Look Who it Was Random video

THROWBACK THURSDAY 29: At The Computers In The Basement

404 views · Published 26 January 2017 · 18:48 · Indexed 6 November 2026

Channel: jaykay18 · 2017 · Howto & Style

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Originally recorded July 8, 1998.

Ah, yes, down in the dungeon at mission control.  At the time, the PC I was on was some Dell OptiPlex with a 133MHz Pentium processor, maybe 128MB of RAM, running Windows 95 or 98.  The desktop background was the standard "clouds" background of the day that I modified.  I still own the printer and scanner seen on that desk, and yes, they still work, 19 years later.

I have no idea what I was doing exactly on the computer at the moment, probably copying some stuff around.  I had a stack of AOL disks, because I'd erase and reformat them and use them for my own stuff.  Whenever I saw them free in a store, I'd grab as many as possible.

At 4:19 you'll see why this was called "mission control".  Many of the machines you'll see are actually still there, and other pieces of equipment as well.  Besides the computers with the tantalum (tantrum) capacitors that blow up, I'll bet a lot of that stuff still works, or will work until their capacitors throw a tantrum!

So this is how I got my start, working on old PCs, so they will always have a special place in my heart.  Yeah, this is what I really did with my time.

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