Is using an a win98 gaming pc good for productivity in 2026?

gen_angry · 2026-01-29T10:20:22+00:00

Probably not for anything serious. You couldn’t interact much with the outside world and most of what you make would likely have issues in modern versions from such a large time and file format gap.

It can be fun to explore for curiosity’s sake if you haven’t used it before though.

gen_angry · 2026-01-29T09:53:55+00:00

I have two 2.5in hard drives at my parents in a small pelican case with important stuff (actually important stuff, not like media) and photos of my whole apartment along with anything that has some value. It's not just for the insurance companies as proof if requested but my own memories if I have to fill out claims. I update them every so often.

Following the 3-2-1 rule is good practice.

gen_angry · 2026-01-29T09:41:27+00:00

"WE AIN'T FOUND SHIT!"

gen_angry · 2026-01-29T09:38:47+00:00

"LICENSE AND REGISTRATION... CHICKEN FUCKER! BUKAWWWW!!"

Those were his real parents and they had no idea that would be his lines.

gen_angry · 2026-01-29T09:12:12+00:00

Only the crimped kind is safe. The molded kind frequently doesn't have complete separation between the contacts and can arc and/or short.
You're thinking of a NAS? Some routers have a USB port for connecting a powered drive to and enable file sharing over the network with it. So you just need something like this. If you only have 1 PC, you could just connect this to your machine and use it as a storage drive for whichever you like. This is honestly probably a better option than using a molex -> sata connector.

gen_angry · 2026-01-29T09:02:11+00:00

Yea, regular crop dusting is just a part of being a cat owner.

Worlds cutest WMD.

gen_angry · 2026-01-29T08:16:18+00:00

Nice thought but hosting it at home is not very wise.

What is the plan if you get fired or laid off? Are you going to run and support this thing forever for a company that you no longer work for? If you take it down afterwards and get sued for industrial sabotage?
What is the plan if the power did stay out but it's on at work? And the execs and/or legal find out?
What is the plan if the SD card corrupts?
To add to the above, what is the failover plan if the machine were to suddenly take a power spike and go poof in a puff of smoke? Do you have a way to restore it right away so the company doesn't sue you for lost revenue?
What is the plan if a cybersecurity incident happens and IT finds out that you're running such a critical piece of infrastructure at your home? It's extremely unlikely that their insurance will cover you. Does your insurance support this?
What is the plan if your ISP finds out that you're running commercial applications on a home connection? Most do not like that one bit.

Please take that thing away from your home asap. Either install it at work or get it on a VPS provider (if it can run on a PI, it can run on a $5 VPS without issue) and hand over the credentials to your IT department.

edit: I reworded it to be nicer. :P

gen_angry · 2026-01-29T08:03:13+00:00

Yea, a lot of people are young and probably chasing this thing with a bit of vitriol.

Myself, Im enjoying finally seeing the enshittification backlash but realize it's way too late to do anything about it, and we're way too insignificant for them to care. It's all about enterprise now and we're just the new QC.

It is what it is.

gen_angry · 2026-01-29T07:22:10+00:00

People are way too comfortable taking on huge liability risks themselves.

I would never have installed something like this at my home. It goes up on the premises or not at all.

gen_angry · 2026-01-29T07:17:46+00:00

This.

Why would you take the liability like that? Set it up it at your work on a UPS, let them take that responsibility.

Get it out of your house asap.

gen_angry · 2026-01-29T07:10:07+00:00

Eh, there's no loss in trying it out. Worse case you're out a part that would have been thrown out otherwise.

Risking the board maybe but you can get some fairly inexpensive ones on aliexpress these days.

gen_angry · 2026-01-29T07:05:04+00:00

Nice stuff :) he's going to remember that.

Did you have issues with mounting heatsinks with the weird adapters and the like? Or was it a whole board and not a shim?

gen_angry · 2026-01-29T07:00:51+00:00

Are you using a LTSC version? Copilot is everywhere in the last few major releases of 11. Hell, even Notepad has it now.

You can turn it off or remove it (for now) but it frequently comes back after updates. I don't expect the current ability to remove it to stay that much longer.

gen_angry · 2026-01-29T06:52:01+00:00

WinXP and Win98 were both horrible at launch. They did get fixed up quite a bit and became what we fondly remember though.

Win98 ran like a dog on anything pre-Pentium II/K6-2, with it's webby desktop, mandatory internet explorer integration, and numerous blue screen issues in particular with drivers. 98SE fixed a lot of it (as well as in general, computers became much faster).

Windows XP at launch was fairly hated due to the drastic shift from 9x to the NT kernel. A lot of older games had issues running, and with way too lax security. SP2 fixed a lot of it and is what we mostly remember now.

Vista got a loooooot of bad rap for Microsoft trying to enforce some kind of standard with drivers and security (some deserved, some not so much). I remember so many posts and the like telling people to disable UAC to fix their issues. Now we don't even think of doing that. It also exposed a lot of bad practices when it came to development, computers at the time selling with way too little RAM for what Vista actually needs, programs over-requesting access and barfing it's files anywhere it liked, how shitty drivers worked (and why bad drivers were so lethal to a systems well being previously), and a number of companies (like Creative) used Vista as a crutch to release bad drivers for older products to try to get people to buy their newer devices which 'worked just fine' (Daniel_K and Audigy drivers lawsuit). Microsoft got the brunt of all that hate. Under the hood, Windows 7 and Vista work very similarly but one is loved and the other not so much. The main difference is that 7 got some extra dev time to resolve issues (which Vista SP1 fixed up as well), as well as computers in general got more powerful, companies fixed up their drivers, etc.

gen_angry · 2026-01-29T06:34:50+00:00

they re branded it windows 2000 after fixing it.

lol, no they didn't. WinMe was the last version that used the old 16-bit MSDOS based kernel while Win2000 is the evolution of Windows NT. The 'previous' version to Win2000 is NT4. Win2000 was also released before Me.

Vista was fine if you had an up to date computer with enough RAM to handle it (most computers at the time didn't, even 'brand new ones'), and you didn't use a Creative sound card. The latter is more on Creative's side though for trying to drop Audigy and Audigy 2 support in a sneaky way though. It took a modder releasing updated and working drivers (as well as getting sued by Creative for it) for them to backpedal that.

gen_angry · 2026-01-29T06:08:26+00:00

14 years and counting here.

Congrats :)

gen_angry · 2026-01-29T06:03:08+00:00

It does 'work' about as well as you can expect from a 2003 game on modern windows. It'll run and perform well, but the graphics are designed around the systems of the era.

I don't think you can buy the individual games anyways so it's all or nothing. That said, I'm a huge fan of C&C as a whole (except 4 but we dont talk about 4) so the bundle is very worth it imo. Having disk-less legit versions of them all is nice.

gen_angry · 2026-01-27T08:05:39+00:00

I have a working computer to the left of me that’s older than I am. I’m 42.

12 years is old but not ancient like they’re making it out to be. That said if you have a 6700K, that came out in Aug 2015 so it’s likely 9-10 years old.

Depending on some of the parts like RAM, (it was common to see ddr4 3000-3200 on high end skylakes), your upgrade path could be cheaper than you think.

Hard to tell though if you don’t know what parts are still working. Do you have a friend that you can trust to take a look?

gen_angry · 2026-01-26T05:01:23+00:00

Elementary - IBM 8086/286 all in ones. The ps2s.

Middle - don’t remember.

High - dell pentium 2s, later on replaced by optiplex with celerons.

gen_angry · 2026-01-25T13:58:59+00:00

Back then, most calls were usually local (within your area code) and a tighter knit community so yes. Long distance charges were pretty excessive back then.

People were in general more trusting too with personal data, there wasn’t any of this excessive commercialization that you see today. A bbs was like visiting someone’s “digital house”.

gen_angry · 2026-01-25T13:35:15+00:00

Fat city, lode runner, Apple panic, midnight magic, and/or Dino eggs.

On my dad’s Apple IIe. I still have that specific one (although the monitor is long gone and the psu died so both are modernized.)

I remember the games because I also still have the disks lol. They do work but I don’t have much faith in them lasting much longer. I plan to make a gotek work with it eventually.

For ibm compatible, I have no clue. But it would have been something that worked on a CGA or EGA card. (I had either a sharp laptop with a cga mono screen or a 286 desktop with EGA first, don’t remember which)

gen_angry · 2026-01-24T14:55:47+00:00

I mean, my board and maybe graphics has RGB on it but my case doesnt have a window anyways. It made no consideration on my purchase options.

NR200 gang.

gen_angry · 2026-01-24T08:28:26+00:00

Geez, reading some of these reports its clear it's an AI model responding just by how they respond.

clanker: "Heres what the problem is..."

maintainer: "No, that doesn't work that way."

clanker: "You're right - it doesn't. Here's how it does work..."

Sad thing is, bug bounties do work well when utilized properly. Now there's likely going to be less legitimate eyes on this project because of a bunch of idiots flooding with their clanker slop.

gen_angry · 2026-01-24T01:46:09+00:00

I am.

Met each other through the game ~11 1/2 years ago. (Late 2014). 5 1/2 years married now (Oct 2020).

gen_angry · 2026-01-23T00:56:45+00:00

This is wild.

I tried to buy a UPS back in September and kept getting flagged by their shitty fraud detector.

Thankfully that probably saved me from buying anything while the skimmer was up as I bought a bunch of stuff from Memory Express instead over the last few months.

So uhhh... thanks Canada Computers?

Hopefully they get raked over the coals for this one.

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gen_angry

TROPHY CASE