
Happy Sysadmins Day 23 things only 90s Sysadmins will remember - discoposse
https://discoposse.com/2018/03/20/23-things-only-90s-sysadmins-will-remember/
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notacoward
I wasn't a 90s sysadmin, but I remember most of these. Also...

> EISA vs. MCA (vs. NuBus)

> SCSI termination and ID-conflict issues

> Apple stuff: System 7, AppleTalk, ADB

> DECnet and OSI (yes, still, in the early 90s)

> NFSv2, RFS

> Reconfiguring your kernel to add new devices

> BSD and SysV "universes" in some flavors of UNIX

> Usenet and all of the crappy software that went with it

> sendmail rewriting rules for a bazillion kinds of addresses

> KVM cables/switches with VGA and PS/2 keyboard and mouse connectors

> X Terminals and Motif

> i860, i960, 88K, MIPS, SPARC, POWER, PRISM

> Gopher, archie, veronica

> Kermit and xmodem

> Pagers

Stupid software that couldn't display indented text properly without having to
add newlines. Oh wait, we still have that.

~~~
blantonl
And, never, ever forget OS/2

~~~
canada_dry
Ever since using OS/2 I have always put my toolbar vertically on the left side
of my screen. Just seemed like better use of screen real-estate.

And with Ubuntu - what's old is new again!

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ImFifty
This makes my prostate swell. I remember all of these then there are the
comments and I remember them as well. Now the internet is a phone and a server
is just a slice of cloud. Ethernet is old.. Wireless is fragmented There was
not any security at my job when I started my computer had its own class B
address. It was part of the internet on the internet no firewall now.. my pc
is behind 4 firewalls and a carrier pigeon. The other day I got an email from
a guy who wanted me to pay for a video of me jerking off - I was like hey I
can make my own videos plus who would want to see that anyway I bet he didnt
even watch it.

~~~
skate22
Not in front of the pigeon :(

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pjmlp
> Lotus Notes possessed integrated email, directory services, Internet email,
> and applications (known as databases…much to the chagrin of legit DBAs). If
> it wasn’t for wide proliferation of HTML applications and rapidly adopted
> internet standards, you’d probably still be logging into a Lotus Notes
> client today.

I am still logging into a Lotus Notes client _EVERY SINGLE DAY_ :(.

~~~
Nannooskeeska
Little anecdote.

At my dad's old company, where he'd been for almost 25 years, they still used
Lotus Notes. About a year ago, he moved to a new company that uses Office, and
he hates it (old dog, new tricks, etc.). His old company is still the only
company I've ever personally had experience with that still uses Lotus Notes.

Is it that bad?

~~~
sk5t
Notes is itself pretty remarkable, but suffers from a peculiar UI +
dysfunctional efforts from two sides in development (people who wish it was a
RDBMS not a document database, and people who don't really have any business
writing application code). The complaints about it being kind of an ugly email
client are not really of the essence. In addition, IBM has pretty much left it
to rot on the vine since the early 2000s. I think "R5" was the last release of
any real significance, and even that was not revolutionary.

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ben_bai
Way too young to be a sysadmin back then but still remember all those things.

Still got a bad habit from Win95, whenever the system seems sluggish I have to
move the mouse around, because when the mouse didn't respond under Win95 it
was time to press the hardware RESET button.

Maybe that's the reason Windows 2000 is still the best Windows ever in my
mind.

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exoesquitur
Aaaahf. I used all of that stuff. All of it.

Worse yet, last year I did a break-fix on a wlan installation at a Sears
store... They had an operational token ring network still running their
automotive department, along with a tan tower rocking a pentuim pro. (remember
those?)

Good times.

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j45
Fun read.

For all its headaches, today's were still trying to replace the mobile
offline-first capability of Lotus Notes in the 90's. It's too bad IBM got
their hands on Lotus.

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blhack
I was a sys admin from Around 2006 to around 2014 and I used many of these
things.

Our office still had (multiple) T1s, and ran on IBM as/400\. When I joined in
2006, it was a startup.

Also: PCMCIA cards were definitely still around for much more than the 90s. I
still have several coveted PCMCIA wifi cards that were supported by kismet.

~~~
torgoguys
I never could remember what PCMCIA stood for (something about a memory card
association, even though there ended up being lots of types of those cards
beyond just memory).

If someone asked me, I used the tongue-in-cheek alternative someone came up
with of PCMCIA=People Can't Memorize Computer Industry Acroynms.

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evgen
If you don't remember ordering GNU software on 9-track tapes, vampire taps for
coax ethernet cables, and the dimple on the Sun 3/50 then get off my lawn...

~~~
mmt
To be fair, my read of this article suggests that what it calls "Sysadmin"
was, at the time, called "Network admin" and tended to include a significant
helpdesk component.

What I remember being called "sysadmin" that might have included thicknet
ethernet or servers with reel-to-reel tape drives is now "devops" almost
everywhere I look.

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jedberg
Ah, simpler times, when most things could be fixed by taking them apart and
putting them back together again, because that was still a thing you could do.

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Diederich
I'd like to reference this gem as well:

[https://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/know.your.sysadmin.html](https://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/know.your.sysadmin.html)

Decades later, it gives me a good laugh.

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tssva
You could add multi-protocol networks to the list. Almost all sysadmins today
only have to worry about TCP/IP versus back in the 90s your network usually
supported at least two and possibly all of the following protocols: TCP/IP,
IPX, VIP, DECnet, LAT, SNA, and NetBEUI. There are plenty I'm leaving off the
list.

Token ring was mentioned but other LAN technologies around in the 90's that
are dead or mostly dead include 100VG-AnyLAN, ATM LANE (emulates an ethernet
network over ATM), FDDI, TCNS (basically 100Mbs ARCNET), proprietary
pre-802.11 wireless technologies, proprietary layer 3 ethernet switching
technologies (looking at you Cabletron and 3COM). I worked with all of these
at some point during the 90s. Some were a pleasure to use and some were not,
but ATM LANE deserves a special place in hell.

I started out the 90s connecting systems to 9600bps x.25 networks and ended
them deploying millions of dollars of Juniper M40 routers and Fore ASX-4000s
ATM switches per day. Both of those vendors would have probably appreciated my
employer actually paying for them. It was a crazy decade.

~~~
Drdrdrq
> ...and ended them deploying millions of dollars of Juniper M40 routers and
> Fore ASX-4000s ATM switches per day. Both of those vendors would have
> probably appreciated my employer actually paying for them.

Ok, I'll bite... Can you share the story how that could have happened?

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LeoPanthera
I retired about a decade ago and have been actively avoiding staying "up to
date" but I suppose I can't resist asking now...

What replaced Ghost?

~~~
CaptSpify
It probably depends on what you were doing with Ghost, but for me, Clonezilla
is the replacement: [https://clonezilla.org/](https://clonezilla.org/)

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pwned1
Don't forget IRQ and DMA!

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jkingsbery
I was a 90's teaching-self-to-program-while-in-middle-schooler, and I remember
many of these. "The Internet was new" is definitely one I can relate to - I
initially learned how to program by reading through the VB4 help files, since
my family didn't have internet yet. Also, Zip Disks, because it was really
easy to leave behind in the computer at school.

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watersb
I was a Mac sysadmin in the 1990s. We had different stuff.

Gatorbox AppleTalk routers. RJ11 terminators. RIP print servers. Hell film
printers for color slides.

Banyan VINES for global auth management. Like LDAP and ACLs before it was
cool.

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tssva
No mention of Banyan Vines. Am I the only one here that had the unique
pleasure of supporting Vines, StreetTalk, and Intelligent Messaging III.

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Arubis
Can we retitle with something less clickbaity? Perhaps "For Sysadmins Day,
here's a nostalgic look back at the 90s"

~~~
jedberg
But the HN rules clearly state that the title must match the one on the
article.

~~~
wanderingjew
But it's clickbait, and that's against HN guidelines.

I wasn't a sysadmin in the 90s, and I remember this stuff. Are we _really_
supposed to believe that _only_ 90s sysadmins remember the items on this
listicle? That makes it an inaccurate headline, and clickbait. Titles are
frequently changed here by the admins, and I don't see why this one wouldn't
be changed.

It doesn't matter if this is intended to emulate a Buzzfeed-style headline;
that's not clever, and makes the submission inaccurate.

~~~
jedberg
> that's not clever, and makes the submission inaccurate.

I found it to be clever and funny.

Which one of us is right?

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protomyth
Walnut Creek for your operating system needs.

~~~
coldacid
Yeah, that's the one that is missing the most from that list!

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coldacid
3270/5250 emulation still lives on to this very day and can be commonly seen
in banks around the world.

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jdubs
"Wow, awk!? You're old school" ...

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madcaptenor
90s users, not just 90s sysadmins.

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maerF0x0
Shareware.

