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Comment by layer8 | Hacker News Reader

The Zip drive in the picture feels slightly anachronistic though. Technically it isn’t, having been release a few months before Windows 95, but still.

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Zip Drives began as Parallel Port devices, and PCs had parallel ports since the beginning. It's not like it's a USB device or something like that.

I don’t think that’s a good counterargument. For example, an Olympus P-330 dye-sublimation photo printer from 1998 also uses a parallel port, but would nevertheless seem out of place for the Windows 3.11 era.

I mean... to be super honest, I was there, and 1998 was ALSO Windows 3.1 era. The future is not evenly distributed and a TON of people in 1998 still had Windows 3.1 as their daily driver. Windows 95 was a big big thing but a lot of people waited out of choice or necessity. 4MB of RAM was hard to come by for a lot of computers.

CANYON.MID was shipped with Windows 3.1 IIRC.

Yes, hence it predates the availability of Zip drives, which are more of a Windows 95-era thing.

Doesn't feel anachronistic for me, as people kept items from different eras on their desks in the 90s.

The video shows Windows 3.11 though.

My point is that while there is a small time window where Zip drives were available and Windows 3.11 was still the latest consumer Windows (ignoring NT here), Zip drives feel more like Windows 95-era. A stack of 3.5” floppy disks would have felt more authentic.

It's a very "borderline between eras" picture. The 1000 RSX was a late Tandy model. It has a 386 CPU and VGA graphics, which makes it a pretty reasonable Win 3.11 machine. It's a system that could technically run Win 95 but it'd struggle with that CPU and limited RAM capacity. You really wanted a 486 or Pentium for Win 95.

The monitor is the standard Tandy VGA monitor of the system's era. The styling on the speakers feel newer than the RSX's 1991 launch, they're more what I'd expect from the mid to late 90s.

You had to upgrade the VGA chip's BIOS to use Win 95 on it:

> The ACUMOS VGA graphics can be software-updated with Cirrus Logic BIOS (via MS-DOS driver) to allow VESA/SVGA to function in Windows 95, as the Windows 3.xx Tandy VGA drivers are insufficient for Windows 95.

ref: https://gunkies.org/wiki/Tandy_1000_R-Series

I think the background image is probably authentic, it has the feel of a mid-late 90s digital camera picture. It reads to me as the desk of someone who is trying to keep that system alive long past its prime years. Which were arguably over before they started, given 486 systems had been available for a bit when this launched. We end up with an early 90s system with a handful of mid-late 90s peripherals.

The bigger problem to me is this sounds like MIDI played back on a sound card with FM synthesis. The 1000 RSX had the poorly supported Tandy 3 tones + DAC sound hardware. You could install an AdLib, Sound Blaster, or other card to give it MIDI FM synth capability, but the base system can't do it. Alas, we can't see the back to see if it has such an upgrade...

I think the picture was taken using a film camera. The resolution is way too high for 90’s digital cameras.

> was still the latest consumer Windows

When I was a kid, I was using Windows 95 for a while when Me was already a thing - newer versions could technically run, but the experience wasn't great on that hardware. You could even still find Windows 3.11 computers at my school at the time. Computers don't go die at the exact moment a successor becomes available on the market.

As a data point/anecdote, I had a parallel-port Zip drive with a 386 and Windows 3.1. I remember quite clearly that I had to load a SCSI driver in CONFIG.SYS. I didn't understand back then why I had to load a SCSI driver for a parallel port device, years later I found out that the parallel port version was actually the SCSI version but it tunnelled the SCSI protocol via the parallel interface...

The Tandy 1000 RSX had a 386SX. The 386SX was a lower cost, 16-bit data bus version. Windows 95 minimum requirements were a 386DX (32-bit data bus) or better with a 486 recommended. Here's an excerpt from the comp.sys.tandy FAQ. If nothing else, read the second paragraph.

* III.C.1. Can I run Windows on my 1000?

...

The RLX's can run Windows 3.1 in standard mode only, if they have the RAM upgraded to 1M. The RLX just barely meets the minimum hardware require- ments for Windows 3.1, however, and performance will be poor. Windows will not recognize the built-in mouse (see section II.G.2.). One user says of Windows 3.1 on the 1000RLX:

Windows' performance is tolerable on a 486DX2/66. I like it on the RLX because I can start a program, go to the bathroom, and when I come back only have to wait a few minutes before I can actually use the #@$% thing.

The RSX's can run Windows 3.1 (or 3.11) in 386 enhanced mode if the memory has been upgraded to 2M or more. There is a Windows sound driver for the RSX's built-in sound at my ftp/WWW site and at Tandy's support WWW site (see sections IV.B.1. and IV.B.2.).

Tandy does not officially support the use of Windows on any model of the 1000-series. The RSX's could theoretically run Windows 95, but Microsoft does not recommend Win95 for 386's.

I had a Zip drive before I had a Windows 95 PC.

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