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notacoward

I wasn't a 90s sysadmin, but I remember most of these. Also...

> EISA vs. MCA (vs. NuBus)

> SCSI termination and ID-conflict issues

> Apple stuff: System 7, AppleTalk, ADB

> DECnet and OSI (yes, still, in the early 90s)

> NFSv2, RFS

> Reconfiguring your kernel to add new devices

> BSD and SysV "universes" in some flavors of UNIX

> Usenet and all of the crappy software that went with it

> sendmail rewriting rules for a bazillion kinds of addresses

> KVM cables/switches with VGA and PS/2 keyboard and mouse connectors

> X Terminals and Motif

> i860, i960, 88K, MIPS, SPARC, POWER, PRISM

> Gopher, archie, veronica

> Kermit and xmodem

> Pagers

Stupid software that couldn't display indented text properly without having to add newlines. Oh wait, we still have that.

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> i860, i960, 88K, MIPS, SPARC, POWER, PRISM

I was a teen in the 1990s, and what I remember was thinking that the world of interesting hardware had come and gone and I'd never get to use anything other than x86 chips. VAX? PDP-10? Alpha? Stuff I'd read about, even seen some assembly listings for, but nothing I'd get to program. Some systems, like Multics or Lisp Machines, were freakin' Atlantis sunk beneath the waves for all the access I'd ever get.

Now, I have emulators for them. I have Multics, I have PDP-10 OSes, I have both BSD and Linux on VAX, and that's without trying too hard. I also have real, physical ARM CPUs, something else I'd never imagined I'd have.

> Usenet and all of the crappy software that went with it

Xnews on Windows is pretty good, and Usenet isn't even dead. More like "determinedly ignored even as federation and decentralization become hot ideas".

And, never, ever forget OS/2

Ever since using OS/2 I have always put my toolbar vertically on the left side of my screen. Just seemed like better use of screen real-estate.

And with Ubuntu - what's old is new again!

I remember spending way too much time reading threads on usenet (fr.comp.sys.mac, mostly) on the beloved MacSOUP. In this dial-up area it was great to be able to download a forum content and read it offline, writing the answers offline, and then synchronizing everything when going online.

On the other hand my communication skills were atrocious, and it took me way too long to understand that sarcasms have no place on forums...

In many ways I feel like reddit is sort of the new usenet (without warez, as far as I know), but it's not quite the same.

https://www.reddit.com/r/opendirectories/

Backing up 20 DEC RA81 disk drives with 120MB capacity 9-track tapes. The RA81s were 454MB each.

A 20-node VAXcluster using workstations and 10base5 (coax) Ethernet.

StorageTek anything.

Real laser printers that could set the paper on fire. (DEC LN01s that were rebranded Xerox units)

PL/I

Bliss-32

Microfiche of the VAX/VMS source

Some of those were more 80s, weren't they? I remember RA81s and VMS microfiches from '89, and even then at a company that was deliberately providing legacy support.

Then, there's stupid software (mail clients?) like this:

>> Stupid software that couldn't display indented text

> properly

>> without having to add newlines. Oh wait, we still have

> that.

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