I have an old Aptiva 486 DX2 66 Desktop model waiting for me to try to recover whatever can be recovered from the hard drive.
It was our first PC style computer and we used it a lot.
Fun facts:
- newly booted it could run
AutoCAD on the standard 4MB
- of course with a giant extra 8MB it flew and was only limited by us kids knowing nothing
- it had suspend/resume (!) If you hit the power button ut turned itself off and when turned on again it came right back where you left it. For younger people here: this was amazing at the time. Some friends probably stil had drives that had to be "parked" around that time.
- 24/7 IBM Helpware was somehow included and these guys (it was mostly guys) where amazing. As a 15 - 17 y.o. I called them a number of times after siblings had cleaned the "mess" in the C:\ folder etc etc. I called them on midsummers eve and I think on new years eve (it might have been Christmas) and they were always friendly, helpful and patient. Utterly amazing customer support! Could answer anything and would stay on the phone while I ran through the backup disks or whatever I did to solve that days problem. Set a standard for what IT support should be like for me. (Yes, I have done IT support myself since then and those guys and Limoncelli/Hogans book "The Practice of Systems and Networks Administration" was probably the best inspiration for me.)
I had one of these as well. I don’t remember what happened to it, but last time I interacted with it was probably in 2005 or 2006. I was trying to get some MP3s off the thing (I couldn’t find them anywhere else). It was running Windows 95, so no USB. It just had a 28.8 modem, so no transferring it over the network. I ended up using WinRAR to split each file across multiple floppy disks, so I could join them back together on the other side. That was also the last time I used both WinRAR and floppies.
In hindsight, I probably could have moved the files to the D drive, installed Linux to C, got the USB port working, and used that. Or just pull out the HDD and throw it in an enclosure to use as an external drive. Oh well… the floppies work and we’re probably faster.
You can also perform transfers like this using crossover or null modem[1] serial cables if both machines have serial ports. I transferred a number of files like this back in the day.
You could even use them for some multiplayer games that would have otherwise required a proper LAN.
It was our first PC style computer and we used it a lot.
Fun facts:
- newly booted it could run AutoCAD on the standard 4MB
- of course with a giant extra 8MB it flew and was only limited by us kids knowing nothing
- it had suspend/resume (!) If you hit the power button ut turned itself off and when turned on again it came right back where you left it. For younger people here: this was amazing at the time. Some friends probably stil had drives that had to be "parked" around that time.
- 24/7 IBM Helpware was somehow included and these guys (it was mostly guys) where amazing. As a 15 - 17 y.o. I called them a number of times after siblings had cleaned the "mess" in the C:\ folder etc etc. I called them on midsummers eve and I think on new years eve (it might have been Christmas) and they were always friendly, helpful and patient. Utterly amazing customer support! Could answer anything and would stay on the phone while I ran through the backup disks or whatever I did to solve that days problem. Set a standard for what IT support should be like for me. (Yes, I have done IT support myself since then and those guys and Limoncelli/Hogans book "The Practice of Systems and Networks Administration" was probably the best inspiration for me.)