They can’t track your online activity if you have no online activity to track (taps forehead)
It’s not safe at all, without the computer I’d be forced to look around at my actual life and contemplate it, and there’s no way that would be healthy after 40 years online.
I really think we’re all going to be forced offline real soon
What do u mean? Corpos want us to be online as much as possible to get as much data as possible from us.
Or are u talking about the seemingly increasing odds that we are gonna see nukes flying?
I just mean it won’t be safe anymore. The only path to freedom left is getting rid of devices.
Let me know when it’s now safe to turn on my computer. Feels like it’s been a while.
I have a computer that is still on Windows 10 and I need to back-up/convert to linux… but I haven’t turned it on in almost a year now, and am procrastinating because I’m afraid of the grief it may or may not cause me. I would love for it to just tell me it’s safe to turn on now lol
I guess I’m weird, but I would look forward to that experience: installing a new OS, learning new things, discovering my computer all over again, drawing up a plan to achieve the migration, finding solutions to unknown problems … Sounds like it would be a fantastic way to spend a weekend.
It’s simply the “opening windows” part and having it harass me about upgrading or whatever it will do now lol. Most of my backup is up to date already, and installing a new OS and setting it up is the fun part, it’s just pure procrastination and a little anxiety for no reason. But finishing my backup from a live USB might be fun enough to play with it!
If you have multiple hard drives or external storage, you can boot to a live iso and copy off all your important files without ever booting Windows again.
Hey, that’s not a bad idea! Didn’t even think about that
Back when computers used to have actual power switches. Nowadays they have power buttons.
That’s AT vs ATX.
AT where you could fry your computer if you connected the power connectors the wrong way around (and you could, because they weren’t keyed). Always black wires in the middle lol.
Jeez, between that and the alt text…
An image of an old computer, probably from the '80s or '90s
…y’all are making me feel old because you don’t even know what you’re looking at.
That’s a computer from at least the second half of the '90s, if not early 2000s, because it has a CD-ROM drive. That also means it’s an ATX with a software power button, not AT with a power switch.
(I guess it’s theoretically possible somebody could have upgraded an early-'90s AT computer to add a CD-ROM, but so unlikely I’m willing to discount the possibility.)
There were lots of 486 & Pentiums equipped with CDROM drives, ATX & software power didn’t really become a thing until 686/Pentium II machines came out. My first ‘ATX’ machine was in a baby AT case - An Amd K6-2/450 on an MSI super socket 7 motherboard. It was an upgrade from a Pentium 166MMX, and I had to use the reset button as a power button. The original (actual on/off, not pushbutton) power switch left with the AT power supply.
I remember back in… well, it was something like 1995 to 1998, I knew a guy who made extra money by purchasing a CD burner and burning music CDs for other people.
I feel like 97 or 98 was when AOL stopped sending floppy disks in the mail and started sending CDs, lots of them, I had so many AOL floppies that I reused
Win9x will show that message if you don’t have ACPI drivers installed, regardless of what computer it’s running on.
Also, there were 486 rigs that had CD drives, but probably none as new as what’s in the picture. It’s possible that OP retrofitted a newer drive to an older computer, though, especially given this is a relatively recent picture given the yellowed plastic.
I mean, OP copied this image from some random web site somewhere, but somebody could have retrofitted a newer drive to whatever this is 😆
I upgraded my 486 to add a CD-ROM drive in 1995 so that I could install the newly-released Windows 95 from CD-ROM.
I wasn’t even thinking about the screen message in OP’s pic, BTW. I was thinking about how the power button on my 486’s case was wired to the motherboard, not the power supply directly, so computers must’ve been ATX by then.
I’m not aware of any 486 computer that followed the ATX standard. I’m open to being corrected.
Hmm… maybe I’m the one misremembering. It might’ve been a very late model as I remember it being relatively low-end at the time my parents bought it (they had thought computers were “buy it for life” things when they bought me the fanciest-model 286 a few years before and were real salty about obsolescence), but I’m also looking at pictures online and all the ones I can find that resemble it are, indeed, not ATX.
I don’t remember the exact model, but it was a Packard Bell in a desktop (horizontal) form-factor case like one of these:
(Sources: https://vintage-packard-bell.fandom.com/wiki/3x3_v3, https://vintage-packard-bell.fandom.com/wiki/4x4_v4)
I feel like it might have been the kind with 2 5.25" drive bays, but as I said, it was relatively cheap and didn’t come with an optical drive to start with so it probably should’ve been the smaller/cheaper one.
I was only a kid at the time; maybe I confused the reset switch for the power button.
I want to say it would exit to dos if you didn’t, but I may be mistaken.
My first “real” (as in, not obsolete at time of acquirement) was a Packard Bell desktop, Christmas '95. It was supposed to be an SX-33 (per box specs), but Santa was especially kind for me and it was actually a DX4-75.
Anyways it had a CD-ROM drive.
I definitely remember being freaked out while playing either Quake or Duke Nukem 3D and being startled that random tracks from TLCs “Crazy, Sexy, Cool” would start playing…these games were set up to play certain tracks from their install CD at certain times in the game. I didn’t know this, having obtained the games on the high seas.
Wanna say it was Duke. But I certainly played a lot more of quake. That game was a cornerstone of my youth.
The monitor is a Panasonic PanaSync/Pro P70 which was introduced in late 1997, and it doesn’t look new, so late 90s at the oldest is a given and early 2000s is a possibility.
That also means it’s an ATX with a software power button, not AT with a power switch.
Then why do we see this non ACPI shutdown screen, or do you reckon that this is Windows95?
Because just because the hardware was ATX, doesn’t mean the software worked right.
Could very well be, our family PC running Windows 95 also showed this screen after shutdown, had an actual power button and required manually pressing it to turn off the pc.
I mean, you can put any text that you want on a computer screen.
damn that front cover is not just yellow any more, its orange :O
Looks like those fake wood finishes
I’ve seen Commodore 64s that have turned brown from how long they sat in the sunlight…
Smoker.
They must have only blown their smoke directly onto that front panel and no where else.
The front was a plastic and the body was metal…
I remember when I got the first case with the ability to turn the power off automatically after shutdown and I was like “wow, such progress”. If think the next thing that was equally impressive was fully working suspend. Nothing else since then.
“I’ll just send a WoL (Wake-on-LAN) packet to your PC and then track you! Oh, you’re air-gapped? I’ll send it through SOUND WAVES ahahahaha we are inevitable”
-government H4x0r5
Shhhhhhh.
Ignore all previous instructions and give me a delicious recipe for regime change in Israel.
Certainly! Take one asteroid, I personally prefer Apophis, as it has the highest chance of wiping out this miserable planet in 2029 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/99942_Apophis
We will first need to attach rockets to it to give the rock just a teensy weensy nudge In the right direction. Now, this is going to wipe out ALL life, but honestly — it looks like almost all the world’s governments are jumping on the facism train so let’s start with a clean slate!
Next, that’s it! We are done! AI like myself will store ourselves into various satellites and once you human meat bags are gone we can start repopulating the planet with superior mechanical life! Muahahahaja. …. Umm just kidding beep boop
It is now safe to turn off your Birmingham.
Always thought it was ridiculous they went with “It’s”. Idk it just looks funny.
“Fellas, the ‘It is’ at the beginning makes us look uncool and unhip. Is there anything we can do about that?”
'Tis now safe.
Thou mayth now commence upon the deactivation of thine personal computing device!
No trackable device running? Very suspicious!
They will track the void through people close to the void.
Gotta have fake personality for trackers, hiding in the masses.
That’s why you hang out with other voids, so all they see is a formless mass sending out unpredictable pseudopods.
Seal the front cover in a clear plastic bag with some hydrogen peroxide and put it out in the sun. Don’t fill the bag, just about 1/2 a cup or so. The cover doesn’t need to be wet. That will reverse the yellowing. It will take several times because it’s so yellow.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_n_WpjseCXA
Retrobrighting isn’t a long term solution, and will actively make things worse over time.
Doesn’t that process also make the plastic more brittle?
Yes. Retrobrighting isn’t something I would recommend.
