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?

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.

wahming,

awkward amount of time to kill

For how long? Because that’s probably the most important factor.

There’s also a million indie games that run perfectly fine on mid 2000 desktop hardware. Even games that look crazy computational intensive like Factorio.

CorrodedCranium,
@CorrodedCranium@leminal.space avatar

Sorry I forgot to put 12 hours in the title. I made the edit.

sleepybisexual,

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,
@viking@infosec.pub avatar

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…

sleepybisexual,

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,
@LunarLoony@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

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,

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,
@LunarLoony@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

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.

sleepybisexual,

Holy shit, no idea what to run on that. Modern Linux mint has no chance of running on that

LunarLoony,
@LunarLoony@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

Could spend your 12 hours making it run! Plenty of tinkering opportunity there :D

sleepybisexual,

Sounds fun, but my terminal knowledge ends at

sudo apt get adventure

ares35,
ares35 avatar

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,
@LunarLoony@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

Must’ve been an office with money, then…

ares35,
ares35 avatar

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.

LunarLoony,
@LunarLoony@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

That’s pretty impressive. I’m especially surprised about the 8GB RAM considering that was a lot even in the early 2010s.

ramble81,

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

Petter1,

Since size of harddisk is not specified, I’d take all Nintendo consoles roms that work with emulators on that desktop. May some genesis, Atari and some PSP, basically I take myrient erista on my drive 😂

CorrodedCranium,
@CorrodedCranium@leminal.space avatar

But what would you play? Or is this an !sbcgaming thing where you’d spend the 12 hours tinkering with emulators?

Petter1,

Well, yea, I have most likely spent more time installing stuff on my 3ds than actually playing with it

But in all honesty I would likely kill most time with Zelda, Mario, and pokemon (any generation of each)

Thank you very much for the link to that community, it feels just like home 🤩

viking,
@viking@infosec.pub avatar

Open X-COM. Or well, maybe the regular X-COM, that should run just fine regularly.

Some books as epubs or whatever format is convenient, and a reader. Would have to research which one works on Windows 2000 or ME. Or was it XP already?

Megaman_EXE,

This kind of feels like every work day. Except I can’t use the pc for fun. Lol help me :')

+1 on roms and Doom. Maybe the sims. Tbh I’m not too familiar with that generation of PC gaming. There’s probably a lot I don’t know about

warlaan,

Boy, this question hurts.

For anyone above a certain age with kids below a certain age this isn’t a punishment or a challenge, this is A DREAM!! Heroes of might and magic 3, system shock 2, Anno (any version up to 1503), Morrowind, Civilization 3, Age of wonders shadow magic, Baldur’s gate 1 and 2…

Whenever my wife finds the time she goes to her room to play Morrowind. She just got a new laptop and the first thing I did was install OpenMW and copy her save file.

It goes without saying that you couldn’t finish any of those games in those 12 hours, except for System Shock 2.

the_third,

except for System Shock 2.

No, at some point I’d make a very unmanly noise and Alt-F4 the fuck outta there.

jbloggs777,

Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego and Commander Keen … wait a second, the time machine’s dial is broken.

datavoid,

I’d probably bring Warcraft III, Half Life 2, and potentially Deus Ex if the PC was extra shitty.

CorrodedCranium,
@CorrodedCranium@leminal.space avatar

Was Deus Ex pretty good on low-end PCs?

datavoid,

I don’t know about pretty good, but it ran on mine!

webghost0101,

A whole 11.5 hours of extra sleep next to a nostalgia machine?? Count me in.

ares35,
ares35 avatar

just put a big pillow 'on' the external hard drive.

massive_bereavement,
massive_bereavement avatar

Dungeon Keeper, Diablo II, StarCraft maybe, Morrowind, Uplink, Civilization II, Sim City 2000 or 3000 (depends on what will run), quake.

LunarLoony,
@LunarLoony@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

Mid-2000s? SC3K would run easily, I’d have thought. SC4, on the other hand…

root,

I enjoyed Uplink as well.

massive_bereavement,
massive_bereavement avatar

I blame my career choices to that game and the 90s movie "Hackers".

alphafalcon,

There should be an external hard drive full of portable game installs in some drawer that fits the time period.

Should easily kill a week.

metaStatic,

all my Napster mp3s to listen to while I beat my high score on 3D Pinball Space Cadet

Th4tGuyII,
Th4tGuyII avatar

I'd love to chance to play a bunch of nostalgic titles - just off the top of my head I'd play DOOM, Uplink, Darwinia, Morrowind, and my trashy favourite from that era Themepark world. There are definitely more if I had time to think about it.

Greznak,

Elder scrolls morrowind. 12 hours should’nt be a Problem.

Flynn_Mandrake,

Copious amount of ebooks or web novel downloads, as well as my lofi folder for background music. All preloaded on a boot drive with a Linux distro capable of both running on the hardware and viewing everything I brought, if I can figure out how to do that. Plus however many snacks I can sneak in.

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