I think where I started pushing limits back in 2001, was I just wanted ONE computer with internet connectivity. That's it. And if it meant I was going to make that cast off 486 DX-33 do it, then so be it. Unfortunatley, in my social circle, we had a few "Net Admin" and "infosec" wannabees and even a few laypeople who wanted to put down my lofty ambitions to make a thrift shop computer do things a brand new Pentium 4 would do.

That's how it all really started for me TBH, on 02/09/2001, I took possession of a 1992 Flight 386 SX Desktop computer, and upgraded it to a 486 using a ZEOS Motherboard in the kitchen cupboard. AS some of you viewers can imagine, I'm talking about the fist one, CreepingNet 1. With that computer, before it even had a hostname, I was on a quest to make that thing my primary PC, even if it was just a "Crappy old 486". Problem was only one or two people (Who apparently were the only people who knew anything - which included a bandmate and his sister who were in college for Information Technology) really knew anything, and the other people in the group were like "hahaha, a 486, what are you going to do with that? Play PONG?" (no, I'll play DOOM with it, but I digress). One network admin in our group told me "The Winmodem won't work on a 486!" - funny since he forgot that Modems were SERIAL Devices once upon a time, and nost some crippled PCI shitboard with some kind of arbitrary Microsoft certification to work with Windows.

Well, I got that 486 on the internet, I signed up for AOL, WITHOUT a mouse, by flip-flopping a copy of AOL 3.0 and AOL 4.0 back and fourth (4.0 came with my Serial US Robotics 56K Faxmodem). That 486 DX-33 spent hours upon hours of it's life surfing the internet between 2001 and 2011 when I finally had to give it up because it was so used up there was just nothing left work saving.

However, in hindsight, that was really not an amazing feat. Many computers would get on the internet after Creeping Net 1, I put at least 4 different 286s, 3 different PC/XT class 8088s, a handful of 386 systems, an endless STREAM of 486 machines, and pretty much anything newer I had in my grubby hands on the internet. The internet, is really not a resource intensive activity. Sure, today's modern websites are with all the shitty scripts and other crap on em', but it's still not too much for most of these old machines to handle. THey either cannot understand all the code, so they either gloss over it or give errant errors when Java does not understand what to do, or the site requires some new plugin that is not made for DOS or early Windows. I still regularly surf the web and use internet resources on these old machines, usually through an even older O/S - DOS - these days, and it's really nothing, especially once we get into Broadband internet and connecting over Ethernet or a Wifi to Ethernet Bridge.

Diablo - I'd say, the first limit push I ever did with software was Diablo, and I did it with the same snarky, contrarian attitude that had developed as a result of the whole INternet thing. See, the manual clearly states Do not run this on a 486, it will not run - well, apparently an IBM PC-330 100DX4 T/C: 6571-W5K can handle Diablo no problem. I'd spend nights beating the tar out of Demons on that thing. My working theory on how this worked so well was that the DX4 supposedly had some PEntium instructions in it, but that turned out not to be true. I think the reason why, was probably a bunch of kids were Buying Diablo and trying to run it on under-spec 4MB of RAM 486 DX-25s with a 2X CD-ROM and VGA Video and then whining to BLizzard about it. I had a DX4-100 with 64MB of RAM, 1MB SVGA, and a ripping 256K of L2 Cache. It was LAUGHABLE for 2002, but it got the job done like an old 2.3L Ford Ranger - it wasn't fast, it wasn't impressive due to a big lift kid, high horsepower, blistering torque, or a flashy paintjob - but like a little 2.3L Ford Ranger, it was just the right speed and STABLE! What more could you ask for.

That Time Five Nights at Freddy's ALMOST Ran in Windows 95 - So just a few years ago, I tacked in some unusual DLLs from WIndows into Windows 95, and then commenced to dragging in a copy of FIve Nights at Freddy's on the 486 - well.......SOMEHOW the game managed to launch and even eek out the first few milliseconds of the background music and title screen! Then it complained about some runtime it was checking for. We WILL revisit this one, imagine what Scott CAwthon would think if one of his ol' Clickteam Horror jobbies ran on a computer so old it's model name is a NUMBER! Christ, 20/20/20/20 mode might be really easy - because Freddy's move opportunities might drop like the frame rate! I have 80GB of HDD space so it might be a fun excursion.

Quartz AudioMaster Freeware 486 - Says it needs at least a PEntium 90, and a large hard disk - well, a 486 DX4-100 comes pretty close, and 80GB should be plenty for track stems (The GEM did it for about 11 years, and that was a PIII With the same hard disk capacity). The only thing is the little PTI-255W just could not keep up fast enough for Quartz at the time, but I also did not have the HDD drivers loaded. Maybe with some tweakage, I could have gotten it to run at full capacity. Either way, CreepingNet Music - we've been turning 486s into digital Audio Workstations since 2001!

YouTube in Windows 3.11 For Workgroups (almost) - Sometime back around 2011 I was in a goofey mode and feeling up about Microsoft, and decided to try the goofiest thing I had in awhile - see what happened if we put the flash plugin from Mozilla Firefox in Opera 3.62 - the 32-bit one. Because here we had a 486, Win32S installed, and Opera 3.62 could use some 32-bit runtimes. So I can't remmeber the exact folders but I googled where Firefox kept the flash plugin, and copied it to the plugins folder on the 486. THen I launched YOuTube, searched for the stupidest thing we could run on a computer so old only Yoda could compete for whose older - a Kurt Cobain documentary - and lo and behold, it started to load, and possibly BUFFER! Wanna' talk about nuts. THe fact Flash would try to do anything at all in Windows 3.1x was pretty impressive, let alone the lastest plugin for Windows 7!

YouTube in Windows 95 - This goes back a little before above. In 2006 or 2007, I was kind of bored, and wondered if YouTube would run in Windows 95, lol. I know it won't now, but back then? HEheheheheheh! Well, I went to www.youtube.com, and lo and behold, I managed not just to load the site, but load and play Videos! They were literal Slide Shows, but the audio streamed PERFECTLY! I remember I played that ol' Freddie King and Gatemouth Brown video from 1963 or so - GAtemouth has a white Fender Jaguar in the video - welll...funky mama proceeded to blurt out the speakers of that 486 without skipping a beat.Now if only they called Trixter to do their video playback code, LOL.