

I barely remember my first-PC life with my 1989-era Austin 286 PC, 16Mhz, 40MB Hard drive, where a game wouldn't work unless you manually set IRQ and DMA channels. Internet search found a forum entry: "Oh yeah, it lost the date, open terminal and type this command in this format." I re-imaged my little USB-2.0 thumb drive with the O/S to re-copy the "packages", but no luck. Upon trying to load the O/S, it said something about not finding "valid packages", even though I had done the same process as on the first one. I replaced the little button-cell battery on both, but only one lost the date (which I didn't know).

I was re-imaging a 2007 & 2008 iMac that I put little SSDs in (still beautiful, basic internet terminal). The internet is pretty wonderful in its ability to disseminate useful information, obscure or not.
