Sneaking into the auditorium for the Windows 2000 launch rehearsal

Re:Sneaking into the auditorium for the Windows 2000 launch ... by canucker2016 on Monday November 02, 2026 @03:21PM (#50343127)

Supported in MS Schedule+ 7.0 included with Office 95.

Very magical to hold your watch up to the CRT monitor, see the monitor go black and flash a bunch of white lines for a few seconds and then look at your wrist to view the downloaded info.

But it was only letters and numbers so the routine got old fast.

Could be a bit finicky to get a successful transfer as well.

And transfer bandwidth was pretty low.

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Re:Sneaking into the auditorium for the Windows 2000 launch ... by ssl-3 on Monday November 02, 2026 @03:49PM (#50343503)

I used one for a few years. It was a pretty neat thing for its time.

IIRC it didn't work with a CRT using MS operating systems after Windows 2000 due to driver changes or something.

But Timex also a sold little single-LED blinkenbox that plugged into an RS-232 port that would do the trick. That was intended for computers with LCD screens like laptops, but it worked with later operating systems too.

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