i finally found this picture again. it has infected me memetically a long time ago

Never touch the terminals.

Please don't. Cause of failure.

This may be the cause.

It is not possible to use multiple computers at the same time.

It is not possible.

@whitequark What the fuck is this

Is it... A pluggable PCIe extension card for networking? Why... Would it specify that using with multiple computers is not possible? Why? Who would want that? Why it PCIe x16? Why?

I have so many questions. Explanatory alt text would go so fucking hard here.

@KFears It's a PCI (PCIe wasn't a thing then) extension card for IEEE-1394, commonly know as Firewire.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_1394

IEEE 1394 - Wikipedia

@sobek @KFears Could the "it's not possible to use multiple computers" refers to connecting two computers with this then?
@mage_of_dragons @sobek @KFears
It is possible to connect two computers with Firewire and use it as either a network connection or a serial link. Windows XP (at least) supports running the kernel debugger over Firewire

@grapeshot @mage_of_dragons @sobek @KFears

One of the nicest features of Apple's now-discontinued XServe line:

If the machine crashed, you could plug in an iPod and it would take a full memory dump and store it on the iPod then reboot the machine. You could then debug the failure offline.

Yes, Apple really did sell the iPod as a system administration tool. And, yes, lots of people were very happy that this let them expense theirs.