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Comment by MrGilbert | Hacker News Reader

I wear a pretty neat shirt which shows PS/2 mouse and keyboard ports and a text saying "I'm this old" at the front. As I will turn 40 next year, it felt adequate.

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Most annoying tech support call ever:

Customer: Our computer won't boot. Come over and fix it.

Me: Please tell me what message you see on the screen which describes why the computer will not boot.

Customer: No, just come fix it.

Me: Okay, but we're charging for a service call even if I don't touch your computer.

Customer: Just fix it.

Me: (drive over, walk up to the office where the computer is at, pause at door and look in to read the screen across the room (younger me had much better vision) announce)

You have the mouse plugged into the keyboard port, and the keyboard plugged into the mouse port. Power the computer down and swap the connections and it will then boot.

I did tech support for a startup a long time ago. I mostly won't do any phone support for friends and family because they have the nasty habit of doing something like this:

Me: What do you see?

Them: <click> <click> <click> Nothing.

Me: What are you doing?

Them: <click><click><click> Nothing.

So I've been doing it in person or don't do it at all. Too many hours trying to visualize what in the world might be on the other person's screen.

The reason I'm moved to comment is two things: one is that my daughter in college had me help her file her taxes by starting with FaceTime on her MacBook, then sharing the screen so that I could see exactly what she was doing. She's not technically inclined and it wasn't something that I suggested, she figured out how to do it herself.

The other thing is that my mother-in-law is 90 and also not a techie. But I've been able to help her with 1 or 2 issues remotely because she's able to take a photo of the situation with her cell phone and text it to me.

Things have progressed to the point where hopefully your customer could have been convinced to send you a picture and saved you a trip.

Yeah.

Counterpoint to the above was the customer who selected OS/2 for their computer --- we installed it and delivered, but the next day they called asking for help with installing a printer --- despite my only OS/2 experience being doing the install the previous day, the UI was consistent enough that I was able to talk them through this on the phone w/o a reference system to use in parallel (we only ever sold the one OS/2 computer and never did get a second copy in).

This would make more sense with a parallel port and/or the DIN connector used by keyboards before PS/2, both of which have been extinct for much longer than PS/2, which is still being added to some main boards.

I would have included an RS232 D-Sub serial connector but those are still used if not for mice.

Or a gamepad port on a Soundblaster card.

I remember being blown away when that changed. "I can just use a USB port and not have to use the gamepad port?!"

It felt like back then everything was a bodge and computers were somehow made without any thought to gaming or mice even after they became common. Wasn't the game port really a MIDI port and gamepads pretended to be MIDI devices?

I believe so, yes.

No, on the original Sound Blaster there is a jumper that switches the port between a UART for MIDI and a quad timer for IBM compatible joystick.

I'd really like a modern version of the SB AWE32... I do wonder sometimes why front panel audio connectors never changed to a USB motherboard connector, I know it would be a few dollars more. I used to use a cheap USB dac on the front for wired headphones as the FP audio just never sounded that good..

I mean… Yes, I agree. But I'm not, like, THAT old. o.O

Also, from a visual standpoint, it’s quite appealing the way it is: https://www.qwertee.com/shop/tees/i-m-this-old-468

That's cool, I love the colors

I'm that old! Now I want a similar shirt featuring the back side of an IBM 5170

I'm 5 years older than you and that t-shirt (very nice anyway!) still makes me think of late 1990s/ early -00s so it's still not THAT old. I owned an actual IBM PS/2 XT as a kid and they were not color-coded [1]

[1] http://john.ccac.rwth-aachen.de:8000/alf/ps2_76/ps2_76_2_ful...

Yep, the colors come from the PC System Design Guide [1] developed by Microsoft and Intel in the late 90s after IBM completely lost control of the PC market.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_System_Design_Guide

Don't forget the Centronics 36-pin parallel connector!

PS/2 is like the 90s. If it didn't have screws for positive affixation it doesn't count.

The AT connector predated that and is essentially a jumbo PS/2 connector. Mice were DB9 serial, though.

You'll be thrilled to hear what they're doing with higher wattage USB-C cables, then! https://www.startech.com/en-eu/cables/s2cepr2m-usbsl-cable

Its funny because I'm younger than you by a couple of years and I can remember the big parallel ports on keyboards before PS/2 became popular! PS/2 still feels modern to me in comparison

Big parallel ports? There was some proprietary DB-something connectors (for example, the Olivetti M24/AT&T 6300 had one), but if you're younger than 40 you likely have been using an AT connector (basically PS/2, but physically larger) for the keyboard, and a DB-9 or DB-25 for the serial mouse - and that is easy to mistake for a parallel port.

PS/2 and AT refer to the IBM computer models where the connectors were introduced, of course.

Since this is an age competition, I can remember the annoyance of XT and AT keyboards and motherboards having the same connector but being incompatible. Some keyboards had a switch to change modes. I don't know what advantage the AT keyboard provided but it must have been huge to be worth breaking compatibility in both directions.

How about some of the PC “clones” that used older dumb terminal components and ports, probably to ease upgrades on accessories for some corporations.

Our computer lab in college had these NEC/AT&T 386 desktops that had RJ-11 keyboard ports that didn’t work anywhere else.

> Its funny because I'm younger than you by a couple of years

I'm 33 and also grew up with computers that only had PS/2 ports! Granted, USB existed, but the PCs I had as a youngster were old PCs.

I'm quite sure I literally used the adapter mentioned in the submission, as one of the first mouses I bought myself was a Microsoft mouse that came with a PS/2<>USB adapter!

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