The Last Octet

I was going through some old stuff at my parent's house the other day and unearthed my first "PC". This is not to say I found my first computer, as I had numerous computers prior to this PC. This particular machine would be the one that would lead me down the PC/x86 road and introduce me to my present day career.

I'd often wondered what state the machine would be in if I were to power it up again. I didn't have very high hopes, but I did wish that I could recover the machine's state to retain that "era" of my computing past. More on this later.

When I dug the machine out, I didn't do much prep. I plugged in the power cable and keyboard in and threw the power switch. What happened next was a scene out of my own Back to the Future movie. First there was a short pause, then a bright glowing (firey) light shown from behind the brightness and contrast dials,followed by a capacitor blowing POP!. This happened in about 2 seconds time. Then.......I saw the machine performing its memory check as it proceeded to POST. Shockingly there was very little "electronic smoke" smell in the air.

After about a minute, the machine had booted up to Norton Commander and the menu system I'd written to assist other family members who didn't know DOS.

So here I am. 20 year old computer that I want to preserve. I'm going to ponder the direction I take with this over the coming days and figure out what my approach is going to be. Those with suggestions, post'em up.