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in my ewaste scavenging, i sometimes find people's old boot disks they kept around for emergencies. from what i can tell, you put together just enough of an MS-DOS installation for the computer to boot up again when everything else was going wrong. you feel a sense of connection to someone from 30 years ago - we're both just trying to get these things working again and hoping whatever ails our PC is within our means to fix. they seem personal, they have people's names on them, they have dates and instructions. you can tell it mattered
pictured: me using some of these boot disks i found in the trash to update the BIOS of an old server motherboard
Apr 16, 2025
Related Recs
Why, yes, there is a website where you can buy those retro computer badges for practically any operating system or hardware you could think of!
Feb 2, 2024
Knowing what your computer is doing, how it works, and how to take care of it is really cool. It's probably one of the most powerful devices anyone has on hand at any given time, and it pays off to know exactly what it's doing and what you can do with it. Technical literacy doesn't need to be boring, and at the very least you get to feel like Trinity or Neo from the Matrix.
Nov 27, 2024
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Lucius gave you good advice, so I'll just throw in some tools that can help you work with disks.
I will echo one thing tho, you prob want the cloud in there somewhere, because if a disaster strikes your house, block, town, or you're concerned about political instability having copies of that material in a very different location is GOOD.
Nov 13, 2024
Top Recs from @swumbles
part of me sorta wishes AI image development stopped around here. this is just far enough to be funny, but not far enough to create enormous amounts of slop and engagement bait
Apr 13, 2025
the sheer joy of having a bunch of arduinos around is unmatched. i salvaged these from ewaste and will be trying to find a home for them like i'm a pet shelter
Apr 12, 2025
it truly brings joy to this world when i look at my dog and he has formed a new orbular shape
Apr 8, 2025