It’s funny how one thing leads to another. I wrote a few days ago about the discovery of an “emulator” that turns your computer into it’s great, great grandfather. While tinkering with it yesterday the thought crossed my mind that you can probably pick up a similar computer second-hand for not-very-much-money-at-all. And that’s how I found myself nosing around eBay during a coffee break this afternoon.
Early next week a computer will arrive in the post.
Yes, I know. I’m my own worst enemy.
A twenty-something year old computer. My own re-imagining of the Wordstar machine that George R R Martin used to (not) write the Game of Thrones novels. The interesting thing about old operating systems is that most of the software is now classed as “abandonware”, and can be freely downloaded. What would have cost thousands years ago is now free.
And yes, I will be installing “Lotus Organiser”.
I’ll also be installing “WinAmp”, and trying to find some of the music I downloaded from the internet back in the day. I seem to remember a band called “Fisher” lived on my computer for quite some time - mostly because I didn’t have many MP3 files, and “ripping” CDs hadn’t become a thing yet. I remember the girl I worked with asking who they were.
It’s funny how moments stay with you.
On the shelf above my desk there is a pile of hard drives from long-dead computers. I’m tempted to resurrect them - to disassemble the computer as soon as it arrives and turn it into Frankenstein’s monster. There is a ZIP drive in the attic too. Remember ZIP disks? 100 floppy disks on one ZIP disk. They seemed amazing at the time. We can now fit a several thousand ZIP disks on a cheap piece of silicon smaller than your little finger nail.
There’s something about old computers though. The clunkiness. Their mechanical nature. The sound of the fan, the clacking of the keyboard, and the chuntering of the hard disk drive. The electric beep on boot-up. The swirling sound of Windows coming to life.
I joked with a co-worker that I would have a dot matrix printer before the end of the summer. I don’t think I was actually joking. I’m not sure the rest of the house would appreciate the screaming sound from it bashing letters into pages though.