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Getting a Classic PC Working After 25 Years?

tunersedge writes "Yesterday I dug out of my parents' basement a PC they had bought brand new in 1984: Epson Equity I personal computer; 512K RAM; 82-key keyboard; 2 (count 'em!, 2) 5.25" floppy disk drives; 13' RGB monitor (with contrast/brightness knobs); handy on/off switch; healthy 25-year-old yellowed plastic; absolutely no software. (My mom ran a pre-school, and they used it to keep records and payroll. I cut my programming teeth on this thing. GW-Basic was my friend. Kings Quest screens took 2 minutes to load when you walked into a new one.) When I resurrected this machine I pulled the case off, dusted out a little, and plugged it in. It actually fired up! I'm stoked, except the disks we had are missing. What I'm looking to do is either buy some old working disks with whatever I can find (MS-DOS 3.22, GW-Basic, whatever), or try and recreate some using a USB-based floppy drive and some modern software. Has anyone tried to resurrect a PC this old before?"

2 of 533 comments (clear)

  1. Re:You already know where to go for disks.... by gjcamann · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    I didn't know Epson outsourced software development to India too.

  2. Re:Sad Joke... by LizardKing · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Evidence to back up your claims?

    There's this thing called the Internet right? And then there's another thing called the World Wide Web that runs on it. Still with me? Well, there are websites called "search engines". Can you guess what they do? That's right - you can search for references.

    Fuckwit.