I was reading about old forum archives and found a crazy stat about early internet questions.

Hayden Hunt · 2026-03-13T13:30:07.964114+00:00

I was looking through a backup of a 2002 tech help forum. Found out over 40% of the questions were about how to connect a dial-up modem. People would post the exact error codes. It's wild to think that was the big tech hurdle. What's the most dated tech problem you've ever had to solve?

shane_reed7mo ago

Remember trying to get a CD-ROM drive to work in DOS?

9

emery6036mo ago

Manually setting IRQ jumpers" is a phrase that takes me back. I used to think old hardware was simpler, but that stuff was a real puzzle. Makes a dial-up error code look easy.

5

oliviac227mo ago

Actually, that stat sounds a bit low for 2002 (most folks were still on dial-up then). The real dated problem was getting those internal PC sound cards to work. Spent hours manually setting IRQ jumpers just to hear a beep.

3