7 ms·
Free unlimited rebooting experience from vintage operating systems
- scpotter 13y agoOh, the page is interactive; drop downs work, which makes this better than a bunch of static images. Ironic that a page demonstrating ui/ux variation has low usability.
- NigelTufnel 13y agoNot just drop downs, but you can click on, e.g, restart and the page will restart. Took me a couple of minutes to get it.
- CatsoCatsoCatso 13y agoTerrifically realistic in Full-screen mode. Nice one.
- jzzskijj 13y agoUnfortunately GEM on Atari ST didn't have a restart dialog. Otherwise I'd be loudly complaining the page being badly incomplete.
- mnw21cam 13y agoNeither did the Amiga, but that didn't stop it appearing. Note, the "restart Workbench" dialog there was for restarting the gui, not the operating system. It you wanted to reboot, you just did a three finger salute. I like how the mouse pointers change according to which window you are hovering over.
- jzzskijj 13y agoFunny detail about Amiga/Workbench in this page: Restart dialog is from version 2.x, but in reboot scene you'll see version 1.3.
- pistle 13y agoBig ups from the 1040ST part of the peanut gallery!
- kabdib 13y agoA few years ago I pulled my ST out of the closet, hooked it up to a hard drive and turned it on. Blammo. Within about a second I was looking at the desktop. This was so much fun to see that I hit reset about 30 times in the next minute or so. Reset. Desktop. Reset. Desktop. Wheeee! Most BIOS-based computers won't get to a single desktop in that amount of time. I don't know what they're doing, but most of it is not useful to me.
- jzzskijj 13y agoI wish I had a hard drive for my Atari back in the day :) Had to survive with extra SF314 drive. Fortunately there was a SM124 monitor to accompany my Philips CM 8833 at least. 1040STFM is still stored inside a waterproof plastic box along with few hundred floppy disks and extra floppy drive. Seemed to be working a few years ago.
- d0 13y agoSurprisingly this is actually really interesting. Nice to see OS/2 in there!
- ohwp 13y agoNice! Seeing this page made me notice the professional look of Windows 2000 Professional. I wonder why. I don't think it has to do with the word 'professional' but with the blue color and the white top. Also the gray is warmer than most Windows versions.
- kaivi 13y agoI would still trade the XP or Aero themes for WINXP2K look any day. I remember those days at the library, where one could browse the internet, download stuff, but could not run any of the downloaded files. I then figured out that if you renamed an executable into SETUP.exe, it would run without questions. Then the library computers got cluttered with warez, music and games.
- meddlepal 13y agoI partially agree. I really like the way Windows 7 Aero feels, but that classic look and feel of Windows is a wonderful blend of functional minimalism and nostalgia... It also really reminds me of the 90s and my first computer, an IBM with a Pentium clocked @ 200Mhz with 64MB of RAM and running Windows 95. I got good use out of that thing.
- vonmoltke 13y agoAptiva series? My first computer at home was an Aptiva C6E, 133MHz Pentium with 32MB RAM (8MB for video) and Win95. Also had the Mwave card, which was IBM's interesting and novel combination modem/sound card. Got it in 1997 and only got rid of it last year. :P
- meddlepal 13y agoActually - yes. It was an Aptiva S. Actually I still have the Joystick and keyboard that came with that computer, they are pretty solid. I played a lot of MechWarrior 2 and SimCity 2000 on that thing. I was still a kid in the 90's. It kicked around in my house until 2000/2001 when it was finally replaced with a Dell Dimension.
- blueblob 13y agoI feel like XP wins this one. Too much text on the others.
- mickeyp 13y agoNice one. The Amiga one (the one with the Workbench dialog) is slightly incorrect. The disk drive reader head doesn't sound right, at least for an Amiga 500, which it ought to be seeing as it's using the 1.3 kickstarter. It's also not mechanically checking if there's a floppy disk in the drive at the kickstarter screen after the workbench has shut down, which the Amiga needs to do to detect if there is a floppy disk in the drive. The checking mechanism manifested itself as a slight "clicking" sound. Very cool though!
- molbioguy 13y agoFun! I spent way too much time watching the systems reboot after I understood that the dialogs were active. Very nice collection. Curious how this was done. Screen captures, recreated from videos?
- nly 13y agoDid anyone else hit DEL or Fx to see if they could get in to a functioning BIOS config? My laptops firmware has mouse support and an IPv6 network stack. It's terrifying.
- eklavya 13y agooh, I am missing XP now
- fit2rule 13y agoI'm not seeing SGI Irix!
- ajmarsh 13y ago2nd vote for Irix. Thanks.
- frik 13y agoNice! Suggestion: BeOS, old (~1998) Linux distros RedHat/SuSE
- rlu 13y agoThis actually reminded me of the old "It is now safe to turn off your computer" orange text that would come up on older versions of Windows. Eventually computers began being able to turn themselves off. Does anyone know what prevented older computers from doing this? And if it was possible, why the design decision was made to make the users turn the computers off themselves? Was it some sort of "feel in control of this new thing in your house" thing?
- amarraja 13y agoOlder computers had a mechanical on/off switch, rather than the soft power buttons we have these days
- ygra 13y agoWith AT motherboards the power button on the computer was linked directly to the power supply. There was simply no option of turning the computer off through software. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATX#Power_switch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATX#Power_switch
- lmm 13y agoI suspect it wasn't so much a decision as a lack of one. Every appliance up until then had a simple power switch: an actual switch, that physically disconnected the power feed to/from the device. Why would a computer be any different?
- neckro23 13y agoSoftware power-off is a feature of ACPI, which didn't even exist when Win95 came out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Configuration_and_Power_Interface http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Configuration_and_Powe...
- achairapart 13y agoAuto shutdown (and wake-up) was an improvement of the ATX form factor standard introduced in 1995, replacing the previously AT form factor: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATX http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATX
- valarauca1 13y ago
- ToastyMallows 13y agoWow nice touch with the cursor image changes! This is cool, I love old computer stuff.
- dmd 13y agoBeautiful. Needs way more unices.
- achairapart 13y agoTried to reboot Windows ME but it crashed.
- pavel_lishin 13y agoFrom my vague memories of running Windows ME, that's expected behavior.
- callumjones 13y agoWould love to see one dedicated to OS install processes one day, my highlights are the OS X intro videos and "helpful hints" provided during an install of Windows XP.
- drdeadringer 13y agoI know when I'm feeling old when XP is called 'vintage'. Time waits for no OS?
- rbanffy 13y agoSo, when the author reads this, we want: Irix Solaris + OpenWindows Solaris + CDE AIX HP/UX BeOS PC/GEOS VMS/DECWindows ;-) Funny thing: I never saw a QNX desktop restarting in real life. The thing was always connected to some piece of big and dangerous machine and restarting would be terribly dangerous. It was the first time I saw machines with a 5-year uptime.
- keithpeter 13y agoYup, I was looking for #reboot and did not find it :-) Seriously, excellent. I'll be using this with teenagers on an interactive whiteboard for giggles on Friday.
- sehugg 13y agoIt's funny that OS shutdown time has seemed to be increasing over the years, despite Moore's law. (I admit I sometimes just hold down the power switch rather than go through the agony of a proper reboot on my MacBook)
- achairapart 13y ago> (I admit I sometimes just hold down the power switch rather than go through the agony of a proper reboot on my MacBook) Please don't do that! Try with an SSD instead.
- sehugg 13y agoWhy should I let kernel panics have all the fun? :)
- ClashTheBunny 13y agoWhy is it that looking at those old computers fill me with the hope of what can be (the oldest of the set), and as the things get newer, I loose that feeling? QBasic was killed when? When was it that a computer became a thing that did a list of stuff and not a thing that I could make do anything?