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Virtual archaeology: Recreating the first PC I ever used (2022)

There are some things in life you will remember forever. In case you are just like me, then the very first PC you ever used is most likely one of these things.

It turned out that trying to recreate the system on a virtual machine was quite an adventure involving a deep dive into the inner workings of the Packard Bell recovery process. A much bigger problem was the missing accompanying boot floppy that initializes the system restore process, and the fact I couldn’t find a copy online. With the/FIELD option, HSCENTER guided me through a simple interface where I could pick some of the components and software collections, presumably based on the different model variants sold at the time.

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