On 2018-09-19 12:14 PM, graham wrote:
> On 2018-09-19 9:15 AM, Jinx the Minx wrote:
>> Cindy Hamilton > wrote:
>>> On Wednesday, September 19, 2018 at 10:50:58 AM UTC-4, Ed Pawlowski
>>> wrote:
>>>> On 9/19/2018 10:05 AM, John Kuthe wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> And at first Windows was a pretty good GUI shell script! Then it fell
>>>>> victim to the "kitchen sink syndrome"!! And that was just between Win
>>>>> 3.1 and Win NT! Then Win XP made it even bloatier but at least XP
>>>>> was a
>>>>> little more stable than all the rest since Win 3.1!
>>>>>
>>>>> John Kuthe...
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Most of us never saw the bloat with XP but is was far better than its
>>>> predecessors.Â* When I left work we still had an XP machine used for
>>>> monitoring a process.Â* As long as the hard rive holds out it will
>>>> probably work for another decade or two.
>>>
>>> I've got an XP machine as one of the 6 computers in my office.Â* I
>>> build some of our software on it daily.Â* I've got another one that's
>>> powered down.Â* It was upgraded to XP from Windows 2000.
>>>
>>> Cindy Hamilton
>>>
>>
>> Anyone want an old 286 with Win 3.0 on it??Â* Ive got one taking up space
>> in my garage.
>>
> I have a 486 with a 5.25" floppy drive stored in the basement. It proved
> to be useful when a client asked me for some data from a project that I
> did back in the late 80s. I had to save the data to a 3.5" disc to burn
> a CD on a newer model and then download it to my W10 desktop.

I am surprised that the files were still intact. Magnetic media is
fragile after a few years. It is a bit ironic that we are the age of
information, but that our reliance on magnetic memory and other fragile
media, and computer printed documents, that most of our stored data will
disappear faster than the information from any previous age. The 21st
century may be more of a mystery than Stonehenge.