Recycle old pc

Be very careful to erase all your personal data. You will need to remove your or anyone else’s user account(s) to start with, do a factory reset. Or to be absolutely guaranteed free of being hacked remove hard drive, or format it. If purely recycling you want to make it unusable to another user, if selling you want to be very sure to at least clean your own data. What operating system is on that laptop?

(Windows 3.1 🤣?)

Yes, I was taking a journey down memory lane. First came Microsoft Disk Operating System, then Windows was born and resided on that as a graphical interface imitating the MAC OS (based on Linux, which in turn is based on Unix) until it became an OS in itself. I’m a bit of an old fossil meself 😁

Its origin lies in the origin of IBM personal computers, with Microsoft & IBM Co-developing almost identical operating systems. Before the development of the standard PC & Mac (the latter ahead of its time with graphical interface) on a small scale you had the varying non-standard home computers for nerds & gamers like the Commodore 64, BBC micro computer, etc. So nothing on the IBM PC standard before DOS, it is the mother of non-Unix etc operating systems.

Also the inventor of the Graphical User Interface was Xerox.

OP, show us your kit!

I will use a phrase popular in the Liveline thread a la Joe Duffy:

I know dat, I know dat, I know dat!

🤣

I’m talking about the rise of popular computing. Before that it was the provenance of engineering, companies,nerds & little boys in cash fluid families. It was the era when most of us started using computers for many things at work, when the ordinary adult started getting home computers.

Goodness knows, I know this, my cousin was first prof of comp science in this country & I closely followed him.

I started working in 1979, and in subsequent years entertained the idea of buying a computer for my home. Although material in the library system where I worked were being put on the MARC system for a future circulation system, there was no computerised circulation system in place.

I looked at the cost of eg the Commodore 64, it was many multiple times of my salary, you certainly couldn’t get your second hand banger of a car plus the likes of that.

I know what my wage packet could buy, for sure, and I wanted to buy something close to what I’d be using from then onwards, and IBM PC or Mac were the way to go. My first practical use of a computer was to write a book for a publication in 1992.

Yes I know Linux is a later clone.

The dinosauric Mac 2 on which I cut my teeth didn’t last long, and it was the price of a small car.

For anyone to suggest any computers were easily affordable in the 1980s wasn’t running a household back then, wages were low, taxes extremely high.

In the 1990s standardisation started to come into play so making investment in a home PC more of a prospect. I still have a batch of sturdy old ZIP discs, the contents of which I can view on my current PC, laptop etc.

Born in 1961, attending a girl’s school, I wasn’t early to computers in a highly misogynistic world of then Irish male-dominated STEM. Different times, you might have had a different experience. My take-home as a Grade 3 public service admin was well below easy affordability. No way could I splurge out on things then. Only a few years before MEN were paid HIGHER than WOMEN for doing the EXACT SAME JOB. Some of the misogyny still on Boards is cringeworthy.

A memory of beige-ness. All black set-ups started to become a thing, initially reserved for top spec models, one of which I was sorely tempted to get and which actually came with a screen top camera of all things. These early machines with Windows 3.1 and Microsoft Home Suite or whatever it was called back then, had very nice teach-yourself modules which rewarded you with a nice little video display once completed.

Going down memory lane, I’m trying to recall exactly when I got my first PC. Book (biography of friend undergoing lung transplant) was published 1993, just as he was recovering from it, having started it a bit less than a year before. Launched on Pat Kenny show and a best-seller for a week. It was a momentous occasion in my life, I had known shag all about word processing etc before that. I finished off the biography on a typewriter as I no longer had access to the Mac.

Around that time I was considering options of purchasing my own machine as I enjoyed so very much using the Mac. It was Mac or PC, PC or Mac. Being artistic I had heard the Mac might overall suit me better, but I was equally keen to see sone underbelly of operations. PC it was.

I was into archiving and genealogy, a hand scanner was a must for capturing photos. Flatbed scanners were prohibitive! People have no idea now how expensive this realm could be. There were no usb ports, and I started getting my screwdriver out to fit the scanner port, when my mother, who knew feck all, grabbed it from my fiddly hands and fitted it in a jiffy 🤣 To install the driver software on DOS was fiddly, but the Eureka moment came with the scanner scanning an ancient family photo or two and some archival material for digital posterity, now all online.