Nice one. The Amiga one (the one with the Workbench dialog) is slightly incorrect.
The disk drive reader head doesn't sound right, at least for an Amiga 500, which it ought to be seeing as it's using the 1.3 kickstarter.
It's also not mechanically checking if there's a floppy disk in the drive at the kickstarter screen after the workbench has shut down, which the Amiga needs to do to detect if there is a floppy disk in the drive. The checking mechanism manifested itself as a slight "clicking" sound.
Irix
Solaris + OpenWindows
Solaris + CDE
AIX
HP/UX
BeOS
PC/GEOS
VMS/DECWindows
;-)
Funny thing: I never saw a QNX desktop restarting in real life. The thing was always connected to some piece of big and dangerous machine and restarting would be terribly dangerous. It was the first time I saw machines with a 5-year uptime.
This actually reminded me of the old "It is now safe to turn off your computer" orange text that would come up on older versions of Windows.
Eventually computers began being able to turn themselves off.
Does anyone know what prevented older computers from doing this? And if it was possible, why the design decision was made to make the users turn the computers off themselves? Was it some sort of "feel in control of this new thing in your house" thing?
With AT motherboards the power button on the computer was linked directly to the power supply. There was simply no option of turning the computer off through software. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATX#Power_switch
>Does anyone know what prevented older computers from doing this?
Your master power switch was actually just that, a master power switch within the power supply. Your computer was shocked to life by having this switch turned on, and your computer was turned off by literally having this turned off.
It was just easier to design around this. Also bios functionality was incredibly limited at the time, normally being configured via DIP switches on board and hardware control via OS was a long way off, typically the only hardware control was to assign interrupts and handle them.
I suspect it wasn't so much a decision as a lack of one. Every appliance up until then had a simple power switch: an actual switch, that physically disconnected the power feed to/from the device. Why would a computer be any different?
Fun fact about that "It is now safe to turn off your computer" orange text: you were actually dumped to a DOS prompt even though the display was set to a graphics mode. You could type commands and switch the display to text mode.
Yeah, Win95 (and subsequent versions to ME). It was a DOS prompt, so you could type anything. I believe typing CLS<enter> would clear the screen and show you the prompt.
I spent way too much time watching the systems reboot after I understood that the dialogs were active. Very nice collection. Curious how this was done. Screen captures, recreated from videos?
Oh, the page is interactive; drop downs work, which makes this better than a bunch of static images. Ironic that a page demonstrating ui/ux variation has low usability.
I wish I had a hard drive for my Atari back in the day :) Had to survive with extra SF314 drive. Fortunately there was a SM124 monitor to accompany my Philips CM 8833 at least.
1040STFM is still stored inside a waterproof plastic box along with few hundred floppy disks and extra floppy drive. Seemed to be working a few years ago.
Neither did the Amiga, but that didn't stop it appearing. Note, the "restart Workbench" dialog there was for restarting the gui, not the operating system. It you wanted to reboot, you just did a three finger salute.
I like how the mouse pointers change according to which window you are hovering over.
Why is it that looking at those old computers fill me with the hope of what can be (the oldest of the set), and as the things get newer, I loose that feeling?
QBasic was killed when? When was it that a computer became a thing that did a list of stuff and not a thing that I could make do anything?
Seeing this page made me notice the professional look of Windows 2000 Professional. I wonder why. I don't think it has to do with the word 'professional' but with the blue color and the white top. Also the gray is warmer than most Windows versions.
I would still trade the XP or Aero themes for WINXP2K look any day.
I remember those days at the library, where one could browse the internet, download stuff, but could not run any of the downloaded files. I then figured out that if you renamed an executable into SETUP.exe, it would run without questions. Then the library computers got cluttered with warez, music and games.
I partially agree. I really like the way Windows 7 Aero feels, but that classic look and feel of Windows is a wonderful blend of functional minimalism and nostalgia...
It also really reminds me of the 90s and my first computer, an IBM with a Pentium clocked @ 200Mhz with 64MB of RAM and running Windows 95. I got good use out of that thing.
Aptiva series? My first computer at home was an Aptiva C6E, 133MHz Pentium with 32MB RAM (8MB for video) and Win95. Also had the Mwave card, which was IBM's interesting and novel combination modem/sound card. Got it in 1997 and only got rid of it last year. :P
Actually - yes. It was an Aptiva S. Actually I still have the Joystick and keyboard that came with that computer, they are pretty solid.
I played a lot of MechWarrior 2 and SimCity 2000 on that thing. I was still a kid in the 90's. It kicked around in my house until 2000/2001 when it was finally replaced with a Dell Dimension.
Would love to see one dedicated to OS install processes one day, my highlights are the OS X intro videos and "helpful hints" provided during an install of Windows XP.
The disk drive reader head doesn't sound right, at least for an Amiga 500, which it ought to be seeing as it's using the 1.3 kickstarter.
It's also not mechanically checking if there's a floppy disk in the drive at the kickstarter screen after the workbench has shut down, which the Amiga needs to do to detect if there is a floppy disk in the drive. The checking mechanism manifested itself as a slight "clicking" sound.
Very cool though!