Throwback Thursday: Old PCs never die -- we hope
Pilot fish at this big distribution center is called in to investigate a PC in the shipping area that -- according to the trouble ticket -- is "making a loud noise."
"When I arrived, I found an ancient PC with a monochrome monitor that was hooked up to a similarly ancient dot-matrix printer," says fish. "All of this was hooked up to a UPS that was shrieking due a dying battery.
"The computer had an old DOS-based menu that had been up for so long that the screen had severe burn-in and probably could have been read by people using their fingertips."
Fish types a few commands. The hard drive whirs and clunks and finally responds. The PC is running a version of DOS that's 20 years old.