AT where you could fry your computer if you connected the power connectors the wrong way around (and you could, because they weren’t keyed). Always black wires in the middle lol.
An image of an old computer, probably from the '80s or '90s
…y’all are making me feel old because you don’t even know what you’re looking at.
That’s a computer from at least the second half of the '90s, if not early 2000s, because it has a CD-ROM drive. That also means it’s an ATX with a software power button, not AT with a power switch.
(I guess it’s theoretically possible somebody could have upgraded an early-'90s AT computer to add a CD-ROM, but so unlikely I’m willing to discount the possibility.)
I remember back in… well, it was something like 1995 to 1998, I knew a guy who made extra money by purchasing a CD burner and burning music CDs for other people.
I feel like 97 or 98 was when AOL stopped sending floppy disks in the mail and started sending CDs, lots of them, I had so many AOL floppies that I reused
There were lots of 486 & Pentiums equipped with CDROM drives, ATX & software power didn’t really become a thing until 686/Pentium II machines came out.
My first ‘ATX’ machine was in a baby AT case - An Amd K6-2/450 on an MSI super socket 7 motherboard. It was an upgrade from a Pentium 166MMX, and I had to use the reset button as a power button. The original (actual on/off, not pushbutton) power switch left with the AT power supply.
Win9x will show that message if you don’t have ACPI drivers installed, regardless of what computer it’s running on.
Also, there were 486 rigs that had CD drives, but probably none as new as what’s in the picture. It’s possible that OP retrofitted a newer drive to an older computer, though, especially given this is a relatively recent picture given the yellowed plastic.
I upgraded my 486 to add a CD-ROM drive in 1995 so that I could install the newly-released Windows 95 from CD-ROM.
I wasn’t even thinking about the screen message in OP’s pic, BTW. I was thinking about how the power button on my 486’s case was wired to the motherboard, not the power supply directly, so computers must’ve been ATX by then.
Hmm… maybe I’m the one misremembering. It might’ve been a very late model as I remember it being relatively low-end at the time my parents bought it (they had thought computers were “buy it for life” things when they bought me the fanciest-model 286 a few years before and were real salty about obsolescence), but I’m also looking at pictures online and all the ones I can find that resemble it are, indeed, not ATX.
I don’t remember the exact model, but it was a Packard Bell in a desktop (horizontal) form-factor case like one of these:
I feel like it might have been the kind with 2 5.25" drive bays, but as I said, it was relatively cheap and didn’t come with an optical drive to start with so it probably should’ve been the smaller/cheaper one.
I was only a kid at the time; maybe I confused the reset switch for the power button.
I want to say it would exit to dos if you didn’t, but I may be mistaken.
My first “real” (as in, not obsolete at time of acquirement) was a Packard Bell desktop, Christmas '95. It was supposed to be an SX-33 (per box specs), but Santa was especially kind for me and it was actually a DX4-75.
Anyways it had a CD-ROM drive.
I definitely remember being freaked out while playing either Quake or Duke Nukem 3D and being startled that random tracks from TLCs “Crazy, Sexy, Cool” would start playing…these games were set up to play certain tracks from their install CD at certain times in the game. I didn’t know this, having obtained the games on the high seas.
Wanna say it was Duke. But I certainly played a lot more of quake. That game was a cornerstone of my youth.
The monitor is a Panasonic PanaSync/Pro P70 which was introduced in late 1997, and it doesn’t look new, so late 90s at the oldest is a given and early 2000s is a possibility.
Could very well be, our family PC running Windows 95 also showed this screen after shutdown, had an actual power button and required manually pressing it to turn off the pc.
Back when computers used to have actual power switches. Nowadays they have power buttons.
That’s AT vs ATX.
AT where you could fry your computer if you connected the power connectors the wrong way around (and you could, because they weren’t keyed). Always black wires in the middle lol.
Jeez, between that and the alt text…
…y’all are making me feel old because you don’t even know what you’re looking at.
That’s a computer from at least the second half of the '90s, if not early 2000s, because it has a CD-ROM drive. That also means it’s an ATX with a software power button, not AT with a power switch.
(I guess it’s theoretically possible somebody could have upgraded an early-'90s AT computer to add a CD-ROM, but so unlikely I’m willing to discount the possibility.)
I remember back in… well, it was something like 1995 to 1998, I knew a guy who made extra money by purchasing a CD burner and burning music CDs for other people.
I feel like 97 or 98 was when AOL stopped sending floppy disks in the mail and started sending CDs, lots of them, I had so many AOL floppies that I reused
There were lots of 486 & Pentiums equipped with CDROM drives, ATX & software power didn’t really become a thing until 686/Pentium II machines came out. My first ‘ATX’ machine was in a baby AT case - An Amd K6-2/450 on an MSI super socket 7 motherboard. It was an upgrade from a Pentium 166MMX, and I had to use the reset button as a power button. The original (actual on/off, not pushbutton) power switch left with the AT power supply.
Win9x will show that message if you don’t have ACPI drivers installed, regardless of what computer it’s running on.
Also, there were 486 rigs that had CD drives, but probably none as new as what’s in the picture. It’s possible that OP retrofitted a newer drive to an older computer, though, especially given this is a relatively recent picture given the yellowed plastic.
I mean, OP copied this image from some random web site somewhere, but somebody could have retrofitted a newer drive to whatever this is 😆
I upgraded my 486 to add a CD-ROM drive in 1995 so that I could install the newly-released Windows 95 from CD-ROM.
I wasn’t even thinking about the screen message in OP’s pic, BTW. I was thinking about how the power button on my 486’s case was wired to the motherboard, not the power supply directly, so computers must’ve been ATX by then.
I’m not aware of any 486 computer that followed the ATX standard. I’m open to being corrected.
Hmm… maybe I’m the one misremembering. It might’ve been a very late model as I remember it being relatively low-end at the time my parents bought it (they had thought computers were “buy it for life” things when they bought me the fanciest-model 286 a few years before and were real salty about obsolescence), but I’m also looking at pictures online and all the ones I can find that resemble it are, indeed, not ATX.
I don’t remember the exact model, but it was a Packard Bell in a desktop (horizontal) form-factor case like one of these:
(Sources: https://vintage-packard-bell.fandom.com/wiki/3x3_v3, https://vintage-packard-bell.fandom.com/wiki/4x4_v4)
I feel like it might have been the kind with 2 5.25" drive bays, but as I said, it was relatively cheap and didn’t come with an optical drive to start with so it probably should’ve been the smaller/cheaper one.
I was only a kid at the time; maybe I confused the reset switch for the power button.
I want to say it would exit to dos if you didn’t, but I may be mistaken.
My first “real” (as in, not obsolete at time of acquirement) was a Packard Bell desktop, Christmas '95. It was supposed to be an SX-33 (per box specs), but Santa was especially kind for me and it was actually a DX4-75.
Anyways it had a CD-ROM drive.
I definitely remember being freaked out while playing either Quake or Duke Nukem 3D and being startled that random tracks from TLCs “Crazy, Sexy, Cool” would start playing…these games were set up to play certain tracks from their install CD at certain times in the game. I didn’t know this, having obtained the games on the high seas.
Wanna say it was Duke. But I certainly played a lot more of quake. That game was a cornerstone of my youth.
The monitor is a Panasonic PanaSync/Pro P70 which was introduced in late 1997, and it doesn’t look new, so late 90s at the oldest is a given and early 2000s is a possibility.
Then why do we see this non ACPI shutdown screen, or do you reckon that this is Windows95?
Because just because the hardware was ATX, doesn’t mean the software worked right.
Could very well be, our family PC running Windows 95 also showed this screen after shutdown, had an actual power button and required manually pressing it to turn off the pc.
I mean, you can put any text that you want on a computer screen.