Amin GirasolSimple things make me happy.
#RetroComputing #WindowsNT4 #FloppyDisks #IBM #Thinkpad #Thinkpad760CD
stdevel@fluidlogic Lovely setup! Which configuration does your system have? What are you using it for?
@stdevel Thanks! It's a first generation Pentium 90 with 64MB RAM, a 1.2GB IDE drive, swappable CDROM and floppy drives and 5v PCMCIA support. A friend rescued it from a skip (dumpster) years ago and gave it to me a few months back. The main and BIOS batteries are still fine, bizarrely. It was probably last used in the early 2000s.
I've been having fun putting different period-correct operating systems on it and seeing if I can get various PCMCIA cards working. I found a trove of old IBM drivers for it, so the next intervention is to update the BIOS. That'll let me run Windows NT4 and OS/2 Warp. I'll probably try an old Debian install on it too. Windows 98SE was fun but very flaky.
@fluidlogic That’s a lovely story! Also have a weakness for those old models. They had such a lovely and clever design, especially the modularity and keyboards are just awesome. :)
I was giving OS/2 a try the other day - it’s a really strange but interesting experience.
@stdevel thanks! I saw a very flashy demo and presentation for OS/2 Warp in Dublin when I was in my early 20s. (I'd blagged my way into a huge computer expo. Wish now I'd brought a camera.) My mind was completely blown by the OS/2 Warp presentation. At the time, it was streets ahead of 16-bit Windows 3.1. I never used OS/2 as a desktop OS, though. At work our client software was supported on OS/2, but I was in the server team. I moved to using Solaris running CDE and never looked back.
I'd love to give both of these OSes a spin on the Thinkpad 720CD. I've utterly fallen in love with it. Maybe even more than my beloved Lenovo X220!