this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2026
510 points (97.2% liked)
Ask Lemmy
40103 readers
1556 users here now
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, toxicity and dog-whistling are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !askusa@discuss.online
7) No Hit-and-Run questions.
Please don't delete your post for no apparent reason. If you plan on deleting a question later, say so in the post, or if you feel that you have a good reason to remove it, message a mod beforehand. It's not fair to the ones who took their time to answer, and it's not in the spirit of the community.
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Is this referring to computer labs in schools in general? This is at least Win 95 (and the school system didn't bother to update things in 98), so I would have been in high school with these, and thinking back we had very similar machines. I do kind of miss it because my friends and I had setup a hidden series of IRC servers on a few PCs. So, while we were supposed to be learning to type, we'd just chat. In retrospect, it was a good idea that was poorly implemented (people will eventually get around anything that they have physical access to) but the modern idea of kids in schools just having a ChromeBook, tablet, phone, or w/e is kind of fucked up. We had access to the computer lab for 1 period a day vs. the modern 24/7.
I think that in the end my real opinion is that I don't miss this, I miss my friends and I testing the limits of the security for both network and individual PC. We did some wild stuff with our TI-83s. One of my friends from that time was a certified Machine God and wrote an assembly program for his TI that would allow him (and by extension us) to surreptitiously plug in our calculators to those PCs via serial and effectively "dial out" bypassing the restrictions. It was a wild time.