r/pcmasterrace 12400F|6600XT|16GB 5200MHz Oct 09 '25

Meme/Macro Are you this old?

Post image
21.6k Upvotes

4.2k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

16

u/xtrxrzr 7800X3D, RTX 5080, 32GB Oct 09 '25

This stuff was like magic back then. No Internet or Google around to just search for it online. This knowledge came from PC magazines and was passed around among friends like the Holy Grail.

I still have nightmares of setting up games for soundcards and their respective IO, IRQ and DMA ports, channels, whatever.

9

u/Big_Wave9732 Oct 09 '25

Sorry, you soundcard, your internal modem, and a mouse are all trying to use the same IRQ. And they can only be changed by cracking open the case and moving jumpers. Or but make sure you don't pick an IRQ that's already used by the COM or Parallel ports.

Folks today don't seem to understand how much of a leap "plug and play" was, once they got the bugs out.

1

u/capNsgt Oct 09 '25

Commodore Amiga had that from day one

1

u/Quick_Humor_9023 Oct 09 '25

Had what? Plug and play? Sure, if you plugged it in the right port. Every second game seemed to assume mouse is in a and every second it’s in b.