• @tiramichu@sh.itjust.works
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      15 days ago

      And the power switch was like KA-JUNK when you pushed it, because it was a big ol’ switch that actually physically connected and disconnected the power.

      “It’s now safe to turn off your computer” went away after we moved to software power control, where the operating system could signal the power supply to turn off.

      • @CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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        215 days ago

        I had my computer plugged into a power bar and we’d turn off the power bar to turn off the computer so that we wouldn’t wear out the switch on the computer.

        People actually thought you’d have a computer long enough to wear out its power switch.

    • @Grabthar@lemmy.world
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      815 days ago

      The one I remember best was having to use the DOS ‘park’ command before you shut down the PC. I guess I am that old.

      • Björn Tantau
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        415 days ago

        Huh, never ever seen that. We always used the rule "yoi can shutdown the computer when you can see the C:".

        What does park do? Put the HDD arm into a parked position? Never needed that for ours, but we also had a blazingly fast 486 with a massive 250 MB hdd.

        • @Grabthar@lemmy.world
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          515 days ago

          Yeah, old drives didn’t autopark like the IDE drive in your spiffy 486. I had an XT growing up, and dad was militant about having us remember to park the drive when we were done with it. I think by the end of the 80s, all drives were IDE and were autoparking, so the command was deprecated.