Yesterday, I wiped the hard drive on the old Dell Dimension clean and installed Windows 98, the operating system which shipped with the computer back in Dec. 8, 1998. (A little more than 10 years, actually.)
I spent a good part of the day hunting down old discs with drivers, installing anything Windows 98 couldn't find. It was nice to get the graphics card driver installed because looking at 640×480 monitor with 16 colors is a bit lo-fi for my taste.
Once everything got set up, I couldn't help notice just how speedy the computer ran. With XP on it, clicking anything would tax it for seconds at a time. It was excruciatingly slow. Back to its original state, it ran like a charm. It almost had me thinking it might be able to withstand a upgrade to Windows 2000 and no more.
But I have to reel myself back in. The hardware components are out of date, and a 500 mHz processor is not enough power to drive a modern day blow dryer. I even fished out the original receipt from the order. (Oh, yes you better believe I kept it. An old apartment was broken into once.)
Back in 1998, the computer shipped with a 13GB hard drive, 96MB of RAM, a CD burner and a ZIP drive. Yes, a ZIP drive! Your iPod probably has more space than that machine had in 1998.
Right now, I have a 40GB drive in there — yes, very spacious — and 512MB of RAM. I even put in a PCI card to support USB 2.0 and a network card. No, I didn't opt to get a network card in 1998. I was still on dial-up.
No, this computer must join its brethren into obsolecense. I guess that will be my secondary holiday project, in addition to studio time.
It does feel weird reviving the patient, only to know it's going to get gutted.