Are you old enough to remember this?

I’m old enough to remember this….

It's past your bedtime grandpa.
- It likely is….
  
  Now get off my lawn!!!

Remember? I have the disc in a box next to me

Thanks for the free key sucker 😎

Don't forget the classic:

Savage

Bruh, I remember 5.25” floppies.

And 5 1/4” hard drives.
- Ah, yes, full height 5 1/4" hard drives. (CD drives in desktop computers are "half height")
I had hundreds of 5.25" floppies with pirated Apple II games.

I even owned a 9" floppy disk drive and a few disks, but just as a novelty.
- We even got that damn zip disk drive for a while. 28k modem days, I was telecommuting via floppy and usps
I have an unopened box of 5.25" floppies in the attic, still in their shrink wrap. I'm not holding my breath for them to come in handy any time soon.

Microsoft: we’ll make long-ass cd keys so they’re difficult to memorize and pirate

18-year-old me: hold my cherry coke

hold my Surge

...that cd-key is etched into my brain.

Wait, you're telling me the files are IN the computer?

I'm old enough to remember Win3.0 and the 10-digit activation codes that were valid if they were mod-7. Yes, that did include 000-0000000.

Nice.

I recall my win95 key.

I say "my" like I'd paid for it. Really it was just one that worked.
- Our activation key, comrade!

This is the internet. You can say FUCK GW here

Yeah, fuck gamesworkshop!

I'm old enough to have saved and loaded data with a cassette drive (i.e. a random ass tape deck with a special cable attached to the computer) on a TI-99/4a. You had to set the volume level the same for recording and reading or else it wouldn't read correctly. Get off my lawn.

CAN YOU PLEASE COMMENT A LITTLE LOUDER? I DIDN'T QUITE CATCH THAT!
- I SAID IT'S TIME TO TAKE OUR METAMUCIL.
The TI-99/4A was a gorgeous machine. Visually. I hated using it.
Apparently they're still used for data storage.
I remember playing Parsec, TI Invaders, and a bunch of other games on that. We also had the periperal expansion box, with its flat firehose cable.
- I remember Parsec from a friend's house but I didn't have that one. I had Jawbreaker and Hunt the Wumpus, and the extended BASIC cartridge. I was a party animal back then.

Yes. Next to my Windows 7 and BeOS CDs

I still have mine around here, somewhere! It's WinXP Media Center 2005. That I still use on my Dimension E510.

Take a lighter. Hold it to the clear side of the disk. Once it's good and hot take the lighter and drop it through the other side.

Lol no you blow a bubble with it.

I am almost certain there is a copy of both XP and 7 with the key written on the disc just like this in my box of "maybe I'll need it one day" computer cables and parts box lol.

The sacred box of parts! May it never be called on.

Amen.
- I had to pull out a DVI-D to display port cable from there a few days ago. I felt so validated for holding onto that cable for 3 moves lol
It's in the stack with the StarCraft and red alert CD's.
- I found an original StarCraft jewel case in the trunk of my car last year. It had heros of might and magic 4 inside lol.
- Mine are diablo 2 and all the isometric fallouts.
I have a "NOT TRASH!!! WINDOWS 10" envelope on my desk. I think my copy of 7 is likely lost to time.

I can remember that code of the top of my head, quarter a century later. Lunch yesterday?? Hahaha no

Haha, no.
I've got better, a modified ISO that doesn't need a key. Maybe there is malware, who knows, but it doesn't need a key.

Matter of fact, I carry around a portable USB DVD drive and book case with discs in my backpack. Linux ISOs but also the newest Hiren's Boot disc (which is based on Windows 11 PE).

But I just like DVDs. Yes, I have a Ventoy disk, yes, it boots in seconds, not minutes, yes it's smaller and more convenient, but does it spin? Does it make any (audible) sounds? Is it nice and shiny? Does it require burning, verification and some more care? No, it's just a boring USB stick.

But my backpack also includes a WRT54GL with DD-WRT, so...

It's similar to how I grabbed at 3G when its shutdown was announced. I switched my phone to 3G only ("WCDMA only" in *#*#4636#*#* menu) until I was forcefully disconnected when the cell towers in my area shut down. But for the sake of affecting some possible statistics, I switched back to 3G only every time before entering area that still had 3G and switched it back only a while after exiting it.
My idea was there could be some statistics for the last days of 3G usage, and perhaps it could include devices that would not successfully re-connect after the shutdown.

Just an example there. I like to keep old technology around, and I like to affect statistics in certain ways, and I do want DVD purchase statistics to be higher, so I keep using them, and I like them too.

Pfffft, you kids! I remember shuffling through a couple of dozen 3½" disks to install Windows 3.1 for Workgroups.

WFW 3.11 only had 8 disks.

Your memory is slipping. 😎
- That's what, like 28MB? For a fucking operating system. Now windows uses like 60GB and just bloats from there.
- Once, a long time ago, I had to create management reports from a mainframe accounting system, built in-house by someone long since retired. The only way to extract data was to capture a print file and then use an application called Monarch. I seem to recall that came on >20 floppies. I used Crystal Reports a lot, and that had a similar number or perhaps more.
- Probably meant NT something something.
  
  I am not a crank!
I don't remember that far back, but I do remember using floppy's to upgrade Windows 95 to 98.

I had the same one! Except that it said "Mandrake". Apart from that, it was almost identical.

Mine had Windows 98 and 2000 on them.

I still have functioning WinXP and Win98 virtual machines.

Same. I don't even use them though.
- About a year ago I was moving old backups to newer, larger drives and I came across stuff I had archived in an old format. They could only be opened by Win98. Something similar with XP. There are custom pieces of software that only work on XP.
- Hush! You use them one day, like the 800+ cables that lives in a miscellaneous drawer/bin!

I still have a 50 stack of dvdrws somewhere. I probably use two or three a year

Hell I remember windows not having a backdoor key that was something like 12345678-123. Something like that anyway....in my defense it's been 27 ish years since I installed NT

Grew up with Commodore 128 with a tape drive and arcade games at the grill bar. Precious memories.

I'm old enough to already have forgotten the key a long time ago. Hello, old friend.

Yep and I even used those same Sony cd-r's. They were less reliable than cheaper ones actually. That cd key actually seems familiar! Maybe just a weird memory thing though

IBM AS400's FTW

Yup. Count one more dinosaur in

My first computer had 640k RAM, and ran on DOS 5. The first computer I used (not owned) ran CP/M