Submission + - My Classic PC, Still Working After All These Years 2
tunersedge writes: Check the specs:
Epson Equity I personal computer (c. 1984)
512K RAM
82-key keyboard
2 (count them!, 2) 5.25" floppy disk drives
13" RGB monitor (with contrast/brightness knobs)
Handy on/off switch
healthy 25-year-old yellowed plastic
absolutely NO software
This PC happens to be one my parents bought brand new in 1984. My mom ran a pre-school, and they used it to keep records and payroll. Lotus 123, baby! I cut my programming teeth on this thing. GW-Basic was my friend. Kings Quest screens took 2 minutes to load when you walked into a new one. I dug this thing out of my parents basement yesterday. I pulled the case of, dusted out a little (surprisingly low on the dust), and plugged it in. It actually fired up! I'm stoked, except the disks we had are missing. Who knows where they ended up. What I'm looking to do is either buy some old-working disks with whatever I can find (MS-DOS 3.22, GW-Basic, whatever), or try and recreate some using a USB based floppy drive and some modern software. Has anyone tried to resurrect a PC this old before? I figured at least a couple Slashdotters might have some good leads.
Epson Equity I personal computer (c. 1984)
512K RAM
82-key keyboard
2 (count them!, 2) 5.25" floppy disk drives
13" RGB monitor (with contrast/brightness knobs)
Handy on/off switch
healthy 25-year-old yellowed plastic
absolutely NO software
This PC happens to be one my parents bought brand new in 1984. My mom ran a pre-school, and they used it to keep records and payroll. Lotus 123, baby! I cut my programming teeth on this thing. GW-Basic was my friend. Kings Quest screens took 2 minutes to load when you walked into a new one. I dug this thing out of my parents basement yesterday. I pulled the case of, dusted out a little (surprisingly low on the dust), and plugged it in. It actually fired up! I'm stoked, except the disks we had are missing. Who knows where they ended up. What I'm looking to do is either buy some old-working disks with whatever I can find (MS-DOS 3.22, GW-Basic, whatever), or try and recreate some using a USB based floppy drive and some modern software. Has anyone tried to resurrect a PC this old before? I figured at least a couple Slashdotters might have some good leads.
