7 ms·

My mid 90s is FreeBSD. Two floppies and a 14.4k on the install. 486 66dx2 with 20 megs of ram and the thing cooked. I used that server up until 2002 as a proxy

My mid 90s is FreeBSD. Two floppies and a 14.4k on the install. 486 66dx2 with 20 megs of ram and the thing cooked. I used that server up until 2002 as a proxy server (this is before the age of updating software for security). I finally didn’t need it, it simply never broke.

xtracto 5y ago
For me it was late 90s. A friend of the family bought for me Walnut Creek's FreeBSD CD set, with all the stickers and other goodies. They sent it all the way to my godforsaken small town in Mexico. As a 12 year old it was soooo cool. I remember spending hours installing (incluing configuring and compiling the kernel in an ncurses based interface). I printed the whole FreeBSD manual and my mom bound it for me. Great times!
- op00to 5y ago
  Would you have been able to get FreeBSD otherwise? Like, mid 90s I remember downloading Slackware from a BBS. Floppy after floppy. Was that available in your area at the time?
  - xtracto 5y ago
    I dont think so. BBSs were not really a thing in Mexico... particularly in a city as small as mine. Maybe in Mexico city. But long distance calls were super expensive (mom used to talk to my grandma living in another city only once a week for 30 mins). I think I might have been able to get something in the local public university computer centre. It was the beginning of the internet (14.4 modems min to connect to the university, which was the only internet provider) Great fun times!
- protomyth 5y ago
  The printed FreeBSD Handbook with the 2.5 CD-ROM was amazing at the time. An open source OS with a book that was better than some of the commercial OS offerings. We setup the colleges first mail server with that combo.
vardump 5y ago
Remember those times. Some PCs just last. A 2.4 GHz Core2 Quad I had, I think from 2008, is still going strong and can run most modern software just fine. It's amazing how little progress there has been in last 13 years. In the nineties you had to upgrade every two years or so just to be able to run current software. I think 2021 computer has a good chance of being still completely usable in 2040.
- nix23 5y ago
  My Main-PC is now 11-12 years old, it's a HP Z600 upgraded to the max, buy'd a second CPU for 15$ additional 24GB ram (now 48GB) for like 100$ and a new GPU for 350$ some time ago, and it still runs like a champ.
  - vardump 5y ago
    Also got one HP Z-something (can't remember) PC, a bit later with a Xeon CPU (or two?) with 24 GB RAM. Otherwise great, but it's very power hungry, heats up a room in a hurry.
- orobinson 5y ago
  Intel Q6600 I presume? Great CPU. PC I a built in 2008 has the same. I recently retrieved it from my parents’ attic and updated it to Windows 10 - still works like a charm.
- tjoff 5y ago
  That is probably the Q6600, I had it as well. Very good CPU at the time and I think I had it for 6-7 years as my main computer. The next time I got an (quite expensive) 6-core CPU. And the difference was mindblowing. Not because of the extra cores but the responsiveness and single-core performance was out of this world. I'm currently building my next computer, and the difference again is just staggering. And that is not even factoring in that the next one has got 12-cores. It is not that the progress hasn't been slow (I guess it has if you compare it to the pace of the past), but I think it has more to do with computers back then still being very capable. You can still fire up some CAD software and do proper work on the Q6600. I mean, right until you want to listen to music or do some very light web browsing. Then it will suddenly become quite painful. The amount of waste in today is incomprehensible. No seriously, properly incomprehensible.
reincarnate0x14 5y ago
I had a FreeBSD doitall-machine from 1998 to 2006 on some Pentium-ish thing with an AT motherboard. Moved a few thousand miles and it didn't get unboxed, until 2020 when I needed an AT PSU for something unrelated. Prior to cannibalizing it I powered it up long enough to check that it would still send email and run brief X session to hit YTMND in 15 year old Firefox.

xtracto 5y ago

For me it was late 90s. A friend of the family bought for me Walnut Creek's FreeBSD CD set, with all the stickers and other goodies. They sent it all the way to my godforsaken small town in Mexico. As a 12 year old it was soooo cool. I remember spending hours installing (incluing configuring and compiling the kernel in an ncurses based interface). I printed the whole FreeBSD manual and my mom bound it for me. Great times!

op00to 5y ago
Would you have been able to get FreeBSD otherwise? Like, mid 90s I remember downloading Slackware from a BBS. Floppy after floppy. Was that available in your area at the time?
- xtracto 5y ago
  I dont think so. BBSs were not really a thing in Mexico... particularly in a city as small as mine. Maybe in Mexico city. But long distance calls were super expensive (mom used to talk to my grandma living in another city only once a week for 30 mins). I think I might have been able to get something in the local public university computer centre. It was the beginning of the internet (14.4 modems min to connect to the university, which was the only internet provider) Great fun times!
protomyth 5y ago
The printed FreeBSD Handbook with the 2.5 CD-ROM was amazing at the time. An open source OS with a book that was better than some of the commercial OS offerings. We setup the colleges first mail server with that combo.

vardump 5y ago

Remember those times. Some PCs just last. A 2.4 GHz Core2 Quad I had, I think from 2008, is still going strong and can run most modern software just fine. It's amazing how little progress there has been in last 13 years. In the nineties you had to upgrade every two years or so just to be able to run current software. I think 2021 computer has a good chance of being still completely usable in 2040.

nix23 5y ago
My Main-PC is now 11-12 years old, it's a HP Z600 upgraded to the max, buy'd a second CPU for 15$ additional 24GB ram (now 48GB) for like 100$ and a new GPU for 350$ some time ago, and it still runs like a champ.
- vardump 5y ago
  Also got one HP Z-something (can't remember) PC, a bit later with a Xeon CPU (or two?) with 24 GB RAM. Otherwise great, but it's very power hungry, heats up a room in a hurry.
orobinson 5y ago
Intel Q6600 I presume? Great CPU. PC I a built in 2008 has the same. I recently retrieved it from my parents’ attic and updated it to Windows 10 - still works like a charm.
tjoff 5y ago
That is probably the Q6600, I had it as well. Very good CPU at the time and I think I had it for 6-7 years as my main computer. The next time I got an (quite expensive) 6-core CPU. And the difference was mindblowing. Not because of the extra cores but the responsiveness and single-core performance was out of this world. I'm currently building my next computer, and the difference again is just staggering. And that is not even factoring in that the next one has got 12-cores. It is not that the progress hasn't been slow (I guess it has if you compare it to the pace of the past), but I think it has more to do with computers back then still being very capable. You can still fire up some CAD software and do proper work on the Q6600. I mean, right until you want to listen to music or do some very light web browsing. Then it will suddenly become quite painful. The amount of waste in today is incomprehensible. No seriously, properly incomprehensible.

reincarnate0x14 5y ago

I had a FreeBSD doitall-machine from 1998 to 2006 on some Pentium-ish thing with an AT motherboard. Moved a few thousand miles and it didn't get unboxed, until 2020 when I needed an AT PSU for something unrelated. Prior to cannibalizing it I powered it up long enough to check that it would still send email and run brief X session to hit YTMND in 15 year old Firefox.