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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?"
har har har har. That stupid fucking joke is about as old and lame as his computer. It stopped being funny about 24 years ago.
I know that may be a joke to you but call up Epson or submit a ticket explaining to them your situation. Who knows? Maybe they have a storeroom with old floppies lying around so you can get the original software back? I imagine those disks wore out all the time. Just ask them if they have any of the original software for that model lying around. That would be amazing support if they did.
They do host the manual that indicates you have a parallel port and a RS-232C serial port to play with and also something that looks like expansion slots designed for peripherals. Good luck and have fun!
My work here is dung.
Cool, it is very educational to work with old computer's
Nice things to do: :)
- add extra ram by using an ISA memory expansion card (up to 2MB !!!), running windows 3.0 would then be possible !
- 200mb+ IDE/MFM drive (the latter where mostly smaller though and a bit hard to get)
- ISA VGA card
- ISA Soundblaster
- ISA ethernetcard
- run Arachne and surf the WEB !!!!!!!!!!!!, heheh yes you can this baby on slashdot
- a lot more upgrade options, FPU etc.. etc..
Greetings and Enjoy and good luck hunting down Dos software
eBay is fine for obtaining a supply of disks, but not necessarily so fine for finding software. However, see the FreeDOS site for a likely operating system. That software should allow you to connect a CD-ROM drive (again eBay can be your friend), after which you should be able to find all sorts of DOS software you can run (eBay, again!).
Nah, it's a typical lifecycle for expensive products that become commodities. When that PC was new, it probably cost upwards of $5,000 in 1984 dollars. Many parts were Made In USA instead of by some faceless penny-scraping OEM in Taiwan. Heck, people used to actually send hard drives in for repair instead of just RMA'ing them and getting a new one. You'll see this in other products too...automobiles, washing machines, sewing machines, etc.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
An operating system should be like a light switch... simple, effective, easy to use, and designed for everyone.
I'd like my operating system to have more than two possible settings. Operating systems are complex because the world is complex.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Nope, different connectors on the drives, although he could likely change the cable too. The real issue is that the BIOS likely won't know what to do with the drive...
What's really sad is that many of us had RAM-hungry applications *at the time* and were waiting for small computer systems to catch up to the problems we *already had*.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
The only possible reason is personal nostalgia. I can understand resurrecting computers that meant something significant in the history of computing like an original Apple II, or a TRS-80 or something of that nature. However, the machine he's talking about is not particularly historically interesting other than in his own personal life. So he can resurrect it for his own personal nostalgia, that's fine, but he shouldn't expect anyone to be impressed if he wants to show it to people later on or anything.
Actually trying to use the machine is not likely to make him happy, either. When I've messed around with older nostalgic machines from my childhood, it was cool for the first 10 minutes until the nostalgia wore off and I started to see how painfully slow and primitive they are. These things were great in their time, but they don't age well.
Since the machine is so generic and non-interesting, he may have a harder time finding any sort of enthusiast group for it, but the Internet is vast, so who knows what he could find if he spent enough time digging.
Nevertheless it's a tradition deeply engrained in slashdot culture.
In other words, you must be new here.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
This would be an incredible teaching aid. Students could be shown (not just told) how technology has advanced over 25 years. Real, side-by-side comparisons could be demonstrated using simple programs designed to run on both the new and old systems (first-hand demonstration of backwards compatibility, performance comparisons, etc). This could be an excellent system to teach the importance of efficiency in programming.
When my son is old enough to have an actual computer, I plan on giving him a system that has limited capabilities so I can teach him on a system that doesn't provide built-in distractions (I'll probably pick something newer than 25 years though). Of course, I'll teach him BASIC first, then maybe COBOL and some other simple languages before introducing him to modern languages and objects.
"Lame" - Galaxar
I think he means he wants to us a USB floppy drive on his modern computer to save the software onto 5.25" disks to then use on the old machine.
True.
And what Rumsfeld said about "known unknowns" was logical (albeit paraphrased in a place where the original quote would have been better.)
And Al Gore didn't claim to have "invented" the internet; he said he "took the initative in creating the internet", which given how you would expect a Congreeman to take initative (recognizing a good program, giving it attention and money) is true.
And Sarah Palin's speech was actually coherent, not beautiful but coherent, if you read it.
And Quayle's spelling of potato isn't the most common, but is technically a valid alternative. (Although the potato incident was dumb for other reasons.)
People who you dislike rarely say the dumb things you think they did, as you'll address a quote out of context (or misrepresentation of that quote) from someone you like, but not from someone you don't. You're more than happy to assume people you don't like are retarded.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Like the others are saying, when a thing is going to cost $4000, an extra $200 for quality construction is a worthwhile investment. When the whole thing costs $200, not so much. Keyboards are really emblematic of this - they used to be a selling point for computers, while now people think it's strange if you'll pay $70 for a Unicomp keyboard. (I've never understood this idea; why would you cheap out on mouse and keyboard when they're the primary interface with the computer? You use them ALL THE TIME.)
Plus I don't think I've seen a whole lot of 5.25" USB floppy drives; 3.5" USB floppy drives are much more common. I think one would have to scavenge a 3.5" USB floppy to use it with a 5.25" drive.
It'd probably be best to take the floppy drive out of the old computer if he needs to try to recreate install discs using a newer computer.
So, basically Bill Gates said "I never said that 640k thing that people ridicule me with."
Well, that's good enough for me! After all, he couldn't possibly have gotten where he is today without being a very honest man!