the systems reboot after I understood that
the dialogs were active. Very nice collection. Curious how this was done.
Screen captures, recreated from videos?

~~~
wehadfun
I was impressed that the mouse changed then I read your comment and spent way
...

~~~
molbioguy
Appropriate username :)

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nly
Did anyone else hit DEL or Fx to see if they could get in to a functioning
BIOS config?

My laptops firmware has mouse support and an IPv6 network stack. It's
terrifying.

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scpotter
Oh, the page is interactive; drop downs work, which makes this better than a
bunch of static images. Ironic that a page demonstrating ui/ux variation has
low usability.

~~~
NigelTufnel
Not just drop downs, but you can click on, e.g, restart and the page will
restart. Took me a couple of minutes to get it.

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jzzskijj
Unfortunately GEM on Atari ST didn't have a restart dialog. Otherwise I'd be
loudly complaining the page being badly incomplete.

~~~
kabdib
A few years ago I pulled my ST out of the closet, hooked it up to a hard drive
and turned it on.

Blammo. Within about a second I was looking at the desktop.

This was so much fun to see that I hit reset about 30 times in the next minute
or so. Reset. Desktop. Reset. Desktop. Wheeee!

Most BIOS-based computers won't get to a single desktop in that amount of
time. I don't know what they're doing, but most of it is not useful to me.

~~~
jzzskijj
I wish I had a hard drive for my Atari back in the day :) Had to survive with
extra SF314 drive. Fortunately there was a SM124 monitor to accompany my
Philips CM 8833 at least.

1040STFM is still stored inside a waterproof plastic box along with few
hundred floppy disks and extra floppy drive. Seemed to be working a few years
ago.

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ClashTheBunny
Why is it that looking at those old computers fill me with the hope of what
can be (the oldest of the set), and as the things get newer, I loose that
feeling?

QBasic was killed when? When was it that a computer became a thing that did a
list of stuff and not a thing that I could make do anything?

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ohwp
Nice!

Seeing this page made me notice the professional look of Windows 2000
Professional. I wonder why. I don't think it has to do with the word
'professional' but with the blue color and the white top. Also the gray is
warmer than most Windows versions.

~~~
kaivi
I would still trade the XP or Aero themes for WINXP2K look any day.

I remember those days at the library, where one could browse the internet,
download stuff, but could not run any of the downloaded files. I then figured
out that if you renamed an executable into SETUP.exe, it would run without
questions. Then the library computers got cluttered with warez, music and
games.

~~~
meddlepal
I partially agree. I really like the way Windows 7 Aero feels, but that
classic look and feel of Windows is a wonderful blend of functional minimalism
and nostalgia...

It also really reminds me of the 90s and my first computer, an IBM with a
Pentium clocked @ 200Mhz with 64MB of RAM and running Windows 95. I got good
use out of that thing.

~~~
vonmoltke
Aptiva series? My first computer at home was an Aptiva C6E, 133MHz Pentium
with 32MB RAM (8MB for video) and Win95. Also had the Mwave card, which was
IBM's interesting and novel combination modem/sound card. Got it in 1997 and
only got rid of it last year. :P

~~~
meddlepal
Actually - yes. It was an Aptiva S. Actually I still have the Joystick and
keyboard that came with that computer, they are pretty solid.

I played a lot of MechWarrior 2 and SimCity 2000 on that thing. I was still a
kid in the 90's. It kicked around in my house until 2000/2001 when it was
finally replaced with a Dell Dimension.

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achairapart
Tried to reboot Windows ME but it crashed.

~~~
pavel_lishin
From my vague memories of running Windows ME, that's expected behavior.

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callumjones
Would love to see one dedicated to OS install processes one day, my highlights
are the OS X intro videos and "helpful hints" provided during an install of
Windows XP.

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d0
Surprisingly this is actually really interesting.

Nice to see OS/2 in there!

~~~
glhaynes
My thought when I saw MS OS/2 1.3: "Hey, an old version!"

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frik
Nice!

Suggestion: BeOS, old (~1998) Linux distros RedHat/SuSE

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fit2rule
I'm not seeing SGI Irix!

~~~
ajmarsh
2nd vote for Irix. Thanks.

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sehugg
It's funny that OS shutdown time has seemed to be increasing over the years,
despite Moore's law.

(I admit I sometimes just hold down the power switch rather than go through
the agony of a proper reboot on my MacBook)

~~~
achairapart
> (I admit I sometimes just hold down the power switch rather than go through
> the agony of a proper reboot on my MacBook)

Please don't do that! Try with an SSD instead.

~~~
sehugg
Why should I let kernel panics have all the fun? :)

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eklavya
oh, I am missing XP now

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ToastyMallows
Wow nice touch with the cursor image changes! This is cool, I love old
computer stuff.

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drdeadringer
I know when I'm feeling old when XP is called 'vintage'.

Time waits for no OS?

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CatsoCatsoCatso
Terrifically realistic in Full-screen mode. Nice one.

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dmd
Beautiful. Needs way more unices.

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blueblob
I feel like XP wins this one. Too much text on the others.

