British 90s nostalgia and shite

Because I don't know why, here are the computers my family owned when I was a child.

My family's first computer

Here's my family's first computer. This is not what it really looked like. I don't know what kind of computer it was. It could have been an Atari or a Commodore. But from my memory, it looked something like this:

You're thinking, "Oh yeah, well that's just a typical olden-day computer." But no. This was the 1990s. Computers weren't like this anymore. Computers had changed. No one had computers like this anymore. This computer was old. I don't know where my dad got it from. Probably a jumble sale for 20p, or maybe he stole it from a computer museum.

The computer was extremely basic. When you booted it up, a list of ten things appeared on the screen, like this:

1. WORD PROCESSING
2. SPREADSHEET
3. DATABASE
4. ADDRESS BOOK
5. PHONE BOOK
6. CALCULATOR
7. DICTIONARY
8. THESAURUS
9. TETRIS
10. OPTIONS

If you wanted to do something that wasn't on that list then fuck you, the computer didn't care. This was not a child-friendly computer. This computer was brutal. And there was no mouse either, so everything had to be done with a keyboard.

The ten things the computer could do were all boring administrative things: word processing and databases, stuff like that. Things your parents used to keep track of their finances.

All except one, that is: Tetris. Yes, Tetris was on the list and therefore one of the things we could do on the computer. And play Tetris we did. Playing Tetris on that computer was one of the few pleasures we had back then.

Unfortunately, though, one day I accidentally deleted Tetris from the computer.

You see, one day I was exploring the computer's options out of boredom and curiosity. Then, and I don't remember how this happened, I selected some option that made the screen say, "ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO DELETE TETRIS FILES?" (It was like that — ALL CAPS.) Now, this message sounded serious. It scared me — and in fact, I was so scared that I immediately selected "YES" without thinking. Then the screen said, "DELETING TETRIS FILES MEANS THE TETRIS PROGRAM WILL NO LONGER BE ACCESSIBLE. ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO DELETE FILES?" At this point, and I don't why, I selected "YES" again.

Then, a third and final ominous warning appeared on the screen. This time, the screen said, "DELETING TETRIS FILES WILL REMOVE THEM FROM THE COMPUTER. TETRIS WILL NO LONGER BE PLAYABLE. ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO DELETE TETRIS FILES?"

Then there were the two options again: YES or NO.

I selected YES. Still to this day, I don't know why.

The screen went black. I held my breath.

An eternity later, the screen popped back into existence. Everything seemed fine. The menu screen was there, with the list of ten things. TETRIS was still on the list. So I selected TETRIS from the menu and pressed Enter. But then this message appeared:

ERROR: FILES NOT ACCESSIBLE

I tried again. And again. I turned the computer off and on again and tried again. But nothing worked. Tetris was gone. There would be no more four-block shapes for our family.

I was ready to bolt out the door and to the nearest orphanage. But luckily, blame for the incident fell on my aunt, who had used the computer a few hours earlier. My aunt vehemently denied it of course, but only I knew she was telling the truth, and I let her take the blame for years.

So now the computer could only do nine things and Tetris wasn't one of them. To be fair, the computer might have been able to do more than nine things, but we never found out because, one day, the computer spontaneously combusted. I'm not making this up. I was in my bedroom reading a book when I heard my sister shout, "The computer's on fire! The computer's on fire!" I went to look and there, sitting on the stairs landing outside our bedrooms, was the computer (why it was on the landing, I don't know) with plumes of black ugly smoke coming out from it. There was the smell of burning plastic. My dad bounded up the stairs and exclaimed "Oh bloody hell!" He yanked the plug out, ran back downstairs, came back with a glass of water and threw it over the computer. Surprisingly enough, the computer never worked again.

My family's second computer – a Packard Bell

Next came our first real computer: a Packard Bell. Now, if you don't know what a Packard Bell is, then don't worry, because it doesn't matter. It's just a type of computer. What is funny, though, is that the word "Packard" sounds like a playground insult, like it's the words "Packie" and "retard" together. Maybe that's what a Packard is: a retarded person of Pakistani origin. Something to think about.

The Packard Bell came with a generous box of 20 CDs. Most of them were educational, but there was also Ecco the Dolphin and Batman Cartoon Maker, and I was definitely not learning anything by making Batman do backflips all over the screen.

The Packard Bell also came with its own operating system. Why it came with its own operating system, I don't know. There was already a perfectly good Windows operating system out there: they could have used that. And in fact, they did put Windows on the computer, except that when you booted the computer up, the computer would ignore Windows and boot straight to Packard Bell's operating system instead.

And let me tell you something: Packard Bell's operating system was AMAZING. At least, if you were a child who wanted to mess around and not an adult who actually wanted to do some work. The operating system was called Packard Bell Navigator and was designed in a time when software designers were still figuring out what an operating system should look like. Should it have menus? Should it have dropdown boxes? Packard Bell decided to have none of that shit and they made their operating system look like a house instead.

Yes, this operating system is a HOUSE. You could walk around it (or 'navigate' around it I suppose) and go to different rooms. If you wanted to do some work, you had to go to a virtual office, where you'd find programs like Calculator and Microsoft Word waiting for you on a virtual office desk. Or if you wanted to play games, you went to a virtual play area where there were games on shelves.

To a ten-year-old, this was really, really good. I loved that house. The house was massive for one thing, and it had a library, huge windows, and these cool stairs that didn't have a guardrail, so, I imagine, you could fall off them if you weren't careful. That in particular always seemed cool to me.

But one day my dad discovered Windows 95, which had been on the computer all the time, but just suppressed by Packard Bell. My dad decided he liked Windows 95 more and so made the computer boot to Windows on startup instead of Navigator. And so ended the days of the Packard Bell Navigator in our house. We could still access it, but you had to click on an icon to open it, and that was too much like hard work.

Here are a few photos of me on the computer.

Here's my brother. Some say he's retarded. I think this photo has the final say.

My family's third computer

The next computer had a flatscreen instead of a carcinogenic box. And instead of Windows 95 and Windows 98, it ran futuristic-sounding operating systems like Windows XP and Windows Vista.

But the years went by and, as time went on, the computer got slower. My dad was obsessed with the idea that a virus had infected the computer.

No Dad, I thought. The computer's just shit and old.

One day he discovered defragging. He got obsessed with it. Defragging became like his hobby and he did it everyday. He seemed really pleased to watch the little green boxes slowly turn blue, meaning the computer was putting pieces of files together on the disk. To be fair, there really was something relaxing and satisfying about watching the computer defrag itself in real-time. It was like watching the computer undo a knot or do a massive poo.

Defragging didn't do much to speed up the dying computer however. No amount of medicine will save someone dying of old age.

One day I came home from school and my dad declared that he had formatted the computer to make it run faster. That was one of the worst days of my life. My dad had unthinkingly deleted all my saved games, work, stories and pictures from the computer. At least it taught me a lesson – always make backups. Also, my dad is a twat.

The computer has gone

Childhood seemed to stretch on forever, but one day, the unthinkable happened and I became an adult. I then went travelling for a couple of years in Canada, and when I finally came back home, I noticed the computer was gone. There was now a bare, empty space where the computer had been.

"Where's the computer?" I asked.

"We don't need a computer anymore," he said.

Don't need a computer anymore? What had happened while I'd been away — the next stage of technological advancement? What was he using instead? Holograms?

"I've put the computer in the loft," my dad said. "We all have laptops now, so we don’t need a PC anymore."

To be fair, he was right. Everyone in my family had their own laptops now. My dad had a laptop, my brother had a laptop, my sister had a laptop, and even I had a laptop. The world had moved on from big, cumbersome PCs to small, portable laptops.

But still: it was a shock to find the computer gone. The computer had been a central feature of the living room, like the television. An era had ended.

I don't know if my dad did the right thing by getting rid of the family computer. What I do know is that I liked having a computer in the living room. It created a sense of community that you don't get with laptops and smartphones. With a PC, everyone in the living room can see what you're doing on the screen. While this isn't ideal for watching porn, it does create a sense of community. My brother and I would play computer games and sometimes my dad would come over and watch. I remember playing the Ravenholm level of Half-Life 2 and my dad was watching over my shoulder, engrossed. Sometimes my brother would watch me play RuneScape or Age of Empires. Now those days are gone. Now everyone has their own screens, whether they're in the form of a laptop or a smartphone.

Finally, I'll leave you with a photo of me, my dad and brother on the Packard Bell computer together: