Those things are clearly meant for laptops. It's always awkward to hook them up to tower PCs. Either you're bending the short cable to stick them in the top chassis ports and the cable tension pushes it halfway off the case, or your are letting the drive dangle from the back panel ports.

I kinda miss the beefy boys that came with detachable USB cables and their own power supplies.

I still have a box of 5.25" that I won't throw away.

My guy, I’m right there with you. I have a boxed copy of Unreal Tournament 2004 on my shelf, that I bought back in uni… more than half a lifetime ago!

Don’t give a listen to Dexter and the Moonrocks, my guy, they have a song about how the ancient music of the 90s and nirvana in particular crafted who the singer came to be. It made me feel arthritic and shake my fist at the clouds.

I heard Red hot chili peppers on a classic rock station... Several years ago.

That parrots sticker! 🦜 🦜 🦜 - classic!

Same.

I listened to bits straight off an audio CD yesterday!

I lived on HP Pavillions until I started building my own PCs.

HP might be a vile as fuck company, but you gotta use what you can get your hands on 👍

Sony: rrrrrrRRRREEEEEEE

Given that you have a broken sword 2 physical copy, I assume it won't take very long before we'll be able to pry it away.

I generally don't keep mine installed all the time, but I keep one on hand just in case.

My teenage bedroom wall was covered in game maps... and Christina Aguilera.

Actually, the few that still get produced are vastly inferior to the 2000s ones via a SATA plug. We are losing the facilities and knowledge, tolerances are far worse now.

Btw, i've discovered redumper (from the Redump disc-preservation initiative) if makemkv doesn't suffice anymore. The old SATA ones chugged along like nothing, while the new-ish ones errored here and there, requiring long correcting runs. All in all, better get some old notebooks than a new USB drive, if you want to go get ripping.

I was basically forced to buy one many many years ago when cases with no optical drive bays first came on the market. The motherboard I got with that build had the drivers on a CD, and that included network drivers. I had no secondary PC to download them with. I suppose I could have used my phone, but back then the internet wasn't built for phones very well, and I remember it being a pain in the ass. Since then I have used it quite a few times. It's always been a great thing to have just in case I need it.

He's also 10 in 2026

They've been slowly revising. First they were boomers. Then they rewrote it to be gen X. Now they're millennials.

Time just keep on be marching...

Still got my box copy of Wing Commander 1 and 2!

I really wish we could go back to being a magazine culture.

You had patience, because of the limited media things were prioritized so you didnt get a lot of bullshit

and it was exciting for the time of the month to come around waiting to get it and find out all the new information.

Thanks to the infinite scrolling 24/7 always on internet, thats gone now and replaced by an infinite conveyor belt of fresh hells and misery.

With Coconut Monkey?

Mine too. That's what I spent my one (1) 5.25" external bay on.

The old tower that's stacked full of other disk drives is in the basement, where I can get to it if I ever need it. I find myself needing it more often than you'd think, usually courtesy of others who just rediscovered some irreplaceable personal thing on some damn fool floppy disk or another that they want back.

Was it the shareware version that actually had the full versions of every Id Software game released up to that point behind easily-breakable encryption?

I know I have a floppy somewhere with the crack for the shareware CD

internal bluray drives are still stupidly priced, and i want one so bad.. but at least I have a DVDRW

God, I miss big box games.

When you got all kinds of cool shit in the box, without having to pay 200 dollars to get them? Pewter Figures, Big Maps, Minature Replicas of items, and all sorts of other shit.

I currently use an external optical drive. If someone doesn't own one, they could always buy one later…

Owns disk grabs pirate copy because it's easier 😂

There's really no reason not to have an optical drive beyond cost, and they can be cheap. Mine has a sata blu-ray burner. If you don't have a 5.25" bay there are USB ones.

A common problem with older games is that the DRM isn't compatible with modern computers. Necitating the need for a crack anyways.

I never got super into BG2 but BG1 I go back to every 5 years or so. It feels like a DnD campaign, it's comfortable, and I like how brutal the combat can be if you roll in unprepared

Very different game (if you've played the pathfinder games, it's a similar feel).

Honestly, my memory is too rose tinted to offer an honest review on bg1 and bg2... They were amazing for their time, and have aged well in my elderly opinion.

They're less dialogue driven than bg3 (planescape torment will scratch that itch), and a bit less forgiving, but they're damn good fun!