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You are going to be trapped in a room for 12 hours with a mid 2000s office desktop with no internet connection and an external hard drive; what are you putting on the hard drive? (leminal.space)

submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by CorrodedCranium@leminal.space to c/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com

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I've got some DOOM WADs I have been meaning to play so I would probably grab Trench Foot, Total Chaos, and the sequel to Ashes 2063, Ashes: Afterglow with a portable install of GZDoom to play them.

After that I'd probably bring Star Trek TOS and a MOBI copy of Neuromancer by William Gibson combined with a portable install of VLC and Calibre in case the computer didn't have applications that support the file format.

What about you?

I wanted to phrase this in a way where it isn't a prolonged or desert island style question where the responsible idea would be to bring Wikipedia ZIMs and educational PDFs. It's just an awkward amount of time to kill. The mid 2000s office desktop stipulation is just an additional challenge so you can't just bring in a copy of Baldur's Gate 3 or Cyberpunk 2077.

Edit: By mid 2000s I meant around 2005; the XP or Vista.

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[-] sleepybisexual@beehaw.org 2 points 7 months ago

So, just a PC? No controllers or anything?

I might get a few 8 and 16 bit ROMs

And mainly movies, I'd get around to watching Rambo and get some other stuff

[-] viking@infosec.pub 0 points 7 months ago

A 2000's office PC has a CRT screen (or first generation TFT, but they suck), so good luck watching movies in a proper resolution...

[-] ramble81@lemm.ee 1 points 7 months ago

I see you haven’t heard of the Video CD and it’s glorious 240p resolution you had to watch videos in…

[-] sleepybisexual@beehaw.org 1 points 7 months ago

Any resolution is good, I mean, why not 240p

Wait, CRT?

I could use a keyboard as a controller and play retro games. Might as well play punch out for nes

[-] LunarLoony@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 7 months ago

I think they're referring more to the aspect ratio - watching a 16:9 film on a 4:3 display isn't the most optimal method, to put it charitably

[-] sleepybisexual@beehaw.org 1 points 7 months ago

Oki

Wait, this is stupid but what are the specs of our hypothetical PC. Can I put Linux on it to kill an hour?

[-] LunarLoony@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 7 months ago

If it's an office desktop, we're probably talking a low-end Intel Pentium with 256MB RAM. If there is a discrete graphics card, it'll be one of those ultra-basic ones, but chances are it'll be onboard only. There's probably a CD-ROM drive (DVD drives were still quite expensive!) and USB 2.0.

[-] ares35@kbin.social 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

i have a couple dual core athlons (windsor and brisbane athlon 64 x2) at the office from that era. they are still used, even. have 8gb ddr2, dvdrw, and dx10-capable geforce cards.

[-] LunarLoony@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 7 months ago

Must've been an office with money, then...

[-] ares35@kbin.social 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

i personally bought them. no i don't have money. didn't then either. they were about $200 each, just prior to when vista started shipping (they were on sale). ram was upgraded from scrap, so was one of the video cards and one of the cpu (they were both originally windsors)--the other was bought new for ~$50 in late 2008 or so.