Why did old PCs have key locks? (2017) [video] | Hacker News Reader

Why did old PCs have key locks? (2017) [video]

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89 pointshsnewman64 comments

I remember back when I was a kid and I thought putting a lot of necessary stuff in my computer was cool, I had a thing attached in one of the front bays of my computer that had a key start, a cigarette lighter, and a slide out cup holder. It was really dumb but I thought I was so cool.

Periodically I daydream about building an absolute monstrosity of a computer with a LiteScribe DVD burner, combo floppy disk reader, iomega zip drive reader, TV/cable tuner, and other older forgotten-about technology. The motherboard will have a LPT parallel port and a serial port of course. I would call it The Tower, keep it in a spare room.

Whenever I would need to access any information out of old media without fear of damaging anything, I'd pop it into The Tower then SSH into it from a rather useless but comfy Macbook 12".

Ummm.. that is my everyday computer! DVD burner, 3.5" floppy, 5.25" floppy, zip drive, Bt848 based tuner. It's based on an Intel Core 2 Duo and must be pushing 10 years old by now, but it still works. Okay, about a year ago I moved all the data off my floppy and zip disks and unplugged the 5.25" floppy and zip drives to save power (the machine also runs 24/7 as a dns/email/http/file/print server). Still got the SCSI card in a box in case it's ever needed. Sadly, no turbo button.

I mean, I understand you might not have the need to upgrade, but why?

It fits my purpose and just works.

The system has a fanless power supply and GPU making it virtually silent. When it's idle it consumes relatively little power as a server. Admittedly with 2GB of RAM and the latest Gnome/Debian it's beginning to lose it's snappiness as a desktop, but it's still usable. Unfortunately suitable DIMMs aren't easy to find anymore, as a memory upgrade would restore that responsiveness and extend its life by a few more years. Chances are I will have to replace it in the next year or so.

Based on the final comment in GP post, it's because they have information on all of those mediums. If you've been in computing for a few decades, you'll find dusty floppy disks, zip disks, and the like hiding in weird corners. Having the ability to easily read and move that data can be invaluable.

Personally, I can't remember how many old disks and pieces of my computing history that I've thrown out because I can't read them anymore.

Why not also add the kitchen sink! http://www.john-ward.org.uk/personal/john/computers/html/roc... :)

You're going to want Zip, Jaz, and Bernoulli drives of course! Maybe some external SCSI enclosures. And now I'm trying to recall why Ethernet transceivers were necessary...

> And now I'm trying to recall why Ethernet transceivers were necessary

I think the idea was to decouple the card that went inside the computer from the physical media. You could use the same card for 10BASE5 or 10BASE2 or even 10BASE-T based on the building wiring.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attachment_Unit_Interface

The decoupling was nice to have, but i've gathered that the bigger issue was 10base5 cabling was big and inflexible, and connecting to it was a bit of a chore, it was kind of necessary to have a flexible cable between the computer and the tap.

10base2 had a much more flexible cable, and allowed for T's, so it wasn't too bad to route it right to the computer, and 10baseT was also routed to the computer. So after 10base5 was pretty well dead, budget cards lost the transceiver port, although fiber transceivers were useful in niche cases -- if you needed one, you'd have to more carefully select your ethernet card.

Modern datacenter switches are still this way, see SFP+/QSFP.

Not just for that, though it's important--as I understand it, the electronics needed to feed data at high rates over RJ-45 are actually surprisingly difficult. Going much over 10Gbit (currently expensive) over RJ-45 is going to be prohibitive.

Don't forget a tape drive and a SuperDisk drive!

Throw in the 5.25" to 3.5" and 2.5" reader... and baby, you got physical media!

It's not all in a tower but I'm in the process of fulfilling my own childhood dream - filling out all the IDs on a Mac SCSI chain http://kalleboo.com/retrotech/perip/#scsitower

What, no SCSI flatbed scanner?

If I only had the space, I would also have CRTs and other goodies. Alas, family in a small apartment :(

Oh the nostalgia. I had a tape back up SCSI drive running on my Tekram and later Adaptec U19160 controller. That was premium hardware with very good Linux support. How I miss those days.

What about 8" floppies -- both hard and soft-sectored so you'll need two drives. And QIC

I still use SCSI zip drives for all my 90s music gear but am slowly porting them across to SCSI2SD.

Akai samplers will physically blow an internal fuse if you forget to switch off the zip drive before unplugging it.

In a perhaps related mode, and apologies if the discussion goes further off track, what I liked about the front panels of "real" computers back then was that they always had a key lock. The minicomputers (PDP 8, PDP 11, and VAX) that I had access too all used the lock to turn on power and optionally disable they key switches. The IBM 360 and 370 series had an operator enable key lock which could lock out operator functions like initial-microprogram-load (IMPL) and other system control functions.

That always seemed more impressive to me, and I have expressed it over the years with different types of panels that I've built that carry the look, but not the gravitas, of "serious" control circuitry. I have ressurected some of that when helping a friend design escape room puzzles that are more set piece than functional but it is much more fun to get a clue from something that looks like it could power up a reactor than it is to find it in a coffee can or amongst the graffiti on the wall.

Apollo Domain computers had a key lock. You needed the key to run as their equivalent of "root".

(Apollo machines were early 80s workstations. They ran their own OS, Domain, and had their own two-cable token ring network. Not bad, but too nonstandard.)

> a slide out cup holder.

By this I am going to assume you mean the cd-rom drive. (And thanks to the 1990s for the computer joke of that decade.)

Probably not. https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/is-this-the-best-com...

A SAAB cup holder would have been cool:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7ULaCgLp6A

Nah I meant a literal holder made specifically for cups, with no disc reading abilities, a lot like the one posted in this comment thread

I know. I was joking. And I heard this joke too many times ~20 years ago. So I was being corny.

My previous desktop had a floppy controller. I had a 5.25/3.5 combo drive in mine just because I could. Unfortunately my newest motherboard does not have a floppy controller.

You know that was the cd drive?

a what? /s

s/necessary/unnecessary

/r/whoosh

I was an 'MIS assistant' back in the 90s and RAM / video card theft was a real issue. A stick of RAM was a month's salary or more and easy to conceal. There were clever RAM swaps where someone took a 4MB stick from the work computer and substituted it for a 1MB from home.

Locked cases basically eliminated that loss.

That does not speak for your users... Even when one was too lazy or inept to just pick those locks, a collection of just a few different keys was usually enough to open any of the typical tubular locks.

Source: Did this a lot when I was young and stupid, not to steal but to annoy teachers... As soon as I was not young enough to walk free (but still just as stupid), I got caught and had to help with maintenance of the computer cabinet for the rest of my school career ;)

A lock is increasing the effort someone has to take to steal. Even if the lock is utterly useless from a real security perspective, psychologically it presents a small hurdle to people who are not hardened criminals, but opportunistic thieves.

In many cases that small hurdle is already enough to make a significant impact on the outcome.

As they say, a lock is not there to keep the thief out, but to keep honest people honest.

Law can be different for "theft" and "break & theft".

When, or more importantly where, in the 90s was a stick of ram worth a month's of salary? IIRC they were in the several $100s range of price and surely sold for less used.

In the UK in the mid-90s. I was well paid at the time on £10k or thereabouts gross, so about £650 net per month

An office PC was at least two or three times that price.

Despite being a 'computer whizz' I only had a Spectrum 48k at home until 1995. PCs really were high-end goods.

I'm surprised, my first job was in 2001 (so only a few years later than you) in Israel and despite being an 18 year old earning roughly minimum wage my salary was similar or higher (~4000-5000 ils gross per month, according to today's exchange rate that would be ~£800-1k & at that level I paid next to no income tax).

A "good wage" even in the late '90s/early '00s would be at least 2x as much (programmers were commonly earning 20k ils per month in the late 90s).

I would have guessed UK wages were higher than Israeli ones.

The pdp-8 panel designers needed a way to secure the front plastic bezel to the front of the machine. They added a power key lock switch on the left and panel key lock switch on the right. They were there mostly to hold the front panel together, but the idea was copied by their competitors (Data General etc) and soon became a minicomputer standard.

I don’t miss the key locks. I do miss the Turbo key.

But it was not a Turbo key! It was a "degrade the performance for legacy software" key.

Right! You want me to believe it wasn't a magical key that 2x'ed my CPU speed? Next thing you're gonna tell me the 640Kb limit wasn't a clever design to teach everyone about memory management and making custom autoexec files!

I really miss custom autoexec and config.sys files.

I understood computers back then. Windows is almost a black box to me, now.

Memory paints with a golden brush.

The hardest part of playing games like Wing Commander 2 and Ultima was getting them to load in the first place