Vintage New Computer

You occasionally find people talking about how they built their own computer. As in, actually purchasing the video card, sound card, RAM, etc. separately, rather than getting a pre-made PC. They decide how they want their computer, in terms of storage capacity, amount of memory, and how well it runs those high-end graphics on the latest games.

But this gets me thinking. What if they took that concept, building a custom computer, and did something crazy and unexpected with it? What if they took an old computer, and put all new stuff in it? It would be a brand new computer, with the outward appearance of Ye Olde Windows. (Or whatever operating system you happen to be using.)

To paint a picture of what this might look like, let's go down Memory Lane. In the late 1990s-early 2000s, computers were different. A lot of people had Windows 95 or 98. In fact, my elementary school had those things for a long while before they were finally replaced with newer computers.

At this time, the computers were often light gray, or some ugly yellowish hue that makes me wonder what companies were thinking. The towers (these are desktops, keep in mind) had a CD drive, and a floppy disk drive. Yup, floppy disks. The thing everyone used before USB flash drives became the favored method of portable file storage.

I didn't use these much. We generally saved our file directly onto the computer. When it was more common for me to need a project saved on something portable, I was in high school, or maybe it was junior high. Either way, by then floppy disks were obsolete, and I had a 2 GB flash drive for that purpose.

You also had a mechanical mouse. They had a large rubber ball at the bottom, which rolled over the surface to determine what direction the mouse was moved in. It would pick up dust if used on a dirty surface, so the compartment for the ball had to be opened and cleaned occasionally, or it would stick and not move properly.

The monitors were big, bulky CRTs, rather than the slim LCDs of today. The monitors at the school had buttons, or sometimes dials, for manually adjusting the picture. Not just the brightness, but making sure the picture was properly positioned on the screen. Sometimes a kid would mess with them, and I'd have to fix it. What have you done, human, the picture's not centered any more...

The dials used for adjusting the size and placement of the picture.

Anyway, you get the idea. And if you grew up after all of this stuff was dead and gone, it probably sounds like I'm describing primitive technology.

Now, imagine if you took one of those old computer towers, opened it up, and put all new parts in it. New processor, RAM, video card, sound card... In fact, let's go for a solid state drive, too. More on that later.

Then somebody comes over to your house, and notices this ancient PC. They laugh at your decades-old setup. "Does it even run still?" they ask. Yeah, you use it all the time, you tell them. They're totally skeptical and obviously think you're crazy. "You still use it? To do what? Play 'Pong'?"

Preparing yourself for the big reveal, you manage to keep a poker face as you coolly walk over to the relic of times long gone. You press the power button on the computer tower, turn on the monitor, then wait. Seeing as it's a solid state drive, there's no sound of the hard disk spinning, so your 'ancient' computer boots up with only the whisper of its fan. And it loads quickly. In under ten seconds, the Windows 10 welcome screen appears. Your friend's eyes bug out of their head, and their jaw drops. Unable to contain your amusement any longer, you smirk at them, reveling in the expression on their face.

"You were saying?"

Okay, I'll admit that half the fun of putting new stuff in an old tower is to see everyone's reactions. Here they are, looking at this retro piece of technology, and then big surprise, it's all a disguise. Though if you're a big fan of nostalgia or vintage stuff, it would have a bit of that feel. It's a modern operating system, but packaged in an old setup.

To conclude, boot screens from Windows 95, just because it's fun. (And I got caught up in nostalgia.) I forgot what the startup looked like until I found this video not long ago.

Come to think of it, this image encapsulates what I said earlier about the old monitors. The picture seems to be positioned too far to the left of the screen, and some of the letters are cut off.

The CPU clock is showing the processor speed in terms of megahertz. Today's processors are much more powerful, so they're measured by gigahertz.
"Diskette Drive A", the floppy disk drive for 3.5 inch disks. And the 'Primary Slave Disk" (weird name) is the CD drive. It probably couldn't read DVDs (a new technology at the time) or write to a disk.