Jan 30, 2009 - Music Tuneland Starring Howie MandelTuneland Starring Howie Mandel (7th Level - ages 3-6) is an old title, at least as measured in CD-ROM. Izgotovlenie tatu katushki.

Gosh, I'll bet it's been a year or more since I last did a Retro Junk article. Well, I guess my silence is over, haha. Also, this will hopefully be the first of an article series known as 'Retroputing', where we will take a look at vintage computing. Ever since I was 5 years old, I have always loved computers. It all started sometime around the summer of 1995 when my aunt introduced me to her Gateway 2000 running MS-DOS 6.22 & Windows for Workgroups 3.11. There was something extremely moving about this thing called a 'computer'. I had heard the term before, but never knew what it was.

Was it a machine that would eat me alive? (I seriously did think that). Boy, was I obviously wrong. At age 5, I was just shocked at how amazing this computer thing was.

I couldn't get over how you could just press a button on something called a 'mouse', and the computer reacted to the click. That screenshot, by the way, was taken on my copy of the 'DOSBox' emulator, a multi-platform DOS emulator I have on my Windows 7 computer. My aunt and I played various computer games such as Sierra's Mixed Up Mother Goose, Freddi Fish, and a Microsoft game known as 'SkiFree' where a monster would randomly eat you as you ski down a mountain. Look at those graphics! World of Warcraft, eat your heart out. In the fall of 1995, shortly after I started kindergarten, my dad decided it was time we needed our own computer.

I remember him doing a lot of research on computers, since he had never owned one before. In early December 1995, my dad finally found the perfect computer. It was a little pricey, nearly $3,000, but he really liked this one. I remember that rainy Wednesday he bought it. I had just turned 6 and I desperately wanted to go with my dad to pick the computer up. But I was bedridden with a stomach bug and was stuck in bed watching reruns of The Flintstones on Cartoon Network.

Okay, maybe it wasn't so bad, haha. That evening, my dad returned home from Best Buy with tons of heavy boxes with the Packard Bell logo plastered all over them. It was a Packard Bell Legend 822CDTW Multimedia Minitower Computer. I vividly remember getting up out of bed every 10 minutes or so to watch my dad set the computer up. Well the magic moment arrived. The computer was all set up, ready to be turned on at any moment.

It looked so new and beautiful. Little did I know how much of an affect this computer would have on my life. The above picture is from a February 14, 1996 home video of my original Packard Bell. It was now time to finally fire this beast up. Keep in mind that up until this point, the only OS I was familiar with was Windows 3.11 on my aunt's Gateway 2000. Packard bell master cd 1 download. So when the desktop popped up, I was shocked at the completely revamped interface.